Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954

312 Pages·1999·1.57 MB·English

by  Nick Cullather

Cover

Secret History : The CIA's Classified
title: Account of Its Operations in Guatemala,
1952-1954
author: Cullather, Nick.; Gleijeses, Piero.
publisher: Stanford University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0804733112
print isbn13: 9780804733113
ebook isbn13: 9780585062785
language: English
Guatemala--History--1945-1985, United
States.--Central Intelligence Agency,
Guatemala--History--Revolution, 1954,
subject
Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo,--1913-1971,
United States--Relations--Guatemala ,
Guatemala--Relations--United States.
publication date: 1999
lcc: F1466.5.A688C85 1999eb
ddc: 327.1273/07281/09045
Guatemala--History--1945-1985, United
Guatemala--History--1945-1985, United
States.--Central Intelligence Agency,
Guatemala--History--Revolution, 1954,
subject:
Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo,--1913-1971,
United States--Relations--Guatemala ,
Guatemala--Relations--United States.
Page i
Secret History
The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954
Nick Cullather
with a new introduction by the author
and an Afterword by Piero Gleijeses
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
1999
Page ii
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Page iii
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Introduction, Afterword, Notes to Appendix C, and Index ® 1999 by the
Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
Cover illustration ® 1999 by Banco de México
Fiduciary of the Trust for the
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums
Avenida 5 de Mayo No. z, Col. Centro
06059, Mexico City, Mexico
Reproduced by permission.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cullather, Nick
Secret history: the CIA's classified account of its operations in
Guatemala, 1952-1954/ Nick Cullather; with a new introduction
by the author and an Afterword by Piero Gleijeses.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8047-3310-4 (cloth: alk. paper).–
ISBN 0-8047-3311-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Guatemala–History–1945-1985. 2. United States–
Central Intelligence Agency. 3. Guatemala–History–
Revolution, 1954. 4. Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo, 1913-1971.
5. United States–Relations–Guatemala. 6. Guatemala–
Relations–United States. I. Gleijeses, Piero. H. Title.
F1466.5.A688C85 1999
327.127373'07281'09045–dc21 99-24849
CIP
Original printing 1999
Last figure below indicates year of this printing:
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99
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Page v
Contents
Introduction: A Culture of Destruction vii
Foreword to the CIA Edition 5
Chapter 1: America's Backyard 7
Chapter 2: Reversing the Trend 38
Chapter 3: Sufficient Means 74
Chapter 4: The Sweet Smell of Success 105
Appendix A: PBSUCCESS Timeline 127
Appendix B: Bibliography 133
Appendix C: A Study of Assassination 137
Afterword: The Culture of Fear, by Piero Gleijesesxix
Index xxxv
Page vi
Photographs and Maps
Photographs
Carlos Castillo Armas in exile 13
Jacobo Arbenz addressing a crowd in Guatemala City 21
Allen Dulles 30
John Foster Dulles conferring with President Eisenhower36
Maps
Invasion plan, 18 June 1954 86
Actual invasion, late June 195491
Page vii
Introduction
A Culture of Destruction
This study is a product of the Central Intelligence Agency's "openness"
initiative, which for a short while promised to reveal the agency's history
to the public. Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates apologized to
the Oklahoma Press Association in February 1992 for the agency's
reflexive secrecy and announced that all documents over thirty years old
would be reviewed for declassification. Senator David Boren, a member
of the Select Committee on Intelligence, applauded, noting that a new
understanding of history would "create a climate in which the wisdom of
current operations will be carefully weighed."
It seemed a natural, almost predictable announcement, given the history-
making events of the early 1990s. Two months earlier, the Soviet Union
dissolved, and the new Russian government threw open the archives of
the Communist Party in Moscow. The KGB escorted network television
crews on tours of its inner sanctum while former spymasters signed book
deals in New York. Almost every week newspapers carried revelations
from the Soviet files on the Alger Hiss case, the fate of POWs in Vietnam,
and other mysteries of the Cold War. If the Communist enemy was going
public, how could the United States refuse?
Americans expected not only a "peace dividend" after the Iron Cur-
Page viii
tan fell, but a truth dividend as well. Governmental secrecy, at least on
the scale that it had been practiced during the Cold War, seemed a relic
of the past. Responding to the public mood, Congress passed legislation
requiring the release of materials on the assassination of John F.
Kennedy and accelerating the declassification and publication of
diplomatic records. Oliver Stone's movie JFK turned support for
declassification into a fashion statement. Shortly before Christmas 1991,
I noticed a sales clerk at Marshall Fields in Chicago sporting a stylish pin
that read "Free the Files."
Having spent the previous three years requesting, and for the most part
being denied, information on U.S. government activities in the
Philippines, I cheered the prospect of a more open CIA. The agency
destabilizes history, particularly in poorer nations where rumors of dark
plots often blend into a kind of surrogate history in which the CIA is the
only real actor. When I arrived in Manila just after a military coup attempt
had nearly toppled the Aquino government in 1990, I found many people
who believed the CIA had both initiated the coup and then engineered its
failure. Secrecy prevents such stories from being challenged, and they
gradually harden into fact. Picking up the pieces years later, historians
can never be entirely sure of themselves as they try to sort reality from
illusion. Openness might remove the veil of mystery which keeps
intelligence and espionage in the shadows of history.
Shortly after Gates announced the openness program, the CIA began
advertising for historians in the newsletters of scholarly associations. In
my last year of graduate school and intrigued by this unusual opening,
and I telephoned J. Kenneth McDonald, the CIA's chief historian, to ask
about the position. He explained that the History Staff would be at the
center of the openness effort. Its eight historians would have complete
access to the agency's files. They would locate documents, rank the
papers in order of importance, and then pass them to the review group
that did the declassifying. Major covert actions had first priority, and
agency historians would research and write secret, internal histories of
operations in Iran, Guatemala, and Indonesia as part of a process that
would end with a public conference at which the history and documents
would be released. The job was a career posi-