SAN SALVADOR – THE BRIGHT LIGHTS of San Salvador cut the cool night air. Large spotlights beamed from military bases along the perimeter. Closer to the center, more lights glowed atop the heavily fortified walls of the U.S. embassy. Dressed in black and armed with an M-16, one of my guerilla guides stopped along the […]
Original article can be found here. SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – A U.S. military advisor at a Salvadoran army base came under fire yesterday in an early morning rebel attack that killed three Salvadoran soldiers, but he apparently managed to escape unharmed. It is at least the fourth reported attack involving U.S. advisers since they […]
With an old straw hat, a soiled yellow shirt, ragged pants, and sandals, my weathered guide could easily have passed for the ignorant peasant he often claims to be. But he is far more sophisticated than he appears. Like most Salvadoran peasants in eastern Chalatenango province, he is intensely aware of the conflict at hand. […]
EASTERN CHALATENANGO, El Salvador – A helicopter gunship riddled the landscape with heavy machine-gun fire as a battalion of 200 elite army soldiers trailed on the ground behind. Two miles away, a patrol of six guerrillas kept track on the oncoming battalion, communicating…
Only last year,” said the U.S. official, was the army “willing to move more than nine to five. “I’d heard those same words two years before in the same room deep within the walls of the heavily guarded embassy in San Salvador. Transforming the Salvadoran armed forces into an effective counterinsurgency force has been a […]
Original story found here. MR. NIELDS: Well, you put in some blanks. You said “blank” in two places. There’s nothing classified about either of these words. One of them is CIA— LT. COL. NORTH: Well— MR. NIELDS: —and the other is Southern Command. “Delicate state of transition from CIA run op to Southern Command run […]
