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Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954

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This is a frank account of the CIA's operations in Guatemala to overthrow the democratically elected centre-left government of Jacobo Arbenz. It was written in 1994 by an historian of the CIA's History Staff, classified as "secret", and disclosed to the general public in 1997 with some minor deletions. Although dealing only cursorily with the Guatemala history and politics of the period, it is rather detailed with respect to the CIA's role in them, and it is a very useful book if one wants to get a clear view of the political climate of the era and of the role of the US in Latin American politics. With the tragic example of the CIA's sucess in the overthrown of the Arbenz government as a vivid and recent event, is it all that strange that, four years later, cuban reformists and revolutionaries would move with a much tougher determination in the path of social and economic reforms, just before the US government could try to repeat the operation? which incidentally they did at the Bay of Pigs... The Afterword to the book, written by Piero Gleijeses, on the consequences of the CIA's coup to Guatemala up to the present day, is chilling and revolting

Nick Cullather's account of the CIA operation PBSuccess is quite interesting in that it relies primarily on CIA documents. These documents were unavailable to those previously writing about the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. He provides insight into the processes rather than into the personalities involved. The only negative about this account, pointed out by Cullather himself, is that the CIA uses retired agents to screen material before publication. The screeners' deletions can be quite extensive in certain areas despite the CIA promise to be more open. As one reads this book it becomes annoying when many names, sentences and paragraphs are sanitized by the retired CIA agents. Nonetheless the book is informative, well written and a very enjoyable read. This book is a must for anyone interested in the covert world of the CIA. The book also would be of interest to anyone studying the nature of U.S. involvement in the national affairs of our Latin American neighbors.

This is a great book about one of the great follies of the Cold War: the CIA's overthrow of a leftist government in Guatemala in 1954. The author, Nick Cullather, wrote the book while employed as a CIA historian. He had full access to surviving files on the Guatemala operation, and intended his monograph to serve as a case-study for CIA staff. It was ultimately released as part of a brief "openness" campaign at the CIA. Parts were heavily (and clumsily) redacted by CIA censors before declassification, but the remaining text still fascinates and appalls. Cullather is wise in the ways of government, and understands the role of hubris and error in human affairs. His book is very smart.

Today the story is well known. In the early 1950s, the CIA plotted to rub out a reformist Guatemalan government that had redistributed land to peasants and curbed the influence of the United Fruit company. The agency funded anti-regime activists, blocked arms shipments, established a clandestine radio station, and assembled a rag-tag army of rebels based in Nicaragua and Honduras. Notwithstanding the David-and-Goliath nature of the contest, the covert action almost failed. Intelligence was bad, the operation was poorly planned and riddled with security lapses, and most CIA assets within Guatemala were rolled up before the invasion began. Worst of all, the invaders were laughably incompetent and on the verge of collapse after a few days of border fighting.

Fortunately for the bunglers at the CIA, the Guatemalan Army became gripped by fear that Eisenhower might send in the Marines: to avoid a showdown with the U.S., the generals removed the reformers from power. Under the ensuing dictatorship, land reform was cancelled, two-thirds of the population was disenfranchised, political parties were banned, and Guatemala became dependent on massive U.S. aid. The operation entered CIA lore as a big success, and led to the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs.

Although Americans didn't learn this secret history for decades, no one in Europe or Latin America was deceived. The world knew that we had raped a small country, and the damage to our reputation was immense. Ironically, the "Sovet threat" that prompted the covert action turned out to be a figment of the Dulles brothers' imaginations: after the coup, captured documents revealed that the handful of communists in Guatemala's government never had significant links to Moscow. The whole sordid mess was much ado about nothing -- just like Iraq's WMDs.

Cullather's "Secret History" should be required reading in classes on 20th century American history, for it is a timely reminder of how badly America can stumble when it meddles in the internal affairs of other countries. George Bush may not understand it, but there's a reason why people all over the world distrust the United States. Whether Iranian, Guatemalan, Cuban, Brazilian, Vietnamese, Laotian, Chilean, Congolese, Angolan, Nicaraguan, or Iraqi, they know our history better than we do.

The book, written by Nick Cullather, is a perfect account of the secret operations carried out by the C.I.A. The content is rich with interesting information on how the Guatemalan president, Jacobo Arbenz, was overthrown by rebels and American monopolies who were angered by his policies. The fear of Communist influence within Arbenz regime also alarmed the United States, who then approved immediate action to topple him out of power.

The story begins with Jorge Ubico, the president of Guatemala who welcomed U.S. investments and gave the United Fruit Company (UFC) the freedom to do whatever they want in the country. The result led the UFC to control every significant enterprise in the country. Inevitably, this stirred some controversy as peasant strikes paralyzed the country. Ubico surrendered his power to a military junta led by Jacobo Arbenz, who stepped aside and held elections. Arevalo was elected president.

During his presidency, Guatemala took a couple of positive strides with the proliferation of political parties, including a Communist party, and the organization of unions for laborers. But when Arbenz was elected president, he took things further by passing reforms that expropriated land to peasants. For the first time peasants received land instead of being robbed of it or being exploited on it. This threatened United Fruit Company's assets and immediately asked for U.S. intervention which led to the formation of "Operation Success" led by C.I.A. officials and Guatemalan rebel Castillo Armas.

The C.I.A. then brilliantly pieced together a plan by first seeking support from other Latin American countries, putting out propaganda that the Guatemalan government was Communist, setting up a radio station that was anti-Arbenz and asked for the support for Castillo Armas' rebel movement, supported anti-Communist students to revolt and persuaded military officials to turn on Arbenz. Of course, it was not done effortlessly and the whole operation took an interesting twist and almost collapsed. Arbenz became aware of the rebel opposition and went public of foreign intervention in conspiracy to overthrow him. The U.S. dismissed the allegations while Arbenz secretly bought Czech arms to arm the peasants. But the Army learned of the shipments therefore the army kept them. What followed was invasion attempts led by Castillo Armas that all failed. Castillo Armas was even ready to abort the whole mission but the Arbenz regime inexplicably collapsed that until this day still remains a mystery. Arbenz fled to Mexico along with others who supported his government. Castillo Armas was named president. He reversed the agrarian reforms, eliminated all political parties and formed death squads to kill any subversives and Communists. His rule was corrupt and caused great political instability and civil war for the next 30 years. The United Fruit Company entered a disastrous situation where they had to pay higher wages, allow competition in the country and pay taxes despite receiving a good portion of the land that was taken away by Arbenz. They would soon go out of business.

The major flaw of the book lies on the deletion and censorship of key names, places, organizations and countries that could have helped make the book that much of a juicer read. The deletions sometimes interrupt the flow of your reading and leaves a big question mark on the accountability of the C.I.A. because they do imply that other secret operations have been carried out. But still a great read and an important history lesson.

The author, the young historian Nick Cullather, wrote this case-study report on Guatemala for new recruits during his one year stint at the CIA. He soon left for academia. Cullaher had full access to all the allegedly existing files concerning CIA operations in Guatemala from 1952 to 1954. This report has been published during the short "glasnost" at the CIA. The text shows many deletions (often idiosyncratic) from CIA censors, even if they reemerge in other parts of the text. The story is well known by conspiracy theorists and historians of Guatemala. They now have the insider proof they needed.
The ousting of the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz by the would be caudillo Carlos Castillo Armas with the enthusiastic support from the CIA will be the general rehearsal for future operations in other parts of the World during the Cold War. The operation in Guatemala will turn into a success despite the many mistakes in the planning and implementation phase. Castill Armas was a disaster and his successor will prove themselves even worse. Guatemala is still paying for that successful operation.

This story (not so secret after all) outlines the modus operandi of CIA and will be the blueprint for future covert operations, whether or not successful. A recommended reading to all contemporary historians.

I read Cullather's Secret History as an assignment for my American Foreign Relations History class. Cullather does a good job with the resources he was given. As a CIA Historian, he comes up against many roadbloacks while trying to write his book. This is prevalent as much of the book is redacted (blanked out by CIA classifiers). He goes into detail what happened on the ground in Guatemala however he is missing some substance in his details of what was happening in Washington and current popular belief on the subject. Cullather could have also explained more on the outcomes of the Guatemala escapade.

Overall a very good, informative book and a must-read for anyone who is researching the CIA's intervention in Guatemala.

I loved this book, read it in a week. I was afraid it would be dry, but it is absolutely fascinating, albeit upsetting too. Be sure to read the introduction to put the book into context. Even the bibliography is interesting.

This is the original, Stanford has also just produced a new version, Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala 1952-1954. I bought this used and not only loved the speed of delivery, but the notes from the previous owner.

My next review will cover The CIA in Iran: The 1953 Coup and the Origins of the US-Iran Trade. The two "successes" would both be condemned by history, but more pointedly, led to the CIA misadventures in Cuba, Chile, the Philippines, Viet-Nam, and so on.

There is a great deal in this book that I was not aware of, and that is with 294 reviews tagged Intelligence (Government/Secret)at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, all leading back to their Amazon page.

In a nutshell, PBSUCCESS was a stunningly inept widely known endeavor penetrated across multiple points by the Guatemalan government, which succeeded only because the Army lost its nerve and deposed their own elected President. Especially new to me were the US Navy blockage of the Guatemalan ports (one on each coast), and the failure of CIA-trained "saboteurs" to derail the shipment of arms from the port to the capital city that the President was able to procure despite a global US embargo on arms for Guatemala.

This is a book I really appreciate and strongly recommend to anyone who wants to understand the nuts and bolts of "covert action" in close association with the idiocy and lack of ethics in the US Government then (and now).

The author was "the" CIA historian for PBSUCCESS in Guatemala, his notes are superb, and this is a classic study that demonstrates what is possible if and when we ever have an honest US Government willing to abide by the Congressional and Department of State demands for declassifying the history of our clandestine and covert operations.

Two quotes from the poignant forward by the author, which also laments the fact that no "truth dividend" ever came of the end of the Cold War:

QUOTE (xii): Having done so little historical research of its own, the agency had to rely on accounts by historians with no access to classified documents, and its training program suffered from its own efforts to conceal and distort the public record.

QUOTE (xiii): "a careless disregard for the past that is perhaps natural in an agency where the only valuable information is minutes or at most hours old."

The author himself highlights Guatemala as "setting the pattern," and also points out that the money trail side of this book has never been done. Throughout the book one develops an appreciation for the covert action and corruption actions of United Fruit that were better funded and better managed than CIA's fledgling efforts.

Guatemala was the beginning, the author tells us, of CIA's routine use of assassination, especially in the form of murder for contrived political gain. Appendix C, "A Study of Assassination," is the short front-end of CIA Historian Gerald K. Haines 1995 work, "CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals, 1952-1954."

Guatemala was, the author states, an early example of the CIA using intensive (and expensive) paramilitary and psychological operations to displace a popular elected leader. This was--with Iran--the beginning of "regime change" as a core element of a broadly unethical, mostly idiotic, and generally corrupt US foreign policy (see my reviews of 86 books on diplomacy at Phi Beta Iota). See also, for the "rules of the game" that include "lie to the President if you can get away with it," Morton Halperin's still seminal Bureaucratic Politics And Foreign Policy.

Before doing my detailed notes, I want to jump to the Afterword, "The Culture of Fear," by Piero Gleijeses.

QUOTE (ix): Violence, torture, and death are the final arbiters of Guatemalan society, the gods that determine behavior.

After describing a long series of military dictatorships spawned by the US Government's intervention in Guatemala, the author observes that even the occasional "elected" president is nothing more than a puppet.

QUOTE (xxvi): Cerezo and his party won at the polls, but they were only the props of the upper class and the army.

QUOTE (xxxii): [Guatemala] still has the most regressive fiscal system and the most unequal land ownership pattern in Latin America. Its army, victorious on the battlefield, has evolved into an all-powerful mafia, stretching its tentacles into drug-trafficking, kidnapping, and smuggling. And its civilian presidents have shown no inclination to challenge the army and the upper class, to fight for social reform, or to clamp down on corruption. Today Hungary is free. Guatemala is still paying for the American "success."

Now for just a few notes from a book that is as thoughtfully developed and well foot-noted as any:

+ US paranoia about communism, combined with the well-funded campaigns of United Fruit both within the US political circles and in Guatemala, combined to end Guatemala's move in a progressive direction.

+ QUOTE (9-10): [Dictator] Ubico (whom the extremist mayor of Guatemala has just honored with a road naming) "suppressed dissent, legalized the killing of Indians by landlords, enlarged the Army, and organized a personal gestapo.

+ Ubico also gifted massive amounts of land to United Fruit, just one more reason why Guatemala, like Australia, needs a Native Title Act as well as land reform.

+ I learn that in the aftermath of WWII there was a general move toward progressive regimes, with teachers playing a key role. Guatemala elected a university professor, Juan Jose Arevalo, as President.

+ US ignorance about Guatemala is described as profound--in training the Army and in evaluating the political parties, the US balanced extreme ignorance about all things with extreme paranoia that any leftist was a communist in the making.

+ In a preamble to Carter/Brzezinski pushing Guatemala toward Israel's arms industry, in the earlier years the US and its heavy-handed policies pushed Guatemala to buy arms from Czechoslovakia.

+ Arbenz, the deposed president, was born of a Swiss father and Guatemalan mother; married a US-educated Salvadoran, and was intellectually and socially concerned to the point of advocating reforms in his earlier role as Minister of Defense.

+ US and Catholic Church sided with the oligarchs. Fast forward to the Pope condemning liberation theology today--we have Nazis in the Vatican and the US Government!

+ CIA's ignorance about land reform is breath-taking. They fought it because they saw it as a "communist" conspiracy to create collectives, and they also supported it as an antidote to communist collectives.

+ CIA assumed Moscow links, history has demonstrated that there were NONE less one attempt to buy bananas.

+ Guatemala was solemnly declared to be a "threat to US national security" and I am reminded of the Mexican president who told his idiot counterpart US president that he could not go along with declaring Cuba to be a national security threat or tens of millions of Mexicans would die laughing.

+ The ignorance of both CIA case officers and analysts boggles the minds and reminds me of Evan Thomas' The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA--well-intentioned dolts.

+ Arbenz had the entire CIA operation penetrated thanks to a walk-in from Panama. He ultimately exposed the operation (by then everyone who could read in Latin America knew of it) but made a huge error in forging materials to back up his story.

+ Students were used as bait by the CIA, intended to invite harmful repression (CIA's version of collateral damage), at which point the intervention would be launched.

+ DEEP INSIGHT: CIA was bluffing. Arbenz was led to believe that the entire US Government was participating in the invasion, but in fact CIA was having trouble moving two airplanes and their paid for bad boy had only 480 men.

+ Three days into the invasion, two of the four 100-person columns were turned back, one of them by the police of El Salvador.

+ Guatemala got the UN to object and pass a resolution, but by then the Army officers had pooped in their pants and decided to oust the president to save their own skins. The president was deposed by his own people at precisely the same time that CIA's operation was collapsing beyond salvation.

+ Five juntas followed, each more subject to American pressure, all of them inept, repressive, and corrupt.

The book concludes "the US was guilty of wanton criminal neglect." Here are four quotes and then some additional recommended reading.

QUOTE (109): Had the Guatemalan Army crushed Castillo Armas at Chiquimula, as it easily could have done, investigations would have uncovered the chronic lapses in [CIA] security, the failure to plan beyond the operation's first stages, the Agency's poor understanding of the intentions of the Army, the PGT [the communist party of Guatemala], and the government, the hopeless weakness of Castillo Arma's troops, and the failure to make provisions for the possibility of defeat.

QUOTE (112): In Latin America, the Arbenz regime's demise left an enduring legacy of anti-Americanism.

QUOTE (113): Castillo Armas completed his lunge to the right by disenfranchising illiterates (two-thirds of the electorate), cancelling land reform, and outlawing all political parties, labor confederations, and peasant organizations."

QUOTE (117): In Guatemala, US officials learned a lesson they would relearn in Vietnam, Iran, [REDACTED], and other countries: intervention usually produces "allies" that are stubborn, aid-hungry, and corrupt.

Seven other books:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
SAVAGE CAPITALISM AND THE MYTH OF DEMOCRACY: Latin America in the Third Millennium
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam

See also my reviews at Phi Beta Iota on capitalism, pathologies of power, etcetera.

Now to end on a positive note (see the List of Book Reviews (Positive) at Phi Beta Iota):

1. The truth at any cost reduces all other costs.

2. Machine guns cannot kill cockroaches.

3. When the cockroaches all have cell phones, the Earth will be back in balance.

This book chronicles the CIA's covert operations in Guatemala in the 1950s that brought down that country's liberal government. The bugaboo was that "land reform" must mean communist infiltration. The CIA's actions precipitated a 40-year war in Guatemala that resulted in 200,000 deaths, whole villages massacred, the houses destroyed-- almost all the atrocities carried out by the Guatemalan army, its actions covered up and lied about by US officials for years after. The country is still trying to recover from this "officially" sanctioned terrorism. Much of the book's information is redacted, and given the enormity of what isn't redacted, can only leave one guessing as to what more could be known. The book is a lesson in the irresponsibility and unaccountablility of a US government in fear of Communism, and a warning to the future.

Book contains a lot of useful insights into this event. The blanked out portions can be a distraction at times.