Word: guatemala
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President Clinton last night severed covertCIA ties to Guatemala's military intelligence services, immediately after learning that several hundred thousand U.S. dollars had continued to flow to that government without his knowledge. White House officials said Secretary of State Warren Christopher did not know about theCIA programswhen he said on a talk show Sunday that no U.S. money was going to Guatemala. TIME Washington national security correspondent Douglas Waller explains that the CIA, which was ordered in 1992 to drop its covert action in the country, legally maintained several low-profile "liaison" programs that trained Guatemalan officers in intelligence-gathering...
...sent the State Department and White House a report containing an allegation that Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, once a paid CIA asset, may have played a role in Bamaca's death. Alpirez may also be linked to the 1990 murder of Michael DeVine, an American innkeeper in Guatemala. Torricelli claims that the CIA knew since 1992 of both Bamaca's death and its own involvement--a claim the CIA vehemently denies--and that the State Department had been "complicitous." "When an embarrassment to the CIA is weighed against informing an American family about the death of someone they love...
That may not be enough for Harbury, 43, who has spent the past five years on a tumultuous personal odyssey. In 1990 she went to Guatemala to research human-rights violations. There she met Bamaca, whose nom de guerre was Everardo; the couple were married in a common-law ceremony in Austin, Texas, in September 1991. Soon after his March 1992 disappearance, she was told by Guatemalan military authorities that Bamaca had committed suicide rather than be captured and tortured by the army. But Harbury believed her husband was still alive and pressed for proof of his fate. In August...
...look into the matter. On January 25, the CIA provided the State Department with what White House spokesman Mike McCurry now calls "new information"--information about Alpirez that was at the very least potent enough to prompt the CIA to begin an internal investigation. (The CIA station chief in Guatemala was recalled to Washington around the time the inquiry began.) Concurrently, 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...
...Guatemala last week, President Ramiro de Leon Carpio said the military will investigate the allegations against Alpirez. The colonel, now second in command at an army base in Guatemala City, has not made a statement of any kind. For her part, Harbury is planning to file a lawsuit once the threads of responsibility are sorted out. She may have learned the truth. That, however, is not the same as having all the answers...