U.S. TELLS OF '54 GUATEMALA INVASION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640033-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: January 4, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640033-4
ARTICLE APARED
ON PAGE ?.5
NEW YORK TIMES
4 January 1984
U.S. Tells of '54 Guatemala Invasionl
By BERNARD GWERTZMAN
Special to The New York Timec
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 ? After a six-
year delay, the State Department
today published the official documen-
tation on American policy toward the
overthrow of the leftist Government in
Guatemala in 1954. But all material on
the covert role of the Central Intelli-
gence Agency and the Defense Depart-
ment was omitted.
Many books and articles have been
written about the C.I.A.'s role in the in-
vasion of Guatemala from Honduras
by Guatemalan exiles who toppled the
Government of President Jacobo Ar-
benz Guzman.
The secret American involvement
was acknowledged in passing by for-
mer President Dwight D. Eisenhower
in his memoirs. He noted that he over-
rode the State Department and ap-
proved a request by Allen W. Dulles,
then Director of Central Intelligence,
to supply bombers to the insurgents led
by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas.
The volume made public today, the'
latest in the State Department's series
of historical documentations, "Foreign
Relations of the United States: 1952-
1954: The American Republics," in-
cludes a long section on Guatemala
that has long been awaited by scholars
and journalists because of the known
covert role the United States played in
overthrowing President Arbenz.
Introduction Cites Limits
But in the introduction, the State De-
partment's historians, who edited the
volume, said that "under current Gov-
ernment declassification policies,
procedures and regulations," they
were not able to document "the widen-
ing web" of American Government
relationships in the region. The intro-
duction said that for "a more compre-
hensive accounting," researchers will
have to consult other agencies, "such
as the Department of Defense and the
Central Intelligence Agency."
A department official said, however,
that if a historian asked the Pentagon
and the C.I.A. for files about covert ac-
tivity in Guatemala, he would be
denied access on national security
grounds. "They do not want published
anything related to covert activity," he
said.
John Glennon, the general editor of
the Foreign Relations series, said, "We
were not successful in declassifying
everything we wanted." He said the de-
partment's historical division com-
piled the volume from 1974 to 1977, but
its publication was held up pending
resolution of disputes in the Govern-
ment on declassification.
Another Volume Delayed
A similar delay has held up publica-
tion of the Foreign Relations volume
that includes the overthrow of the Ira-
nian Government in 1953, which led to
the return of the Shah. The C.I.A. has
been widely reported to have played a
key role in that coup.
State Department officials said the
latest volume was important because it
covered the first case in which covert
activity played a crucial role in Ameri-
can relations with another Govern-
ment, but the official American docu-
mentation of those relations cannot be
published in full.
Mr. Glennon said, "We try to make it
as comprehensive as we can." He
noted that the volume does include
some C.I.A. analyses of the situation in
Guatemala as well as National Se-
curity Council memos. "If we feel we
don't have a sufficiently complete
record, we can just sit on the record,"
he said.
"There was more that we would have
liked to have gotten in than we got in,"
he said. "But we felt it was enough in
there to make it worthwhile publishing
the volume."
Previously published accounts have
reported that the United States, con-
cerned by what it perceived to be a
growth of Communism in Guatemala
under President Arbenz, began build-
ing an opposition force, including a few
planes flown by C.I.A. pilots. The inva-
sion was touched off by the arrival in
Guatemala in May 1954 of a Swedish
ship, the Alfhem, carrying 2,000 tons of
military equipment from Czechoslova-
kia for the Arbenz army.
The closest the State Department I
volume comes to acknowledging the
C.I.A. role is in quoting from the diary
of Tames C. Hagerty, then President
Eisenhower's press secretary, which is
in the Eisenhower Library. On June 18,
1954, Mr. Hagerty wrote: "Allen Dulles I
called early in the morning to tell me
that his organization expected there
would be an anti-Communist uprising '
in Guatemala very shortly." '
"Officially, we don't know anything
about it," he added.
Another reason for the Eisenhower
Administration's concern was that a
strike had begun in Honduras, and ?
there was concern that the Guatemalan
Army might invade and lead an insur-
rection.
On May 27, 1954, President Eisen-
hower, Secretary of State John Foster 1
Dulles, his brother, Allen, and other top '
advisers met at the White House to dis-
cuss the situation in Guatemala. The
record, as published in the State De-
partment volume, says that Secretary
of State Dulles expressed concern
abot the reporting from Mexico City, ?
by Sydney Gruson, the correspondent
of The New York Times for the region.
He said he believed Mr. Gruson was "a
very dangerous character and his re-
porting had done a great deal of ;
harm.
Mr. Eisenhower, according to the re-
port, "said that he often felt that The
New York Times was the most untrust-
worthy newspaper in the United States,
at least as far as the areas of the news _
with which he was personally familiar.
were concerned."
Mr. Gruson, who is now vice chair-
man of the New York Times Company,
said today that he knew he was "in con-
siderable disfavor with the Dulles
brothers because of my reporting, and
they did manage to keep me out of
Guatemala for the actual invasion and
revolution against the Arbenz Govern-
ment."
He added: "But my banishment
didn't last long. I certainly haven't suf-
fered professionally from what I
thought at the time was a hysterical at-
titude on the part of the Adrninistra-
tion."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640033-4