The mid 1990s became a particularly important period in Guatemala. Peace negotiations were ongoing and agreements such as the one creating the CEH were already signed by 1995. In the United States, the scandal over the cases of Michael DeVine and Efraín Bámaca Velásquez
534 United States. Department of Defense, "The Rising Impact of the Bamaca Case on the Guatemalan Military
prompted pressure for the declassification of U.S. government records. The Clinton administration responded with the report of the IOB, accompanied by the declassification of 6,000 documents.535 Within this context, the National Security Archive launched its Guatemala Documentation Project.
The project began in June 1994, the same month of the agreement to create the Guatemalan truth commission,536 with the submission of a series of FOIA requests drawn from previous research. This continued through 1995 and 1995 and expanded with research at NARA, the presidential libraries of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower, and private collections.537 Following the release of the CEH report, the National Security Archive presented the findings of this project in Guatemala City on 1 June 2000.538 The Guatemalan press covered the presentation of the report.539 General Otto Pérez Molina, who was a member of the military during the civil war, expressed that the NSA report has "half truths and half lies."540 An opinion piece in the newspaper Prensa Libre was not critical of the release of the report and publication of the declassified documents, yet it questioned the responsibility of past U.S. administrations. In an article aptly titled "¿Y los Gringos Qué?" ("And what about the gringos?"), Margarita Carrera argues that the Guatemalan military should feel betrayed by the U.S. government, but
535 Doyle, The United States and Guatemala: Counterinsurgency and Genocide, 1954-1999. 536 Doyle, The United States and Guatemala: Counterinsurgency and Genocide, 1954-1999.
537 The Guatemalan Military: What the U.S. Files Reveal: A report compiled by The National Security Archive. 538 The Guatemalan Military: What the U.S. Files Reveal.
539 See “Arriba experta de EE.UU., Kate Doyle,” Prensa Libre (Guatemala, May 30, 2000),
http://www.prensalibre.com/noticias/Arriba-experta-EEUU-Kate-Doyle_0_292779119.html; Juan Carlos Ruiz, “Documentos son un tesoro,” Prensa Libre (Guatemala, June 1, 2000),
http://www.prensalibre.com/noticias/Documentos-tesoro_0_292780198.html
540 Sam Colop, “¿Lealtad militar?,” Prensa Libre (Guatemala, June 28, 2000),
http://www.prensalibre.com/opinion/UCHAXIKbrLealtad-militar_0_292779511.html. (Accessed November 1, 2011). General Pérez Molina, who is currently President elect of Guatemala, wrote an opinion piece in August 2000 criticizing the REMHI and CEH reports. He argued that the investigation were bias towards the left, but also accepted that the military made a mistake by not cooperating during the CEH investigation. See Otto Pérez Molina, “La Verdad Verdadera,” Prensa Libre (Guatemala, Agosto 2000),
http://www.prensalibre.com/opinion/ACTXUMBALbrLa-verdad-verdadera_0_293373082.html. (Accessed November 1, 2011).
nevertheless they asked for it by serving the U.S. interests instead of the Guatemalans. Yet, Carrera laments that the NSA report provides names of Guatemalan military officers but not of U.S. military officers or politicians.541
The declassification of records as part of the IOB report and the FOIA requests made by the NSA as part of the Guatemala Declassification Project were not the only efforts to obtain access to government records. Soon after the Historical Clarification began its work, the National Security Archive, along with public interest, human rights and religious organizations, joined forces to begin a public campaign for the declassification of documents about human rights violations in Latin America.542 On 5 August 1997 The New York Times ran an editorial supporting the campaign. It particularly asked the CIA to declassify more documents, and particularly those related to cases in Guatemala where victims were not U.S. citizens. It also requested the declassification of documents about Honduras.543 Two months later, a letter signed by individuals representing fifty organizations from the United States and Latin America was sent to President Clinton. The letter stated,
Human rights information should not be shielded by the system of secrecy inherited from the cold war. Such information is often a critical component to a country’s struggle to promote the rule of law, end impunity and bolster reconciliation in formerly conflicted societies. As newly-democratic nations in Latin America confront their legacies of violence, your administration can strengthen its commitment to human rights by declassifying United States files on human rights abuses in the region and releasing them to the public.544 (Emphasis included)
541 Margarita Carrera, “PERSISTENCIA ¿Y los gringos qué?,” Prensa Libre (Guatemala, June 9, 2000),
http://www.prensalibre.com/opinion/PERSISTENCIAbrY-gringos_0_292780135.html. Carrera underlines that the NSA is not a government agency and that it is not its role to release these names.
542 National Security Archive, "Campaign for Declassification of Documents on Human Rights Abuses in Latin
America," http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/19971017.htm (Accessed November 1, 2011)
543 "History that Remains Hidden," The New York Times (August 5, 1997): 18.
544 “Letter to President Clinton,” October 8, 1997. http://www.cnss.org/secrecy/clintonltr.html (Accessed February
As shown above, the value of the declassified records to the CEH investigation was that it particularly helped the commission understand the structure of the Guatemalan military and the counterinsurgency strategies. There was not a smoking gun, but rather a context that was very important to study in order to provide a more accurate history of the conflict. From Kate Doyle:
We found that in the U.S. archives of course we had access to all kinds of intelligence reports and detailed reports on the ways armies functioned, on how they were structured, on what officials were in the command structure, on where people were placed in the country, what kind of operations were taking place, even some times analysis of the army and human rights abuses. But... even without sort of smoking gun style documents, you had this incredibly rich resource in the Defense Intelligence Agency, in the State Department, in the CIA of intelligence, and raw intelligence and analyzed intelligence on the security forces of Latin America.545
Through the Guatemala Documentation Project, the National Security Archive provided documents to the CEH and also assisted with its analysis.546 In addition, the Archive's military database was developed to address the CEH's prohibition against naming names547. The NSA agreed with the commission's rationalization about assigning individual responsibility, as explained above. However, it considered as unacceptable "the perpetuation of a protective wall of silence around the army as an institution."548 This struggle to confront the wall of silence in Guatemala continued after the release of the CEH report. Of particular significance were the discovery of the Guatemalan military logbook and its publication by the National Security Archive and the discovery in 2005 of the archives of the Guatemalan National Police. Furthermore, local and international investigations began to emerge and continue today. The rest of this chapter explores these events.
545 Interview Kate Doyle.
546 Kate Doyle, “The Guatemalan Military: What the U.S. Files Reveal,” National Security Archive Electronic
Briefing Book No. 32, June 1, 2000, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB32/index.html.
547 Doyle, “The Guatemalan Military.” 548 Doyle, “The Guatemalan Military.”