The Vietnamization of Latin America
This article is a section from "United States Politico--Military Activities in Latin America," a paper read at the Conference on Canada, Latin America, and United States Foriegn Policy...
...Congress, House, Communication from the President of the United States Transmitting the Final Report of-the PresiTent's Committee to Study the Und tatesilliitary Assistance Program, Wit ifihSeveral Stu-ies Which are Annexes Thereto, 81 Cong., 1st Sess...
...8. "Address of General William Westmoreland to the 8th Conference of American Armies," Rio de Janeiro, September 25, 1968, as inserted in NACLA Newsletter, Vol...
...civilian personnel and their local counterparts...
...Recognizing that the Latin American military is valuable for suppressing people's movements in the South as well as for the traditional defense purposes, the North American military has taken the initiative to develop the "internal security" capabilities of Latin American armies...
...and Latin American military officers is strengthened by North American manipulation of bureaucratic mechanisms to certify the need for, and thus obtain, the military equipment requested by the Latins...
...74-75...
...3 According to a State Department advisor, 4 the affinity between U.S...
...This makes Brazil the largest recipient of OPS funds in La- tin America...
...1 1 According to his experience in South nam, every act of "nation-building" ought carried out under the slogan "move, shoot communicate".12 25 Vietto be and Judging by the striking similarity, both in operation and administrative set up, between the U.S...
...Gen...
...Times, p. 2. 17...
...This has been done both by comprehensive training programs for its advisory staff to upgrade its capacity for political indoctrination, as well as by increasing its technical abilities to maintain more efficient and intense political involvement in the internal affairs of less developed nations...
...1 0 The military, para-military and police forces, both regular and in intelligence, define the limits of the social structure...
...continued on page 17...
...The official explanation for "Operation Bird Cage" was that it constituted preventive detention to forestall terrorist operations, including kidnappings and assassinations, planned to mark the first anniversary of the death of the late urban guerrilla leader, Carlos Marighella...
...1 Rand's position in these matters is similar to that of U.S...
...For example, immediately after the 1960 golpe , spokesmen for deposed Bolivian President Paz Estensoro charged that U.S...
...General William Westmoreland has insisted that U.S.-Latin American Intelligence Coordination plays a leading role: In what we call conventional warfare, the intelligence agencies of one nation operate in complete isolation from the intelligence agencies of their allies...
...civilian (CIA) and Defense Intelligence agencies with their local counterparts...
...By this I mean that the finest intelligence available is worthless until it is coordinated, evaluated, and put into the hands of the user -- the commander -- the man who can do something about it.8 Intelligence training, along with other techniques for improving indigenous armed forces' capabilities for internal control, is given to certain Latin American military officers who have exhibited over the years a staunch loyalty to National Security and to the United States...
...The then commander of the Sao Paulo-based Second Army felt that this situation required better coordination among the various intelligence and police agencies concerned with subversion...
...9. U.S...
...Congress, Senate, United States Policies and Programs in Brazil, Hearings Beforte theSubcomittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Comittee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 92nd Cong., 1st Sess., May 4, 5, and 11, 1971, p. 156...
...standards) electronic devices...
...LVI, June, 1969, pp...
...Army Colonel John Wood, who holds that, The key to better counterinsurgency coordination is the creation of a corps of politico-military experts sufficiently large and adequately equipped and organized to man key planning, operations, and decisionmaking posts at all levels of U.S...
...Times...
...1 4 The excesses of the Phoenix Program are encouraged by the relative autonomy granted to DIOCs as well as by the absolute absence of any judicial restraint: "When the program started in 1968 we were killing about one-third of the neutralizations" the source said...
...5. 6. Barber and Ronning...
...11, No...
...national security" is further enhanced by the deep involvement of U.S...
...Congress, Senate, United States Policies and Programs in Brazil, p. 308...
...agency had any connection with Operation Bird Cage...
...U.S...
...Congress, Senate, United States Policies and Programs in Brazil, p. W. 19...
...6, p. 10...
...3. Cf...
...This confirms reports that "U.S...
...Since 1958, when the Military Assistance Institute at Arlington Towers, Virginia, was established, specialized training in "geopolitics" and intelligence has been given to a majority of U.S...
...Most of the suspected subversives were released after a day or two...
...George S. Beatty, Chairman of the U.S...
...The CODI centers are under the coordination of the local Army intelligence representative...
...In Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro the organizations maintain what, in effect, are their own staffs capable of conducting autonomous anti-subversive investigations.l9 CODIs are the essential administrative coordinating instruments for the tactical implementation of "preventive counterinsurgency" in Latin America...
...the PRUs...recruited from jails, are the triggermen for the program's political assassinations...
...They come from a number of course outlines which were submitted by the Department of Defense to the U.S...
...In several highly technical courses, access is granted to some Secret material...
...The Latin Generals seem to know that the Vietnamese experience is more than an irritating irrelevancy for inter-American affairs...
...In an address to the "Eighth Conference of American Armies" in Rio de Janeiro (September of 1968), General William Westmoreland advised his colleagues on "nation-building": Nation-building is essentially equivalent to combatting insurgency...
...6 A great deal of classified military-espionage technology as well as social science "soft weapon systems" consisting basically of conspiracy and counter-conspiracy simulations are used for this purpose...
...Los Angeles Times, "Phoenix: A Controversial Viet Program," by Stewart Kellerman, UPI Staff Writer, Thurs., November 25, 1971, p. 1. 14...
...Phoenix program in Vietnam and Operacao Bandeirantes in Brazil, one can only infer that General Westmoreland's audience was more than attentive when he said that, "Another penetrating lesson we have learned from our experience in Vietnam is the importance and the difficulty of denying intelligence to the enemy...
...The program has given the Saigon government "big brother" power over much of the population, and sources in the U.S...
...and teach them how to improve the character and the image of their for- ces...
...Printing Office, Washington, 1959, p. 58...
...officers assigned to MILGRPS...
...Horowitz, Josue de Castro and J. Gerassi (New York, 1969...
...For details on what goes on in these Cen- tros de Operacoes de Defesa Interna (Internal De- fense Operations Center) see Washington Post, "Tortures in Brazil Leak Out Despite Rebuff of OAS Probe," March 7, 1971, as inserted in U.S...
...Bragg, no Latin American officers are given access to classified portions of the course...
...349-350...
...Most of the arrests were made in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo...
...Operation Phoenix" was initiated in 1967 and consists of a massive CIA and U.S...
...7. U.S...
...For instance, "There is no connection between CODI and any U.S...
...Delegation, Joint Brazil-U.S...
...Consequently, Westmoreland continues, Although nation building sounds like a function of civil agencies, it has been our experience that military forces --our own and those of the nation we are seeking to help -- must often play a major role and use their special equipment and capabilities to help the people help themselves...
...The magnitude of advances in this field permits them to develop a capacity for "bugging" the "recipient's" archaic equipment, and this fact greatly facilitates the "donor's" surveillance functions...
...military personnel by word or deed had an influence upon the actions of the local military in time of political crisis" 5 in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic...
...H. Doc...
...civilian and military officers...
...Louis, Mo.: Washington University, July-August 1967), pp...
...Ibid...
...believe that the best method of implementing this mission is by providing the indigenous security forces with modest or obsolete (by U.S...
...As to the specific case of material classified Secret NOFORN in The Special Forces Officer Course at Ft...
...According to Maj...
...Theodore D. Brown, Chief Public Safety Adviser, U.S, AID, Brazil, reports that the Operacao was a "Pilot project to coordinate military and police efforts to combat terrorist activities...
...Indeed, many experts and laymen in the U.S...
...ambassador reportedly was supporting the previous constitutional government...
...military attaches secretly supported the rebels, while the U.S...
...foreign affairs, these "politico-military experts" have to distinguish and to act upon two types of targets, namely, U.S...
...In an insurgency situation this method of handling intelligence will not work...
...This counterintelligence task was stressed late in the 1950's, and has been refined and intensified since then...
...In most countries the intelligence agencies of government services even isolate themselves from each other...
...for the American military's involvement in the coup that ousted Goulart, see George Thayer, The War Business (New York: Simon and Schuster, 19 , p. 200...
...DoD's intensified political interventionism in Latin America has been a key factor in creating tensions, strains and stresses between U.S...
...1 5 As with Brazil's Escuadron de la Muerte, or Guatemala's Mano Blanca, or the Dominican Republic's Ojo por0o, the most controversial men on the Phoenix team are the Province Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), organized and financed by the CIA...
...1 7 In Brazil, Operacao Bandeirantes (OB) was set up in Sao Paulo in mid-1969 as a pilot Phoenix for Latin America...
...Joint Chiefs' of Staff conception of "nation-building...
...A witness from the Rand Corporation testified to that effect recently before a Congressional Committee: .. ,.that the solution lay in special training for military assistance teams so that their "inevitable" involvement in the political life of the countries where they are stationed would be a conscious, deliberate process in the hands of competent, politically informed military-political analysts...
...N. 215, Part 2, U.S...
...must not be viewed as an end in itself...
...2 0 1. In I.F...
...Its importance was clearly stated in the Draper Report: Assistance should be given in developing counterintelligence forces capable of identifying and eliminating subversive24 forces within the indigenous armed forces...
...See also Lester D. Langley, "Military Commitments in Latin America: 1960-1968," Current History, Vol...
...And particularly important is the requirement that at each level of government -- particularly within the police forces -- efforts and resources must be pooled to meet the common need...
...In every case of the release of classified material, the recipient of the training has been carefully screened prior to the granting of clearance...
...9 This kind of training is consistent with the U.S...
...Westmoreland, p. 10...
...Copyright Juan Saxe-Fernandez...
...Times, p. 3. 15...
...While some of the intelligence and counterintelligence training is transferred to selected Latin American officers, classified portions of the technology and the courses are tightly controlled by the Americans...
...Some of the topics from the course outlines deal with: censorship, checkpoint systems, chemical and biological operations, briefings on the CIA, civic action and civil affairs, clandestine operations, communism and democracy, cordon and search operations, dissent in the United States, counterguerrilla operations, cryptography, defoliation, electronic intelligence, electronic warfare and countermeasures, the use of informants, insurgency intelligence, interrogation of prisoners and suspects, handling mass rallies and meetings, nuclear weapons effects, intelligence photography, polygraphs, populace and resources control, psychological operations, raids and searches, riots, special warfare, surveillance, terror, and undercover operations...
...Senate Committee on Foreign Relations' Sub-Committee on Western Hemisphere Affairs...
...AID ex- penditures in fiscal 1970 were $732,000, and re- quests for fiscal 1971 were $756,000...
...Here more than ever, intelligence collection must be timely, responsive, and detailed...
...In practice the operation of the Sao Paulo-based OB and the more recent CODI centers varies from area to area...
...In Honduras, members of the American military mission explicitly encouraged the conspiracy that downed President Villeda Morales' regime in 1962...
...Army Handbook of Counterinsurgency: Guide-inesv-o Area Commanders: An Anaysis of Critje .American University, SR',anuary, 1966, AD-478, p. 301...
...Brazilian police personnel were brought to the In- ternational Police Academy (IPA) in Washington, D.C., a training center for senior police officers from the entire Third World...
...This article is a section from "United States Politico--Military Activities in Latin America," a paper read at the Conference on Canada, Latin America, and United States Foriegn Policy at Northwestern University, February 17-20, 1972...
...Washington Post, "Latins Blame the United States for Military Coups," February 5, 1968, p. 12...
...agen- cy," or "No U.S...
...foreign policy and national security machinery...
...For comparison, see the table below, which gives figures for the amounts received be- tween 1959 and 1970 by other Latin American coun- tries...
...In these statements the fist sentence always reads, "No U.S...
...It was really mad...
...They (the sources) said the PRUs are also used to arrest especially dangerous suspects and to administer the rougher tortures...
...Training, equipment and organization directives are some of the mechanisms used to achieve an adequate level of coordination...
...But in 1969 the district chiefs got the idea into their heads that the optimum kill ratio was 80 percent...
...U.S...
...Westmoreland...
...According to allied intelligence sources" :16 i~ --- - ------- -7 0...
...Embassy in Saigon have reported that "U.S...
...It might be well to describe here some of the points which are covered in the training courses given to these military establishments...
...Army Intelligence apparatus designed to "neutralize" the National Liberation Front's infrastructure...
...Through June 30, 1969, "self-help" con- tributions to the program by the Brazilian govern- ment total more than $25 million, mainly for con- struction, supplies, and related costs...
...7 This policy, which is also extended to electronic technology for surveillance, is concordant with one of MAPs primordial tasks, namely, to keep a close scrutiny over Latin America's most important mechanism of political control...
...During late 1969 and 1970 OB was extended in the form of Centros do Operacoes do Defesa Interna (CODI - Internal Defense Operations Centers) to other major Brazilian cities...
...Intelligence...
...The various security agencies represented in Operacao Bandeirantes include representatives of the local Army, Air Force, and Navy intelligence sections of the local, state and federal police organizations...
...His Excellency William M. Rountree, U.S...
...They began killing every Communist suspect in sight...
...2 Since traditionally the State Department was in charge of U.S...
...The proliferation of quasi-intelligence terror systems in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Argentina, gives further credence to this observation...
...1 3 The Phoenix program has organized hundreds of District Intelligence Operations Commands (DIOCs) and "each DIOC is manned by South Vietnamese soldiers, police and psychological warfare specialists as well as an official member from the U.S...
...agency had any connection with...
...The pur- pose of the Academy is "To impart, to police lead- ers of the free world,...[courses] on countering subversion and insurgency...
...a few may still be in custody...
...He has spent several years in the United States teaching at Hofstra College in New York and is currently teaching at both California State College at San Diego and at the University of Mexico) where he is a resident Professor in Sociology...
...4. W. Barber and C.N...
...Con- gress, Senate, United States Policies and Programs in Brazil, pp...
...An article of his exposing the "militarization of Costa Rica" from the Kennedy administration on appeared in the May, 1972 issue of Monthly Review and another article on the Central American Defense Council was included in the anthology, Latin American Radicalism, edited by I.L...
...Army, American sources said...
...305-307...
...Military Commission, Although most courses are unclassified, there are courses which include Confidential portions...
...This training emphasizes two levels of control: one to upgrade the indigenous armed forces' control over the political process, and another to upgrade U.S...
...John Saxe-Fernandez, "The Future of Counterinsurgency," Trans-action (St...
...Ambassador to Brazil, has described one preventive counterinsurgency operation to a Senate Subcommittee: On the weekend of October 30, 1970, Brazilian security forces undertook a nationwide round-up designated "Operation Bird Cage" with the objective of picking up and questioning all persons suspected of any involvement with terrorist organizations...
...Times...
...IPA, originally known as the Inter-American Police Academy, is op- erated by the Office of Public Safety...
...Stone's Bi-Weekly, January 25, 1971, p. 4. 2. U.S...
...capabilities to keep control over the local armed forces...
...Ronning, Internal Security and Military Power (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1966...
...The degree of "plausible deniability" is, however, decreasing...
...Congress, Senate, United States Policies and Programs in Brazil, p. 89...
...Estimates of those detained ranged from several hundred to several thousand...
...The training of the Military Advisory Groups (MILGRPS) stresses political functions, and is not restricted to supervision of equipment or on-site training...
...My emphasis...
...it must be used as a means to an end...
...The coordinator is the Army intelligence representative in Sao Paulo".' 8 He further adds that, the formation of OB was in response to the intense level of terrorist activities during 1968 and early 1969, including bombings of military installations and robberies...
...Juan Saxe-Fernandez is a Costa Rican sociologist...
...Gov't...
...For, in- deed, "Under the auspices of the Alliance for Pro- gress, the Brazilian and American governments ini- tiated project #512-11-716-070 (in early 1960...
...Army intelligence officers also sit unofficially on boards determining the fate of suspected Communists...
...Westmoreland, p. 11...
...They provide the frame of reference within which "nation-building" is to take place...
...continued of page 26...
Vol. 6 • May 1972 • No. 5
