Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation-Building in the American Century

III. The Cold War on the Periphery: Police Training and the Hunt for Subversives in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East

Part III lbe Cold War on the Periphery Police Training and the Hunt for Subversives in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East There are two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible. The first is the government that citizens read about in their newspapers and children study about in their civics class. The second is the interlocking , hidden machinery that carries out the policies of the United States in the Cold War. The second invisible government gathers intelligence, conducts espionage, and plans and executes secret operations all over the globe. - DAVID WISE and THOMAS B. Ross, The Invisible Government, 1964 In 1974, CIA operative Philip Agee published an expose, Inside the Company, which rocked the Americanforeign policy establishment. The book detailed Agees role in funneling money to centrist, anticommunist candidates in Ecuador and Uruguay, in infiltrating labor unions, and in collaborating with the military and secret police through USAIDs Public Safety Division to gain information on leftist groups and contribute to their dismantling. Agee concluded: "American capitalism , based on its exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, cannot survive withoutforce- a secret policeforce. ... Now more than ever, exposure ofCIA methods could help American people understand how we got into Vietnam and how our other Vietnams are germinating wherever the CIA is at work." In Agees view, the Cold War provided an important pretext for the United States to expand its hegemony, as the "threat" ofcommunism could be invoked to drum up supportfor intervention. The methods he outlined were employed worldwide , with police training serving as a key means ofprojecting American power. Staffed by true believers in the American mission, the OPS and its predecessors worked to penetrate and professionalize the internal security apparatus ofclient regimes asfar afield as Africa and the Middle East. CIA agents used the programs to establish police and intelligence liaisons and contributed to the development of mass surveillance states known for terrorizing their own citizens. After a visit to the Guatemalan police archives, filled with thousands of dossiers on political activists, detailed organizational charts, and information on 163 torture victims and police spies, researcher Kate Doyle commented: "The National Police weren't interested in fighting crime and the files were not organized to support prosecutions. What was important was the hunt for subversives." This emphasis bore the unmistakable stamp ofthe American trainingprograms, which were designed to expand police intelligence and counterinsurgency capabilities. The architects ofus.policy were obsessed with countering radical nationalist and guerrilla movements worldwide, the central purpose behind the 1290-d program and the OPS. The huntfor subversives was not unique to Guatemala but part ofa global initiative, which spawned myriad abuses and wrought much havoc across the so-called Third World. 164 The Cold War on the Periphery ...