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Autonomous Operation DoD. In , the Truman Administration tripled the budget for propaganda and appointed a Psychological Strategy Board to coordinate activities. PBSUCCESS's designers planned to supplement overt diplomatic initiatives-such as an OAS conference convened to discredit Guatemala-with "black operations using contacts within the press, radio, church, army, and other organized elements susceptible to rumor, pamphleteering, poster campaigns, and other subversive action.
An "already cleared group of top-ranking American businessmen in New York City" would be assigned to put covert economic pressure on Guatemala by creating shortages of vital imports and cutting export earnings. The Program would be supplemented by overt multilateral action, possibly by the OAS, against Guatemalan coffee exports. The Planners believed economic pressures could be used surgically to "damage the Arbenz government and its supporters without seriously affecting anti-Communist elements.
Newspaper and broadcast media, for example, accepted the official view of the Communist nature of the Guatemalan regime. Less conservative papers like New York Times depicted the growing menace in only slightly less alarming terms. The Eisenhower administration's Guatemala policy did not get a free ride in press or in Congress. In early , a number of editorials attacked the President's failure to act against Arbenz, citing the continued presence of US military advisers as evidence of official complacency.
Walter Winchell broadcast stories of Guatemalan spies infiltrating other Latin American countries and urged the CIA to "get acquainted with these people.
When Arbenz revealed the plot, American newspapers dismissed it as a Communist ploy, another provocation to which the administration responded far too passively. The World Bank had devised a development program that should be pursued, but not in the tightfisted way of the past.
By late April, freedoms of speech and assembly had all but been revoked by official decrees and unofficial goon squads, which intimidated independent newspapers and radio stations into silence. Radio Universal, the only openly anti-Communist radio station, closed after its offices were raided by goons and its owner placed under arrest.
Opposition elements remained active owing largely to the failure of Guatemalan police to make systematic arrests. Guatemala Station reported that the government's behavior demonstrated a "desire to crush opposition activity together with what appeared to be a lack of knowledge as to how to proceed most effectively.
Chapter 3. He used all of them to intensify the psychological distress of Arbenz and his officials. Even the paramilitary program-Castillo Armas and his liberacionistas-served a psychological rather than military function. As an Agency memo prepared for Eisenhower explained, the operation relied "on psychological impact rather than actually military strength, although it is upon the ability of Castillo Armas effort to create and maintain the impression of very substantial military strength, that the success of this particular effort primarily depends.
The broadcasts reminded soldiers of their duty to protect the country from foreign ideologies, and warned women to keep their husbands away from Communist party meetings an labor unions, and threatened government officials with reprisals.
Couriers carried the tapes via Pan American Airways to [xxxxxxxx] where they were beamed into Guatemala from a mobile transmitter. When the traffic in tapes aroused the suspicions of Panamanian customs officials, the announcers moved to [xxxxx] and began broadcasting live from a dairy farm [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] a site known as SHERWOOD.
On 17 May, the State Department declared that the shipment revealed Guatemala's complicity in a Soviet plan for Communist conquest in the Americas. To further confront the Guatemalan army, additional planes were requested by Castillo Armas. These requests were promptly authorized by Eisenhower.
Nevertheless, the covert action objectives were satisfied even beyond their original calculations. CIA was up to the challenge and distinguished itself as incomparably competent and professional in covert action planning as well as execution. CIA planners designed a plan in accordance with higher objectives and intents that were expertly executed by operators on the ground through their available agent networks. Considered acceptable at the time, both from the perspective of Washington policymakers as well as those at CIA, assassination was classed as a political weapon to use in the struggle against communism and other political threats.
Government involvement in assassination attempts. The U. While Title 10 authorizes overt military involvement overseas, Title 50 specifically authorizes CIA to conduct covert intelligence activities and actions.
Even today, the distinction between Title 10 and 50 is grey at best. More specifically, it demonstrated to the world and American citizens what the U.
Government would do and what it was capable of. Covert action programs persisted in the years following the Operation with rather great frequency and implications although PBSUCCESS was without a doubt the most successful of those undertaken. Nevertheless, the worldwide seriousness of CIA was heightened immensely after the covert action in Guatemala. Nevertheless, these responsibilities were shared by the military and, as such, the American way of war.
There was no distinction between Title 10 and 50 as previously discussed. CIA involvement, as a civilian agency that reported only directly to the White House, was not an agency of war and neither were its activities.
This would be fine if it was sure that CIA had no involvement in covert action, although the pretense of plausible deniability only goes so far, and its understanding is eventually known in some way or form. Even if not unclassified or affirmed by the U. Government, the possibility exists and this changed the way of war for the United States.
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