************* ARTICLE II ************************
CHIAPAS: AN INTELLIGENCE FIASCO OR COVERUP?
by DOLIA ESTVEZ
On January 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, Mexicans were supposed to
wake up to the wealth and comfort of North America; instead, they
heard the sound of Central American-style gunfire.
For decades during the Cold War, the CIA portrayed Mexico as
being as important to U.S. strategic interests as the Soviet Union.
Nonetheless, despite numerous warning signals, the Agency failed
to warn of a potentially major threat to political stability in
Washington's backyard.
The rebellion by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in
the southern state of Chiapas, has triggered a political earthquake in
Mexico. The foundations of the Mexican political system, which
has given the U.S. a largely stable neighbor for the past 64 years,
have been shaken as never before. Currently Mexico can be defined
with only one word: uncertainty.
For the first time since 1929, the results of the Mexican
presidential election are in doubt. Until now, the selection of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate by the incumbent
president was tantamount to being elected. Now, the possibility
exists that the PRI could lose Mexico's highest public office. If,
before Chiapas, the government felt some internal and external
pressure to end vote fraud practices, after the uprising, the mood of
the population is such that nothing short of clean and credible
elections will be tolerated. NAFTA strengthened Washington's
views that the southern neighbor must be seen as key to U.S.
national security.
But if its public statements are true, the New Year's uprising took
Washington by surprise and neither the president nor Congress was
alerted ahead of time to the level of organized armed opposition in
Mexico's second poorest state.
Failure or a coverup? asked Congress. In an open hearing with CIA
head James Woolsey on January 25, members of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence suggested the latter. " We did not get a
prediction of potential political unrest in Chiapas after the treaty was
approved. No prediction was made," Sen. Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.),
told Woolsey in a recriminating tone. Woolsey made no comment.
In a closed-door session the same day, CIA officials admitted an
intelligence failure of omission. They denied, however, that the CIA
had covered up information which might have provided useful
ammunition for opponents of NAFTA on both the left and the right.
The CIA had a little bit of information, they knew there were some
rebels, they knew there were guns, but they did not realize that it
[Chiapas] was as significant as it turned out to be, said Senate
Intelligence Committee Chair Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.).1
Referring to the failure of the CIA to warn about an armed
insurgency in Chiapas; DeConcini reported, We asked if the
NAFTA debate had been a factor, and there was no evidence of
that, I cannot guarantee it, but that is what they said. He declined
to say how early the CIA Station in Mexico City was aware of the
problem.
The Arizona Democrat said that in retrospect the Agency wished it
had spent more time investigating the little that they knew, so that
the U.S. would have been better prepared, adding that he was
satisfied with the CIA's admissions that they had underestimated the
significance of the information they did have. Congressional sources
reported that the CIA group included Brian Latell, national
intelligence officer for Latin America. Latell, a career CIA
intelligence analyst since 1962, formerly with the CIA's National
Intelligence Council, became notorious in 1984 when CIA director
William Casey assigned him to write a draft estimate predicting the
collapse of the Mexican political system.2 John Horton, then
national intelligence officer for Latin America, and former Chief of
Station in Mexico City (1969-71), resigned when Casey rewrote the
estimate on potential instability in Mexico on the basis of Latell's
draft. Horton believed there were no facts to substantiate Latell's
doomsday scenario. *3
Two years later, while on leave from the NIC, Latell authored an
extensive analysis updating his earlier assessment. Unless the
country's leaders adopt bold new initiatives to decentralize and
democratize the rigid, authoritarian political structure, the odds will
continue to rise that the system will rupture violently, he wrote. *4
Eight years later, Chiapas turned Latell's words into prophesy.
Asked whether the New Year's uprising vindicated Casey's decision
to have his Mexican intelligence estimate rewritten by Latell,
Horton responded: No, it [Latell's estimate] did not say anything
about Chiapas; the evidence that was presented at the time had
nothing to do with this. *5
INCREASED CIA ROLE
DeConcini tried to play down the CIA's role in Mexico, arguing
that it is a friendly country. With the end of the Cold War, the
departments of State, Commerce and Agriculture, and the
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), have largely replaced
the CIA as collectors of intelligence in Mexico, he said, implying
that even the number of CIA officials in the Agency's Station at the
U.S. Embassy in Mexico City one of the world's largest has
diminished considerably.
During the past few years, NGOs have dramatically increased their
role in Mexico's internal political affairs. In testimony before the
House Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs, February 2,
Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Alexander
F. Watson, reported that in the first week after the uprising, 140
non-governmental human rights organizations sent personnel to
Chiapas to assess the situation. Most of the groups were from the
U.S. In 1993, the quasi-governmental National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) created by Congress in 1983 to do publicly what
the CIA does secretly granted $420,000 to five Mexican civic
groups active in the electoral arena and the field of human rights.
The amount is the largest ever given to Mexico, a nation that did not
appear among the major NED recipients until 1992, when the
Endowment became active financing Mexican groups advocating
clean elections. In 1992, NED grants to Mexico totaled $381,779.
*6
While the increased presence of U.S. private and
quasi-governmental groups is hard to deny, DeConcini's assertions
about the CIA's lessened role in Mexico are debatable. The situation
in Chiapas, will no doubt provoke a stronger CIA role in Mexico
while NAFTA makes U.S. intervention, in many forms, by many
actors, more compelling then ever.
I really think it is a serious problem for the United States, said
Rep. Dan Glickman (D-Kan.), chair of the House Select Intelligence
Committee. In the aftermath of the Chiapas rebellion, he added, he
was concerned that U.S. intelligence agencies' analysis of Mexico's
political stability may be a little Pollyanna-ish. *7 He said he would
encourage the CIA to focus more attention on Mexico.
Some analysts predict that the CIA will launch Cold War- style
covert operations against the rebels. On the eve of the initiation of
the peace talks between the Zapatistas and the government,
February 21, Ralph McGehee, who spent 14 years overseas as a
CIA operations officer, said that in this sort of negotiations you
always have technical operations against the rebels to gather
information on the leadership and members, and their negotiating
position. *8
He suggested that the Agency might deploy a close support team to
the area, to gather information on the guerrilla leadership, members
and negotiating position and give it to the Mexican government.
JANUARY 1 NOT FIRST CHIAPAS COMBAT
If the CIA was surprised at the New Year's Day insurrection, it was
not from lack of warning signs. The first Mexican press reports on
guerrilla training camps in Chiapas appeared in May 1993, around
the time Cardinal Juan Jes#s Posadas was killed by drug traffickers
in Guadalajara, Mexico.
On May 23, after it lost two soldiers in a shootout in the Chiapas
jungle between regular troops and guerrillas, the Mexican army
launched an operation involving hundreds of soldiers in helicopters
and trucks. They searched the tropical forests of southern Mexico
for people suspected of guerrilla attacks against the state forces.
Residents and those arrested in the operations told reporters that
soldiers questioned them about guerrilla activity. All the major
Mexican dailies and various European media carried the news, but
reporting in the U.S. was virtually non-existent.
At the time, NAFTA was in trouble, as a result of the new Clinton
administration's decision to postpone submitting the controversial
trade pact to Congress until side agreements on environmental and
labor issues were completed.
The assassination of the cardinal did not help, since it prompted a
debate about the Colombianization of Mexico that is, the potential
for drug cartels to immerse Mexico in the kind of violent anarchy
that Colombia has experienced since the mid-1980s. *9
If the CIA's little information on Chiapas had then become an open
issue, and news of guerrilla activity in southern Mexico had been
printed on the front pages of major U.S. papers, NAFTA might
have been defeated. Not only did the CIA suppress the little that
they claimed to have known about Chiapas, but around the months
the Zapatista rebels were preparing their New Year's offensive, the
Agency was part of the uphill effort to persuade Congress to ratify
NAFTA. In a closed-door meeting with members of the House
Select Committee on Intelligence shortly before the November 17,
1993, NAFTA vote, Brian Latell warned that a defeat of the trade
agreement would bring undesirable political and economic
consequences inside Mexico. A pro-NAFTA Democrat, present at
the session, told reporters afterwards that the briefing by the CIA
helped many members to overcome fears about NAFTA. *10
A former CIA station chief in Mexico described Latell as one of the
new breed of CIA operatives more interested in affecting policy
than providing objective information, and said that Latell works
very closely with National Security Council chief Anthony Lake to
lobby Congress on sensitive issues. *11
U.S. SENDS TEAM TO CHIAPAS
Twenty-four hours after the rebels declared war on the Mexican
central government, the State Department sent a team to the
southern Mexican state but refused to release the names or
affiliations of the five members. We're not familiar with the group,
but the Embassy Ambassador Jim Jones, specifically has dispatched
a five-person team yesterday to go to the state capital Tuxtla
Gutirrez and the town of San Crist"bal de las Casas, said State
Department Spokesperson Mike McCurry on January 3. ...[T]hey
will be assessing the situation, also checking the status of American
citizens who are in the vicinity.
According to Mexican sources, under the pretext of interviewing
tourists, the U.S. team gained broad access even into the most remote
corners of Chiapas. The extensive reports on what they saw and heard
were cabled back to the State Department and, it is believed, to CIA
headquarters. The information, including the Mexican army's repressive
response during the first days of the conflict, the level of support for
the rebels, and a status report on human rights have remained
classified. Congressional leaders with jurisdiction over Mexico have
asked for the information, arguing that if the reports revealed
violations of human rights by Mexican security forces, the situation
could become another El Mozote fiasco, referring to the massacre by the
Salvadoran Armed Forces in 1981 which Reagan's State Department covered
up to protect its cozy relationship with the Salvadoran government.
The concern seems justified. Human rights reports by Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch/Americas (formerly Americas Watch)
have denounced serious violations, including extrajudicial executions,
disappearances, and arbitrary arrests by the Mexican army. *12
Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatista military strategist, cautioned
that the violation of human rights was not the policy of the Mexican
army...[C]ertain sectors of the Armed Forces fought with military
honor avoiding harm to the civilian population. *13
But the State Department is not sharing its information, even
though there is reason to believe that its reports not only document
the violations, but will clarify whether the Mexican army used
American helicopters, on loan from the U.S. for the war on drugs,
in combat against the rebels. Ambassador Jones stated that Mexico
did not violate any agreement by using the helicopters since they
were deployed for logistics, not combat. *14
Some of the contents of the classified reports were leaked when
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, James R. Jones, a political appointee
who used to be the CEO of the American Stock Exchange, briefed
Congress on Chiapas.
In classified meetings with members of Congress the week of
January 24, when asked about the origins of the arms that the
Zapatistas are bearing, Jones responded that some of them came
from Cuba and that at least one of the leaders of the rebellion was
known to be Cuban. *15
According to some sources close to the meeting, Jones also said
that he was optimistic about the situation and believed that
everything was under control. And although he admitted that there
were some regional focuses with similar socioeconomic conditions,
he ruled out the spread of the armed conflict. *16 Jones' statements
contradicted the State Department's official position. I don't think
we have any evidence that any external actors were involved in what
happened in Chiapas. They may be, but we do not have any
evidence of that and I haven't heard people talking too much about
that anymore, said Alexander F. Watson, assistant secretary of state
for inter-American affairs. *17
Havana's reaction did not wait. We are used to this type of
statement, said Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, when
asked about Jones' allegations. For the Americans, it is important to
discredit the Cuban Revolution and therefore they cooked up the
most blatant lies and slanders. *18
Julieta Noyes, deputy press attache in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico,
denied that Jones had ever implied the Cubans were behind the
Zapatistas. She admitted, however, that Jones said one rifle had a
registration number that indicated that it went through Cuba. *19
REASSESSING U.S.-MEXICAN RELATIONS
Before the rebellion in Chiapas, U.S. intelligence services were
taking Mexico for granted. The CIA's 1984 warnings to Ronald
Reagan that there was at least a 1-in-5 chance that the Mexican
government would collapse within the next five years an event that
would pose serious security problems for the U.S. had been put to
rest during the Salinas administration. *20
During his five years in office, Salinas' policies have been met with
approval in Washington: He imposed drastic neoliberal economic
reforms, de facto reversing decades of economic nationalism; and
begged Washington for NAFTA. Thanks to Salinas, Mexico went
from being a headache for U.S. foreign policy to becoming the
model for all Latin American nations who wished to enjoy a special
relationship with the Coloso del Norte. Chiapas is, in many ways,
the story of how Washington came to believe its own propaganda.
George Bush was convinced that Salinas would go down in history
as the most reform-minded, pro-U.S. president Mexico ever had.
Bill Clinton, who turned NAFTA into a life-or-death issue for his
presidency, is as convinced about Salinas as his predecessor.
Many Mexicans hope that the rebellion will be a catalytic factor in
closing the increasing gap between rich and poor and opening the
door for a more democratic system. Washington and its intelligence
services would prefer to see the uprising as an aberration. They
hope that Mexico can still become part of the North American
paradise despite the 40 million poor who will continue to fight,
sometimes with arms, for economic and political recognition.
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