-Caveat Lector- COUP D'ÉTAT IN AMERICA Coup D'Etat in America Database http://www.weberman.com/htdocs/06/06-13.htm#top An interesting excerpt from the site: DAVID ATLEE PHILLIPS [E. HOWARD] HUNT'S CIA assignment in 1953 was the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala - Project PB SUCCESS. HUNT worked closely with DAVID PHILLIPS on this operation. DAVID ATLEE PHILLIPS was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on October 31, 1922 - a spook who was born on Halloween. He attended Texas Christian University and worked as an actor until World War II intervened. PHILLIPS served as a nose gunner in the Army Air Corps. He was shot down over Austria, but returned to the Allied lines after twice escaping from German prison camps. In 1948 PHILLIPS married an airline stewardess and, with a $200 a month option on a play he had written that was never produced, he and his bride decided to go to Chile to live cheaply. In Chile he purchased Latin America's oldest English-language newspaper, The South Pacific Mail. Because of this he was approached by the CIA and asked to pose as Chief of Station in Santiago, Chile, so that the CIA could observe the extent of KGB surveillance. PHILLIPS told The Washington Post: "I was to be a 'dangle.' Word was to be leaked out in Chile that I was chief of American intelligence there. Sure enough, a KGB agent soon began to cultivate me. I was at the time being paid $50 a month for my services. When that Soviet showed up it occurred to me I should be getting more." [Washington Post 7.2.75] PHILLIPS career with the CIA began in Chile on February 1, 1951 when he took a job as a contract agent at $600 per month with a term that ended February 28, 1951. He again entered on duty on January 25, 1952 and was paid $6,000 per year with a term that ended on August 31, 1953. On March 4, 1954 PHILLIPS entered on duty as a Contract Employee at $7200 per year. On August 1, 1954 his pay was increased to $8360 per year with a term ending March 31, 1955. At this time PHILLIPS was HUNT'S Deputy Chief for Propaganda and he left Chile to become, according to Who's Who, "a lecturer on Latin America." THE OVERTHROW OF JACOBO ARBENZ 1954 Jacobo Arbenz, a professional Army officer, was the son of a Swiss father who migrated to Guatemala. In 1944 Jacobo Arbenz took part in a military coup against General Jorge Ubico. Dissatisfied with a successor of Jorge Ubico, Jacobo Arbenz participated in another coup and became a member of the subsequently installed Junta. Jacobo Arbenz was made the ranking officer in the Guatemalan Army in 1949, after his chief rival was ambushed and assassinated. The chauffeur of Jacobo Arbenz, and later his secretary, was credited with the murder. Jacobo Arbenz ran for President in 1950. During the election campaign his main rival, General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, went into hiding under threat of arrest. Five days before Jacobo Arbenz was elected President through massive vote fraud in November 1950, Colonel Carlos Castillo-Armas headed an unsuccessful revolt against him. Carlos Castillo-Armas was badly wounded and thrown into prison. Jacobo Arbenz took office in March 1951. The following summer Carlos Castillo-Armas tunneled his way out of prison and left the country. President Arbenz declared a partial state of siege in 1951, allegedly to control the dispatches of unfriendly foreign correspondents. Arbenz also tried to institute land reforms; the United Fruit Company, the country's biggest employer, was outraged when he expropriated 225,000 acres of its property. The profits of United Fruit began to drop when labor unions demanded $2.50 a day for each worker, instead of $1.36. [Business Week 4.30.55] During the early 1950's, United Fruit was a symbol of American economic imperialism. The term "Banana Republic" had its roots in the domination by United Fruit of Central and South American governments. Jacobo Arbenz turned frequently to the Communists to maintain his power. By 1954 they were running Guatemala. President Eisenhower, Vice President NIXON and the other National Security Council members called for the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz. In the Spring of 1954, the USSR began covertly supplying the Guatemalan regime with arms, hidden aboard a Swedish freighter, in unmarked boxes. When the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles, received news of this shipment, the fate of Jacobo Arbenz was sealed. HUNT'S VERSION In his autobiography, Undercover, HUNT recalled that he recommended the ouster of Jacobo Arbenz shortly after he was elected, but his superiors at the CIA refused to act until Arbenz threatened the profits of United Fruit. Then, according to HUNT, the lawyer who represented United Fruit, Ernest Cuneo, pressured the CIA leadership into taking action against Arbenz. PHILLIPS described the chain of command in the Arbenz operation as follows: the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Allen Dulles; then Director /Plans Richard Bissell; then Deputy Director/Plans Frank Wisner and his subordinate Tracy Barnes; then Colonel J.C. King, Chief /Western Hemisphere Division; then himself and HUNT. TRACY BARNES Tracy Barnes graduated from Harvard Law School and practiced with Carter, Ledyard & Milburn. [Weyden Bay of Pigs p39] During the war, Tracy Barnes joined the OSS and worked with Allen Dulles in attempting to arrange a secret surrender of the Nazis in Italy in 1945. In February 1951 he joined the CIA. He became Deputy Director of the Psychological Strategy Board during the Korean war. Tracy Barnes served as Chief of Station of the CIA in Frankfurt, Germany, from 1954 to 1956, and London Chief of Station from 1957 to 1959. Tracy Barnes was a relative of Nelson Rockefeller. Nelson Rockefeller's Latin American interests had been endangered by Arbenz. Nelson Rockefeller joined the Eisenhower Administration from 1953 to 1954 as a Special Consultant, Assistant for Cold War Strategy. Tracy Barnes chose HUNT and PHILLIPS for the Arbenz operation, which was given a semi-autonomous status. HUNT was posted to Miami. In 1954 the CIA approached Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, then an anti-Arbenz exile living in El Salvador. In My War With Communism, Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes wrote: "A former United Fruit Company executive...came to see me with two gentlemen whom he introduced as CIA agents. They said I was a popular figure in Guatemala and they wanted to lend me their assistance to overthrow Arbenz. When I asked for the conditions for the assistance I found them unacceptable. Among other things I was asked to favor the United Fruit Company..." Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes agreed to support the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz but, according to HUNT, "It had been decided at the State Department that Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes was a 'right-wing reactionary'...and so the CIA's support was put behind Colonel Carlos Castillo-Armas." On January 29, 1954, Jacobo Arbenz charged that Carlos Castillo-Armas and Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes were receiving assistance, in their joint effort to overthrow him, from Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza. Anastasio Somoza allowed anti-Arbenz forces to use an island off the Nicaraguan coast as a base of operations. American soldiers-of-fortune, working as CIA contract employees, were the flyers of the Guatemalan rebel air force. On the morning of the planned invasion a meeting took place among President Eisenhower, the Dulles brothers, and Joint Chiefs of Staff representatives, during which President Eisenhower asked if they were sure the operation would succeed. Assured that it would, President Eisenhower responded: "I'm prepared to take any steps that are necessary to see that it succeeds." [Ross & Wise Inv. Gov. p176] On June 18, 1954, Carlos Castillo-Armas and his army crossed the Honduran border into Guatemala. His CIA-sponsored air force had just bombed San Josa large Guatemalan port city. The troops of Carlos Castillo-Armas dug in just inside the Guatemalan border, where they waited for further air strikes. After the forces of Jacobo Arbenz took out most of CIA's exile air force, the CIA immediately resupplied them with new aircraft. Under constant air attack, Jacobo Arbenz began to panic. On June 22, 1954, Guatemalan Government forces began an unsuccessful drive to dislodge the forces of Carlos Castillo-Armas. At the front, CIA-recruited members of the Army of Jacobo Arbenz, at the request of DAVID PHILLIPS, sent back messages to him that they were being overwhelmed by the troops of Carlos Castillo-Armas. PHILLIPS also set up a clandestine radio station in Mexico, the "Voice of Liberation" which pretended to be broadcasting from within Guatemala and orchestrated false reports about legions of rebels who didn't exist and major battles that never took place. Under such a propaganda barrage, on June 25, 1954, Jacobo Arbenz resigned and took asylum in the Mexican Embassy. On July 8, 1954, a Guatemalan military junta elected Carlos Castillo-Armas President. In August Castillo-Armas suspended all civil liberties. Soon he restored to United Fruit the land seized by Jacobo Arbenz. THE DEATH OF JACOBO ARBENZ Jacobo Arbenz lived in exile until June 27, 1971, when he was found dead in his bathtub in Mexico City at age 57. Officials listed the cause of death as drowning due to a heart attack. Jacobo Arbenz had been under treatment for a stomach ailment. [Immerman, R. CIA in Guatemala pp. 139-140; NYT 1.28.71] La Prensa, the newspaper of Buenos Aires, reported: "The death of Jacobo Arbenz still has not become clear. Jacobo Arbenz was found asphyxiated and drowned in his bathtub, covered by boiling water. According to the police, the body was horribly burned by hot water and an autopsy was needed to determine the cause of death. The police indicated that Arbenz did not spend much time in the bathtub and the door to the bathroom was locked. They had to break it down to enter." In 1955 Allen Dulles dispatched the former adversary of Arbenz, Ambassador John E. Peurifoy, to Bangkok, Thailand. There, John E. Peurifoy and his son were killed in a head-on collision with a heavy truck in 1956. HOWARD HUNT believed his death was the revenge of the Communists. [Immerman, R. CIA in Guatemala p253] Author Thomas Powers reported that two Guatemalans who worked closely with DAVID PHILLIPS on a clandestine radio transmitter, known as the Voice of Liberation, were assassinated in 1957. ChGuevara took asylum with Jacobo Arbenz. It took him a month to get out of Guatemala. Author Thomas Powers reported: "PHILLIPS was in Guatemala searching through captured documents, and opened a CIA file on Guevara." THE ILLNESS OF DR. JUAN CORDOVA CERNA In Give Us This Day HUNT related that the CIA had initially favored a pre-eminent jurist and coffee grower, Juan Cordova Cerna, to head the post-Arbenz regime: "I thought back to the period before the overthrow of Colonel Arbenz when the CIA was treating with three exiled leaders: Colonel Castillo Armas, Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna, and Colonel Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes. As a distinguished and respected jurist, Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna had my personal vote as provisional president; our paramilitary people, however, were impressed with Castillo Armas' qualities as a military leader, and State had vetoed Ydigoras Fuentes as authoritarian. I remembered meeting secretly with Juan Cordova Cerna in a room in the Mexico City YMCA, and how at a critical time in the pre-invasion maneuvering, he had been forced to enter the Ochsner Clinic for cancer surgery. With his hospitalization, the possibility of civilian leadership ended, and Colonel Armas was selected to carry though. Chance, then, as it so often does, played the decisive role in the destiny of a nation." In Undercover, HUNT recounted that Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna "reluctantly had left Guatemala for New Orleans. There, it was discovered that he suffered from throat cancer and treatment was begun at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans." [HUNT Undercover p97] PHILLIPS wrote: "One facet of CIA planning had gone awry in a development beyond control - the moderate civilian who was groomed to become the interim President contracted a fatal illness." [PHILLIPS Nightwatch p53] PHILLIPS was asked "Do you have any knowledge about how Juan Cordova came to contract the disease, cancer?" He answered: "No, I do not know." ANALYSIS Did Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna really have HUNT'S personal vote? HUNT wrote: "It had been decided at the State Department Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes was a right-wing reactionary." In the past, HUNT favored political figures who had been labeled "right-wing reactionaries" by the State Department. For example, he described his friend Pedro Diaz Lanz as one of those labeled a right-wing reactionary. Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna would not have conformed to HUNT'S vision of a post-Arbenz government. Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna, a candidate for election in 1950, was a former legal advisor for the United Fruit Company. Washington lobbyist Tom Corcoran, an associate of Ernest Cuneo, called Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna "the liberal" among the exiles. ChGuevara wrote his followers: "Keep in contact and be united with groups around Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna...because they represent valuable allies and should not be despised." [Fuentes, My War with Communism p146] After Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, HUNT'S next logical choice should have been Castillo Armas. Had HUNT poisoned Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna during their meeting, to thwart the wish of the State Department to make him the head of the post-Arbenz Guatemalan government? Could the cancer of Juan Cordova Cerna have had some relation to the Ochsner Clinic? Was the Clinic unwittingly or wittingly CIA-penetrated? No credible evidence of this exists as of 1996, however some interesting documents have been released regarding Alton Ochsner. DOCTOR ALTON OCHSNER Dr. Alton Ochsner (born May 4, 1896; died August 1981), the founder of the Ochsner Clinic, had prestigious credentials and was the past president of the American Cancer Society. Alton Ochsner was part of the New Orleans anti-Communist community which included David Ferrie and his associate, William Guy Banister. Ochsner was linked to FBI Agent WARREN C. DeBRUEYS through the New Orleans Crime Commission in 1967. Alton Ochsner was linked to OSWALD through these men. Carlos De La Vega, a Cuban exile, was director of Latin American Relations of the Ochsner Foundation. Carlos De La Vega was under a special State Department contract to act as a bodyguard for foreign dignitaries. [Memo Martin to Garrison 3.31.67] Dr. Alton Ochsner was a consultant to the U.S. Air Force "on the medical side of subversive matters," and a personal friend of the Somoza family. [Scott, Beyond Conspiracy p649] In April 1993, Dr. Alton Ochsner's son, Alton Ochsner Jr., was asked: "Did your dad know guys like Ferrie and that crew? Freedom fighter types?" He replied: "Yeah, he knew about anybody who might have been labeled an anti-communist. My dad was a strong anti-communist and he believed in all these things. He knew all the local people who were on trial or involved in the Garrison investigation. Now he and Ed Butler thought OSWALD was involved in a communist conspiracy. I don't think they thought this was the CIA at that time. "My daddy was an ambassador without portfolio to Central America, and particularly Nicaragua. He went down there...he was a professor of surgery at Tulane and some of the most distinguished Latin American citizens were the doctors. Some trained under him at Tulane, so he had a close connection with them. Some became government leaders. And he went down there several times, not as an ambassador, but as a doctor...he probably knew, or met, the fellow that came up to the Ochsner Clinic [Dr. Juan Cordova Cerna]. He came up to the clinic because of my dad's connection with those people, but I don't know specifically who took care of that patient or whether my dad was actually doing it..." Dr. Ochsner was asked if his father had ever been approached by the CIA: "Yeah, some Argentinean colonel contacted my dad and said there was a Argentinean, he wouldn't say his name, that needed my dad's medical attention. He asked him to come down and see him, because for political reasons the man couldn't leave the country. Shortly before my dad saw that fella, the CIA visited my dad, and said 'Are you going down to see Peron?' And he said, 'I don't know who I am going to see'...He went down there and it was Juan Peron, he had a vascular occlusion of his leg. He needed a particular kind of surgery the Argentineans hadn't perfected. My dad was hesitant to do it in Argentina and, unfortunately, it was not politically right for Peron to leave Argentina. He entertained my dad royally." ALTON OCHSNER AND THE CIA The CIA reported: "Dr. Ochsner was of contact interest in October 1947 and November 1948. He has been a cleared source since May 13, 1955. The last official contact with Dr. Ochsner personally occurred on January 8, 1962, and with the Ochsner Clinic on November 8, 1963." Another CIA document read: DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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