In an announcement that
seemed timed to get the least amount of press attention, the Pentagon's acting
Inspector General, Russell Rau, said Friday (Feb. 21) that the Pentagon was
right to absolve US officials of any responsibility for training of Latin
American soldiers that included information about “motivation by fear, payment
of bounties for enemy dead, false imprisonment and the use of truth serum.” In
the report, the Inspector General said that “mistakes” lead to the inclusion of
“objectionable” information in manuals used to train Latin American soldiers
and officers at the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia.
The report concluded that “no
deliberate and orchestrated attempt was made to violate Defense Department or
U.S. Army policies” and therefore “further investigation to assess individual
responsibility is not required.” The report did not appear to indicate how
these “mistakes” were made or who was responsible for them. The investigation
by the Inspector General began in September 1996 after the Pentagon admitted
that torture, execution, false imprisonment, extortion and other techniques
were included in training manuals used at the SOA and by mobile training units
in Latin America until 1991.
In response to the
Inspector General's report, Representative Joseph Kennedy (D-MA), a long- time
opponent of the SOA, said in a statement, “These manuals taught tactics that
come right out of a Soviet gulag and have no place in civilized society.” Rep.
Kennedy introduced a bill in early February in the House of Representatives
that would close the SOA (HR 611).
Since its creation in 1946,
the SOA has trained nearly 60,000 Latin American soldiers and officers. SOA
graduates include former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noreiga, El Salvador death
squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson, and former dictators of Argentina, Peru,
Ecuador, and Bolivia. SOA graduates were also responsible for the assassination
of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the El Mozote massacre, the Uraba massacre, and the
assassination of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. Vladimiro
Montesinos, another graduate of the SOA and right- hand man of Peruvian
President Alberto Fujimori, has been implicated as the leader of the Grupo
Colina death squad responsible for numerous massacres in Peru.
* School of the Americas Watch.
Cuestiones de
América Nº 10, Agosto-Septiembre de 2002
Regresar a la Página Principal...