Reprimands Due for CIA Actions in Guatemala

In the first major test of his leadership of the nation’s spy service, CIA Director John M. Deutch is poised to take disciplinary action against CIA officials involved in the spy agency’s controversial activities in Guatemala, intelligence community sources said Wednesday.

Deutch plans to tell Congress by Friday who should be punished and how severely they should be reprimanded for their involvement in the CIA’s worst scandal since last year’s Aldrich H. Ames spy case, sources added.

CIA officials facing reprimands--including several from the Latin American division of the agency’s clandestine arm and the former senior CIA supervisor in Guatemala--have been informed of their likely punishments this week. They have been given a chance to make last-minute appeals to Deutch.

The controversy began in March when it was revealed that a Guatemalan army officer on the CIA’s payroll was implicated in the 1990 murder of an American innkeeper in rural Guatemala, as well as the 1992 torture-killing of a Guatemalan rebel married to an American woman.

Lawmakers in Congress have been eagerly waiting to see how Deutch handles the Guatemalan situation to see whether he would move more aggressively than his predecessor R. James Woolsey did in punishing CIA officials in the aftermath of the Ames spy case.