ustxtxb_obs_2002_06_07_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

Everardo. She stood by as bodies of victims of the Guatemalan army were exhumed; lobbied endlessly for answers at the U.S. Embassy, the State Department, and in Congress; brought witnesses out of Guatemala to testify before the Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States; and sat in the office of the Guatemalan Minister of Defense, attempting to negotiate Everardo’s release. She conducted one hunger strike in front of the Politecnica, Guatemala’s National Military headquarters, and then another for 32 days in front of the National Palace. It was not until November 1994, when the television show “60 Minutes” aired a broadcast revealing that the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala did, in fact, possess information indicating that Everardo had been captured alive, that the State Department acknowledged that it knew he had not been killed in combat or committed suicideas the Guatemalan army had initially reportedbut had been captured and held in a clandestine military prison. On the third anniversary of Everardo’s capture, she began a hunger strike in front of the White House. She was repeatedly told by the American Ambassador in Guatemala and other officials that they had no further information about what had happened to her husband. Then in March 1995on the twelfth day of her third hunger strike she was summoned to the office of then-Congressman Robert Torricelli. It was there that she was told the truthor as much of the truth as Torricelli had pieced togetherthat Everardo was dead, his killing ordered by Julio Roberto Alpirez, a colonel in the Guatemalan Army, a graduate of the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia, and a CIA asset who was also linked to the 1990 murder of American citizen Michael DeVine, an expatriate innkeeper. Torricelli’s revelations caused an uproar. The Clinton Administration should “announce that America will no longer train and encourage Latin American thugs,” thundered The New York Times. “It can make an even stronger case for thorough, systemic reform of the CIA to make it lean, honest, less wasteful and more accountable for the millions of taxpayer dollars it spends.” The President ordered an investigation and in June 1996, the Intelligence Oversight Board released a 61-page document, which stated that the CIA had a relationship with Guatemalan military intelligence and criticized the CIA for failing to properly inform Congress about human rights violations. It concluded that Alpirez had taken part in a cover-up of DeVine’s murder and participated in Everardo’s interrogation. “We believe, but lack definitive proof,” the report continued, “that interrogation included torture.” As to Everardo’s fate, the Board concluded that he had been killed within a year of his capture and offered three possibilities: He had been flown in a helicopter and dumped at sea; he had been dismembered and his remains scattered so they would never be found; or he had been buried at a military base known as Las Cabanas. “Although the Board believes that assets or liaison contacts were likely involved or knowledgeable,” the report stated, “it found no indication that Efrain Barnaca Velasquez \(Comandante Guatemalan army on March 12, 1992. He knew precisely the kind of things his captors would want to knowas well as things in which they would probably have no interest at all. He spoke Mam and Quiche, as well as Spanish, and was a voracious reader who sometimes wrote poetry. the CIA was aware of these links at the same time.” Among the documents made public at the same time was a September 1993 Department of Defense intelligence report that noted that clandestine military prisons had always existed in Guatemala, and that guerrilla prisoners were commonly held incommunicado in isolated military zone locations, interrogated, and killed after the army had extracted all useful information from them. Meanwhile, Harbury had begun piecing together documents released from her own Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the CIA; from the National Security Archive, a non-profit research organization based in Washington, D.C.; and from information from witnesses inside and outside of Guatemala. Slowly she was cross-referencing the facts, working her way through the courts in the United States and in Central America. In addition to her FOIA suit, she filed a federal civil rights suit in Washington, D.C. against former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, former National Security Council chief Anthony Lake, former U.S. 6/7/02 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 5