Word: bamaca
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Dates: during 1995-1995
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...reports in The New York Times and by the Associated Press. An investigation by Frederick P. Hitz, the CIA's inspector general blames the agency for not sharing important information about the killing of American innkeeper Michael DeVine in June 1990 and the March 1992 disappearance of Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, the husband of American lawyer Jennifer Harbury, with U.S. administration officials and Congress. President Clinton ordered the internal investigation in March 30 after allegations by Representative Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, that a CIA informant was behind the deaths of DeVine and Velasquez...
...intelligence service--was linked to the murders. Last week Torricelli released an anonymous letter, supposedly from a National Security Agency employee, claiming that the CIA and the Pentagon knew early on about Alpirez's connection to the killings of American Michael Devine in 1990 and Guatemalan guerrilla Efrain Bamaca Velasquez in 1992. (Bamaca was married to an American lawyer, Jennifer Harbury, who conducted hunger strikes in Guatemala and Washington to pressure authorities for information about her husband's murder.) The letter goes on to accuse the NSA and Army of destroying documents that would show U.S. "involvement in these incidents...
...informant and passed along the allegations against him to the Justice Department, which decided in March 1992 that it had no jurisdiction to prosecute. Intelligence officials say the agency then paid Alpirez the $44,000 that was due him before the CIA relationship was severed. That same month, Bamaca disappeared. The CIA last December received a report that Alpirez saw him tortured to death. Meanwhile, the CIA continued to provide $1 million to $3 million annually to Guatemala's intelligence arm for training and monitoring insurgents and drug traffickers...
...Harbury was told that the U.S. was "doing everything we could to encourage the Guatemalan military authorities to investigate," according to McCurry. According to the Washington Post, Secretary of State Warren Christopher sent a cable to the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala Marilyn McAffee saying he had "credible" reports of Bamaca being sighted on several occasions inside a military camp, including stories from another guerrilla who reportedly witnessed Bamaca being tortured. On March 7, McAfee informed Harbury that Bamaca was dead but that there was no information regarding how or when. Three days later, Washington said it would stop funding training...
...Torricelli learned of the Alpirez connection. CIA files reveal that Alpirez became a CIA informer in the 1980s and spent a year at the School of the Americas, an elite U.S. program for foreign soldiers. He remained on the CIA payroll until sometime in 1992, around the same time Bamaca was captured and then killed...