Cia Headquarters Switzerland International

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 27

Published – March 14, 2000

Edited by Tom Blanton

For more information contact:
Tom Blanton 202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu

Washington, D.C., March 14, 2000 – Today's Washington Post features an op-edon page A17 titled 'Hardly a Distinguished Career,' written by NationalSecurity Archive director Tom Blanton and commenting on the CIA's decisionto award the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal to the highest-rankingCIA official fired in a 1995 scandal for failing to inform Congress aboutthe CIA's ties to human rights abuses in Guatemala.

THE DOCUMENTS

According to State Department biographical registers and journalisticaccounts, the official, Terry R. Ward, started his career at the CIA inthe early 1960s, initially in Laos as a paramilitary officer. Hethen served under diplomatic cover in a series of CIA stations in LatinAmerica: Argentina in 1965 to 1968, the Dominican Republic from 1968 to1970, Bolivia from 1970 to 1972, Venezuela from 1973 to 1975, and Perufrom 1975 to 1977. By the middle 1980s, he had risen to the positionof deputy chief of the Latin American division of the CIA's directorateof operations. In 1987 and 1988, he was station chief in Honduras,supervising the CIA's Nicaraguan contra operation. In early 1989,he returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, as chief of the LatinAmerican division. In 1993 he became station chief in Switzerland,where he was when CIA director John Deutch fired him in 1995. Forreasons of privacy, we have deleted the name of Ward's wife.

The CIA used two secret manuals during Terry Ward's career to trainLatin American militaries and security services in interrogating suspects,one titled 'KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation - July 1963,' anda updated version titled 'Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual -1983.' These two documents were declassified in January 1997 in response to a1994 Freedom of Information Act request by the Baltimore Sun, and the Sun'sthreat of a lawsuit under FOIA. The Sun headlined its report on thedocuments (27 January 1997, by Gary Cohn, Ginger Thompson, and Mark Matthews)as 'Torture was taught by CIA.' The Sun's story noted the admonitionon page 46 of the 1963 manual that when planning an interrogation room,'the electric current should be known in advance, so that transformersor other modifying devices will be on hand if needed.' The Sun reportedthat '..this referred to the application of electric shocks to interrogationsuspects.'

The 1963 manual included a 22-page section titled'The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources,'which on page 100 admonishes that 'drugs (and the other aids discussedin this section) should not be used persistently to facilitate the interrogativedebriefing that follows capitulation. Their function is to causecapitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation. Once this shift has been accomplished, coercive techniques should be abandonedboth for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive.'

The 1983 manual as declassified included numerousrevisions made by CIA apparently in July 1984 in the wake of public revelationsabout a CIA 'assassination' manual used by the Nicaraguan contras. The revisions added a full page following the table of contents labeled'Prohibition against use of force,' and overwrote in hand-printed lettersmost of the manual's references to 'coercive techniques.' For example,the 1983 sentence on the second page of the introduction read 'While wedo not stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you awareof them and the proper way to use them.' The 1984 revisions overwrote'do not stress' with the word 'deplore' and replaced the phrase 'the properway to use them' with the phrase 'so that you may avoid them.'

The CIA Inspector General's secret report titled 'Selected Issues Relatingto CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980s' is dated 27 August 1997, andwas declassified in September 1998 as the result of repeated requests bymembers of Congress and the National Security Archive on behalf of theHonduran human rights commissioner, Leo Valladares Lanza. Triggeredby a series of reports by New York Times reporter James Lemoyne, the IGreport detailed CIA's knowledge of human rights abuses in Honduras, includingthe activities of the Honduran death squad ELACH working for the 316thBattalion of Honduran military intelligence. The 316th Battalionwas specifically formed in the early 1980s to support the CIA's programto interdict arms flows through Honduras from Nicaragua to the Salvadoranguerrillas -- the rationale given to Congress for the CIA's developmentof the Nicaraguan contras.

Although heavily censored, the IG report and relateddocuments confirmed that the CIA failed to followup CIA director WilliamCasey's 1986 commitment to Congress that the Agency would investigate ELACHand Battalion 316. Although the 316 Battalion was formally disbandedin September 1987, during Terry Ward's tenure as Honduras station chief,an 18 February 1995 CIA cable concluded that 'Although the CI [counterintelligence]division [under the Honduran armed forces chief of staff for intelligence,or C-2] retained some of the 316th military intel battalion's functionsand personnel [two lines deleted], a considerable number of the unit'spersonnel, sub-units and functions, such as analysis centers, were transferredto other sections within the C-2.' In February 2000, the Hondurangovernment announced that it would begin to pay reparations, initiallyin the amount of $2.1 million, to the families of 19 of the 184 acknowledgedvictims murdered by the 316 Battalion (see 'Reparations for ‘Disappeared'Hondurans,' in the Washington Post, 24 February 2000).

These excerpts describe (1) the State Department-funded investigationin 1986 and 1987 that established repeated instances of the murder or tortureof prisoners by the Nicaraguan contras based in Honduras (pp. 197-201);(2) the contra's 1987 'counterintelligence' campaign within their own ranks,whichincluded CIA polygraph experts as well as routine torture and indefinitedetention while the contras' CIA handlers 'turned the other way' (pp. 194-195);and (3) Terry Ward's role with the contras (pp. 222-223).

On October 15, 1991, the CIA station in Guatemala sent an 'eyes only'cable to Mr. Ward (identified as 'Chief/LA') titled 'Station investigationof human rights violations in Guatemala.' Summarizing the murderof U.S. citizen Michael Devine, the cable states that 'the entire commandstructure of the military zone where the killing took place was controlledby men known to be capable of murder under the most casual pretext.' At least one of those commanders was a paid CIA asset. After discussingseveral other cases, the cable concludes by reporting that 'the extrajudicialkilling of certain categories of persons is almost routine.'

On June 28, 1996, the President's Intelligence Oversight Board reportedthat during the period of Mr. Ward's direction of Latin American operations,the CIA provided 'vital' funding, ranging from $1 million to $3.5 millionper year, to the Guatemalan military intelligence services (the D-2 andthe Department of Presidential Security) whose human rights records 'weregenerally known to have been reprehensible by all who were familiar withGuatemala.' The Board said 'we learned that in the period since1984, 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 con