Announcement

**Bereta_Eder** · July 4, 2002, 05:27

americans condone tortures in their war manuals

Army manuals appear to condone human rights abuse

Manuals for Latin American forces pulled in 1991
September 21, 1996
Web posted at: 4:05 p.m. EDT
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Manuals used by the U.S. Army's School of the Americas between 1982 and 1991 appeared to condone executions, beatings and other human rights abuses, the Pentagon said in a disclosure that prompted renewed calls for the school's closure.

The Pentagon on Friday disclosed English translations of portions of seven training manuals it said were pulled from use in 1991 by then-Defense Secretary **** Cheney. He determined that the language violated U.S. policy. At the time, the Pentagon conducted a review of the training materials and reported the findings to Congress in closed briefings.

"The review found that about two dozen isolated phrases, sentences or short passages, out of 1,100 pages in six of the manuals, were objectionable or dubious," a Pentagon statement said, "(and) appeared to condone practices violating U.S. policy."

The phrases, including references to "eliminating potential rivals" to "obtaining information involuntarily" to the "neutralization" of people, were taken out of context, the statement said.

The School of the Americas was established in Panama in 1946 to train Latin American military and security officers. The school was moved to Ft. Benning in Columbus, Georgia, in 1984.

The program has been criticized by some in Congress as a training ground for human rights abusers, but the Army says less than 1 percent of all graduates have been cited as committing human rights violations.

Other excerpts from the manuals:

"Insurgents can be considered criminal by the legitimate government and are afraid to be brutalized after capture."

"If an individual has been recruited using fear as a weapon, the ... agent must in a position of (sic) maintain the threat."

"The ... agent must offer presents and compensation for information leading to the arrest, capture or death of guerrillas."

"The employee's value could be increased by means of arrests, executions or pacification, taking care not to expose the employee as the information source."

"Threats should not be made unless they can be carried out and the employee realizes that such threats could be carried out."

Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, who has fought to deny funding to the school, said the disclosure shows that "taxpayer dollars have been used to train military officers in executions, extortion, beating and other acts of intimidation" and that it "underscores the need to close" the school.

The Pentagon says the School of the Americas has trained some 60,000 officers, cadets, non-commissioned officers, police and civilians from Latin America and the United States since its founding. It says every course includes mandatory human rights training to help foster military professionalism and respect for civilian authority.

Panamanian dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos were among the 10 Latin American presidents who seized power in their countries undemocratically after attending the school.

Correspondent Jamie McIntyre and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

**Bereta_Eder** · July 4, 2002, 05:31

Kissinger = war criminal

the case against him for crimes against humanity

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/1810_302/71250720/p1/article.jhtml?term=kissinger

**Bereta_Eder** · July 4, 2002, 05:37

USA protects dictators

Washington slammed over Pinochet

Mr Pinochet is still stuck in Britain

America's largest human rights group has condemned Washington's refusal to support the prosecution of former Chilean leader General Augusto Pinochet.

Human Rights Watch says the Pinochet regime was responsible for the murder or disappearance of more than 3,000 people and calls on Britain to extradite him for trial as soon as possible.

Secretary of State Mrs Albright: Respect Chile's wishes
Executive director Kenneth Roth said the US stance on General Pinochet was ''tremendously disappointing''.

"The world perceives the US' prolonged silence and wishy-washy statements earlier this week as siding with the Chilean Government trying to avoid justice for Pinochet," he added.

Washington has begun a review of classified documents relating to human rights abuses in the Pinochet era with a view to making them public.

But Mr Roth said a review of documents was no substitute for a policy in support of justice.

The Human Rights Watch annual report notes most dictators commit atrocities because they think they can get away with it, and refusing to bring them to justice simply reinforces that view.

Mr Pinochet (left) and Salvador Allende a month before the coup
General Pinochet faces extradition to Spain on charges of murder and torture after the British House of Lords ruled he was not immune from prosecution.

But the Chilean Government wants him returned. The US said this week that Chile's request demanded significant respect.

The general is now waiting for UK Home Secretary Jack Straw to decide whether to send him to Spain or put him on a plane home.

Commentators say America's stance may be motivated by a desire not to have details of its backing for General Pinochet's 1973 coup dragged up again.

Mr Roth said the US was ''very queasy'' about any justice that it feared might implicate itself.

His group also blasts the US for undermining the fight for human rights by refusing to embrace key international initiatives, such as the establishment of an international criminal court.

Police brutality in Latin America

Turning to Latin America, the annual report blames serious setbacks in human rights on the inability of the police and judiciary to control everyday crime.

It notes that police brutality is evident in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

In Colombia there were 600 political killings in the first half of 1998, many of them carried out by right-wing paramilitary groups.

Human Rights Watch says the Colombian army often fails to make a sufficient distinction between civilians and combatants.

The government is currently negotiating a settlement to its long running conflict with left wing rebel groups.

**lightblue** · July 4, 2002, 05:38

Decided to put all your anti-US trolls in one thread?

Az · July 4, 2002, 05:43

*we've got multiple trolls inbound*

*engaging*

* he's on my six, can't shake her*

* mayday, mayday, this it trollbuster , I am going down*

**Bereta_Eder** · July 4, 2002, 05:45

not trolls if it's the truth

Americans overthrow democracies and plunge millions to tortures

by Christopher Hitchens

Twenty-seven years after Richard Nixon was chased from the White House by a nation sickened by his crimes, the architect and author of some of that administration's most heinous and felonious acts still walks among us, fawned upon by the business, policy and academic establishments, lavishly paid for his pronouncements, consulting for the likes of CBS and ABC News, even cavorting with Jay Leno, and, above all, making multiple fortunes as consigliere to the world's most rapacious and iniquitous multinational corporations.
Even supposedly sophisticated Americans seem to have forgotten just how sanguineous the consequences of the Nixon-Kissinger tandem were for the unfortunate people of places like Chile, Bangladesh, Iran, East Timor and Cyprus, not to mention Indochina. Fortunately, Henry Kissinger has now met his match in Christopher Hitchens.
The Trial of Henry Kissinger begins by recounting Kissinger's role as a double agent in the Republican destabilization of Paris peace negotiations on Vietnam-engaged in by the administration of Lyndon Johnson-during Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign. No less an establishment figure than Richard Holbrooke (then a senior LBJ negotiator) says that "Henry was the only person outside of the government we were authorized to discuss the negotiations with.... It is not stretching the truth to say the Nixon campaign had a secret source within the U.S. negotiating team."
At the same time, Dr. K was advising the Nixon camp on how to scuttle the talks, which they did by using a "back channel"-the infamous "Dragon Lady," Anna Chennault-to get the South Vietnamese to "hold on" and refuse the Johnson proposal.
"One has to pause for an instant to comprehend the enormity of this," Hitchens writes. "Kissinger had helped elect a man who had surreptitiously promised the South Vietnamese junta a better deal than they would get from the Democrats. The Saigon authorities then acted, as Johnson advisor William Bundy ruefully confirms, as if they did indeed have a deal. This meant ... four more years of an unwinnable and undeclared and murderous war, which was to spread before it burned out, and was to end on the same terms and conditions as had been on the table in 1968."
Once ensconced in the White House as Nixon's foreign policy right hand (he was, as Hitchens underscores, Nixon's "very first appointment"), Kissinger was deeply involved in micromanaging the war. Hitchens demonstrates by a masterful synthesis of various sources-the work of the respected historian Lawrence Lifschultz, the annotated diaries of Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, (partially) declassified government documents, interviews with surviving witnesses-that Kissinger was directly responsible for deliberate massacres of civilians, from the notorious "pacification" campaigns like Operation Speedy Express (in which at least 10,000 Vietnamese villagers were killed) to the secret bombings of Laos and Cambodia, which were given the repulsive code names "Breakfast," "Lunch," "Snack," "Dinner" and "Dessert."
Thus Haldeman's diary records for March, 17, 1969: "Historic day. K's 'Operation Breakfast' finally came off at 2.00 PM ... K really excited, as was P[resident]"; or again the next day, "K's 'Operation Breakfast' a great success. He came beaming in with the report, very productive." These bombing raids caused at least 350,000 civilian deaths in Laos and 600,000 more in Cambodia.
Then came Chile. In September 1910, that country chose as its president the Socialist Salvador Allende, who was anathema to the multinationals doing business there like ITT, Pepsi and Chase Manhattan-Nixon supporters all. Kissinger "had previously neither known nor cared about Chile, describing it offhandedly as 'a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica,' " but he lost no opportunity to curry favor with Nixon by making Allende a priority target. At an Oval Office meeting with Kissinger and CIA Director Richard Helms, Nixon snarled his wishes for Allende's elimination. From Helms' contemporaneous notes of the meeting: "Not concerned risks involved. No involvement of embassy. $10,000,000 available, more if necessary.... Make the economy scream. 48 hours for plan of action."
As chairman of the Forty Committee, Kissinger not only oversaw but

spurred on the formation of a working group at CIA headquarters whose purpose was "a strategy of destabilization, kidnap, and assassination designed to provoke a military coup" against Allende.
The first step in this plan was to get rid of the chief of the Chilean General Staff, Gen. Rene Schneider, a conservative who was nonetheless opposed to any military meddling in the electoral process. The CIA put a price on Schneider's head, offering $50,000 to any Chilean officers willing to kidnap him; Helms later said that "we tried to make clear to Kissinger how small the possibility of success was," but Dr. K ordered them to press on. After the first attempt to grab Schneider failed, CIA cabled its Santiago station demanding urgent action, since "Headquarters must respond ... to queries from high levels." The ClA's director of covert operations, Thomas Karamessines, later testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that "high levels" referred directly to Kissinger.
After yet another bungled kidnapping attempt, Schneider was finally murdered on October 22, 1970. Three more years of meticulously managed sabotage of Chile's entrenched democratic tradition culminated in Allende's death in the coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973.
Much of this information has already come out in dribs and drabs over the years; it is Hitchens' merit that he assembles it all with prosecutorial skill aimed unerringly at his target. But he also raises the veil on a number of episodes that have received little or no attention.
Take for example the July 1974 coup in Cyprus, mounted by the junta then in power in Greece, that toppled and exiled the Cypriot president, Archbishop Makarios, and triggered a Turkish invasion that keeps the island bitterly I divided to this day. Hitchens shows how Kissinger "made himself an accomplice in a plan of political assassination [of Makarios] which, when it went awry, led to the deaths of thousands of civilians, the violent uprooting of almost 200,000 refugees, and the creation of an unjust j and unstable amputation of Cyprus l which constitutes a serious threat to | peace a full quarter-century later."
Kissinger later claimed he never knew that a coup was in the works. In fact he had multiple warnings-from his own State Department Cyprus desk, from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright, and even from the National Intelligence Daily. Indeed, the head of the Greek armed forces, Gen. Grigorios Bonanos, wrote in his 1986 memoir that a message of "approval and support" for the coup was received from Nixon and Kissinger's chosen intermediary with the Greek junta, Thomas Pappas.
Pappas was a conservative Greek -American businessman who had endeared himself to Nixon by delivering a contribution of $549,000-in cash-to John Mitchell for Nixon's 1968 campaign. The money came directly from the KYP, the Greek equivalent of the CIA.
"Its receipt was doubly illegal," Hitchens notes. "Foreign governments are prohibited from making campaign donations ... and given that the KYP was in receipt of CIA subsidies there existed the further danger that American intelligence money was being recycled back into the American political process-in direct violation of the ClA's own charter."
Exiled Greek journalist Elias P. Demetracopoulos, a foe of the fascist junta in Athens who had briefed Fulbright on the Cyprus coup, provided this information to Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O'Brien, who publicly called for an investigation. Was it information on this "Greek connection" that motivated Nixon's burglars to break into O'Brien's office at the Watergate? As Hitchens puts it, "Considerable weight is lent to this view by one salient fact: When the Nixon White House was seeking 'hush money' for the burglars, it turned to Thomas Pappas to provide it."
Hitchens' chapter on a plot to kidnap Demetracopoulos from Washington and murder the thorny journalist breaks new ground. The Greek ambassador to Washington at the time has said that Kissinger was "fully aware of the proposed operation" and "most probably willing to act as its umbrella." But Kissinger personally intervened with Sen. Frank Church to squelch any investigation of the plot by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the (unspecified) grounds of "national security."
In an afterword titled "The Profit Margin," Hitchens shows how "there is a perfect congruence between Kissinger's foreign policy counsel and his own business connections." For example, Kissinger was a staunch defender of the People's Republic of China in the wake of the massacre in and around Tienanmen Square in June 1989, writing that "no government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators."
While the client list of Dr. K's consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, is secret-indeed, "contracts with 'the Associates' contain a clause prohibiting any mention of the arrangement"- some of the clients are known. Kissinger "assisted several American conglomerates, notably H.J. Heinz, to gain access to the Chinese market," Hitchens writes. "He assisted Atlantic Richfield/Arco to market oil deposits in China.... Six months before the massacre in Tienanmen Square, Kissinger set up a limited investment partnership named China Ventures, of which he personally was chairman, CEO and chief partner." The firm's brochure explicitly states that it only takes on projects "that enjoy the unquestioned support of the People's Republic."
Hitchens was inspired to write this essay in part by the arrest in London, on a Spanish warrant, of the retired Chilean dictator Pinochet. Since it was written, Slobodan Milosevic has been dragged off in manacles to face war crimes charges in The Hague. Kissinger's latest book, Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, is a turgid tour du monde that serves as a prospectus for future Associates clients, but this partly ghostwritten tome is unremarkable save for an impassioned chapter attacking the Pinochet arrest and the concept of international jurisprudence that allows for transnational trials of war criminals.
But in the new climate symbolized by the arrest of Pinochet (who will almost certainly escape trial) and now of Milosevic (who won't), Hitchens argues that Kissinger "may be found liable for terrorist actions under the Alien Tort Claims Act, or may be subject to an international request for extradition, or may be arrested if he travels to a foreign country, or may be cited for crimes against humanity by a court in an allied nation."
Victims of the ethnic cleansing of the British colonial island of Diego Garcia in the '70s, who were displaced to make room for a U.S. military base, have a case that has already won a victory in the British courts-a case in which Kissinger is cited for his role in "forced relocation, torture and genocide."
The Trial of Henry Kissinger confirms Hitchens' reputation as the most skilled political essayist and polemicist this country possesses-fortuitously, thanks to the native Brit's desire to escape from Maggie Thatcher. In the interests of full disclosure, I should say I've been a friend of Hitchens since he came to this side of the Atlantic. Reading his incisive, mordant prose is a tonic, for he captures not only what's wrong about Kissinger, but what's wrong with us.
The pudgy man standing in black tie at the Vogue party is not, surely, the man who ordered and sanctioned the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient politicians, the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers and journalists and clerics who got in his way? Oh, but he is. It's exactly the same man. And that may be among the most nauseating reflections of all. Kissinger is not invited and feted because of his exquisite manners or his mordant wit (his manners are in any case rather gross, and his wit consists of a quiver of borrowed and second-hand darts). No, he is sought after because his presence supplies a frisson: the authentic touch of raw and unapologetic power.... I've noticed, time and again standing at the back of the audience during Kissinger speeches, that laughter of the nervous, uneasy kind is the sort of laughter he likes to provoke. In exacting this tribute, he flaunts not the "aphrodisiac" of power (another of his plagiarized bons mots) but its pornography.

**Bereta_Eder** · July 4, 2002, 05:47

americans give the go ahead for the Cyprus tragedy

Twenty-five years ago, the Turkish Army invaded Cyprus. Ankara claimed that it was obliged to act to protect the Turkish Cypriot community following a coup against President Makarios mounted on July 15th by the faltering Greek junta in Athens. The colonels had named as president Nicos Sampson, a Greek Cypriot right-winger with a reputation as a Turk fighter. This provocative appointment presented Turkey with a perfect propaganda ploy to justify intervention under the Treaty of Guarantee which empowered Greece, Turkey and Britain to take action if the communal balance on the island were disturbed. Britain, also obliged to intervene, was instructed to stay out by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Under the treaty, the two should have used force to counter the coup and re-establish the legal government of the republic. Instead Turkey, acting on its own, occupied the northern 37 percent of the island and expelled 125,000 Greek Cypriots from their homes and villages. Later Ankara used its military muscle to compel Turkish Cypriots still living in the south to move north. The island where the Greek and Turkish communities once lived together in mixed towns and villages was divided into two ethnic zones.

Cyprus remains divided, its people separated by the worlds first Green Line, so named because during an earlier round of troubles a British officer drew a line in green ink to divide the capital, Nicosia, into two sectors. After Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, the term Green Line was used to refer to the 1948 cease-fire line in Palestine and, of course, Beirut acquired its own Green Line during the civil war.

The Turkish side says that the Cyprus problem has been solved. The Greek side argues that the occupation and de facto partition of Cyprus are illegal and that the presence of 35,000 Turkish troops on the island poses a threat to the stability of the eastern Mediterranean. The international community agrees that the status quo is not acceptable and has called for an end to the arms race which has turned the island of Aphrodite into one of the most heavily militarized pieces of real estate in the world.

The Cyprus problem which had repeatedly threatened to precipitate Greco-Turkish warfare was supposed to be resolved in 1974. But the men in Athens, Ankara and Washington (yes, Washington) who planned the summer scenario miscalculated. Instead of solving the Cyprus problem, they perpetuated it, deepening Greco-Turkish antagonism.

Two British journalists, Brendan OMalley, foreign editor of the Times Educational Supplement in London, and Ian Craig, political editor of the Manchester Evening News, have, on the 25th anniversary of the events, brought out a book entitled The Cyprus Conspiracy: America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion (published by I.B. Taurus in London).

But the conspiracy theory is nothing new. The conspiracy was revealed as those events unfolded. Elements of the plot came out in the British press and many politicians who disapproved of the Cyprus affair soon spoke out. I used this material and interviews with Cypriots and U.S. sources for a book entitled The Aphrodite Plot written during the spring and summer of 1976, sitting in a house in Chemlan with shells from a 75-millimeter howitzer positioned on the ridge above Ainab soaring overhead and crashing into targets in East Beirut.

Lawrence Stern of The Washington Post wrote about the plot at the same time (The Wrong Horse); Peter Murtagh, formerly of the Guardian and now with the Irish Times, added details in a book about the colonels published in 1994 (The Rape of Greece). There were, of course, many other books which referred to the plot.

The object of the plot was to solve the Cyprus problem once and for all. A general outline of a deal had been thrashed out during clandestine conversations between Greek and Turkish ministers meeting privately during NATO conferences in the early 1970s. The deal itself involved the establishment of a Turkish base on the Karpass Peninsula and arrangements for the protection of the Turkish Cypriots while most of the island and the Greek Cypriots who made up 82 percent of the population would be granted union, Enosis, with the Greek motherland.

Since the Cyprus troubles began in 1963-64, the U.S. had been determined to get rid of President Makarios, seen by Washington as the major obstacle to such a deal. The U.S., a country based on the separation of church and state, had a visceral dislike for Archbishop Makarios because he was a cleric in politics. He also drew electoral support from the communist Akel Party while the Cold War raged on the international scene. He was non-aligned, thus immoral in Washingtons eyes. He was a friend of the Arabs, while the U.S. backed Israel. And Makarios was an enemy of Washington s junta friends in Athens who, according to Peter Murtagh, had allowed Israeli planes to use a U.S. base in Crete to launch the air strikes on Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian air fields that decided the outcome of the 1967 war before Arab and Israeli troops came together on the ground.

After the October War in 1973, the U.S. became increasingly eager to get rid of Makarios and secure a strategic foothold on the island by installing its Greek and Turkish allies on Cyprus. Britain had denied Washington the use of Cyprus-based communications facilities which might have enabled the U.S. to warn Israel of the Arabs preemptive attack. And Washington was not allowed to use British bases as staging posts for resupplying Israel with the weaponry which enabled it to win the war.

The timing of the coup was crucial. By late 1973, Greek and Turkish Cypriot negotiators had reached a constitutional agreement which would have settled the Cyprus problem within the context of the existing unitary state. Turkish Cypriots were leaving the communal enclaves they inhabited since 1963 to work and to settle back in their old homes.

Athens and Ankara took steps to block the accord. Then Athens began to make arrangements to overthrow Makarios. He knew full well what was going on and demanded the withdrawal of mainland Greek officers of the Cyprus National Guard who were instructed to mount the coup on behalf of Athens. Makarios warned everybody who would listen, even journalists like my husband and myself during an interview a few months before the plot was mounted.

The July 1974 coup was the last of several attempts. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agencys chief of station in Athens had been fully informed of the plots development since early in the year. The State Department was also aware of what was going on and told the U.S. ambassador in Athens to warn off the colonels. But he did not make a forceful statement in time to stop them from going ahead. Which they did. And they botched it.

Just after 8am on the morning of July 15th, Greek-commanded units of the National Guard rolled up the curving drive to the presidential palace in armored cars. They were held off by bodyguards and policemen expecting such a bid. President Makarios was receiving Greek schoolchildren from Egypt. He led them to safety in the garden behind the palace, escaped down a path and caught a taxi which took him to safety. The coup had failed in its first objective.

But not in its second which was to give Ankara a military foothold on the island. On July 20th, Turkish troops were parachuted onto the island and landed on the tourist beaches near the pretty port of Kyrenia. Although Greek Army officers commanding the National Guard were ordered not to resist, those who did fought well but could not prevent the Turks from occupying, in two stages, the entire northern part of the island. But instead of sticking to the deal which gave Turkey a base in the Karpass, Ankara had decided to implement its own plan for the partition of the country along a line first put forward in the mid-1950s.

The Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus precipitated the collapse of the Greek junta, the CIAs Athens asset, but this did not worry the State Depa rtment which had reached the conclusion that the junta was no longer an acceptable partner. Although Kissinger said later that Washington was too preoccupied with Watergate to function effectively as the crisis on the island was building, his excuses must not be taken seriously. It was reported in the press at the time that Kissinger first discouraged Britain from mounting a joint intervention with Turkey with the object of restoring the legitimate government and then told the British foreign secretary, James Callaghan, not to be a boy scout when he suggested that Britain stage a naval operation to prevent Turkish landings on Cyprus. Kissingers nos speak complicity.

Like many other well-laid plots, the Cyprus conspiracy went astray. It solved nothing. But it is important to know that there was a plot. Today, after 25 years of fruitless settlement talks, Washington, the only power on earth which might press Turkey to agree to a UN-drafted federal solution, refuses to do so. The U.S. secretary of defense, William Cohen, stated as much during his recent visit to Ankara. Why should Washington intervene to reverse the outcome of the conspiracy it supported?

Callaghan says US vetoed 74 intervention to protect spy facilities
Cyprus Mail: 13th November 1999

By Jean Christou

THE UNITED States vetoed Britain's intervention in the Turkish invasion to protect its spying bases in northern Cyprus, former British Prime Minister Lord Callaghan has revealed in an interview to a British paper.

This is the first time that America's use of spy bases in Cyprus has ever been confirmed, and the issue is to be raised in the British House of Commons.

In the interview, published yesterday in the Times Higher Education Supplement, Lord Callaghan confirmed that Britain had almost gone to war with Turkey over Cyprus.

He said that although Britain had sent a task force in 1974, the Americans vetoed any military action that might have deterred Turkey.

He implied that this was because the US did not want to jeopardise its electronic spying facilities in northern Cyprus and admitted the invasion left the US free to continue spying on Russia and the Middle East from a 'state' it did not recognise.

"The Turks were willing to let the Americans carry on operating because their presence was a political safeguard against the Russians," he said.

Callaghan was interviewed for the Times by Brendan O'Malley, co-author with Ian Craig of The Cyprus Conspiracy: American Espionage and the Turkish Invasion.

O'Malley said that when researching the book, Callaghan had privately admitted that Britain had sent the task force. "It was the most frightening moment of my career," he said. "We nearly went to war with Turkey. But the Americans stopped us."

The author said that, although Callaghan has in the past shunned interviews about Cyprus, he relented last month.

Callaghan disputed the authors' conclusion that the division of Cyprus was an international plot at a time when the US was embroiled in the Watergate scandal that toppled the Nixon presidency.

At the same time, the Labour government had come to power in Britain determined to slash defence spending at a period when spying in Cyprus was increasingly important.

"We took a decision to cut down on defence and closing one or two of the major bases on Cyprus was a strong runner," Callaghan said, adding that the US military and senior State Department officials repeatedly asked for the bases to be saved, primarily because they could not have taken them over themselves.

"Cyprus had extreme value as a centre for electronic surveillance of the Soviet Union's nuclear activities," Callaghan said. "So the American's didn't want us to go."

Page not found - Hellenic Electronic Center

http://www.greece.org/cyprus/Takism6.htm

**Bereta_Eder** · July 4, 2002, 05:49

americans orchastre Greek dictatorship

"Fvck your parliament and your constitution," said the President of the United States

"It's the best damn Government since Pericles," the American two-star General declared. [1] (The news report did not mention whether he was chewing on a big fat cigar.)

The governmnet, about which the good General was so ebulient, was that of the Colonels' junta which came to power in a military coup in April 1967, followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save a nation from a "communist takeover". Corrupting and subversive influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were the miniskirts, long hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory. [2]

So brutal and so swift was the repression, that by September, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands were before the European Comission of Human Rights to accuse Greece of violating most of the Commission's conventions. Before the year was over, Amnesty International had sent representatives to Greece to investigate the situation. From this came a report which asserted that "Torture as a deliberate practice is carried out by the Security Police and the Military Police." [3]

The coup had taken place two days before the campaign for national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece.

Philip Deane (the pen name of Gerasimos Gigantes) is a Greek, a former UN official, who worked during this period both for King Constantine and as an envoy to Washington for the Papandreou government. He has written an intimate account of the subleties and the grossness of this conspiracy to undermine the government and enhance the position of the military plotters, and of the raw power exercised by the CIA in his country [4]. We saw earlier how Greece was looked upon much as a piece of property to be developed according to Washington's needs. A story related by Deane illustrates how this attitude was little changed, and thus the precariousness of Papandreou's position: During one of the perennial disputes between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, which was now spilling over onto NATO, President Johnson summoned the Greek ambassador to tell him of Washington's "solution". The ambassador protested that it would be unacceptable to the Greek parliament and contrary to the Greek constitution.

"Then listen to me, Mr. Ambassador," said the President of the United States, "**** your Parliament and your Constitution. America, is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good . . . We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament and his Constitution may not last very long." [5]

In July 1965, George Papandreou was finally maneuvered out of office by royal prerogative. The king had a coalition of breakaway Centre Union Deputies (Papandreou's party) and rightists waiting in the wings to form a new government. It was later revealed by a State Department official that the CIA Chief-of-Station in Athens, John Maury, had "worked in behalf of the palace in 1965. He helped King Constantine buy Centre Union Deputies so that the George Papandreou Government was toppled." [6]

For nearly two years thereafter, various short-lived cabinets ruled until it was no longer possible to avoid holding the elections prescribed by the constitution.

What concerned the opponents of George Papandreou most about him was his son. Andreas Papandreou, who had been head of the economics department at the University of California at Berkeley and a minister in his father's cabinet, was destined for a leading role in the new government. But he was by no means the wide-eyed radical. In the United States, Andreas had been an active supporter of such quintessential moderate liberals as Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey. [7] His economic views, wrote 'Washington Post' columnist Marquis Childs, were "those of the American New Deal". [8]

But Andreas Papandreou did not disguise his wish to take Greece out of the cold war. He publicly questioned the wisdom of the country remaining in NATO, or at least ramaining in it as a satellite of the United States. He leaned toward opening relations with the Soviet Union and other Communist countries on Greece's border. He argued that the swollen American military and intelligence teams in Greece compromised the nation's freedom of action. And he viewed the Greek Army as a threat to democracy, wishing to purge it of its most dictatorial-and royalist-minded senior officers. [9]

Andreas Papandreou's bark was worse than his bite, as his later presidency was to simply demonstrate. (He did not, for example, pull Greece out of NATO or US bases out of Greece.) But in Lyndon johnson's Washingon, if you were not totally and unquestionably with us, you were agin' us. Johnson felt hat Andreas, who had become a naturalized US citizen, had betrayed America". Said LBJ:

We gave the son of a ***** American citizenship, didn't we? He was an American, with all the rights and privileges. And he had sworn allegiance to the flag. And then he gave up his American citizenship. He went back to just being a Greek. You can't trust a man who breaks his oath of allegiance to the flag of the United States. [10]

What, then, are we to make of the fact that Andreas Papandreou was later reported to have worked with the CIA in the early 1960s? (He criticized publication of the report, but did not deny the charge.) [11] If true, it would not have been incompatible with being a liberal, particularly at that time. It was incompatible, as he susequently learned, only with his commitment to a Greece independent from US foreign policy.

As for the elder Papandreou, his anti-communist credentials were impeccable, dating back to his role as a Brtitsh-installed prime-minister during the civil war against the left in 1944-45. But he, too, showed stirrings of independence from the Western superpower. He refused to buckle under Johnson's pressure to compromise with Turkey over Cyprus. He accepted an invitation to visit Moscow, and when his government said it would accept Soviet aid in preparation for a possible war with Turkey, the US Embassy 'demanded' an explanation. Moreover, in an attempt to heal the old wounds of the civil war, Papandreoubegan to reintroduce certain civil liberties and to readmit into Greece some of those who had fought against the government in the civil war peroid. [12]

When Andreas Papandreou assumed his ministerial duties in 1964 he was shocked to discover what was becoming a fact of life for every techno-industrial state in the world: an intelligence service gone wild, a shadow government with powers beyond the control of the nation's nominal leaders. This, thought Papandreou, accounted for many of the obstacles the government was encountering in trying to carry out its policies. [13]

The Greek intelligence service, KYP, as we have seen, was created by the OSS/CIA in the course of the civil war, with hundreds of its officers receiving training in the United States. One of these men, George Papadopoulos, was the leader of the junta that seized power in 1967. Andreas Papandreou found that the KYP routinely bugged ministerial converstaions and turned the data over to the CIA. (Many Western intelligence agencies have long provided the CIA with information about their own government and citizens, and the CIA has reciprocated on occasion. The nature of much of this information has been such that if a private citizen were to pass it to a foreign power he could be charged with treason.)

As a result of his discovery, the younger Papandreou dismissed the two top KYP men and replaced them with reliable officers. The new director was ordered to protect the cabinet from surveillance. "He came back apologetically," recalls Papandreou, "to say he couldn't do it. All the equipment was American, controlled by the CIA or Greeks under CIA supervision. There was no kind of distinction between the two services. They duplicated functions in a counterpart relationship. In effect, they were a single agency." [14]

Andreas Papandreou's order to abolish the bugging of the cabinet inspired the Deputy Chief of Mission of the US Embassy, Norbert Anshutz (or Anschuetz), to visit him.

Anshutz, who has been linked to the CIA, demanded that Papandreou rescind the order. Andreas demanded that the American leave his office, which he did, but not before warning that "there would be consequences". [15]

Papandreou then requested that a thorough search be made of his home and office for electronic devices by the new KYP deputy director. "It wasn't until much later," says Andreas, "that we discovered he'd simply planted a lot of new bugs. Lo and behold, we'd brought in another American-paid operative as our No. 2." [16]

An endeavor by Andreas to end the practice of KYP's funds coming directly from the CIA without passing through any Greek ministry also met with failure, but he did succeed in transferring the man who had been liaison between the two agencies for sevearl years. This was George Papadopoulos. The change in his position, however, appears to have amounted to little more than a formality, for the organization still took orders from him; even afterwards, Greek "opposition politicians who sought the ear (or the purse) of James Potts, CIA [deputy] chief in Athens before the coup, were often told: 'See George -- he's my boy'."

In mid-February 1967, a meeting took place in the White House, reported Marquis Childs to discuss CIA reports which "left no doubt that a military coup was in the making ... It could hardly have been secret. Since 1947 the Greek army and the American military aid group in Athens, numbering several hundred, have worked as part of the same team ... The solemn question was whether by some subtle political intervention the coup could be prevented" and thus preserve parliamentary government. It was decided that no course of action was feasible. As one of the senior civilians present recalls it, Walt Rostow, the President's adviser on national security affairs, closed the meeting with these words: I hope you understand, gentlemen, that what we have concluded here, or rather have failed to conclude, makes the future course of events in Greece inevitable. [18]

A CIA report dated 23 January 1967 had specifically named the Papadopoulos group as one plotting the coup, and was apparently one of the reports discussed at the February meeting. [19]

Of the cabal of five officers which took power in April four, reportedly, were intimately connected to the American military or to the CIA in Greece. The fifth man had been brought in becasue of the armored units he commanded. [20] George Papadopoulos emerged as the 'de facto' leader, taking the title of prime minister later in the year.

The catchword amongst old hands at the US military mission in Greece was that Papadopoulos was "the first CIA agent to become Premier of a European country". "Many Greeks consider this to be the simple truth," reported Charles Foley in 'The Observer' of London. [21]

At the time of the coup, Papadopoulos had been on the CIA payroll for some 15 years. [22] One reason for the success of their marriage may have been Colonel Papadopoulos's World War II record. When the Germans invaded Greece, Papadopoulos served as a captain in the Nazi's Security Battalions whose main task was to track down Greek resistance fighters. [23] He was, it is said, a great believer in Hitler's "new order", and his later record in power did little to cast doubt upon that claim. Foley writes that when he mentioned the junta leader's pro-German background to an American military adviser he met at a party in Athens, the American hinted that it was related to Papadopoulos's subservience to US wishes: "George gives good value," he smiled, "because there are documents in Washington he wouldn't like let out." [24]

Foley relates that under Papadopoulos:

intense official propaganda portrayed Communism as the only enemy Greece had ever had and minimized the German occupation until even Nazi atrocities were seen as provoked by the Communists. This rewriting of history clearly reflects the dictator's concern at the danger that the gap in his official biography may some day be filled in. [25]

As part of the rewriting, members of the Security Battalions became "heroes of the resistance". [26]

It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare. James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in December 1969 that a "conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand" the number of people tortured. [27] It was an odious task for Beckett to talk to some of the victims:

People had been mercilessly tortured simply for being in possession of a leaflet criticizing the regime. Brutality and cruelty on one side, frustration and helplessness on the other. They were being tortured and there was nothing to be done. It was like listening to a friend who has cancer. What comfort, what wise reflection can someone who is comfortable give? Torture might last a short time, but the person will never be the same. [28].

Becket reported that some torturers had told prisoners that some of their equipment had come as US military aid: a special "thick white double cable" whip was one item; another was the headscrew, known as an "iron wreath", which was progressively tightened around the head or ears. [29]

The Amnesty delegation desribed a number of the other torture methods commonly employed. Among these were:

a) Beating the soles of the feet with a stick or pipe. After four months of this, the soles of one prisoner were covered with thick scar tissue. Another was crippled by broken bones.

b) Numerous incidents of sexually-oriented torture: shoving fingers or an object into the vagina and twisting and tearing and brutally; also done with the anus; or a tube is inserted into the anus and water driven in under very high pressure.

c) Techniques of gagging: the throat is grasped in such a way that the windpipe is cut off, or a filthy rag, often soaked in urine, and sometimes excrement, is shoved down the throat.

d) Tearing out the hair from the head and the pubic region.

e) Jumping on the stomach.

f) Pulling out toe nails and finger nails. [30]

These were not the worst. The worst is what one reads in the many individual testimonies. But these are simply too lengthy to be repeated here. [31]

The junta's response to the first Amnesty report was to declare that it was comprised of charges emanating from "International Communism" and to hire public relations firms in New York and London to improve its image. [32]

In 1969, the European Commission of Human Rights found Greece guilty of torture, murder and other violations. For these reasons and particularly for the junta's abolition of parliamentary democracy, The Council of Europe -- a consultative body of, at that time, 18 European States, under which the Commission falls -- was preparing to expel Greece. The council rejected categorically Greece's claim that it had been in danger of a communist takeover. Amnesty International later reported that the United States, though not a member of the Council, actively applied diplomatic pressure on member states not to vote for the expulsion. (Nonetheless, while the Council was deliberating, the 'New York Times' reported that "The State Department said today that the United States had deliberately avoided taking any position on the question of continued Greek membership in the Council of Europe.") The European members, said Amnesty, believed that only the United Sates had the power to bring about changes in Greece, yet it chose only to defend the junta. [33]

On the specific issue of torture, Amnesty's report concluded that:

American policy on the torture question as expressed in the official testimony has been to deny it where possible and minize it where denial was not possible. This policy flowed naturally from general support for the military regime. [34]

As matters transpired, Greece walked out before the Council could formalize the expulsion.

In a world grown increasingly hostile, the support of the world's most powerful nation was 'sine qua non' for the Greek junta. The two governments thrived upon each other. Said the American ambassador to Greece, Henry Tasca, "This is the most anti-communist group you'll find anywhere. There is just no place like Greece to offer these facilities with the back up of the kind of Government you have got here." ("You", not "we", noted the reporter, was the only pretense.) [35]

The facilities the ambassador was referring to were dozens of US military installations, from nuclear missile bases to major communication sites, housing tens of thousands of American servicemen. The United States, in turn, provided the junta with ample military hardware despite an official congressional embargo, as well as the police equipment required by the Greek authorities to maintain their rigid control.

In an attempt to formally end the embargo, the Nixon administration asked Papadopoulos to make some gesture towards constitutional government which the White House could then point to. The Greek prime minister was to be assured, said a secret White House document, that the administration would take "at face value and accept without reservation" any such gesture. [36]

US Vice-president Spiro Agnew, on a visit to the land of his ancestors, was moved to exalt the "achievements" of the Greek government and its "constant co-operation with US needs and wishes". [37] One of the satisfied needs Agnew may have had in mind was the contribution of $549,000 made by the junta to the 1968 Nixon-Agnew election campaign. Apart from any other consideration, it was suspected that this was money given to the junta by the CIA finding its way back to Washington. A Senate investigation of this question was abruptly canceled at the direct request of Henry Kissinger. [38]

Perhaps nothing better captures the mystique of the bond felt by the Greeks to their American guardians than the story related about the Chief Inspector Basil Lambrou, one of Athens' well-known torturers:

Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute fultility of resistance: "You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans." [39]

**Bereta_Eder** · July 4, 2002, 05:50

part #2

Amnesty International adds that some torturers would tell their victims things like: "The Human Rights Commission can't help you now ... The Red Cross can do nothing for you ... Tell them all, it will do no good, you are helpless." "The torturers from the start," said Amnesty, "had said that the United States supported them and that was what counted." [40]

In November 1973, a falling-out within the Greek inner circle culminated in the ousting of Papadopoulos and his replacement by Col. Demetrios Ioannidis, Commander of the Military Police, torturer, graduate of american training in anti-subversive techniques, confidant of the CIA. [41] Ioannidis named as prime-minister a Greek-American, A. Androutsopoulos, who came to Greece after the Second World War as an official employee of the CIA, a fact of which Androutsopoulos had often boasted. [42]

Eight months later, the Ioannidis regime overthrew the government. It was a fatal miscalculation. Turkey invaded Cyprus and the reverberations in Athens resulted in the military giving way to a civilian government. The Greek nightmare had come to an end.

Much of the story of American complicity in the 1967 coup and its aftermath may never be known. At the trials held in 1975 of junta members and torturers, many witnesses made reference to the American role. This may have been the reason a separate investigation of this aspect was scheduled to be undertaken by the Greek Court of Appeals. [43] But it appears that no information resulting from this inquiry, if it actually took place, was ever announced. Philip Deane, upon returning to Greece several months after the civilian government took over, was told by leading politicians that "for the sake of preserving good relations with the US, the evidence of US complicity will not be made fully public". [44]

Andreas Papndreou had been arrested at the time of the coup and held in prison for eight months. Shortly after his release, he and his wife Margaret visited the American ambassador, Phillips Talbot, in Athens. Papandreou related the following:

I asked Talbot whether America could have intervened the night of the coup, to prevent the death of democracy in Greece. He denied that they could have done anything about it. Then Margaret asked a critical question: What if the coup had been a Communist or a Leftist coup? Talbot answered without hesitation. Then, of course, they would have intervened, and they would have crushed the coup. [45]

Az · July 4, 2002, 06:07

Seriously, Paiktis is correct...

This is a link I have that describes some of the CIA's classes, and what exactly was learned in them.

CIA's Torture Class

**lightblue** · July 4, 2002, 06:09

Well yeah he might be correct, but noone in his right mind is going to read thru all those posts and respond to things point by point

**Deathwalker** · July 4, 2002, 06:17

The CIA has always condoned war crimes to further there aims and goals. But given as a rule they always win no one gets punished. Thats part of the reason that the USA wont sign up to the War Crimes court

**MarkG** · July 4, 2002, 06:49

**Saint Marcus** · July 4, 2002, 07:16

Happy 4th of July to all Americans, with your hands washed in innocence, with clear conciences, and may you rest easy at night.

Announcement

US school of assassins - US as safe heaven for dictators and torturers

US school of assassins - US as safe heaven for dictators and torturers

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment