proceeded without pause. On the beaches and in the jungles of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Florida, the Bay of Pigs invasion was being rehearsed.

On the 13th of the month, five days after Kennedys victory, Guatemalan military personnel broke out in armed rebellion against the government of General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, seizing two military bases and the port city of Puerto Barrios. Reports of the number of officers involved in the uprising vary from 45 to 120, the latter figure representing almost half the Guatemalan Armys officer corps. The officers commanded as many as 3,000 troops, a significant percentage of the armed forces. Their goals, it later developed, were more nationalistic than ideological. The officers were fed up with the corruption in the Ydigotas regime and in the army, and were particularly incensed about the use of their country by a foreign power as a springboard for an invasion of Cuba, some of them being admirers of Fidel Castro for his nationalist policies. One of the dissident officers later characterized the American training base in Guatemala as a shameful violation of our national sovereignty. And why was it permitted? Because our government is a puppet. 1

The rebellion was crushed within a matter of days, reportedly by the sole power of the Guatemalan Air Force. Some years later, a different picture was to emerge.

The rebels were a force to be reckoned with. The ease with which they had taken over the two garrisons and the real possibility of their mutiny spreading to other bases set alarms ringing at the CIA base, a large coffee plantation in a remote corner of southwestern Guatemala, where the Agency and the US Air Force were training the army of Cuban exiles who were to launch the attack upon their homeland. The CIA feared, and rightly so, that a new regime would send them, the Cubans, and the whole operation packing.

In Washington, President Eisenhower ordered US naval and air units to patrol the Caribbean coast and shoot if necessary to prevent any communist-led invasion of Guatemala or Nicaragua.2 Eisenhower, like Ydigoras, saw the hand of international communism, particularly Cuba, behind the uprising, although no evidence of this was ever presented.3 It was all most ironic in light of the fact that it was the conspiracy of the two leaders to overthrow Cuba that was one of the reasons for the uprising; and that the US naval fleet ordered into action was deployed from Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, an American military installation present in that country against the vociferous objections of the Cuban government.

In Guatemala, meanwhile, the CIA decided upon a solution to the dilemma that was both remarkably simple and close at hand: American and Cuban pilots took off from their training ground and bombed and strafed rebel headquarters outside Guatemala City, and bombed the town and airfield of Puerto Barrios. Caught completely by surprise, and defenseless against this superior force, the rebels insurrection collapsed.4

Back at the coffee plantation, the CIA resumed the function which had been so rudely interrupted, the preparation for the overthrow of the Cuban government.

No announcement about the bombings was made in Washington, nor did a report appear in the American press.

The CIA actions were probably not widely known about in Guatemala either, but it became public knowledge that President Ydigoras had asked Washington for the naval and air support, and had even instructed the Guatemalan Ambassador in Washington to Get in touch immediately with [Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs] Thomas Mann to coordinate your action. 5 Thus it was that the Guatemalan president, needing afterward to distance himself a little from so much Yanqui protection, was

moved to state that countries like Guatemala are at a disadvantage because Cuba is a satellite of powerful Russia , but we are not a satellite of the United States. 6

The final irony was that some of the dissident officers who went into hiding became more radicalized by their experience. During their revolt they had spurned offers of support from some of the peasants-though this would necessarily have been very limited in any case-because fighting for social change was not at all what the officers had in mind at the time. But as fugitives, thrown into greater contact with the peasants, they eventually came to be moved by the peasants pressing need for land and for a way out of their wretched existence.7 In 1962, several of the officers were to emerge as leaders of a guerrilla movement which incorporated November Thirteen as part of its name. In their opening statement, the guerrillas declared:

Democracy vanished from our country long ago. No people can live in a country where there is no democracy. That is why the demand for changes is mounting in our country. We can no longer carry on in this way. We must overthrow the Ydigoras government and set up a government which represents human rights, seeks ways and means to save our country from its hardships, and pursues a serious self-respecting foreign policy.8

A simple sentiment, stated even simpler, but, as we shall see, a movement fated to come up against the wishes of the United States. For if Washington could casually do away with an elected government in Guatemala, as it had in 1954, it could be moved by a guerrilla army only as rocks by waves or the moon by howling wolves.

24. France/Algeria 1960s

Letat, cest la CIA

When John F. Kennedy assumed office in January 1961, he was confronted with a CIA at the zenith of its power and credibility. In the Agencys first 14 years, no formal congressional investigation of it had taken place, nor had any watchdog committee been established; four investigations of the CIA by independent task forces during this period had ensured that everything relating to things covert remained just that; with the exception of the U-2 incident the year before, no page-one embarrassments, scandals, or known failures; what had received a measure of publicity-the coups in Guatemala and Iran-were widely regarded as CIA success stories. White House denials and a compliant media had kept the Agencys misadventure in Indonesia in 1958 from the public scrutiny it deserved.

It is probable that the CIA had more staff officers overseas, under official and unofficial covers, than the State Department, and this in addition to its countless paid agents. Often the CIA Chief of Station had been in a particular country longer than the American ambassador, had more money at his disposal, and exerted more influence. When it suited their purposes, Agency officers would completely bypass the ambassador and normal protocol to deal directly with the countrys head of state and other high officials.

The CIA had its own military capabilities, including its own air force; for all intents and purposes, its own foreign service with, indeed, its own foreign policy, though never at cross-purposes with fundamental US cold-war, anti-communist ideology and goals.

Seemingly without fear of exposure or condemnation, the Agency felt free to carry out sundry Dr. Strangelove experiments involving control of the human mind and all manner of biochemical weapons, including the release of huge amounts of bacteria into the air in the United States which resulted in much illness and a number of deaths.

It was all very heady stuff for the officers of the CIA, playing their mens games with their boys toys. They recognized scarcely any limitation upon their freedom of action. British colonial governors they were, and all the world was India.

Then, in mid-April, came the disaster at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. The international repercussions had barely begun to subside when the Agency was again catapulted into world headlines. On 22 April four French generals in Algeria seized power in an attempt to maintain the countrys union with France. The putsch, which held out but four days, was a direct confrontation with French President Charles de Gaulle, who had dramatically proclaimed a policy leading not to an Algeria governed from France, but to an Algerian Algeria .

The next day, the leftist Italian newspaper, II Paese, stated that It is not by chance that some people in Paris are accusing the American secret service headed by Allen Dulles of having participated in the plot of the four ultra generals. 1

Whether Il Paese was the original source of this charge remains a mystery. Dulles himself later wrote that the Italian daily was one of the first to launch it (emphasis added). He expressed the opinion that This particular myth was a Communist plant, pure and simple. 2

The New York Times reported that the tumors apparently began circulating by word of mouth on the day of the putsch? a report echoed by the Washington Star which added that some of the rumors were launched by minor officials at the Elysee Palace itself who gave reporters to understand that the generals plot was backed by strongly anti-communist elements in the United States Government and military services. 4

Whatever its origins, the story spread rapidly around the world, and the French Foreign Office refused to refute the allegation, Le Monde asserted in a front-page editorial on 28 April that the behavior of the United States during the recent crisis was not particularly skillful. It seems established that American agents more or less encouraged Challe [the leader of the putsch] ... President Kennedy, of course, knew nothing of all this. 5

Reports from all sources were in agreement that if the CIA had indeed been involved in the putsch, it had been so for two reasons: (11 the concern that if Algeria were granted its independence, communists would soon come to power, being those in the ranks of the National Liberation Front (NLF) which had been fighting the French Army in Algeria for several years-the legendary Battle of Algiers. It was with the NLF that de Gaulle was expected to negotiate a settlement; (2) the hope that it would precipitate the downfall of de Gaulle, an end desired because the French President was a major stumbling block to US aspirations concerning NATO: among other things, he refused to incorporate French troops into an integrated military command, and he opposed exclusive American control over the alliances nuclear weapons.

By all accounts, it appears that the rebel officers had counted on support from important military and civilian quarters in France to extend the rebellion to the home country and overthrow de Gaulle. Fanciful as this may sound, the fact remains that the French government took the possibility seriously-French Premier Michel Debre went on television to warn the nation of an imminent paratroop invasion of the Paris area and to urge mass opposition.6

Reaction in the American press to the allegations had an unmistakably motley quality. Washington Post columnist Marquis Childs said that the French were so