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Guatemalan Murder Probe Beset by Irregularities

Guatemala City — Her short stature and soft voice were deceiving. Among Guatemala’s highland Indians, she was a legend. Among her colleagues in North America and Europe, she was a rising academic star.

An ethnic Chinese Guatemalan, Myrna Elizabeth Mack Chang had become one of Latin America’s most eminent anthropologists. Her research focused on Guatemala’s nearly one million indigenous refugees, dislocated by severe military counterinsurgency practices in the early 1980s. Government authorities have been reluctant even to recognize the existence of these refugees; traveling on foot from camp to camp, Ms. Mack was the first to document their numbers and conditions.

But on Sept. 11, 1990, Mack was attacked and killed upon leaving her office here. Her colleagues and relatives believe she was murdered on the orders of Guatemala’s Military Intelligence Division.

One suspect, Noel de Jesus Beteta Alvarez, a former special sergeant major from the Security Section of the Presidential High Command, was charged in December with the crime. Mr. Beteta had been missing for a year before being apprehended in Los Angeles and extradited back to Guatemala.

The Mack murder case has become one of the most important in Guatemala’s history and is widely seen as a case challenging decades of military impunity. Both U.S. Ambassador Thomas Stroock and Guatemalan President Jorge Serrano Elias have pledged support for a full investigation.

But high-ranking civilian and military officials are undermining the investigation, according to independent investigators, human rights monitors, and non-American Western diplomats. The case has been beset by irregularities from day one:

* Key physical evidence was either ignored or discarded by investigating authorities, according to a forensic report commissioned by the New York-based human rights group Americas Watch.

* For nine months, authorities denied charges of military involvement. Only last June, after unprecedented international pressure, did the government announce that the crime was politically motivated.

* In August, the chief investigator on the case was himself gunned down in broad daylight outside his own police headquarters. According to the Roman Catholic archbishop’s office on human rights here, the investigator had evidence linking Mack’s murder to the military high command.

* A key witness he interviewed has since recanted his testimony.

* An military intelligence file — indicating that the military at the very least had an interest in Mack — has not been turned over to court authorities, despite several formal requests, according to the government’s own human rights ombudsman.

* On Dec. 9, the presiding judge removed himself from the case, claiming that Helen Mack, sister of the murdered anthropologist, had challenged his integrity by requesting access to presumably public documents on the suspect.

* On Dec. 10, the Mack family announced that groups of men had conducted surveillance of their home in Guatemala City for several days, in a manner similar to surveillance conducted on Mack prior to her murder.

The Mack family was formally visited by Ambassador Stroock in early December, as well as by ambassadors from Canada and France, in a public demonstration of support. “I hope this case does not remain, like so many other crimes, committed in a cloak of impunity.” Helen Mack told a local newspaper.

The Mack murder is but one of thousands of politically motivated murders in recent years. Since January 1990, extrajudicial murders and disappearances have continued at a rate of two per day, according to the ombudsman’s office.

Human rights monitors and Western officials say military-controlled security forces are the primary killers. The US State Department’s 1990 report on Guatemala reads: “Reliable evidence indicates that the security forces committed, with almost total impunity, a majority of the major human rights abuses.”

Based on previously recorded testimony, independent investigators and sources sympathetic to the Mack family say they believe Beteta was indeed one of Mack’s assailants. But the number of men involved in the murder of Mack and the surveillance that preceded it indicate that he was not acting alone, they say.

Out on a Limb: The Use and Abuse of Stringers in the Combat Zone

Somewhere just outside of Baghdad, I was blindfolded and led down a corridor into a room where, to judge by the sound of the voices, there were at least half a dozen men. The possibility of being beaten or tortured was on my mind. I was ordered to sit, and waited in the darkness.

The interrogator asked me what was my “real job.”

I said I was a reporter.

He said I was lying. “Tell us about your relationship with the CIA,” he said.

I denied having any relationship with the CIA or any other intelligence organization.

The interrogator, who was from Iraq’s military intelligence, then offered me a deal: “If you tell us the truth, you will go free. But if you continue to lie, you will stay here many years.”

Only twelve months before, an Iranian-born British journalist, Farzad Bazoft, had been offered the same promise: if he “confessed” to working for British intelligence, he would go free. He did, and was hanged.

This predicament demonstrates the risk faced by all journalists covering armed conflicts — a risk that is especially threatening to stringers.

The gulf war in particular proved an exceptionally difficult story to cover, due to its highly technological nature and to the logistical barriers erected by both sides: neither the allies or Iraq respected the concept of journalistic neutrality; both sides saw reporters as intruders.

Yet those barriers could be and on occasion were overcome, as journalists circumvented the allies’ press pool south of Iraq in Saudi Arabia and entered northern Iraq illegally without a visa. Reporters also paid a price: Gad Gross, a German photographer from J. B. Pictures on assignment for Newsweek, was executed by low-ranking Iraqi soldiers. Charles Maxwell and Nicholas Della Casa, a British freelance camera team on assignment for BBC Television, were also killed in northern Iraq last March, reportedly murdered by their Turkish guide. Della Casa’s wife, Rosanna, who was working with the team, has not been seen since and is believed dead.

For weeks, these four free-lance journalists, as well as several teams of staff reporters, were classified as missing. News organizations and professional associations pressured Iraqi authorities for information. But the level of concern varied greatly depending on the news organization involved, and sometimes on whether the missing reporter was a staff correspondent or a stringer.

These incidents raise the question of the obligation news organizations have to free-lancers in trouble in the field. The matter can be further complicated by the nationality of the journalist, and by the fact that the line between a legitimate journalist and an intelligence operative is — sometimes — blurred.

Every major network, newspaper, magazine, and wire service uses stringers, especially for reports from abroad. Some publications, such as The Christian Science Monitor and The Economist, rely frequently on stringers for their foreign reports. The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, and the Los Angeles Times, like most papers, give stringers bylines, designating them as “special” correspondents. The New York Times runs stringers’ articles, but does not give them a byline.

Leading wire services such the A.P. and Reuters rely on stringers’ copy from countries in which they do not have full-time, staff correspondents. Financially strapped U.P.I. currently has more stringers abroad than staff correspondents. Reuters and the A.P. use as many freelance photojournalists as salaried staff photographers in their foreign bureaus.

Most major news organizations use stringers to brief staff correspondents (who usually “parachute” into foreign locations for only a few days), arrange interviews, and provide background information. Television also buys footage from freelance camera crews. Magazines such as Newsweek and Time rely on a worldwide network of print stringers and buy most of their photos from agency-affiliated free-lance photographers.

Of all the media, radio is the most dependent on freelancers. All national news radio services rely predominantly on stringers for their primary international news, especially on-the-scene foreign reporting, or “spots.”

The main reason the media rely so heavily on stringers is money. While a salaried staff correspondent may draw well over $50,000 in salary and benefits, stringers are usually paid only for reports that are used. A one-minute radio spot, for example, pays about $50. A 900-word article pays an average of $150. And an average newspaper photo pays about $75. Meanwhile, as a rule, freelancers must pay their own transportation and other expenses.

And although stringers may be accredited with a major news organization and represent it in the field, they usually enjoy no benefits, such as health or life insurance. If, for example, a stringer is injured in a bus accident in a foreign country but not while pursuing an assigned report, it is unlikely that he or she would be covered. And when stringers are injured while actually reporting, compensation is usually arranged post facto on a case-by-case basis. Some stringers have their own health insurance. But they must first find a policy that does not exclude “acts of war” and they must usually pay at least $2,000 annually. With such a high premium, many work without coverage — even in war zones.

On a cost-benefit basis, freelancers are news organizations’ most productive journalists. In a recession, when both advertising revenues and operating budgets are low, stringers are in particularly great demand — especially when it comes to covering strife-torn countries. What news directors and editors are looking for, as a rule, is live combat footage or eyewitness print dispatches accompanied by dramatic still photos. Yet, the news organization rarely takes responsibility for sending the free-lancer into a conflict zone.

Take the all-too-typical case of veteran print journalist Tom Long. The Miami Herald has customarily identified Long as one of its “special correspondents.” Yet when he was recently injured in a mortar attack in northern El Salvador, the Herald identified him in its story only as a “freelance journalist.” Both the Herald and The New York Times, for which Long also reports, offered to cover some of Long’s medical costs. But both news organizations made it clear that the support was being offered only out of charity, on a one-time basis, and that Long, who did not have his own insurance, would be responsible for any long-term health care needs that might arise.

In countries like El Salvador and Chile, where the foreign press has been a frequent target of attack, members of the foreign press corps have organized press associations to lobby authorities on behalf of individual journalists in trouble. American journalists can also rely on the Washington, D.C.-based Congressional Committee to Support Writers and Journalists; American and non-American journalists alike rely on the independent New York City-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

The outcome of any particular confrontation may well depend on what such organizations and the news outlets involved choose to do. In Iraq, for example, captured reporters were accused of being Israeli, American, or other Western intelligence agents. My case and that of Gamma-Liaison photographer Alain Buu seemed to be caught up in a debate within the Iraqi government, the intelligence and information ministries taking different sides on whether we were spies or journalists.

Our predicament was aggravated by the fact that I was a CBS News stringer — a distinction in status that was lost on Iraqi authorities. They seemed aware only that, while CBS News had mobilized an impressive campaign for the release of staff correspondent Bob Simon, it had done considerably less for me. This difference was interpreted by the authorities as indicating that I was not a real journalist but a spy.

Unfortunately for legitimate journalists, the Iraqis may have had reason to be wary. One Western journalist who had been detained in the Middle East was approached by his country’s intelligence service soon after his release. The journalist, who requested anonymity, says he was asked to become a clandestine government agent while continuing to work as a journalist.

In the United States, the CIA’s use of journalists as intelligence agents is believed to have decreased since the practice was exposed by congressional inquiry in the mid-1970s. Whether it has been completely abandoned is impossible to ascertain. The best way for journalists to convince foreign authorities of their legitimacy is by maintaining their integrity. In other words, information gathered should appear only in published reports and not be relayed privately in background briefings given to government officials.

Veteran photographer Bill Gentile, who was the Dutch cameraman Cornel Lagrouw when Lagrouw was killed in El Salvador in March 1989, has observed that combat can be covered with reasonable safety when one is traveling with one side or another. The problem arises when battle lines swiftly change and journalists find themselves unwillingly or even unwittingly crossing sides. Lagrouw’s last words were, “Great pictures, aye,” only moments before a bullet struck him.

Journalists who take such risks are often responding to the networks’ insatiable appetite for “bang-bang.” The difference between a routine shot of Kurdish rebels posing atop a captured tank, for example, and a shot of an Iraqi helicopter attack could be — depending on demand –over $50,000. That is largely why free-lance cameramen have earned the reputation of being the loose cannons of the business.

However, the motivation may not necessarily be higher compensation but the compelling desire to document the situation at hand. Gvido Zvaigzne filmed some of the most spectacular footage of Soviet troops and tanks crushing the Latvian rebellion in January 1991. In his tape, the viewer hears the impact of the bullets and watches the landscape bob as the camera falls. The viewer sees and hears further battle, as Zvaignze, who died soon after, continues to aim his lens as he crawls away.

While news organizations are increasingly relying on freelance journalists for their primary coverage of foreign wars, they have yet to come to terms with the responsibilities this entails.

At the very least, they should offer freelancers working in war zones some kind of basic insurance coverage. Newspapers that publish stringers’ articles should not only offer them bylines, but pay them professional rates as well. And news organizations that find it both economical and convenient to buy material from free-lancers should recognize their obligation to stand behind anyone representing them — regardless of whether they are staff or stringer — in the field.

Who Killed Guatemala’s Leading Anthropologist?

Original article can be found here.

The Chief Investigator Is Dead, Key Testimony Has Been Recanted, and the Primary Suspect Is Missing, but American and Guatemalan Officials Promise Justice

GUATEMALA CITY — Myrna Elizabeth Mack Chang was Guatemala’s most respected anthropologist. Her work with the country’s indigenous refugees — displaced by the military’s severe counter-insurgency practices — was internationally renowned. But on September 11, 1990, the petite, 40-year-old ethnic Chinese woman was attacked upon leaving her office here. Her assailants had been conspicuously watching her for at least a week. One or her attackers, cleaned his weapon, described in one account as a “Rambo” knife, in her blouse, before leaving her with 27 deep puncture wounds.

The crime’s investigation has become a test case to see whether the rule of law can be applied in Guatemala. Both American and Guatemalan officials recognize that its outcome is likely to determine future foreign aid relations. ‘When President [Jorge] Serrano came to office [in January] he did promise that he would do something, and I think he’s beginning to deliver on the promise, and we are very, very pleased,” U.S. ambassador Thomas Stroock said in taped interview on July 4.

When she was killed, Mack had been collaborating with Georgetown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Ford Foundation. The grisly crime produced outrage worldwide. Guatemalan newspapers still regularly receive paid ads from social scientists and human rights organizations in Canada, Europe, and the United States demanding a serious investigation. President Serrano, also on July 4, assured an American congressional delegation about the Mack case, “We are doing things, not just saying things.”

But one month later, on August 5, the chief homicide investigator, Jost Miguel Merida Escobar, himself was gunned down. His own criminal report on the Mack case — obtained by the Voice — he inexplicably never ratified. Witnesses he interviewed have since recanted their testimony. A suspect that he first identified is believed to be dead or out of the country. And an alleged military intelligence file on the murdered anthropologist is being withheld from court authorities.

As a result, non-American Western diplomats and investigators from Guatemala’s semiautonomous Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman say that many obstacles remain to solving the Mack murder. As in the November 1989 Jesuit murder case in neighboring El Salvador, military and other government officials are actively undermining the Mack investigation, they say.

Mack’s colleagues in Guatemala believe she was murdered on the orders of Guatemala’s notorious military intelligence apparatus. “We have no doubt that this was the work of the G-2, the counterintelligence body of the army,” attorney Ronalth Ochaeta, from the Catholic archdiocese’s human rights office, told a visiting congressional delegation shortly after the murder.

Mack’s work was highly controversial in Guatemala. The country’s displaced population was created by the army’s “scorched earth” counterinsurgency campaign, which began in the early 1980s. Tens of thousands of people — mostly Indians of Mayan descent — were killed. Up to one million more, in a country of fewer than 9 million, were uprooted. The government has been reluctant even to recognize the existence of the country’s own displaced population; Mack’s research began to document their numbers and conditions.

Independent investigators recognize that they face an uphill battle: Guatemala holds one of Latin America’s worst records for human rights-related murders. No military officer and only a handful of soldiers have been convicted of human rights violations. Government officials admit that the military enjoys impunity even when compared to El Salvador and other Central American nations. Even cases involving American citizens — the November 1989 abduction of Ursuline sister Diana Ortiz and the June 1990 kidnapping/murder of rancher Michael Devine, for example — remain unsolved.

On August 5, chief investigator Merida was shot to death only 150 yards from his own Police Headquarters in Guatemala City. Merida had already assumed a controversial role in the investigation. In the original criminal report compiled last September, Merida, along with another police detective, implicated undercover military units in the Mack murder. One witness quoted in their original report testified that he recognized one of the assailants as being from an intelligence office attached to the military high command. The witness had worked for 23 years in the state security forces, independent investigators say. But this testimony was omitted from the police report before being sent to the court. The witness has since recanted his own statement — and, before he died, Merida refused to ratify his own report.

At the time, American and Guatemalan officials dismissed these irregularities, arguing that the anthropologist’s murder was most likely a “common crime.” Ambassador Stroock — a political appointee of the Bush administration who was a school chum of the president’s at Yale — wrote personal letters to American academics who had denounced the Mack murder in the Guatemalan press, asserting that the crime was not politically motivated. President Serrano, on March 1, 1991, circulated an official report to members of the European diplomatic corps that suggested that Mack “had done some hard-currency business on the black market and had been the target of persecution by delinquents.”

But few if any diplomats were persuaded. Said one, “The [government’s] whole description of that case was scandalous.”

Three months later, under intense international pressure, the government officially reversed its position, and American officials have since followed suit. On June 17, 1991, Guatemalan attorney general Aciscio Valladares officially acknowledged that the crime had a “political” motive and that it had been “programmed,” or premeditated. The attorney general added, “Within the next few days, the results of the developments in this process will be made public, which will clarify the crime.”

On July 4, the government announced — via a newspaper report — that it was issuing an arrest warrant for a suspect in the case Noel de Jesus Beteta Alvarez, a special sergeant major with the Security Section of the Presidential High Command. Strangely, the basis for the charge was the same police report rejected by its own authors. Although Beteta is not mentioned by name in the original report, the testimony that implicated him was recorded September 17, 1991, just six days after the Mack murder.

So far, the government has not explained why it waited up to nine months before trying to arrest Beteta. In interviews the week before Beteta was publicly named, independent investigators and other sources said his identity was already well known. They believe the government intentionally orchestrated the delay. “The fact of too much publicity has made a witness willingly disappear,” noted an investigator from the ombudsman’s office.

Beteta was relieved of his post with the Presidential High Command less than 12 weeks after the Mack murder, according to military documents filed with the court. The documents state that as of November 30, 1990, Beteta “does not enjoy military privilege.” Within a month after being relieved, Beteta mysteriously disappeared. Family members have said they believe he is dead. Others suspect he has fled. Regardless, it seems unlikely he will be prosecuted.

Rather than lead to Beteta’s apprehension, the issuing of a warrant for his arrest seemed more intended to affect international opinion. The day before the arrest order was announced, 16 U.S. congresswomen called for a full investigation in a paid ad in the Guatemalan press. On the morning the arrest order was issued, a prearranged meeting between President Serrano and U.S. senator James Jeffords (Republican, Vermont) and Representative Jim McDermott (Democrat, Washington), who had traveled to Guatemala specifically to monitor progress on the Mack and other human rights cases, was scheduled.

“To find that the name [of the person] had been announced at least at the execution level was very interesting,” Jeffords said in an interview. “[It] indicated that whoever was putting things together did an excellent job to reach what we thought was a significant break in the Myrna Mack case.”

Witnesses quoted in the murdered investigator’s original report indicate that Beteta may very well have been one of Mack’s assassins. However, it is unlikely that Beteta — even if he could be located and tried — acted alone.

The presence of a personal file on Mack compiled by Guatemalan military intelligence suggests that higher authorities may be involved, according to human rights ombudsman Ramiro de Leon Carpio. Carpio has publicly complained that the government is not committed to defending human rights. In July, his investigators made the existence of the Mack file known to a visiting U.S. congressional delegation.

Court officials have formally requested all information on Mack from the Guatemalan ministry of defense. But no military intelligence file on Mack has been turned over, according to court sources.

Senator Jeffords said he raised the file in the July 4 meeting with President Serrano. “We pointed out to the president that the investigator from [the ombudsman’s office] announced that they had found a detailed file on Myrna Mack in the army. It indicated that obviously [the investigation] should go higher.”

In his official response, Serrano told Jeffords, “if there is anyone involved in the higher-ups, we are going to know it through the process. And if there is one, he is going to be punished.” Serrano, as well as senior presidential aides, made it clear that authorities do not now plan to press the investigation any higher. They also failed to explain how they intend to apprehend Beteta — the only suspect currently charged in the crime.

The failure to achieve justice in such cases “demonstrates a lack of political will or sympathy,” said Ombudsman Carpio. “The reign of impunity goes on.””

Tragedy in Iraq

Tragedy in Iraq: One Journalist Died Covering the War in the Persian Gulf, Photographer Gad Gross. This Is the Story of How it Happened.

by Frank Smyth

The Village Voice, May 14, 1991

Near the borders of Syria, Turkey, and Iraq — Small waves broke over the sides of the creaky raft that our Kurdish contacts had lashed together from old inner tubes and scraps of plywood. Though it was only about as wide as a city avenue, the river was high with the spring melt, and the water was the color of coffee as it rushed by. The far shore was Iraqi territory, where a pickup truck waited to take us to the rebel commanders. On this day — March 21 — the rebels claimed to control 90 percent of what they call Kurdistan in northern Iraq. To the south, Shi’ite-led rebels were claiming that the resistance there was also going well. Rebel leaders in Damascus had said that “the revolution” was advancing into new areas, and that there was fighting in Baghdad itself. The Americans appeared to have completely routed the Iraqi army, and Saddam Hussein’s regime was tottering — anything, even the breakup of Iraq, seemed possible.

Winning his struggle with the rivet’s current, our oarsman splashed into the shallows under the opposite bank. Photographers Gad Gross and Alain Buu, along with Wall Street Journal correspondent Geraldine Brooks and myself, had entered the country illegally. We had all met at a conference of Iraqi opposition leaders in Beirut a week earlier, where Gad and I were working various Kurdish opposition leaders incessantly, hoping that sooner or later we would be able to gain access and enter Iraq. After our Kurdish friends had arranged the trip, Gad decided to turn Alain on to our contact, even though Gad was on assignment for Newsweek and Alain was working in direct competition for Time. I told him that few photographers would be so generous.

With the uprising at its peak and Saddam’s army broken, the possibility that we might get caught barely crossed our minds. The two dozen or so members of the Kurdish resistance who greeted us certainly betrayed few doubts as we shook hands and passed cigarettes around. Every other male, it seemed, was armed with a Kalashnikov folding-stock automatic rifle, which he handled with assured nonchalance. There was no sign of the Iraqi army.

Over the next several days, the spirit of revolution was both palpable and contagious, and really not too different from the popular resistance movements I had seen in Central America. Civilians and peshmager, as the Kurdish fighters are fondly called, mingled freely; once, in front of the hospital at Dahuk, we watched a group of peshmager join hands with the nurses in a folk dance to celebrate their imminent independence, the circle of dancers growing larger and larger with every round.

But it was all new to Gad, 26, who had never before covered an armed insurgency. I met Gad in Amman, Jordan, three weeks before we crossed the river. Gad was an ethnic German born in Romania who had graduated from Harvard on a liberal arts degree a year ago. He had covered the fall of the Berlin Wall just before his graduation, but missed the Romanian revolution because he had to be in Boston for his finals; it was a nagging regret to him, and as we traveled through Kurdistan over the next week he would often say he saw similarities between the Kurdish and Romanian revolutions. The enthusiasm of the Kurds was infectious, and Gad loved that, but particularly he liked the way people seemed so glad to see us, foreign reporters, covering their struggle.

Gad was tall and good-looking, but he was missing a front tooth. “I fell asleep on a motorcycle,” Gad told me the first time I saw him take out his false tooth. He wouldn’t always wear it, and it could unnerve a subject, so I was always telling him to put the thing in. As we were preparing to leave for Kurdistan, Gad heard he’d won the Missouri Award of Excellence for a photo of a Romanian soldier sitting on a toppled statue of Lenin. He was ecstatic. He danced to his Walkman in our Damascus hotel room, singing along with M.C. Hammer, and smiling that damned smile.

Nobody in Kurdistan believed the revolt would fail. Kurds and reporters both speculated on how many days or weeks Saddam had left: most said no more than two months, one bold reporter thought two days. Our plan was to stay with the resistance all the way to Baghdad.

I could feel that his broken wrist had never properly healed when I shook his hand. We were in Zakho, a sunny mountain town near the Turkish border, to meet Dr. Kamal “Kirkuki,” the man who had personally led what the people here called the “intifada” — the liberation of most towns and villages in Iraqi-held Kurdistan. The title of “doctor” is an honorary one: Kamal had dropped out of medical school in Vienna, where he learned fluent German and some English, to become a Kurdish guerrilla leader. Somewhere here, in the Zagros Mountains, a piece of shrapnel had crippled him.

A seemingly frail man, Kamal spoke so softly we could hardly hear him. With steady eyes and a subdued expression, Kamal explained that the uprising had gone off like clockwork, almost like pushing in a door. On March 14 — a scant two weeks after the American bombing halted and President Bush urged the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow Saddam — villagers and townspeople all over Kurdistan had joined forces with more experienced peshmager and locally recruited militia to overwhelm Iraqi army outposts.

It took the rebels and townspeople little more than four hours to liberate Zakho, but it did not fall without casualties. Before they retreated, government troops indiscriminately lobbed mortar shells into the into the town’s center. At least 40 civilians were killed and dozens wounded. The guerrillas took us to see several young boys in the hospital who had burns over their faces and more than 50 percent of their bodies, but none of the laceration wounds normally associated with shrapnel or other conventional weapons-Saddam may have been using incendiary bombs, possibly, phosphorous.

“We had many friends in the military,” a smiling Kamal said. He was flanked by more than a dozen Iraqi military officers who had defected to the guerrillas. One was a former intelligence officer from Saddam’s elite Republican Guard. Another, a former aircraft gunner, was put in charge of Kamal’s air defenses. Once loyal to the regime, these officers said that Saddam had simply gone too far-first going to war with Iran and then Kuwait.

“For years and years, we have been fighting our neighbors for nothing,” said Lieutenant Colonel Akhmed, the former commander of 700 Iraqi government soldiers. Akhmed, who asked that his real name not be used to protect his family, had been a professional officer for 20 years, yet he had been recruited by Kamal’s clandestine agents. On the 14th, he switched sides. “Many officers feel the same way about Saddam. But they can’t do anything,” he said, adding to the generally accepted impression among the Kurds that the Iraqi army had lost its will to fight.

Rebel leaders claimed that more than 30,000 Iraqi troops had either been captured or defected, a number that seemed too high to believe. But there was little question that among rank-and-file Iraqi, foot soldiers, discipline and morale were visibly crumbling.

We saw 60 prisoners in green Iraqi army uniforms were squatting on the ground, casually watched over by a handful of armed guards and dozens of the ubiquitous Kurdish civilians. (Everywhere we went while the revolution was running, in the streets, near battles, we were surrounded by staring civilians, who watched over events with the intense curiosity of a people who had waited decades for a taste of liberation.) A regular soldier, who only gave his name as Hussein, demanded the floor. “God willing, he’ll be dead soon,” he said of Saddam.

“Why do we kill? Why did we go to war with Iran?” he yelled, his face taut as the blood rushed to his cheeks. The wails of this lone soldier, standing among his huddled comrades, were soon joined by others, until finally the crowd of civilians joined the chorus. When the chant of “Down with Saddam Down with Saddam!” went up, one of the prisoners grabbed at a guard’s gun — in order to brandish it over his head, for emphasis.

The scene gave vivid testimony to the collapse of the locally-deployed regular Iraqi army, which was made up of largely the same sort of poorly motivated conscripts caught in the American turkey shoot in Kuwait (though it gave no inkling of the condition of elite Army Special Forces and Republican Guard assault units then massing to the south). Nearby, Gad photographed a pair of POWs huddled together for support; as Private Hussein screamed out his grief, they began silently to cry.

Sound of boots and sneakers sucking up mud was all that could be heard through the cold rain outside of Mosul, the last major city in northern Iraq still under Baghdad’s control. Several units of about 20 fighters each were marching single file through the fields of sprouting millet. The lush landscape, punctuated by the occasional boulder, reminded me of Ireland. “We are going to war,” said one peshmager, his lips curling into a bold smile beneath his thick black moustache. Grizzled old men and young boys marched together under the weight of the munitions they had just picked up.

Behind them, other units were still clustering around the heavy burlap sacks sitting beside a white Toyota pickup parked on the main road out of Mosul. A rebel kneeling on the blacktop used both hands to distribute bullets. Other guerrillas stripped the seals off dozens of stubby, green plastic tubes and loaded rocket-propelled grenades — minifootball-shaped projectiles — onto these propellant charges. Many of the peshmager wore the dark brown one-piece jumpsuits traditionally worn by Kurdish men. Gad snapped a picture of one proud teenager who had accented his black-and- white checkered sash with two bandoliers of oversized bullets wrapped tightly around his chest, so that he looked like a chilly, wet Kurdish version of Rambo.

But Americans are not necessarily heroes to these rebels. Despite the success of Desert Storm — which after all, had made this sudden rebellion possible — they remember that the United States had supported Saddam Hussein as late as 1988, viewing the Iraqi dictator as a strategic buffer against the Islamic government of Iran. And, like many Third World militants, they remember America’s defeat in Vietnam as a victory for popular insurgencies everywhere.

One evening, after learning Alain was French-Vietnamese, a Kurdish fighter insisted on singing an old revolutionary song about Ho Chi Minh for Alain and me. Alain had fled Vietnam with the first boat people the day Saigon fell-but he appreciated the sentiment.

“We want the world not to help dictators like Saddam Hussein,” Azad, a 28-year-old civil engineer-turned-rebel, told us, explaining why the United States was at best a temporary and unreliable ally. Azad had spent 40 days in an Iraqi prison, where he was repeatedly tortured with electrical shocks to his testicles; the prison building was a target during the war, and he escaped when American bombing blew out the wall to his cell block. “The U.S.A. made [Saddam]. If the U.S.A. and Europe didn’t give him the help, he couldn’t have done this.”

Even though, like many rebel leaders and spokespersons, Azad said the Kurds were hoping to receive humanitarian and even military assistance from the United States and other member nations of the anti-Iraq coalition, he went on to complain that in its cease-fire agreement the United States had allowed Iraqi helicopters to fly “humanitarian” missions — a concession General Norman Schwarzkopf would later admit he had been “hoodwinked” into making. Just one week into their rebellion, the Kurds had heard that the Iraqis were beginning to use helicopter gunships with devastating effect on their fellow insurgents in the Shiite south. We saw our first helicopter firing over the horizon here, at rebel targets in the battle for Mosul.

But not all Kurds — then, at least — were so critical. One peshmager laughingly told me as we trudged through glutinous mud that many newborn Kurdish babies were being given “Bush” as their first name.

Neither of us suspected that many of those same infants would soon die of exposure along the Turkish and Iranian borders.

Thick black smoke billowed from a burning oil well and mortar shells echoed steadily in the distance, but Kirkuk seemed relatively undisturbed otherwise. The city, an important oil-producing center, had been in Kurdish hands for more than a week. The Kurds explained that the Iraqi army still held two primary positions, one just southeast of the city and another just northwest. Although the mortar fire was intense, for the first two days we were in the city the basic battle lines never changed, and the Kurds appeared to be in complete control of the situation.

The afternoon of March 26 was clear and cool, spring weather in the highlands. The three of us rode out to the northwest front, a series of mortar and machine gun emplacements along the rolling plain that flows to the edge of the town. In these outlying areas, clashes had continued for several days, and territory had shifted back and forth repeatedly. At the base of a hill we found a group of Kurds huddling around a big, 81-millimeter mortar, firing I over the ridge at the Iraqi army, dug in about two miles away.

As we watched, Iraqi helicopter gunships beat in over the horizon and attacked several Kurdish mortar positions around us, ignoring our own. The Kurds returned fire with machine guns and a few larger antiaircraft guns, to no apparent effect. The choppers did little damage either, choosing to fly high; they seemed to be probing the Kurds, trying to get the rebels to expose their positions, rather than engage them directly. High above the helicopters, a jet made several passes. The cease-fire agreement between the U.S.-led coalition and Iraq had grounded Saddam’s fixed-wing aircraft, supposedly without exception, but the Kurds complained that Iraqi planes were indeed flying reconnaissance. But the jet we saw was so high we couldn’t tell whether it was an Iraqi or an American observer photographing the battle.

As the sun began to set over the open plain, “Lieutenant Omar” — the zone field commander — joined us on the crest of the hill in front of the mortar emplacements.

From there, looking out over miles of open country, Omar pointed to what he said were the Iraqi troop and tank positions, adding that they had not moved for several days. Omar said his forces were preparing to attack them — maybe as early as that evening. He seemed quite sure of success.

But the helicopter gunships were a chilling reminder of the regime’s superior firepower. One peshmager admitted that, as a guerrilla army, they had never learned how to use mechanized equipment, so the helicopters and hundreds of tanks and armored; vehicles they had captured when they took Kirkuk and the other cities in Kurdistan in were, by and large, useless to the revolution. But others said they were planning to find drivers and eventually to deploy captured tanks against Saddam Shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and mortars of all sizes were everywhere.

The Kurds showed us dozens of captured crates of American-made mortar shells, whose markings showed they had been shipped to Saddam’s army via the Jordanian military in March 1988. But the Kurds had no heavy weaponry. Even when they managed to capture an anti-aircraft gun from the fleeing Iraqis, their sights had been removed, rendering the guns largely useless. And we had seen no surface-to-air missiles, the best answer to helicopter gunships in this exposed terrain.

Guerrilla movements elsewhere in the world, especially in Vietnam and El Salvador, have demonstrated that firepower can be matched by ingenuity. Land mines, for instance, can be designed to stop ground soldiers or even advancing tanks, and homemade explosives could have been easily manufactured locally. But the Kurds did not seem to manufacture any of their own weaponry. Even more surprising, the rebels had no two-way radios to coordinate military action. To compensate, I assumed they had established a network of scouts and runners to monitor enemy movements. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

That night, the shelling was heavy, and the head of the household where we were staying decided to evacuate his family to Arbil. Bakhtiar, the young rebel who had volunteered to be our translator and guide, and the other rebels laughed, saying the man had panicked, and moved us into their own billet. They were occupying the headquarters of an oil refinery company a few hundred yards away, just outside the city. Bakhtiar didn’t really seem worried about our safety, only our comfort.

After breakfast (cooked by a former Iraqi soldier), we piled into a pickup and drove to the ruins of Iraqi helicopter base K1, just north of Kirkuk. Dozens of confident Kurdish rebels triumphantly gave us a tour. They showed us box after box of munitions — many from the Eastern Bloc, Gad noticed — they had captured with the base.

The floors in here were covered with blankets, raincoats, boots, gas masks, and the insignias ripped off by Iraqi officers in their rush to get out. The burnt-out hulls of two Iraqi helicopters squatted on the field where the Kurds had torched them, not far from the body of a dead Iraqi soldier. I believe it was the first dead body Gad had seen up close; he lingered, staring. Later, inside the base headquarters, the four of us had a talk about the risks we were taking, I and we agreed: Nobody gets killed.

The guerrillas also gleefully showed us the officers log book for the communications center at the base, which listed all the reports on soldiers that had gone AWOL, who were described as “wanted criminals.”

According to the log, hardly a day had gone by since the war began without at least one I soldier lighting out. The last entry had been made four days ago-shortly before the base was overrun by the rebels.

Despite the incessant crump of the mortars, the mood was playful. We even stopped to take a pair of group photos posing with the rebels, who brandished their AK-47s and smiled into the lens. Gad had someone take a picture of him with his arm around Bakhtiar. They were both the same age, and bumping through the war together over the past few days had already made them fast friends. Bakhtiar had been an economist, a graduate of the University of Baghdad, and he was amicable and urbane, even with his AK-47, extra clips, and high-topped military hoots. Elegant and charming, he seemed almost to be standing, like a cutout before the backdrop of his own war. “Imagine this guy in New York, but you stay away my girlfriend! ” Gad would say, laughing.

Over lunch that day, March 27, Geraldine Brooks and the remaining two journalists from an ABC TV crew decided to return to Arbil. Because she worked for a daily newspaper, Geraldine’s deadline was tight, and she had to get back to file; the ABC crew wanted to get back because they had lost their correspondent, and thought he might have returned to their base. She offered to carry a videotape I had shot for CBS News back to Arbil, where a group of reporters had arranged a system to secretly send material out of the country, and to make sure a dispatch for the Voice I’d left behind made it out as well. Gad, Alain and I were several days away from our own weekly deadlines, so we elected to stay -making us the last remaining Western journalists in Kirkuk.

After lunch, Bakhtiar offered to take us out to see a row of Kurdish homes that had been bulldozed by Saddam’s army. Fahdil, a fiftyish midlevel commander from the Kurds’ largest Marxist faction, offered to accompany us.

As we picked our way among the rubble of the block of homes, we were startled by a series of powerful explosions that shook the ground, one after another, within a hundred yards of where we stood. Bakhtiar explained it was a Katushya — a Soviet-made, truck-mounted missile launcher that fires up to 40 medium-range projectiles in succession. Even as the rockets bit, we could see a man painstakingly stacking cinder blocks amidst a pile of dust and rubble that once had been his home. Neighbors told us he had been doing this ever since the bulldozers came. He returned to find his wife and children gone, apparently dragged away by the Iraqi army, as many civilians were.

He had lost his mind. For days, he refused to leave the rubble where his loved ones had last been seen. Fahdil gave the man money for food, and others tried to persuade him to take shelter with friends or relatives. But we left him there as dusk fell, stacking his concrete blocks in the ruins.

That evening, Fahdif and Bakhtiar offered to share a bottle of white wine with us. The older and austere Fahdil began to open up, and Bakhtiar was planning a trip to visit Gad and I in New York sometime after the revolution. We discussed class struggle, perestroika, ethnic nationalism, and Kenny’s Castaways in the Village well into the night.

“Wake up ! Wake up!” said Bakhtiar. “Fahdil wants you to go.” Incoming mortar shells, which we had been hearing since we arrived, were now landing so close we could feel the walls vibrate with every hit. It was the morning of March 28. We were still sleeping in the oil refinery building a few miles outside of town. Something was definitely up: peshmager rebels, including Lieutenant Omar, had dropped back into the city from the front. Still stiff and bleary-eyed, the three of us crowded into a double cab Toyota pickup, and Fahdil’s men quickly drove us into the city center.

The shelling in outlying areas had increased, but downtown Kirkuk, for a few hours at least, was relatively quiet. Armed with still and video cameras, we wandered about the downtown square, frustrated at having been removed from the action. Then a few shells began to land nearby. One killed a young girl two blocks away; as I filmed her, a man drove by on a bicycle and shouted, “This is Saddam Hussein!” his voice cracking with emotion. “Mr. Bush must know.”

Several helicopters appeared over the city, and the blue sky was suddenly overcast with streamers of anti-aircraft fire. We were standing in front of a former Iraqi government building that was now a rebel command center; armed with their automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, truckloads of eager peshmager fighters waited impatiently for orders to the front. Two men walked out of the building in street clothes, each carrying what might have passed for an oversized fishing-rod case.

The long green tubes were heal-seeking surface-to-air SAM-7 missiles. We got them on film, and I told Gad that SAMs were a good sign, they could be quite effective in trained hands. (I didn’t learn until later that those two were the only SAM missiles in Kirkuk.)

We were still anxious to get back to the fighting, and one group of rebels invited us to accompany them in a tour bus heading for the city’s southern edge. A young boy stuck his head in the door as the bus turned a corner and said proudly, “Remember, you are peshmager. You will fight and win.” Everyone nodded in silence.

We hadn’t gone far when the shelling sounded very close, backed by the brittle staccato of machine guns. The sound was coming from two directions, both incoming and outgoing fire; the Iraqi army was nearby, where only hours before the streets were empty. The bus pulled to a halt in a Kurdish middle-class neighborhood of simple, one- and two-story concrete block homes.

The rebels poured out of the bus and began to disperse, saying they intended to form a line of defense against an Iraqi advance. We stumbled outside the bus into a clutch of crowing roosters, chickens, and dozens of peshmager, who were yelling back and forth to each other over the sound of whistling bullets and exploding tank shells. They had no formal command structure, for the first time, I saw confusion and fear on their faces. Bakhtiar saw it at the same time. “These are not [regular] peshmager,” Bakhtiar said. “They are militia from the city.”

One sobbing man wailed that a tank shell had killed his brother. He grabbed a Kalishnakov and ran out to challenge an Iraqi tank on his own. The Kurdish militia set up machine guns on top of several two-story buildings, around our position. But the shelling was becoming more accurate as the Iraqi tanks advanced. Bakhtiar, Gad, Alain and I started running across a field that spread to the east of the city center. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the rebel militiamen take up their counter battery fire from a nearby rooftop, and seconds later, the entire building wobbled from a direct hit. Within 30 minutes after the militia and we had gone pounding down the steps of the bus, the entire neighborhood was alive with shrapnel.

The field we were running through was planted with mint, and the air was thick with its sharp green scent; I remembered picking mint for the kitchen of a restaurant in Vermont where I had a summer job once. I worried about snipers and, especially, helicopters. We could see them off on our left, but for now, the choppers were engaging rebels to the west, where we had spent the night. We were near the far edge of the field now, breathing hard. Suddenly a high-pitched whistle that keyed up to a metallic scream seemed to tear the air in front of us, and a shell landed with a thud about 300 feet away, before anybody could take cover. Incredibly, it was a dud. I told Gad, “That was it, that one had our name on it. But we’re going to make it -we’re lucky.”

Once past the field and into the city streets, we felt less exposed. Here on the city’s northern edge, as far from the original Iraqi positions as you could get within the limits of Kirkuk, there was only quiet. We rested, drinking from our canteens. Bakhtiar drew a map in my hand. “This is the city,” he said drawing a circle. He drew two solid dots on the left and bottom of my palm. “This is the Iraqi army.” According to Bakhtiar, the Iraqi army was still located to the southeast and northwest of the city. To get away, all we had to do was travel straight north, up the main road to Arbil.

Refugees carrying blankets and other belongings lined each side of the road north. Both cars and fuel were scarce — many pleaded for rides from passing motorists. Men with Kalashnikov rifles, apparently separated from their units, were also fleeing — they must have been local militia, since many were with their families. As the exodus grew, the distinction between rebel and civilian was blurring.

We began to film the scene, feeling now and out of combat, trudging along the secure road north. But all three of worried about our packs, which we had left behind in the city. Bakhtiar tried to find a car to take us back into town them, thinking we still had time. But when Bakhtiar finally found us a car headed our way, we discovered Fahdil sitting in the front seat. We realized then that it was not just militia, but regular peshmager and their commanders who were retreating.

Fahdil told us calmly that it, get out of Kirkuk, and he said he would take care of the gear we’d left behind. As he drove off, a man in civilian dress — who’d been listening — offered to give us a ride to Arbil in his Toyota compact (earlier, when, we’d asked him to take us into Kirkuk, he’d said his tires were bad, and couldn’t make the trip). We drove up the hill mountain pass that marked the edge of the city. Looking out the window, I saw a helicopter overtaking us from behind.

I had learned in El Salvador that helicopter bullets can pass through car metal like papier-mâché. We got out of the car to take cover in the crevices of the granite outcroppings that littered the treeless hillsides. These rock formations seemed to continue cast for miles, toward Iran.

While tucked in the crannies, we filmed the scene overhead. More helicopters appeared, swarming like hornets over the pass ahead, strafing and firing rockets. Two smaller gunships were soon joined by four or five heavy attack helicopters. They hovered, searching out rebel positions; finding one, a chopper would deliver a swooshing volley of rockets. According to the cease-fire agreement reached in the gulf war, Iraqi helicopters are permitted to fly only for transport or humanitarian emergencies. We watched their rockets and guns pummel the surrounding hillsides for half of an hour. It is hard to believe that American reconnaissance would not have detected their deployment in combat.

Then there was a brief lull — the helicopters were still around, but there were fewer of them and there were no more rockets — and civilians who had taken cover resumed walking. “Let’s go,” Bakhtiar said. I suggested that we take advantage of the rocks and leave the city on foot. “But to where?” he said. “Don’t worry, it’ll be OK. After this, you’ll be on the way to Arbil.” The stream of refugees indicated that, at least to the north, the way was clear.

The helicopter reappeared. It hovered over our left, firing a rocket onto the road ahead. As we topped the hill, I saw for the first time what the hornets had been buzzing over, and I pleaded with Bakhtiar to stop the car and let us get out. A white pickup truck had gone off the road, and its driver was slumped over the wheel, shot. A few yards farther on, a bus sat with a gaping black hole in its side; what remained of a woman’s body was strewn about the road. The sharp crack of machine guns was incessant. We were driving into a wall of bullets. “I don’t like this either, Bakhtiar,” said Gad.

Bakhtiar, always anxious not to upset those around him, relayed our doubts to the driver. He didn’t react, and we sped further into open terrain. About 70 yards ahead, the driver saw a cluster of houses on the right side of the road, and instinctively drove off the highway in front.

We jumped out of the car and took cover behind a one-story, flat-roofed cinderblock house. The green fields roundabout were lit up by two incoming volleys of Katushya rockets that landed about a hundred yards behind us, and the helicopters continued to hover overhead, searching for fleeing peshmager rebels. Thousands of rounds of heavy caliber bullets were smacking into the house and ground all around us, fired indiscriminately from the mountains about 200 yards to the north, and tank shells were exploding nearby; the Iraqis were laying down a field of fire to seal off the road. I filmed a column of tanks — at least eight — but there were more, more tanks than thought Saddam had left, pouring through the mountain passes to our left. The Iraqi army was not only south and northwest of the city, it had circled around to the north and now had cut the rebels off from Arbil. We were trapped. Bakhtiar summed up our dilemma. “if we try to leave through the field, we’ll be shot,” he said. “And if we stay here?” I asked.

“That is just as dangerous.” Gad walked over to me. We both smiled. “He’s funny,” Gad said with a grin, trying to cut the tension. “If we go there we’ll be shot, and if we stay here it’s just as dangerous.” He laughed.

We didn’t have time to decide. “The tanks, they’re coming!” Alain shouted, and looking over my shoulder I saw two Soviet- made tanks roaring up the road beyond our shot-up Toyota, about 50 yards away, coming straight for us. “Come on!” Alain yelled, and we started running. Gad and Bakhtiar were in the lead — our driver had already melted away — and they disappeared behind the wall of a house. Alain and I glanced back at the tanks and saw a turret turning in our direction. Just a few steps ahead a pile of dirt stretched out of sight along the right side of the highway, some 10 feet high; just behind it was a short ditch, about four feet deep and twice that long. We jumped in.

The rumble of the tanks passed us on the other side of the dirt wall, sending little streams of earth into our trench. The machine gunner started firing into the standing houses and open fields, clearing out any possible enemy stragglers. The firing was relentless, sending literally thousands of bullets whistling over our heads. One ricocheting round landed on the edge of the ditch, close enough to touch. We kept our heads down and prayed.

After a time, the tanks seemed to head back for Kirkuk. But we could still hear voices in the area. We decided to wait for nightfall, hoping that Gad and Bakhtiar had survived the second onslaught of bullets and were also safely hunkered down, out of sight.

Alain and I jumped into the ditch between two and three in the afternoon. Shortly before sunset, we heard the tanks and trucks returning. One went past us. Another killed its engine literally right behind us, less than 15 feet away on the other side of the dirt wall. The Iraqi army had decided to make camp all around our hiding place.

They set up a machine-gun post atop the flat roof of the first house we had used for cover. Other soldiers established positions further up the road to the north. We could hear soldiers talking, laughing, even their footsteps as they milled about. There was a distinct popping noise anytime someone opened a can of food.

Worse yet, it was a clear night. I looked up despairingly at the Big Dipper — I could see every star in the sky, sharp and clear, and a fat full moon beamed down enough light to read by. Whispering, we talked about trying to crawl away. But the soldiers near us fired away throughout the night. They were apparently under orders to shoot at anything they thought had moved. There was no return fire.

We thought we might be able to bury ourselves in the loose earth. But we were afraid that the soldiers would hear us digging — or, if we could not cover ourselves completely, that we would be immediately shot and killed upon being discovered.

I turned. off the alarm on my watch, and tried to control my breathing. When I get nervous, I tend to take quick, short breaths. But Alain’s blood pressure dropped from the stress, and he soon fell into a fitful sleep. I had to keep him from snoring. It gets cold in Kurdistan at night, dropping from a high in the 60s to near freezing. But shivering could be a problem — the soldiers might hear our chattering teeth.

Embracing each other like lovers to stay warm, we stayed in the ditch for over 18 hours. I watched an ant colony at work below, and envied each passing bird.

Shortly after sunrise, we heard a commotion coming from the closest house, about 100 feet away, where we’d last seen Gad and Bakhtiar running. A soldier began angrily yelling, as many more came running in answer to his call. I swallowed deeply.

We heard more banging; it sounded like someone was whacking metal filing cabinets with a bat. They were searching the rest of the house. Then they found something — this time we knew it was a person. We hoped it was Kurdish civilians and not Gad and Bakhtiar.

The soldiers’ shouts seemed to grow angrier and louder. There was more commotion, and even louder shouts. I think I heard a soldier yell, “Kurdi!” Then we heard a single sustained burst from an automatic weapon.

It all happened very quickly, but it was, clear that whomever the Iraqis had seized had not resisted, but was in the soldiers’ custody — for a short time, anyway.

About a half-minute later, we heard a very strong and distinct scream. It lasted for at least a full second. There was about a five second delay, and then another long burst from an automatic rifle, followed by silence.

Alain and I both knew it had been Gad screaming.

Alain knelt In the trench to pray. A blanket of terror descended upon us. Peeking over the edge of the ditch, Alain saw a soldier carrying Gad’s camera bag from the house. I began to panic, but was quickly overcome by an overwhelming obsession to stay alive.

Whispering, we decided our only chance if caught would be to surrender, saying we were sahafi-journalists. But after what we had heard in the house, that didn’t seem to be much protection. I thought we were going to die, and soon.

The ditch was deep enough that a soldier would have to nearly walk right on top of it to see us. The waiting was becoming unbearable. About an hour after the incident at the house, a soldier climbing over the earth mound glanced into the ditch and did a double take, but kept walking. Alain said he thought the soldier was going to walk up behind the dirt mound and then lob a grenade into our trench. He jumped up, put his hands in the air, and yelled, “Sahafi!”

“What are you doing?” I said incredulously, looking up at Alain standing in the ditch, his face pale in the morning sunlight. Then I put my hands up and did the same.

We saw several soldiers approaching us with rifles raised. They ordered us to put our hands higher. One searched the pockets of the field jacket I was wearing — actually, it was Gad’s jacket, he’d lent it to me because the pockets were big enough to carry a large tape recorder. When the zipper got stuck and I couldn’t open it, the soldier pulled out a grenade and threatened to drop it inside. I pulled the jacket over my head and dropped it to the ground. I pulled my American passport out of a pouch strapped to my ankle and handed it to him. There was $800 in cash folded into the Ziploc bag, and he stuffed the money quickly into his pocket. I felt lucky to still be alive.

Another soldier searched Alain. He wore a solid green uniform, indicating that he was either an officer or a military liaison official from the ruling Baath party. His demeanor was more human, much less brutal than that of the foot soldiers. He said in his broken English, “No shoot, no shoot,” even as he ripped a gold pendant of the Virgin Mary from Alain’s neck.

Petrified, we repeated that we were Western journalists and pleaded for our lives. Some of the soldiers leading us away from the trench understood English. “Where are we going?” I asked one.

“You,” he said laughing, and looked at me as he roughly drew his index finger across the base of his neck.

Piling into the back of an army truck, I though they weren’t likely to mess it up by killing us there. We were taken to see “the captain,” whose field command was on a hill overlooking the site of our capture.

There were civilians being held prisoner there; at least they hadn’t killed them. I looked, somehow expecting to see Gad, maybe hurt but still alive. Then I saw his camera bag, with his press identity cards hanging from the outside.

“I want to take the gun and shoot you,” the young captain said, in English, as he gave us a look of distilled contempt.

“You know what happened to your friend?” he asked. “He killed himself. You know why? He had a gun.”

Another officer, whose uniform indicated he was a Special Forces commander and a paratrooper, asked, “Do you know him?” holding Gad’s press I.D. in his hand.

“No.” We didn’t want to give them a reason to kill us.

A third Iraqi soldiers said, “He had a gun. He shot himself.”

Gad and I had talked about the issue of self-defense in a war zone. He was adamant that a reporter should never carry a weapon, under any circumstances.

The officer who had taken Alain’s Virgin Mary medal then appeared, and began talking to the paratrooper commander. I don’t understand Arabic, but I understood that they were discussing our lives. The body language of the officer who’d found us was nonthreatening and open as he made his case, but the paratrooper shook his head. “Sahafi,” I heard him say. Seconds later, he gestured towards Gad’s ID. Then he held his right hand as if he were writing on his other hand. I understood he wanted to kill us for what we knew. The captain said, “See you in” — and hesitated, searching for the right English word, and the paratrooper came to his aid, saying, “another place.” Like the afterlife.

“Are you married?” the paratrooper asked me. I lied and said I had a wife and three kids. “I am sorry for you,” he said. “It is too late.”

We were blindfolded and put into the back of a Land Cruiser headed west over back roads toward the highway between Baghdad and Mosul. Alain and I held hands — we were terrified that we would be separated. With every shift of gears or bend in the road we feared we would be taken out and executed.

My blindfold was made of thin cotton cloth. I managed to spread it loosely over my eyes so I could still see somewhat. All around us, I heard the rumble of large engines. It was then that I knew that the Kurdish revolution would soon be finished.

I could make out the outlines of dozens of tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers, and heavy military trucks. In addition to the units that had found us and cut off the road to Arbil, whole divisions were massing for a major counteroffensive. The Kurds, it seemed, had no intelligence on the build up. I knew that — apart from their own heartfelt enthusiasm — they had nothing with which to counter the superior firepower of the Iraqi army. Saddam was clearly planning to overrun and retake the rest of Kurdistan. In fact, he took most of it in less than four days.

The truck stopped and our blindfolds were removed. We were standing on the tarmac of a military air base somewhere near Mosul.

An officer pulled out some papers that we recognized as being Gad’s — they were stained with blood. “What about this?” he said. We later realized that he genuinely didn’t know about Gad; he thought Gad’s camera bag belonged to me.

Blindfolded again, we were taken to a room at the base. “How did you get into Iraq?” said the interrogator. “From Syria,” I said, speaking into the dark. They wanted to know about the Kurds; they did not ask either of us about Gad. We later speculated that only his death, but not the way he was killed, had been reported to superior officers.

That night, Alain and I were alone in a makeshift cell in a bombed out building in Kirkuk. We tried to coordinate our stories, in an attempt to distance ourselves as much as possible from Gad. Unless they raised specific questions, we would deny knowing him.

But mulling it over in my mind, I remembered that there was considerable evidence linking us to Gad. We had already seen among Gad’s captured papers a hotel card from Damascus with both my name and Gad’s on it. I also realized that in my last radio tapes for CBS, I had reported–in case somehow the tape was found and we weren’t — that the three of us were together in Kirkuk when it came under siege.

But the tape was still in an inside pocket of Gad’s field jacket, the one that made the soldier with the grenade impatient. Keeping an eye out for the guards, that night we removed all the tape from the spool, wrapped it in several pieces of electric tape, and tossed it among the rubbish on the floor of the littered room.

“Gatewood Enginnering Ltd” read the sign on the gate. We had been driven form Kirkuk to Baghdad the day after our capture. You could see lots of evidence of the American bombing throughout Baghdad. Our escorts, military intelligence officers, removed our blindfolds and invited us into a public restaurant for lunch.

The scene in the restaurant was surprisingly normal. Men smoked cigarettes and sipped tea around a stand. Veiled women with children walked down the street. There was no unrest, let alone any sign of fighting. The larger-than-life portraits of Saddam, which had been methodically defaced and destroyed further north, now greeted us defiantly, even jubilantly.

Judging from its interior, Gatewood Engineering had been the home and office of a British businessman and his family. The little bar on one side of the living room was adorned with the red Bass Ale flags. The backside of an attractive blond woman decorated one wall; we were still too terrified to really notice.

The guards locked us up in what appeared to be the bedroom of a teenage boy. It was adorned with pictures of motorcycles and boasted a collection of Back Street Heroes, a British biker magazine.

A third interrogation began immediately. There were many men waiting, who among them spoke Arabic, English, and French. They were clearly from military intelligence, and knew very well what they were doing.

They asked us what was in our bags. I said just cameras and light meters. I answered what had become somewhat routine questions. But Achmad, my interrogator, was suspicious. He asked how many were with us. I then said that the camera bag was not mine but belonged to another reporter.

“Why did he leave it?” he asked.

I said I didn’t know, but that maybe he left it to run away.

“But a reporter would never leave his bag, his cameras,” he said. “I think you don’t tell all you know because you fear death.” I tried not to react, but my stomach tightened like a fist.

Nevertheless, our handlers still didn’t seem to have the whole picture. Alain’s interrogator accused him of using Bakhtiar’s identity card to enter Iraq. Throughout our ordeal, our interrogators were more interested in trying to prove we were spies than in finding out what we know about Gad. Perhaps that saved us.

Left alone in the room with the motorcycles, we confabulated a new story. We would tell the truth, Gad had been with us. To make it simple, the only lie would be that we became separated form him at 11 A.M. in Kirkuk, instead of 2 P.M. near the house where we had been captured. We would never admit knowing of his execution.

We stayed in relative comfort in the house, watched by military intelligence, for three days. On April 2, we were again blindfolded. After about a half hour drive, we were brought to a real prison, nearer the heart of Baghdad.

“This is a bad sign,” said Alain. “If they start torturing people and we hear it, that will be worse.”

Our cell measured 6 by 10 feet. There were no bunks or mattresses, just a concrete floor and three blankets apiece (two more than the average prisoner got, we later found out). Unlike the others, the bars of our cell door were curtained with pieces of burlap. It was unclear if that was so we couldn’t see out or so others wouldn’t see in.

Dinner was a bowl of tomato soup with a few cooked vegetables, some bread, and a bowl of water. Later that evening, a man was dragged out of his cell. We heard him making strange sounds, bleating like a sheep, “Bah, bah, bah, baaah.” That was interspersed with the sound of heavy wood meeting flesh. Even as he continued, the change in the tone of his voice indicated his pain. The soldiers were trying to make him crow like a rooster, and they laughed uncontrollably when a real rooster crowed, as if to answer his call. As all this was going on, the sound of guards playing ping pong competed for our attention. A prisoner with a rare, beautiful voice began to sing, almost to wail — he was reciting a Muslim prayer. The sounds of pain, ping pong, and prayer mixed in the air around us.

[Days later], I was blindfolded and led down a corridor where, I could tell from the voices, there were at least a half dozen men. The possibility of being beaten or severely tortured was on my mind. I was ordered to sit, and waited in the darkness.

The translator spoke English, and seemed to have some compassion. But my interrogator was another matter. He asked me what my “real job” was. I painstakingly retraced my steps, from flying into Amman in early February to my capture nearly two months later in Kirkuk. I said I had already told them that I was a reporter for the Village Voice and CBS News.

Much to my relief, he asked little about Gad, and never questioned my story about how we became separated. I could tell from his questions that he had developed both Gad’s and Alain’s film–including the group photos from the base in Kirkuk. The interrogator again asked, “Now tell us about your real job, your real purpose in coming to Iraq.” I repeated that I worked for the Voice and CBS.

They said I was lying. “Tell us,” said the interrogator, “about your relationship with the CIA.”

I denied having any relationship with the CIA or any other intelligence organization.

“We have our own information, our own proof, of your longstanding relationship with the CIA,” he said. “Don’t like to us. We know. If you tell us the truth you will go free. But if you continue to lie, you will stay here many years.”

Alain and I had already decided that unless the pain was unbearable, we would never admit to being spies. In 1990, an Iranian-born British journalist, Farhad Barzoft, was offered the same promise — if he “confessed” to working for British intelligence, he would go free. He did, and was summarily hanged.

I continued my denials. At the end I learned the interrogation was also a trial. “You are found guilty of entering Iraq without a visa, and concerning your relationship with the CIA, you remain under suspicion.” It was the best I could hope for under the circumstances. Alain timed the ordeal: I’d been gone for two hours. Then he underwent a similar experience, being accused of working for French intelligence. But his interrogation only lasted 45 minutes.

After more than two weeks in prison, Alain and I became disillusioned. We discussed the possibilities. The Iraqis might really think we were spies. Although we hadn’t yet been physically harmed, we knew that — as Western reporters — if they began to torture us, it would mean that they had already decided that we must be killed. Alain told me how to commit suicide without a rope: get a full running start and ram your own head into a brick wall. He said it was common among prisoners during the Vietnam War.

The most difficult feeling was our abject helplessness as we listened to the cries of other prisoners being abused. The guards’ instrument of choice was a heavy rubber hose. We listened and occasionally managed to watch — I could just peek out a small window that looked into the prison yard — as men were beaten. Prisoners were made to hold out their hands just like in Catholic grade school. Some were hit in the soles of the feet. If a prisoner raised his hand to defend himself, he would be savagely beaten about the head and body.

The guards also had a collection of heavy sticks, some as thick and twice as long as a baseball bats. I watched one blindfolded man beaten with these sticks in the cell block yard. About five guards surrounded him, flailing away, as the prisoner tried to remove his blindfold. One ingeniously sadistic guard playfully held a broom handle like a pool cue and repeatedly poked a crying man in the head.

One evening we heard a strange sound: Alain thought it was a welding torch. As another prisoner was dragged out of his cell, my imagination lost all self-control. The strange sound continued, but we hardly heard any screams.

The next morning, I heard the same hissing sound, and looking through our tiny cell window I saw a guard playing with a flat, gunlike device by a chain-link fence. He was placing the two white prongs on the end of the device near the fence watching the tiny blue bolts of electricity that arced between them. It was a stun gun. Some of the guards were genuinely fascinated with their “toys.”

Later I saw a black man, presumably from Sudan, hosed down and then made to stand outside on an overcast day. He was interrogated while he stood there shivering. When the answer was not up to par, a guard zapped him with the stun gun and watched as he tumbled onto the wet paving.

The abuse was systematic and routine — to the point of being institutionalized sadism. The most disturbing aspect was that most of the physical abuse did not occur in the context of extracting information, but on the whim of individual guards. We don’t know if the Ministry of Information was aware of what we were witnessing, or simply didn’t care.

The Iraqi prisoners — from young teenage boys to grandfathers — didn’t seem like hardened criminals, nor did they seem important enough to be political prisoners. They just seemed to be under suspicion: in Iraq, to be under suspicion is as good as being charged with a crime.

Clearly, such abuse serves a political purpose. To be even suspected of being against the regime can result in the nightmare of being held incommunicado and randomly abused in jail. I watched new prisoners come in. One man, about my age and wearing regular street clothes, simply covered his face with his hands, shaking his head.

In the evening the guards liked to play dominoes. The game seemed to enhance their own sense of camaraderie. Afterward, their laughter would become louder and more menacing; they would often drag an unfortunate prisoner out of his cell soon after the last domino fell.

On the night of April 9, they chose Jaffer. I had seen him a few days before, he was a boy about 16 years old.

Like a game, the guards chased him around the cell block, up and down the stairs and even into the outer yard. They beat him relentlessly with rubber hoses. His high-pitched screams echoed through the cells. Although not seriously harmed physically, he was terrorized to the point of breakdown. The guards dragged him back to his cell, laughing.

The next night they chose Jaffer again, but rather than chase him, one guard pinned him against a cell door with a chair while the other guards beat him. A prison source told me that the boy had participated in the Shiite uprising in the south, and that he had killed an entire family. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Regardless, the guards got great pleasure out of horrifying the defenseless boy. Alain and I began to hate them.

“Would you like to do a television interview?” asked Moustafa, one of our liaisons from military intelligence, when he came to check on us the next day. We had received confirmation that the Arabic-language version of Voice of America had reported us missing. We knew that if the interview ran on television, at least our families would know our status — and the Iraqis would be less likely to kill us. We agreed.

We were brought to the Ministry of Information on Thursday, April 11. We met with vice minister Sadoon Al-Janaby and the Iraqi press officer, a Mr. Oudai Al-Tahir. We later learned that just days before these same men had told reporters in Baghdad we had been killed, only to subsequently deny any knowledge of us.

The TV interview focused on negative aspects of the Kurdish revolt. In response to questions, we told our interrogators that ethnic Turkish refugees had complained that the Kurds had looted Arab shops in Kirkuk. Local sources, including one rebel, had also told us that the Kurds had executed 17 Baath party officials in a small village north of Dahuk. They explained that they did so because these officials had executed soldiers who had been caught trying to defect from the Iraqi army.

I tried to qualify my answers; it was clear they were not interested in explanations. I don’t think the tape was ever aired anyway. As we left, the vice minister said that, “God willing,” we would be freed soon. But we were returned to our cell.

As the days went by I thought more and more about Terry Anderson, the Associated Press bureau chief who has been held in Beirut now for more than six years. I was determined to keep a positive attitude, and concentrated on preparing to write an account of our captivity; I wondered how long Anderson had done that. Alain, on the other hand, withdrew into himself. He spent most of his time sitting, rarely wanting to talk.

But it was difficult to hold on to even your own thoughts. In the last week of our captivity, for two nights in a row, we both heard faint cries coming from somewhere far away in the prison. At first, we both tried to ignore them. But the cries persisted. On closer listening, we were almost overcome by nausea. They were the screams neither of fear nor even sharp pain, but the steady, uncontrollable cries of a man in unbearable agony, undergoing a much more severe and systematic form of torture.

Three days after being told that our release was up to God, we began to lose hope. It had now been 17 days since our capture. We decided that on Monday we would begin a hunger strike, and maintain it even if we were separated.

But that day we were both transferred to what appeared to be a permanent cell deep[er] in the prison [cellblock]. We delayed our plans for a strike to make sense of our situation.

The night we were released without warning to fellow reporters at the Al-Rashid Hotel. The decision to release “Mister Alain and Mister Frank,” we were told, had come personally from President Saddam Hussein.

When I called New York, Gad’s photo agent said his shots of Kurdistan were now outdated; all his subjects are smiling. I laughed to myself. Although it sometimes made it hard to get a serious news photo, Gad was the kind of guy who inevitably provoked even the most severe people into a grin.

Gad identified with the Kurds and their struggle, and saw his own role in documenting it as his personal contribution. But his deep commitment was always complemented by his laughter. Gad called people, like he called regimes. Before he died we agreed on what might be the best measure for both — whether they have a sense of humor.

The Iraqi government has no sense of humor. Any legitimacy it once held is lost. It has become almost apolitical; it exists solely by its monopoly of force.

But there is little alternative. While there is now considerable dissent, even among government officials, opposing voices have few outlets for expression. Saddam’s hold on the country is genuinely weak, but his enemies are even weaker.

Much of the blame lies with U.S. policy. Having started the gulf war, the United States hoped that by terrorizing Iraq’s civilian population and destroying the country’s infrastructure it would inspire a move to oust Saddam. But the United States would never back a popular attempt to seize power — with the instability and uncertainty it might bring. Rather, American policymakers remain wedded to the concept of an anti-Saddam coup from within his own army, thinking such people might be more amenable to American aims than insurrectional Shiite and Kurdish masses.

Contrary to the hyperbolic rhetoric of three months ago, American leaders now seem prepared to accept Saddam. His survival has become the price of stability. A humiliated and defeated Saddam in power is useful to American policymakers; he has been used just like everybody else.

Since we crossed the river six weeks ago, thousands of Kurds have died of starvation, exposure, and warfare. Looking over Gad’s photos, I wonder if any of these people — who pressed tea and hearty lamb and rice dishes on us wherever we traveled in those bright spring days of the revolution — have survived to reach the “secure zone” belatedly established by the Americans.

Upon leaving prison, it was painful to learn just how disastrous had been their fall.

We had plans to cover other conflicts and countries. A poet as well as an artist, Gad’s own interests and knowledge were broad. While reporting in Kurdistan, Gad had been accepted to Yale Law School. Typically, he had posted his application from the Plaza Hotel in Amman. He never knew he was accepted.

After he ran around that house, I never saw Gad again. His body has yet to be recovered. In fact, although they had both his camera bag and passport in their possession, after Alain and I were released from prison, the Iraqi authorities acted as if he had never existed at all.

–For Gad–as well as Joe, Edith, Mauzi, Jocelyne, Alain, and all those who knew and loved him.

Release the Jesuit Tapes

Original article can be found here.

by Thomas Long & Frank Smyth

The FBI Has Videotaped Testimony That Accuses the Salvadoran Army of Killing Six Jesuits—and Proves the U.S. Knew in Advance

SAN SALVADOR—American officials in both San Salvador and Washington claim that they have cooperated “intensely” with the investigation into the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter last November. Yet even though State Department officials finally yielded to pressure from Congress to turn over the sworn testimony of a U.S. military adviser—who said he knew of the murder plan in advance—they have continued to withhold key evidence. For 10 months the FBI has kept a videotape of the adviser’s testimony, which suggests there was a conspiracy to murder the Jesuits that included several top Salvadoran army officers, in their Washington headquarters.

Two weeks ago U.S. Embassy officials delivered to a Salvadoran judge three cursory sworn affidavits given by U.S. Army Major Eric Warren Buckland to the FBI in January. But they did not turn over the videotape or a transcript of a detailed discussion between Buckland and FBI examiner Paul Cully.

The recorded discussion is vital. Cully based his own conclusion that Buckland had prior knowledge of a plan to kill the Jesuit priests on the videotaped interview. It also contains information that Buckland recanted—with only a sketchy explanation—one week later.

“There is no way to analyze his statements and his supposed retraction without having the videotape—or at least a transcript—to know exactly what he said and what he was trying to recant,” said Antonio Cañas, a senior political analyst at the Jesuit-run University of Central America.

American officials have yet to explain why this evidence has not already been volunteered to investigating Salvadoran authorities. In fact, U.S. officials in San Salvador have received strict instructions from Washington not to comment on Buckland’s testimony at all.

Nevertheless, the videotape was entered into evidence at FBI headquarters in Washington. Logged, according to official FBI documents, under case title “Shooting of Six Jesuit Priests,” subject “Murder,” it has been “maintained” at the Polygraph Unit, section GRB, Suite 2, under the file number #00116093 PQ1X0.

“Why is the Embassy being so fucking tight-lipped?” asked a non-American Western official, who has been independently monitoring the investigation. “Somewhere somebody is lying through their back teeth within the U.S. hierarchy.”

According to Jesuit academic Michael Czerny, “The United States government from very early on has been acting in a very irregular if not criminal manner.”

Major Buckland has offered two clearly conflicting stories. First he said he had prior knowledge that senior officers were planning to murder the priests. Then he said that he only learned of the Jesuit murders after the fact.

But his recantation is less than weak. “It’s absolutely nonsensical,” said one Western diplomat. In both versions, Buckland says that some time before the Jesuits were killed he accompanied a senior Salvadoran army officer, Colonel Carlos Avilés, to the country’s military academy to “solve a problem” with the school’s director, Colonel Guillermo Benavides. Benavides was later charged with ordering the Jesuit murders.

Buckland says he shared a close working and personal relationship with Colonel Avilés, his Salvadoran counterpart in developing psychological operations for the war. He also says that Avilés was his chief source of information on the murders. According to both Buckland’s original and revised testimonies, on the day of their visit to the academy, Avilés was acting as a special envoy of then army chief of staff Colonel René Emilio Ponce.

In a sworn handwritten statement given to the FBI on January 11, Buckland says Avilés told him that Benavides, the military school’s director, and other unnamed officers were planning to kill Ignacio Ellacuría, the rector of the University of Central America and the most prominent of the murdered priests. The adviser says he waited while Avilés went to talk with Benavides:

“Aviles appeared very uncomfortable about talking to Benevides. Upon returning to the vehicle Aviles called me back to the vehicle and told me that he had to work something out; ‘Colonel Benavides is from the old school, he liked to handle things in his own way, in the old style.”…

“Benevides told Aviles that Ella Coria [sic] was a problem. Aviles told me they wanted to handle it the old way by killing some of the priests. I asked what happened when you (Aviles) talked to him. Aviles told me that Benavides was old school and was still the ‘rammer.’ ”

In his January 18 retraction one week later, Buckland describes the same visit in even greater detail. He recalls, for instance, Avilés telling him “about the fine quality of the bread baked at the military school.” At the same time, however, Buckland curiously claims not to remember anything about his conversation with Avilés concerning Benavides—which was, according to the adviser’s own testimonies, the purpose of the trip:

“After we both got into the vehicle, I asked him words to the effect of what was going on and I do not remember his reply or specifically what “we talked about.” According to this revised version, the major still claims Avilés told him about Benavides’s involvement in the murders—but on another occasion, six weeks after the crime took place.

In explaining the switch, Buckland implies that his initial version was given under duress, and that he became confused during the FBI examination. But it does seem odd that Buckland could have invented the information that Benavides wanted to murder Father Ellacuria—and even write it down himself—and then recall nothing a week later. What’s more, Buckland’s first account is rich, in its particulars, with little hint of confusion under stern FBI examination. It seems unlikely, for example, that Buckland could have remembered all the details like the little-known nickname, “the rammer,” when Benavides is more commonly referred to by fellow officers as “Virgin Boots.”

U.S. officials back up Buckland’s claim that he lost control of his faculties in his initial testimony—even though the veteran Green Beret and army Special Forces Psychological Operations major was under routine questioning as a friendly witness.

Even more convincing, a lie detector test directly contradicts Buckland’s retraction. In answer to the question, “Did you have prior knowledge that the Jesuits would be killed?” Buckland said no, and the polygraph indicated “deception,” according to official FBI documents.

Based on this and the subsequent videotaped interview, FBI examiner Cully concludes: “Buckland admitted that he obtained prior knowledge that the [priests at the university] were going to be killed, specifically Ellacoria [sic], through conversations with Colonel Avilés. According to Major Buckland, Colonel Avilés told him of the intent of certain officers of the El Salvadoran Army to conduct a military operation against the University of Central America. Major Buckland became aware of this information several weeks before the Jesuits were murdered.”

But Colonel Avilés, Buckland’s main source, denies telling the adviser anything. Avilés denies even his former friendship with Buckland—a relationship of which both Salvadoran and Americans were well aware. Indeed, Avilés claims that he was not even in El Salvador when the alleged trip took place.

Buckland, in his initial statement, says the pair made the visit “approximately 10 days before the killings (circa November 6, 1989).” But in his later version, the adviser says the trip was made in late October, recalling that Avilés left for vacation at the beginning of November.

Colonel Ponce, on whose orders Avilés was allegedly sent to the military school, also denies knowing of the murders in advance. He bases his denial on a selectively narrow reading of Buckland’s testimony (Ponce has since been promoted to the military’s top post as minister of defense).

Last month Ponce sent a letter to Massachusetts congressman Joe Moakley, who chairs a special task force on the investigation. Ponce points out that Avilés passport indicates he was not in El Salvador in early November. “That should be sufficient to demonstrate with facts the falsehood of Major Buckland’s declaration,” he says in the letter.

Only Buckland’s revised testimony, which U.S. officials now claim is the truth, establishes the date of the visit in late October.

The newest revelations do not mark the first time Avilés and Buckland have given widely disparate versions of their activities together. Buckland first came forward in early January, telling his superiors that Aviles informed him in December that the military school director had ordered the killings. Avilés categorically denies revealing any information.

Both men were given lie detector tests at that time. Congressman Moakley and other officials concluded that it was the Salvadoran colonel who was lying.

Avilés would have had good reason. To be branded a snitch within the most exclusive and powerful men’s club in El Salvador—the senior officers’ corps—is akin to blowing the whistle on the Mafia. At the very least, “his career is over,” said one Western official. Not surprisingly, Avilés has since said he’s planning to retire.

“It is a very grave sin among them [to snitch],” said a chief prosecutor from the office of the Salvadoran attorney general. “But they can’t get rid of him now, because it would be too obvious.” Portions of the affidavits which Buckland does not retract reveal that both men feared for their lives because of what they knew of the murders.

The many inconsistencies between Buckland’s original and revised testimonies clearly indicate that key pieces of the puzzle are still missing. For one thing, much of the information he recants in his revised affidavit never actually appeared in his previous sworn statements.

What’s more, the FBI examiner’s report draws heavily on evidence that has never been made available to Salvadoran judicial authorities. The most complete record of what Buckland may have known and when he knew it is likely to be found in the videotaped FBI interview.

The Bush administration has never been notably openhanded about information concerning the Jesuits’ murder. The January affidavits were released only after Congressman Moakley publicly complained in mid-October. The Salvadoran judge on the case has now asked for the videotaped interview; U.S. officials refuse to comment on the matter, saying they have not yet received a formal diplomatic request.

Such behavior leads Jesuit leaders and other observers to question the administration’s true intentions. “The U.S. Embassy did not provide the evidence, and they have not yet explained why,” said Father Jose Maria Tojeira, the Jesuit Provincial for Central America. “They are either inept, or acting in bad faith.”

Sources say that Buckland’s January testimony was “discovered” by U.S. officials in San Salvador in late September. Yet they refuse to say who in the federal government might be responsible for their mysterious discovery or even which agency channeled the evidence from the FBI headquarters in Washington to the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador. They also fail to explain why it took nearly a month to pass the evidence to Salvadoran authorities— at the same time that they deny that Moakley’s prodding played any role.

Non-American officials and other observers say that the U.S. government’s blatant discrepancies warrant an inquiry. “There are too many agencies involved,” said one Western diplomat. “They [should] be called to testify under oath.”

Officials of the Jesuit university agree.

“There has always been passive complicity [by U.S. officials] in human rights abuses in the past; now the complicity has become active,” said the university’s Cañas. “It is not only a question of how far does this complicity reach, but where did it begin?”

The Truth Will Out

San Salvador — The official purpose given for Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson’s visit here two weeks ago was to express support for negotiations between El Salvador’s U.S.-backed government and the leftist guerrillas. But the real reason the ranking state department policymaker for Latin America traveled to El Salvador was to give a scathing lecture to the High Command of the Salvadoran Army over their suspected involvement in the murders of six Jesuit Priests last November.

Aronson gave the High Command a dressing down that differed markedly from his public comments on the U.S. ambassador’s lawn. Sources present at the meeting said Aronson lambasted the assembled officers about the Jesuit investigation, and demanded that those responsible be brought to trial.

U.S. officials here admit to being terrified at what they might find if they press the government to get to the bottom of the case. They have begun to realize that not only a few lower-ranking officers, but several members of the senior High Command may be complicit in planning the murders. U.S. officials also fear the embassy’s favorite son, armed forces chief of staff Colonel Rene Emilio Ponce, may be involved.

So far, no definitive evidence to link specific senior officers to the actual ordering of the crime has come to light — presumably because individual officers have closed ranks to protect one another. But a mounting body of evidence points increasingly to the complicity of the High Command.

Military intelligence sources as well as Catholic Church officials say that prior to the Jesuit murders, the military conceived of “Plan Djakarta” a term coined after the brutal 1965 anti-communist campaign in Indonesia that led to the wholesale slaughter of leftists and ethnic Chinese in that country. Sources say the military’s Plan Djakarta, which was developed in the midst of the major offensive by leftist guerrillas last November, targeted dozens of prominent religious, labor, and other popular leaders for assassination. The Plan Djakarta strongly suggests that the Jesuits were not killed in isolation, but as part of a broader, preconceived plan.

Under strong pressure from Congress, the [George H. W.] Bush administration has been forced to make the infamous massacre of six Jesuit priests and two women a test case for U.S. policy. But various diplomatic and other sources say the Salvadoran military High Command is actively blocking the investigation. Unless the crime is successfully prosecuted and its “intellectual authors” within the military are tried, U.S. officials admit they will have little remaining justification to defend against serious cuts in U.S. aid.

It’s now become apparent that the dilemma has frozen U.S. policy in its tracks. At the very least, even if Ponce was not involved in the killings, given his sway over the rest of the rest of the High Command, diplomats suspect the chief of staff is collaborating in a cover-up. The High Command’s failure to demand accountability in the case demonstrates that U.S. attempts to “professionalize” the Salvadoran Armed Forces have been in vain. Though it has been financed and supported by U.S. tax dollars over the past 10 years, the Salvadoran military is now thumbing its nose at its backers, and the senior officers that currently dominate the High Command have become Washington’s Frankenstein — or Noriega — in yet another Central American nation.

The High Command remained politely silent during Aronson’s address, and at the end gave him an ovation. But sources present said they doubted that his words were well heeded. One observer said, “It was like telling sharks not to eat sardines.”

Wearing a standard dark-blue suit, white shirt, and red tie, the assistant secretary looked a little out of place before the camouflage-clad Salvadoran High Command, according to one observer present. “He was like a Dutch uncle,” he said. “But I don’t know if they got the [message].”

Aronson’s visit came in the wake of heavy pressure from U.S. officials here. Diplomats say the embassy’s military attaché, Colonel Wayne Wheeler, has lobbied the High Command almost daily to cooperate with the investigation. Frustrated with the lack of progress in the case, U.S. ambassador William Walker — conscious that his own diplomatic future may be hanging on the outcome — recently gave what officials described as the “toughest speech of his 30-year career.” But the High Command didn’t budge. Aronson was called in to up the ante.

Five soldiers and three junior officers have been charged with carrying out the murders, and Colonel Guillermo Benavides has been charged with ordering them. But diplomats and other observers here are almost unanimous that Benavidcs, who has been referred to as “Virgin Boots” could not have ordered a crime of such magnitude on his own. “I know Benavides,” said a senior U.S. official directly involved in the case. “I don’t believe he did it,” he said flatly.

For a time, U.S. officials entertained the thought that the lower-ranking officers charged in the assassination of some of El Salvador’s most prestigious Catholic clergy and respected academic critics on their own. But both the severity of the crime and the number of troops involved make that highly unlikely. Besides, the High Command’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation puts that scenario further in doubt. “Why would a lieutenant decide to do that?” said a non-American Western diplomat. “It had to come from higher up.”

Speculation revolves around two now well-known meetings. The first took place in the High Command headquarters the evening of November 15, just hours before the Jesuit murders. The second occurred in the military’s National Directorate of Intelligence (which shares facilities with the CIA) several hours after the deaths. Earlier this year, military sources told reporters that officers at the first meeting decided to use air power to put down the mounting guerrilla offensive, and to try to assassinate suspected rebel leaders in the capital. Sources also said that at the second meeting, officers clapped in approval upon hearing of the Jesuits’ deaths.

One Salvadoran Army officer present at that second meeting, Colonel Pineda Guerra, took issue with his fellow officers for applauding, according to diplomatic and military sources. Pineda argued that the Jesuit murders were a mistake, and predicted that the case would be a terrible scar on the military as an institution. Other officers, especially Colonel Guzman Aguilar, argued that the Jesuits deserved what they got. “[Pineda] made a real impression on people present,” said a U.S. official — implying that either American officials or sources were also represented.

But it still remains unclear who ordered the killings — and who knew about them, and when. On the morning the Jesuits were killed, Army soldiers raided the headquarters of the Lutheran Church and were also seen at the homes of several other antigovernment politicians and activists. All but the Jesuits had already gone into hiding. That the actions all occurred at about the same time led to speculation among Church officials and others that the military had drawn up a list, identified to the Church as “Plan Djakarta.” Several members of the High Command confirmed the existence of the Plan Djakarta, according to an individual with long-standing access to the military and official intelligence information. The purpose of the list was “to decapitate” the antigovernment movement, he said. “There were lots of religious and other people on it.” When asked how many, he said, “at least a hundred.”

El Salvador’s Catholic archbishop, Rivera y Damas, told an audience in Europe that he believes his name and that of Auxiliary Bishop Rosa Chavez were included: “Bishop Rosa Chavez and I could have died too on that night (the Jesuits were killed). Our names were on the list of Plan Djakarta, whose aim was the physical elimination of all of those of us who denounce human rights violations and the system of injustice here in El Salvador.”

“What we do know, we have from sources which the Archbishop sees as worthy of belief,” Rosa Chavez later told an American reporter. “The plan you mention did exist.” Two days after the Jesuits were killed, El Salvador Attorney General Eduardo Colorado sent a letter to Pope John Paul II, warning him that the bishops were in danger. The Salvadoran AG encouraged the Pope to temporarily withdraw the bishops for their own protection.

The Jesuits’ deaths make it inconceivable that they would not have been on the list. The testimony of one the lieutenants charged with killing them is also telling. According to the testimony recorded by El Salvador’s Fourth Penal Court, Benavides told three of his subordinates, “This is a situation where it’s them or us; we’re going to begin with the ringleaders. And within our sector, we have the university and Ellacuria [the most prominent of the murdered priests) is there.”

Nevertheless, judicial authorities have not even begun to seriously investigate the High Command. Actually, fewer than a dozen officers have provided even peripheral testimony in the case. Ponce, for example, took responsibility for ordering a search of the Jesuits’ residence less than three days before they were killed. But he has only provided a judge with prepared statements, limited largely to the search itself. Only one senior officer besides Benavides has been called before the judge. Other key senior officers whom diplomats strongly suspect, such as Vice-Minister of Defense Juan Orlando Zepeda, have yet to be even seriously questioned. El Salvador’s Fourth Penal judge, Ricardo Zamora [no relation to leftist politician Ruben Zamora] is genuinely pursuing leads. But his efforts are, predictably, limited mostly to the execution of the crime, not to who gave the order.

The investigation itself has taken a number of strange turns. “Every time they get one thing straight, they come to something else,” said a non-American diplomat. “They keep incriminating more people.” The burning of more than 7O log books from the Military Academy — which might have indicated who directed the unit that killed the Priests — is one example. Military officers said that all the books from 1989 were burned as standard routine, though the books for 1987 and 1988 are, oddly, still on file.

In another bizarre twist, Judge Zamora ordered the arrest of Lieutenant Colonel Camilo Hernandez for having allegedly ordered the books to be burned. But three weeks passed before Hernandez was actually arrested, and consigned to a judge. The High Command says it was a misunderstanding; a non-American Western diplomat independently monitoring the case describes the military’s attitude toward the investigation as a “joke.”

Other diplomats say the Bush administration has wanted to get — or has needed to get in order to pacify Congress– at least one officer above Benavides to take responsibility for ordering the assassinations. But the problem is whether one senior officer can be singled out from the rest. “They were looking for one other name besides (Benavides),” said a non-American diplomat. “They (thought) someone higher up was involved, but what if they were all involved?”

The War Next Door

Original story can be found here.

The slaying of six Jesuits was only the most recent reminder that El Salvador is one of the few remaining countries where the price of thought can be death.

San Salvador – Several months ago a friend invited me to his sociology class. “Come on,” he said, “we’re going to see a movie.” Beaches, starring Bette Midler, was the day’s discussion subject.

Students milled about the auditorium, many in Levis and Reeboks. With a Coke and popcorn in hand, I felt as close to home as a foreigner can feel in El Salvador.

Entre Amigos –- “Among Friends” –- is how the movie title was translated into Spanish. Readers may be familiar with the plot: two young girls meet by chance in California and build a friendship that stretches to New York and lasts for life.

When the lights came on, a tall man in a long graying beard took his place in front of the class. He spoke in a deep raspy voice.

“What does it mean to be friends?” he asked paternally. “What does it mean to have a friendship?”

But the discussion soon took its own track. “What is the meaning of friendship,” asked one woman, “in the midst of war?”

The more sober theme dominated the rest of the session. In El Salvador, even the most delightful film can offer only transitory escape from violence.

The bearded man was sociology professor Segundo Montes. SJ. Like other Jesuit professors at the University of Central America Jose Simeon Canas or UCA (pronounced “ooka”), much of his coursework was devoted to exploring El Salvador’s “national reality.” Integration of the war and friendship themes was likely part of this plan for that session.

Both Montes and his fellow Jesuit and colleague Ignacio (Nacho) Martin-Baro were immensely popular among students. The last time I saw them was in October, at an UCA-organized conference on the Salvadoran military. That day I spoke with both. We needed to exchange ideas. Segundo, Nacho and I were to speak on a joint panel at an upcoming Latin American conference in Miami.

But I made this trip alone. In Miami I saw next to two empty chairs adorned with flowers.

Before daylight on November 16, in the midst of a major military offensive by leftist guerillas, U.S.-trained and equipped army soldiers surrounded and entered UCA’s grounds. They marched six Jesuit priests, including Segundo and Nacho, into a grassy courtyard in their nightclothes. The Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter were shot repeatedly with automatic weapons at point-blank range.

With recent changes in Eastern Europe, El Salvador now remains one of the few places in the world where ideas are genuinely dangerous. Segundo, Nacho and the other Jesuits were targeted to be killed precisely because their ideas were powerful and persuasive.

Segundo, for example, was a noted critic of human rights abuses. He also had done extensive research on refugees created by El Salvador’s 10-year civil war between the U.S.-backed government and the leftist guerillas.

Nacho was chairman of UCA’s psychology department as well as an astute political and military analyst. He also administered a public opinion poll run out of UCA. It explored Salvadorans’ views on subject such as the economy and the war.

Ignacio Ellacuria, SJ, UCA’s rector, who also died that night, was another compelling figure. “The truth is the truth is the truth,” I remember him telling an audience packed with students some years ago. Editor of UCA’s main journal, Estudios Centroamericanos or “Central American Studies,” he was a prolific writer and a powerful critic of both the Salvadoran government and U.S. policy toward it.

In interviews with the foreign press, he and Nacho often told both Salvadoran and U.S. officials what they didn’t want to hear:

“Ideology…had a lot to do with the American involvement in this civil war,” said Nacho. “And unfortunately, you Americans have invested here during the last eight years [$3.2 billion] of your tax-payers’ dollars; just to have in this country more destruction, more death–-and no more democracy, no more peace, no improvement for the majority of the Salvadoran people; just with the obsession of militarily defeating the rebels, militarily putting an end to the so-called advancement of, or the expansion of, communism.”

Nacho, Ellacuria and all the Jesuits at UCA advocated a negotiated settlement to the war, as opposed to a military victory by either side. The Jesuits strongly criticized the United States for pursuing a military solution. They also took issue with claims by U.S. officials that EI Salvador’s civil war was foreign inspired.
“The problem of this country is not a problem of communism or capitalism,” Nacho went on. “The problems of this country are problems of very basic wealth distribution, of very basic needs. Now more than 60 percent of our adult population doesn’t have a job. Can you imagine–how are our people able to…survive without a job?”
The Salvadoran government and military had long equated popular demands to change such conditions with subversion. This is why, argued the Jesuits, EI Salvador’s guerrilla movement was born.

“When in this country you ask for satisfaction for those needs,” said Nacho, “you become a subversive–and you are a subversive. Why? Because if you want to satisfy those basic needs, you have to change the social system. You have to change the regime. But then you become a ‘Communist.’ Then you become a rebel. Then you become a revolutionary. And then you have to be repressed. And you are repressed. And there you have… the civil war.”

The Jesuit killings have received more attention than any Salvadoran crime since the 1980 slaying of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero. But over the past decade, over 70,000 Salvadorans–more than one percent of the country’s population–have been killed. According to the human rights office of the country’s Catholic archbishop, the vast majority of victims were assassinated by either the Salvadoran military or allied rightist death squads. They were killed on suspicion of being “subversives.”

Let me offer one family’s story.

In October I interviewed an inspirational young woman, Tatiana Mendoza. Her father was a leading member of EI Salvador’s early democratic opposition movement, before it was driven underground. He and several colleagues were killed when army soldiers raided their offices in 1980.

A decade later, Tatiana, his 21-year-old daughter, was a union organizer who worked with women’s groups. She had recently been detained on charges of being a “subversive.” During her ordeal, Tatiana told me, she was raped by a military guard. Although a court-appointed doctor confirmed her claim, in EI Salvador an attempt to charge a soldier with rape is laughable.

Two weeks after I interviewed her, Tatiana was killed by a bomb. An attacker had placed it in the cafeteria of her trade union office. Two generations of activists; two deaths. The story of Tatiana’s family is the story of her blood-drenched country.

For Nacho and the other Jesuits, such violence was part of daily life. Some of his more recent interviews carried a sense of foreboding. ‘There is an environment,”‘ I remember him saying, “of the possibility of being killed any moment of the day.”

Nacho also did not equivocate about [he likely source of the threat. “As long as [he armed forces in this country are over and above the law, as long as the armed forces [are] a corruptible and corrupt institution, as long as the armed forces have within its ranks … terrible human rights violators, you cannot expect to have in this country peace, to have democracy, and to have [least of all] justice.” Nacho said these words in his last known interview, one week before he was killed.

The UCA Jesuits were full participants in the Salvadoran community. In addition to teaching and writing, they were active at the grassroots and shared a commitment to the poor.

Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, SJ, was another of the murdered men. He ran a program–“Faith and Happiness”–which worked in poor areas with base Christian communities: small groups of local individuals who meet to worship and read scripture.

Despite his death, other UCA Jesuits continue similar work. One, Jon Sobrino, is not only a leading interpreter of liberation theology, but is also active with El Salvador’s base Christian community movement, whose members receive constant threats and other forms of intimidation from the armed forces. Another, Jon Cortina, does his pastoral work in Chalatenango, one of the most war-torn provinces in the country. He recently moved there from UCA to live and work among newly rebuilt peasant communities.

Most of these priests, including Segundo, Nacho and Ellacuria, were born in Basque country in Spain, and later became naturalized Salvadoran citizens. But most of the younger Jesuit seminarians who have been studying under them are native Salvadorans. The seminarians are spread throughout the country. Almost all live and work among poor communities.

Segundo, who had several seminarians under his tutelage, not only studied refugees but frequently traveled to their places of repatriation. He encouraged them to organize themselves to defend their rights and to find ways to improve their conditions. Nacho also worked closely with peasant and labor-based “popular organizations,” as well as community self-help groups.

Nacho and I knew one such refugee community well. Called “Community of the Cross,” it is not far from UCA, on vacant land between lanes of the country’s largest highway. Its 500-odd squatters live in mud and split-bamboo shacks with roofs of tin.

Children with faces mottled by chickenpox and bellies bloated by amoebic infection rush to greet a stranger. They are likely to call any foreign male they come to know. Padre.

People there say that Nacho came every once in a while to say Mass. “Padre Nacho is with us,” one woman, Martha, told me.

Martha later said she was angered by Nacho’s death, but not surprised. Like many others, Martha knew at firsthand the effects of repressive violence. She and her two sons had been taken, interrogated and physically abused by government soldiers two months earlier–again on suspicion of “subversion.”

Martha said she knew who was responsible for killing the Jesuits–this, before government officials admitted military involvement in the case. “The ones who need to be punished,” she said, “are the [ones running the country].”

Martha must have had better insight than U.S. officials here. Nearly up until the time that army involvement in the case was made public, U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador William Walker tried to convince Congressional leaders in Washington that leftist guerrillas and not army soldiers were responsible. U.S. officials also questioned the credibility of a key witness in the case, seriously straining relations with the Catholic communities in both countries.

Maria Julia Hernandez, a tough little woman who directs the Catholic human rights office, said she’s not surprised by this behavior. “I don’t know if they are aware of it or not,” she said, “but U.S. Embassy officials have the ability to deceive themselves, and to never hit the mark [on human rights] in EI Salvador.”

Some U.S. officials–speaking privately–seem to agree. “If we can have 55 military advisors,” said one, “why can’t we have 55 human rights officers?” The Jesuit case has disillusioned many U.S. officials need to put a good face on the case in order to ensure continued Congressional approval for military and economic aid. But when confronted, some admit they no longer believe in what they’re doing.

Many Congressional leaders have also lost faith. The idea that an army trained, financed, and advised by the United States would commit such a crime proved too much for them. A bipartisan task force looking into the slayings recently visited EI Salvador. By the time members finished their investigation, they were openly questioning whether senior Salvadoran military officers were trying to cover up the murders; whether the killings were “the actions of a few renegade military figures or whether, in fact, they stem from attitudes and actions that go to the very heart of the armed forces and other major institutions in this country.”

The evidence doesn’t look good for the armed forces. For years army officers had accused the UCA Jesuits of being allied with the guerrillas. Last April, then Army Intelligence Chief Colonel Juan Orlando Zepeda accused the Jesuits of running guerrilla operations out of the university.

For several days prior to the murders, the armed forces radio program broadcast threats against the UCA Jesuits. “Anonymous” phone-in callers were encouraged to express their views. The army aired repeated demands for the Jesuits’ deaths in revenge for the offensive by leftist guerrillas. Approximately five hours before the killings, the military high command held an emergency meeting. Military sources quoted in The Washington Post and elsewhere said the officers present decided to use greater air power to put down the guerrilla offensive and also decided to attempt the assassination of suspected guerrilla leaders in the capital city.

Shortly after the murders, a second meeting took place in the military’s intelligence complex, which shares facilities with the CIA. An army officer interrupted the meeting to announce the Jesuits had been killed. According to military sources present, the attending officers clapped in approval.

Nevertheless, only one army officer present at the first meeting has been charged with the crime. Many non-American Western diplomats here believe other senior officers were involved in planning the murders.
Preliminary treatment for accused Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides doesn’t offer much cause for hope that justice will be served. He is being held in a luxury apartment at the headquarters of the National Police. The “prisoner” has also been seen at a military-owned resort hotel on the Pacific Coast.

I was in a small parish in San Salvador the morning of November 16. It was the fifth day of combat since the guerrilla offensive had begun. An orphanage, called Mary, Mother of the Poor, had been hit by a grenade. Young Jesuit seminarians were evacuating civilians under heavy fire. One of them stopped to tell me that Ellacuria and the others had been killed.

I felt relatively little on learning this shocking news. My senses were numbed by the wanton violence I had seen over the previous days. The most extraordinary experience of many was watching a government’s helicopters and planes strafe, rocket and bomb its own people. On the second day of fighting, I saw a helicopter fire a rocket at a mud and split-bamboo shack. I can still see the victims–a mother and her decapitated daughter.

Many similar incidents occurred. The Jesuit murders are only the most celebrated in a series of atrocious acts. Leftist guerrillas share in the blame. Their worst violation was to discourage or even temporarily prevent people from leaving combat areas, in order to use them as a deterrent against government air strikes. But both human rights groups and international monitoring organizations cite army soldiers as the most consistent and flagrant offenders. One of the most inexcusable crimes was not allowing the International Red Cross and other relief groups to evacuate wounded from battle areas–out of fear they might unknowingly treat “subversives.”

The violence of November has left the country scarred. Most UCA students, for instance, who come from EI Salvador’s wealthier classes, seem generally repulsed by the killing of some of their most prestigious and popular professors. But indicative of the country’s mood, few are willing to express their views. According to several students I’ve talked to, most will keep their feelings private rather than admit them even to each other.

UCA’s academic programs have been scaled back. Several professors have fled the country in fear. At least one senior editor and writer for UCA’s journals barely missed encountering a death squad of heavily armed men in civilian clothes at his home. He has now taken refuge in another Latin American country.

Many lesser known Salvadorans have fled as well. Jesuit seminarians have arranged visas for people who feel particularly targeted to flee to Canada–it is not possible to obtain such visas from the United States. But others have been smuggled into the United States illegally by the religious-based sanctuary movement.
But most Salvadorans don’t have the luxury of flight. For them, violence is a recurring agony to be endured.

Nevertheless, there is some reason for hope. In the wake of the November offensive, an increasing number of players on all sides of the conflict have come to see that a negotiated settlement, rather than a military victory, would indeed be the best solution. The slain Jesuits certainly believed this. It is worth noting that as a community the Jesuits believe that the most efficacious way to bring about genuine negotiations is to cut U.S. aid to the Salvadoran government and army.

I was recently invited to a base Christian community meeting. It took place in one of the areas I had reported from during the fighting, the same community in which I had learned of the UCA massacre.

A family had invited me to commemorate a previous tragedy–the ninth anniversary of their son’s death. In 1981, along with 25 other young men from his community, he had been dragged from his home and shot by army soldiers.

A Christian catechist, brother of the murdered man, led the ceremony. After a short reading he asked, “What is the fruit of his death?”

“Well,” said a peasant woman, addressing the mother, “the fruit of his death is in the children you still have.”

“But,” responded another, “we are all children of God. The fruit is in all the children, all of us. ”
But the mother had a different answer: “For me, I cope with his death by giving to other children who have no one else.” A seemingly frail woman, the mother, since her son’s death, has tenaciously managed a home for children abandoned or orphaned because of the war. “I had a choice,” she said. “I could have gone into despair. But I decided to make something good come out of it.”

It’s possible there may be no negotiations in EI Salvador–and no cuts in U.S. aid. I wonder, what then would be the fruit of the Jesuits’ deaths?

Frank Smyth lived in El Salvador during the 1980s, serving as a radio report for CBS News and reporting for The Village Voice and other publications.