CIA
South America: Ecuador
by
William Blum
www.killinghope.org
If the Guinness Book of World Records included a category
for "cynicism", one could suggest the CIA's creation of "leftist" organizations which condemned poverty, disease,
illiteracy, capitalism, and the United States in order to attract committed militants and their money away from
legitimate leftist organizations.
The tiny nation of Ecuador in the early 1960s was, as it remains
today, a classic of banana-republic underdevelopment; virtually at the bottom of the economic heap in South
America; a society in which one percent of the population received an income comparable to United States
upper-class standards, while two-thirds of the people had an average family income of about ten dollars per month
-- people simply outside the money economy, with little social integration or participation in the national life; a
tale told many times in Latin America.
In September 1960, a new government headed by José María Velasco
Ibarra came to power. Velasco had won a decisive electoral victory, running on a vaguely liberal, populist,
something-for- everyone platform. He was no Fidel Castro, he was not even a socialist, but he earned the wrath of
the US State Department and the CIA by his unyielding opposition to the two stated priorities of American policy in
Ecuador: breaking relations with Cuba, and clamping down hard on activists of the Communist Party and those to
their left.
Over the next three years, in pursuit of those goals, the CIA
left as little as possible to chance. A veritable textbook on covert subversion techniques unfolded. In its pages
could be found the following, based upon the experiences of Philip Agee, a CIA officer who spent this period in
Ecuador.{1}
Almost all political organizations of significance, from the far
left to the far right, were infiltrated, often at the highest levels. Amongst other reasons, the left was
infiltrated to channel young radicals away from support to Cuba and from anti-Americanism; the right, to instigate
and co-ordinate activities along the lines of CIA priorities. If, at a point in time, there was no organization
that appeared well-suited to serve a particular need, then one would be created.
Or a new group of "concerned citizens" would appear, fronted with
noted personalities, which might place a series of notices in leading newspapers denouncing the penetration of the
government by the extreme left and demanding a break with Cuba. Or one of the noted personalities would deliver a
speech prepared by the CIA, and then a newspaper editor, or a well-known columnist, would praise it, both gentlemen
being on the CIA payroll.
Some of these fronts had an actual existence; for others, even
their existence was phoney. On one occasion, the CIA Officer who had created the non-existent "Ecuadorean
Anti-Communist Front" was surprised to read in his morning paper that a real organization with that name had been
founded. He changed the name of his organization to "Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Action".
Wooing the working class came in for special emphasis. An
alphabet-soup of labor organizations, sometimes hardly more than names on stationery, were created, altered,
combined, liquidated, and new ones created again, in an almost frenzied attempt to find the right combination to
compete with existing left-oriented unions and take national leadership away from them. Union leaders were invited
to attend various classes conducted by the CIA in Ecuador or in the United States, all expenses paid, in order to
impart to them the dangers of communism to the union movement and to select potential agents.
This effort was not without its irony either. CIA agents would
sometimes jealously vie with each other for the best positions in these CIA-created labor organizations; and at
times Ecuadorean organizations would meet in "international conferences" with CIA labor fronts from other
countries, with almost all of the participants blissfully unaware of who was who or what was what.
In Ecuador, as throughout most of Latin America, the Agency
planted phoney anti-communist news items in co-operating newspapers. These items would then be picked up by other
CIA stations in Latin America and disseminated through a CIA-owned news agency, a CIA- owned radio station, or
through countless journalists being paid on a piece-work basis, in addition to the item being picked up unwittingly
by other media, including those in the United States. Anti-communist propaganda and news distortion (often of the
most far-fetched variety) written in CIA offices would also appear in Latin American newspapers as unsigned
editorials of the papers themselves.
In virtually every department of the Ecuadorean government could
be found men occupying positions, high and low, who collaborated with the CIA for money and/or their own particular
motivation. At one point, the Agency could count amongst this number the men who were second and third in power in
the country.
These government agents would receive the benefits of information
obtained by the CIA through electronic eavesdropping or other means, enabling them to gain prestige and promotion,
or consolidate their current position in the rough-and-tumble of Ecuadorean politics. A high-ranking minister of
leftist tendencies, on the other hand, would be the target of a steady stream of negative propaganda from any or
all sources in the CIA arsenal; staged demonstrations against him would further increase the pressure on the
president to replace him.
The Postmaster-General, along with other post office employees,
all members in good standing of the CIA Payroll Club, regularly sent mail arriving from Cuba and the Soviet bloc to
the Agency for its perusal, while customs officials and the Director of Immigration kept the Agency posted on who
went to or came from Cuba. When a particularly suitable target returned from Cuba, he would be searched at the
airport and documents prepared by the CIA would be "found" on him. These documents, publicized as much as possible,
might include instructions on "how to intensify hatred between classes", or some provocative language designed to
cause a split in Communist Party ranks. Generally, the documents "verified" the worst fears of the public about
communist plans to take over Ecuador under the masterminding of Cuba or the Soviet Union; at the same time,
perhaps, implicating an important Ecuadorean leftist whose head the Agency was after. Similar revelations, staged
by CIA stations elsewhere in Latin America, would be publicized in Ecuador as a warning that Ecuador was
next.
Agency financing of conservative groups in a quasi-religious
campaign against Cuba and "atheistic communism" helped to seriously weaken President Velasco's power among the
poor, primarily Indians, who had voted overwhelmingly for him, but who were even more deeply committed to their
religion. If the CIA wished to know how the president was reacting to this campaign it need only turn to his
physician, its agent, Dr. Felipe Ovalle, who would report that his patient was feeling considerable strain as a
result.
CIA agents would bomb churches or right-wing organizations and
make it appear to be the work of leftists. They would march in left-wing parades displaying signs and shouting
slogans of a very provocative anti-military nature, designed to antagonize the armed forces and hasten a
coup.
The Agency did not always get away clean with its dirty tricks.
During the election campaign, on 19 March 1960, two senior colonels who were the CIA's main liaison agents within
the National Police participated in a riot aimed at disrupting a Velasco demonstration. Agency officer Bob
Weatherwax was in the forefront directing the police during the riot in which five Velasco supporters were killed
and many wounded. When Velasco took office, he had the two colonels arrested and Weatherwax was asked to leave the
country.
CIA-supported activities were carried out without the knowledge
of the American ambassador. When the Cuban Embassy publicly charged the Agency with involvement in various
anti-Cuban activities, the American ambassador issued a statement that "had everyone in the [CIA] station smiling".
Stated the ambassador: "The only agents in Ecuador who are paid by the United States are the technicians invited by
the Ecuadorean government to contribute to raising the living standards of the Ecuadorean people."
Finally, in November 1961, the military acted. Velasco was forced
to resign and was replaced by Vice-President Carlos Julio Arosemana. There were at this time two prime candidates
for the vice-presidency. One was the vice-president of the Senate, a CIA agent. The other was the rector of Central
University, a political moderate. The day that Congress convened to make their choice, a notice appeared in a
morning paper announcing support for the rector by the Communist Party and a militant leftist youth organization.
The notice had been placed by a columnist for the newspaper who was the principal propaganda agent for the CIA's
Quito station. The rector was compromised rather badly, the denials came too late, and the CIA man won. His Agency
salary was increased from $700 to $1,000 a month.
Arosemana soon proved no more acceptable to the CIA than Velasco.
All operations continued, particularly the campaign to break relations with Cuba, which Arosemana steadfastly
refused to do. The deadlock was broken in March 1962 when a military garrison, led by Col. Aurelio Naranjo, gave
Arosemana 72 hours to send the Cubans packing and fire the leftist Minister of Labor. (There is no need to point
out here who Naranjo's financial benefactor was.) Arosemana complied with the ultimatum, booting out the Czech and
Polish delegations as well at the behest of the new cabinet which had been forced upon him.
At the CIA station in Quito there was a champagne victory
celebration. Elsewhere in Ecuador, people angry about the military's domination and desperate about their own
lives, took to arms. But on this occasion, like others, it amounted to naught ... a small band of people, poorly
armed and trained, infiltrated by agents, their every move known in advance -- confronted by a battalion of
paratroopers, superbly armed and trained by the United States. That was in the field. In press reports, the small
band grew to hundreds; armed not only to the teeth, but with weapons from "outside the country" (read Cuba), and
the whole operation very carefully planned at the Communist Party Congress the month before.
On 11 July 1963 the Presidential Palace in Quito was surrounded
by tanks and troops. Arosemana was out, a junta was in. Their first act was to outlaw communism; "communists" and
other "extreme" leftists were rounded up and jailed, the arrests campaign being facilitated by data from the CIA's
Subversive Control Watch List. (Standard at many Agency stations, this list would include not only the subject's
name, but the names and addresses of his relatives and friends and the places he frequented -- anything to aid in
tracking him down when the time came.)
Civil liberties were suspended; the 1964 elections canceled;
another tale told many times in Latin America.
And during these three years, what were the American people told about this witch's
brew of covert actions carried out, supposedly, in their name? Very little, if anything, if the
New York Times is any index. Not once
during the entire period, up to and including the coup, was any indication given in any article or editorial on
Ecuador that the CIA or any other arm of the US government had played any role whatever in any event which had
occurred in that country. This is the way the writings read even if one looks back at them with the advantage of
knowledge and hindsight and reads between the lines.
There is a solitary exception. Following the coup, we find a tiny
announcement on the very bottom of page 20 that Havana radio had accused the United States of instigating the
military takeover.{2} The Cuban government had been making public charges about American activities in Ecuador
regularly, but this was the first one to make the New York
Times. The question must be asked: Why were these charges deemed
unworthy of reporting or comment, let alone investigation?
NOTES
1. Philip Agee, Inside the
Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975) pp. 106-316, passim. Agee's
book made him Public Enemy No. One of the CIA. In a review of the book, however, former Agency official Miles
Copeland -- while not concealing his distaste for Agee's "betrayal" -- stated that "The book is interesting as an
authentic account of how an ordinary American or British `case officer' operates ... As a spy handler in Quito,
Montevideo and Mexico City, he has first-hand information ... All of it, just as his publisher claims, is presented
`with deadly accuracy'." (The
Spectator, London, 11 January 1975, p. 40.)
2. New York
Times, 14 July 1963, p. 20. For an interesting and concise discussion
of the political leanings of Velasco and Arosemana, see John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 1965,
revised edition) pp. 141-8.
This is a chapter from Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War
II by William Blum
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