National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #37-98 S.O.A.: Exporting Democracy or Terror?
September 16, 1998

Program description at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1998/9837.html

Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information this week on Making Contact.

Male #1: "This School is always a front for other special operations, covert operations. The difference between the conventional training and the unconventional training is that they are trained to torture human beings."

Phillip Babich: Manuals that teach torture have been used to train Latin American soldiers at the U.S. Army School of the Americas according to a recent admission by the Department of Defense. Some graduates of the school have been linked to human rights violations, including the massacre of 900 men women and children in a village in El Salvador in the early 1980's.

On this program we take a look at the School of the Americas, known to its critics as the School of Assassins. You'll also hear an exchange between activists and the school's new commandante, Col. Glenn Weidner. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact.

The School of the Americas first opened it doors in 1946 in Panama. The school then moved to Ft. Benning, Georgia in 1984.

Throughout its history the school has molded Latin American military officers, teaching them counter insurgency tactics and psychological warfare methods. Among the school's graduates were dictators Leopoldo Galtiere of Argentina and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Both linked to atrocities and violent repression.

For more on the school's background, we now present an audio excerpt from the film "School of Assassins" produced by Robert Richter, narrated by Susan Sarandon.

Susan Sarandon: In the late afternoon of December 4th, 1980 an unmarked grave was found in a field in El Salvador. When it was opened in the presence of the U.S. Ambassador, it revealed the bodies of four women. Mary Knoll Sisters, Mara Clark and Edith Ford, Ursaline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan. Of the five officers later found responsible for the rape and murder of these women, three were graduates of the United States Army School of the Americas.

According to the Pentagon, the mission of the school is to train armed forces of Latin America, promote military professionalism, foster cooperation among multi-national military forces, and to expand the trainees' knowledge of United States customs and traditions.

The School of the Americas originated in 1946 in Panama, now it is located on the ground of Ft. Benning, Georgia.

The school teaches commando operations, sniper training, how to fire an M-16, and psychological warfare. Since no major declared war between Latin American countries has occurred in decades, and the Communist threat has vanished, why provide this kind of training? Representative Joseph Kennedy.

Joseph Kennedy: If you look at the course ranges that are offered to these individuals, they in fact are a dedicated way of teaching military leaders in foreign nations how to subvert their local communities.

Susan Sarandon: Since it opened over 55,000 military officials from 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries have trained at the school. About 2000 students a year. As facts have emerged about the school and its graduates, it has drawn the attention of a growing number of human rights activists such as Mary Knoll Father Roy Bourgeois.

Father Roy Bourgeois: Just down the road here is the school, School of the Americas. It's a combat school. Most of the courses revolve around what they call counter-insurgency warfare. Who are the insurgents? We have to ask that question. They are the poor. They are the people in Latin America who call for reform. They are the landless peasants who are hungry. They are health care workers, human rights advocates, labor organizers. They become the insurgents. They are seen as "el enemigo," the enemy. And they are those who become the targets of those who learn their lessons at the School of the Americas.

Susan Sarandon: What has been learned about the lessons taught at the school? In the 1980's the civil war in El Salvador became a focal point for human rights activists throughout the world. Death squads operated freely. Often killing 50 people a night.

There were so many cases that on March 23rd, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador made a plea to the military leaders of his country.

Archbishop Oscar Romero: I would like to make an appeal in a special way to the men of the army. In the name of God, in the name of the suffering people whose laments rise to the Heaven, each day more tumultuous, I beg you, I ask you, I order you, in the name of God, stop the repression.

Susan Sarandon: While celebrating mass the next day, Archbishop Romero was assassinated.

A number of years later the National Security Archives in Washington D.C. made an important discovery when they obtained a copy of a declassified cable. Kate Doyle.

Kate Doyle: These two cables are both from the American Embassy in El Salvador. One is from Dean Hinton, who was then Ambassador to El Salvador in 1981, and it discusses a meeting during which Roberto D’Aubuisson plans the murder of Archbishop Romero. During the meeting there is described a lottery that the people attending the meeting hold to see who would draw the right to kill Romero himself.

Susan Sarandon: D’Aubuisson trained at the School of the Americas. Also trained at the school were two of the three officers directly responsible for the assassination.

December 11, 1981, El Mozote a small village in El Salvador.

Female #1: First they forced everyone out of their houses and made us all lie face down in the street both men and women.

There were soldiers on both sides. Then they moved away to see the women kneeling down on the ground to pray.

They killed all of them. Not a single one of them survived. Just me, by the grace of God. I hid under a tree.

When I heard the screams of the children, and I knew which ones were mine, they were crying, "Mommy, they're killing us."

Susan Sarandon: Over 900 men, women and children were massacred. Virtually the entire population of the village and the area surrounding El Mozote.

Out of 143 bodies identified in the laboratory, 131 were children under the age of 12, including three infants under the age of three months.

Ten of the twelve officers cited as responsible for the El Mozote massacre were graduates of the School of the Americas. They were members of the Atlacatl Battalion, a part of the El Salvador Army.

November 16th, 1989, San Salvador, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her 15-year old daughter were slaughtered.

19 of the 26 officers implicated in the Jesuit murders were graduates of the school; including Ushi Rene Mendoza, the lieutenant in charge of the squad that killed the Jesuits and the two women. He attended a commando course a year before the massacre took place.

Father Roy Bourgeois: As a Catholic priest, as a U.S. citizen, I really feel a responsibility to speak out against that because of this.

This does not lead to healing. It leads to death and suffering. In a way, this is a death machine.

And this I want to say is very close to home because it's in our backyard. It's not out there in El Salvador. This is not in South Africa. We're talking about a school of assassins right here in our backyard. Being supported and financed through our tax money. It's being done in our name.

Phillip Babich: That was an excerpt from the film "School of Assassins" produced by Robert Richter and narrated by Susan Sarandon.

To verify claims of torture training at the School of the Americas, Father Roy Bourgeois traveled to Latin America to interview former SOA students.

In the following clip, an excerpt from another of Richter's films entitled "Inside the School of Assassins", Bourgeois asks an SOA graduate about interrogation strategies he learned at the school. The speaker's voice has been modified to protect his identity.

Male #1: The school is always a front for other special operations, covert operations. The difference between the conventional training and the unconventional training is they were trained to torture human beings.

They would bring them to the base and they would be experts to train us on how to obtain that information through torture. Some of them, they were blindfolded, and they were spread.

At the time they had a U.S. medical physician, I remember very well. They were dressed in green fatigues. They would teach the students the nerve endings of the body, show them where to torture, toward what, you won't kill the individual. He will tell them how much the heart can hold up, and they were also times when they will revive the person with a powerful drug.

When the person was the doctor will tell you, "This is enough. You can't go on anymore because this man will die." It's very simple. If he hasn't talked yet, then you've got to stop because otherwise he will be dead.

Father Roy Bourgeois: Now what was that psychological torturing you talked about earlier?

Male #1: Psychological operations is psychological torture. It can go for almost the same thing. They will set you up in a room. In the next room they will play a tape recorder with screams of women and a baby, they will come back to the person and teach you to say, "Well, you wife and kids are being tortured next door." And they will show you a panty with some blood. If you don't break down at that point, then basically torture would be applied.

I mean, there are so many tricks that you can play; there are manuals about those things.

Father Roy Bourgeois: That were used- manuals used on unconventional training?

Phillip Babich: Father Roy Bourgeois speaking with the School of the Americas graduate.

Shereen Meraji: You're listening to Making Contact a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or you would like to learn how you can get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call, it's toll free. 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcript orders. That's 800-529-5736.

Phillip Babich: According to human rights groups, graduates of the School of the Americas continue to be linked to death squad activity, paramilitary operations, and repression.

This year Colombian SOA graduates were linked to the murders of three human rights activists and an armed assault on an Catholics human rights group.

These and other incidents have prompted two bills in congress to cut funding for the school which would effectively close it down. SOA proponents continue to defend the school and its record.

In June, a group of peace activists had a chance to meet with the school's new commandant, Col. Glenn Weidner. Making Contact's Peggy Law attended the meeting.

In the following exchange, Law and activist Anna Eno questioned Weidner about the school's torture manuals.

Col. Glenn Weidner: I feel very strongly, from my reading of the situation, my time in the theater, that this is a gross exaggeration and a use of circumstantial evidence to promote a falsehood.

The United States Army is the United States Army. It's an army that everyone in this room can be proud of and that has ethical, institutional values that it tries its best to enforce and to observe. The point I am trying to get across here, is that institutional professional militaries have a legitimate need to teach the use of force, and the School of the Americas does that.

But institutional militaries as opposed to para-military groups, private military groups, militias -- teach the use of force in the sense of legitimacy, and that is that force must be limited. That force cannot be employed simply to achieve an objective. That the use of force is subject to certain constraints. And that's something that our instruction at school tries to transmit.

Peggy Law: It's my understanding and certainly from my studies and from people who know much more than I, that the torture training manual does not stand alone. And that the people that have been admitted as students and also the instructors at the School of the Americas, many of them have come there as known documented human rights violators. Who have been some of the worst violators of human rights, have their pictures hanging on the wall as the heroes of what has come out of the School of the Americas, so I think we are talking about something much more systemic than one class or one manual.

Col. Glenn Weidner: You know your points are among the most effective talking points that the opposition to the school uses.

First of all, the Hall of Distinguished Graduates is a problem that I'm going to have to deal with when I get there. Because it's controversial. I don't know right now every person who is on there, but the two examples that get trotted out are General Banzer of Bolivia, and Hector Gramajo of Guatemala.

There's no doubt that Banzer was a dictator. He came to power by a coup, a military coup. And he repressed the miners' movement in Bolivia. I understand this was a formative experience for Father Roy Bourgeois who was in Bolivia at the time.

It's interesting though that many Bolivians regard that period of dictatorship as the Dicta Blanda rather than Dicta Dura but Banzer's record as President during that period for Bolivians goes beyond his repressive tendencies. And he is now the democratically elected President of Bolivia.

Now the other guy that gets brought out, Gramajo, is very interesting. Gramajo has a very conflictive history as well. I don't know it as well as I ought to but I would mention one thing, if he is so irredeemable and so untouchable, why was he a visiting scholar at the Kennedy School of Government after he left power?

It's because these things are complex that people in authority, in countries in strife like this, you know, have to make very difficult decisions. And I don't know specifically to what degree the abuse on the ground is strictly the product of an order given by Hector Gramajo.

Anna Eno: Why are we training soldiers from, as you say, sovereign countries in Latin America. Why are we training them? The answer from evidence that I have is to support our so-called national interest in each one of these countries.

And it's to keep them unstable so that we can have a slave labor market. So that we can have all of the products after which we lust -- like coffee and sugar, etc.,etc.-- so then why this school and why, why is the army so concerned about continuing its existence?

Col. Glenn Weidner: Wow. Great conspiracy of the coffee cartels.

Number one, I think overwhelmingly, any authority in Latin America will tell you that the first priority of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America is not been to keep instability, but to promote stability. And from that perhaps an undue preoccupation with security is the first priority, U.S. security. As the first priority for U.S. foreign policy.

Rather than the economic issues that Latin American governments certainly would have preferred to be first on our plate.

Number two, the only time I've heard a variation of this particular theory for why we are interested in promoting instability in Latin America, was, in believe it or not, I read a paper submitted by a Honduran officer to his CGSC course in Tegucigalpa which stated that U.S. foreign policy was designed to abolish all the militaries in the region in order to consolidate U. S. control and hegemony and therefore, be able to preserve the rain forest, prevent the development of the rain forest thereby preserving our supply of oxygen.

You know, to me this argument smacks of that same degree of concern, hyper-concern, that I don't think is borne out by my perception of the world as it exists.

With globalized economy, Latin America is extremely worried that we'll buy our coffee someplace else, that we'll buy our oil someplace else. Your picture of the motivation for our foreign policy to maintain instability in these countries, I -- I just can't buy. I cannot agree with. I think it's been the reverse. I think we've wanted to keep stable governments in the area. And during the cold war we wanted to keep stable governments regardless of their stripes because we perceived the area as being ripe for communist penetration and subversion, thereby causing strategic consequences for the United States in confronting communism in other parts of the world.

Since the fall of the Berlin wall, we don't have that excuse any more, and I'm glad of it. I think that in the two embassies I served in the 90's, number one in the mission program plan overriding goal was promotion of democracy, the consolidation of civilian authority according to the rule of law.

Number two on the priority list was, promotion of free market, reformed economies amenable to U.S. trade and investment. Now, those are fairly benign imperial designs by my criteria.

Phillip Babich: SOA Commandante Glenn Weidner speaking with Peggy Law and Anna Eno.

Joining us now by telephone from her office in Washington D.C. is Carol Richardson. She's the director of the School of the Americas Watch office in Washington.

Carol, thanks for joining us in "Making Contact."

Carol Richardson: Thank you very much.

Phillip Babich: Now, first up Carol, you had a chance to listen our interview with the new Commandante of the school of the Americas, Col. Glenn Weidner. What are your impressions?

Carol Richardson: Well, I think two things immediately. One is I think we need to be very careful about allowing supporters of the School of the Americas to frame the debate. That's one thing I think.

And the other thing I think is, as I have seen in the past, the tendency of SOA supporters is to barrage us with a lot of words, but the reality is, this is not a difficult, complicated issue. I mean, I think any time we talk about the School of the Americas; we have to talk about the Latin American context.

And the Latin American context is basically this: The majority of the people are very poor and they have a daily struggle for survival. It's a reality where people are struggling to find food to eat, a place to live, a job to survive. It's a reality where children die before their time. And in that context, you know, we have to ask ourselves this question. You know, "What is it about the kind of training that graduates of the School of the Americas get at U.S. taxpayer expense that helps in any way to alleviate the suffering of the majority of people in Latin America?"

Now I didn't hear anything from Col. Weidner around that issue.

Phillip Babich: Let's pick up another point that Col. Weidner mentioned and that is the issue of stability versus instability. What exactly are some of the interests, in your opinion, that the United States may be attempting to promote or protect in Latin America?

Carol Richardson: Well, stability -- I think he went on to say something about stability by definition, you know, is U.S. security, U.S. interests. And I think, historically and at the present time, that means economic interests. And so, you know, I think he spoke the truth in that regard.

That we are about, in relationship to our foreign policy, of making sure that everything is calm and quiet in such a way that U.S. economic interests and the economic interest of a few elite in Latin America can be promoted.

And I think one interesting example of that is what has happened in Mexico. For example, in the first 50-some years of this school there were almost no Mexican graduates of the school. But very shortly after NAFTA and very shortly after the indigenous uprising that took place as a result of the implementation of that kind of economic policy, Mexico then began, very quickly, to start pumping students into the School of the Americas. And now Mexico is the largest single country/client of the School of the Americas.

And I think that it would suggest, you know, that what is happening here is that there is an attempt now to put in place the muscle that will keep that region "stable" in the terms that Col. Weidner was talking about "stable" so that the economic policies that are related to NAFTA can be enforced.

Phillip Babich: Now, you're talking about basically raw social control and we're talking also about attempting to control populations that have no means of massive military equipment or other ways in which to protect themselves for the most part. Is that correct?

Carol Richardson: That's correct. Absolutely. One of the groups that has been one of the primary targets for School of the Americas graduates, for example, are labor organizers.

Clearly, labor organizers are about helping people to get decent working conditions and decent wage for honest work. And that threatens profits. And so you have, anytime you put that kind of economic model in place that requires the majority of people to be at the service of that kind of profit motive, then you have, you have to also put in place the muscle so to speak to prevent those people -- to keep those people -- in that kind of situation where they continue to be at the service of that kind of profit motive.

Phillip Babich: Do you think this is a case where the United States doesn't want to take care of this sort of dirty work any more and is training other armies to take care of its own dirty work?

Carol Richardson: Absolutely.

Phillip Babich: Col. Weidner mentioned that the School of the Americas uses educational material from regular wings of the U.S. Army, and simply translates that into Spanish? Do you think that that's largely correct and if so what does that say about what the rest of the Army is learning in the United States.

Carol Richardson: To be honest with you, I don't know if it's correct because that whole area is pretty much shrouded in secrecy.

Going back to the torture training manuals, for example, we had done some interviews and some investigation related to the torture training manuals before they actually came out or were revealed. And we had interviewed former graduates of the school in Latin America who had told us of the existence of these training manuals. And Father Roy Bourgeois, who is the director of the SOA Watch, actually had gone on radio and had told about the training manuals. As I mentioned that was some of the testimony that we had.

Well, I, actually, he’d, then went on to prison, as a part of his penalty, so to speak, for his non-violent civil disobedience action and I was staffing the office in Georgia. Well, I got a letter from the former Commandante of the School of the Americas just outraged that we had made this accusation.

Well, very shortly after I got that letter, the White House intelligence oversight board report came out on Guatemala and there was one page in that report that talked about their having reviewed training manuals that had been used at the School of the Americas that advocated blackmail and assassinations and very decidedly undemocratic methods.

Phillip Babich: You had mentioned that Father Roy Bourgeois spent some time in jail, you yourself have also spent some time in jail for civil disobedience against the School of the Americas. Maybe you can talk about some of the civil disobedience actions that have taken place over the last several years, many years, at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

Carol Richardson: Actually, we have been doing actions at the gates at Ft. Benning since 1990. We have always done them in November, in commemoration of the anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuit priests and their two women co-workers in El Salvador at the hands of School of the Americas graduates.

That demonstration, that vigil, that civil disobedience action has continued to grow year after year, after year. And last year we had over 2,000 people from all around the country and Canada and other places in the world.

Phillip Babich: We have been speaking with Carol Richardson, she's the director of the School of the Americas Watch office in Washington D.C. Carol, thanks for joining us on Making Contact.

Carol Richardson: Thank you.

Phillip Babich: If you want to get in touch with School of the Americas Watch, call 202-234-3440.

And that's it for this edition of Making Contact, a look at School of the Americas. Thanks for listening. And special thanks this week to Robert Richter for providing recorded portions, Shereen Meraji and Norah Haldeman assist with production. I'm Phillip Babich.

If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts or if you'd like to make a comment or suggestion for future programs. That's 800-529-5736.

Making Contact is an independent production funded by individual contributors. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. Our national producer is David Barsamian, Phillip Babich is our managing producer. Our senior advisor is Norman Solomon, Shereen Meraji is our production assistant, Peggy Law is our executive director. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. For everyone at Making Contact, thanks for listening.