1978

1978-1992, El Salvador: Training the Death Squads

By Mark Zapezauer

The fourteen families who rule El Salvador were never squeamish about killing anyone who got in their way. A popular slogan among Salvadoran rightists is, "be patriotic - kill a priest." In 1980, El Salvador's archbishop, Oscar Romero, wrote to President Jimmy Carter, begging him to stop military support for El Salvador's murderous rulers. Carter ignored Romero, but El Salvador's rulers didn't. Shortly after sending the letter, Romero was shot through the heart while saying mass.

Romero's assassination was ordered by Roberto D'Aubuisson, nicknamed "Blowtorch Bob" for his favorite torture method. A big admirer of Hitler, he once said, "You Germans were very intelligent. You realized Jews were responsible for the spread of Communism and you began to kill them." D'Aubuisson's party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance, supported by the U.S., still rules El Salvador.

D'Aubuisson was a big wheel in the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Organized in 1961, WACL is an umbrella organization for extreme-right militants. It includes expatriate Nazis, Italian terrorists, Japanese fascists, racist Afrikaners, Latin American death squad leaders, a number of U.S. congressmen and "former" CIA agents.

The CIA has done alot to encourage bloodshed in El Salvador. With billions of dollars in U.S. military aid at its disposal, the CIA flew air raids, waded into combat and trained military units that formed the Salvadoran death squads. The CIA's spin doctors also worked to improve the government's image. This often consisted of denying atrocities like the 1982 El Mozote massacre. CIA sycophants in the media parroted this line shamelessly. In 1993, the UN Truth Commission determined that 733 peasants were murdered at El Mozote. The Commission concluded that 63,000 Salvadorans were killed between 1979 and 1992.

In 1982, Jimmy Carter called El Salvador's government the "blood-thirstiest in the hemisphere." It's too bad he didn't realize that back when he - like his predecessors and successors - was funding it.

Source: from The CIAs Greatest Hits

www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/ElSalvador_CIAHits.html

“The U.S. trained death squads that massacred tens of thousands of social activists, unionists, clergy and their supporters. The U.S. gave $6 billion in military aid and economic support to combat what they called ‘the communist threat.’"

Roberto D'Aubuisson

(1943-1992)

graduated from the Salvadoran military academy (1963)
trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (1972)
trained at Taiwan's Political Warfare Cadres Academy (1977)
rose through El Salvador's CIA (the National Security Agency) and became its #3 man (1979)
planned and ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero (1980)
was El Salvador's representative to World Anti-Communist League (WACL) and attended its convention in Buenos Aires; arranged for WACL funding of Argentine agents to instruct El Salvador's National Guard in "counter-subversion" (1980)
arrested for plotting a coup; was released within days; moved to Guatemala; raised support for terror alliance. A 1981 U.S. State Department document shows that money and weapons came from millionaire Salvadoran exiles in Miami who wanted to kill 300,000-500,0000 "whatever it takes to get rid of the communists and their allies" (1980)
returned to El Salvador and helped to create the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) (1981). (A CIA "Selective Study on Death Squads," 1983, detailed ARENA's role in assassinations, kidnapping and torture, and its links to the military, National Police, National Guard and Treasury Police. These links were publicly denied by the U.S.
was invited by U.S. Ambassador Deane Hinton to lunch with U.S. Amb. to UN, Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Vice-Pres. Bush and Oliver North, visited El Salvador to offer more military support, if steps were taken about death squads. U.S. arms exports continued, as did D'Aubuisson's death squads (1983)
D'Aubuisson's ARENA allies were caught kidnapping wealthy Salvadorans & blaming FMLN rebels (1986)
invited by Ambassador William Walker to attend the U.S. embassy's Fourth of July party (1989)

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