I was recently taken to task by a self-styled journalist for my "dogged and virulent" attacks against the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) and for insisting that US "advisors" orchestrated the atrocities committed by its alumni in Latin America.
Opinions, the illegitimate offspring of proclivity and self-interest --- not fact alone --- predispose us to lean in one direction or another. Some of us, for example, are predisposed to glorify the SOA. Others, like me, who have documented its handiwork, witnessed the legacy it left behind and interviewed a number of its alumni, are predisposed to censure it. The truth, generally the stronger of two arguments, often rests on clever marketing and persuasive rhetoric aimed at an uninformed audience.
Whether the US "ordered" the atrocities committed by a significant number of SOA graduates in Central and South America and in the Caribbean Basin, is irrelevant --- but I will return to this point further on. The indisputable fact remains --- and verifiable events confirm --- that SOA cadres were (a) trained by the US, (b) armed by the US, (c) funded by the CIA, (d) deployed in operations sanctioned by the US, and (e) coddled by regimes politically and economically subservient to the US.
Honduran death squad Battalion 3-16, while staffed by Honduran officers, operated under direct US orders in "cleansing" forays approved by the Pentagon. I could cite a dozen other cases but, as an alleged fellow journalist, my detactor should be familiar with the gory details.
I have interviewed --- and published the revelations of --- a number of Guatemalan and Honduran senior ranking officers implicated in well documented human rights abuses who affirmed that they had acted on orders of the US, sometimes under the supervision of US "advisors." These "advisors," I was told, did not take an active role in the various acts of barbarism perpetrated before their eyes; they merely "observed" the dastardly deeds from a safe distance. One of these officers is a former Chief of Military Intelligence, now retired, and living on a fat US pension. He and his cronies will never be called to answer for their crimes, he affirmed, "because the US has much to lose if we spill the beans."
Narcotrafficking schemes in which a number of SOA graduates were involved have further helped tarnish the school's reputation. Several Colombian, Panamanian --- among them Manuel Noriega --- Honduran and Guatemalan SOA graduates were also implicated in narcotrafficking schemes as troops under their command were busy massacring their fellow countrymen.
I also interviewed two former SOA instructors whose sworn depositions confirm long-held suspicions that the SOA curriculum included training in "irregular warfare," with an emphasis on interrogation "techniques" (psychological and physical torture) as well as "pacification," a euphemism for mass control of disenfranchised native populations.
Senators Lieberman and Dodd of Connecticut, with whom I have copious correspondence on the matter, expressed grave concern about the legitimacy and usefulness of the SOA, and about its abysmal human rights record.
Lastly, I had an opportunity to peruse an SOA Spanish-language manual adapted from a CIA handbook in which are prominently featured "persuasion methods" that clearly violate the Geneva Conventions.
As a pragmatist, I am compelled to admit the value of military institutions and, on occasion the deplorable necessity for war. Years of extensive research into the SOA, however, suggest that there is nothing redeeming about that institution. After clamoring to have it shut down, I no longer advocate this course. The SOA did "close," only to reopen the next day under a different and more sinister name --- The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. It will remain an arcane throwback of the Cold War and, like a chameleon, it will change its colors to suit its needs. It will never submit to accountability and transparency.
Perhaps one day history will get it right.
W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist. He lives and works in southern California.
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Gutman, School of the Americas was THAT bad
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HRW, Ashcroft attacks human rights law
