The Reagan administration's dirty wars in Central America should be relatively fresh in people's minds, with the atrocities committed by the US/CIA-backed Contras and the Salvadorean and Guatemalan military/security forces as part and parcel of a record of brutality. But apparently not. It just didn't happen. Instead, Reagan is portrayed in popular culture as a kind of doddling old grandfatherly type, sort of a Dubya-lite without the evil sneer who valiantly defeated commies and leftists.
In fact, the story was quite different, especially for those struggling for basic human dignity but who happened to be on the receiving end of The Gipper's policies. But instead of facing up to the truth, Obama and the Democrats have signed a resolution to create a commission that will plan a centennial celebration in 2011 of Ronald Reagan’s birth. In other words, none of the facts matter. Can you think of another "open society" so thoroughly hypnotized by a hogwash history? Punditman can't.
By Robert Parry
Lost amid the attention given George W. Bush’s “war on terror” torture policies was the CIA’s cryptic admission that it also engaged in interrogation abuses during Ronald Reagan’s anti-leftist wars in Central America, another era of torture and extra-judicial killings.
The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report, released last month, referenced as “background” to the Bush-era abuses the spy agency’s “intermittent involvement in the interrogation of individuals whose interests are opposed to those of the United States.” The report noted “a resurgence in interest” in teaching those techniques in the early 1980s “to foster foreign liaison relationships.”
The report said, “because of political sensitivities,” the CIA’s top brass in the 1980s “forbade Agency officers from using the word ‘interrogation” and substituted the phrase “human resources exploitation” [HRE] in training programs for allied intelligence agencies.
The euphemism aside, the reality of these interrogation techniques remained brutal, with the CIA Inspector General conducting a 1984 investigation of alleged “misconduct on the part of two Agency officers who were involved in interrogations and the death of one individual,” the report said (although the details were redacted in the version released last month).
In 1984, the CIA also was hit with a scandal over what became known as an “assassination manual” prepared by agency personnel for the Nicaraguan contras, a rebel group sponsored by the Reagan administration with the goal of ousting Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.
Despite those two problems, the questionable training programs apparently continued for another two years. The 2004 IG report states that “in 1986, the Agency ended the HRE training program because of allegations of human rights abuses in Latin America.”
While the report’s references to this earlier era of torture are brief – and the abuses are little-remembered features of Ronald Reagan’s glorified presidency – there have been other glimpses into how Reagan unleashed this earlier “dark side” on the peasants, workers and students of Central America.
Project X
At CHEO, volunteers have been screening visitors and directing them to a handwashing station. (CBC)
Ryan Collerd for The New York Times