| http://www.consortiumnews.com/061501a.html
What Business in Guatemala? By Robert Parry June 15, 2001 George W. Bush’s maiden trip aboard as U.S. president brought some new attention to the earlier mystery of how extensive was his overseas experience. Over the past year, Bush’s aides have given out fragments of information, including one peculiar assertion that Bush conducted business in Guatemala sometime in the past. Immediately prior to his current European trip, Bush’s aides said he had traveled to Europe before, mostly to Great Britain with a 1990 add-on trip down to Spain and Portugal. The aides said Bush had visited Paris, too, though they wouldn’t give U.S. news organizations a date. The confusion over Bush's travels began during last year’s campaign when aides told The New York Times about three overseas trips: a visit to China when his father was U.S. envoy in 1975, a trip as Texas governor to the Middle East (with a stopover in Italy), and a ceremonial visit to the African country of Gambia. [NYT, Oct. 29-30, 2000] That account was followed by some clarifications and more locales to bolster Bush's image as a more seasoned world traveler. In mid-December, spokesman Gordon Johndroe released a list claiming that Bush had been outside the United States “more than a dozen times,” counting “many, many” visits to Mexico and Canada. The overseas trips included France on vacation; Bermuda on vacation; Italy with his family (presumably en route to the Middle East); Israel and Egypt with the National Governor’s Association; Gambia with a delegation during his father’s presidency; England and Scotland; and China to visit his father, with a stopover in Japan on the return flight. [See CNN.com, Dec. 17, 2000] Guatemala? But perhaps Johndroe's most provocative addition to Bush’s travel itinerary was the claim that Bush also had traveled to Guatemala on business. Bush’s aides offered no clarification of this odd entry and there’s no indication that the Washington press corps pressed very hard, if at all, for additional details. Bush’s biographies also have not elaborated on what business Bush would have been conducting in Guatemala, a country that has been the scene of massive human rights violations over the past half century. In 1999, a Guatemalan truth commission, which had received historical records from the Clinton administration, concluded that about 200,000 people were killed in the political violence that dated back to a CIA-sponsored coup in 1954. Some of the worst bloodletting occurred during the 1980s, when the Reagan-Bush administration backed a right-wing military dictator, Rios Montt, who was blamed for massacres in 626 Mayan Indian villages in a butchery judged “genocide” by the commission. While that slaughter was going on, President Reagan lifted a Carter administration embargo on military supplies to Guatemala and defended the Montt regime as having gotten “a bum rap” from human rights groups. Though the historical documents released by President Clinton made clear that the CIA knew differently – and indeed was monitoring the human rights calamity – it is still unclear exactly what Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush and their top aides knew about the slaughter as it was occurring. It is clear, however, that with the public-relations help of the Reagan-Bush administration, the genocide went on unchecked. Records Delay Since taking office in January, the new Bush administration has moved to block release of historical records covering deliberations of the Reagan-Bush administration. Those records of policy debates inside Reagan’s White House were scheduled for release on Jan. 21. But George W. Bush immediately authorized delays so the documents could be reviewed and some material possibly withheld from public scrutiny on national security or other grounds. It is still not clear when that document release will occur. Beyond what light those documents might shed on the Reagan-Bush administration’s level of knowledge about the genocide in Guatemala, George W. Bush might expect some reasonable questions about what he was doing in that troubled land. What was his “business” in Guatemala and when was he conducting it? Who were his business associates? Was this a case of Bush’s aides trying to puff up their boss’ scanty record of foreign travel by sticking a stopover in Guatemala on the list or was Bush in Guatemala for a significant period of time? When he was there, what did George W. Bush know about the atrocities and did they matter to him? There are other better-known gaps in Bush’s record, such as his whereabouts during the Vietnam War when he seems to have not shown up for required National Guard duty. But Bush’s aides have put these supposed business dealings in Guatemala on the public record and they presumably were conducted while he was a grown man, not a youth who, by his own account, was "young and irresponsible." As for Bush's curious Guatemalan episode, it seems reasonable for reporters to ask what, where, when, why and with whom. |
