CIA Admits Slips in Guatemalan Murder Cases

The acting CIA director acknowledged Wednesday that the agency committed serious errors in two controversial murder cases involving a paid source within the Guatemalan military, and lawmakers angrily charged that senior agency officials misled and perhaps lied to Congress about the CIA’s role.

Acting CIA Director William O. Studeman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the CIA failed to provide Congress with information about the alleged involvement of a senior Guatemalan army officer who was on the CIA payroll when a U.S. citizen was killed and the husband of another American disappeared and was presumed murdered.

Led by committee member William S. Cohen (R-Me.) and Vice Chairman Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), several senators charged that the CIA had misled or lied to the panel purposefully to divert attention from the involvement of the CIA source, Lt. Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez.

The committee is investigating the June, 1990, murder of Michael DeVine, a U.S. citizen, near his Guatemala ranch by the Guatemalan military, and the 1992 disappearance and apparent murder of a Guatemalan guerrilla, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, who was married to a U.S. citizen.

Studeman’s comments were the CIA’s first public statement about the mounting controversy surrounding the killings. Studeman said that he does not believe the CIA deliberately lied to Congress, but he said that the agency’s inspector general is still investigating.

“I want to acknowledge that we failed to inform the intelligence committees in the House and the Senate about the specific information we acquired,” Studeman said as widows of the two men listened quietly.

Cohen and others said that they were dismayed by the apparent failure of the CIA to control its sources in Central America and by its decision not to brief either the House or Senate oversight committees.

“I’ve been through this before, and that was in Iran-Contra,” Cohen complained, referring to the Ronald Reagan White House scandal involving the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages and diversion of the money to Nicaraguan rebels.

Studeman admitted that the agency did not reveal to Congress information it received about the DeVine killing in 1991 and also did not recognize the “potential significance” of information it received in mid-1994 about the death of Bamaca.

Bamaca’s widow, Jennifer Harbury, who conducted a lengthy hunger strike in Guatemala and in Washington to force U.S. officials to acknowledge their failures, has said that she believes her husband was captured alive and was tortured by the Guatemalan army.

Harbury charged in testimony Wednesday that Clinton Administration officials initially dismissed her demands for an aggressive investigation to avoid disruption of trade negotiations and other diplomatic contacts with the Guatemalan government.

The CIA’s handling of the cases has become an embarrassment for the Administration, which has sought to make human rights and democratic reforms the foundations of its policies in Latin America.

President Clinton has suspended most remaining U.S. military and intelligence assistance programs for Guatemala since the controversy erupted. But U.S. officials have not been able to pressure the Guatemalan government to arrest Alpirez, who is still on army duty.

Alexander Watson, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, defended the Administration’s handling of the cases, arguing that the U.S. Embassy put constant pressure on the Guatemalan government to prosecute members of the army. Watson also said that U.S. Ambassador Marilyn McAfee pressed Guatemalan President Ramiro de Leon Carpio as recently as Tuesday night for a full investigation.

But while five enlisted soldiers and a captain were tried and convicted, the captain escaped and Alpirez was never detained. U.S. officials are not certain that Alpirez was present during the murders, but they are convinced that he was involved in a high-level cover-up.

Studeman refused to answer in public session questions about reports that the CIA paid up to $44,000 to Alpirez several months after the agency had learned of his alleged involvement in the DeVine case.

But he defended the agency’s practice of paying agents inside Third World military forces. “We do not necessarily find our sources among the pristine, the honorable and the elegant.”

Although Guatemalan soldiers convicted of killing DeVine had spent time before the murder at a training camp run by Alpirez, Studeman said that the CIA did not link Alpirez to the case until more than a year after DeVine’s death.

The agency learned Alpirez may have been present during the American’s interrogation and promptly notified the State Department, the FBI and other U.S. agencies, he said.

Studeman said that the CIA did not associate Alpirez with the Bamaca death until late January of this year, when it learned that he was the senior military officer who had interrogated Bamaca in March, 1992, before his death.