Ike's Spies (38 page)

The
CIA
based its strategy on fear. Agents trained in Opa-Locka jammed Guatemalan radio communications so that the inhabitants of Guatemala City had little or no idea as to what was happening at the “front.” Wild rumors circulated, reporting major defeats of government forces and the imminent arrival of well-equipped divisions of rebel troops. In fact, the Guatemalan Army remained safely in barracks throughout the rebellion.

Arbenz aggravated the situation when, in an effort to silence the Voice of Liberation, he ordered a total blackout of the capital and other large cities. This only increased the tension, making the threat seem more real. The incessant sound of police sirens and curfew bells frayed the people's nerves to the breaking point. The scene was one of mass confusion.

In this situation Castillo Armas' “air force,” with pilots hired by the
CIA
, became the crucial factor. It consisted of a few small Cessnas along with some P-47 Thunderbolts. These planes buzzed Guatemala City, occasionally dropping a small bomb or two, or blocks of dynamite attached to hand grenades. They were called
sufatos
, the Guatemalan word for laxatives, due to the psychological effect they had on Arbenz and the residents of the city. One lucky hit on the citadel where the
Alfhem
's cargo of munitions was stored made an impressive explosion.

The
CIA
used black propaganda effectively to ground Arbenz' air force, which was weak and unreliable to begin with. The Voice of Liberation broadcast accounts of Soviet aviators who had defected to the West with their planes. When a Guatemalan pilot did the same,
CIA
agents tried to persuade him to appeal publicly to others in the air force to follow his example. He refused, but the agents got him drunk, then persuaded him to make an “imaginary” appeal. This was secretly recorded, cut and spliced, and then broadcast triumphantly by the Voice of Liberation. From that moment, Arbenz grounded the remainder of his air force, fearful that other pilots would defect with their planes.
⁴³

Nevertheless, Arbenz' antiaircraft gunners were able to put up some resistance, and, on June 22, Allen Dulles reported to Ike that Castillo Armas had lost two of the three old bombers with which he was launching the “invasion.” The
Times
, meanwhile, after
keeping the Guatemalan revolt in the headlines for a week, was rapidly losing interest. No Guatemalan peasants were rallying to Castillo Armas' cause, the Guatemalan Army continued to sit in its barracks, the rebel “army” to sit in its church. Without some boost, the rebellion might soon die of boredom.

Late on the afternoon of June 22, Ike held a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House. Foster Dulles was there, and Allen, along with Henry Holland. Allen Dulles said that Somoza of Nicaragua had offered to supply Castillo Armas with two P-51 fighter-bombers if the United States would agree to replace them. Holland, perfectly innocent of any knowledge of
PBSUCCESS
, insisted that the United States should keep hands off because the Latin American republics would, “if our action became known, interpret our shipment of planes as intervention in Guatemala's internal affairs.” The Dulles brothers argued that replacing the bombers “was the only hope for Castillo Armas, who was obviously the only hope of restoring freedom to Guatemala.”

Ike turned to Allen Dulles. “What do you think Castillo's chances would be without the aircraft?”

“About zero.”

“Suppose we supply the aircraft. What would the chances be then?”

Dulles did not hesitate. “About twenty percent.”

Recalling the event years later, Ike said he thought of the “letter and spirit of the Caracas resolution.” His duty was clear. He instructed Dulles to send the planes.

As Dulles began to walk out of the Oval Office, Ike went to the door with him. Smiling to break the tension, the President said, “Allen, that figure of twenty percent was persuasive. It showed me that you had thought this matter through realistically. If you had told me that the chances would be ninety percent, I would have had a much more difficult decision.”

“Mr. President,” Dulles replied with a grin of his own, “when I saw Henry walking into your office with three large lawbooks under his arm, I knew he had lost his case already.”
⁴⁴

The planes were delivered, the rebels resumed their bombing, and five days later Arbenz resigned. He was replaced by a short-lived military junta that gave way to Castillo Armas a week later.

On June 30, Foster Dulles went on nationwide television and radio to report to the American people. In his conclusion he declared,
“Now the future of Guatemala lies at the disposal of the Guatemalan people themselves.”
⁴⁵

TO IKE'S CRITICS
this was a sordid event, nothing more nor less than the overthrow of a democratically elected, popular government whose only interest was in improving the wretched lives of the Guatemalan people. To Ike's defenders this was a heroic event, nothing more nor less than the prevention of the rise of an early Castro in Central America. To United Fruit it was a godsend. The company got its land back, the labor reform laws were repealed, wages cut. To Castillo Armas it was only a temporary victory. He was assassinated three years later, to be replaced by Ydígoras Fuentes, whose cooperation with the
CIA
in permitting the agency to use Guatemala as a staging ground for the Bay of Pigs caused such widespread criticism that he was compelled to declare martial law.

For Peurifoy the result may well have been Castillo Armas' fate. Peurifoy went to Thailand as ambassador; a year later he died in an automobile accident. Hunt said that “a lot of people think that he was killed in Southeast Asia” because of his involvement in
PBSUCCESS
. “I have many friends who still think that.”
⁴⁶
For Hunt and Bissell, the result was greatly enhanced reputations and a big step forward in their
CIA
careers. For the
CIA
, the result was a huge success. At the cost of a few dozen lives and a few million dollars, it had overthrown another government.

In 1977, thinking over the event, Howard Hunt mused, “Of course I've often wondered in retrospect if we shouldn't have let the Guatemalans [i.e., Castillo Armas' Guatemalans] shoot that group we had out at the airport there, including Che Guevara. I'm glad they didn't have to shoot Arbenz though, I think that would have been bad. What happened was that there was an agent there and he said, ‘Don't do it, we don't want a bloodbath.' ”
⁴⁷

As a socially conscious, rebellious medical student in his early twenties, Guevara had entered Guatemala in February 1954. He was more a concerned observer than a dedicated revolutionary, at least at first, but then he became a supporter of Arbenz. When Arbenz fled, Che went with him, seeking asylum in Mexico. There he met Raúl Castro, who later introduced him to his brother Fidel.

The lesson Che learned in Guatemala was that no Latin American reform, no matter how justified, would be accepted by the
United States, not if it impinged on American economic interests. He was also convinced that Arbenz' failure to arm the peasants had caused his downfall. In his first political article, “I Saw the Fall of Jacobo Arbenz,” Guevara outlined his tactics for revolutionary organization. Latin revolutionaries, he argued, must build an army whose loyalty is to the government, not independent of it, and they must spurn moderation, because moderation in the face of American hostility is futile.

“The struggle begins now,” Che wrote in his concluding sentence. When, seven years later, the
CIA
went to Cuba to do to Castro what it had done to Arbenz, Guevara and the Castro brothers would be ready.
⁴⁸

THERE NEVER WOULD BE ANY
AMERICAN TROOPS
. The Hungarian Freedom Fighters of 1956 would have to fight it out on their own, with Molotov cocktails against tanks, slingshots and stones against machine guns and bullets. American promises to help liberate Hungary were hollow, meaningless, empty verbiage.

In a terrible blunder, the
CIA
had promised what it could not deliver, raised hopes that could not be realized, helped start a rebellion that could only be crushed. But it was by no means the exclusive fault of the
CIA
, which was merely repeating what the Secretary of State was saying and what the President had approved.

Republican promises to help free the Russian satellites induced thousands of Americans of East European parentage to vote for Eisenhower in 1952. The promises also raised unrealistic hopes among the peoples of Hungary, Poland, East Germany and elsewhere. These hopes were sustained and strengthened by broadcasts from Radio Free Europe, a
CIA
-controlled radio station in Munich that broadcast to all the East European countries.
RFE
encouragement to the captive peoples was backed up by the Eisenhower
White House, which sent out a stream of captive-nations resolutions. Each Christmas the White House radioed a Christmas greeting to the East Europeans to “recognize the trials under which you are suffering and to share your faith that right in the end will bring you again among the free nations of the world.”
²

Such statements made good campaign material, but unfortunately some of the captive people did not know how to distinguish between American campaign bombast and actual policy. The truth was that liberation talk was intended for the domestic political situation, not for the East Europeans themselves. There was precious little thought given to the
RFE
broadcasts or the White House pronouncements. The idea that the East Europeans could set themselves free by copying the example of the French Resistance was absurd. The French Resistance had been successful because, first, the
SHAEF
armies tied up nearly all German resources and, second, nearly every Frenchman and -woman supported the Resistance, and third, the French underground had a closely knit organization. None of these conditions were, or could be, present in East Europe in 1956. Under the circumstances, it was highly irresponsible for the Republicans to talk of liberation, but they could not resist the temptation.

The irony was that this awful failure in Hungary was a direct result of one of the
CIA'S
great intelligence coups, the acquisition in 1956 of Premier Nikita Khrushchev's famous secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress denouncing Stalin for his criminal cruelty and misgovernment. That speech dovetailed perfectly with the Republican Party platform pledges in the 1952 campaign to “liberate” the Communist satellites in East Europe. In one well-publicized incident during that campaign, John Foster Dulles had said the United States would “use every means” to achieve liberation. Ike had called him on the phone that evening and told him to be sure to insert the word “peaceful” between “every” and “means” from then on, but nevertheless the emphasis remained on liberation.
³

According to Ray Cline (Harvard graduate,
OSS
officer, author of the
CIA'S
National Intelligence Estimates, eventually Deputy Director of the
CIA
), Allen Dulles managed to get a copy of Khrushchev's secret speech by putting out the word that the
CIA
wanted it badly and that price was no object. It was finally acquired “at a very handsome price,” according to one ex-
CIA
agent. But James Angleton, Jr., the former Chief of Counter Intelligence, declared in 1976 that “there was no payment.” Angleton said the speech was acquired from an East European Communist whose motive was ideological. A third source, Howard Hunt, said that the speech was given to the
CIA
by Israeli intelligence.
⁴

However acquired, the
CIA
had a copy of the speech. In it Khrushchev had been brutal in his denunciations of Stalin and seemed to promise that the future would be different, that a relaxation of Communist Party controls inside Russia would be matched by a moderation of policy toward the satellites. It even hinted that there might be a modicum of true independence for the satellites in the near future. It was, in short, an explosive document, and the Soviets had kept it a closely guarded secret. Only those who had heard Khrushchev deliver the speech at the Twentieth Party Congress knew of its existence.

The first question for the
CIA
was, is our copy authentic? Ray Cline, representing the intelligence-gathering and analysis side of the
CIA
, was able to provide Frank Wisner, Richard Helms, and Angleton, all from the operations side, with “convincing and most welcome internal evidence that the text we had was authentic.… This made everyone happy.”
⁵