Fwd: Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare,Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990

[Michael Pugliese]

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From: Michael Pugliese <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: leftist_trainspotters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: Michael Pugliese
Subject: Fwd: Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, 
Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990
Date: 4/24/02 10:11:11 AM

Watching the Neighbors: Low- Intensity Conflict in Central America
http://www.statecraft.org/chapter17.html
Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and 
Counterterrorism, 1940-1990



Watching the
Neighbors: Low- Intensity Conflict in Central America

Terrorism and Aid to the Political Police

The outrage over the Beirut bombing of October 1983 prompted both the invasion 
of Grenada and the proliferation of U.S. covert counterterror operations. One 
of the provisions of the 1983 Anti-Terrorism Act was the renewal of overt 
police assistance. The object of the new legislation, unlike the stared 
objective of earlier programs, was explicitly political in nature: the violence 
to be opposed was political violence, political terrorism. For the first time, 
Congress approved a program explicitly aimed at better political policing 
overseas—responding to the popular sentiment against international terrorism 
that was fueled by the Reagan administration.

The Reagan administration's renewal of major police assistance programs to 
counterinsurgency states began even before changes in the law were pushed 
through the way was opened tor the U.S. military to provide police assistance 
on a large scale simply by stressing the paramilitary nature of the police to 
be assisted and by redefining their primary tasks as essentially military in 
nature. The militarization of the Third World police, which had been a 
concealed consequence of U.S. assistance in the 1960s, was in the 1980s turned 
into a virtue: their militarized status made it possible to provide aid denied 
thus far to those forces stuck in the mold of the civil police tradition.

A series of legislative initiatives facilitated the administration's broader 
objective: renewing an assistance program that could openly deal with 
nonmilitary police and intelligence agencies. At the top of the bill were 
initiatives promoted as part of the campaign against terrorism. The Anti- 
Terrorism Assistance Program (ATA) was approved by Congress in November 1983, 
its stated objective to enhance, through training and equipment, the ability of 
the law enforcement personnel of friendly foreign governments to deter and 
counter terrorism, with an emphasis on bomb detection and disposal, management 
of hostage situations physical security, and other matters relating to the 
detection, deterrence and prevention of acts of terrorism, the resolution of 
terrorist incidents and the apprehension of those involved in such acts."1 The 
initial appropriations were modest, a mere $5 million for each of the two 
subsequent fiscal years; this would be nearly doubled, to $9.8 million a year 
later.2 The increase was justified as a provision to improve airport security 
(a precaution about which no one could complain) and, for the first time, to 
permit the provision of certain commodities from the munitions list of military 
and police supplies requiring export clearance from the Department of 
Commerce.3

Considerable efforts were made by congressional human rights watchdogs in the 
1980s to prevent an across-the- board revival of the defunct Public Safety 
program, wrapped in the flag of antiterrorism. Congress was to be notified in 
advance of countries programmed for assistance; respect for human rights was to 
be a factor in their eligibility and annual reporting On program activity was 
required.4 The act also limited overseas training by U.S. government personnel 
to no more than thirty consecutive days—apparently to prevent the repetition of 
the earlier cozy relationship of Public Safety's in- country advisers with 
foreign political police. Despite this, the ATA program appears to have been 
intended to maximize the opportunities to exert an influence very similar to 
that of its predecessor.

The act required that training be provided almost exclusively in the United 
States, and it set out a three- stage program. Top security officers were first 
to attend a two-week seminar and visit a range of U. S. security agencies, from 
FBI to TEA and municipal police departments. A U.S. delegation was then to 
visit overseas counterparts and thrash out a detailed program. And, finally, 
foreign officers would begin training at establishments in the United States. 
Unlike Public Safety, when all began their instruction at Washington's 
International Police Academy (IPA), training would be provided by several 
agencies in many different places—a procedure that might reduce the 
clubbishness among participants but could also make monitoring the program more 
difficult.5 Within two years, Congress had been notified of the intention to 
develop programs with 70 countries and that 1,456 foreign officers had received 
training in the United States.6

A companion to ATA cloaked police assistance in another program designed to 
improve the administration of justice overseas. The legislative foundation for 
a program to assist the Administration of Justice (AOJ) was laid in 1985, with 
an addition to the Foreign Assistance Act. Section 534, which was limited to 
Latin America and the Caribbean, emphasized the provision of training and 
material assistance for the court systems and legal profession and the 
"revision and modernization of legal codes and procedures."7 It opened another 
door to police assistance by authorizing, "notwithstanding section 660 of this 
Act, programs to enhance investigative capabilities, conducted under judicial 
or prosecutorial control."8

The new legislation authorized the allocation to the program of up to $20 
million yearly until September 1987. The police assistance aspect of the 
program was set apart as the International Criminal Investigative Training 
Assistance Program (ICITAP), with some 10 percent of the overall funding.9 The 
program was defended by the administration as a necessary corollary to the work 
with lawyers, laws, and the courts. A State Department letter to Congress 
claimed: "Helping Central American governments improve their courts . . . will 
not have full impact on criminal justice if the courts are not presented with 
well-developed cases by police investigators." The rule of law would suffer "no 
matter how much the courts may improve" so long as police investigators lacked 
training in "basic investigative skills."10

Congress attempted to prevent the use of AOJ funds to train political police in 
the kind of investigative skills that had brought the Public Safety program 
into disrepute—such as torture—by adding a rider specifying that funds would 
only be used to improve police capabilities where investigations were 
"conducted under judicial or prosecutorial control. " The intention was to 
foster court- directed judicial police, without backing either the enforcement 
side of policing or the monitoring of civilians, that is, "intelligence. " The 
matter of police eligibility for assistance rapidly became a bone of contention 
when the administration's classification of foreign police forces falling under 
"judicial or prosecutorial control" proved to be arbitrary. The administration 
AOJ training for Salvadoran National Guard investigation officers to irate 
congressmen by claiming, apparently with a straight face, that the Guard was 
actually under the control of the courts.11 Congressional aides knew better: 
The National Guard was (and is) technically a part of the Salvadoran army

At its inception the legislation seemed to have the potential to do some good— 
a sensitive program to reinforce the very fabric of the legal system might have 
made some contribution to making the rule of law a reality. The Judiciary 
working in conflict situations often lack even the most basic of resources, 
from office furniture and photocopiers to the vehicles required to make on-the-
spot inspections. Antiquated legal procedures, too, may well be improved by a 
concerted effort to review and reform them. Higher wages, improved 
infrastructure, better training and improved procedures, however, could hardly 
by themselves make the Judiciary independent, particularly in a state dominated 
by military institutions committed to circumventing the law in order to crush 
insurgency.

The conundrum of assistance for the administration of justice in 
counterinsurgency states revolves around the fiction that counterterror 
atrocities against subversives and suspected subversives are somehow 
aberrations distinct from the "lawful" counterinsurgent program Catching up 
with mysterious "death squads," then, could be presented as a problem for 
ordinary crime control (and aid to this end sold to Congress and public opinion 
as a signal of human rights awareness). The essential premise is that human 
rights abuse is a somehow natural phenomenon: a consequence of private 
initiative, personal pathology, ignorance, or accident. Counterinsurgent terror 
on a large scale is, however, rarely the work of either renegades or civilian 
psychopaths; indeed solitaries and off-base auxiliaries who go freelance, and 
against the grain of policy, are themselves promptly dealt with, extralegally, 
by the counterinsurgent apparatus.

Another rationale for assistance in the administration of justice was that the 
terror tactics of the security services are a natural response to the 
incompetence (or betrayal) of the courts. A long- standing argument was made 
that the failure of courts to hold, prosecute, and convict suspected 
subversives poses insuperable obstacles to the counterinsurgent. In the context 
of the counterinsurgency state, criticism of the weak judiciary in the 1960s, 
as in the 198Os, was presented as a prime impetus behind counter/error: a 
terrible, swift sword cutting through the dithering and corruption of the 
courts to bring instant justice. A 1967 Public Safety report, for example, 
suggested that the Guatemalan army "bypassed the courts," summarily executing 
"suspected guerrillas and supporters,'' because they could have no confidence 
in justice being done otherwise: 'Guatemalan Army officers significantly remark 
that the first suspects captured were turned over to the courts but. . . 
obtained their freedom.' This, they said, was "bad for their forces' morale." 
Counterterror was the solution to the morale problem: "Thereafter the number of 
guerrillas turned over to the courts seemed to diminish somewhat."12

Similarly, a 1965 Pentagon study on relations with Latin American armies 
reflected the notion that the law itself, let alone the courts, was among the 
main "handicaps" to counterinsurgency. The civilians, it suggested, returned 
the guerrillas to the street moments after the soldiers rounded them up: 
"[Many. . . legal systems require courts to free prisoners, even notorious 
guerrillas . . . unless witnesses can testify they actually saw the accused 
commit the crime."13 Counterterror posed a shortcut solution to that problem; a 
better legal system could develop in its own good time.

Ironically, the argument of judicial incompetence would also be made in the 
1980s to explain the impunity of counterterrorists before the law. One of the 
recurring issues in the debate on human rights in El Salvador and Guatemala, 
for example, is whether police and military personnel can be brought to book if 
the judiciary is too frightened or corrupt to act. The answer proposed is more 
U.S. assistance—for the police and military, to train them to be better 
citizens and professional counterinsurgents, and for the judicial 
establishment, to teach judges, prosecutors, and investigators essential 
skills, and how to resist blandishments and intimidation. All well and good— 
except for the problem of the institutional doctrine and policy behind 
counter/error.

Should the incompetence of the courts, rather than the political will of the 
military, be the real barrier to bringing the military's own mass murderers to 
justice, there was an easy solution in most of the counterinsurgency states. 
Military wrongdoers could be brought before the military's own courts—most 
armed forces cultivated by the United States jealously guard the jurisdiction 
of their own courts over military, and often police and paramilitary, 
personnel. The failure of the military courts to punish even the more blatant 
lawbreakers is more difficult to explain away as a matter of poor training, 
legal technicalities, and intimidation A review of the record of the military 
courts in the counterinsurgency states most renowned for human rights abuses 
will show that atrocities, as a rule, are simply not dealt with either as 
crimes or disciplinary offenses requiring investigation or prosecution.

If the armed forces of the counterinsurgency states had the least interest in 
taking to task the murderers among them they would do so counterterror and 
covert forces, like any conventional military outfit observe as a basic 
Imperative the maintenance of discipline, cohesion and purpose. As a 
consequence, they tend to punish only those crime! and offenses that threaten 
the unit. What is more, in an unconventional or covert organization, punishment 
may be meted out by the same extralegal methods as those employed against their 
adversaries: the threat or reality of torture, mutilation, or death. The 
harshest punishment is often reserved for those who undermine the institution's 
purpose from within by resisting their share of dirty work (which in a later 
period, when war crimes trials might take place, could make their counterparts 
vulnerable); or those whose disobedience suggests a disaffection, and by 
extension common cause with the enemy. Counterterror is no work for an 
undisciplined military or paramilitary force; it can only be sustained where 
discipline is absolute, where breaking ranks means a broken head. The 
counterterrorist cannot risk being compromised by an undisciplined underling or 
colleague; like organized crime, unconventional military hermetism must be 
absolute, enforced by absolute sanctions.

In most of the counterinsurgency states, police and military personnel have 
remained almost exclusively within the jurisdiction of the military courts and 
military law. No one has suggested that the failure of military justice systems 
to bring to account torturers within their ranks or to proceed against military 
mass murderers was a consequence either of courtroom technicalities or lack of 
legal training. Whereas the military courts could prosecute and punish torture, 
"disappearance," and mass murder, but refuse to do so, they often also refuse 
to deliver suspects to the jurisdiction of civilian courts—even when civilian 
prosecutors have assembled damning evidence against them. The apparatus of 
civilian justice, feeble or not, incompetent or not, has been largely 
irrelevant to military discipline, even when exercising limited jurisdiction 
over military personnel, so long as counterterror and tactical lawlessness have 
remained elements of military strategy. Improving the civil courts, so long as 
military institutions shelter the counterterrorist, offers £10 remedy to 
programmatic counterterror.

The root of the problem is that the conduct of a "dirty war" by the armed 
forces is not a consequence of feeble judicial structures or of the 
inadequacies of the civil police—though it can certainly feed upon, and be 
shielded by, these failings. Security assistance creates a vicious cycle: On 
the one hand, the argument goes, a well-trained police and a more competent 
judiciary would be able to crack down on the "death squads," thereby justifying 
U.S. training and support; on the other hand, it was U.S. assistance that 
helped create the "death squads" in the first place. The proposals to enforce 
human rights by judicial and police assistance help to mask the much larger 
program of lethal contributions to the dirty war. Individual prosecutors and 
courageous magistrates may, and indeed sometimes do, make brave efforts to 
bring the counterterrorist to justice, although they do so at their peril. But 
whenever the tactics of counterinsurgent terror are the product of the 
collective will of the armed forces, the administration of justice and the rule 
of law will continue to be sacrificed to the generalized lawlessness of a 
dominant branch of the government itself.

The 1980s renewal of aid expressly designed for El Salvador's police was 
delayed for a time by the alacrity with which the United States' allies there 
murdered American nuns and officials. In the first years of the decade, when 
tens of thousands of civilians were murdered by military and paramilitary 
forces, Congress balked at overt police aid. The administration had, after all, 
elected to pin part of the blame for the "death squad" phenomenon on a few 
renegades in the paramilitary police services (a lightning rod to deflect 
criticism from the armed forces). While the bulk of the blame for killing 
leftists continued to be laid on a shadowy "extreme right," the police bore the 
blame for killings that could not otherwise be explained away, perpetuating the 
fiction of the military's noninvolvement. The Treasury Police, a force that did 
indeed perform much of the dirty work, took much of the flak. The fact that the 
police were commanded by army regulars was simply ignored.

The proscription of police assistance under Section 660 of the Foreign 
Assistance Act was successively (and, in the end, simultaneously) circumvented 
by lending the police military assistance, creating new police units under a 
judicial aid program, and—in the wake of the Zona Rosa attack off off-duty U. 
S. Marines—by a "waiver" agreed to by Congress in August 1985 permitting police 
assistance in El Salvador and Honduras.14 The 1985 measure also lifted the ban 
on police assistance for countries with a "longstanding democratic tradition," 
no standing army, and £10 record of gross and persistent human rights abuse.15 
(This strengthened the legal basis of aid programs already In progress in Costa 
Rica and the small nations of the Eastern Caribbean.) Human rights training was 
not part of the curriculum, although some National Police trainees received a 
module on "police- community relations."16 The military curricula, like those 
of ATA, failed to cover the students' correct response to an illegal order and 
excluded consideration of political rights. A Defense Department official 
claimed, "Our guys aren't qualified to teach" political rights; apparently, 
"the judicial system, rather than the police, is expected to determine which 
political activities are legally permissible."17

Police assistance under the Anti- Terrorism Act was modest in scale compared to 
aid provided through the military.18 ATA training, however, began in a manner 
reminiscent of the outlawed Public Safety assistance program. The first group 
of Salvadoran trainees brought to the United States for training was found to 
include three officers well known to human rights monitors as among the army's 
top administrators of "death squad" terror. Congressional fears that the 
program might lead to charges that the United States was rewarding state 
terrorists— or helping them to improve their criminal skills—had resulted in 
pledges that the U. S. embassy would screen participants "to exclude suspected 
abusers of human rights." Apparently the administration ignored the agreement. 
Senator Tom Harkin, a critic of ATA, exploded: "We're training hard-core 
killers to be more efficient."19

The State Department's counterterrorism chief Bob Oakley piously chastised 
Senator Harkin for presuming "to pronounce publicly a guilty sentence. . . 
without specifying—names, dates, places—what they were guilty of."20 Oakley's 
own "background check" found that "no one we have been able to talk to has even 
heard rumors" of anything like the allegations made. "There is nothing," he 
insisted, to suggest that any of the individuals have "a past record of 
torture, killings or similar rights abuses."21 Yet, a simple review of human 
rights reporting since 1979 would have substantiated claims that the army 
battalions, brigades, and police units in which the trainees had command 
responsibilities were among the most enthusiastic in sowing counterinsurgent 
terror. A more honest response was attributed by the Los Angeles Times to 
another State Department official: "There could be some truth in it, but I 
doubt anyone can ever prove it. These guys were in the National Guard when it 
was doing some very nasty things, but in a country where every officer's bad 
record has been erased, how do you know?"22

Consorting with state terrorists could hardly be explained away by inadequate 
record keeping at the U.S. embassy in San Salvador. The Salvadorans on the 
guest list who raised the hackles of human rights monitors were former 
commanders and acting or former intelligence chiefs of units with a clear and 
bloody track record over many years They included:

Col. José Dionisio Hernandcz. in 1986 National Guard chief of staff, who was 
one of the small group of officers who had been involved in the administration 
of counterinsurgency terror since 1979; his past assignments include service as 
third in command of the National Guard; as commander of Army Garrison Number 6 
in Sonsonate frown November 1983 to February 1986; appointed Deputy Director of 
the National Guard in February 1986;23

Lt. Col. José Adolfo Medrano, intelligence chief of the National Guard and a 
top army chief throughout the years of the terror Of the early 1980s— and long 
before; a graduate of the International Police Academy's first course, in 1963, 
when it was still based at Fort Davis in the Canal Zone;

Major Baltazar Lopez Cortes, a former National Guard intelligence chief;

Captain Victor Cartagena Martinez, intelligence chief of the Treasury Police, 
previously intelligence chief of the Second brigade and company commander of 
the "Arce" rapid response battalion in San Miguel (Cartagena was also the 
object of rather personal charges: former prisoners of the Treasury Police 
claimed he had directly participated in beating them and subjecting them to 
electric shocks).24

The first of the ATA classes of twenty Salvadoran "police chiefs"—army officers 
of the rank of lieutenant or above—began training in the United States in late 
June 1986. By the end of the year seventy-six officers had completed courses. 
Although the antiterrorism curriculum was to have included instruction in 
"human rights and internal discipline," the substance of this remains obscure. 
A spokesman of the State Department's Office of Counter-Terrorism, which runs 
ATA, said, for example, that the course instructors " 'stay away' from 
discussing political rights, such as which rallies or newspapers should be 
judged legal, because That's a political question not handled by the 
police.'"25

The major programs of assistance for the Salvadoran National Guard, National 
Police, and Treasury Police were provided under the military assistance 
program, as the units involved were to perform military functions. The term 
"military," in this context, was applied to anything expressly dealing with 
counterinsurgency and, subsequently, antiterrorism. In the 1960s, the police 
function was at least nominally distinguished from that of the military vis-a-
vis counterinsurgency, though in practice it was largely neglected and wholly 
subordinated to the unconventional warfare prerogatives of the military.

The 1980s approach to police training dropped the pretense of the civil 
police's independence from the military, perhaps partly because of the 
constraints on training ordinary police, but essentially because the changing 
view of insurgency lent itself to a military and paramilitary response alien to 
the concept of a civil police. The State Department's October l 986 
notification of the intent to reprogram military aid for the police in El 
Salvador stressed this:

Counterterrorism in El Salvador combines police and military techniques to meet 
a threat which combines elements of guerrilla warfare with open criminality, 
both in urban and rural areas.... The training curriculum composed entirely of 
military techniques, responds to the quasi- military nature of the Salvadoran 
terrorist threat.26

A U.S. Embassy official told an American delegation in 1986: "You have to 
recognize that every policeman in El Salvador has a double mission: law 
enforcement, and a counterguerrilla mission. What the [U.S. Military Group] is 
focusing on is the military role."27 It was not, therefore, particularly 
duplicitous to use military assistance to train policemen: The police status of 
the national bodies was in part, itself a polite fiction (as was the suggestion 
that only the police, and not the military, manned the "death squad" units).

The U. S. Military Group trained and outfitted some 2,800 policemen between 
1982 and 1984, including six police infantry battalions of the National Police 
and one each of the National Guard and Treasury Police. The quasi-legal 
argument explaining this was that these units were engaged primarily in 
military activities "and do not perform regular police duties." Similarly, a 
fifty-man Salvadoran SWAT team—the Special Anti- terrorism Commando, comprised 
of police from the three forces— was trained in 1984 by the Defense Department 
on the grounds that its rapid response antiterrorism brief was "military" in 
nature. Congressional critics saw their worst suspicions confirmed when the 
team first went into action in June 1985. Ordered in to break up a hospital 
workers' strike, the squad beat and handcuffed medical staff and patients, 
halted surgery in progress (one patient died), and, in a classic mistaken 
identity gaffe, shot dead four undercover National Police officers. Union 
leaders were dragged off to jail for illegal strike action.29

After August 1985, military training of police was to be justified by reference 
to Section 660(d). Despite the "waiver" on Section 660 restrictions, the U.S. 
military continued, as before, to be the main trainers of the Salvadoran 
police. The only change in an eight-week course for police on "field 
counterinsurgency tactics" taught by military advisers was its expansion to 
twelve weeks and the addition of specialized training in hostage-rescue 
skills.30 Day-to-day advisory assistance comparable to the CIA's Public Safety 
assignments was provided by the appointment of a member of the Military Group 
to advise each of the three police services (it cannot be ruled out that they, 
too, may have been seconded from the CIA).31

By 1985, the expanding program also began to bring regional security services 
and their leading personalities together under U. S. sponsorship. Congressional 
investigators subsequently found that Central American security chieftains were 
being flown out to secret "planning" meetings in Miami.32 Alarm bells might 
well have rung at the coincidence of the meeting's stated focus on 
"investigations" and the attendance of regional political police figures, such 
as El Salvador's Colonel Reinaldo López Nuila.33 It was, after all, the 
"Investigations Advisers" of the Public Safety program who worked directly with 
the political police in Central America—under the auspices of the CIA, not AID. 
An August 1986 congressional caucus report noted that, in addition to the 
"well-motivated but largely unproductive efforts to strengthen the Salvadoran 
judicial system," U.S. programs "based on questionable interpretations of law" 
had trained over 4,000 police officers.34

Congressional resistance eventually restrained the efforts to expand security 
assistance throughout Central America. By August 1985, assistance was 
proceeding overtly along four tracks: military aid, police aid under 660(d) 
waivers, special programs under ATA, and Administration of Justice programs.35 
A proposal to introduce a fifth track, through an omnibus Central American 
Counterterrorism Act, was under discussion as early as the spring of 1985. The 
proposal would have funded a combined five-country military/police assistance 
budget of $53 million. The $26 million "Law Enforcement" section was to have 
earmarked $12 million for El Salvador —and a contentious $3 million for 
Guatemala, a country still in the congressional eye for having taken the "death 
squad" formula to the limit.

Congressional watchdogs were particularly concerned with the elimination in the 
draft act of provision for the congressional oversight committees' veto power 
over reprogramming military assistance funds to El Salvador and Honduras and 
the renewal of police aid to Guatemala They were also worried that the 
antiterror bandwagon was being used to propose transfers of arms that were 
particularly useful for state terror— notably submachine guns and sniper rifles 
"with day and night scopes" for El Salvador. Representative Buddy MacKay 
expressed a widely held skepticism regarding the human rights situation in 
Guatemala and Panama:

It is not persuasive to me to say we are going to have an election in Guatemala 
. . . when I can read in the weekly news magazines that that is cosmetic, that 
whoever serves there is going to serve at the leave of the military.... [A]nd 
it is not persuasive to me to say let's train some people in Panama to combat 
terrorism, when the terrorist is the mall that is running the army.37

The administration may have jumped too soon, tempted by the antiterrorist 
opportunity opened by Salvadoran guerrillas when they attached U.S. Marines in 
June that year. Congress had already been stampeded into waiving bans on police 
aid to El Salvador on 11 July. This time the Congress held fast— the Central 
American Counterterrorism Act was defeated.

The new buzzword, international terrorism, brought an emotional charge that 
"insurgency" or "subversion" or even "revolution" could never match. No 
American could rightfully oppose a program to combat International 
terrorism—and few in Congress thought very long or very hard about the means 
being proposed to do so. The antiterrorism campaign served to rehabilitate the 
idea of police assistance precisely in the areas in which the Public Safety 
Program had been most harshly criticized. From its inception in 1956 to its 
dissolution in 1975, Public Safety had presented its primary mission, at least 
for public Consumption, as the development of conventional civil police 
capabilities. Revelations of the close association of some of its advisers with 
local political police and intelligence agencies were enormously embarrassing. 
In the proposals for renewed police assistance, the emphasis was unashamedly 
placed on political investigation and intelligence, with the police role in 
special operations a close second. The U.S. public in the 1960s was uneasy 
about the way such aid to counter subversion and insurgency could shade into 
repression of a much broader nature. The 1980s formula, which identified the 
worldwide nemesis as terrorism, was made considerably more palatable.

The legislative initiatives of 1983 opened the way for a 1960s-style campaign 
to beef up the overseas security assistance program. They also avoided the 
human rights requirements for assistance to the counterinsurgency states under 
the terms of the Foreign Assistance Act. The resulting programs of advice and 
assistance would serve to disseminate a rehabilitated U. S. military doctrine 
combining counterinsurgency and unconventional warfare—the doctrine of low-
intensity conflict. It would retain most of the worst characteristics of 
previous counterinsurgency doctrine while dropping its better features. The 
implementation of the unconventional aspects of the doctrine, moreover, would 
be spurred by a foreign policy that legitimized the tactics of reprisal and 
retaliation in kind in political warfare.

Experiments in an "American Lake"

Some of the first efforts to raise the level of assistance to friendly foreign 
police forces under the Reagan administration were made in the Caribbean and in 
Central America. The approach in most cases was to train small paramilitary 
forces (and sometimes create them from scratch) as if they were military 
formations. U.S. security assistance in the Caribbean before the Anti-Terrorism 
Assistance Program began centered on Puerto Rico as a training center and a 
source of U.S. personnel. Since 1980, the 12,000-man Puerto Rican National 
Guard, one of the best trained, best-equipped American national guard units, 
had provided training to the paramilitary security services of Barbados, 
Dominica, and Jamaican.38 The use of U.S. military forces to train regional 
paramilitary security units was one way to bypass the Public Safety training 
ban. In December 1981, after an attempted coup in Dominica, Congress authorized 
a $1 million fund to assist the defense forces of the small islands of the 
eastern Caribbean, even though most of those governments preferred small police 
forces to standing armies of any size.

This training of police by the U.S. military proceeded side-by-side with the 
training of the same forces by the FBI. FBI training for Caribbean police was 
permissible under the Justice Department waivers for certain kinds of 
instruction. A pilot training program was established by the FBI in Puerto Rico 
during 1982 to train police officers from the U. S. and the Caribbean "in basic 
criminal invest) dative matters."39 Now known as the FBI's Caribbean Police 
School, it provided two four-week sessions annually, from 1982 to 1984, 
training "137 mid-management officers," including 21 from the U.S. Army and 
Navy, and 80 from sixteen foreign countries.40 (Statistics on its work after 
1984 are not available.) The combined paramilitary police force of Barbados, 
Jamaica, Dominica, Antigua, Saint Vincent, and Saint Lucia, which joined the 
U.S. task force in the wake of the Grenada invasion, had all enjoyed American 
tutelage.

Training in the Caribbean increased after the October 1983 Grenada operation. 
The British promptly detailed a team of police advisers, supported by a Senior 
Superintendent from Barbados (and a modest budget of £750,000) to rebuild 
Grenada's police force in the civil police tradition.41The United States was 
reluctant to surrender its newfound influence in the region to the British, 
however, and proceeded with its own style of police assistance. The objective 
was to establish a regional paramilitary force with the capability to preempt 
Grenada-style "crises" should leftists threaten to take power anywhere in the 
Caribbean. To that end, Congress agreed to waive restrictions on police 
training in the Caribbean, and the president authorized a $15 million 
program.42

In February 1984, nearly 100 Army Special Forces eight-man teams were reported 
to be operating in the area, organizing paramilitary "Special Service Units" on 
Grenada's neighbors Saint Kitts-Nevis, Antigua, Dominica, Saint Lucia and Saint 
Vincent, and Barbuda.43 A year later 160 Grenadian police recruits, too, 
underwent Special Forces training. The best would join "an 80-man paramilitary 
force that will wear combat fatigues and carry M-16 rifles"—Grenada's own 
Special Services Unit (SSU).44 The irony of sending Special Forces teams to 
train Caribbean police was largely missed by the United States' press. The New 
York Times reported that "they are teaching police recruits . . . a variety of 
skills useful to either a soldier or a policeman."45 The peculiar attitude of 
the United States' unconventional warriors toward the rule of law apparently 
disturbed no one: perhaps because they were not even aware of the nature of 
special warfare and the orientation of special operations forces at the time.

This paramilitary project was Washington's top priority in the region. Each of 
the microstates of the eastern Caribbean was to have an SSU and to work in 
conjunction with the small conventional army of Barbados in a Regional Security 
System (only Trinidad refused to join). By the end of 1985, the United States 
had trained and equipped SSUs on each of the islands with an explicit 
countersubversion, counterinsurgency brief: that is, "to provide their 
governments, most of which do not have armies, with extra muscle for dealing 
with insurgencies and external attack."46

The first test of the new forces of the "Eastern Caribbean Security System" 
came in 1985 with regional maneuvers to "liberate" Saint Lucia. Military 
exercises, code-named "Exotic Palm,'' simulated "a situation in which a member-
nation of the regional security system is threatened by insurgents, and needs 
assistance."47 Participants included the Special Forces' proteges from 
Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts-Nevis, and Grenada.48 A disturbing detail 
that tends to confirm the aggressive nature of Special Forces training was the 
Saint Lucia SSU's war games assignment: working with U.S. Navy SEALs to play 
the part of left- wing guerrillas. This implies that at least basic offensive 
unconventional warfare skills were passed on to these police recruits, perhaps 
through training in the "Aggressor" guerrilla tactics used in maneuver warfare. 
A year later, in "Ocean Venture '86," Grenada was "liberated" for a second 
time. As in the previous exercise, U.S. airborne troops operated in conjunction 
with eastern Caribbean forces from''the special service units set up with US 
support."49

The antiterrorism rationale for security assistance opened the way to revived 
programs of U.S. police and military assistance to the region. Often the 
distinction was almost academic. Costa Rica's Civil Guard (the country boasts 
of having no standing army since 1948) was one of the first paramilitary police 
forces to enjoy the increased attention from the United States in the Reagan 
years.50 After 1981, diplomatic and economic pressure virtually forced the 
Costa Ricans to abjure neutrality and take sides in the war on Nicaragua— and 
to prepare to take up arms in the fight.51 Although Costa Rica has no army, 
U.S. assistance to its police was military in substance (and itemized as such 
in the federal budget), and was provided by the army's Green Berets. Like the 
specialist CIA trainers of the old Public Safety program, they were hardly 
representative of the civil police tradition.

U.S. military involvement in Costa Rica grew rapidly during Reagan's first 
term. Military assistance levels rose from $300,000 in 1981 to $11 million in 
1985.52 At times the enthusiasm of U.S. officials for Costa Rican projects 
outstripped that of their Costa Rican counterparts, who, after all, had the 
sometimes difficult task of ensuring continued domestic support from an 
electorate jealous of its country's sovereignty as well as its democratic, 
neutralist tradition. In November 1983, U.S. Defense Undersecretary Fred Ikle 
recoilless rifles, grenade launchers, and, in a single shipment in April 1985, 
4,000 M16 rifles. In February 1985, 45 Costa Rican guardsmen left for the U.S. 
Regional Training Center in Honduras to attcud a two-month counterinsurgency 
course to prepare them to become instructors.64 In May 1985, a 24-man Special 
Forces Mobile Training Team arrived in Costa Rice to train the Civil Guard's 
Batallon Relampago—the "Lightning Battalion."65 The Nation's account of the 
graduation of the battalion's A and B companies after three months of training 
by Green Berets in 1985 notes wryly that anyone at the ceremony "would 
recognize the 375 men for what they are, soldiers." Militarization (or 
"paramilitarization"), it seems, was part and parcel of U.S. security 
assistance. Richard J. Walton reported:

They were trained by elite combat troops to counter subversion and guerrilla 
warfare, and they were trained not with Police Specials but with M-16s, .50 
caliber and M-60 machine guns, and anti- tank weapons.... Minister of Public 
Security Benjamin Piza Carranza. . . told me he would like to see the entire 
5,500 man force receive similar instruction.67

The entire 750-man Lightning Battalion was trained along lines similar to those 
of El Salvador's rapid response battalions, which were also trained by the 
Special Forces. A second elite force of 400 police officers underwent training 
in 1985, with an explicitly "anti-terrorist" brief, the affiliations of the 
U.S. trainers involved was not revealed. Minister of the Presidency Danilo 
Jimenez said only that the antiterrorist force was being trained by "Israeli 
and US agents."68

Another Costa Rican innovation that smacked of the counterinsurgency state was 
the organization of a paramilitary militia—a civilian defense body suspiciously 
reminiscent of El Salvador's infamous ORDEN—in late 1982. OPEN, the 
Organization for National Emergencies, was officially described as a civilian 
volunteer organization to support regular security forces "in national 
emergencies" and "to defend democracy"; it was administered by the Ministry of 
Security.69 Like ORDEN, OPEN's members, in the words of Vice-Minister of 
Security Johnny Campos, "must be 'citizens of proven democratic faith.' They 
must sign a declaration professing their belief in democracy. Communists are 
not permitted to join. "7" Civil Guard Lt. Col. Carlos Zeledon stressed that 
OPEN was different from the previous National Reserve or National Guard, in 
that it was "more civil in character."70It might be added that it was more 
political in character as well—a matter much discussed in Costa Rica, where the 
possibility that extremist right-wing groups would infiltrate the group was 
recognized.

In early February 1983, authorities announced that some 10,000 citizens had 
been preparing over the previous two months to participate in OPEN; their 
training included "self-defense use of light weapons, and emergency rescue 
techniques."72 Campos refused to say whether the United States assisted in the 
creation of OPEN, claiming the matter was a "state secret."73

Costa Rica did not become a military staging area for the United States along 
Honduran lines; it did, however, provide a safe rear area— dotted with 
airstrips and supply dumps—for contra incursions into Nicaragua, until the 
Iran-contra scandal gave Monge's successor, Oscar Arias Sanchez, a pretext to 
curtail assistance to the Contras. Costa Rica's cooperation with the United 
States' regional plans w as closely related to the economic squeeze put on 
Monge when he assumed office in 1982. Costa Rica had been in a debt crisis 
since the late 1970s, and had become increasingly dependent on U.S. financial 
aid.74 This aid—much of it with strings attached—jumped from $16 million in 
1980 to $200 million in 1983; the threat to pull the plug on aid was an 
increasingly significant factor in the bilateral relationship.75

The threats came out in the open after President Arias began to backpeddle from 
Monge's commitments to U. S. policy shortly after his election in February 
1986. He moved to shut down the contra supply base on John Hull's ranch near 
the Nicaraguan border (Hull would later receive further media attention in the 
context of the Iran- contra hearings when allegations emerged that CIA contract 
pilots used his ranch to bring in guns and take out narcotics). Arias ordered 
the airstrip there closed and the U.S. operations in the area curtailed; some 
contras were actually detained for a short time.

The Tower Commission report describes the NSC response to news on 9 September 
1986 of the airfield closure and of an impending Costa Rican announcement of 
the action. In a conference call, NSC staffer Oliver North, State Department's 
Elliot Abrams, and Ambassador Louis Tambs decided to limit the damage through 
economic bullying: "North said that they had decided North would call Costa 
Rican President Arias and tell him if the press conference went forward the US 
would cancel $80 million in promised AID assistance and Arias' upcoming visit 
with President Reagan."76 North also told the commission that both Tambs and 
Abrams had "reinforced this message with Arias," and that National Security 
Adviser William Poindexter had supported the initiative. North's NSC field team 
in Central America had advised a similarly heavy-handed approach in a coded 
transmission on 10 September informing Washington that the airfield—code-named 
"Plantation"—had been raided. The text reflects a typical Yankee disdain for 
presidents of smaller republics who get in the United States' way:

COSTA RICAN SECURITY forces raided Plantation yesterday and impounded 77 drums 
of gas. Rumors [redacted] apprehension for questioning denied late last night. 
One raiding official who claims saw facilities for 400 men at site arrested 
[redacted] .... Alert Ollie Pres. Arias will attend Reagan's dinner in New York 
Sept. 22nd. Boy needs to be straightened out by heavy weights.77

The story did not end with the airstrip contretemps. Arias stuck to his guns on 
the closure and announced it to the media; Washington responded as threatened, 
cutting unilateral grants and loans, and blocking aid from international 
financial institutions.78 Arias did not buckle under U.S. pressure, however, 
and eventually put through his own regional peace plan (to Washington's 
dismay), which won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987.

Exporting Off-the-Rack "Insurgency"

The offensive component of political warfare had been a covert side of U.S. 
policy since the 1940s. In the 198()s, it was made public in formal policy 
statements. The Reagan administration entered office determined to roll back 
revolution around the world, and said so quite openly. El Salvador was the 
primary theater of operations to crush a revolution in the making. Nicaragua 
was to be the showcase operation of spoiling and reversing a successful 
revolution through concerted unconventional warfare. Propaganda efforts to 
justify covert intervention in Nicaragua would go some way toward distracting 
the U.S. public's attention from the all-out warfare in El Salvador and the 
tens of thousands of political killings by U. S. allies there.

The theoretical side of offensive counterrevolutionary warfare had been worked 
over for decades by backroom Cold Warriors: Some of the Reagan team's 
policymakers had been working to this end for many years, and the more 
innovative ones would find the opportunity to put Into practice their own 
theories from decades before. Among them was Central America policymaker 
Constantine Menges. In a 1968 paper he prepared as a RAND Corporation 
strategist, Menges set the stage for his 1980s role in waging the 
unconventional war On Nicaragua. In "Democratic Revolutionary Insurgency as an 
Alternative Strategy" (March 1968), he elaborates On the organization of U. S.-
backed "insurgency" against revolutionary regimes. The tactics, in his 
assessment,

would be precisely the same as those immortalized by the Viet Minh and Viet 
Cong: systematic assassination of key communist officials at all levels of 
government; selective recruitment of cadre elements; efficient use of limited 
external material assistance; incessantly "political" warfare, meaning 
establishment of model governments in areas free of communist government 
control; attacks on communist military units known to be demoralized and the 
like.79

Menges's 1968 paper acknowledges that sonic allies are not really worth saving, 
and it reserves the Option to dump so- called allied regimes that are potential 
liabilities. The preferred contingency, however, Is to maintain moderate 
backing for an ally while preparing for the morning after its fall. The 
"unsuitable" allies that had outlived their usefulness could be propped 
discreetly, but the United States would not go out on a limb to save them. The 
primary effort was to go toward selecting and protecting a more congenial 
successor. This was in practice the approach taken during the rapid decline of 
El Salvador's General Romero, and it was also applicable as the Marcos regime 
progressively lost its grip. The long fall of the Somozas was an occasion in 
which all the options were covered—diplomatic tut-tutting and estrangement 
cloaked backdoor U.S. training and a green light to Israeli arms shipments. And 
even as Somoza flew out, a last-ditch deal was being frantically promoted to 
form an Inter- American peace force. If the installation of a more acceptable 
moderate was unrealistic, and an undesirable revolutionary regime seemed 
inevitable, preparations were in order for a future campaign of guerrilla 
insurgency.

The preparations to be made before the collapse, as outlined by Menges, were to 
include setting up a U. S.-backed "revolutionary" force to act when the time 
was ripe: "Thus it might be feasible to do nothing to prevent a communist 
movement from seizing power against a government we consider 'unsuitable,' but 
meanwhile make efforts to encourage the formation of an underground movement 
which will emerge later."" The underground movement would "snake its move" 
within six mouths to a year, time enough for the revolutionary government to 
have won "that massive unpopularity . . . which usually follow[s]."81 And so, 
as Somoza and friends fled, preparations for life after Somoza went into high 
gear.

The covert and unilateral preparation for unconventional war on the territory 
of allied nations was not a particularly novel idea. The development of local, 
U.S.-controlled assets as resources against future crises was one aspect of the 
1962 Special Forces mission to Colombia discussed earlier, while the ClA's 
high-level assets in Central America (notably in Panama's Manuel Noriega) have 
more recently been in the news. The doctrine and practice was to make some 
preparation for unconventional warfare In the counterinsurgency states, against 
the possibility that friendly governments could (and in some cases, should) 
collapse. This could be done as part of U. S. military assistance and training 
programs within the country as well as through joint contingency planning with 
the host government.

A major role of U.S. special operations forces was to prepare and encourage 
host governments to take unconventional measures to combat subversion and 
insurgency before it was too late. There was also a secondary track—not always 
known to the head of the host govenrnment—for preemptive special warfare 
operations: If the host was unsuccessful in quashing prorevolutionary 
stirrings, or collapsed altogether, U. S. assets in the country could be called 
upon. Brigadier General Joseph C. Lutz, commander of the First Special Forces 
Command explained that special operations forces gave us "the capability of 
being introduced into a given country, being established on the ground with 
contacts, maybe even with our own intelligence networks," in anticipation of 
later needs. This, he confided, "is the secret of the peacetime to wartime 
transition.''82 The strategy assumed that the United States could carry out 
undercover organization (and operations) overseas virtually at will— if not in 
pursuit of a particular objective, then simply as tramming exercises and 
insurance. This could explain why U. S. military personnel were detailed to 
help the Costa Ricans build roads along the Nicaraguan border, and more 
recently, ostensibly to fight drug traffickers In Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru.

The long-term placement of U.S. assets through special operations was secondary 
to the prime objective of helping allied governments develop counterinsurgency 
states that would preclude any insurgency. The tactics of unconventional 
warfare were encouraged as legitimate tools to preempt serious threats. The 
United States' instruction in illicit counterinsurgency, however, coincided 
with a second, more public track of U. S. foreign policy: pressuring these 
self- same governments to professionalize their police and armed forces and to 
respect human rights. The advisers In unconventional warfare, moreover, could 
not decide the critical threshold at which the host government would turn to 
the Illegal tactics of unconventional warfare, the extent to which such tactics 
would be used, or the timetable of its action. U.S. doctrine at every level 
encouraged military counterparts to consider domestic political problems as an 
aspect of global political warfare— in the same light as the international 
skulduggery of spies and commando raids. The nonviolent political opposition—if 
labeled ideologically suspect—was fair game. The unrestrained use of 
unconventional warfare tactics by host governments, as if the enemy had already 
taken control, was perhaps inevitable.

As an allied counterinsurgency state turned Increasingly to the unlimited 
terror of unconventional warfare, the United States still had several Options. 
It could extend unrestricted support to its threatened ally, or it could 
covertly support one or more of the contending factions for power. 
Alternatively, the U.S. response to a government on its way out could be to 
organize a third force, an autonomous insurgent movement that would nominally 
fight the old regime while setting out to hamstring and supplant its principal 
adversary. Menges called this "Triangle Warfare": that is, "the fomenting of a 
national revolutionary insurgency that would draw upon the best persons within 
the major social institutions, and unite them in a cohesive movement opposed to 
both the corrupt government and the communist insurgency."83 In the 
postcollapse situation, then, U.S.- backed rivals to undesirable revolutionary 
movements could keep up the fight, unencumbered by any association with the old 
regime.

Menges suggests that the United States' position improves as the communist 
movement becomes more dangerous and the government weakens, with "the 
disruptions and intrinsic tragedies of a country In the throes of communist 
insurgency . . . made to work in favor of the ultimate victory of the U. S.- 
supported democratic revolutionary movement." Terror and counterterror would 
create the preconditions for a third contender to move in, pick up the pieces, 
and assume control:

All the brutality of the struggle between the rival terror machines might 
therefore serve to reinforce the desire of many for some other alternative—a 
third choice.... The effective democratic revolutionary movement could enter 
the open battle late, fight against two weakened and tired opponents, and gain 
more strength and support with every offensive action taken against both the 
Communists and the legal regime.

A more common alternative to the "triangle" approach has been applied to 
collapsing regimes with still-viable armed forces: nurturing selected factions 
within military establishment capable of leading palace coups, and providing 
the new faces to revive and remodel old systems. The "reformist" coups in El 
Salvador in 1979, Guatemala in 1982, and the Philippines in 1985 could all be 
interpreted as variations on this theme. The coup option provides a means to 
avoid (or deflate) "mass participation, uprisings, disturbances and the like," 
while "leaving some kind of government intact." Although the coup is usually 
the only option the United States will consider, the transfer of power offers 
little in the way of a remedy to the political problems that may have led to 
unrest. Menges points out that the "coup alternative . . . often leaves the 
successor regime quite constrained as to new policy alternatives"— an analysis 
Corazon Aquino might appreciate.

In practice, U.S. policymakers found that backing a third force between the 
unsuitable and the unacceptable was preferable to taking chances with 
mercenaries and volatile paramilitary forces, but such options were foreclosed 
in situations in which authentic revolutionary movements had already swept the 
traditional armies from the field.

In Nicaragua and Angola, the "triangle warfare" model was applicable. In 
Angola, the United States backed first Holden Roberto's FNLA (National Front 
for the Liberation of Angola) and then FNLA and UNITA (National Union for the 
Total Independence of Angola) as alternatives to the Soviet- backed MPLA (the 
ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola); the geometry of 
intervention was made rather more complex by the addition of Zaire, South 
Africa, and odds and ends of "assistance" from the European powers. The 
Nicaraguan example began after the first year of the revolutionary government, 
when Eden Pastora—Comandante Zero—split with the government and set up as a 
guerrilla leader on his own. As leader of the Tercerista faction of the FSLN 
(roughly, "the third way"), Pastora's band would be a natural for recruitment 
and assistance by the United States. The arrangement ultimately broke down on 
two scores: U. S. war managers distrusted Pastora and, in the words of 
Newsweek, "alienated the only group likely to attract widespread support in 
Nicaragua." Even worse, the United States selected the rump of the National 
Guard as the backbone of its campaign, "supporting the only wrong, the only 
truly evil alternative.''87 Even though Pastora was, ultimately, brought on 
board, the romance ended prematurely when Pastora balked at taking orders and 
at direct collaboration with the former National Guard officers running the 
main contra forces. On 30 May 1984, a bomb exploded at a Pastora press 
conference in a shack along the San Juan River, killing two journalists and 
severely injuring others. Pastora escaped with his life, but his usefulness to 
the counterrevolution was terminated.

Tripartite Arrangements

A favorite U.S. option in the 1980s was to bring; the forces of third countries 
into U.S. unconventional warfare offensives—under their own or false colors, on 
a cash-down or voluntary basis. The motives (and rewards) varied. Theodore 
Shackley cites as a model the assistance lent to the ClA's Meo program by an 
elite paramilitary unit from Thailand.88 Shackley's 1981 proposals suggest that 
he saw no political problem in hiring outside forces, a logic that could also 
apply to U. S. contract forces in unconventional roles: "Selectively employ 
'volunteers' as combat troops or advisers. The supply of high-quality manpower 
is limited in any country.... The volunteers can be reservists from a 
neighboring country who have just finished tours of active military duty and 
are hired to fight on fixed contract terms.''89

A 1986 paper from another RAND analyst, Charles Wolf, concurred with Shackley 
and proposed to do formally what in practice occurred covertly: induce Third 
World allies to provide counterinsurgency/counterrevolutionary forces to 
operate shoulder-to-shoulder —or stand in for—U.S. forces in third- country 
scenarios.90 "Cooperative Forces" would be drawn from Third World "countries 
and movements" for the advancement of mutual interests, notably "pluralism, 
human rights, 'open' societies and containment and reversal of the Soviet 
Union's empire in the third world."91 The reference to "movements" may well 
refer to such Cold War dinosaurs as the World Anti-Communist League or to the 
range of American oddball organizations called in to help out with the contra 
embargo-busting campaign. Wolf identifies likely "cooperative" candidates as 
including Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina in the Americas. He distinguishes 
between our "cooperative" forces and the enemy's proxies or surrogates: 
"Proxies act at the behest of a controlling power, which bears all the 
accompanying costs. Cooperative forces act from mutual interest, and share in 
the cost, responsibilities and decision making."92 Cooperative forces would be 
on call with counterinsurgency services "at the invitation of beleaguered third 
world countries." And in the proinsurgency field, they would include "the 
forces of 'front line' states willing to provide support for the insurgent 
local forces" throughout the world.93

The proxy option was particularly appealing at the time because it mirrored yet 
another of the alleged methods of the Soviets, who were seen as past masters 
of"surrogate" forces acting at their behest, the Cubans in Angola being the 
prime example. Wolf's proposal appears to have been adopted intact by the "low-
intensity" school—a recommendation phrased in much the same terms appeared in 
the 1988 report of the blue-ribbon Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. 
The commission's report lauded what it saw as the Soviet achievement in the 
field (with a fairly indiscriminate list of supposed surrogates) and 
recommended work with our own Third World allies "at developing 'cooperative 
forces.' " It ruefully admitted that

we have a lot to leant from the Soviets in this regard. Soviet efforts to 
advance and defend their interests in less developed countries are typically 
supported by a familiar cast of characters—Cubans, Nicaraguans, Vietnamese, 
North Koreans, East Europeans. These cooperating forces are led and financed by 
Moscow.... The entire operation carries enormous advantages for the Soviet 
Union, both in minimizing its own risks of confrontation with the West and in 
making available troops that blend readily into the environment.94

Ideally, the American project would result in "mobile forces available for duty 
in particular regions, or even outside them." In the process participating 
allies would be able to "improve their military capabilities and perhaps their 
regional political and economic influence."95

The third-party option was actually used extensively in covert actions well 
before the idea was bandied around in public. Argentinian and Israeli advisers 
played a major role in the organization of the unconventional war on Nicaragua 
and in the covert counterterror bloodbath in Guatemala between 1979 and 1982. 
Argentinian trainers based in Honduras were on the job with the U.S. advisers 
at the inception of the program to build an irregular army for the war on 
Nicaragua. Although Israel's role in the region was even more extensive, not 
all of the Israeli offers of help were taken up. A May 1986 exchange of 
computer memoranda at the National Security Council between Lt. Col. North and 
Admiral Poindexter illustrates the Israelis' eagerness to gain political 
capital through such exchanges:

DEF[ense]MIN[istcr Yitzhak] RABlN SENT HIS MIL[itary]AIDE TO SEE ME WITH THE 
FOLLOWING OFFER: THE ISRAELIS W[oul]D BE WILLING TO PUT 20-50 SPANISH SPEAKING 
MILITARY TRAINERS/ADVISORS INTO THE DRF [Democratic Revolutionary Forces] IF WE 
WANT THIS TO HAPPEN. THEY W[oul]D DO THIS IN CONCERT WITH AN ISRAELI PLAN TO 
SELL THE KFIR FlGHTER TO HONDURAS.. .. RABIN WANT TO MEET W/ME PRIVATELY IN N. 
Y. TO DISCUSS DETAILS. MY IMPRESSION IS THAT THEY ARE PREPARED TO MOVE QUICKLY 
ON THIS IF WE DO DESIRE. ABRAMS LIKES THE IDEA.96

The interchange of counterterror personnel between El Salvador and Guatemala, 
and the role of the ubiquitous CIA Cubans in both countries is rather less 
known. The November 1980 "Dissent Paper on El Salvador and Central America," a 
twenty-nine-page paper attributed to the State Department's "dissent channel"— 
but officially disavowed—is one quasi- official source that reports that better 
"communication and cooperation among armed forces and paramilitary 
organizations" in Guatemala and Honduras was a key part of U.S. strategy on El 
Salvador and Nicaragua.97 Contingency plans for regional intervention in 1980 
reportedly included the creation of "a paramilitary strike force of former 
members of the Nicaraguan National Guard, anti-Castro Cubans, Guatemalan 
military personnel and mercenaries,"98 although it was said to be impossible to 
substantiate "charges that CIA has been promoting and encouraging" this.99

The February and March 1982 Washington' Post exclusives that revealed parts of 
the Reagan administration's covert action plans in Nicaragua tended to 
substantiate the CIA parentage of a multinational, but unilateral, regional 
paramilitary program.100 The Post's analysis of National Security Council 
records on the November 1981 presidential finding read very much like the 
November 198() Dissent Paper. The action plan provided for the "conduct of 
political and paramilitary operations against the Cuban presence and Cuban-
Sandinista support structure in Nicaragua and elsewhere in Central America." 
101 The "formation and training of local paramilitary "action teams" was 
proposed for intelligence collection and "to engage in paramilitary and 
political operations in Nicaragua and elsewhere."102

On the noncovert side the 1988 report of the Commission on Integrated Long- 
Term Strategy suggested third-party involvement in El Salvador was a starting 
point for broader regional cooperation: "The war . . . became a model of sorts 
for cooperative efforts: under American leadership other Latin American 
countries proved willing to offer military training."103 Second- government 
involvement in El Salvador was, In fact relatively small in scale although 
possibly significant in the intelligence field. One of the more surprising 
partnerships was Venezuela's secret provision of a twelve-man mobile training 
team in 1982 to assist in the organization of 350-man hunter-killer cazadora 
battalion modeled on similar units set up in Venezuela in the 1960s.104 In 1985 
Venezuelan trainers were revealed to be working with the intelligence officers 
of Salvadoran security services—services that U. S. trainers were banned from 
assisting. A Salvadoran officer confirmed that "the Venezuelans are picking up 
where the United States is not allowed to train,' after human rights workers 
received reports that uniformed Venezuelans had supervised the Interrogation of 
political prisoners.105

Argentine counterinsurgents, too, are credited with having lent assistance at 
the inception of the Salvadorans' own "dirty war" in 19801981. Former 
Salvadoran security chief Colonel Roberto Santivanez who emerged from shadowy 
retirement in the United States to be interviewed In 1985, was one source on 
the Argentine connection. Argentine advisers, he said, working with 
''unemployed'' former Nicaraguan National Guardsmen, had been involved in 
setting up the clandestine Infrastructure for counterterror "death squad" 
operations in the Immediate aftermath of the October 1979 coup. Santivanez 
credits these "cooperative forces" with having actively promoted a 
decentralized system for "death squad" targeting of subversives at the local 
level while identifying the National Police, National Guard, and Treasury 
Police as those responsible for the bulk of the killings. "it The grass-roots 
intelligence system onto which the "death squad" campaign of killings was 
grafted was based on the preexistent structure of ORDEN, the paramilitary 
network of some 100,000 members set up by the armed forces explicitly for 
counterinsurgency in the 1960s.107

The Dissent Paper lends further credence to a role for "cooperative forces" In 
some of the stickier areas of Salvadoran counterinsurgency. "The most solid 
bloc of support" reportedly came from the Southern Cone, with Argentina, Chile, 
and Uruguay providing training and advisers on "Intelligence, urban and rural 
counter- insurgency, and logistics. Argentina is held to have become the second 
largest trainer of Salvadoran officers after the United States."

The Other Political Dimension

A major distinction between old-style counterinsurgency and the new doctrine of 
the 1980s—what Sam Sarkesian called "the new counterinsurgency era"—was the 
quiet watering down of its reform and development dimension.109 Development and 
reform had traditionally been considered unmilitary (a matter for civilian 
agencies), unworkable (an impertinent interference with allied governments), 
and precipitous (impossible to achieve without having first crushed the 
insurgency). The 1986 low-intensity conflict Field Circular, FC100-20, 
continued to refer to Internal Defense and Development (IDAD) as a part of the 
philosophy of counterinsurgency, its definition dating from the 1960s 
counterinsurgency era: "the art and science of developing and using the 
political, economic, psychological, and military powers of a government, 
including all police and internal security forces, to prevent or defeat 
insurgency.110 The same manual makes only an oblique reference to problems of 
unattractive allies, merely asserting that the host government "must clearly 
demonstrate that it is a better choice than the insurgent organization."111

A more extensive acknowledgement of the political underpinnings of 
counterinsurgency was made in the 1986 joint-services study of lowintensity 
conflict.112 The study concludes that the existence of a well developed 
insurgency is often in itself evidence of a "legitimate crisis" in the society, 
with a likelihood that "political, social, and economic disparities" had 
provoked armed opposition. The solution to this problem, however, is seen to 
lie with the host government, which is expected to use military force carefully 
while defusing the more acute of the grievances that fuel it. The governing 
authority must both "discipline the use of force" and realize that "the true 
nature of the insurgent threat lies in its political claims and not in the 
military movement.113 Sound advice, but barely reflected in the training, 
equipment, and operational assistance provided to allied counterinsurgents. The 
report of the Joint Low-lntensity Conflict Project, like many products of 
committees, incorporates the practical and the philosophical on an equal 
footing. Operational doctrine does not.

The doctrine provides no formula, apart from the cosmetic device of civic 
action, through which to transform the political aspect of counterinsurgency 
analysis into programmatic action. On the contrary, the political mood of the 
Reagan administration was to abjure poetical pressures on ideological allies, 
however ruthless and authoritarian, in line with the principle that "the enemy 
of my enemy is my friend"—and by elaboration, that one does not tell one's 
friends how to live." strictly military side of counterinsurgency, in contrast, 
is subject to immediate implementation with a modicum of training and 
equipment.

The stated commitment to democratization and development provided a fine gloss 
to the military contest with subversion, much as in the classic 
counterinsurgency doctrine of the 1960s. The extensive development programs of 
1960s counterinsurgency, however, had been betrayed by their incomparability 
with the doctrine's military dimension (and blocked or corrupted by the status 
quo in every theater). The doctrine of the 1980s revival restated the same 
analytical premises but largely eschewed a direct, hands-on military role in 
counterinsurgency's political dimension. In the new operational doctrine, the 
U.S. forces' lowintensity role largely shed the last of its reformist trappings 
in deference to programs of strictly military action. The Reagan administration 

Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, "Police Aid to Central America," 13 
August 1986, p. 13. A thirteen-payc State Departmettt response to the C aucus 
report elaborates Otl the background to the ''plantlitlg conference." See 
letter dated l October 1986 front James H. Michcl, I)eputy Assistant Secretary 
for InterAmericatl Affairs, to Matthcw F. McHugll, Caucus chairs.

Ibid. An AID spokesman told Caucus researchers that the Miami meetings were 
"planning conferences" that did not technically constitute " 'assistance' " and 
so were not subject to Section 660's ban on aid to police or to the test of " 
'judicial or prosecutorial control.' "

Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, p. 12.

The 660(d) waiver for police training in El Salvador and Honduras, initially to 
expire in 1987, was extended.

For a summary of the draft bill, see Washington in Focus 3, no. 7, 17 October 
1985 (Washington Office of Latin America).

U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, The Central American Counterterrorism 
Act of 1985, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, of 
Representatives, 95th Congress, First Session, 24 October and 19 November, 1985 
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1986), p. 54. The training and commodities list for 
Panama included arms and equipment for a l,000 municipal police force: ten 
sniper rifles, two light machine guns, 500 M-1 carbines, 1,000 .357 magnum 
revolvers, 1,000 flak jackets, and so on.

Tom Barry and Deb Preusch, "Puerto Rico and the Militarization of the 
Caribbean," Caribbean Contact (April 1984). According to them, fifty members of 
the Barbados Defense Force attended a National Guard summer training camp in 
Puerto Rico in 1980. Paramilitary police from Barbados and Dominica received 
training there in 1982, end Jamaica's Defense Force has trained there 
"regularly" since a memorandum of understanding was signed with the Puerto 
Rican government. The use of the Puerto Rican training facilities would expand 
after the invasion of Grenada.

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Justice Department, fiscal year 1986 Budget 
and Authorization Request, p. 66.

Ibid.

Training was provided at the Seawell police training center on Barbados, opened 
by the British in 1957 and funded in the 1980s with about _500,000 a year. 
Training is provided there for the police of 11 former British colonies in the 
eastern Caribbean, from the Virgin Islands (with a force level of about 70) to 
Barbados's 11,0(N) constables. Nick Worrall, "Grenada Gives up the Goose Step, 
" The Observer (London; 15 January 1984).

Hugh O'Shaughnessy, "A Mini-NATO for Caribbean," The Observer (London; 5 
February 1984), reports the appropriation.

The six are members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, which gave 
a veneer of regional legitimacy to the United States' otherwise unilateral 
decision to act Otl Grenada. A seventh, Barbados, already had a small military 
(or paramilitary) defense force: see New York Times Service, "US Gives Arms 
Training in Nations Whose Troops May Stay in Grenada," International Herald 
Tribune (20 February 1984).

Joseph B. Treaster, "US Soldiers Training Grenada Unit, New Paramilitary Force 
Part of Region's Militarization," New York Times Service, International Herald 
Tribune (8 January 1985).

Ibid.

Ibid. A paramilitary training school was apparently set up on the Grenadiarn 
island of Carriacou.

"Caribbean Military Affairs, US Stages Another Ocean Venture, Grenada Hosts 
Military Exercise; St. Vincent Abstains," Latin American Weekly R eport (25 
April 1986).

Michael White, "Caribbean Joy Ride in a Hurricane," The Guardian (London; 13 
September 1985). See also White's second report from St. Lucia, "Wind and Rain 
Still the Main Foe of Exotic Palm," The Guardian, (14 September 1985).

Ibid. The exercises in the eastern Caribbean were only a small part of the 
"Ocean Venture" maneuvers.

Costa Rica in the early 1980s had both a Civil Guard (with a force level of 
about 5,5(X)) whose tasks included urban policing and border control, and a 
Rural Guard (about 2,500), charged with policing rural areas. Both are 
organized along paramilitary lines.

Costa Rica's constitution not only abolished a standing army but committed the 
country to permanent neutrality.

"Caribbean Military Affairs," Latin American Weekly Report (17 May 1985). 
Military transfers included assault rifles, ammunition, explosives, 
helicopters, light aircraft, patrol boats, and trucks. Military aid jumped to 
$2 million in 1982, $4.6 million in 1983, $9.2 million in 1984, and $11 million 
in 1985. See Joel Brinkley, "US To Begin Military Training of Costa Ricans," 
New York Times Service, International Herald tribune (8 May 1985).

"Costa Rica, 'Doves' Gain Ground in Cabinet," Latin American Regional Reports: 
Mexico and Central America (2 December 1983), p. 7.

References to a leaked report on this, dated 5 May 1984, are from Joanne Omang, 
"Draft Report Says Costa Rica Seeks More US Military Aid," Washington Post 
Service, International Herald Tribune, 11 May 1984.

Ibid.

Ibid.

The incident, and allegations that it was staged, is reported in "Military 
Affairs, Upgrading Costa Rican Security," Latin American Regional Reports: 
Mexico and Central America (12 July 1985), p. 5; Martha Honey, "America Finds 
Ally in Neutral Costa Rica," The Sunday Times (London; 16 June 1985); and Colin 
Smith, "Soldier's Story Blows Costa Rican Facade," The Observer (London; 7 July 
1985). Reference to British mercenaries appears in Tim Coone, "Soldiers Fail to 
Find Their Fortune," The Financial Times, 10 November 1985; and Martha Honey, 
"Jailed Mercenaries Say Costa Rica and CIA Involved in Contra War," the Times 
(London), 7 April 1985.

Honey, "America Finds Ally," The Sunday Times (16 June 1985). She cites Costa 
Rican sources for the U.S. offer_a credible story given the similar offers made 
more overtly to the Hondurans. Martha Honey was one of the reporters who were 
badly injured at the bomb attack on Eden Pastora's press conference in May 
1984.

Ibid.

Smith, "Soldier's Story, " The Observer (7 July 1985). Tim Coone, in ''Soldiers 
Fail To Find Their Fortune," Financial Times (11 October 1985), cites American 
Robert Thompson "We thought they were coming just like all the other times.... 
I even went over and shook the colonel's hand." The other American, Stephen 
Carr, is said to have been recruited through "the Miami- based 2506 Brigade," 
an organization of Cuban dating back to the Bay of Pigs invasion. His joint 
effort with the largish "Civilian Military Assistance" (CMA) recruits, and his 
claims that the five had been briefed at the ranch of AmcricanJohtl Hull (whose 
CIA ties were revealed in the Iran-contm hearings), suggest that the recruiting 
agencies were working for a common purpose under the guidance of a central 
agency.

Nick Davics and Jonathan Foster, "British Dogs of War Recruited To Fight itl 
Nicaragua, " 7 he Ohseruer (London; 26 May 1985), cited one of the first 
Interviews with Glibbery and Davics (at which they said nothing of a CIA 
connection). Thc authors examined the CMA role in organizing mercenaries for 
the contras, citing CMA head Tom Posey's confirn1atiotl of the two men's 
assignment in Costa Rica, as well as his denial of illegally hiring 
mercenaries: " 'I don't hire anybody,' he said. 'These people are volunteers. 
All we can offer is support.' "

Smith, "Soldier's Story," The Observer (7 duly 1985). The delivery, like the 
subsequent arrests, illustrated the tension between extreme rightists and 
others in the government and in the guard. Not everything to do with the 
contras (and the United States) was a matter of consensus within the Costa 
Rican government. The raid on the camp was reportedly ordered by Minister of 
Justice Hugo Munoz_who advocated expelling the contras from Costa Rica. The 
arrests were made by a unit of the Rural Guard, a rival of the Civil Guard 
controlled by the Ministry of Government and Police.

"Nicaragua Is Taking Threat Seriously," Latin American Regional Reports: Mexico 
and Central America (12 July 1985).

"Military Affairs, " Latin American Regional Reports: Mexico and Central 
America (12 July 1985), p. 5.

Honey, "Costa Rica Military Affairs, US To Groom Civil Guard," Latin American 
Weekly Report (17 May 1985), p. 5, refers to 24 advisers from the Panama-based 
Third Battalion of the Seventh Special Forces. They were to be assisted by 47 
Costa Rican guardsmen who had taken a ten-week course as trainers at the U.S. 
training base at Puerto Castillo, Honduras. See also "Military Affairs," Latin 
American Regional Reports Mexico and Central America (12 July 1985), p. 5.

Richard J. Walton, "Corrupting a Country: How the US is Changing Costa Rica," 
The Nation (5 October 1985), p. 308. Joel Brinkley, in "Costa Rican Neutrality: 
Arrival of US Advisers Spurs Debate," New York Times Service, International 
Herald Tribune (20 May 1985), cites Security Minister Benjamin Piza linking the 
in- country training to the closure of the School of the Americas in Panama 
(where Civil Guardsmen had been trained for many years). The US advisers were 
"to train the guardsmen at a new camp in northwestern Costa Rica, 1() miles 
from the Nicaraguan border.

Ibid.

"Costa Rican Military Affairs," Latin American Weekly Report (17 May 1985). 
Israel's contribution to Costa Rica's security apparatus is also discussed by 
Jean Hopfensperger in "Costa Rica Defends Democracy by Beefing up Civil 
Guard," Christia?' Science Monitor (7 February 1983), p. 13. Then-Minister of 
Sccurity Juan Jose Echeverría reportedly traveled to Israel in early 1983 to 
"examine its police organization. "

Hopfensperger, "Costa Rican Defends Democracy," Christian Science Monitor (7 
February 1983), p. 13.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., citing Vice-Minister of Security Johnny Campos. The group was said to be 
composed of men between 18 and 50, "representing all social and economic 
classes. " They received four hours of "civil and police training" each week, 
"using 'obsolete' arms."

Ibid. Thc same source cites U. S. embassy of ficials in Costa Rica denying that 
$2 million in "nonlethal" military aid provided in October 1982 had included 
provisions for OPEN: "They stress that the United States did not pressure its 
southern neighbor into creating the organization."

Walton, "Corrupting a Country," The Nation (5 October 1985), p. 310. He puts 
the country's foreign debt in 1985 at somewhere between $4 and $6 billion, 
apparently almost twice the level of debt (relative to gross national product) 
as that of Brazil.

The Costa Ricans were not reticent about the United States' extortionist 
tactics. See Joel Brinkley, "Costa Rican Neutrality," International Herald 
Tribune (20 May 1985), for statements from "a senior Costa Rican government 
official" to the effect that Monge had "serious misgivings" about the presence 
of U.S. advisers. Previously, the official noted, "Costa Rica had turned down 
many American invitations to observe or take part in military exercises. " But 
because they were receiving a great deal of economic support, Monge did not 
rescind the order to bring in the advisers, he said, "out of fear of straining 
American good will.... Mr. Monge 'can only say no to a generous friend so many 
times.' "

President's Special Review Board, The Tower Commission Report, New York Times 
edition (New York: Bantam/Times, 1987), p. 58.

KL43 coded transmission, 10 September 1986, 1730 hours, from Ralph to Rus Info 
Goode; facsimile in U.S. Congress, the House Select Committee to Investigate 
Covert Arms Transactions with Iran and the Senate Select Committee on Secret 
Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition, 100th Congress, Ist 
Session, Joint Hearings, May 5 through May 8, 1987, Testimony of Richard V. 
Secord (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1987), p. 435.

Press reports in November 1986 cited the blocking of a $26 million price 
support loan from the World Bank, as well as of IMF loans and AID grants. 
Elliot Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter- American Affairs, was 
cast as the heavy, having traveled to San Jose, Costa Rica, in October 1986 
with a blunt message: play ball or kiss international financing good- bye. See 
Jonathan Steele, "Costa Ricans Feel Reagan Aid Pressure," The Guardian (London; 
10 November 1986).

Constantine Menges, "Democratic Revolutionary Insurgency as an Alternative 
Strategy" (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, March 1968), pp. 10-11.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Brigadier General Joseph C. Lutz, in Frank R. Barnett, B. Hugh Tovar, and 
Richard H. Shultz, Special Operations in U. S. Strategy (Washington, D. C.: 
National Defense University Press in cooperation with National Defense 
Information Center,1984), p. 49. General Lutz was Commanding General of the 
First Special Operations Command.

Menges, ''Democratic Revolutionary Insugency," p. 6.

Ibid., p. 8.

Ibid., p. 6.

Ibid.

"America's Secret War, " Newsweek, (8 November 1982), p. 82, quoting a European 
observer.

Theodore Shackley, The Third Option: An 'American Vieu'of Counterittsurgency 
Operations (New York: Readers Digest Press/McGraw Hill, 1981), p. 122.

Ibid., p. 123.

Charles Wolf, Jr., ''Conducting Low Intensity Warfare in Association with 
Cooperative Forces in the Third World, " in U. S. Department of Defense, 
Proceedings of the Low-Intensity Warfare Conference, 14-15 Jattuary 1986, p. 
66. Wolf was director of the RAND Corporation's research program on 
international economic policy and dean of its graduate school. Further 
discussion of the theme is in Charles Wolf, Jr., and Katharine Watkins, 
Developing Cooperative Forces in the Third World: Report of a Rand Conference, 
March 14-15, 1985 (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, N-2325- USDP, June 1985).

Ibid., p. 69.

Ibid., p. 70.

Ibid., p. 72.

The Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, co-chairmen Fred C. Ikle and 
Albert Wohlstetter, Discriminate Deterrence, 12 January 1988, p. 20.

Ibid., p. 21.

PROF note, North to Poindexter, 8 May 1986, in The Touter Commission Report, p. 
466. Elliot Abrams told the commission he "did not recall" any such offer.

Department of State (?), "Dissent Paper on El Salvador and Central America," 
DOS 11/ 8/80, To: Dissent Channel; From: ESCATF/ D Re: DM-ESCA no. 803, p. 9. 
Although not acknowledged to be an official document, the "Dissent Paper" 
clearly reflected views known to have been prevalent in sectors of the foreign 
policy establishment at the time, as well as information then available only to 
policy insiders but later independently corroborated.

Ibid., p. 12.

Ibid., p. 13. The paper notes the awareness of the U. S. intelligence community 
of the movements in and out of the United States of Central American and Cuban 
exile personnel involved in the scheme.

Don Oberdorfer and Patrick E. Tyler, "Reagan Said To Approve Action To Stem 
Central American Unrest," Washington Post Service, International Herald Tribune 
(15 February 1982), and Patrick E. Tyler and Bob Woodward, "US Is Said To 
Approve Anti-Nicaragua Actions," International Herald Tribune (11 March 1982).

Tyler and Woodward, "US Is Said To Approve," International Herald Tribune (11 
March 1982).

Ibid.

The Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, p. 15.

Robert Block, "Venezuela Trains Security Forces in El Salvador," Reuters (16 
July 1985).

Ibid. The then-Vice-Minister of Defense responsible for the police services, 
Genera Carlos Lopez Nuila, confirmed the reports but denied that the Venezuelan 
"technicians" provided intelligence or counterinsurgency training.

Santivañez called these "grpos de vigilancia," "watch roups" or "vigilant 
groups.' "Ricardo Lau, Coronel Somocista Asesinó a Monseñor Oscar Romero," 
Agence France Press/La Hora (Guatemala; 22 March 1985).

For the background to ORDEN, see Michael McClintock, The American Connection , 
vol. l, State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador ( London: Zed, 
1985). pp. 204-9.

"Dissent Paper," November IL80, p. 20.

Dr. Sam C. Sarkesian, "Commentary on Low Intensity Warfare: Threat and Military 
Response," in Department of Defence, Proceedings of the Low-Intensity Warfare 
Conference, 14-15January 1986 (Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.), pp. 38-39.

FC l00-20, p. 3-l, cited in Peter Kornbluh and Michael Klare, Low Intensity 
Warfare (New York: Pantheon, 1988), p. 56. FC 100-20 also reaffirms 1960s 
doctrine that the police are "the first line of defense," and in many countries 
"better trained, organized, and equipped than the military for gathering 
intelligence on the local situation and handling low levels of violence, 
conspiracy, and subversion" (p. 4-1).

FC 100-20, p. 3-7, in Kornblah and Klare, Low Intensity Warfare , p. 58.

This section is based on the Joint Low- lntensity Conflict Project, Final 
Report, vol. 1, pp. 4-1 to 4-13.

Ibid. In an oft-repeated passage, the study adds: "Although the armed elements 
must be dealt with, a concentration on the military aspect of the threat 
resembles the bull charging the matador's cape; it is a diversion masking the 
real danger." Host governments, however, tended to substitute "tactics for 
strategy," opting for military operations alone as the solution, "rather than 
the broad need to address legitimate grievances and to isolate the guerrillas 
from the population." This is classic doctrine at its best, but has little 
bearing Otl most modern counterinsurgency situations, in which the bulk of the 
resources and the political will aim for military solutions.

John M. Collins, Congressional Research Service, U.S. and Soviet Special 
Operations (Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, Draft Committee Print for 
Special Operations Panel, House Armed Services Committee, 1986), p. 5, suggests 
that the Reagan Doctrine can be "freely interpreted to mean 'the enemy of my 
enemy is my friend.' "

General Paul Gorman, in Department of Defense, Proceedings of the Low-Intensity 
Warfare Conference, 14-15 January 1986 (Washington, D.C.: It386), p. 13.

Brigadier General Joseph Lutz, Commander, First Special Forces, ill Bartlett, 
Tovar, and Schultz, Special Operations in U.S. Strategy, p. 48.

Colonel Rod Paschall, "Marxist Counterillsurgellcies," Parameters 16, tlO. 2, 
(Summer 1986), pp. 2-15. Paschall was one of the most prolific military writers 
On counterinsurgency in the 1980s, best known for his Parameters review 
"Cout1tcrinsurgetlcy Doctrine: Who Nccds It?" He was director of the U. S. Army 
Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks in 1986.

Ibid.

John Prados, The Presidents' Secret Wars CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations 
from World War II to Iranscam (New York: Quill/ William Morrow, I986), p. 317; 
see Seymour Hersh, The Pursuit of Power (New York: Summit, 1983), p. 265.


Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and 
Counterterrorism, 1940-1990

© 2002 Michael McClintock

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