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The CIA's handiwork: A triumphal procession for the handpicked new leader of Guatemala in 1954. Page 111,

FEATURES DEPARTMENTS 1 UNCOMMON SENSE ,171 By Jeanne Mane Lasks 11r1 3

41.1 10 Faith and miracles Nl Are Americans becoming more violent? Debased? Desensitized? REAL TIME 1:111

111 Has popular culture sparked a kind of national moral decline? To enter 1 5 Br Lon Montgomery 14. the world of 14-year-old Aaron Wolf—a nice kid who swims, bowls, gets Have gun. will travel 111 41.

1 good grades and says, "I just really like watching violence"—is to confront DINING NB. f these questions in their most disturbing form RV DAVID FINKEL n1 By Phyllis C Richman N 23

ut Life with noodles n ler- THE PUZZLE , 33 By Arthur S Verdesca m11 - u

01 Box Me Flops

101

11 WITS END

wool 36 By Dove Barry Dave & Colin reiv, 11 1 111 1. .1. 4 18 47

Nl At a time when new CIA Director John Deutch is calling for stepped-up covert operations to battle post-Cold War threats such as

.41Arll terrorism, the full story of Operation PBSUCCESS in Guatemala in 1954 11 41, 1 provides a reminder of what the CIA can accomplish—and how the agency's most dangerous illusions were born BY EVAN THOMAS

phro,,cranh h. Djnwl 5.ffn. Solunon io but rek's putt on piv 24 kic rt.) A1 1991 Last month, CIA Director John Deutch fired two spies for failing to report properly `Yo about human rights abuses in Guatemala. The scandal made headlines and provoked heated debate inside OwnM the CIA headquarters. For old agency hands, it was a bittersweet reminder that there was a time, World not so long ago, On June 15, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the CIA to launch an opera- when a spy could tion code-named PBSUCCESS, an attempt to overthrow the communist-leaning, reform-minded government of the small Central American nation of Guatemala 1 do just about want you all to be damn good and sure you succeed," the president told his CIA director, Allen Dulles. what he pleased When you commit the flag, you commit it to win." The CIA's "field" headquarters for the covert oper- in a little country ation were on an abandoned Marine air base in Opa- Ludo. Fla., in a suite of offices over a former nursery. like Guatemala ... In the dusty old barracks, determined men moved swiftly, impressive maps and a 40-foot chart lined the walls, phones rang, By Evan telexes chattered. To Richard Bissell and Tracy Barnes, the Ivy League- Thomas In promoting the Guatemalan coup. Tracy B. I

COPYRIGHT MIA fir RYAN THOMAS FROM THE THE URI' REST MfiN, PURL'S/AO 67 SINION k SCHUSTER INC PRINTED NY PERMASION in coup, "'retry Barnes, far left, relied on psywar devices, including this photo op. wrier* CIA-recruited rebels hold an effigy of the president at gunpoint.

OCTOBER :11. 1991 19 spreading on the map. It was his personal action arm: All he needed to do was call his brother, Allen, the CIA director. So the new battleground would BI be back alleys and restless bar- mil racks from Cairo to Havana. The Third World beckoned as an eas- 11 a ier place to operate than the East I I %6 di. Bloc. The communists were the --11? insurgents, not the government. h The Kremlin had long tentacles, tit' It ti .1 but they became attenuated with distance; local communist move- ments were easier to penetrate than ones close to Moscow Cen- ter. Third World strongmen were already dependent on American and British companies to run their economies, and the services of many public servants south of the border and east of the Levant were for sale. By judiciously dis- pensing cash and favors, an American CIA station chief could gain the kind of power enjoyed by a colonial proconsul. The odds for intervention seemed so encouraging that the men who ran the CIA overlooked one shortcoming: They knew al- most nothing about the so-called Developing World. In Guatemala. the CIA had pulled together a rebel "army" of 200 men, which it trained on one of Gen. Anastasio Somoza's Nicaraguan plantations. The chief CIA trainer was an American sol- dier of fortune named William "Rip" Robertson. The rebel corn- ° mander—the "liberator"—was a disaffected Guatemalan army offi- cer named Carlos Castillo Armas. Robertson regarded his recruits as "10th rate" and sarcastically said that Castillo Armas "might bred senior CIA operatives sent to supervise the attempted coup, it make sergeant in the American Army." Tracy Barnes had his all looked like a smoothly run, crisply efficient organization. doubts about Castillo .Armas, whom he called a "bold but incompe- Artful, quick, inexpensive coups d'etat Here was a role for the tent man.' But he tried to put a brave face on Castillo Armas's rag- CIA that really worked, or so Bissell and Barnes believed. At the tag soldiers, calling them "the hornets." time, Eisenhower was trying to cut back his military budget, which On June 18, three days after Eisenhower's order, Castillo Armas, had been bloated by the Korean War. The Republican platform had dressed in a checked shirt and driving his command vehicle, a beat- made some grand statements about liberating the "slave states" of up old station wagon, pushed across the Guatemalan border with Eastern Europe. but Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John with about 200 "hornets," whom he had met for the first time a Foster Dulles, had no desire at all to go to war to deliver on this week before. promise. "Eisenhower didn't trust the military," said historian Once the invasion began, the "Voice of Liberation," a phony ra- Arthur Schlesinger Jr. "He knew too much about it" The CIA beck- dio station set up by the CIA, broadcast false bulletins, breathlessly oned as a promising alternative. It was small, relatively cheap, elite, reporting pitched battles and heavy casualties. The CIA front used nonbureaucratic and, best of all for a political leader, deniable. classic disinformation techniques to start rumors and spread fear. Secretary of State Dulles had made the most noise about rolling "It is not true that the waters of Lake Atitlan have been poisoned," back the Iron Curtain. But he did not really believe his own rhetoric. began one broadcast "At our command post here in the jungle we He was content to contain communism, which seemed a large are unable to confirm or deny the report that Castillo Armas has an enough task in the early 1950s. The place it was growing fastest was army of 5,000 men." in the Third World, where colonialism was giving way to chaos. He Barnes and Bissell were back at CIA headquarters in Washing- saw the CIA as a convenient tool that could stop the Red stain from ton when the invasion began, fomenting insurrection via coded

20 THE WASHINGTON POST HAGAZINE PHOTOGRAPH ON PAGE IS COURTEST JANE IIARNES: PAGE HA AND THIS PAGE IT SPITMANIN telexes to their operatives spring when a Guatemalan colonel on the CIA's payroll was linked under cover in the field. The to human rights abuses, ;ncluding the death of an American. And two men, who had been last month. Deutch fired two senior agency officers and disciplined `What right schoolmates at both Groton eight others for their handling of the reporting of the incident and Yale, were completely The ubiquitous meddling of the agency in its early years has cre- sure of their place and pur- ated a permanent climate of suspicion in some parts of the world. do we have pose in the world. Neither Many foreigners—and not a few Americans—see CIA plots every- man had any experience where. Most of these conspiracy theories are pure fiction. But the to help someone with failure during a large- culture that Bissell and Barnes helped create is still alive today in scale covert operation—or, the CIA's Directorate of Operations, where the old boys still toast for that matter. much experi- their secret coups, Guatemala prominent among them. to topple his ence with failure of any kind. The secret war against SOME HISTORIANS USE a corporate conspiracy theory to explain why government and Moscow was still in its in- the CIA sought to overthrow the government of Guatemala in 1954. fancy in the early 1950s. For The story, as it is usually told, begins in 1936 on Wall Street with a throw him out young Ivy League activists at deal set up by John Foster Dulles, then a lawyer with Sullivan & the CIA like Bissell and Cromwell. to create a banana monopoly in Guatemala for his client Barnes, there was still a United Fruit Co. In 1952, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Guatemala's presi- of office?' sense of Big Game anticipa- dent, expropriated United Fruit's holdings. To get his company's tion about the emerging ri- land back, Sam "The Banana Man" Zemurray. the head of United Phillips asked. valry with the Soviet Union. Fruit hired Washington lobbyist Tommy "Tommy the Cork" Corco- Having just won the Second ran. His case was sympathetically heard, in part because just about World War against fascism, everyone in a position to do something about Guatemala was, in one Barnes ducked they were prepared to wage way or another, on United Fruit's payroll. Both Dulles brothers had a larger, if more shadowy, sat on the board of United Fruit's partner in the banana monopoly, the question. struggle against Marxism. the Schroder Banking Corp. The assistant secretary of state for inter- The battlefield, as well as the American affairs, John Moors Cabot, owned stock in United Fruit prize, was the entire world. For both the KGB and the CIA, (I-Es brother Thomas had served as president of the company until Guatemala was, as Barnes had put it while recruiting an operative 1948.) U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge was a stockholder, and for PBSUCCESS. "an easily expandable beachhead, if you want to had been a strong defender of United Fruit while a U.S. senator. Ann use the current term." Whitman. Eisenhower's personal secretary, was the wife of Edmund

GEN. WILLIAM "WILD BELL" DONOVAN. the founder of the Office of Strategic Services. America's World War II spy agency, liked to hire Wall Street lawyers and Ivy Leaguers to commit espionage. "You can hire a second-story man and make him a better second- story man," Donovan explained, referring to the cat burglars some- times employed by investigative agencies, "But if you hire a lawyer or an investment banker or a professor, you'll have something else besides." Donovan wanted a higher class of men; although the OSSers were teased for being socialites, they tended to be confi- dent and intelligent. On the other hand, they didn't have much of a knack for, or experience with, the planning and execution of sec- ond-story jobs. Donovan's hiring philosophy was embraced by the OSS's Cold War successor, the CIA. Its top ranks were filled with Wall Streeters, many of whom were OSS veterans, and academics from leading eastern colleges. They were especially visible—at once ad- mired and resented—at the upper levels of the Directorate of Plans. the CIA's operations arm, also called the clandestine service, or, by reporters of a later era, "the Department of Dirty Tricks." Operating in secret they were not public figures, though in their heyday, the 1950s and early 1960s, they were very powerful. Within the CIA, the men who ran the clandestine service were known for their courage and elan, as well as for their occasional recklessness. More than three decades later, the style of covert action these men pioneered remains seductive to policymakers, even after the various CIA scandals over the years—the assassination plots, the il- legal break-ins, the betayals by Kremlin mole Aldrich Ames. With encouragement from Capitol Hill and the White House, the CIA's new director. John M. Deutch, has called this autumn for stepped- up clandestine operations against post-Cold War threats like terror- ism and nuclear proliferation. Secret operations can produce quick and useful results. But the long-term legacy can be sour. The CIA's intervention in Guatemala did not achieve democracy, but rather a string of repressive regimes. Few Americans were surprised last

IOTTOM RH HT PHOTOGRAPH 11 RUB KI ff. °THEIS 11 RETINA:O. OCTOBER 22.1995 21 Whitman. United Fruit's PR disaster saved by good fortune, the willingness to take risks and director. Walter Bedell Smith. the cravenness of the opposition. the undersecretary of state, The CIA had tried and failed to lure Arbenz out of power by offer- The American ing him a Swiss bank account. The agency also considered assassi- was actively seeking a job with United Fruit and later sat nating Arbenz, but didn't want to make him a martyr. If the CIA press played on the company's board. couldn't bribe Arbenz or kill him, perhaps it could scare him out of Against this capitalist jug- office. The CIA's records do not disclose who first suggested the gernaut, the story usually idea, but the concept, first contemplated in the fall of 1953, closely along with this goes, stood Arbenz, an idealis- mirrors the World War II experiences of the operation's co-supervi- tic reformer who wanted only sor. Tracy Barnes. charade. It to help the downtrodden peas- Barnes had worked on Wall Street for Carter, Ledyard, the blue- ants of his country. Arbenz stocking law firm. He was hired into the OSS during the war by posed no national security John Bross, the senior prefect in Barnes's class at Groton. "Tracy simply ignored risk to the United States. His came to me .. . looking for something active," Bross later wrote in a badly equipped, poorly led private memoir. "If we couldn't give him some kind of combat ser- the Guatemalan army of 6,500 men was inca- vice, he was going to get a job as a waist gunner in the air force." pable of threatening its neigh- Bomber crews over Germany at the time had about the same life bors, much less the colossus expectancy as sailors on the Murmansk run. "I rather got the im- leader's cry to the north. Arbenz was a left- pression that he wanted specifically to look death in the eye," wrote ist, but not really a commu- Bross. Barnes's classmate got him assigned to the Jedburgh pro- that the CIA was nist, and he wasn't working gram, training commandos to drop behind German lines and link for Moscow or trying to sub- up with the French Resistance. In Peterborough, England, Barnes how to blow vert other countries. His only was instructed by British commandos in the black arts: plotting crime was to threaten the up a bridge, code a message, operate a radio, forge documents, and profits of United Fruit. silently strangle someone from behind. against him. There is some truth be- On August 5, 1944, Barnes parachuted into France, breaking his hind this explanation of the nose on the airplane hatch as he jumped. Attacking along with only CIA's involvement in Guatemala during the 1950s, but it is not the one other commando, he convinced a garrison of Germans holding whole story. For one thing. Arbenz "considered himself a commu- a little town in Brittany that they were under siege from a superior nist, and with his few confidants, he spoke like one," wrote histo- force. Barnes accomplished this trick by racing about on the out- rian Piero Gleijeses. Guatemala was the one country in Central skirts of the village firing weapons, setting off explosions and gen- America willing to harbor communists, and agrarian land reform erally making a ruckus. The frightened Germans fled. did pose an ideological threat to its neighbors. Arbenz was not a In Guatemala, the CIA set about to play essentially the same trick Stalinist or even a budding Castro. But he was not just a nationalist, on a grander scale. The CIA would recruit a small force of exiles to either. He had the potential to be a useful client for Moscow. invade Guatemala from Nicaragua. They would pretend to be the Certainly, the top policymakers in Washington believed that Ar- vanguard of a much larger army seeking to "liberate" their home- benz was a communist, or close to it, and that he posed a threat to land from the Marxists. By radio broadcasts and other propaganda, the hemisphere. With or without United Fruit, Guatemala would the insurgents would signal a broad popular uprising. Fearing a rev- have been a likely target for American intervention in the early olution, Arbenz would throw up his hands—like the frightened Ger- 1950s. The prevailing view in Washington was succinctly stated by mans—and flee. Tracy Barnes when he signed up David Phillips. a CIA operative, to The key to shocking Arbenz, Barnes and his psychological war- join the Guatemala operation. In his agency memoir, Night Watch, fare staff believed, was air power. The Guatemalan air force con- Phillips quoted Barnes's recruiting pitch: sisted of a few light training planes and 300 men. If the insurgents "It's not just a question of Arbenz," Barnes explained. "Nor of could get control of the skies and bomb Guatemala City, they could Guatemala. We have solid intelligence that the Soviets intend to create panic. Barnes set about creating a small pirate air force to throw substantial support to Arbenz ... Given Soviet backing, that bomb Arbenz into submission. An odd-lot fleet—six aging P-47 spells trouble for all of Central America" Thunderbolts, three P-51 Mustangs, a Cessna 180, a PBY naval pa- Barnes believed what he was saying; he was not being cynical. trol bomber and a P-38 Lightning—was smuggled into neighboring After churning out pages of urgent warnings about global commu- Nicaragua under the cover of military aid to the Somoza regime. To nism for the CIA's Psychological Strategy Board in 1952, he had fly these planes, the CIA recruited soldiers of fortune like Jerry De- convinced himself, his views were generally shared by his friends Larm, a former skywriter who owned an automobile dealership in and colleagues. "Tracy and 1 were not concerned with an ideologi- Guatemala City and who liked to put a .45-caliber pistol before him cal debate over whether to do it," Bissell said later. "Just how to do on the table when he spoke to a stranger. ii" Barnes and Bissell were activists, and overthrowing a foreign This entire operation was supposed to be highly secret—deni- government was action on a dramatic scale. "Tracy was so relieved able by the U.S. government. But Gilbert Greenway, who had been he could actually do something," said his wife, Janet. assigned to help locate air crews for the operation, recalled that Barnes and Bissell were not Allen Dulles's first choice to run the "Tracy was very lax on security. We were going to hire crews with Guatemala operation. Dulles had asked Kermit Roosevelt, a grand- very little cover. He was in such a hurry that he wanted to hire peo- son of President Theodore Roosevelt who had recently engineered ple without any security checks, a flagrant security violation. He a successful coup in Iran, to reprise his feat in Central America. But just wanted to get going." Greenway balked, but Barnes insisted. Roosevelt demurred. For a coup to be successful, he told Dulles, "Oh. go ahead," he urged. In the end, the cover for the pilots was the army and the people have to "want what we want," He doubted pretty flimsy: Many of them were hired from a Florida flight school that the Guatemalan peasants wanted what United Fruit wanted. owned by Greenway's brother-in-law. In later years, the CIA's work in Guatemala would be regarded as One of Barnes's recruits for the Guatemala operation was E. Howard Hunt. Hunt would work for Barnes for most of his CIA ca- a model of tactical success, of agency cunning and mastery of continued on page 29 covert action. To the participants at the time, however, it was a near reer, sometimes to Barnes's detriment.

22 THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE numbed that he can't tell the difference be- CIA we dare you tween right and wrong. "Maybe like a continued from page 22 flower," he says, thinking about this. "If you to compare keep seeing it, do you still keep seeing it? A graduate of Brown University, Hunt re- Or is it just there? You don't care. That garded himself as Barnes's social peer, but doesn't mean you're desensitized. You're others did not share this estimation. Hunt used to it" was at once devious and melodramatic. He And besides, he goes on, "If I hadn't seen successfully moonlighted as a part-time au- anything violent, I probably wouldn't be thor of spy thrillers; he wrote dozens of who I am, and I probably wouldn't have them under various pseudonyms. Barnes much of a life." signed him up to be chief of propaganda for He elaborates: the Guatemala operation. "If I hadn't seen all this, I'd be different" David Phillips, a charming if unsuccess- And elaborates further ful actor who had drifted into the CIA when "I wouldn't even have an outside life. he could not make it on Broadway, was put "I'd be scared to be with anyone else. in charge of the phony Voice of Liberation "I wouldn't be able to relate to anybody to make clandestine radio broadcasts into else." Guatemala. Its slogan was "Trabajo, Pan y guitars, basses, amplifiers And further Patria"—Work, Bread and Country. Phillips recording, lighting, drums "Because they've all seen it." hired a couple of Guatemalans—"Pepe" and So: What will it be this afternoon? Music? "Mario"—to write stirring calls to arms. The percussion, signal processing, pro TV? Video games? idea was to prepare the proper psychologi- audio and sound, software He makes a decision. He turns on the cal climate for the revolution. ALL MAJOR BRANDS computer, and on comes a game given to Phillips was a smart man—more grounded him by another student in school a few days than Hunt—and he was perceptive about 703-533-9500-10 before, called Druglord. the conflicts roiling below Barnes's unflap- He starts with $500 cash. The computer pable exterior. As he was being recruited by asks him to choose what he wants to buy: Barnes, Phillips asked him, "What right do "cocaine, crack, heroin, acid, crystal. grass, we have to help someone to topple his gov- MUSIC speed. Ludes." ernment and throw him out of office?" Barnes He makes his choice, and now the com- "ducked" the question. "For a moment," ecriter puter shows him some prices. Phillips wrote later, "I detected in his face a flicker of concern, a doubt, the reaction of a He decides to spend all $500, and now he ... has to decide where he wants to sell the sensitive man." *I! 1.411 drugs: Chicago, Detroit Las Vegas. Los An- The CIA's Berlin station chief, Henry go or Heckscher, was brought back and sent to geles, Miami, New York, San Die " SS Washington. Guatemala City disguised as a coffee buyer • He chooses San Diego, hits the button in a straw hat and dark glasses. Heckscher 44* and is told that he's just made a $500 profit tried, without much success, to penetrate -. 1f-Ar- "Pretty nice," he says. Arbenz's army and turn the officers against Now he has enough money to buy and the president He did manage to recruit one mac IT nip= sell some heroin. member of Arbenz's planning staff, who And with the profit from that he's able to turned out to be a useful spy. buy and sell some speed. Before the "hornets" being trained in And now he's up to $3,500 when a char- Nicaragua could be set loose, the United DON'T FORGET HOW HOT IT WAS THIS SUMMER! acter named Juan appears, selling some States needed some justification to make Be Ready Far the '96 Heat Wave. CALL NOW. AK-47s—except the price is $5.000, am). clear to the world and the Guatemalans that "Ooh, I can't believe it. Those are the Arbenz was a dangerous communist The .1.1irielanal !Ads% girc. g -800-252-aWlIM nicest guns. I could kill some cops." CIA tried to contrive evidence by plantin mD. en. W. vA.. DEL. PA.. 8 DC mAtC 16694 And wouldn't you know it, here come the caches of weapons—fraudulently stamped police. with the Soviet hammer and sickle—along They're closing in. They're surrounding the Guatemalan coast. The discovery does him. They're opening fire. They're blasting not seem to have caused much of a stir. But SCHULZ away, shooting and shooting until a mes- then Arbenz played into Washington's hands. HOMES i t. .1 21el sage comes up on the screen: In January 1954, according to the CIA's ESTATE HOMES. SpecuMei etch Georgian am Slone end Slump Ecrimean Country Hamm Hundreds of Mane from 1000.10.000 sq. ft "Everything has a strange misty look to it still-secret history of the operation, a Pana- AlOrdably Wit on your lam Pcomae. Greet Fos. Oeinsin, Mialeourq. Farkas. Cleion and sister moo locations. Rea 451.0■11 CUSTOM you start to feel heat under your feet ... manian double agent had revealed that the ADDITIONS. MODEL HOME 6 DESIGN CENTER on RC 50 W m guess CIA was plotting against Arbenz. This be- Mdse. VA. rust 25 minutes mom of Feu Oaks 1 Rt. 66 Ve you see flames licking all around ... I OPEN 12 .4 SAT. & SUN., WEEKDAYS BY APPT. 7034Z74530. this is the end." trayal might have blown the whole opera- And there it is. tion. But Arbenz overreacted. Precisely be- Aaron Wolf, 14, is dead. cause he feared an attempt by "los But not for long. norteamericanos" to overthrow him, the Iiv1 14Y V1/1:17.1: IN Tim "Would you like to play again?" the game Guatemalan president went shopping for <11 asks. communist reinforcements. Through his spy He presses 'n'. For no. on Arbenz's staff, Heckscher learned that Ar- There are too many other things to do.. benz had ordered an entire shipload of ture—New York Times publisher Arthur Though unknown to the public, he was re- weapons from Czechoslovakia, to be shipped garded as one of the brightest young men in from Poland aboard the freighter Alfhem. Hays Sulzberger ordered Gruson to stay out of Guatemala, just as Gruson was about government. He was the hidden genius be- The CIA tracked the Althem all the way hind ate Marshall Plan in the late 1940s, and to the Guatemalan port of Puerto Barrios, to launch an investigation of Castillo Ar- !MS'S army. in later years at the CIA, he developed the U-2 where it docked in mid-May 1954. At first spy plane, eventually becoming chief of all the CIA's chief of clandestine operations. Wisner was able to control the press, but he was nonetheless full of doubts. He had covert action. It was Bissell who master- Frank Wisner, was angry that the U.S. Navy minded the agency's assassination plots and had failed to intercept the freighter—until initially opposed the creation of a CIA- backed rebel air force—even threatening to hired the Mafia in a fruitless attempt to elimi- he realized that the shipment of 200 tons of nate Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. communist weaponry was just the excuse resign—for fear that it would blow the agen- cy's cover. After the Panamanian double At operation headquarters in Florida that the United States needed to intervene. June 1954, Bissell was thoroughly im- Surreptitiously. Rip Robertson and a agent informed Arbenz of the CIA plot, Wis- ner considered aborting the operation, but pressed with what his Groton classmate band of his hornets tried to stop the ship- had helped create. He later recalled that ment before it reached Guatemala City. Dulles decided that the agency was already committed. Then the agency discovered both he and Barnes admired the military Their plan was to destroy a railroad trestle plans and operations. Neither of them had just as the Guatemalan freight train carry- electronic bugs 'similar to the jobs the Rus- sians used"—including a microphone in the ever been before in a military headquarters ing the weapons rumbled across. But the on the eve of battle, and their experience dynamite did not explode; a downpour had chandelier—in the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. Wisner wrote a memo to with paramilitary operations was entirely drenched the fuses. theoretical. That was about to change. It did not really matter, the weapons were file, stating that the operation "appears to be rather naked ... Several categories of of limited used to Arbenz. The World War WHEN THE GO-AHEAD came down from II vintage machine guns did not work and President Eisenhower, Barnes's air force the antitank weapons had no utility in a re- went into action. Jerry DeLarm, the former gion that had no tanks. But they gave the Veil, Colonel,' Hobbing skywriter who was now code-named Rose- State Department cause to fulminate. The binda, dropped leaflets heralding the com- American ambassador to Guatemala, John said, 'there is ing liberation of Guatemala City. A Cessna E. lack" Peurifoy, had been handpicked by pilot dropped hand grenades and Coke bot- Wisner to work with the CIA. A flamboyant tles filled with gasoline out the window over figure who paraded around the embassy in diplomacy and then Puerto Barrios, making loud bangs but a jumpsuit with a shoulder holster, sporting causing no real damage. Two other planes a green Borsalino hat with a feather on his there is reality. were shot up by small arms fire, and an- head, Peurifoy demanded an audience with other pilot, sent to strafe the city of Cohan, Arbenz and cabled home that if the ran out of gas while airborne. He crash- Guatemala leader was not actually a com- Our ambassador landed just over the Guatemalan border in munist, "he'll do until one comes along." Mexico. A pilot sent to knock out the gov- The White House denounced Guatemala as represents diplomacy. ernment's radio station blew up the trans- a Soviet bastion and the Pentagon shipped mitter of some American evangelical mis- 50 tons of small arms to the exile "army" of sionaries by mistake. In Guatemala City, Castillo Armas. I represent reality.' the CIA's station chief sent a cable describ- The American press played along with ing the bombing as "pathetic." The this charade. It simply ignored Arbenz's Guatemalan people did not rise up. cry that the CIA was plotting against him. people—hostile, friendly and 'neutral—ei- ther know or suspect or believe that the In early June, just before the invasion be- Most reporters accepted uncritically what- gan, Arbenz had cracked down on student ever American officials told them. and if U.S. is directly behind this one and, assum- ing it proceeds to a conclusion, will be able dissenters, arresting 480 in the first two they didn't, their editors did. Dispatches weeks. Barnes noted that the CIA's network from Time magazine reporters in Gua- to tell a convincing story." To try to "quiet" the operation, Wisner briefly suspended of spies had "suffered losses" and suggested temala, generally Sympathetic to Arbenz, to Wisner that it be "reorganized." "But," were rewritten at the magazine's editorial "black" flights of arms and other supplies to the hornets. noted the CIA's internal history of the opera- offices in New York to take a hard line tion, "there was nothing left to organize." In- against the Guatemalan government. The Barnes tried to calm nerves at the opera- tion's Opa-Locka headquarters. He traveled stead, Arbenz executed ringleaders, burying editor-in-chief of Time Inc., Henry Luce, 75 dissidents in a mass grave. At agency was a friend of Allen Dulles, and the re- to the barracks accompanied by his old schoolmate, now his CIA colleague, headquarters in Washington and at Opa- porters strongly suspected government in- Locka. optimism was fading quickly. Only tervention. The most naked—and success- Richard Bissell. In his role as a special as- sistant to Allen Dulles, Bissell had been dis- Barnes, with his characteristic buoyancy, re- ful—attempt to control the press came at mained upbeat. Everyone else feared a dis- the New York Times. The dispatches of patched as a kind of "eyes and ears" for the director, to report back to Washington on aster in the making. "We were all of us at Sydney Gruson, the Times's man in Mexico our wits' end," recalled Bissell. Al Haney, City. seemed overly influenced by the how this bold and highly sensitive opera- tion was progressing. the CIA's field commander, begged Wash- Guatemalan foreign minister. Since the ington to send more airplanes. Wisner was Times reporter was taking the wrong line, Owlish and clumsy, Bissell made an un- likely James Bond But he was intellectually nervous, unsure what to do. It was almost Wisner suggested to Dulles that the CIA try too late to keep the CIA's involvement a se- to silence Gruson. As a left-leaning" emi- domineering and bold, physically as well as mentally. As a Yale undergraduate, his un- cret James Reston was beginning to hint in gre who traveled on a British passport is- the New York Times that Washington was -sued in Warsaw, Gruson was a "security sanctioned sport was climbing over the steep- pitched roofs of the gothic hails at night— behind the "invasion," and a sudden show of risk," Wisner argued. The necessary phone force, if thinly disguised, risked exposing calls were made, and—as a patriotic ges- "criminally dangerous," he later conceded.

30 THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE the whole operation. Wisner decided to from the Guatemalan army in a brief ['re- push ahead anyway. "He was almost fatalis- fight Richard Bissell later traced the turn- tic, amenable to putting the actions in mo- ing point of the operation to the scene of a Beautif ul tion and letting the cards fall where they hospital train arriving in Guatemala City, may," Bissell recorded in his memoirs. bearing dozens of wounded soldiers from w Allen Dulles, accompanied by Bissell. the front. The two new P-51s sent down by Win brought the request for more planes to Washington went into action on a 72-hour President Eisenhower. He was opposed by bombing spree. They didn't do much actual for the Holiday damage, but a large smoke bomb dropped an assistant secretary of state, Henry Hol- Ask your decorator about special Fall land, who brought an armload of law books on the parade grounds of Fort Matamoros savings! Plus... to argue that the United States was violating made it look as though the government a number of laws and treaties by its increas- were under siege. The locals began refer- PAY NOTHING FOR ingly blatant intervention. Eisenhower lis- ring to the bombs as "sulfatos"—laxa- ONE YEAR! tened to Holland and asked Dulles what the tives— for the effect they were having on NO Down Payment NO Interest odds were of success. Dulles responded Guatemala's leaders. To shut the radio NO Payments, 'till Nov. 1996[ that with the planes they were 'about 20 transmitters at the U.S. Embassy. Arbenz 'On App.oved aim ISCA puremr. percent"; without the planes, zero. The ordered the power turned off, but the ensu- Custom Shutters president gave Dulles the planes. ing blackout just caused more panic. From Dulles had deputized Bissell to handle lo- Opa-Locica, Phillips ordered the Voice of The Elegance & gistics for the operation. Bissell had proved Liberation to launch a "final big fie—that himself an able logistics officer during two massive columns of rebel troops were Charm of Wood! World War H. He quickly found two war- advancing on Guatemala City. surplus P-51s; as cover, the CIA gave In Washington, Wisner remained anx- $150,000 to Nicaragua's Somoza to buy the ious. He was enraged when Rip Robertson, planes; he in turn leased them back for a acting on his own authority, sank a British dollar. Bissell worked feverishly as the op- freighter on June 27 by dropping a 500- eration headed for an uncertain climax. pound bomb down its smokestack. (Robert- Fearful that Arbenz would move to crush son mistakenly thought the freighter was Castillo Armas's tiny force, still sitting just delivering fuel to Arbenz for his trucks and inside the border, Bissell worked out a plan planes; this "subincident," as Bissell de- to rescue them with a sealift and then land scribed it. cost American taxpayers $1.5 million to repay.) Bissell was not optimistic them at a different location. Bissell con- Nothing adds more charm to a PBSUCCESS, putting tacted his old wartime friends in the ship- about the prospects for room than the rich, warm elegance ping industry to charter what Bissell later the odds at less than even. of wood. Limited time savings, called "a few small disreputable ships." But then Arbenz panicked. The call today! Before Bissell could stage this covert Guatemalan president was exhausted and Dunkirk, however, events on the ground dra- drinking heavily. He was convinced that if Custom Draperies matically improved. The CIA's psywar ex- he suppressed the rebel invasion, a greater perts would later take credit The Voice of invasion beckoned—by U.S. Marines. On From Danz g to Liberation had been broadcasting from June 25, he had ordered the distribution of Captivating... "somewhere in Guatemala"—actually, weapons to "the people's organizations and Nicaragua and the roof of the American Em political parties." This was anathema to the bassy in Guatemala City—calling on the peo- conservative officer corps, whose loyalty ple to rise up against their communist was already shaky. In addition, as Piero bosses. The broadcasts were not having Gleijeses has pointed out, the Guatemalan much effect on the people, but they helped officers were afraid of Uncle Sam moving in plant doubt in the conservative Guatemalan with a full-scale invasion. officer corps by warning that Arbenz planned Pressured by his officers, Arbenz agreed to betray the army and arm the peasants. on the evening of June 27 to step aside for a An air force colonel defected and the pay- military junta. war operatives tried to persuade him to The news caught the CIA by "surprise," broadcast back an appeal to fellow officers said Bissell. "We thought we'd lost," re- to join him, The colonel refused. But he called Phillips. In the "war room" inside the Treat yourself to today's most beautiful proceeded to get drunk with the American CIA's "L Building" on the Reflecting Pool a draperies and top treatments. all agents, who coaxed him into giving the few hundred yards from the Lincoln Memo- custom made and designed to bring out the very best Fabulous speech he would have given. Secret tape rial. glasses were raised and cheering of your home. savings on hundreds of designer recorders captured the fiery diatribe, which broke out as Arbenz tearfully announced fabrics, patterns and styles! was broadcast the next day while the officer his resignation over the government radio slept off his hangover. Worried about losing that Sunday night Call Today his tiny air force. Arbenz grounded it. There was still some cleanup work to be for your FREE In-Home Consultation! The psywar campaign was given credibil- done in Guatemala City, however. The CIA NCRTHERN WASHINGTON ity when Castillo Armas and his hornets fi- had planned to install Col. Elfego Monzon as VIRGINIA AREA METRO AREA nally bestirred themselves to fight a small the caretaker president of Guatemala until 703-888-0713,11-572-4400 battle. On June 24. the rebel column dared "the Liberator" Castillo Armas could make to advance to a small border town called his triumphant procession into the capital. Chiquimula. There they engaged a garrison Ambassador Peurifoy called Monzon his VERTICAL VISIONS LEAOINI; OESFGNIO a CUSTOM 1011017W MSNONS summoned the CIA men for a formal briefing in Guatemala City and listened to the "tame pup"; he had been recruited by the sound of exploding sulfates outside, appar- CIA's Guatemala station chief, John Doherty, at the White House, with slides and charts. "How many men did Castillo Armas ently was seized by doom, fearful that he in the least subtle way: Doherty had was about to be crushed by "the govern- knocked on his door one morning and an- lose?" Eisenhower asked about the opera- tion, which had cost less than $20 million. ment of the north." Lower ranking officials nounced, "I'm the CIA's chief of station. I had the same explanation for the agency's want to talk to you." After Arbenz resigned, The answer was "only one." Dave Phillips watched as Eisenhower shook his hearl, re- miraculous success. "It should have been a Monzon lost his nerve and agreed to serve in fiasco," said fobbing, "except for the idi- a junta under army Chief of Staff CoL Carlos membering, perhaps. the thousands killed at D-Day. "Incredible," the president said. otic Latin attitude that the gringos are all- Enrique Diaz. The CIA was furious. 'We've powerful." been double-crossed. BOMB!" CIA operative Tracy Barnes's wife was sitting at home after the briefing when her husband and The American press may have been Enno Hobbing cabled Washington. lulled into playing down U.S. involvement in Jerry DeLarm took off in a P-47 and Frank Wisner burst in. Barnes generally did not discuss his work at home, but he Guatemala, but the Latins had no doubt In dropped two loud bombs on the Fort Mata- the week Arbenz fell, there were Yankee- moros parade grounds. fobbing and Do- could not resist telling her about the Guatemala operation. "Wiz and Tracy were Go-Home riots in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, herty then paid a visit to the new junta Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, Diaz started arguing about the merits of very pleased," she recalled. 'They did a lit- tle scuffling dance and said. 'We've been to Panama, Peru. Uruguay and Venezuela. Arbenz's social reforms. Latin American revolutionary Ernesto Robbing was blunt: "Wait a minute, see the prexy, and it was great!' " The war stories began to circulate; the "Che" Guevara was in Guatemala at the colonel," he interrupted. "Let me explain time of the coup; he had come to study Ar- something to you. You made a big mistake memory of the mistakes began to fade. Phillips regaled agency hands with his bril- benz's social reforms. "It was Guatemala," when you took over the government" He his first wife said, "which finally convinced paused for a moment "Colonel, you are just him of the necessity for armed struggle and not convenient for the requirements of for taking the initiative against imperial- American foreign policy." low many men did ism." Guevara learned a practical lesson as Diaz, who had been nicknamed "the Sad well: that it was necessary to purge an army Chicken" by his troops. stammered. "I Castillo Armas lose?' of all conservatives. Arbenz's revolution talked to your ambassador. He gave me failed because it had been too moderate. your approval." For Guatemala, the coup ushered in sev- "Well, Colonel." Hobbing said, "there is Eisenhower asked eral decades of repression. The "Liberator" diplomacy and then there is reality. Our canceled Arben.z's land reform, gave United ambassador represents diplomacy. I repre- about the operation, Fruit back its holdings, banned subversive sent reality. And the reality is that we don't books like Les Miserables, and restored the want you." secret police. Jose Linares, the police chief, which had cost less gave electric baths to suspects and em- OVER THE NEXT ii DAYS, five provisional ployed a skullcap designed to "pry loose se- governments formed (Monzon set a record than $20 million. The crets and crush improper thoughts." Exiled. by appearing in four of them) before Arbenz died of drugs and alcohol in Mexico Castillo Armas took over, with Washing- in 1971. A CIA official noted that "he was his ton's blessing. The "Liberator" was greeted answer was 'only one.' own person, he was not a Soviet agent He by 150,000 people in Guatemala City, shoot- didn't go to the Soviet Union and become a ing off firecrackers that had been distrib- liant disinformation campaign on the Voice colonel in the KGB." uted through the crowd by the CIA In later years, Barnes and Bissell would In Washington on the July 4 weekend, of Liberation. Barnes recounted how the agency's pet colonel. Monzon, had been regret the outcome of the Guatemala coup. John Foster Dulles went on national radio Bissell would blame "poor follow-up" by the to proclaim "a new and glorious chapter" in dead drunk when the time came for him to assume power, a CIA man had to hold him White House and the State Department the history of the Western Hemisphere. But in 1954, PBSUCCESS ensured that their The press played right along. The New up in the shower. This theme, of the hap- less Third World stooge being supported- CIA careers would take off. For his role, York Times judiciously noted that the Barnes was awarded the Distinguished In- United States had supplied "moral support" literally—at the critical moment by a cool and all-knowing CIA man was becoming a telligence Medal, the agency's second-high- to Castillo Armas just as Moscow had pro- est honor (the Distinguished Intelligence vided "moral support" to Arbenz. With clas- staple of agency folklore. These tales were good for esprit, and true enough. But they Cross is usually awarded posthumously), in sic newsmagazine equivocation, Newsweek a secret ceremony. "After Guatemala," re- wrote: "The United States, aside from what- contained dangerous illusions. The lesson of Guatemala to Richard Bissell was that a called his wife, it was " 'You can have any ever gumshoe work the Central Intelli- job you want! You can own the world!'" gence Agency may or may not have been Central American strongman can be fright- ened out of power by the mere thought of Indeed, to Bissell and Barnes, the busy with, had kept strictly hands off." The Guatemala operation was impressive, even New Republic coyly noted, "It was just our U.S. intervention. Bissell later contrasted the way things looked to the CIA against thrilling. luck that Castillo Armas did come by some The two men liked it so much they repli- secondhand lethal weapons from Heaven the way they must have looked to Arbenz during the invasion. At the agency, officials cated it six years later in setting up Operation knows where." Zapata, better known as the Bay of Pigs.. At the CIA, Dulles and Barnes were fretted over the obstacles to success—just giddy, "exuberant," recalled Tom Braden, a few planes and some sullen exiles to work with, botched assignments and Evan Thomas is the Washington bureau chief then a senior CIA official. "Allen was very of Newsweek. This article was adapted from Rooseveltian. He'd say, 'Bully! Bully! We missed communications, freelancing trou- published this blemakers like Rip Robertson. Yet Arbenz, his book The Very Best Men, did it!' He gave Tracy a lot of the credit" month by Simon & Schuster. Gratified and proud, President Eisenhower as he drank alone at the presidential palace

32 THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE