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Chapter 9: The Mortal Sin of Self-Defense Segment 4/7
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2. The Guests so Sorely Troubled
Bush was not the only guest at the garden party to be appalled by the unwanted animal's misbehavior. The Times account of Ortega's crimes quotes President Alfredo Cristiani of El Salvador, who lamented that Ortega's decision to abrogate the government's unilateral cease-fire "has destroyed everything that has been accomplished so far" and "will complicate the situation a great deal."17
El Salvador, of course, declared no cease-fire. On the contrary, when the FMLN declared a unilateral cease-fire as a gesture of good faith during the peace talks they had initiated a few weeks earlier, the Salvadoran military responded by launching military operations into most of the guerrilla base areas and stepping up arrests of union activists and other repression. During the period before the March 1989 election the armed forces had also escalated their operations, actions widely hailed in the U.S. as demonstrating their dedication to the electoral process. To judge by the reaction here, we must assume that another contribution was the presence of troops at the polling booths, where they could observe the transparent receptacles in which voters place their numbered ballots made of paper so thin that the voter's "X" is visible even through the back -- all of this clearly shown in photographs by independent U.S. observers, if not the media.18
While Cristiani was bemoaning Ortega's vulgar disruption of the picnic, a bomb exploded at the headquarters of a leading anti-government union (FENASTRAS), killing 10 people including union leader and outspoken government critic Febe Elizabeth Velasquez. Amnesty International appealed to the government to investigate the bombing, noting that after an FMLN attack on the Defense Ministry compound the day before, Defense Minister General Larios had issued a statement that the labor movement would suffer the consequences. A few hours earlier, another bomb badly damaged the headquarters of the Committee of the Mothers of the Disappeared, injuring four persons, including a 3-month-old baby. Neighbors reported seeing uniformed soldiers running from the offices just before the explosion. "The attacks came as monitoring groups and Western diplomats noted a sharp surge in human rights violations and repression," Lindsey Gruson reported in the Times, including "a steep increase in the use of physical and psychological torture by the armed forces and in the number of peasants, union members and students arrested." Mar¡a Julia Hernández, the Director of the Church Human Rights Office Tutela Legal, observed that "arrests, disappearances and torture have all increased recently," adding that: "The problem is structural. The military have more power than the president" in this celebrated "democracy." Archbishop Rivera y Damas, in his Sunday homily, said that Tutela Legal believed the "ominous death squads" were responsible for the bombing and called for an "in depth-investigation to put an end once and for all to these massacres."19
In accord with the usual convention, the escalating violence was attributed to "extremists of the left and right," with the reform-minded government standing by in helpless impotence. This is the standard technique by which editors, commentators, and congressional doves mask their tacit support for death squads and other methods "used to shield the government from accountability for the torture, disappearances and extrajudicial executions committed in their name" (Amnesty International, corroborating other independent analyses). The source of the terror is adequately demonstrated by the impunity with which it is conducted, not to speak of ample direct evidence implicating the security forces -- truisms that human rights monitors have regularly emphasized, to no avail. During the funeral for six of the victims of the bombing, soldiers lobbed tear gas canisters into "the demonstration," Gruson reports, referring to the funeral march.20
While the guests at the garden party were compelled to suffer Ortega's presence in San José, Salvadoran army deserter César Vielman Joya Mart¡nez was informing reporters and congressional aides in Washington about his participation in torture and murder operations conducted by the special forces group GC-2 of the Salvadoran army's First Brigade, with the certain knowledge of its U.S. advisers, who "had control of the department" -- unless, for tactical reasons, they chose not to know. Joya Mart¡nez claimed that his orders were issued by the Salvadoran Joint Chiefs of Staff and sent to the commanders of the Brigade, that he had seen orders for 72 executions from April through July, and that he had taken part in 8 of these death squad murders. The victims were first almost beaten to death during interrogation, then their throats were usually slit and their bodies were thrown over a cliff into the Pacific Ocean or buried in secret cemeteries, he said, giving a detailed account, many parts of which were independently confirmed. Among the First Brigade officers he implicated were its former commander, who is now the Vice-Minister of Defense, and the current commander of the elite Belloso battalion. They and others cited are "leaders and operators of the so-called death squadrons...," he charged. The Bush administration denied the charges, while recognizing that they were "very serious" and claiming that an investigation was in process.21
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17 Lindsey Gruson, NYT, Oct. 29, 1989.
18 Chris Norton, CSM, Sept. 22, 1989. See photographs and reports by free-lance journalist Terry Allen, Richmond Vermont, transmitted to Congress (with no reaction).
19 Douglas Farah, BG, Nov. 1; Lindsey Gruson, NYT, Nov. 1. AI, AP, Nov. 6; Chris Norton, CSM, Nov. 6, on the report of soldiers fleeing. Tutela Legal, quoted by National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador, Oct. 31. Rivera y Damas, BG, Nov. 6, brief notice on p. 35; editorial, Nov. 7, 1989.
20 NYT, Nov. 3, 1989.
21 AP, Oct. 26, 27, 28; WP, Oct. 27; BG, Oct. 29, p. 26; El Salvador On Line (ESOL), Oct. 30, 1989. The actual story, as it predictably unfolded, was that the Bush administration sought in every way to silence Joya Mart¡nez and ship him to El Salvador before his information could do too much damage. See chapter 12, p. 389. KEYWORDS terrorist democracy elections cia mossad bnd nsa covert operation 911 mi6 inside job what really happened wtc pentagon joint chiefs of staff jcs centcom laser hologram usa mi5 undercover agent female sex exploitation perception deception power anarchy green social democratic participation japanese spy black-op false flag gladio terror.
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