f R Washington 11c 20520 '1 Eras em 7- - DECAPTEONED Elliott Abrams mggh sgfg 50 cm HA - Mel Levitsky - Ex FROM HA Charles Fairbanks OH PA bummerqu DOWNGRAD Or United States Department of State' SUBJECT Credibility of Embassy Guatemala Human Rights Two recent incidents underline the care we need to use in arguing before Congressional committees and the public how much we know about what is going on in Guatemala First we received cables from the Embassy assuring us that all the-charges about Human Rights violations against the people who had fled to Choatulum were false Then we received a cable based on witness testimony cancelling these earlier assertions to the extent of admitting that these people were fleeing from ill treatment by the Guatemalan Army Second when I briefed Congressional staffers with Otto Reich Chuck Berk of the SFRC insistently badgered me with the question what is your method ology This is an obnoxious and phony question because no methodology gives a cookbook solution to finding the truth But it is a very difficult question for us to answer given the character of Embassy Guatemala's reporting The vigor of our justified attack on the shoddy use of evidence is bound to raise the question about how good oure_ Embassy evidence is What are the sources of Embassy conclusions on who committed human rights violations In the course of preparing for the recent briefing I went through most of the important cable traffic from Guatemala since March 23 The picture that appears when all the Embassy reporting is viewed together is rather different than the impression one gets from reading each cable when it comes in Sources of Embassy Reporting 1 Asking the Army All of the early Embassy responses to charges of Army massacres were based primarily on asking the Army whether or not they were true There is an obvious problem here but it is worth thinking a little further about what the problem is Army accounts are distorted for three reasons i A The Rios Montt Government faces a tremendous intern national campaign alleging human rights violations and obviously has at the top level motives to conceal such violations whether or not they do so B Perhaps more significant are the motives of middle echelon officers in the Guatemalan Army who are faced with the ugly and difficult task of quelling a guerrilla war without adequate forces and in the absence of U s assistance At the same time they know that Rios Montt is a reformer who does not want his subordinates to be 'brutal The combination of these circumstances creates an obvious motive for middle-level officers to use very tough methods in fighting the war but not to report these methods fully to the President and his immediate circle C Finally guerrilla wars are fought by squad and platoon- size units operating far away from their higher command and with poor communications Noncommission d officers and subalterns notoriously give very misleading reports about what happens to their superiors -- not' only out of but because they do not have 4the professionalism and carefully refined judgment about what to report of higher officerSauyhmw- Fleci During the first months of World war I the British Afled from its anchorage every day because the lookouts saw periscopes in the water which eventually turned out not to be there The fact that in Guatemala the people actually fighting the war are the people who report least reliably on how it is fought i surely affects the information that reaches Army headquarters The notion that Army testimonY about its own human rights violations is unreliable is not only my own idea but derived from the Embassy reporting itself Guatemala 7396 reports that the Army falisfies its military bulletins Guatemala 7747 reports that the Army does not report many incidents which we know to have from other sources Accord- ing to Guatemala 7747 when our Embassy asked the Army about the truth of certain incidents alleged by NGOs the answer received was different from the Army press releases issued earlier for the same period of time In other words the Army itself says different things at different times Iva- 3 a I thwuu'h 1 LJ 2 The Guatemalan Press The Embassy has also relied heavily before the state of siege was proclaimed on reports of human rights violations in the Guatemalan press Of course since the state of siege all such press reports are drawn from army press releases But we know from Guatemala 7775 that even for the period before the state of seige 155$ many incidents reported by the Army itself in answer to our inquiries didnot appear in the press This fact renders dubious the argument used by the Embassy against some Amnesty International and WOLA allegations of large scale atrocities it is doubtful the media would have missed it Guatamala 7741 3 Video Tapes and Transcripts In a number of cases Embassy Guatemala has supplemented Army reports and the Guatemalan press with its own viewing of confirming materials such as video tapes shown on Guatemalan TV or transcripts of witness testimony We also need to be cautious about this category of evidence In fact the early optimistic cables about Choatulum were partly based on TV interviews of refugees who said they were fleeing from the guerrillas Guatemala 7825 A later cable as we know established that they were fleeing from the Army 4 On Site Inspections and Interviews with Witnesses 1 These are the only really good methods of being sure of who is responsible for human rights violations in the Guatemalan although they are far from infallible We have not done very many such inspections I was directly asked by Chuck Berk and other Administration witnesses are likely to be asked exactly how many on-site inspections Embassy Guatemala has carried out I don't know the answer but suspect it might be embarrassing I 5 Conclusions I would conclude from this that our Embassy does not really know who is responsible for the killings in rural Guatemala SEC-WE ignm Ibi- -4- We do know that the NGO accountzof this is quite unpersuasive and I myself believe the guerrillas are doing more atrocities than the other side But we cannot be sure of this or argue it effectively to hostile audiences with the information we now have It is to my mind a proof of this situation that Embassy Guatemala has said for several months that it believes the Army is responsible for major human rights violations but has not adg sed in any cable a single instance that it believes was done by the Army I do not think there is any misrepresentation by our Embassy but there maybe wishful thinking at least we could make a greater effort to have the facts we need to argue from I would draw two specific conclusions First until we can improve our evidence we need to be careful in the reliance we place on it in public'statements Second it would be extremely useful to improve our human rights reporting from Guatemala as Jon Glassman proposed some time ago According to Guatemala 7935 our Embassy eXhausted all of its travel money under the continuing resolution -- $1 600 -- on one unsuccessful fact finding mission intended to find out about two of Father allegations When the human rights situation in the is the issue on which our developing relation ship with Guatemala will stand or fall such a situation is amazing V 4 1 ecu This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu