Page:CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals, 1952-1954 (1995).djvu/2

 CIA and Intelligence Community reports tended to support the view that Guatemala and the Arbenz regime were rapidly falling under the sway of the Communists. Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Walter Bedell Smith and other Agency officials believed the situation called for action. Their assessment was, that without help, the Guatemalan opposition would remain inept, disorganized and ineffective. The anti-Communist elements—the Catholic hierarchy, landowners, business interests, the railway workers union, university students, and the Army were prepared to prevent a Communist accession to power, but they had little outside support.

Other US officials, especially in the Department of State, urged a more cautious approach. The Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, for example, did not want to present “the spectacle of the elephant shaking with alarm before the mouse.” It wanted a policy of firm persuasion with the withholding of virtually all cooperative assistance, and the concluding of military defense assistance pacts with El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Although the Department of State position became the official public US policy, the CIA assessment of the situation had support within the Truman administration as well. This led to the development of a covert action program designed to topple the Arbenz government—PBFORTUNE.



Following a visit to Washington by Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza in April 1952, in which Somoza boasted that if provided arms he and Guatemalan exile Carlos Castillo Armas could overthrow Arbenz, President Harry Truman asked DCI Smith, [sic] to investigate the possibility. Smith sent an agent, codenamed SEEKFORD, to contact Guatemalan dissidents about armed action against the Arbenz regime. After seeing his report, Chief of the  Division of the Directorate of Plans (DP), proposed to Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles that the Agency supply Castillo Armas with arms and $225,000 and that Nicaragua and Honduras furnish the Guatemalans with air support. Gaining Department of State support, Smith, on 9 September 1952, officially approved ’s request to initiate operation PBFORTUNE to aid Guatemalan exiles in overthrowing Arbenz. Planning for PBFORTUNE lasted barely a month, however, when Smith terminated it after he learned in October that it had been blown.

Throughout planning for PBFORTUNE there were proposals for assassination. Even months before the official approval of PBFORTUNE, Directorate of Plans (DP) officers compiled a “hit list.” Working from an old 1949 Guatemalan Army list of Communists and information supplied by the Directorate of Intelligence, in January 1952 DP officers compiled a list of “top flight Communists whom the new government would desire to eliminate immediately in event of successful anti-Communist coup.” Headquarters asked to verify the list and recommend any additions or deletions. Headquarters also requested to verify a list of an additional 16 Communists and/or sympathizers whom the new government would desire to incarcerate immediately if the coup succeeded. in Guatemala City added three names to the list in his reply. Nine months tater,