The rebels were reduced to little more than sniping attacks on American soldiers, for which they paid a heavy price. US forces blasted apart a building in downtown Santo Domingo from which sniper fire was coming; advancing into a constitutionalist zone, again after sniper fire, they killed some 67 rebels and bystanders; American paratroops were seen firing at rebels who were retreating, and the constitutionalists Minister of justice and Police was reported to have been killed by United States machine-gun fire as he attempted to capture the empty Presidential Palace in midtown with a squad of his troops. 35

When the Johnson administration was not denying such actions outright, it was claiming that they were either contrary to orders, individual indiscretions , or isolated incidents .

A covert team of Green Berets arrived at one point to help ensure the safety of American civilians. But when they discovered that some of the Americans were assisting rebel forces, their main objective shifted from protecting their fellow countrymen to spying on them 36

The Green Berets also found the time to lay the groundwork for the assassination of one of the leading constitutionalist leaders, Col. Francisco Caamano. The plot was canceled at the last moment due to the excessive risk involved.37

Another group of American visitors was that of some leaders of the National Student Association, ostensibly come to the Dominican Republic to talk with their counterparts about educational matters, but actually there at the behest of the CIA to gather information on local students. This was still two years before the expose of the long-lasting relationship between the CIA and the prominent student organization.38

Throughout this period, the communication guns of the US government were aimed at the people of the United States, the Dominican Republic and the world to convince them that communists were a dominant element amongst the constitutionalists, that they represented a threat to take over the movement, or that they had already taken it over, with frightening consequences for all concerned.

At various times the Johnson administration released lists of communists and Castroites in the ranks of the rebels. These lists totaled 53 or 58 or 77 names and became a cause celebre as well as an object of media ridicule. Besides the laughably small numbers involved (in a rebellion of tens of thousands with numerous leaders), several of those on the lists, it turned out, were in prison while others were out of the country.

The American Embassy in Santo Domingo assured reporters that if they went to rebel headquarters, they would see the named communists in the flesh. The newspeople went and looked but could find no identifiable communists (however one identifies a communist). Subsequently, administration officials explained that the reason that newspeople had seen such little evidence of communist activity was that the American landings had scared the Reds into hiding.

Eventually, American officials admitted their doubt that they could prove that communists had gained control of the constitutionalists, although President Johnson had pressed the CIA and FBI into an intensive search for evidence. (A CIA cable to Washington on 25 April reported that the Communist Party [Partido Socialista Dominicano] had been unaware of the coup attempt .)39

Former CIA officer Philip Agee, stationed in Uruguay at the time, wrote later that the new password at his station became Fifty-eight trained communists . The proper reply was Ten thousand marines .40

The embassy, and Ambassador Bennett in particular, poured forth a rising stream of hysterical rumors, atrocity stories, and alarmist reports 41 about the rebels,

reminiscent of the Bolshevik horror stories which had filled the pages of the American press following the Russian Revolution: embassies being ransacked ... Castroite-style mass executions ... rebels parading in the streets with the heads of their victims on poles ...

President Johnson made reference to the atrocities in public statements, but none of the stories were ever proven, for none were true; no one ever located any of the many headless Dominicans; and American officials, in a monument to chutzpah, later denounced the press for reporting such unverified rumors.42

Meanwhile, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the US Information Agency were conducting their own intensive propaganda campaign in the Dominican Republic to give credence to the American position and discredit Dominican groups opposed to it. Experts on psychological warfare arrived to ply their trade, radio stations and newspapers were covertly set up, rebel radio stations jammed, leaflets airdropped in the countryside. The USIA also secretly subsidized the publication of pro-administration material aimed for distribution in the United States.43

From all the wild charges and the frequent contradictory statements made by American officials, the expression credibility gap entered the American popular language and soon came to haunt the Johnson presidency.44

Historian Richard Barnet has noted another interesting side to the American propaganda effort:

To justify the intervention, which had aroused violent opposition from traditional friends of the United States because of its crudeness and the swathe of lies in which it was wrapped ... [Washington] began a direct assault on the concept of non-intervention, the rhetorical foundation stone of Latin-American policy enshrined in numerous treaties, declarations, and Pan-American Day speeches ... Under Secretary Thomas Mann told newspaper correspondents that the OAS and UN charters were drawn up in 19th-century terms ... Averell Harriman remarked in Montevideo that the principle of non-intervention was becoming obsolete . By a vote of 315 to 52 the House of Representatives passed a resolution ... justifying the unilateral use of force on foreign territory by any nation which considers itself threatened by international communism, directly or indirectly. ... The President [declared in a speech]: The first reality is that old concepts and old labels are largely obsolete. In todays world, with enemies of freedom talking about Wars of national liberation, the old distinction between Civil War and International War has already lost much of its meaning ... The moment of decision must become the moment of action.

This is the essence of the Johnson Doctrine, wrote Barnet, a virtually unlimited claim of legitimacy for armed intervention in civil strife. 45

The last American troops did not leave the Dominican Republic until September 1966. The interim period witnessed a succession of ceasefires, broken truces, and protracted negotiations under provisional governments.

In June 1966, elections were held in which Joaquin Balaguer defeated Juan Bosch by a surprisingly large margin. Yet, it was not all that surprising. For five long years the people of the Dominican Republic had lived under a cloud of chaos and violence. The experience bad instilled in them a deep longing for a return to normalcy , to order, without foreign intervention, without soldiers patrolling their streets, without curfews, tear gas and bloodshed. With the US Army still very much in evidence and the American distaste for Bosch well known ... with the ubiquitous American propaganda hammering home fear of The Red Menace and associating the constitutionalists, and thus Bosch, with communism ... with the Dominican military still

largely Trujillista in personnel and ideology ... a victory for Bosch would be seen by many voters as a danger that all the horrors would rain down upon their heads once more. Bosch, who had returned several months prior to the election, was himself so fearful for his personal safety that he never left his home during the campaign.

Joaquin Balaguer remained in office for the next 12 years, ruling his people in the grand Latin American style: The rich became richer and the poor had babies, hungry babies; democracy remained an alien concept; the police and military regularly kidnapped, tortured and murdered opponents of the government and terrorized union organizers.46

But the man was not, personally, the monster that Trujillo was. There was relative calm and peace. No communist threat hovered over the land. The pot was sweetened for foreign investors, and American corporations moved in with big bucks. There was stability and order. And the men who ran the United States looked and were satisfied. Perhaps some of them had come to the realization that the anti-communist liberal government was an impossible ideal; for any movement seeking genuine democracy and social reform would invariably attract individuals whom the United States would invariably categorize as communist ; the United States would then feel driven to discredit, subvert and eventually overturn the movement. A Catch 22.

30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s

The unforgivable revolution

The existence of a revolutionary socialist government with growing ties to the Soviet Union only 90 miles away, insisted the United States Government, was a situation which no self-respecting superpower should tolerate, and in 1961 it undertook an invasion of Cuba.

But less than 50 miles from the Soviet Union sat Pakistan, a close ally of the United States, a member since 1955 of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created anti-communist alliance. On the very border of the Soviet Union was Iran, an even closer ally of the United States, with its relentless electronic listening posts, aerial surveillance, and infiltration into Russian territory by American agents. And alongside Iran, also bordering the Soviet Union, was Turkey, a member of the Russians mortal enemy, NATO, since 1951.

In 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis , Washington, seemingly in a state of near-panic, informed the world that the Russians were installing offensive missiles in Cuba. The US promptly instituted a quarantine of the island-a powerful show of naval and marine forces in the Caribbean would stop and search all vessels heading towards Cuba; any found to contain military cargo would be forced to turn back.

The United States, however, had missiles and bomber bases already in place in Turkey and other missiles in Western Europe pointed toward the Soviet Union. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev later wrote:

The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you; wed be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine. ... After all, the United States had no moral or legal quarrel with us. We hadnt given the Cubans anything more than the Americans were giving to their allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the