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CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 1952–1954
CIA History Staff Analysis
Gerald K. Haines
June 1995
Introduction
In the early 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency directed covert operations aimed at removing the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman from power in Guatemala. Included in these efforts were various suggestions for the disposal of key Arbenz government officials and Guatemalan Communists. The Agency drew up lists of individuals for assassination, discussed training Guatemalan exiles for assassination teams, and conducted intimidation programs against prominent Guatemalan officials.
This brief study traces, in a chronological manner, the injection of assassination planning and proposals into the PBFORTUNE covert operation against the Arbenz government in 1952 and into the PBSUCCESS operation in 1954. It attempts to illustrate the depth of such planning and the level of involvement of Agency officials. It also attempts to detail where the proposals originated, who approved them, and how advanced the preparations for such actions were. Finally, the study examines the implementation of such planning and the results—i. e., in the end, the plans were abandoned and no Arbenz officials or Guatemalan Communists were killed. The study is based almost exclusively on Directorate of Operations records relating to PBFORTUNE and PBSUCCESS.
Background
As early as 1952 US policymakers viewed the government of President Arbenz with some alarm. Although he had been popularly elected in 1950, growing Communist influence within his government gave rise to concern in the United States that Arbenz had established an effective working alliance with the Communists. Moreover, Arbenz’ policies had damaged US business interests in Guatemala; a sweeping agrarian reform called for the expropriation and redistribution of much of the United Fruit Company’s land.[1] Although most high-level US officials recognized that a hostile government in Guatemala by itself did not constitute a direct security threat to the United States, they viewed events there in the context of the growing global Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union and feared that Guatemala could become a client state from which the Soviets could project power and influence throughout the Western Hemisphere.[2]
- ↑ See Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 187–88. United Fruit dominated Guatemalan banana production, controlled the International Railroad of Central America, and its merchant fleet had a virtual monopoly of Guatemalan overseas shipping. It was second only to the Guatemalan government as an employer.
- ↑ See Gleijeses, Shattered Hope and Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982) for general overviews of the Guatemalan situation in the early 1950s and US reaction. See also John Peurifoy US Ambassador to Guatemala statement of 23 October 1953 in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, The American Republic 1950–1954, 4:1093. (Hereinafter cited as FRUS).
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