New Admissions on Pentagon-CIO Intervention in Capture of Che Guevara

Pentagon - CIA Hand

in Guevara's Capture

Vol. 6, No. 16 April 26, 1968

STUDENTS at Columbia University in New York stage a cam- lence flared when police interfered with pickets at an office pus rally April 17 to demonstrate sympathy with Rudi Dutschke of the Springer press in Rockefeller Plaza. Students conducted and the German antiwar movement. Elsewhere in the city vio- similar actions in many countries. See article on page 369. Is U.S. Headed The Debate Over

for Another Daley’s Order to

Civil War? "Shoot to Kill’’

ANOTHER CIVIL WAR IN THE U.S.?

The feature article in the March issue of Esquire magazine is titled, "The Second Civil War." Its thesis is very simple: another "long, hot summer" is expected in the black ghettos of the United States and plans are well advanced to put down the blacks who engage in "riots."

The lengthy piece is written in sensational style for the readers of the slick, mass-circulation magazine, but it has been carefully documented by the author, Garry Wills, and should be read by all partisans of and participants in the black liberation struggle who want to know the real prevailing attitude of the powers that be toward the poor people in the U.S. and their problems.

The article was written before the assassination of Martin Luther King and the wave of rebellions which his tragic death touched off. The massive deployment of military force against those demonstrations simply underlined and confirmed some of the conclusions Wills drew on the basis of his evidence.

"If you live in any major city in America," he writes, "your home is mapped for defense from its own citzenry. There are elaborate arrangements being formed, codified, revised....All seventeen police divisions in New York City have separate plans, which outline such procedures as how té 'freeze' an area (stop the subways from entering it, etc.)....Staging areas, food sources, command centers are laid out, guarded, stocked with food. On the basis of this general planning, specific orders:.of the day are elaborated for expected trouble."

One example Wills gives is significant: "Police instructions for the Century Plaza demonstration in Los Angeles last summer ran to sixty-eight pages." That was the massive police attack on an antiwar demonstration of 20,000 during a visit by Lyndon Johnson.

These secret military plans, which are "jealously guarded," resemble operations in Vietnam. The National Guard, “following military procedure, uses classified code names for its programs. If you live in New York, the plan is Skyhawk, in Detroit, Sundown. In the District of Columbia, Goblet Glass....In Baltimore, it is Oscar."

The men in charge are conscious of the revolutionary potential they are determined to repress. Maryland's National Guard commander, Adjutant General Gelston, "a gracious Southerner," told Wills: "Riots like that in Detroit are not conventional police actions. This is guerrilla warfare; these people have been

learning the lesson of Vietnam....The

tactics against this kind of rioting

are more like city-clearing operations

than the old-style ‘crowd control' --

except that when clearing an enemy city

you don't worry much about who gets

killed on the other side."

General Gelston, who had a chance

to "clear" his own city of Baltimore

shortly after this interview, declared

himself opposed to "unnecessary" use of

guns and clubs. "You won't find a great-

er proponent of gas than I am," he said.

His motivation -- which is common

among ruling-class strategists of the

war against blacks -- did not involve

any considerations of humanity or the

just demands of black people. He cited

an incident in Cambridge where his men

used nausea-tear gas instead of bullets:

"And there were no dead people to embar-

rass us; none had any holes in them; no

kid two blocks away got hit with a stray

bullet."

In the name of so-called riot pre-

vention, police are going into the spy

business wholesale. Gelston told Esquire's

man that "Operation Oscar" is constantly

brought up to date. "Every week," he

said, "we have a meeting of intelligence

personnel from the Guard, city and county

police, the state troopers, the Baltimore

fire department and utilities companies

to coordinate our plan and stay on top

of what is happening."

Wills claims that police agree

that once an outburst reaches a certain

stage they can no longer stop it, but

they "know of a hundred riots squelched

for every one that gets out of hand and

into the papers."

"So every day intelligence reports

cross police chiefs' desks charting the

movement of all militant leaders, point-

ing to suspect meetings....The reliance

on informers, the placing of undercover

men, the meshing of intelligence net-

works -- this task holds first priority

in all cities where trouble is expected.

‘We want to riddle the black movement

with agents the way the American Commu-

nist Party is infiltrated with FBI men,'

one department told me."

The Esquire article exposes the

role of police "community relations" ef-

forts in this process:

"When old-line departments were

hesitant about adding Community Rela-

tions departments to the police force,

on the grounds that policemen should not

be social workers, an argument that

brought some of them around was the ob-

sn she aasatt. sg Sticsepabagteet? EY

servation that these agencies are good for intelligence probes....forces like those in Los Angeles and New York -- and even in Chicago -- have planted undercover agents among black nationalists, paid them through cover channels like the welfare office, given them one 'contact' only, and kept the secret of their police ties even from their own families.

The treatment of America's black communities as occupied "enemy" territory is not the apocalyptic vision of the future. Wills describes some scenes during the ghetto rebellion in Detroit last sunmmer that were not reported in the newspapers:

“Armored personnel carriers, twoton trucks, jeeps with gun mounts, five Commando armored cars, built for Vietnan, loaned to the city police, cruised through crowds....Skeptics point out that so few died -- forty-three by the official count. But I did not talk to a single participant in the shooting who believes that figure. 'We got the fortyfourth,' one Guardsman told me. 'We had been harassed by a sniper in a building for two nights, and were under orders not to go into the building after him....The first night we sprayed the building with machine-gun fire, but he was still up there firing at us. So, on the second night, the building "accidentally" caught fire....' Needless to say, the death went unreported.

"The fact that deaths were not reported can be proved, even from the official statistics. One of the known victims was shot by police who drew up no report of the incident. Two other men shot by police were left to lie in a store -other policemen found the bodies and arranged for their removal. Another was shot by a store owner, who left the scene and made no report....After the first deaths, few Guardsmen cared to report incidents. '....We just shot and forgot. When we killed a sniper or a looter, he either died in a burning building or we threw him into one. I saw at least six unreported deaths, and I was only on duty half the time in one little area.'

"A police observer told me he had heard informed estimates that ran as high as two or three hundred deaths, that the toll was certainly over a hundred. Many of those who disappeared would be unenployed, unregistered, not on welfare rolls."

The National Guard and police were not the only ones to take part in the killing:

"Establishments around the battle perimeter looked for anyone who was willing to carry a gun and protect the prenises....I talked to one private guard who

shot a Negro in the stomach for refusing

to raise his arms when he approached a

hotel."

Last fall, after the military at-

tack on Detroit's black community, the

city's police chief Girardin asked De-

troit's Common Council for nine million

dollars' worth of “antiriot" equipment.

This was to include armored vests, machine

guns, and battle cars.

The police departments of the coun-

try, in addition to the secret operation-

al schemes worked out with the army and

National Guard, have established a general

approach to outbursts in the black com

munities. "The police have an implicit

orthodoxy on the basic response to riots.

I met no police officials who doubted its

two fundamental tenets. First, that the

way to handle an incendiary situation is

to blanket it, instantly, with blue; just

pour the men in....The second tenet is

that, once the violence starts, there

should be no negotiating with ghetto lead-

ers." In other words, black people and

their leaders are to be regarded as en-

emies to be defeated militarily.

Police departments are setting up

special units whose main or only job will

be to suppress "riots." In Philadelphia,

police commissioner Rizzo has "a hundred

twenty-five trained sharpshooters" whose

job is to "go hunting" during rebellions

in the black community.

According to Wills, they are "now

working on anti-sniper tactics, learning

to shoot from helicopters; finding out

which men can shoot from heights, from

ladders; testing heavier guns and body

armor."

Rizzo told Wills, "We have to use

force just as the Army does. It's war....

We're becoming familiar with guerrilla

tactics, and we have the weapons to fight

a war. I consider myself an expert in

city warfare, and I don't know of any

problem we can't handle. We may have a

riot here, but it will be the shortest

-riot in history."

Police departments across the coun-

try are building up their arsenals for fu-~

ture battles in their war on black people.

One of the most popular items is chemical

Mace, a tear-gas spray put out by Smith

and Wesson, a division of Bangor Punta

Corporation. More than 3,000 police de-

partments already stock Mace. The spray

breaks down "the oily protective coating

of the skin to let the tear gas work

directly on the nerve ends all over the

face. This makes it feel as if one's face

is on fire....a man hit with the mixture

closes his eyes, puts his hands to his

face, and suffers a group of psychological

side effects -- disorientation, gasping,

immobilization."

A wide variety of novel weapons are on order by police along with more standard war materiel:

"The old. Roman shield has come back into use, to stop thrown bottles and bricks. Sound and light are being tested -- certain sound waves make men loose their bowels; other ‘curdling' sounds ._. drive men from their vicinity. Light daz-— zles. One man has even invented a 'nonlethal' flamethrower.

"The buying of war equipment is standard procedure now, limited only by the pinch of the city budget. Orders are being taken and filled for four armored cars; at least four others are in the development stage....One of the two vehicles already tested in riots was designed for the war in Vietnam....They are being surrealistically outfitted with all kinds of accessories -—- fire-fighting equipment, gas dispensers, foam to wash Molotov cocktails off them, electric grids to repel those who try to tip them over...."

The Cadillac Gage Company, which also produces the Commando police "tank," has developed a gas-operated rifle called the Stoner 63A. This gun "spews a highvelocity bullet, barely stabilized, that tears into things with a tumbling action,

almost like a dum-dum bullet (the kind

outlawed by the second Hague Conference).

I fired the gun in Warren, Michigan, and

was shown an inert block of clay into

which one bullet had been sent. I could

stick my fist in the hole. Imagine what

such a bullet will do to a man's head

itt it off), or to his chest (clean it

out).

"The government is still trying to

decide whether the Stoner gun should be

adopted in Vietnam. The Detroit police

have decided. They want to carry a hun-

dred of these out on the street next time

there is a riot."

From the facts provided by Wills,

it is clear that a sector of America's

ruling class believes that a "new civil

war" against the black people in the

United States is on the agenda. The con-

crete steps they have already taken show

that they are preparing to use violence --

violence on a scale not seen in America

since the Civil War.

Whether they succeed any better

than their predecessors, the Southern

slaveholders, in maintaining their rule

by such means is a question that will be

settled by the American people -- both

black and white.

* THE DEBATE OVER DALEY'S ORDER TO "SHOOT TO KILL"

i A curious point of difference is being debated in America's ruling circles. The topic is: "How can a rebellion in the ghettos be put down most effectively ~-through use of the 'hard cop' or the ‘soft cop' technique?"

The argument was precipitated by Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, a national figure in the Democratic machine who will be host at the national convention of the Democratic party opening in Chicago August 28, when he announced April 15 that he had issued orders to his police department to "shoot to kill" when they spot “arsonists."

The mayor told a press conference that he had ordered his cops to "shoot to maim or cripple" in the case of "looters."

When asked by a reporter what he had ordered his men to do about young looters, some of them only children, the mayor said, "You wouldn't want to shoot them." In this instance, the mayor suggested that it would be best to gas them with the new chemical Mace.

Thus in a "riot" situation in the second biggest city in the United States,

By Joseph Hansen

a Chicago cop, looking down the barrel of

his gun, is under orders to decide wheth-

er an individual is guilty or not guilty

of being an "arsonist" or a "looter"; and,

having weighed the evidence and reached a

due decision, to pass sentence and exe-

cute that sentence on the spot.

If his decision is "arsonist," he

will aim at the victim's head or heart or

other vital organ.

If his decision is "looter," he

will aim at a part of the victim's body

where a bullet will only maim or cripple,

without killing.

The cop is under orders to temper

Daley's justice only if the victim ap-

pears to be under 21, in which case he

will put down his rifle or pistol and

pick up a tear-gas gun loaded with Mace.

As they say in the Chicago Demo-

cratic machine, "Justice grows out of the

barrel of a gun."

In contrast to Daley's “hard cop"

technique of protecting capitalist proper-

ty rights, as against human rights, down

to a pair of shoes or a pack of Coca Cola,

MAYOR RICHARD J. ("SHOOT TO KILL") DALEY

Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York prefers the "soft cop" approach.

On April 16, Lindsay answered Daley at a press conference of his own. "We happen to think that protection of life, particularly innocent life," he said, "is more important than protecting property or anything else....We are not going to turn disorder into chaos through the unprincipled use of armed force. In short, we are not going to shoot children in New York City."

These carefully chosen words sound very fine. In fact they stand in considerable contrast to the record of violence compiled by New York's trigger-happy force in keeping ghetto dwellers "in their place." But then the mayor is one of the leading "noncandidates" for the presidential nomination in the Republican party and he has paid unusual attention to constructing the liberal image of a "man of the people."

As between Daley's "hard cop" position and Lindsay's "soft cop" stance, various nuances can be found and there has been some shifting of views.

Thus the powerful New York Times declared editorially April 7 during the upheaval that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "There can be no hesitation, no timidity in protecting endangered cities. Burners and looters must be repressed by a massive show of police force and arrests." Ten days later, the same paper shifted. "How hard it will be," said the editors, “to walk the razor's edge between too much force and too little in the police response to urban riots has been underscored by the ‘shoot to kill' orders against aronists just issued by Mayor Daley of Chicago." They declared that the Times shared "Mayor Lindsay's conviction that adoption of the Daley prescription here or anywhere else would 'turn disorder into chaos.'"

In face of the nationwide outcry over his infamous orders, Mayor Daley hinself said April 17 that he was "clarifying" what he had said. He had been "completely misunderstood," he complained. The order to his cops to shoot to kill applied, he specified emphatically, only to "obvious" arsonists.

There is more to the dispute, of course, than an exercise in semantics.

The ghetto explosions that swept the United States in protest over the assassination of Martin Luther King were so massive that the country's top ruling circles were afraid orf losing control. Until the. "dust settled," they felt that the wisest course was not to provoke the black communities any further.

Thus in many cities, the populace witnessed the extraordinary phenomenon -extraordinary for the United States -- of cops ignoring people walking out of stores with samples of American affluence.

"This was a change of strategy from the sometimes trigger-happy responses that turned Detroit, Newark and other communities into battlegrounds last summer," explained Fred P Graham, Washington correspondent of the New York Times, in an April 12 dispatch from America's capital.

He added that "probably the main reason for the decision by the police not

to use their guns to halt looting was that it might not have done any good and might have made things much worse."

In Trenton, the New Jersey National Guard was similarly restrained in contrast to the tactics the guardsmen were ordered to follow in Newark last summer. Maj. Gen. James F. Cantwell, the chief of staff of the New Jersey Department of Defense, told the press April 11: "One of the bitter lessons learned from Newark was that we can't treat our own citizens in the same military way you would operate against the Vietcong."

What "learned" the cops to decide on a tactic of restraint -- so against their entire past tradition and practice?

In a report from Washington in the April 14 New York Times, Ben A. Franklin indicated a strong reason in quoting an unidentified lawyer in the Justice Department on the policy change:

"'We say that this is a matter of effectiveness as well as saving lives. There really is no alternative, and the people who are saying, "Why didn't you shoot?" don't understand that yet.'

"He added, 'the other side has guns.'

"Most officials were reluctant to discuss the implication that the police restraint was dictated in part by a new tactical capability of some rioters to shoot back.

"But one Defense Department official was frank about it.

"'T would say,' he said, 'that it has taken a long time for some of us to recognize what the Black Power demonstrator means with his placard, "I Am a Man."'

"'(if you want to say that it took a lot of these people arming themselves to emphasize that they are human beings and cannot just be shot down even when they are terribly wrong, then you would be somewhere near the mark.'"

Another "informed official" in Washington told the Times reporter:

"'Mhat old stuff about "looters will be shot on sight" is for the history books and maybe the movies. It's for people who don't know how it is to be ina riot where, if you shoot, they shoot back and you've got a lot of dead cops and troops along with the dead citizens.

"'We have drawn back from all that the law allows because it is our duty to stop riots, not to kill rioters.'"

It is thus quite clear that such "restraint" as the police, national guard, and federal troops exercised in the days following the murder of Martin Luther King was dictated by purely tactical considerations. The forces of repression in the U.S. have more respect for the blacks since they began arming themselves.

But something else is happening in the United States that can only be judged as ominous. Layers of the petty bourgeoisie, particularly the small businessmen most directly affected by losses in the uprisings, are becoming frantic and even hysterical. As Fred P. Graham put it in the dispatch cited above, "Perhaps no aspect of the recent wave of riots has done as much to enrage and confuse the public as the picture of looters staggering under loads of booty past policemen.

"These scenes [on TV] have brought complaints from Congressmen, merchants, housewives, editorial writers and others that the big-city police forces have gone soft on criminals and Negroes."

The merchants in particular are screaming. They are also organizing. Two aims are uppermost at the moment in their efforts. They want the government to compensate them for their losses and to provide insurance against future losses. They want the police departments to "crack down" on the blacks and put them "back in their place."

Mayor Daley and types like him are responsive to this clamor, voice it, and seek to whip it up.

Other forces, too, have been given fresh vigor by the rising tension. A sector of big business stands to reap enticing new profits from it. The "law-enforcement market" is now around $2.5 billion a year and about 66 percent of the police forces in the United States are below the strength already authorized. The stocks of companies engaged in this field are running strong in Wall Street. The "crime protection" outfits, who furnish armed private guards, are also doing a boom business.

"Revenues of protection service companies alone," Leonard Sloane points out in the April 15 New York Times, “are said to be $1.2 billion a year..." The prospects point to even "better business” in the coming summer.

Many companies, shouting about the need to stiffen up the forces of "law and order" are hiring mercenary thugs to staff private forces of their own.

These developments must be weighed by the black liberation movement -~ and by the labor movement, too. The "soft cop -hard cop" game is directed against both.

DEMETRIO VALLEJO ENDS HUNGER STRIKE

Mexico City

Demetrio Vallejo ended his hunger strike April 10, twelve days after he began it as a protest against the refusal of the Mexican authorities to respond to his application for "confinamiento" after serving nine years of a fourteen-year prison sentence. The leader of the railway workers was sentenced on charges of violating Article 133 of the Federal Penal Code, a vague law barring activities involving "social dissolution" [disolucién social]. The courts interpreted Vallejo's leadership of a strike in 1959 as infringement of this law.

But under Mexican law, a prisoner is also entitled to being released from jail and "confined" to a specified town after serving a certain part of his sentence. Vallejo's hunger strike was intended to secure this right in his case.

There was no news from the prison of Santa Marta Acatitla as to Vallejo's physical condition after his long strike. His health in general was poor after the many years of imprisonment. It was not even known under what conditions Vallejo brought his fast to an end.

The press claimed that his family persuaded him. There were also ugly rumors of physical measures instituted by the prison authorities. Another rumor, evidently circulated by government officials, was that his appeal for "confinamiento" would be granted "but not under pressure."

Vallejo's case has been attracting more and more national attention. In the April 17 issue of Siempre, the most widely read political magazine in the country, the well-known critic and literary figure, Carlos Monsivais, devotes a full page to the case and to the plight of Mexico's mounting number of political prisoners. He holds that public indifference to this question is evidence of moral decay in Mexican society and the growth of political indifference.

Monsivais pays tribute to those in Mexico (students and other political prisoners) who have expressed solidarity with Vallejo by going on hunger strikes of longer or shorter duration. He maintains, however, that these can only be isolated actions. What is required is a rebirth of the nation. This should begin with condemnation of political repression and in particular the condemnation of the "criminal ‘application of the law of social dissolution."

Demetrio Vallejo's protest action has not yet had time to attract wide at-

DEMETRIO VALLEJO

tention outside of Mexico. Nevertheless,

the first indications of a response

abroad are encouraging. In the United

States, the U.S. Committee for Justice to

Latin-American Political Prisoners has

appealed for demonstrations of solidarity,

particularly the sending of messages to

Lic. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, the president of

Mexico [National Palace, Mexico City 1,

D.F., Mexico].

Dave Dellinger, who is cochairman

of the committee, sent a letter, asking

the president "in the name of humane

treatment" to "order an immediate answer

to Vallejo's petition....Vallejo's crime

was to have led workers in a strike and

surely nine years of his life behind bars

is sufficient punishment."

OLaTIVA OLMLEWaa

DEMETRIO VALLEJO

NEW ADMISSIONS ON PENTAGON-CIA INVOLVEMENT IN CAPTURE OF CHE GUEVARA

Writing from La Paz in an "exclusive" which was published in the April 11 Los Angeles Times from the Manchester Guardian, Richard Gott reveals new facts about the direct role played by the Pentagon and the CIA in suppressing the guerrilla movement headed by Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia.

When Guevara was assassinated last October 9, all the official spokesmen of the U.S. maintained that the American military involvement did not go beyond the “normal military assistance program" begun in 1958. It was categorically denied that any Americans were engaged in field operations.

Richard Gott quotes what an unidentified "U.S. military spokesman" told him recently in La Paz about this official lie. "Our whole point was to play down our role. Of course, if President René Barrientos' office chooses to put out statements saying that it was all done by the Bolivians, that's his affair. But we know what happened, and some of us wouldn't mind some credit for it. We only do what we're asked to, of course, but we do make suggestions."

The "suggestions" began a year ago, in March, after a local newspaper announced that guerrillas were operating in the Santa Cruz area. "Immediately, on March 11, four members of the U.S. military mission in Bolivia, accompanied by a Cuban exile working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and using the name of Fernandez, flew to Santa Cruz to examine the reality of this report on the spot."

"At the same time," continues Gott, "the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Gen. Alfredo Ovando, was in Washington discussing the guerrilla problem at the Pentagon. It was agreed by both the Bolivians and the Americans that as little publicity as possible should be given to the guerrilla outbreak, for fear of stirring up unrest not only in Bolivia but in the rest of the continent as well."

The guerrillas became the subject of world headlines, however, with the first major clash on March 23. "The army had known for some time that Guevara was with the guerrillas, and this information was confirmed by three deserters who left the guerrillas in the middle of March bringing photographs with them. Subsequently they led the army to the guerrilla encampment."

When Ovando returned from Washington to La Paz, he tried to play the matter down in accordance with the agreement reached with the Pentagon. But Barrientos

was already talking about both the guer-

rillas and the presence of Che Guevara.

"After Ovando's return Barrientos changed

his tune and said he thought Guevara was

dead."

The Pentagon, however, was already

putting its "emergency plans" into effect.

"A high~level American team flew down

early in April to La Paz to examine Bo-

livian requirements, and in the middle of

the month the head of the military mis-

sion, Col. Joseph P. Rice, and Maj. Ro-

bert (Pappy) Shelton arrived in Santa

Cruz. On April 19 it was announced that

antiguerrilla training would begin at

La Esperanza, with Maj. Shelton in charge.

Appropriately enough, those who hastened

to offer their lands for training pur-

poses were those who had most benefited

from the U.S. Agency for International

Development program in the area."

With 600 raw Bolivian recruits,

some 20 members of the U.S. Special

Forces, “and an untold number of CIA-