US Lied About Soviet Aid To Salvadoran Rebels - FMLN, FDR

Horhey · Mar 26, 2012

The FMLN arent even Communist. They are Sandinista-style democratic socialists - egalitarians, not Soviet-style totalitarians. There were several different factions within the rebellion and there were some Communists but they were a minority. Soviet-style communism just isnt all that attractive to most people.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bEpEK7uKzE"]CNN Debunks Communist Conspiracy Pretext[/ame]

The State Department's 'White Paper' entitled "Communist Interference in El Salvador" purports to provide evidence demonstrating:

(1) "the central role played by Cuba and other Communist countries ... in the political unification, military direction and arming of insurgent forces in El Salvador";

(2) that "the insurgency in El Salvador has been progressively transformed into another case of indirect armed aggression against a small Third World country by Communist powers acting through Cuba"; and

(3) that "Cuba, the Soviet Union and other Communist states . . . are carrying out what is clearly shown to be a well-coordinated, covert effort to bring about the overthrow of El Salvador's established Government and to impose in its place a Communist regime with no popular support."
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Subsequent investigations exposed faulty methodology and fraud in the research and writing of the white paper. The administration's case would've had to have been a real joke for the business press to blow the whistle..

The Associated Press quoted the the Wall Street Journal report entitled, "Tarnished Report? Apparent Errors Cloud US 'White Paper' on Reds in El Salvador:"

The Associated Press: El Salvador Report Called Misleading

New York (AP) - Parts of the State Department's white paper on Communist activity in El Salvador issued in February may be "misleading" and "over-embellished," according to a State Department aide who worked on the report, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

The Journal said that several of the most important documents in the report were attributed to guerilla leaders who did not write them and that it is unknown who did write them.

Glassman also said that statistics on arms shipments into El Salvador, supposedly drawn from the documents were extrapolated, the Journal said.

A close reading of the white paper indicates that its authors "probably were making a determined effort to create a 'selling' document, no matter how slim the background material."
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The Associated Press quoted the Washington Post report entitled, "White Paper on El Salvador is Faulty; Flaws in El Salvador White Paper Raise Questions About Its Analysis"

The Associated Press: Arms Report 'Misleading'

Salvador Data Challenged

Washington (AP) - The State Department is standing by its white paper on El Salvador amid published reports challenging its accuracy and a statement by a leading policy-maker that U.S. officials couldn't authenticate documents on which it was based.

Both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have carried front-page articles criticizing the eight-page report, which was issued Feb. 23 as the Reagan administration's first major foreign policy initiative.

The Wall Street Journal said Monday that the State Department attributed some documents to guerilla leaders who didn't write them, guessed at arms-shipment statistics and placed in the report data that cannot be found in the documents.

The Post said today that the government report "contains factual errors, misleading statements and unresolved ambiguities that raise serious questions about the administration's interpretation of participation by communist countries in the Salvadoran civil war."
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The Washington Post: White Paper on El Salvador is Faulty

Flaws in El Salvador White Paper Raise Questions About Its Analysis

The State Department's white paper on El Salvador, published in February, contains factual errors, misleading statements and unresolved ambiguities that raise serious questions about the administration's interpretation of participation by communist countries in the Salvadoran civil war.

The contention of the white paper that the Salvadoran rebels were enjoying the benefits of "nearly 200 tons" of communist-supplied arms and materiel is not supported anywhere in these documents, and is implicitly refuted by many of them. In document after document there are reports of rebels short of arms, or looking for ways to buy arms, or exhorting comrades to produce home-made arms, or plotting to kidnap wealthy Salvadorans thought to have access to private arsenals.

The tile copy includes this notation from a US government official who read and evaluated it "From this," the American wrote, "it would appear they had only 626 weapons for more than 9000 men." This document was omitted from the collection released to the press with the white paper.
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Continued..

Horhey · Mar 26, 2012

My title would've been, "White Paper or Toilet Paper?"

The Los Angeles Times: White Paper or Blank Paper? (Pay-Per-View)

U.S. Report on Aid to El Salvador Guerrillas Falls Short

When the State Department released its report on El Salvador on February 23, it also released 100 copies of a 11/2-inch thick packet of documents to support the Reagan Administration's decision to increase military aid to the Salvadoran government. The meat of the documents' original raw intelligence consists of 47 pages of handwritten jottings, memoranda and minutes of meetings, culled from confiscated guerrilla files.

But these very same documents-in addition to other intelligence reports available to the Reagan Administration that were not included in the White Paper-provide conclusions that fall far short of the Administration's portrayal of El Salvador as an arena of U.S.-Soviet confrontation.

The White Paper charges that 800 tons of arms were promised, and 200 tons were delivered, to the insurgents by the time of the (January) offensive. The captured documents, however, indicate that far lesser quantities were promised or in shipment, and only about 10 tons ever actually crossed the border.

Battlefield evidence gathered since January, including the statements of a captured Nicaraguan solider-turned-informer, reveals that the guerrillas were forced to depend on relatively antiquated rifles and other weapons purchased on the international black market.
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New York Times Foreign Correspondant, Raymond Bonner quoted a senior Carter administration official, who had access to all the intelligence traffic who stated that "the guerrillas got most of their arms on the international black market, primarily in Miami.":

A senior Carter administration official, who had access to all the intelligence traffic, has rebutted that statement almost totally. "The only intelligence" the United States had at the time, he said, showed that the guerrillas were receiving bullets, medical supplies, maybe some rifles, but "certainly not anything heavy."

As for the source of the guerrillas' weapons, "Our impression was that the guerrillas got most of their arms on the international black market, primarily in Miami."
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Horhey · Mar 26, 2012

The Sydney Morning Herald also dismissed the white paper's conclusions:

The Sydney Morning Herald: Flaws in documents on arms to El Salvador

Serious doubt is being cast on the accuracy and veracity of the documents which the united states administration used to justify increased american involvement in el salvador.

The white paper warned that a major guerilla offensive was imminent. Within days, the US greatly increased its economic and military aid to the present regime. But the major offensive has not come. Growing evidence of brutality by the security forces, coupled with lack of evidence of significant arms shipments, have prompted and increase in the skepticism about the documents.

Mr Jon Glassmen, the senior State Department official responsible for compiling the white paper, yesterday conceded a number of serious flaws in the white paper and the documents. For example, a key claim was that "nearly 200 tonnes of arms were in the process of being shipped into El Salvador, mostly through Cuba and Nicaragua."

He also conceded that the only concrete instance of Soviet aid delivered to the Salvadorean insurgents was a plane ticket from Moscow to Vietnam for one guerilla.
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Horhey · Mar 27, 2012

Found it in the Washington Post Archives..

The Washington Post: White Paper on El Salvador Is Faulty

Flaws in El Salvador White Paper Raise Questions About Its Analysis

By Robert G. Kaiser
Washington Post Staff Writer
June 9, 1981

The State Department's white paper on El Salvador, published in February, contains factual errors, misleading statements and unresolved ambiguities that raise questions about the administration's interpretation of participation by communist countries in the Salvadoran civil war.
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Horhey · Mar 27, 2012

Author And Prize-Winning Reporter for the Wall Street Journal and PBS, Jonathan Kwitny summed up the case in his book, Endless Enemies:

the White Paper says that a unified, Soviet-run international communist network took over the El Salvador rebellion to such an extent that the uprising constitutes a foreign, armed aggression rather than legitimate Civil War. In fact, so far as we can rely on the documents at all, they show the opposite: a disorganized, ragtag rebellion.

Some of its participants have gone around begging for help from the most likely sources, and have been consistently stalled off and sent home empty-handed, or with much less than they asked for. Not only do the documents not prove the thesis, the thesis simply isn't true.
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Horhey · Mar 28, 2012

James Petras explains the situation very well..

El Salvador: White paper on the white paper

James Petras

The white paper fails to provide a convincing case for any of those propositions. On the contrary, its evidence is flimsy, circumstantial or nonexistent; the reasoning and logic is slipshod and internally inconsistent; it assumes what needs to be proven; and, finally, what facts are presented refute the very case the State Department is attempting to demonstrate.

The document, in a word, has the aura of a political frame-up in which inconvenient facts are overlooked and innuendoes and unwarranted inferences are made at crucial points in the argument. In demonstrating this, I will follow the format of the white paper, discussing the sections in order, under their original titles, and making cross-references to material in other sections where it is warranted; for example, when the authors contradict themselves.

A CASE OF COMMUNIST MILITARY INVOLVEMENT IN THE THIRD WORLD

The first technique that is employed in the white paper is to conflate what is happening in El Salvador with other alleged examples of Soviet and Cuban military involvement. The political opposition is reduced to a group of extreme leftist guerrillas manipulated by Cuba and in turn manipulating "small, non-Marxist-Leninist parties" in order to deceive public opinion. Opposition activity is labeled terrorist. Journalists who describe the U.S.-backed regime's behavior as terrorist are labeled as witting or unwitting dupes of an orchestrated Communist propaganda effort.

What is most striking about this description of the opposition to the junta Government is the complete absence of even a minimal account of the numerous social, political and civic movements that have developed in E1 Salvador over the past decade, which represent a wide range of political views and social strata This collective omission on the part of the State Department is necessary if one ~s bent upon labeling the opposition as Soviet-Cuban manipulated and if one wishes to reduce the conflict to an East-West military confrontation.

The fact of the matter is that over the last decade an enormously rich variety of social organizations have emerged in E1 Salvador, embracing the great majority of professional and technical workers, peasants, labor and businesspeople Their membership is in the hundreds of thousands and they are an integral part of the main political opposition group, the Revolutionary Democratic Front (F.D.R.). Almost all union members, peasant associations, university and professional people are members or supporters of social and civic organizations that are sympathetic to the front. The white paper clearly falsifies the political and social realities by excluding an account of the social forces involved with the opposition. Moreover, the origins of the opposition are clearly rooted in the social realities of the country-a point which the document admits in Section m in a politically vague and unspecified fashion when it notes that: "during the 1970's, both the legitimate grievances of the poor and landless and the growing aspirations of the expanding middle classes met increasingly with repression."

What the paper fails to acknowledge is that these legitimate grievances" and "growing aspirations" found expression and were embodied in the mass organizations which are the essential components of the opposition groups that make up the F.D.R. The guerrilla movement is part and parcel of a larger political and social movement that has been and is repressed. Its activities stem from social realities of Salvadoran history, which the paper concedes is one of "repression widespread poverty and concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few families." Because it is intent on demonstrating that the problem is Soviet-Cuban intervention, the paper fails to examine the crucial relationship between the repressive nature of the state, social inequalities and the growth of opposition and guerrilla movements.
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Horhey · Mar 28, 2012

Continued..

The "Non-Marxist" Opposition

The striking feature of the Salvadoran revolution is the broad array of political forces that have united to oppose this regime-Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Liberal Democrats, as well as independent Marxist groups and pro-Moscow coalitions. What is particularly unique in the Salvadoran case is the substantial leadership and its popular base of support that has developed among Christian communities. In all areas of social and political organization, a plurality of political tendencies are represented-among peasants, workers, professionals and so on.

The attempt by the white paper to reduce the opposition to a handful of Marxist guerrillas manipulating the "non- Marxists" is a crude oversimplification and gross distortion of reality. What is remarkable in the document is the systematic exclusion of any mention of the mass-based Christian opposition, the twenty-eight Christian priests, nuns and community leaders murdered by the regime for their opposition activities. A discussion of these facts would complicate the State Department's job of selling intervention to the U.S. public.

In describing the emergence of the guerrilla forces, the document downgrades accounts of repressive political conditions under the junta. Yet detailed descriptions are available from the Organization of American States, the United Nations and, most comprehensively, from the Legal Aid Commission of the office of the Archbishop of El Salvador, which has compiled a lengthy dossier of the regime's systematic violence against all legal public organizations opposed to it in any way.

Churches, trade unions, independent newspapers and peasant co-ops have been assaulted and bombed, leaving almost 9,000 dead between January 1980 and January 1981. The precondition for the growth of guerrilla activity was the closing of political channels by the U.S.- backed regime-not Soviet intervention.

Shortly after the first junta was established in October 1979, and before the rightist military took over, the guerrillas and political opposition groups offered a cease-fire. The rightists in the armed forces responded by escalating the number of assassinations, which touched off renewed hostilities. The decision to seek a military-political solution was forced upon the opposition by the military regime when it murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero on March 24, 1980, and then the seven leaders of the F.D.R. meeting in San Salvador on November 27, 1980.

The subsequent purge of the moderate Christian Democrats and reformist military officers from the first Government junta is further proof that political options had been taken away. The white paper overlooks this context of regime violence in order to invent a Cuban-inspired conspiracy and to impute the violence of the regime to its victims.

The killings by the military regimes increased from 147 in 1978 to 580 between January and October of 1979 and to 8,952 between January 1980 and January 1981. This increasing reign of terror clearly was instrumental in lowering the rate of popular participation in public activity and swelling the numbers of clandestine groups. Oblivious to this reality, the white paper describes the increase in guerrilla activity as a willful act of the "extreme left."

In its attempt to cast doubt on the opposition's legitimacy, the paper omits any mention of centrist defections from the U.S.-backed junta to join the leadership of the Revolutionary Democratic Front. The shift of a significant body of centrist opinion to the opposition is described disparagingly in the following fashion: "For appearances' sake three small non-Marxist- Leninist political parties were brought into the front, though they have no representation in the D.R.U. [Unified Revolutionary Directorate]."

These former Christian and Social Democratic allies of the U.S.-backed coalition had been described by U.S. officials a few weeks earlier as major political forces representing significant reform-minded sectors of Salvadoran public opinion. The fact that the pro-Moscow Communist Party of El Salvador is a marginal political force in the opposition coalition is never discussed by the white paper, nor is the fact that three of the four major leftist groups are critical of the Soviet Union.

Moreover, the paper's charge that Fidel Castro was responsible for unifying the left overlooks the fact that the unity of the leftist forces was under way prior to December 1979 as a result of increasing repression by the regime and pressure from the rank and file of all the groups. The F.D.R. was formed in El Salvador not in Cuba, and was supported and promoted by European social-democratic forces. It was certainly not a product of the alleged machinations of Castro. As the participants stated at the time, the needs of the popular struggle, the limited options open to all opposition groups and the example set by the success of the Nicaraguan revolution were the main impulsions to unity.
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Horhey · Mar 28, 2012

Continued..

Conspiratorial Hypothesis

The effort by the white paper to discredit the F.D.R. by describing it as a "front" disseminating propaganda for the guerrillas systematically ignores the popular support that these groups draw away from the junta, the internal political debates within the front and between the front and the guerrillas and the influence they have had in shaping the program in a reformist direction. The white paper's conspiratorial view requires that its authors overlook the importance of these moderates and their internal and external influence. The paper says nothing about the widespread international support for the front and the isolation of the junta. Indeed, it expands its conspiratorial hypothesis to find Cuban and Soviet-sponsored deception behind the front's success.

The numerous and detailed accounts of repression by the regime compiled by the Archbishop's Legal Aid Commission which have swayed world public opinion are not mentioned; nor are Amnesty International's publicized accounts of widespread systematic torture. In place of careful consideration of these documents, the white paper labels the 10,000 deaths attributed to the junta (13,000 by the time the paper appeared) an "extreme claim" of the guerrilla propaganda apparatus, which is parroted by the Cuban, Soviet and Nicaraguan media. Actually, the principal source of data collected on the regime's repression is nonCommunist, Catholic and respected by most non-U.S. Government sources. In summary, through omissions and distortions, through labeling and simplification, the white paper early on fabricates a case against a broad-based popular revolutionary movement in order to prove "Communist military involvement." . . .

THE GOVERNMENT: THE SEARCH FOR ORDER AND DEMOCRACY

The massive propaganda effort to focus attention on outside Communist intervention is a way of diverting attention from the repressive regime that the United States is supporting. The Reagan Administration's tactic is to win backing for the junta not because of what it stands for (few democratic governments would support a government whose army has killed 13,000 civilians) but to "draw the line" against outside intervention."
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Horhey · Mar 28, 2012

Continued..

The "Progressive" Coalition

The white paper describes the governing coalition that took over after the coup in October 1979 as being made up of progressive civilian and military officers. Yet the great majority of these progressives defected to the F.D.R. or were killed by the rightist faction which is now in control. The "three small non-Marxist-Leninist political parties" that the white paper earlier dismisses as window dressing in the F.D.R. Ieadership are later portrayed as significant progressives when they were in the first coalition. The white paper's inconsistency is apparent in the way it attempts to reclaim the progressive character of the original junta while discrediting the genuine progressives who resigned from it in protest or were pushed out.

The systematic purge of the progressives by the rightist faction within the junta between October 1979 and March 1980 is described in the same vacuous, euphemistic language that is used throughout the white paper when the authors wish to cover their tracks: "After an initial period of instability, the new Government stabilized around a coalition that includes military participants in the October 1979 coup, the Christian Democratic Party and independent civilians." The white paper leaves out the purge of the Majano reformists, and the bulk of the Christian Democrats who are now in opposition, along with university faculty and students, Social Democrats and the other forces of reform. It does not say that ultra-right forces deeply involved in repressive actions are all that remain of the original junta that took power in October 1979.

The white paper claims that "since March 1980, this coalition has begun broad social changes." Actually, the number of peasants killed and co-ops that fell under military occupation rose sharply: peasants killed increased from 126 per month in February, to 203 in March, to 423 in July, totaling 3,272 for the glorious year of agrarian reform! The paper then repeats the falsehood that the opposition to this "reform" consists of Marxist-Leninist guerrilla terrorists and the three insignificant non-Marxist-Leninist political parties operating outside of the country. Once again, the authors omit mention of the absence of any political rights in El Salvador, and the state of war that the junta has declared against all opposition.

Extremist Symbiosis

The white paper then proceeds to argue that the Government "faces armed opposition from the extreme right as well as from the left. . . . A symbiotic relationship has developed between the terrorism practiced by extremists of both left and right." This notion has been systematically refuted by the Archbishop's Legal Aid Commission report on repression, which adduces evidence showing that in 1980, 66 percent of the assassinations were committed by Government security forces, and 14 percent were committed by right-wing death squads. Moreover, voluminous testimony, documents and photographs have emerged to substantiate the frequent and close collaboration between the death squads and the regime's security forces. The "symbiosis" causing most of the violence is between the regime and the death squads, not the right and left.

In this regard it is important to note that not one right-wing death squad assassin has ever been apprehended, let alone prosecuted, despite the public nature of most of the killings. This in itself should dispel any notion that the regime is innocent in the activity of the death squads. The Legal Aid Commission study further demonstrates that the bulk of the victims were poor peasants, students and wage workers-the groups in whose names the purported reforms were carried out. In fact the reforms were mere facades for the militarization of the country. The escalation of regime terror against the peasants is the surest indication of this.

The white paper voices concern about the murder and rape of the U.S. nuns, but it fails to mention the fact that the nuns were opposed to U.S. policy, and were murdered by the junta along with more than a score of other church people working for the poor. While the white paper claims to be interested in a complete investigation of these killings, former Ambassador White stated emphatically that Washington has not made any effort to pressure the junta and has effectively collaborated with the regime in covering up the murders-rewarding its perpetrators with additional arms and economic aid.

In one of its more cynical statements, the paper notes that "few Salvadorans participate in anti- Government demonstrations"-implying that they support the Government. The scores of dead protesters, including mutilated and decapitated corpses that appeared in the wake of every protest march, have no doubt had a dampening effect on demonstrations. But to equate a terrorized population with one that approves the Government is a grotesque distortion which only indicates how out of touch this Administration is with the political reality in El Salvador and the rest of the Third World. There is not only an absence of political protest in El Salvador, there is an absence of all forms of political expression; the dictatorship is total.

The support for the front and the guerrillas has not diminished-it has gone underground. The white paper's claim that U.S. aid helped create jobs and feed the hungry" is belied by the accounts of Church sources. U.S. economic aid has contributed to massive military corruption; military aid hardens the resolve of the military dictators and increases the rate of killing. U.S. economic aid does not keep up with the massive flight of private capital estimated at more than $1.5 billion during the past year.

The collapse of the Salvadoran economy and the massive exodus of refugees from repression in rural areas hardly testifies to the "success" of what the paper describes as the "Duarte Government." The latter is a figment of the State Department's imagination, f. real power continues to be vested within the military-a point emphasized by military official in an interview in Le Monde recently.
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Horhey · Mar 28, 2012

Continued..

Conclusion

The white paper is a thin tissue of falsifications, distortions, omissions and simplifications directed toward covering up increased U.S. support for a murderous regime. It has sought to transform a war between the regime and its people in an East-West struggle and to deny the internal socioeconomic and political role of the struggle. The purpose of these distortions is to mobilize U.S. public opinion behind the new Administration's policies not only in El Salvador but throughout the Third World. The hypocrisy suffusing the white paper is vice's tribute virtue, for it tacitly recognizes that if the truth were presented, the American people would balk at supporting a regime that is rewarded for killing its noblest so and daughters who seek social justice in El Salvador.
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US Lied About Soviet Aid To Salvadoran Rebels - FMLN, FDR

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