said. I am sure Brazil is not going to forget her obligations ... It is committed. It is a fact. Brazil can uncommit itself if it wants. 12 in early 1961, shortly after Quadros took office, he was visited by Adolf Berle, Jr., President Kennedys adviser on Latin American affairs and formerly ambassador to Brazil. Berle had come as Kennedys special envoy to solicit Quadross backing for the impending Bay of Pigs invasion. Ambassador Cabot was present and some years later described the meeting to author Peter Bell. Bell has written:

Ambassador Cabot remembers a stormy conversation in which Berle stated the United States had $300 million in reserve for Brazil and in effect offered it as a bribe for Brazilian cooperation ... Quadros became visibly irritated after Berle refused to heed his third no . No Brazilian official was at the airport the next day to see the envoy off.13

Quadros, who had been elected by a record margin, was, like Goularr, accused of seeking to set up a dictatorship because he sought to put teeth into measures unpopular with the oligarchy, the military, and/or the United States, as well as pursuing a pro-communist foreign policy. After but seven months in office he suddenly resigned, reportedly under military pressure, if not outright threat. In his letter of resignation, he blamed his predicament on reactionaries and the ambitions of groups of individuals, some of whom are foreigners ... the terrible forces that arose against me. 14

A few months later, Quadros reappeared, to deliver a speech in which he named Berle, Cabot, and US Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon as being among those who had contributed to his downfall. Dillon, he said, sought to mix foreign policy with Brazils needs for foreign credits.15 (Both Berle and Cabot had been advocates of the 1954 overthrow of Guatemalan President Arbenz, whose sins, in Washingtons eyes, were much the same as those Goulart was now guilty of.)16 At the same time, Quadros announced his intention to lead a peoples crusade against the reactionaries, the corrupt and the Communists .17

As Quadross vice president, Goulart succeeded to the presidency in August 1961 despite a virtual coup and civil war initiated by segments of the military to block him because he was seen as some sort of dangerous radical. Only the intervention of loyalist military units and other supporters of the constitutional process allowed Goulart to take office.18 The military opposition to Goulart arose, it should be noted, before he had the opportunity to exhibit his alleged tendencies toward dictatorship. Indeed, as early as 1954, the military had demonstrated its antipathy toward him by forcing President Vargas to fire him from his position as Minister of Labor.19 The American doubts about Goulart also predated his presidency. In 1960, when Goulart was elected vice president, concern at the State Department and the Pentagon turned to panic according to an American official who served in Brazil.20

Goulart tried to continue Quadross independent foreign policy. His government went ahead with resumption of relations with socialist countries, and at a meeting of the Organization of American States in December 1961 Brazil abstained on a vote to hold a special session aimed at discussing the Cuban problem , and stood strongly opposed to sanctions against the Castro government.21 A few months later, speaking before the US Congress, Goulart affirmed Brazils right to take its own stand on some of the cold-war issues. He declared that Brazil identified itself with the democratic principles which unite the peoples of the West , but was not part of any politico-military bloc .22

Time magazine, in common with most US media, had (has) a difficult time understanding the concept and practice of independence amongst Americas allies. In November 1961, the magazine wrote that Brazils domestic politics were confused and

that the country was also adrift in foreign affairs. Goulart is trying to play the old Quadros game of international independence, which means wooing the East while panhandling from the West. Time was critical of Goulart in that he had sought an invitation to visit Washington and on the same day he received it he called in Communist Polands visiting Foreign Minister, Adam Rapacki, [and] awarded him the Order of the Southern Cross-the same decoration that Quadros hung on Cubas Marxist mastermind, Che Guevara .23

Former Time editor and Latin America correspondent, John Gerassi, commented that every visiting foreign dignitary received this medal, the Cruzeiro do Sul, as part of protocol. He added:

Apparently Time thinks that any President who wants to visit us must necessarily hate our enemies as a consequence, and is confused whenever this does not occur. But, of course, Time magazine is so unused to the word independent that an independent foreign policy must be very confusing indeed. In South America, where everyone would like to follow an independent foreign policy but where only Brazil has, at times, the courage, no one was confused.24

Goulart, a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin around his neck, was no more a communist than was Quadros, and he strongly supported the United Stares during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. He offered Ambassador Gordon a toast To the Yankee Victory! ,25 perhaps unaware that only three weeks earlier, during federal and state elections in Brazil, CIA money had been liberally expended in support of anti-Goulart candidates. Former CIA officer Philip Agee has stated that the Agency spent between 12 and 20 million dollars on behalf of hundreds of candidates.26 Lincoln Gordon says the funding came to no more than 5 million.27

In addition to the direct campaign contributions, the CIA dipped into its bag of dirty tricks to torment the campaigns of leftist candidates.28 At the same time, the Agency for International Development (AID), at the express request of President Kennedy, was allocating monies to projects aimed at benefiting chosen gubernatorial candidates.29 (While Goulart was president, no new US economic assistance was given to the central government, while regional assistance was provided on a markedly ideological basis. When the military took power, this pattern was sharply altered.)30

Agee adds that the CIA carried out a consistent propaganda campaign against Goulart which dated from at least the 1962 election operation and which included the financing of mass urban demonstrations, proving the old themes of God, country, family and liberty to be as effective as ever in undermining a government.31

CIA money also found its way to a chain of right-wing newspapers, Diarias Associades, to promote anti-communism; for the distribution of 50 thousand books of similar politics to high school and college students; and for the formation of womens groups with their special Latin mothers emphasis on the godlessness of the communist enemy. The women and other CIA operatives also went into the rumor-mongering business, spreading stories about outrages Goulart and his cronies were supposed to be planning, such as altering the constitution so as to extend his term, and gossip about Goulart being a cuckold and a wife-beater.32

All this to overthrow a man who, in April 1962, had received a ticker-tape parade in New York City, was warmly welcomed at the White House by President Kennedy, and had addressed a joint session of Congress.

The intraservice confrontation which had attended Goularts accession to power apparently kept a rein on coup-minded officers until 1963. In March of that year the CIA informed Washington, but not Goulart, of a plot by conservative officers.33 During the course of the following year, the plots thickened. Brazilian military officers could not abide by Goularts attempts at populist social reforms, though his program was timid, his rhetoric generally mild, and his actions seldom matched either. (He himself pointed out that Genera! Douglas MacArthur had carried out a more radical distribution of land in Japan after the Second World War than anything planned by the Brazilian Government.) The military men were particularly incensed at Goularts support of a weakening of military discipline and his attempts to build up a following among noncommissioned officers.34 This the president was genuinely serious about because of his paranoia about a coup.

Goularts wooing of NCOs and his appeals to the population over the heads of a hostile Congress and state governors (something President Reagan later did on several occasions) were the kind of tactics his enemies labeled as dictatorial.

In early 1964, disclosed Fortune magazine after the coup, an emissary was sent by some of the military plotters to ask U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon what the U.S. position would be if civil war broke out . The emissary reported back that Gordon was cautious and diplomatic, but he left the impression that if the [plotters] could hold out for forty-eight hours they would get U.S. recognition and help. 35

The primary American contact with the conspirators was Defense Attache Vernon Walters who arrived in Brazil after having been apprised that President Kennedy would not be averse to the overthrow of Joao Goulart/6 Walters, who later became Deputy Director of the CIA, had an intimacy with leading Brazilian military officers, particularly General Castelo Branco, going back to World War II when Walters had served as interpreter for the Brazilian Expeditionary Force then fighting in Italy with the Allies. Brazil was the only Latin American country to send ground combat troops to the war, and it allowed the United States to build huge aircraft staging bases on its territory.37 The relationship between US and Brazilian officers was continued and enhanced after the war by the creation of the Higher War College (Escola Superior de Guerra) in Rio de Janeiro in 1949. Latin America historian Thomas E. Skidmore has observed:

Under the U.S.-Brazilian military agreements of the early 1950s, the U.S. Army received exclusive rights to render assistance in the organization and operation of the college, which had been modeled on the National War College in Washington. In view of the fact that the Brazilian War College became a rallying point for leading military opponents of civilian populist politicians, it would be worm examining the extent to which the strongly anti-Communist ideology-bordering on an anti-political attitude-(of certain officers) was reinforced (or moderated?) by their frequent contacts with United States officers.38

There was, moreover, the ongoing US Military Assistance Program, which Ambassador Gordon described as a major vehicle for establishing close relationships with personnel of the armed forces and a highly important factor in influencing [the Brazilian] military to be pro-US. 39

A week before the coup, Castelo Branco, who emerged as the leader of the conspirators, gave Walters a copy of a paper he had written which was in effect a justification for a military coup, another variation on the theme of upholding the constitution by preventing Goulart from instituting a dictatorship.40