US Intelligence Objectives and Programs in Guatemala

REPORT ON THE GUATEMALA REVIEW 

JUNE 28, 1996 

INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT BOARD 

Anthony S. Harrington, Chairman 
General Lew Allen, Jr., USAF (Ret.) 
Ann Z. Caracristi 
Harold W. Pote 


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GUATEMALA REVIEW 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
THE CONTEXT: US RELATIONS WITH GUATEMALA
US INTELLIGENCE OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAMS IN 
GUATEMALA 

Intelligence objectives and activities
Liaison relationship
Funding issues

ASSET INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

DO guidance on human rights
Allegations of human rights abuse by assets

ASSET VALIDATION SYSTEM
NOTIFICATION TO POLICY-MAKERS OF ABUSES BY 
ASSETS
CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT

Conclusions concerning CIA Congressional notification
Failure to notify Congress on receipt of the Alpirez allegation
Semi-annual CIA human rights reports to Congress 
1992 Briefings to oversight committee staff on human rights in 
Guatemala
DOD Congressional notification 

CRIMES REPORT TO DOJ 
HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING 

Priority and performance in reporting 
Perceived loss of objectivity 
Source characterization and protection 
Dissemination and retrieval of intelligence reports 

ALLEGED NSA RECORDS DESTRUCTION 
VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE IN GUATEMALA REVIEWED BY 
THE IOB 

Michael DeVine 
Efrain Bamaca Velasquez 
Sister Dianna Ortiz 
Nicholas Blake and Griffith Davis 
Peter Wolfe 
Janey Skinner and Jennifer Roitman 
Meredith Larson 
Josh Zinner 
Peter Tiscione
Melissa Larsen and June Weinstock 
Daniel Callahan 

INTELLIGENCE BEARING ON THE MURDER OF MICHAEL 
DEVINE 
INTELLIGENCE BEARING ON THE FATE OF EFRAIN 
BAMACA 

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INTRODUCTION

On March 30, 1995, the President directed the Intelligence 
Oversight Board (IOB) to conduct a government-wide review 
concerning allegations regarding the l990 death of US citizen 
Michael DeVine, the 1992 disappearance of Guatemalan guerrilla 
leader Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, and related matters. Under terms 
of reference issued on April 7, 1995, the scope of this inquiry 
covers any existing intelligence bearing on the torture, 
disappearance, or death of US citizens in Guatemala since 1984, 
including the cases of Dianna Ortiz, Griffith Davis and Nicholas 
Blake. Other cases that have come to our attention and have been 
included in our review are those involving Peter Wolfe, Janey 
Skinner, Jennifer Roitman, Meredith Larson, June Weinstock, and 
Daniel Callahan. Because an investigation of the Dianna Ortiz case 
by the Department of Justice is still underway, our comments on 
that case will be limited at this time to our review of relevant 
intelligence reports. The terms of reference also include the US 
intelligence relationship with Guatemala, the coordination of 
intelligence and policy, and the asset validation process.

The IOB's charter is to review and report to the President on 
intelligence activities that we believe may be unlawful or contrary 
to Executive order or Presidential directive. The Board has 
previously conducted its investigations and provided reports in a 
confidential manner. The Guatemala review is unprecedented as a 
publicly announced inquiry.

The Board received reports on the matters under review from the 
Inspectors General of the Departments of State and Justice and the 
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and from the Inspector General 
and General Counsel of the Department of Defense. These reports 
covered those agencies and their subordinate agencies, such as the 
National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Intelligence Agency 
(DIA), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Over the course of the 
review, the IOB has received excellent cooperation from the 
inspectors general and their departments and agencies, as well as 
from innumerable others both in and out of the government, and 
has benefited greatly from the extensive follow-up investigations 
conducted by the Department of Justice on certain matters. The 
IOB believes that the investigations conducted by the inspectors 
general in this review process demonstrate the important, though 
often unpopular, roles they play.

The IOB also conducted its own inquiry in evaluating relevant facts 
and circumstances in order to reach its own conclusions. In this 
inquiry, IOB members and staff interviewed scores of witnesses in 
the United States and Guatemala and examined many thousands of 
documents. The Board also requested a CIA IG review of all 
clandestine assets in Guatemala since 1984 for allegations of 
human rights abuse.

The Board would like to note that agencies have already taken 
several remedial actions as a result of investigations conducted by 
the agency inspectors general, the IOB, and the Congress.

In this report, we provide an executive summary and our 
conclusions and recommendations, and we address the following 
subjects: the context of US relations with Guatemala, US 
intelligence objectives in Guatemala, asset involvement in human 
rights violations, the asset validation system, intelligence agencies' 
interaction with the policy community, Congressional oversight, a 
crimes report to the Department of Justice, human rights reporting, 
and intelligence bearing on the cases of victims of violence in 
Guatemala reviewed by the IOB.

This public version of the report is essentially the same as the 
classified version submitted to the President. This report omits, for 
example, some highly sensitive information, such as the identities 
of those who came forward with information --individuals whose 
lives could be endangered if they were identified. 

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

Policy objectives 

US policy objectives in Guatemala from l984 to the present--the 
period we reviewed--included supporting the transition to and 
strengthening of civilian democratic government, furthering human 
rights and the rule of law, supporting economic growth, combating 
illegal narcotics trafficking, combating the communist insurgency, 
and advancing the current peace process between the government 
and the guerrillas. 

Intelligence activities 

US intelligence officials in Guatemala as well as in Washington 
endeavored to support all of these policy objectives. For the CIA, 
the principal means to accomplish this consisted of working closely 
with Guatemala's security and intelligence services and developing 
human sources of intelligence--known as assets. These assets 
provided intelligence that assisted officials at the embassy and in 
Washington in achieving US policy objectives. The CIA station's 
liaison relationships with the security services also benefited US 
interests by engendering cooperation in such areas as countering 
attempts to overthrow Guatemala's constitutional government, 
providing protection to US citizens at risk in Guatemala and 
reversing a dramatic early 1990's increase in narcotics 
transshipment through Guatemala.

Although the CIA's goals in Guatemala were legitimate, achieving 
them and maintaining influence in Guatemala required that the CIA 
deal with some unsavory groups and individuals. The human rights 
records of the Guatemalan security services were widely known to 
be reprehensible, and although the CIA made efforts to improve the 
conduct of the services, probably with some limited success, 
egregious human rights abuses did not stop.

Our clandestine intelligence capability will clearly remain essential 
to our national security. However, although the conduct of 
clandestine intelligence collection at times requires dealing with 
unsavory individuals and organizations, the value of what we hope 
to gain in terms of our national interests must outweigh the costs of 
such unseemly relationships and be worth the risks always inherent 
in clandestine activity.

The CIA's successes in Guatemala in conjunction with other US 
agencies, particularly in uncovering and working to counter coups 
and in reducing the narcotics flow, were at times dramatic and very 
much in the national interests of both the United States and 
Guatemala. We found, however, two areas in which the CIA's 
performance was unacceptable. First, until late 1994, insufficient 
attention was given to allegations of serious human rights abuse 
made against several station assets or liaison contacts. Second, the 
CIA failed to provide enough information on this subject to policy-
makers and the Congress to permit proper policy and 
Congressional oversight. Other US intelligence agencies also made 
valuable contributions to US interests and policy in Guatemala, but 
fell short in some areas as noted in our report; we did not find, 
however, that the impact of their deficiencies was of the same 
magnitude as that of the CIA. 

Human rights abuses by assets or liaison contacts 

In the course of our review, we found that several CIA assets were 
credibly alleged to have ordered, planned, or participated in serious 
human rights violations such as assassination, extrajudicial 
execution, torture, or kidnapping while they were assets--and that 
the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) headquarters was aware 
at the time of the allegations. A number of assets were alleged--
with varying levels of credibility--to have been involved in similar 
abuses before their CIA asset relationships began; in several other 
cases, the alleged abuses occurred or came to light only after the 
CIA was no longer in contact with the assets. A few assets were 
reportedly present as others engaged in acts of intimidation, and 
another engaged in such an act before becoming an asset. A further 
asset was the subject of an unspecific allegation of human rights 
abuse. Several of the above assets were also involved in covering up 
human rights abuses, as was an additional asset. In addition, a 
number of the station's liaison contacts--Guatemalan officials with 
whom the station worked in an official capacity--were also alleged 
to have been involved in human rights abuses or in covering them 
up. In many of the cases noted above, however, we learned of the 
allegations only by virtue of relationships with other assets or 
liaison contacts alleged to have engaged in similar abuses.

None of the assets alleged to have committed serious human rights 
abuses now have asset relationships with the CIA. Relationships 
with all but a few such assets had been terminated prior to 
September 1994 for a variety of reasons. Only one of the 
terminations of relationship was principally the result of a human 
rights allegation. In September 1994, because of a human rights 
issue unrelated to Guatemala, the DO's Latin America Division 
conducted a review of its then-current assets throughout Latin 
America to determine if any may have violated human rights. As a 
result of this review, the CIA in early 1995 terminated relationships 
with the few remaining Guatemalan assets alleged to have been 
involved in serious abuses such as assassination and kidnapping.

As noted earlier, the IOB believes that US national interests, with 
respect to Guatemala and elsewhere, can in some cases justify 
relationships with assets and institutions with sordid or even 
criminal backgrounds. We believe that a careful balance must be 
struck on a case-by-case basis between the value and uniqueness of 
contributions from the relationship, on the one hand, and the 
seriousness and credibility of the allegations of abuse, on the other. 
We note that in carrying out law enforcement activities in the 
United States, the FBI, police, and other authorities regularly weigh 
such considerations in establishing informant relationships with 
persons having criminal backgrounds. Among the potential costs to 
be considered, however, in continuing or establishing such 
relationships with foreign intelligence assets are: the moral 
implications, the damage to US objectives in promoting greater 
respect for human rights, the loss of confidence in the intelligence 
community by the Congress and the American people, and the 
effect of such relationships upon the ethical climate within US 
intelligence agencies. In February 1996, largely as a result of the 
inquiries related to Guatemala, the CIA issued guidance for dealing 
with serious human rights violations or crimes of violence by assets 
and liaison services. We believe that this guidance strikes an 
appropriate balance: it generally bars such relationships, but it 
permits senior CIA officials to authorize them in special cases 
when national security interests so warrant. We are disturbed, 
however, that until the recent Guatemala inquiries, the CIA had 
failed to establish agency-wide written guidance on such an 
important issue.

We found no evidence that Guatemala station was a "rogue" station 
operating independently of control by its headquarters; it generally 
kept the DO headquarters well-informed of developments, negative 
or otherwise, including allegations implicating CIA assets as each 
allegation surfaced. DO headquarters officials, generally on an ad 
hoc basis, provided guidance to Guatemala station in the late 1980's 
and early 1990's advising it to avoid assets against whom human 
rights violations had been alleged, but the number of such assets 
retained or recruited without any evident deliberation suggests that 
this guidance was neither strictly enforced by headquarters nor 
observed by the station. DO managers rarely focused on specific 
allegations and did not systematically review assets in Guatemala 
for allegations of human rights abuse until the September 1994 
review. Moreover, the balancing of allegations against 
contributions, on those occasions it was done, was conducted 
exclusively by division-level managers and chiefs of station, whose 
performance and rewards systems were principally based on 
establishing and maintaining relationships with productive assets 
and who had little incentive to give great weight to allegations of 
abuse. 

Asset validation 

The asset validation system, through which the CIA should have 
periodically reexamined its relationship with each asset, did not 
address human rights allegations against the assets in question. 
This validation system, even if it had been functioning as intended, 
would not have highlighted human rights issues because it had been 
designed to focus almost exclusively upon assets' vulnerability to 
counterintelligence and upon dropping non-producing assets from 
the payroll. The CIA has recently modified its asset validation 
system to take into account all derogatory information on assets, 
including allegations of human rights abuse. 

Executive oversight 

Out of a general concern for the protection of its sources, out of 
neglect, or for other reasons, the CIA informed neither State 
Department officials, at the embassy or in Washington, nor 
National Security Council officials of alleged abuses by assets 
until late l994 and early 1995. Because significant activities and 
relationships--such as those involving assets implicated in 
assassination, kidnapping, or torture--raised broad policy 
considerations, policy officials outside the CIA (such as 
representatives of the National Security Council and the 
Departments of State and, when appropriate, Justice) should have 
been notified promptly.

During the period we reviewed, the DO, from its leadership down 
to its case officers, interpreted a 1977 CIA agreement with the 
Department of State to obligate the CIA to reveal to ambassadors 
the identities of only those assets with whom senior embassy 
officers were in high-level official contact. The IOB recommends 
that the State-CIA agreement be amended to say explicitly that 
ambassadors must be informed of all intelligence activities that 
have significant policy implications, including reasonably credible 
allegations of asset involvement in the deaths of US citizens or 
other serious human rights violations. If there is concern over an 
ambassador's handling of such intelligence information, the CIA 
should convey the information directly to appropriate senior level 
officials at the Department of State.

The Board believes, however, that the system for collecting and 
disseminating intelligence information can function properly only 
if US executive and legislative branch officials are held accountable 
should they compromise or improperly handle classified 
information. A lack of accountability puts sources of intelligence at 
risk. The effect is to discourage the proper provision of information 
by intelligence agencies to intelligence consumers and the oversight 
community, and ultimately to jeopardize the ability of the United 
States to recruit sources and to collect intelligence in the 
furtherance of its national interests around the world. Ample 
avenues exist by which well-intentioned officials can raise 
grievances concerning intelligence activities--either through the 
executive branch to the National Security Advisor or the President, 
or through the Congressional oversight committees to the 
Congressional leadership--without publicly revealing sensitive 
intelligence information.

During this review and others, we have observed a general 
atmosphere of distrust between the State Department and the CIA. 
We recognize that tension between these entities is to a certain 
extent inevitable, given that their different institutional missions 
will occasionally come into conflict. We believe, however, that 
some of the distrust could be alleviated. We recommend, therefore, 
that the State Department, at an appropriately senior level, ensure 
that ambassadors devote sufficient time and attention to receiving 
detailed initial training and follow-up briefings on intelligence 
activities in their countries of posting. The CIA, for its part, must 
ensure that these briefings cover all activities and relationships of 
policy significance. 

Congressional oversight 

The IOB concluded that the CIA leadership violated its statutory 
obligation to keep the Congressional oversight committees "fully 
and currently informed" under Section 413 of Title 50 of the U.S. 
Code. Though this statute is not criminal and the standard is too 
broad to be fulfilled to the letter, CIA officers--particularly senior 
leaders at CIA headquarters--were derelict in failing to provide 
information that should have been provided under even the 
narrowest reading of the statute. In examining specific instances in 
which information was not provided to Congress, the IOB 
considered conflicting evidence and judged that CIA officials did 
not act with intent to mislead Congress--though they did 
intentionally withhold some information, in substantial part 
because of concern for the protection of sources.

We found the primary causes for this failure in Congressional 
notification to have been the absence of a systematic notification 
process and inadequate emphasis from the CIA's leadership. The ad 
hoc manner in which notifications were handled, combined with 
the DO's predisposition against volunteering sensitive information, 
even to authorized recipients, created an environment that bred 
notification failures. For this we fault the CIA and DO leadership 
back to the 1980 enactment of the oversight statute. Although we 
found no failures as significant as those by the CIA, we found that 
Department of Defense intelligence agencies also lacked a 
systematic process for Congressional notification during the period 
we reviewed. The CIA, DIA, and NSA recently instituted processes 
designed to implement and document Congressional notification 
more systematically.

The IOB found that in the CIA's semi-annual reports to Congress 
on its efforts to improve respect for human rights in Guatemala, the 
CIA created a misleading impression of the status of human rights 
by focusing on positive contributions without mentioning ongoing 
abuses by the services with which the station had a liaison 
relationship. The IOB believes that despite the narrow language of 
the reporting requirement, CIA managers at headquarters should 
have recognized this effect and ensured that Congress received, 
whether through the reports or other means, an accurate portrayal of 
the human rights situation in Guatemala.

In reviewing all of the facts surrounding the CIA's failures in 
notifying Congress, the IOB did not find sufficient basis for a 
criminal referral to the Attorney General. The Department of Justice 
did examine the issue of the CIA's notifications to Congress at the 
request of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), but 
it found that the facts posited by the SSCI did not constitute a 
sufficient basis upon which to premise a criminal prosecution. 
Pursuant to Executive Order 12863, which governs the IOB, the 
Board has notified DOJ of its belief that in the past the CIA 
violated Title 50 of the U.S. Code by failing to keep Congress 
"fully and currently informed." The Board notes, though, that this 
likely violation was not criminal, that the CIA has taken remedial 
action, and that there appears to be no threat of a continuing 
violation. 

CIA funding levels 

There have been public allegations that CIA funds were increased 
to compensate for the cut-off of almost all overt military aid to 
Guatemala in 1990. We did not find this to have been the case. CIA 
funding levels to the security services dropped consistently from 
about $3.5 million in FY 1989 to about $1 million in 1995. 

Human rights reporting 

The station was aware of US policy-makers' interest in learning of 
human rights violations and it disseminated intelligence reports on 
the topic. Although these reports were of varying utility and 
reliability, some were instrumental--becoming the bases for 
diplomatic protests to the Guatemalan government and contributing 
to the decision to suspend overt military assistance in 1990. A 
concern for how negative allegations against the Guatemalan 
security services would be received, however, appears in a few 
instances to have affected how these allegations were reported. 
Although intelligence reports with clearly credible allegations seem 
generally to have been disseminated appropriately, those of 
questionable credibility that were favorable to the liaison services 
appear to have been disseminated beyond the DO more often than 
similarly dubious unfavorable ones. 

Victim cases 

The Board found that the widely publicized allegation based on a 
CIA intelligence report that US citizen Michael DeVine was killed 
in the presence of Guatemalan Colonel Alpirez was, by the clear 
preponderance of evidence, not true. We believe that the most 
likely scenario is that the soldiers currently imprisoned for the 
crime killed DeVine while interrogating him about a missing army 
rifle. We believe that their superiors ordered them to recover the 
rifle, but we found no persuasive evidence that the orders included 
killing Michael DeVine. Colonel Alpirez was, however, involved in 
the broad cover-up of Guatemalan army involvement--a cover-up 
that we believe involved several CIA assets and liaison contacts. 
We have found no indication that CIA officials were in any way 
complicitous in the death of DeVine, and no credible evidence that 
any CIA assets or liaison contacts ordered or had prior knowledge 
of DeVine's death.

The CIA in November 1991 referred the October 1991 allegation of 
Colonel Alpirez's involvement in DeVine s death to the Department 
of Justice (DOJ). Although the CIA initially conveyed this crimes 
report in a manner designed to set it apart from routine reports, the 
report apparently was treated as routine by DOJ, which investigated 
the allegation, but did not uncover all of the relevant background 
information. DOJ did not find US jurisdiction under the anti-
terrorism statute, but never formally closed the case. We found the 
performance of both the CIA and DOJ in connection with this 
referral to have been less thorough than warranted. DOJ, however, 
recently conducted an exhaustive reinvestigation of the DeVine 
case in light of all the information now available to the US 
government, and again found no adequate basis for US jurisdiction. 
DOJ has since implemented new internal procedures in an effort to 
ensure that such criminal referrals are handled in a more systematic 
manner. DOJ has also recently entered into a new agreement with 
the agencies involved in intelligence that is designed to strengthen 
the crimes reporting process.

Another widely publicized allegation based on a CIA intelligence 
report--that Colonel Alpirez killed guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca 
Velasquez--is contradicted by numerous other intelligence reports 
and accounts. We conclude, however, that Alpirez participated in at 
least part of Bamaca's interrogation. We believe, but lack definitive 
proof, that Bamaca's interrogation included torture and that Bamaca 
was killed within about a year of being captured. It has not been 
possible for us to conclude whether Bamaca was killed at the San 
Marcos base near where he was captured or elsewhere, such as in 
Guatemala City. We found that no CIA officials were involved in or 
were contemporaneously aware of the torture or death of Bamaca. 
Some then-active assets or liaison contacts were, however, alleged 
in various, often-contradictory accounts to have been involved in or 
to have known of Bamaca's interrogation and death. Although the 
Board believes that assets or liaison contacts were likely involved 
or knowledgeable, it found no indication that the CIA was aware of 
these links during the course of its relationships with these 
individuals.

Concerning the death, abduction, or torture of other US citizens in 
Guatemala since 1984, the Board found no evidence that CIA 
assets or liaison contacts were implicated. We also found that--
contrary to what may be publicly supposed--intelligence provides 
little insight into the circumstances of these cases. Our intelligence 
agencies are not all-knowing. What intelligence we did find is 
described in this report and, to the maximum extent appropriate, is 
being provided to the victims or their relatives. We may never know 
definitively what happened in the cases we reviewed. In one 
particular case, Dianna Ortiz has described someone she believes to 
be North American who rescued her from her torturers and 
appeared to have some authority over them. Ortiz says the person 
warned her to tell no one about the incident and told her that he 
was taking her to a friend at the US embassy, raising the possibility 
that he had some association with the US government. The Ortiz 
case is still under investigation by the Department of Justice; the 
IOB will accordingly refrain from drawing conclusions on the case 
at this time. We found no indication of involvement by CIA or 
other US officials in any of the harm that befell the other US 
citizens. 

Informing families and victims 

As intelligence on the cases was reported to US government 
officials, very little of it was shared with victims or their surviving 
family members. The IOB believes, however, that in such cases the 
United States should provide its citizens more information 
whenever possible. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 
establishes the only legal requirement to provide such information, 
yet that process is often an unsatisfactory way through which to 
communicate the information to the families and victims. The 
redactions necessary to protect sensitive information in documents 
released under FOIA naturally give the reader the impression-
usually mistaken--that relevant information is being withheld. 
Further, the reader is usually given no indication as to the 
reliability of the information. Victims and family members who 
seek intelligence information outside the FOIA process, however, 
usually find that it is not within the authority of policy agencies, 
such as the State Department, to share intelligence originating in 
another agency, and that it is not within the intelligence agencies' 
charter to communicate directly with victims and families. We 
believe the State Department should demonstrate more initiative in 
seeking authorization from intelligence producers to share their 
intelligence in briefings (oral or written) to family members and 
victims. The briefings need not identify that the information came 
from intelligence, but they should attempt to convey some 
indication of its reliability.

Among the cases of victims in Guatemala we reviewed, in only the 
DeVine and Bamaca cases were there numerous intelligence 
reports--though they were often conflicting and inconclusive--that 
shed light on what happened. In the DeVine case, we believe the 
State Department should have given greater consideration to 
sharing intelligence-based information with Carole DeVine. In the 
Bamaca case, as the State Department went to great lengths in 
pressing the Guatemalan government on the issue, it used 
intelligence-based information in the process and in briefing 
Jennifer Harbury. We found no indication, however, of any request 
by the State Department for a search of past intelligence on the case 
until October 1994. If it had done so in early 1993, when Jennifer 
Harbury first raised the issue of her husband's fate, the Department 
might have been able at a much earlier date to provide her with 
useful information about her husband's fate--that is, a report that he 
had been taken alive.

We also found that the NSA conducted an inadequate search in 
response to the Blake family's FOIA request for all documents 
related to the 1985 death of Nicholas Blake in Guatemala. NSA's 
initial response indicated that there were no relevant documents, 
but it had not searched the database that contains its own reporting. 
After an appeal, NSA conducted a search of this database and 
responded that it had uncovered six relevant documents. The 
broader search used in connection with our review identified an 
additional sixteen documents that were equally relevant, though 
none of them revealed who killed Nicholas Blake or whether the 
army was involved. NSA has since notified the Blake family of the 
existence of these additional documents. NSA similarly found only 
one out of five documents that were covered by the FOIA request 
from Meredith Larson, another victim of Guatemalan violence. 
None of these documents, however, provided greater insight to the 
circumstances and perpetrators of the stabbing attack against her.

NSA has recently made efforts to make its FOIA searches more 
responsive, but it faces a special challenge in releasing information 
because anything it releases will be known to have come from 
signals intelligence. For agencies whose intelligence comes from 
human sources, released intelligence could come from a variety of 
persons who may have had first-, second-, or third-hand access to 
the information. We recommend that appropriate NSC staff study 
this problem in an effort to devise a system through which NSA can 
release useful information without jeopardizing its sensitive 
methods (perhaps, if necessary, by amending the FOIA to permit 
the consolidation of DOD or intelligence community responses so 
that information is not identified as having come from a particular 
agency). 

Alleged NSA records destruction 

We found no evidence to support the late March 1995 allegation 
that NSA and Army officials altered records on Guatemala to 
prevent scrutiny in any investigation, and we believe that there is no 
foundation to this charge. The allegation, communicated to a 
member of Congress in an anonymous letter telecopied to his office 
and also communicated to the press, appears to have been 
fabricated. Detailed analysis of the relevant databases indicates that 
no records on Guatemala were deleted or destroyed. Moreover, the 
officials identified in the anonymous letter, Lieutenant General 
Paul E. Menoher, Jr., the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for 
Intelligence, and Colonel Daniel D. Day, an Army officer assigned 
to NSA, either did not have or did not utilize the access necessary 
to make the alleged alterations. Finally, the anonymous letter, 
which purported to be on NSA letterhead, does not match any 
letterhead used by NSA in at least the last twenty years. An 
investigating US Attorney also found no basis for the allegation. 

Document storage and retrieval 

The State Department and CIA Inspectors General, respectively, 
found shortcomings in the document storage and retrieval systems 
of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research 
(INR) and the CIA's Directorate of Operations. In the case of the 
State Department, retrieval shortcomings complicated its own IG's 
investigation. Within the DO, retrieval shortcomings contributed 
directly to DO headquarters' failure to recognize that an asset 
whose recruitment it approved was alleged to have planned an 
assassination. The DO has been improving its retrieval system and 
has corrected the specific deficiency that led to this failure. The 
IOB recommends that the DO continue its ongoing modernization 
and that the State Department promptly correct its own deficiencies 
in this area. 

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CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 

l. Intelligence activities 

The intelligence community carried out activities in support of US 
policy objectives. These objectives included supporting the 
transition to and strengthening of civilian democratic government in 
Guatemala, encouraging respect for human rights, combating illegal 
narcotics trafficking, fighting the communist insurgency, and, in 
recent years, advancing the peace process.

For its part, CIA established a liaison relationship with Guatemalan 
security services widely known to have reprehensible human rights 
records, and it continued covert aid after the cutoff of overt military 
aid in 1990. This liaison relationship and continued covert aid 
occurred with the knowledge of the National Security Council, the 
State Department, and the Congressional oversight committees.

Contrary to public allegations, CIA did not increase covert funding 
for Guatemala to compensate for the cut-off of military aid in 1990. 

2. Relationships with assets who may have violated human rights 

Credible allegations of serious human rights abuse were made 
against several then-active CIA assets. In addition, allegations of 
varying seriousness, specificity, and credibility were made against 
persons who later became assets, as well as against a number of 
CIA liaison contacts. 

Recommendation:

US intelligence agencies should, while maintaining the ability to 
use key assets with such histories when national interests warrant, 
establish clear guidance on the recruitment and retention of assets 
with human rights or criminal allegations. 

Actions taken: 

Guidance has been recently issued for dealing with serious human 
rights violations or crimes of violence by assets and liaison 
services. We believe this guidance strikes an appropriate balance by 
generally barring such relationships but permitting appropriately 
senior officials to authorize them in special cases when national 
security interests warrant. 

3. Notification of ambassadors and other policy-makers 

CIA did not inform ambassadors and other policy-makers before 
late l994 of allegations of human rights abuse by Guatemalan assets 
as such claims came to light. 

Recommendations:

The Department of State and CIA should amend the State-CIA 
agreement to ensure that ambassadors and other policy-makers are 
informed of station activities and asset and liaison relationships 
that have significant policy implications. Notification of such 
activities and relationships should, at a minimum, include 
reasonably credible allegations of asset or liaison involvement in 
assassination, kidnapping, or torture, and particularly any 
involvement in the death or abuse of a US citizen.

CIA should provide ambassadors detailed initial and continuing 
briefings on intelligence activities in their countries. The 
Department of State, at a level of sufficient authority, should 
ensure that ambassadors attend such briefings and that they receive 
continuing instruction on the importance of protecting intelligence 
sources and methods. 

Actions taken: 

In October 1995, CIA disseminated a guidance cable in an effort to 
clarify the State-CIA agreement of 1977. We believe, however, that 
a more durable and effective solution would be to amend the 
agreement itself. 

4. Provision of information to families and survivors 

Although none of the intelligence we reviewed conclusively 
identified the perpetrators in any of the cases involving American 
victims, the State Department should have sought authorization 
from intelligence agencies to include in its briefings to family 
members or surviving victims more information drawn from 
intelligence reports.

NSA's inadequate responses to FOIA requests by the Blake family 
and Meredith Larson were the result of data searches that were 
overly narrow and the lack of a system that would allow NSA to 
provide more information without compromising its sources and 
methods. 

Recommendations:

The Department of State should implement a program to ensure that 
its bureaus consider including appropriate intelligence-based 
information in briefings to US citizens (or US relatives of those) 
who are killed, abducted, or tortured abroad-perhaps without 
identifying the information as being intelligence-based. The 
bureaus should work with intelligence agencies to ensure that 
sources and methods are not compromised in this process.

NSA, with assistance from DOD and the NSC, should explore how 
to develop a system by which information from signals intelligence 
can usefully be shared without compromising NSA's sensitive 
methods. This could perhaps be achieved by amending the FOIA to 
permit the consolidation of DOD or intelligence community 
responses so that NSA information can be released without being 
identified as signals intelligence. 

Actions taken: 

An interagency group is now studying ways to improve the 
provision of information to US citizens in human rights cases.

The current leadership at NSA has recently improved the agency's 
responsiveness to FOIA requests by substantially reducing their 
processing time and by attempting to release more useful 
information in such responses. 

5. Accountability for those who compromise intelligence 
information 

The system for collecting and disseminating intelligence 
information can function properly only if US executive and 
legislative branch officials are held accountable should they 
compromise or improperly handle classified information. A lack of 
accountability puts sources of intelligence at risk. The effect is to 
discourage the proper provision of information by intelligence 
agencies to intelligence consumers and the oversight community, 
and ultimately to jeopardize the ability of the United States to 
recruit sources and to collect intelligence in the furtherance of its 
national interests around the world. Ample avenues exist by which 
well-intentioned officials can raise grievances concerning 
intelligence activities--either through the executive branch to the 
National Security Advisor or the President, or through the 
Congressional oversight committees to the Congressional 
leadership--without publicly revealing sensitive intelligence 
information. 

Recommendation:

The executive and legislative branches should hold accountable any 
officials known to have compromised or improperly handled 
classified information. 

6. Involvement by US officials 

Dianna Ortiz has described a man who she believes to be North 
American who she said rescued her from her torture but warned her 
to tell no one about it and told her that he was taking her to a friend 
at the US embassy. This raises the possibility that the man had 
some association with the US government. The Ortiz case is still 
under investigation by the Department of Justice; the IOB will 
accordingly refrain from drawing conclusions on the case at this 
time. Subject to resolution of the Ortiz investigation, we uncovered 
no indication that US government officials were involved in or had 
prior knowledge of the death, torture, or disappearance of US or 
Guatemalan citizens. 

7. Headquarters knowledge of station activities 

We found no evidence that Guatemala station was a "rogue" station 
operating independently of control by its headquarters. Rather, the 
station generally kept CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) 
headquarters well-informed of all developments, negative or 
otherwise, including allegations against assets as they surfaced. 

8. Congressional notification 

Congress was not appropriately "fully and currently" informed by 
the CIA, particularly concerning the death of Michael DeVine. 
Though the evidence is conflicting, we do not believe that CIA 
officials acted with an intent to mislead Congress. Rather, the 
primary reasons for this failure to inform were the absence of a 
systematic notification process and inadequate emphasis upon 
reporting issues by CIA management.

CIA's semi-annual human rights reports to Congress were 
incomplete and created a misleading impression. CIA managers at 
headquarters should have recognized this effect and ensured that 
Congress received an accurate portrayal of the human rights 
situation in Guatemala.

Although we found no failures in Congressional notification by 
Department of Defense intelligence agencies as significant as those 
by CIA, we did find that during the period we reviewed, DOD 
agencies also lacked a systematic notification process. 

Recommendation:

CIA and DOD should both implement a systematic process by 
which timely decisions on Congressional notification of 
intelligence issues are made, carried out, and recorded. 

Actions taken: 

CIA, DIA, and NSA have implemented new systems to review their 
activities to determine which issues should be briefed to Congress. 
The information is now usually provided to Congress in written 
memoranda, and a record is made of such notifications. We believe 
these new systems will improve performance and accountability in 
Congressional notification. 

9. Referral of Alpirez allegation to DOJ 

The performance of both CIA and DOJ was less thorough than was 
warranted with regard to the criminal referral of the allegation that 
Colonel Alpirez was present at DeVine's death. CIA failed to 
communicate information that would have led to a more vigorous 
DOJ investigation. We do not believe, however, that this failure 
violated the law, nor do we believe that it affected DOJ's ultimate 
determination in the case. 

Recommendation:

DOJ and the intelligence agencies should institute new internal and 
inter-agency procedures to ensure significant criminal referrals 
receive appropriate attention. 

Actions taken: 

DOJ has implemented new internal procedures to improve tracking 
of crimes reports that it receives from intelligence agencies, and it 
has reached a new Memorandum of Understanding with the 
agencies to ensure that significant crime reports receive special 
attention. We believe these improvements will reduce the chances 
of the sort of breakdown in the process that occurred with regard to 
the DeVine crimes report. 

10. Asset validation system 

In part because performance in asset validation was not 
significantly reflected in the CIA DO's promotion and rewards 
systems, there was a lack of emphasis on validation at station level. 
Even if the asset validation system had been functioning as 
intended, however, it would not have highlighted human rights 
issues, because this system had been designed to focus almost 
exclusively upon assets' vulnerability to counterintelligence and 
upon eliminating non-producing assets from the payroll. 

Recommendation:

US intelligence agencies should ensure that their asset validation 
systems are accorded appropriate weight in internal performance-
appraisal and rewards systems. Additionally, they should ensure 
that their validation systems consider not only counterintelligence 
and productivity issues, but also derogatory information on assets 
(including allegations of human rights abuse) from both 
governmental and nongovernmental sources. 

Actions taken: 

CIA recently expanded its asset validation system to consider 
derogatory allegations against assets and increased the importance 
of asset validation in performance appraisals. 

11. Reliability of allegations against Alpirez 

The widely publicized allegation that Guatemalan Colonel Alpirez 
directed or was present at the murder of US citizen Michael 
DeVine appears to have been based upon information that was 
unreliable and was contradicted by other evidence. Alpirez, 
however, clearly participated in the cover-up of the military's role in 
DeVine's death. Numerous other reports also contradict the 
subsequent allegation that Colonel Alpirez killed guerrilla leader 
Efrain Bamaca Velasquez or was present at his death. We are 
convinced, however, that Alpirez participated in at least part of 
Bamaca's interrogation. We believe, but lack definitive proof, that 
Bamaca's interrogation included torture and that Bamaca was killed 
within about a year of being captured. We believe assets or liaison 
contacts were likely involved or knowledgeable, but we found no 
indication that the CIA was aware of these links during its 
relationships with these individuals. 

12. Alleged NSA document destruction 

The allegation that NSA and Army officials destroyed records 
related to the activity of US intelligence agencies in Guatemala 
(which was communicated to a member of Congress purportedly on 
NSA letterhead) appears to have been fabricated. An investigating 
US Attorney has also found no basis for the charge. 

13. Storage and retrieval of intelligence information 

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) 
lacked--and still lacks--an adequate capability for document storage 
and for the retrieval of intelligence information from its electronic 
database.

CIA's Directorate of Operations records system was inadequate and 
degraded the ability of headquarters and station officers to have 
access to all relevant and available information. 

Recommendation:

The State Department and CIA should promptly examine and 
remedy the shortcomings in their systems for storing and retrieving 
intelligence information. 

Actions taken: 

The DO has improved its records system to facilitate more thorough 
searches of its database and is currently working to digitize all of 
its nonelectronic holdings. 

14. Follow-up evaluation of implementation 

Recommendation:

Agency inspectors general should evaluate the implementation of 
these recommendations and any actions taken thereupon, and 
should report the results of their evaluations to the IOB within one 
year of the date of this report. 

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THE CONTEXT: US RELATIONS WITH GUATEMALA 

In 1954, as the communist party gained increasing influence in the 
Guatemalan government headed by President Jacobo Arbenz, the 
US assisted in the overthrow of the Arbenz government. Following 
this coup, the US was closely allied to successive Guatemalan 
governments. In the 1960's, a left-wing guerrilla movement with ties 
to Cuba emerged in Guatemala and carried out violent attacks, 
including the 1968 assassination of the US ambassador. This 
insurgency continued throughout the 1960's and intensified in the 
late 1970's.

Relations between the US and Guatemalan governments came 
under strain in 1977, when the Carter administration issued its first 
annual human rights report on Guatemala. The Guatemalan 
government rejected that report's negative assessment and refused 
US military aid. The human rights situation deteriorated further in 
the late 1970's and early 1980's, as the Guatemalan army--in which 
the intelligence and security services played a central role--waged a 
ruthless scorched-earth campaign against the communist guerrillas 
as well as noncombatants. In the course of this campaign in a 
country with a population that has never been more than 
approximately 10 million, more than 100,000 Guatemalans died. 
Through the 1980's and into the 1990's, the human rights situation 
gradually improved as the insurgency waned, but successive 
Department of State human rights reports continued to document 
egregious violations, including murders of political opponents.

Relations between the two countries warmed in the mid-1980's with 
gradual improvements in human rights and the Reagan 
administration's emphasis on curbing the spread of communism in 
Central America. After a civilian government under President 
Cerezo was elected in 1985, overt non-lethal US military aid to 
Guatemala resumed. In December 1990, however, largely as a result 
of the killing of US citizen Michael DeVine by members of the 
Guatemalan army, the Bush administration suspended almost all 
overt military aid.

Guatemala inaugurated a new democratically-elected president, 
Jorge Serrano, in January 1991. In May 1993, however, President 
Serrano, claiming to be frustrated by congressional corruption, 
illegally dissolved the congress and supreme court and tried to 
restrict civil freedoms. In the face of strong protests by Guatemalan 
citizens and the international community (including the United 
States) and--most importantly--in the face of the Guatemalan army's 
refusal to support him, President Serrano's Fujimori-style "auto-
coup" failed. In June l993, following President Serrano's flight 
from the country, the Guatemalan congress elected the human rights 
ombudsman, Ramiro De Leon Carpio, to be president.

The US worked with the De Leon government in attempting to 
strengthen democracy and human rights. Both governments also 
cooperated in the fight against the transnational shipment of illegal 
narcotics, which had become a major problem in Guatemala in the 
early 1990's. The US also joined the "Group of Friends of the Peace 
Process," which continues to work to bring an end to Guatemala's 
35-year-old internal conflict. In January 1996, Guatemalans elected 
a new President, Alvaro Arzu Irigoyen.

There has been some improvement over time in the Guatemalan 
military's accountability with regard to human rights violations. 
Whereas in the 1980's the army acted with total impunity, in the 
1990's military personnel were for the first time charged, convicted, 
and imprisoned for some of their crimes. Senior officers, however, 
are still rarely charged for their roles in ordering or covering up 
such crimes. Human rights problems, including cases involving US 
citizens, remain a serious concern in US-Guatemalan relations.

US policy objectives in Guatemala since 1984 have included 
supporting the transition to and strengthening of civilian 
democratic government, encouraging respect for human rights and 
the rule of law, supporting economic growth, combating illegal 
narcotics trafficking, fighting the communist insurgency, and, in 
recent years, advancing the peace process. 

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US INTELLIGENCE OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAMS IN 
GUATEMALA 

Intelligence objectives and activities 

US intelligence officials in Guatemala and Washington worked to 
support overall US policy objectives in Guatemala. For the CIA in 
particular these objectives entailed recruiting human sources of 
intelligence, called "assets," and developing a close liaison 
relationship with the Guatemalan security services.

The station's traditional foreign intelligence collection activities 
continued fundamentally unchanged over the period we examined. 
The intelligence produced by the station (as well as by other 
collectors) proved valuable at times to the embassy and other policy 
makers. In particular, these intelligence consumers found some of 
the reporting helpful in providing information not available to 
embassy political officers. Several reports on human rights 
violations also served as the bases for US diplomatic protests and 
other diplomatic actions. 

Liaison relationship 

The close liaison relationship the CIA maintained with the 
Guatemalan security services helped to counter the communist 
insurgency in Guatemala and to combat the flow of illegal narcotics 
through Guatemala to the United States. For example, cooperation 
between the Guatemalans, the CIA, and the Drug Enforcement 
Administration resulted in the seizure of forty-eight metric tons of 
cocaine from 1990 through 1993 as it was being shipped through 
Guatemala to the United States by Colombian drug cartels. After 
these seizures, the amount of narcotics transiting Guatemala 
appears to have dropped dramatically. The CIA's liaison 
relationship with the Guatemalan services also benefited US 
interests by enlisting the assistance of Guatemala's primary 
intelligence and security service--the army's directorate of 
intelligence (D-2)--in areas such as reversing the "auto-coup" of 
1993 and protecting US citizens at risk, including the 1994 rescue 
of a kidnapped American girl. Because the D-2 was widely 
considered to be the elite within the Guatemalan military and 
government, the station also often requested and received 
administrative and logistical assistance from the D-2 on behalf of 
the embassy.

The human rights records of the Guatemalan security services--the 
D-2 and the Department of Presidential Security (known informally 
as "Archivos," after one of its predecessor organizations)--were 
generally known to have been reprehensible by all who were 
familiar with Guatemala. US policy-makers knew of both the CIA's 
liaison with them and the services' unsavory reputations. The CIA 
endeavored to improve the behavior of the Guatemalan services 
through frequent and close contact and by stressing the importance 
of human rights -- insisting, for example, that Guatemalan military 
intelligence training include human rights instruction. The station 
officers assigned to Guatemala and the CIA headquarters officials 
whom we interviewed believe that the CIA's contact with the 
Guatemalan services helped improve attitudes towards human 
rights. Several indices of human rights observance indeed reflected 
improvement--whether or not this was due to CIA efforts--but 
egregious violations continued, and some of the station's closest 
contacts in the security services remained a part of the problem. 

The end of the Cold War gradually led to lower funding levels for 
the station, but had only a limited effect upon the mechanics of 
how the CIA carried out its business and upon the mind-set of the 
CIA officers dealing with Guatemala. Station officers continued to 
view the communist insurgents--who seemed to threaten a more 
democratic government--as the primary enemy, and they viewed the 
Guatemalan government and security services as partners in the 
fight against this common foe and against new threats such as 
narcotics and illegal alien smuggling. 

Funding issues 

The funds the CIA provided to the Guatemalan liaison services 
were vital to the D-2 and Archivos. This funding was seen as 
necessary to make these services more capable partners with the 
station, particularly in pursuing anti-communist and 
counternarcotics objectives. The CIA, with the knowledge of 
ambassadors and other State Department and National Security 
Council officials, as well as the Congress, continued this aid after 
the termination of overt military assistance in l990.

There have been public allegations that CIA funds were increased 
to compensate for the cutoff of military aid in 1990. We did not 
find this to have been the case. Overall CIA funding levels to the 
Guatemalan services dropped consistently from about $3.5 million 
in FY 1989 to about l million in l995. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ASSET INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS 

DO Guidance on Human Rights 

The CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) and Guatemala station 
were clearly aware of the potential for human rights violations by 
assets and liaison contacts. In November 1988, the DO's Latin 
America (LA) division provided a guidance cable to its Central 
American stations, in which it noted that human rights violations 
were being used politically by Washington opponents of CIA 
programs in Central America, but went on to state:


Point we would like to make is that we must all become sensitized 
to the importance of respecting human rights, and we must ensure 
that those assets and resources we direct and/or fund are equally 
sensitive. The issue will only become more important, and we serve 
our objectives best if we remember that if we ignore the importance 
of the human rights issue in the final analysis we do great damage 
to our mission. We are under great scrutiny.
Finally, aside from the legal and policy considerations which are 
constant in any allegations concerning violation's [sic] of human 
rights we also recognize a basic moral obligation. We are 
Americans and we must reflect American values in the conduct of 
our business. We are all inherently opposed to the violation of 
human rights. Those who work with us in one capacity or another 
must also respect these values.


DO instructions on warning targets of assassination issued in 
September 1989 stated, "Participation of an asset in an 
assassination may constitute a violation of US law or regulations 
and is grounds for immediate termination of the Agency's 
relationship with the asset. Thus, complete information of any such 
incident should be sent to Headquarters as soon as possible."

In 1990, the LA division chief warned the Guatemala chief of 
station (COS) that human rights performance was high on the 
agenda for the executive and legislative branches, with Guatemala 
seen as second only to El Salvador among human rights violators in 
the region.

In August 1992, the Latin American division chief provided 
guidance to his stations to check all new liaison contacts carefully 
for possible human rights violations. The guidance cable also 
directed stations to follow up on all accusations of human rights 
violations in order to corroborate or refute them.

In May l993, the Guatemala COS initiated a review of many of his 
assets "to ensure that no station unilateral asset is, or has been 
involved in human rights violations." The station started by 
questioning some of its assets and planned to polygraph them. No 
station personnel recall, however, what prompted this review or 
why it was apparently never completed. It may have been overtaken 
by Serrano's "auto-coup" later that month and by the COS's 
departure soon thereafter.

In September 1994, because of a human rights issue unrelated to 
Guatemala, the LA division directed all of its stations to review 
their current assets for human rights violations. In Guatemala, this 
review ultimately identified a few asset relationships for 
termination. All but one of these terminations of relationship were 
carried out in early 1995--before this IOB review had been ordered-
-and the last occurred soon thereafter. Relationships with a few 
more assets identified as possible human rights abusers had already 
been ended prior to September 1994 for various reasons.

Apart from the guidance to Guatemala station and other Latin 
American stations that is described above, there was no CIA-wide 
policy before 1995 that spelled out in detail the danger of human 
rights abuse by assets and what specific actions were to be taken by 
the stations and at CIA headquarters in such circumstances. 

Allegations of human rights abuse by assets 

In the course of our review, we learned that in the period since 
1984, several CIA assets were credibly alleged to have ordered, 
planned, or participated in serious human rights violations such as 
assassination, extrajudicial execution, torture, or kidnapping while 
they were assets--and that the CIA was contemporaneously aware 
of many of the allegations. A number of assets were alleged--
though with varying degrees of reliability--to have been involved in 
similar abuses before their CIA asset relationships began. In several 
other cases, the alleged abuses occurred or came to light only after 
the CIA was no longer in contact with the asset. A few assets were 
reportedly present while non-assets engaged in acts of intimidation, 
and another engaged in such an act before becoming an asset. 
Another asset was the subject of an unspecified allegation of 
human rights abuse. Several of the above assets were also involved 
in covering up human rights abuses, as was one additional asset. In 
addition, a number of the station's liaison contacts--Guatemalan 
officials with whom the station worked in an official capacity--were 
also alleged to have been involved in human rights abuses or in 
covering them up.

In many of these cases, however, US intelligence learned of the 
allegations only by virtue of reports from other assets who were 
themselves alleged to have engaged in similar abuses. Some of 
these sources, though, had grudges against those about whom they 
reported and thus may have had an incentive to fabricate or 
exaggerate allegations.

The IOB notes that US national interests, with respect to 
Guatemala and elsewhere, can in some cases justify relationships 
with assets who have sordid or even criminal backgrounds, 
including human rights violations. In fact, it will often be the case 
that the best placed sources of information on nefarious activities 
are not entirely clean themselves. There should be, however, an 
effort explicitly to balance the value and uniqueness of an asset's 
contributions against the seriousness and reliability of any 
allegations against him. We believe it critical that this balancing 
process take place in the context of broad US interests. It should be 
noted that, in carrying out domestic law enforcement activities, US 
authorities regularly weigh such considerations in entering into 
informant relationships with persons who have criminal 
backgrounds. Among the potential costs to be considered in 
establishing or continuing such relationships with foreign 
intelligence assets are: their moral implications, the damage to US 
objectives in promoting greater respect for human rights, the loss of 
confidence in the intelligence community among members of the 
Congress and the public, and the effect of such relationships on the 
ethical climate within US intelligence agencies. In February 1996, 
largely as a result of the inquiries related to Guatemala, the CIA did 
issue guidance for dealing with allegations of serious human rights 
violations or crimes of violence by assets and liaison services. We 
believe this new policy strikes an appropriate balance: it generally 
bars such relationships, but it permits senior CIA officials to 
authorize them in special cases when national interests so warrant, 
We are disturbed, however, that until the recent Guatemala 
inquiries, the CIA had failed to establish agency-wide written 
guidance on such an important issue.

Among the most serious examples of credible allegations against a 
then-active CIA asset were those involving an asset who was the 
subject of allegations that in multiple instances he ordered and 
planned assassinations of political opponents and extrajudicial 
killings of criminals, as well as other, less specific allegations of 
unlawful activities. Although some of these allegations were from 
sources of undetermined or suspect reliability, one was from a 
source considered credible by the station at the time. Another asset 
was alleged to have planned or to have had prior knowledge of 
multiple separate assassinations or assassination attempts before 
and during his asset relationship. A third asset has been alleged to 
have participated in assassination, extrajudicial killing, and 
kidnapping during and before his time as an asset.

The station informed DO headquarters through intelligence reports 
or operational cables of those allegations against its assets and 
liaison contacts of which it was aware. (In one significant instance, 
though, when the station requested authority to recruit a particular 
asset, it failed to remind headquarters of an assassination allegation 
previously made against him.) DO headquarters, however, appeared 
in practice to attach too little weight to human rights issues and 
reacted contemporaneously to human rights allegations against only 
a few of the assets. This conduct was probably the predictable 
result of an arrangement in which the necessary balancing, when 
done, was conducted informally, and was done exclusively by CIA 
DO division-level managers and chiefs of station--whose 
performance and awards systems emphasized recruiting and 
maintaining productive intelligence assets.

Of great concern to the IOB is the apparent lack of sensitivity 
before September 1994 by DO headquarters or the station to the 
series of allegations against a particular asset, especially in light of 
a reliable report that he was directly involved in an assassination. 
No CIA officials we interviewed recalled this asset as having 
presented a human rights problem, nor could any officials provide 
an explanation for the absence of an reaction to the allegations. We 
found no cable traffic or other written record of deliberation 
concerning the asset prior to late 1994. The CIA maintained its 
relationship with the asset despite his egregious record of human 
rights abuse allegations until the relationship was finally 
terminated as part of the September 1994 review.

Of those assets alleged to have committed serious human rights 
violations, relationships with all but a few were terminated prior to 
September 1994 for a variety of reasons; of these, only one 
relationship was ended principally because of a human rights 
allegation. After the September 1994 review of Latin American 
assets, relationships with the few remaining such assets were 
terminated because of allegations of human rights abuse such as 
assassinations and kidnapping. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ASSET VALIDATION SYSTEM 

In analyzing the apparent breakdown of the process for identifying 
assets against whom allegations of human rights abuse had been 
made we reviewed the functioning of the "asset validation system." 
CIA's Directorate of Operations instituted this system in 1989 in 
order to advance two primary objectives unrelated to human rights: 
to cut ties to assets believed to be counterintelligence risks and to 
end relationships with assets whose information production was 
not worth the payments they received. Stations were directed to test 
and to polygraph assets continually and to analyze their likely 
intelligence contributions. This process was to be completed for 
existing assets within two years of the system's implementation, but 
in practice the process usually took much longer or was never 
completed.

We found that the CIA showed an inadequate commitment to the 
asset validation system. Although we understand that validating 
assets will never take on the same cachet as recruiting new ones, we 
believe it requires greater emphasis in the field. Despite repeated 
statements by DO managers on the importance of asset validation, a 
1994 survey by the CIA Inspector General found that only 9 percent 
of DO personnel surveyed believed that promotion panels rewarded 
quality work in asset validation. Even when one makes allowances 
for the amount of time it takes to validate new assets and the 
difficulties of validating tenuously controlled assets by excluding 
such assets from the pool of unvalidated assets, only two-thirds of 
the assets in Guatemala had been "validated" by late 1994.

Because the validation system's nearly exclusive focus, at that time, 
was upon counterintelligence concerns and the purging of non-
performing assets, even more vigorous asset validation would not 
have identified those assets involved in human rights abuses. The 
asset validation system has recently been changed to take into 
consideration all derogatory allegations against assets, including 
allegations of human rights abuse. With this change, it will be 
important for the DO to review all sources of derogatory 
information, including reporting from the embassy, other agencies, 
the press, and human rights groups. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTIFICATION TO POLICY-MAKERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS 
ABUSES BY ASSETS 

Although National Security Council officials and State Department 
officials at the embassy and in Washington were generally aware of 
the CIA's activities and liaison relationships in Guatemala, the CIA 
did not inform these officials until the end of 1994 and early 1995 
that any of its assets or contacts were alleged to have committed 
human rights abuses. These policy officials were thus denied 
information relevant to their decision-making and lost any 
opportunity to express possible concerns that such asset 
relationships undermined US policy on human rights.

The rules for information-sharing between station and embassy are 
set forth in a 1977 State-CIA agreement, which states that chiefs of 
station should keep ambassadors "fully and currently informed 
about all CIA programs and activities," but also that the chief of 
station is responsible, at the same time, "for protecting intelligence 
sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure." Concerning 
the disclosure of asset identities in particular, the agreement states 
that the COS will "identify to the chief of mission individuals and 
organizations within the host country with which CIA maintains 
covert relationships and with which he and senior embassy officers 
that he may designate have official contacts." CIA officers we 
interviewed, from former DDOs down to case officers in 
Guatemala, uniformly expressed the view that the l977 agreement 
called upon them to inform ambassadors of asset identities only 
when assets were cabinet level officials or otherwise in frequent 
contact with the ambassador. State Department officials have told 
us, however, that they understood ambassadors would be informed 
of asset identities in cases of frequent contact or if the asset 
relationship was of "policy" or "political" significance.

In the case of Guatemala, based on the CIA's understanding of the 
1977 agreement and despite knowing about the high emphasis 
policy-making officials placed on human rights, the COS chose not 
to inform the ambassador or other policy makers of relationships 
with assets alleged to have been involved in significant human 
rights abuses. Given ambassadors' positions as the President's 
personal representatives and their need to be aware of US 
government activities that have significant policy ramifications, the 
IOB strongly believes that the State-CIA agreement should be 
amended to state explicitly that ambassadors will be informed of 
intelligence activities, including asset and liaison relationships 
(including, when appropriate, the names of the assets or contacts in 
question) that have significant policy implications. The 
determination of policy significance will require judgment by CIA 
officials, but at a minimum notification should be made in 
instances of reasonably credible allegations of involvement by CIA 
assets in the death or abuse of US citizens or in incidents of 
assassination, kidnapping, or torture. If there is concern over an 
ambassador's handling of intelligence information, the CIA should 
convey the information to the appropriate senior officials at the 
Department of State. Policy officials in Washington, such as 
representatives of the National Security Council, the Department of 
State (and when appropriate) the Department of Justice, should be 
similarly notified.

Although ambassadors and other senior policy-makers are often 
pressed by heavy workloads, it must be their responsibility to 
devote appropriate time to receiving intelligence briefings. Prior to 
and during their postings, all ambassadors should receive 
mandatory briefings on intelligence programs in their countries. 
The IOB believes that high level State Department emphasis will be 
required to ensure that all ambassadors attend such briefings and 
receive adequate initial and recurring training on intelligence 
activities and on the importance of safeguarding intelligence 
sources and methods. At the same time, CIA must ensure that 
ambassadors receive in these briefings all appropriate information 
on CIA activities and relationships in their countries.

The system for collecting and disseminating intelligence 
information can function properly, however, only if US executive 
and legislative branch officials are held accountable should they 
compromise or improperly handle classified information. A lack of 
accountability puts sources of intelligence at risk. The effect is to 
discourage the proper provision of information by intelligence 
agencies to intelligence consumers and the oversight community, 
and ultimately to jeopardize the ability of the United States to 
recruit sources and to collect intelligence in the furtherance of its 
national interests around the world. Ample avenues exist by which 
well-intentioned officials can raise grievances concerning 
intelligence activities-either through the executive branch to the 
National Security Advisor or the President, or through the 
Congressional oversight committees to the Congressional 
leadership--without publicly revealing sensitive intelligence 
information. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT 

Conclusions concerning CIA Congressional notification 

The IOB found the CIA's performance in notifying Congress to 
have been inadequate. Specifically, the IOB concluded that the CIA 
leadership violated its statutory obligation to keep the 
Congressional oversight committees fully and currently informed 
under Section 413 of Title 50 of the U.S. Code. Though this statute 
is not criminal and the standard is too broad to be fulfilled to the 
letter, CIA officers, particularly senior leaders at CIA headquarters, 
were derelict in failing to provide information they should have 
provided under even the narrowest reading of the statute. In 
examining specific instances in which information was not 
provided to Congress, the IOB considered the available evidence 
and, on balance, judged that CIA officials did not act with intent to 
mislead Congress--though they did intentionally withhold some 
information, in substantial part due to concerns for the protection 
of sources.

We found the primary causes of this failure in Congressional 
notification to have been the absence of a systematic notification 
process and inadequate emphasis from the CIA's leadership. The ad 
hoc manner in which Congressional notifications were handled--
combined with the DO's general disinclination to volunteer 
sensitive information even to authorized recipients--created an 
environment that bred notification failures. For this we fault the 
CIA and DO leadership back to the enactment of the oversight 
statute in 1980. The CIA has recently instituted a new system to 
review its activities for issues that should be briefed to Congress. 
Such information is now usually provided to Congress in written 
memoranda, and a record is made of such notifications. This new 
system should improve performance and accountability in 
Congressional notification.

The IOB also found that semi-annual reports from the CIA to 
Congress on what the CIA was doing to improve respect for human 
rights in Guatemala created a misleading impression on the status 
of human rights by focusing exclusively on positive contributions. 
The IOB believes CIA headquarters managers should have 
recognized this effect and ensured, whether through the reports or 
through other means, that Congress received an accurate portrayal 
of the human rights situation.

With respect to criminal liability concerning these CIA 
nondisclosures, we have found no adequate basis to conclude that 
the conduct of any of the relevant CIA officials violated any 
criminal statute. First, the statute requiring "full and current" 
disclosure is not a criminal statute.

Second, it appears that section 1505 of Title 18 of the US Code, 
the statute that criminalizes the obstruction of a Congressional 
"inquiry or investigation," was not violated. It is doubtful that an 
"inquiry or investigation" within the meaning of the statute was 
underway during the period of time at issue. It also appears that, at 
least within the D.C. Circuit, this statute is violated only if an 
official encouraged, influenced, or conspired with another to 
mislead Congress, see United States v. Poindexter, 951 F.2d 369, 
385 (D.C. Cir. 1991 ); we have found no persuasive evidence of 
this element and believe none can be found.

Third, the false statement statute, section 1001 of Title 18, is likely 
inapplicable because a recent Supreme Court decision strongly 
suggests that statements to Congress are outside the statute's 
coverage, see Hubbard v. United States, 115 S. Ct. 1754, 1765 
(1995). In addition, we note that, as a general proposition, 
"knowingly" withholding information from a congressional 
committee is not sufficient to establish the mental state necessary 
to constitute the criminal offense of misleading Congress. Rather, 
the action must also be "willful." Thus, even if the false statement 
and obstruction of Congress statutes were available in this context, 
both would require that the defendant acted "knowingly"--that is, 
voluntarily and purposely and not because of mistake, inadvertence, 
or accident. Both would also require that the defendant acted 
"willfully"--that is, with the intent to bring about a particular result 
or to do something that the law forbids. The Board does not believe 
that the available facts are sufficient to constitute a violation of 
either of these statutes.

Fourth, we have concluded that there is an insufficient basis to 
believe that a violation of section 371 of Title 18 occurred. Section 
371, as construed by the federal courts, proscribes, among other 
things, conspiracies to interfere with a governmental function by 
dishonest means. An agreement to defeat or interfere with the 
congressional intelligence oversight process by lying to or 
misleading the Congress, or by withholding information without 
statutory justification, could, under certain circumstances, amount 
to a criminal conspiracy. Under the circumstances we examined, 
however, we do not believe it likely that an offense occurred. In 
particular, there is no evidence that information was withheld from 
the Congress as a result of the concerted effort or agreement to 
interfere with the congressional oversight process. Even though 
there was an affirmative obligation to disclose the particular 
information not provided to Congress, and the incomplete briefings 
and reports provided to committee staffs over the years had the 
effect of misleading them and interfering with the oversight 
process, we do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to 
establish that this conduct was the result of any agreement.

For these reasons, the IOB has not found sufficient basis for a 
criminal referral to the Attorney General of this failure in 
disclosure to the Congress. The Department of Justice also 
considered this issue at the request of the Senate Select Committee 
on Intelligence (SSCI) and found that the facts posited by the SSCI 
did not constitute a sufficient basis upon which to premise a 
criminal prosecution. However, pursuant to Executive Order 12863, 
which governs the IOB, the Board has notified DOJ of its belief 
that in the past the CIA has violated Title 50 of the U.S. Code by 
failing to keep the Congress "fully and currently informed." The 
Board notes, however, that this violation was not criminal, that the 
CIA has taken remedial action, and that there appears to be no 
threat of a continuing violation. 

Failure to notify Congress on receipt of the Alpirez allegation 

Although we now consider the allegation to have been inaccurate, 
the significance of the October 1991 claim of Colonel Alpirez's 
presence at the death of US citizen Michael DeVine leaves no 
doubt that the oversight committees should have been notified at 
the time. Indeed, none of the CIA officials involved dispute that 
this allegation should have been briefed to Congress. There is no 
record that the CIA notified Congress of the allegation of Alpirez's 
involvement in DeVine's death until after the January 1995 
allegation that Alpirez killed guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca 
Velasquez; none of the officials with whom responsibility lay can 
recall any earlier notification. Thus the issue becomes: was this 
failure to notify intentional or was it unintentional? Unfortunately, 
we have found no record that definitively answers this question, 
and there are facts that support both possibilities.

Among the evidence that the CIA intended to notify Congress was 
the inclusion of a note on a question and answer (Q&A) page in the 
acting DCI's October 1991 briefing book indicating that CIA was 
trying to brief the House Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence (HPSCI) regarding the Alpirez allegation. The acting 
DCI believes he saw the Q&A, but that, given the assertion in the 
Q&A that arrangements to brief the HPSCI were then under way, 
he probably assumed that they were already being carried out. The 
Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) recalls that he too saw the 
Q&A and that the allegation of Alpirez's involvement in the death 
of a US citizen was the reason for the DO's action to notify DOJ 
and the basis upon which the DO intended to notify Congress. The 
CIA's decision to refer the allegation to DOJ, while not directly 
indicating an intent to notify Congress, does indicate that there was 
no intent to try to keep the allegation within the CIA. Moreover, a 
lawyer from the CIA Office of General Counsel assigned to the 
Latin America division ended his notes on a November 18,199l 
meeting with DOJ on this subject with "Brief committees on this." 
The lawyer does not recall, however, whether this reflected the 
discussion or merely his own thoughts. Finally, we found no 
evidence of any instructions or conspiracy to withhold the Alpirez 
information.

On the other hand, the LA Central America branch chief recalled 
that he and others in the division realized in November or 
December l991 that Congress had not yet been notified of the 
Alpirez allegation. (The General Counsel official's November 18 
note to "Brief committees on this" suggests that he too believed in 
mid-November that the matter had not yet been briefed.) The lack 
of action upon this realization leaves open the possibility that these 
officials may have consciously delayed notification. Numerous 
events brought the Alpirez allegation to the attention of relevant 
CIA branch, group, and division managers over the next several 
months. Significant among these are: the referral of the matter to 
DOJ (including a November 18 meeting with DOJ officials to 
discuss the report, which was attended by the deputy Central 
America branch chief); two or three instances recalled by the group 
chief at which he asked the lawyer assigned to LA division to check 
on the status of DOJ s deliberations; the April 15, 1992 CIA semi-
annual human rights report to Congress on Guatemala, which 
mentioned the DeVine case, was edited by the deputy branch chief, 
and was reviewed by the rest of branch, group, division, and 
directorate management; the May 19, 1992 meeting with SSCI staff 
at which the Guatemala chief of station discussed the DeVine case; 
and the discussion of the DeVine case that occurred during a June 
26 meeting with the SSCI staff attended by the Assistant Deputy 
Director for Operations (ADDO), LA division chief, and Guatemala 
COS. Each of these events brought the Alpirez-DeVine issue to the 
minds of CIA officials, though these events may not necessarily 
have reminded them that Congress had not yet been notified.

Because of the contradictory indicators of intent, conflicting and 
vague recollections, and a paucity of documentary evidence, no 
one, we believe, can conclude with certainty whether the failure to 
notify Congress of Alpirez's alleged presence at DeVine's murder 
was intentional or unintentional. After careful consideration, 
however, we have concluded that the failure was most likely 
unintentional. We believe that, among other things, the decision to 
refer the allegation to DOJ and the inclusion of the above-
mentioned note in the acting Director's Congressional briefing 
materials stating that CIA officers were attempting to notify 
Congress of the allegation against Alpirez make it unlikely that the 
failure to provide the information to Congress in 1991 was 
intentional.

The question of intent aside, however, the CIA's performance in 
this area reflects a dereliction of responsibility and a violation of its 
statutory obligation to keep its oversight committees "fully and 
currently informed" of all intelligence activities as required under 
Title 50 of the U.S. Code. The failure to notify Congress of 
Alpirez's alleged presence at DeVine's death would not have 
occurred had CIA managers and officers attached the required 
importance to Congressional notification. Proper attention to 
notification responsibilities by the DCI, DDO, and ADDO should 
have resulted in the establishment of a systematic process by which 
notification decisions were considered, made, carried out, and 
recorded. 

Semi-annual CIA human rights reports to Congress 

Between 1989 and 1994, the DCI was required to report to the 
intelligence and appropriations committees on how programs in 
Guatemala had been used "to further the objective of greater respect 
for human rights and what specific action will be taken in the 
ensuing period to further that objective." The requirement's 
language did not call explicitly for reporting on human rights 
abuses by the Guatemalan security services; nor did it call for a 
comprehensive report on the status of human rights in the country--
in contrast, for example, to the requirement for the annual State 
Department human rights report. The CIA's semi-annual reports 
appear to have satisfied the letter of the requirement to report on 
how the program had been used "to further the objectives of greater 
respect for human rights." For CIA officials, the emphasis was 
clearly to be on the positive contributions of their activities. As 
several CIA officers have noted, in fact, the requirement to report 
was perceived to be an opportunity for the CIA to put its best foot 
forward. The officers preparing the reports believed, and still 
believe, that the program was a positive force for human rights in 
Guatemala and that the human rights situation had improved. The 
reports offered examples to support both convictions, such as the 
new human rights instruction offered at the Guatemalan 
intelligence school and the D-2's investigatory role in the 
unprecedented arrest of a senior naval officer for human rights 
violations.

The semi-annual reports did not include information in the 
possession of the CIA concerning significant allegations of human 
rights abuses by the D-2 and Archivos. The omission of some of 
this information in reports that repeatedly referred to the security 
services roles in protecting human rights painted an incomplete 
picture of the Guatemalan security services. Although several of the 
reports, particularly before 1992, acknowledged significant 
continuing human rights violations, there was only one explicit 
reference in all the reports to an alleged violation by the D-2 or 
Archivos--and this reference dismissed the allegation in question. 
The station and DO were aware of a number of other allegations 
against the D-2 and Archivos from 1989 to 1994 that were not 
mentioned in the semi-annual reports.

We conclude that the semi-annual reports' emphasis upon the 
program's positive contributions and their exclusion of much 
negative information were intentional and resulted from a number 
of factors. Principal among these were: the narrow language of the 
reporting requirement, the DO officers' perception that the 
requirement was an opportunity to emphasize the positive, the DO's 
general predisposition to supply only specifically-requested 
information, and the erroneous belief expressed by station officers 
that the oversight committees were receiving the full picture 
through other channels. These factors were exacerbated by the 
station's faulty discounting of some allegations out of a loss of 
objectivity towards its liaison services, a human inclination to 
focus upon the positive, and the lack of priority the CIA gave its 
semi-annual reports. (One of the cables from DO headquarters to 
the station demonstrated this lack of priority by stating, "We regret 
to inform you that it is once again time for the update for the SSCI 
on the effect of the . . . program on the human rights attitudes of the 
. . . [government of Guatemala]. . . . Apparently since there was no 
'ending date' in the FY 90 budget approval that started this 
requirement, we are forced to carry it on forever.")

We believe that, through a pattern of omissions and hyperbole, 
those responsible for the reports did present Congress with reports 
that were not comprehensive and balanced--and that were therefore 
misleading. However, given the narrow requirement from the 
Congress, we do not find an adequate basis to conclude that CIA 
officials intentionally sought to mislead Congress. Those drafting 
and reviewing the reports believed the program was a positive force 
for human rights in Guatemala, and they saw that as the issue raised 
by the requirement. We would view this issue differently if the 
Congressional requirement had asked for reporting on activities of 
or allegations against the Guatemalan security services, or if we had 
found CIA officials to have knowingly lied in the reports. 
(Although the SSCI staff appeared to have had different 
expectations, one of the principal recipients and readers of the 
reports then on the House Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence (HPSCI) staff has told us that he understood at the 
time that these reports were to focus on the positive contributions 
and were not expected to present a balanced picture of human 
rights in Guatemala.) We fault CIA managers, specifically 
including former DCIs, DDOs, and ADDOs, for not recognizing 
the misleading impression their reports gave, for not ensuring that 
this impression was balanced by other reporting, and for not giving 
the reports the attention they warranted. 

1992 Briefings to oversight committee staff on human rights in 
Guatemala 

A series of meetings occurred between CIA officers and the 
oversight committees in 1992 concerning Guatemalan human rights. 
In the course of these meetings, CIA briefers failed to provide some 
clearly relevant information. In some cases we believe the 
withholding was unintentional; in others we believe it was 
intentional. In at least one of the intentional cases notification 
subsequently occurred, but in others it did not.

One instance of intentional withholding that was followed by 
timely notification resulted from meetings between CIA officers 
and HPSCI staff on August 5 and SSCI staff on August 7,1992. 
Briefers from the DO (the branch chief and division chief, 
respectively) deliberately declined to identify an asset despite 
specific requests by the staff directors. The briefers did so because 
CIA policy (which we consider appropriate) limited authority for 
such disclosures to the DCI and DDO. The briefers did, however, 
alert their superiors, and ADDO Price then notified at least the 
SSCI.

A probable example of intentional withholding that was not 
followed by notification occurred when the Guatemala COS 
intentionally, we believe, did not mention Colonel Alpirez's alleged 
involvement in the death of Michael DeVine when he discussed the 
DeVine case with the SSCI staff in a May 19 meeting (and possibly 
also in a June 26 meeting). We believe it improbable that he could 
have forgotten the Alpirez-DeVine linkage, since his headquarters 
had reminded him of it in a cable he received only a week earlier. 
He apparently did not alert his superiors to the omission from his 
briefing and did not feel it his responsibility to do so. Although 
responsibility for notifying the committees rests with headquarters-
-not chiefs of station--we believe that, by participating in the 
meeting, he incurred an obligation to inform his superiors.

In the other instances we examined in which information was not 
provided to committee staff during the meetings, we believe that the 
failures were likely unintentional. Intent, however, is not required 
for the withholding of information to have been a violation of the 
CIA's obligation to keep the oversight committees "fully and 
currently informed" under Section 413 of Title 50 of the U.S. Code. 

DOD Congressional notification 

In the course of our review, we uncovered no significant 
developments related to the Department of Defense's intelligence 
collection in Guatemala that were not briefed to the Congressional 
oversight committees. Congress was also notified of the l991 
discovery by DOD that the School of the Americas and Southern 
Command had used improper instruction materials in training Latin 
American officers, including Guatemalans, from 1982 to 1991. 
These materials had never received proper DOD review, and certain 
passages appeared to condone (or could have been interpreted to 
condone) practices such as executions of guerrillas, extortion, 
physical abuse, coercion, and false imprisonment. On discovery of 
the error, DOD replaced and modified the materials, and instructed 
its representatives in the affected countries to retrieve all copies of 
the materials from their foreign counterparts and to explain that 
some of the contents violated US policy. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CRIMES REPORT TO DOJ 

Upon learning of the allegation of Colonel Alpirez's involvement in 
the death of Michael DeVine, CIA officials within the DO and the 
Office of General Counsel agreed that the matter should be referred 
to DOJ. This was done on November 18, 1991. Although the CIA 
initially conveyed the crimes report in a manner designed to set it 
apart from the routine, the report apparently was considered routine 
by the Department of Justice. DOJ investigated the allegation, but 
did not uncover all of the relevant background information. DOJ 
did not find the matter to fall within US jurisdiction, though it 
never formally closed the case. We find the performance of both the 
CIA and DOJ to have been less thorough than warranted. In 
particular, we believe that the CIA failed to communicate 
information that would have led to a more vigorous DOJ 
investigation, though we believe that this failure did not violate a 
legal obligation, nor do we believe that it affected DOJ's ultimate 
determination in the case. As a result of its Inspector General's 
investigation, DOJ has implemented new internal procedures to 
track crimes reports better and has entered into a new Memorandum 
of Understanding with the intelligence agencies to ensure that 
significant crimes reports receive special attention in the future. 
DOJ has also thoroughly reinvestigated the DeVine case and found 
no basis for US jurisdiction. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING 

Priority and performance in reporting 

The intelligence community realized the importance its consumers 
placed on human rights reporting and treated the issue as one of its 
top priorities over the period we reviewed. Our interviews with 
intelligence officers and our review of cables confirmed that 
intelligence on human rights violations by the Guatemalan 
government had been considered a particularly high priority by US 
intelligence collectors since 1984. Intelligence officers noted that 
some assets feared the consequences if the US government learned 
of human rights abuses and that these fears made it difficult for the 
assets to discuss such matters candidly. Many of the reports of 
human rights abuses that intelligence officers did receive were 
second- or thirdhand, and some of the sources were known to have 
grudges against those about whom they reported. Nevertheless, 
assets were often the only sources capable of learning the details of 
abuses.

Several of these reports, however, proved valuable to the embassy 
and served as the bases for diplomatic protests to the Guatemalan 
government. Among these were a report confirming that 
Guatemalan soldiers had killed Michael DeVine and that the 
government was engaged in a cover-up. A subsequent report 
corroborated the embassy's suspicions that the government had still 
not undertaken an earnest investigation six months after the murder 
and that the government did not intend to do so. This contributed to 
the ambassador's recommendation that resulted in the termination 
of almost all US military aid to Guatemala in December 1990. In 
1994 and 1995, clandestine reporting served as the bases for 
protests over the reported illegal detention of guerrilla leader Efrain 
Bamaca Velasquez after his apparent capture.

Other reports now appear to have been inaccurate--most 
prominently the October 1991 report that DeVine s interrogation 
and death took place on Colonel Alpirez's base and that Alpirez 
was himself present. The evidence uncovered by Mrs. DeVine's 
private investigator at the time and by a US Attorney recently 
reinvestigating the case indicates that DeVine was killed away from 
the base and that Alpirez was probably not present. 

Perceived loss of objectivity 

With the benefit of hindsight, the IOB has reviewed the facts 
available to the station and to headquarters and believes that in 
certain instances station and headquarters judgments were affected 
by a loss of objectivity. This was not a uniform problem; many of 
the same officers in other instances warned headquarters of the 
self-serving nature of some sources' information. It would not be 
fair to say that the station was unquestioning in its support of the 
liaison services. Nevertheless, news that reflected negatively on the 
services was clearly seen as bad news. As such, there was a natural 
tendency to scrutinize such news more carefully than reports that 
exonerated the Guatemalan services. This is a tendency to which all 
overseas missions--whether diplomatic, military, or clandestine--
must be alert.

The station did report human rights violations by the Guatemalan 
liaison services, even though it knew that this reporting could 
complicate the station's relationships with these services and hence 
the station's ability to accomplish its missions, particularly in 
gathering intelligence and fighting narcotics trafficking. DO 
headquarters at times commended the station for such reporting and 
requested more. We found that when clear and reliable allegations 
of abuse by the Guatemalan services or assets were received, the 
station almost always appropriately forwarded the information to 
its headquarters for dissemination in intelligence reports to 
consumers throughout the executive branch. In one significant 
exception, however, the CIA IG concluded in 1994 that the COS 
had delayed, diluted, and suppressed some reports because he 
feared they would hurt the reputation of the Guatemalan security 
services and his ability to work with them. The chief of station was 
subsequently reprimanded for these actions. It is worth noting, 
however, that the CIA IG investigation was triggered by a complaint 
from station officers who were alarmed by the COS's actions.

In the cases of reports that were of questionable reliability, we 
found that more searching scrutiny was given to reports unfavorable 
to the security services than to favorable ones and that favorable 
reports were more likely to be disseminated beyond the DO. There 
was often also a f