Blow the Whistle, Get Blown Away

The Cold War is over, but the brush-fire wars that were its sideshows continue to claim victims. The latest is an American who helped end the longest conflict in Central America, the guerrilla war that ravaged Guatemala for 35 years.

Richard Nuccio is a veteran Latin America scholar whose most recent job had been as special advisor to President Clinton on Cuba. But he was forced to resign from that post earlier this year, and his career is now on the brink of ruin. The CIA, it seems, blames Nuccio for one of the recent scandals that have embarrassed the spy agency.

Nuccio’s troubles began two years ago when he was a senior policy advisor at the State Department assigned to help Guatemala negotiate an end to its civil war. This was no easy task, for the U.S. government did not come to the negotiating table with clean hands. The Marxist rebellion that began in Guatemala in 1961 was largely a reaction to a CIA-sponsored coup in 1954 that installed the first of a series of right-wing governments.

The difficulty of trying to find an end to an ongoing civil war that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives was compounded by recent allegations that the Guatemalan military was responsible for the murder of a U.S. citizen, Michael DeVine, and of the Guatemalan husband of another U.S. citizen, Jennifer Harbury.

Among the members of Congress who took an interest in the murders was Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) of the House Intelligence Committee, who was cleared to receive classified information. Nuccio at first told members of the committee that the U.S. government had little information about the murders. He soon learned otherwise. Both State and CIA, it turned out, had a lot of information on both killings. A key link between them was a longtime CIA “asset,” Guatemalan Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez. CIA papers implicated Alpirez in the killing of Harbury’s husband and in the cover-up--at least--of DeVine’s murder by other Guatemalan soldiers.

Nuccio, recognizing that he had inadvertently misled the committee, passed along his new information.

Within days, Torricelli had made the story public. Thus began another scandal to haunt the CIA. And thus began Nuccio’s fall from grace. For in telling the unpleasant facts to Torricelli, Nuccio violated an unspoken but important rule.

“You can leak all the information you want,” I was told by one veteran diplomat who has worked closely with the CIA in Latin America. “But you never, ever leak about their methods or their sources. Alpirez is scum. But he was their source.”

“Rick was trying to guide the Guatemalan peace talks through a minefield, including the Harbury case,” another colleague of Nuccio’s said. “He was honest with Torricelli and got burned.” The CIA couldn’t touch the congressman, “so Rick’s the fall guy.”

Indeed, publicity about his part in revealing the CIA scandal apparently did not hurt Torricelli. Last month, he was elected to the retiring Bill Bradley’s seat in the Senate.

Nuccio had to give up his White House post as Cuba advisor. He also agreed to give up his security clearance for one year, and a formal letter of reprimand was put in his government personnel file.

But all that is not enough for the CIA; the spy agency wants Nuccio declared a security risk, effectively ending his government career.

CIA Director John M. Deutch has asked a panel of outside experts to review the Nuccio case. But even that procedure raises troubling questions. The three panelists were selected by Deutch. They are weighing the evidence under Deutch’s rules. And in the end, it is Deutch--rumored to be replaced in a second Clinton administration--who will decide whether to accept their recommendations. One hardly need add that Nuccio’s supporters are not optimistic about the outcome of this process.

None of this charade should be necessary, for the facts are clear. It was the CIA that misled, covered up and violated the law that requires disclosure to Congress. Nuccio simply told the truth. If anyone violated a trust here, written or unwritten, it was an ambitious politician.

Deutch has done some remarkable things to restore the reputation of the CIA, not least among them his recent town hall meeting in South-Central Los Angeles to persuade black Angelenos that the CIA did not help the Nicaraguan Contras smuggle cocaine into their community. He didn’t get far with an angry, skeptical audience.

The CIA director could go a lot further toward restoring his agency’s credibility if he simply did the right thing in the Nuccio case and allowed this honorable scholar and public servant to resume his career free of any taint or questions about his patriotism. It would be especially symbolic if Deutch did so before Dec. 29, when the peace treaty Nuccio helped bring about will be signed in Guatemala City.