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.



Reply via email to