The Defense Department denies offering instruction in abusive interrogation techniques. But U.S. Army Special Forces advisers say they trained select Salvadoran soldiers in what they call “negative-incentive” methods.
The curfew broke after dawn. But the massacre took place in the middle of the night. The high command of the Salvadoran armed forces, who were receiving a million dollars a day in U.S. aid, made their decision near midnight. They had been on the defensive over the past…
EL SALVADOR’S leftist guerrilla movement began moving away from Marxism-Leninism several years before the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, they and independent analysts say. Since the FMLN was already…
Original story can be found here. “I DON’T THINK THEY HAVE the capability,” said a U.S. Embassy official as he sipped coffee one Saturday morning in the tropical setting of his patio. I asked him if he thought rumors of an upcoming rebel offensive were true. “We’ve heard some things,” he said. “But ESAF’s [El […]
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…
The grandmother cupped her palm under Goyito’s chin and pressed down hard with her fingers on his upper jaw. “Look, this is how we did it,” she said, demonstrating how she kept the baby from crying when government troops passed by. “They wanted me to kill…
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 […]
