No More Learning

"It's not so much that the junta gained," said Robert E. White, the United States Ambassador to EI Salvador, "but that its oppo- nents on the extreme right and left have lost prestige. The net result is a boost in prestige for the junta. "
We may note how the title of the article transforms the murder of the leader of the dissident forces (and then of his followers at the funeral) from a moral issue deserving outrage into a question of political advan- tage, and turns that against the rebels. It would be hard to imagine the New York Times publishing an article on Popieluszko headed "Slaying in Poland Backfires on Solidarity Movement," featuring perhaps the playing up by the official press of demonstrator aggressiveness or vio- lence. Note also how the question of identifying the killer of Romero, and the government's obligation to seek justice, has been pushed into the background. Finally, there is the statement that "the extreme left is being blamed" for the deaths in the plaza. Use of the passive voice allows Treaster to avoid specification of just who is blaming the ex- treme left. He mentions as his sources for the article as a whole "many diplomats, businessmen and Government officials"-he doesn't even pretend to have talked to ordinary Salvadorans or church representa- tives-but his only citation near the statement that "the extreme left is being blamed" is the then-U. S. ambassador, Robert White. By relying only on government handouts and carefully avoiding readily available conflicting evidence and alternative views, the Times once again found the means of applying the usual formula of a deadly right offsetting a
deadly left, with the junta favored by the U. S. government once more placed in the middle-with enhanced prestige!
2. 3. 3. Misrepresentation of Romero's views
As we noted earlier, Romero was unequivocal in laying the blame for the violence in El Salvador on the army and security forces, and he viewed the left and popular groupings as victims provoked into self- defense by violence and injustice. The peoples' organizations, he told Carter, are "fighting to defend their most fundamental human rights" against a military establishment that "knows only how to repress the
54 MANUFACTlJklNG CONSENT
people and defend the interests of the Salvadorean oligarchy. " And in his diilry, Romero completely repudiated the idea that the army was reacting to somebody else's violence-the security forces are instru- ments "of a general program of annihilation of those on the left, who by themselves would not commit violence or further it were it not for social injustice that they want to do away with. "33 Thus Joseph Treaster's statement on the front page of the New York Times that Romero "had criticized both the extreme right and the extreme left for widespread killing and torture in El Salvador" (Mar. 31, 1980) is straightforward lying: Romero never accused the left of torture or widespread killing, he never equated the right and the left, and he was quite clear that the government (an agent of the right) was the primary killer. In this respect, Romero's perception, essentially the same as that
privately conveyed to the press by the U. S. government, was grossly falsified in public by both the government and press. 34
Interestingly, a year later, in an article marking the anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Romero, Edward Schumacher, of the Times, noted that under Romero's successor, Archbishop Rivera y Damas, "the church has moved to a more centrist position in the civil war between the Government and the guerrillas. "35 Of course, if the church now takes a centrist position, as opposed to its position under Romero, this constitutes an admission that the theme played by Treaster and the Times a year previously of an even-handed Romero was a lie (which it was). Is it possible that the Times always finds the church in the middle and is lying one year later as well? The question must remain open, as his successor has been much more circumspect than Romero. The willingness ofthe right wing and the army to murder people like Romero might have affected Archbishop Rivera y Damas's ability to speak his mind freely and forced public caution. The point
does not arise for Schumacher and the Times. 36
2. 3. 4. The loss of interest in responsibility at the top
With Popieluszko, the media tried hard to establish that there was knowledge of and responsibility for the crime at higher levels of the Polish government. Soviet interest and possible involvement were also regularly invoked. With Romero, in contrast, no such questions were raised or pressed.
The media did note that Romero opposed aid to the Salvadoran
WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS 55
junta (which Carter provided anyway), but they failed to convey the depth of his hostility to U. S. policy and the importance of his opposi- tional role (although it was far more threatening to U. S. policy than Popieluszko was to the Soviet Union). The press never mentioned the special emissary sent by Carter to the pope in an attempt to bring Romero into line, or the fact that the head ofthe Jesuit order in Central America was called to Rome, probably in response to this U. S. pres- sure. 3' The media also suppressed Romero's appeal to the military to refuse to kill, a fact that would have made much clearer how strongly opposed he was to the official policies, and how convenient his murder was to the rulers of ? 1 Salvador.
Although Romero was far and away the most important establish- ment figure aligned with the popular movements, the media pretended at first that the affiliation of his killers was a complete mystery. The Washington Post supposed an equal likelihood of a left- or right-wing source, and the Miami Herald noted on March 27 that "Both stood to
benefit from any chaos his death might have created. " (No American paper suggested that Popieluszko might have been murdered by Soli- darity sympathizers to discredit the Polish government. ) This foolish- ness was the minority position-the bulk of the press suggested that the killer was probably a rightist, but of obscure connection. The reliable Duarte suggested that the killing was too professional to be indige- nous-it must have been a contract job from the outside. This view was dutifully repeated by the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and CBS News. 3 8
If, as seemed very likely, the killer was a Salvadoran rightist, or someone in their employ, what was his connection, i f any, with the army and security forces? We saw earlier that the linkages between the death squads and the army were close: there was at least some degree of common command, shared operations, and mutual protection. Could the killer have been a member of the armed forces? Given the links of the army to the paramilitary forces, wasn't it likely that they knew who killed Romero? The U. S. mass media did not raise, let alone press, these questions. When D'Aubuisson's link to the murder became public knowledge, the media failed to make this a big issue, and his close relations to the official forces were not examined and discussed. This is evidence of a propaganda system at work.
Any possible U. S. connection to the crime was, of course, "far out," and could not be raised in the U. S. media. That we don't do this sort of thing is an ideological premise of the patriotic press, no matter what the facts of recent history tell US. 39 But still, the question might have been raised whether the environment that the United States was help-
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56 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
?
ing to create in El Salvador. training and aiding a murderous army whose violence had driven Romero to passionate opposition, made the United States indirectly guilty of the murder? The press never dis- cussed this point either. The Times quotes Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on the murder: "Two weeks ago I wrote the Archbishop and said: 'We share a repugnance for the violence provoked by both extremes that is taking the lives of innocent people. We deplore the efforts of those seeking to silence the voices of reason and moderation with explosives. intimidation and murder. ' " 4 { ) The paper points out that the letter from Vance was in reply to Romero's appeal to cease supplying arms. The article failed to include the gist of Romero's argument, and it did not quote that part ofVance's letter that rejected the archbishop's appeal. The report also did not take note of Vance's serious misre- presentation of the archbishop's position when he says that "We share a repugnance [for] . . . both extremes"; Romero attributed the killings to the army and the right. not "both extremes. " We may note also that while Romero was victimized by the very forces that Vance supported. and Romero's forecasts seem to be vindicated by his own murder, there is no hint in the account of any irony or criticism of Vance and his associates. Here the press cannot plead lack of knowledge. As later conceded, the media knew very well that the security forces were the source of the violence.
2. 3. 5. Murder unavenged-or
trium phant f
The assassins ofArchbishop Romero were never "officially" discovered or prosecuted, and he joined the ranks of the tens of thousands of other Salvadorans murdered without justice being done. But in contrast with Popieluszko, the U. S. mass media seemed quite uninterested in who committed the act or in demanding just retribution.
Subsequently, a great deal of evidence became available showing that Roberto D'Aubuisson was at the center of a conspiracy to murder Romero. On the basis of numerous interviews with Arena party activists and U. S. officials, and examination of State Department cables, investi- gative reporters Craig Pyes and Laurie Becklund claimed in 1983 that D'Aubuisson had planned the assassination with a group of active-duty military officers, who drew straws for the honor of carrying out the murder. 4'l Former ambassador Robert White, who had access to State Department cables and other inside information during his tenure in
WORTHY AND U,,"WORTHY VICTIMS 57
office, also stated before a congressional committee in February 1984 that "beyond any reasonable doubt" D'Aubuisson had "planned and ordered the assassination" of Archbishop Romero, and White gave details on the planning meeting and the subsequent execution of the trigger man to keep him quiet. 42 Further evidence of D'Aubuisson's involvement in the murder came to light with the confession of Roberto Santivanez, a former high official in Salvadoran intelligence. According to Santivanez, the murder of Romero was planned and carried out by D'Aubuisson with the aid of former national guardsmen of Somoza, but "under the protection of General Garcia and Colonel Carranza. "43 Pyes's and Becklund's informants also indicated that D'Aubuisson was a subordinate and political ally of Carranza, who was the number two man in the Salvadoran military until his ouster under U. S. pressure in December 1980. Carranza then moved over to head the Treasury Police. D'Aubuisson also worked with the National Guard's G-2 central intelli- gence office while the guard was headed by General Eugenio Vides Casanova. Pyes and Becklund write that "During the time Vides com- manded the Guard, active-duty military officers working with the G-2 were linked in State Department cables to the March 1980 assassination ofArchbishop Oscar Amulfo Romero. . . . "44 Note that Vides Casanova became minister of defense, the post he still holds, under the Duarte
government.
In short, there was substantial evidence concerning the identity of
Romero's murderers, and there were significant links of the murders to the highest officials of the Salvadoran military establishment. In fact, a judicial investigation in EI Salvador headed by Judge Atilio Ramirez quickly pointed a finger at D'Aubuisson and General Medrano, a U. S. protege in ? 1 Salvador. But Ramirez soon fled the country after several threats and an attempt on his life, and active pursuit of the case in El Salvador ended. In exile, Judge Ramirez claimed that the criminal- investigation group of the police didn't arrive at the scene of the crime till four days after it was committed, and that neither the police nor the attorney general provided his court with any evidence. He concluded that there was "undoubtedly" a "kind of conspiracy to cover up the murder" from the very beginning. 45
Needless to say, Judge Ramirez's testimony was not featured in the U. S. media, nor was the accumulating evidence of D'Aubuisson's in- volvement given significant play. It was back-page material at best, treated matter-of-factly and never put in a framework of indignation and outrage by the use of emotive language or by asking allies of Romero to comment on the evidence, and it never elicited strident demands for justice. To this day one will find no mention of the fact
'.
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58 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
that the effective rulers of this "fledgling democracy" are military of- ficers who were closely assoeiated with D'Aubuisson and his cabal and may well have been implicated in the assassination.
After D'Aubuisson was caught in a raid on May 8, 1980, with docu- ments showing that he was planning a coup and with evidence of his involvement in the murder of Romero, he was arrested and faced with the threat of trial and imprisonment. An assembly of the entire officer corps of the Salvadoran army-seven hundred strong-was quickly convened, and demanded his release. He was turned loose shortly thereafter, with the concurrence of the minister of defense. 46 The documents found in his possession dropped out of sight. The security forces also raided the legal-aid office of the archbishopric, removing all of their files bearing on the assassination. At the previously mentioned meeting of the Salvadoran officer corps, Colonel Adolfo Majano, the last of the reformers in the "reformist" junta of 1979, was denounced, and he quickly exited from the junta, to be replaced by yet another hard-liner. The army had expressed its solidarity with the hard-line- death-squad right, and the junta was adjusted to meet this new threat to the image of a reformist junta, with Duarte advanced to president,
serving as a figurehead for the benefit of Congress and the media, to ensure that arms would flow to the killers.
The U. S. mass media gave little notice to this important display and consolidation of the power of the extreme right, and the semi-official vindication of the murderers of Archbishop Romero. This was telling evidence ahout the nature of power in El Salvador and the fictional quality of the claim that the government was centrist or reformist. Unbiased media would have featured and explained the meaning of this information. But these facts contradicted the Carter-Reagan mythol- ogy, so the media predictably remained silent about these events and continued to perpetuate the myth. On November 29, 1980, following the massacre of the leaders of the opposition in San Salvador, the Times suggested that there is "a severe challenge to the credibility" ofthe gov- ernment, but there is no hint that the revolt of May 1980 had changed their view of April 28 that this was a "weak centrist government. "
The media also adjusted nicely, then and later, to the rehabilitation of the probable murderer of Romero and his reintegration into the official power structure. As D'Aubuisson sought high office and eventu- ally became president of the Salvadoran legislature, the U. S. mass media did not focus on his record as the probable organizer of the murder of Archbishop Romero and as the acknowledged leader of the death squads and a mass murderer. Even the open anti-Semitism of this Fascist was kept under the rug. 47 We would submit that if an anti-
WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS 59
Semite and professional assassin. who was suspected of having orga- nized the murder of Popieluszko in Poland, ran for office and became head of the Polish legislature, there might have been a raised eyebrow or two in the U. S. media.
Throughout this period, media coverage adopted a central myth contrived by the government. and confined its reporting and interpreta- tion to its basic premises: the "moderate government" that we support is plagued by the terrorism of the extremists of the left and right, and is unable to bring it under control. The U. S. government and the media understood very well that the violence was overwhelmingly the respon- sibility of both the U. S. -backed security forces. which were, and re- main, the real power in the country. and the paramilitary network they created to terrorize the population. But this truth was inexpressible. To this day the media maintain the central myth of earlier years. long after having conceded quietly that it was a complete fabrication. Reporting on the prospects for peace in El Salvador, Lindsey Gruson comments that "Today, death squads of the right and left no longer terrorize the population into submission and silence," thanks to the success of Presi- dent Duarte and his U. S. supporters in moving the country toward democracy-exactly as a propaganda model would predict. 48
2. 4. COVERAGE OF THE SALVADORAN NATIONAL GUARDS' MURDER OF THE FOUR U. S. CHURCHWOMEN AND ITS FOLLOW-UP
On December 2, 1980, four U. S. churchwomen working in ? 1 Salva- dor-Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan. Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel- were seized, raped, and murdered by members of the Salvadoran National Guard. This crime was extremely inconvenient to the Carter administration, which was supporting the Salvadoran junta as an al- leged "reformist" government and trying to convince the public and Congress that that government was worthy of aid. While temporarily suspending military aid to El Salvador, the Carter administration sought a quick and low-keyed resolution of the case. It resumed aid at the drop of an announced rebel offensive, and-eontrary to its pro- mises-before there was any investigatory response by the Salvadoran
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60 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
government. A commission headed by William P. Rogers was quickly sent to El Salvador to inquire into the facts and offer U. S. aid in an investigation. The commission reported that it had "no evidence sug- gesting that any senior Salvadoran authorities were implicated in the murders themselves," but there is no indication that it ascertained this by any route beyond asking the authorities whether they were involved. The commission acknowledged that justice was not thriving in El Sal- vador,49 but it proposed no independent investigation, merely urging
~the Salvadoran junta to pursue the case vigorously. It noted that the junta promised that the truth "would be pursued wherever it led any- where in the country at any level. "so Rogers was later to concede that perhaps he was a bit optimistic in expecting the Salvadoran junta to pursue the case seriously. 51
With the arrival of the Reagan administration, the already badly compromised concern to find the culprits diminished further, and the dominance of the interest in protecting the client regime in El Salvador became still more overwhelming. It was quickly clear that the whole business could be forgotten-along with the thousands of Salvadorans already killed-except for the demands of public relations. The willing- ness to support any feasible cover-up was also quite evident. Secretary of State Alexander Haig stated before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that the evidence "led one to believe" that the four women were killed trying to run a roadblock-a shameless lie that was soon acknowl- edged as such by the State Department. 52 The Reagan ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, went Haig one better, suggesting that the four women were political activists for the "Frente"-as with Haig's statement, an outright lie-hinting quite broadly that they were fair game. 53
Although Kirkpatrick also asserted that the Salvadoran government "unequivocally" was "not responsible" for the murders, evidence was soon available that showed that members of the National Guard had killed the four women. The administration then moved to the position that it was clear that the local guardsmen had "acted alone. " This was asserted and reiterated despite the absence of any supportive investiga- tion, and important leads suggesting the contrary were ignored. A propaganda model would expect that this preferred government expla- nation would be honored by the mass media, and that in contrast with the Popieluszko case, where useful points could be scored by searching for villainy at the top, the mass media would now be less eager to find that which their government was anxious to avoid.
The difference between the murder of the four women and the
,
WORTHY A:-;V UNWORTHY VICTIMS 61
thousands of others uninvestigated and unresolved in El Salvador was that the families of these victims were Americans and pressed the case. eventually succeeding in getting Congress to focus on these particular murders as a test case and political symbol. This forced these killings ooto the political agenda. A trial and convictions were ultimately re- quired as a condition for certification and aid to the military govern- ment of E1 Salvador. Both the Reagan administration and the Salvadoran military were thus obligated to "see justice done"-in this one instance. It took three-and-a-half years for justice to triumph in this one case. with a lid still kept on top-level involvement.
It was a challenge to the mass media to present these murders, and the delayed and aborted outcome, in such a way as to keep indignation low and to downplay the quality of a system that murdered the women and had to be forced to find a set of low-level personnel guilty of the crime (which it took them years to do). The media met this challenge with flying colors.
2. 4. 1. Details of the savagery
The finding of Popieluszko's body was front-page news for the New York Times-in fact, the initialfailure to find his body made the front page-and in all the media publications analyzed here, the details of his seizure, the disposition of his body, and the nature of his wounds were recounted extensively and with barely concealed relish (see table 2-2)_ These details were also repeated at every opportunity (and, most notably, at the trial). The finding of the bodies of the four women, by contrast, was a back-page item in the Times, and in all four of the media institutions in our sample the accounts of the violence done to the four murdered women were very succinct, omitted many details, and were
not repeated after the initial disclosures. No attempt was made to
?
reconstruct the scene with its agony and brutal violence, so that the drama conveyed in the accounts of Popieluszko's murder was entirely missing. The murder of the four churchwomen was made remote and impersonal.
The Time account, for example, after giving the names of the vic- tims, says, "Two of the women had been raped before being shot in the back of the head. " The New York Times account, shown in table 2-2, is also quite succinct. The Rogers Commission report pointed out that one of the victims had been shot through the back of the head with a weapon "that left exit wounds that destroyed her face. " The Rogers
62 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
report also noted that those present at the disinterment found "exten- sive" wounds and that "the bodies were also bruised. " Raymond Bon- ner's account, in Weakness and Deceit, noted that
In the crude grave, stacked on top of each other were the bodies of four women. The first hauled out of the hole was Jean Donovan, twenty-seven years old, a lay missionary from Cleveland. Her face had been blown away by a high calibre bullet that had been fired into the back of her head. Her pants were unzipped; her under-
4 wear twisted around her ankles. When area peasants found her, she was nude from the waist down. They had tried to replace the garments before burial. Then came Dorothy Kazel, a forty-year- old Ursuline nun also from Cleveland. At the bottom of the pit were Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford, forty, and Maura Clarke, forty- nine, both from New York. All the women had been executed at close range. The peasants who found the women said that one had her underpants stuffed in her mouth; another's had been tied over her eyes. All had been raped.
We may note the failure of Time and the New York Times to mention the bruises (which both of these publications mentioned and repeated, as regards Popieluszko); the failure to mention the destruction ofJean Donovan's face; the suppression of the degrading and degraded use of the nuns' underwear;~4 the failure to give the account of the peasants who found the bodies. These and other details given by Bonner and suppressed by Time and the New York Times (and also Newsweek and CBS News) add emotional force and poignancy to the scene. Such details are included for a Popieluszko, but not for four American women murdered by a U. S. client state. The Rogers report also pointed out that the forensic surgeons sent to the scene of the crime by the junta, at the urging of Ambassador Roben White, refused to perform an autopsy on the ground that no surgical masks were available. This touch, which would have cast the junta and its agents in a bad light, was also omitted from U. S. media accounts.
In the Popieluszko case, both the finding of the body and the trial were occasions for an aggressive portrayal of the details of the act of murder and the condition of the body. The mass-media reticence on such matters at the time of the finding of the bodies of the four women was exceeded by their restraint at the trial. Lydia Chavez, of the New York Times, who attended the trial, notes that there were eight hours of testimony and seven hours of argument that focused on the women's work in El Salvador "and on the details of their kidnappings and
WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS 63
deaths," but heT article gave no details whatsoever on the medical evidence.
2. 4. 2. Lack of indignation and insistent demands for justice
In the Popieluszko case, the press conveyed the impression of intoler- able outrage that demanded immediate rectification. In the case of the murder of the four American women, while the media asserted and quoted government officials that this was a brutal and terrible act, it was not declared intolerable, and the media did not insist on (or quote people who demanded) justice. The media relied heavily. on "senior officials" of the U. S. and Salvadoran governments, who expressed a more resigned view of the situation and were prepared to allow the Salvadoran system of justice to work things out. Correspondingly, the media also moved into a philosophical vein-the women, as Time points out, were "victims of the mindless, increasing violence" of El Salvador (Dec. 15, 1980). With Popieluszko, it was live government officials who committed the crime, not blind forces (that are hard to bring to book).
Even the funeral and memorial services for the women in the United States were not allowed to serve as an occasion for outrage and a demand for justice. For the most part, they were ignored and sup- pressed. The New York Times (Dec. 8, 1981) gave a tiny, back-page, UPI account of the memorial service for Sister Dorothy Kazel, featuring the apolitical statement by Bishop Anthony M. Pilla that "The life of a missionary has never been easy or glamorous. "
We must consider, too, that as Ambassador Kirkpatrick indicated, the victims may have been asking for it. As Newsweek observed (Dec. 15,1980), "The violence in El Salvador is likely to focus with increasing ferocity on the Roman Catholic Church. Many priests and nuns advo- cate reform, and some of them are militant leftists. Such sentiments mean trouble, even for more moderate members of the clergy. '~ (Note here also the impersonality of "the violence"-nowhere in the article is there a suggestion that the U. S. -backed government initiated, and was doing the bulk of, the murdering. ) In the case of Popieluszko, by contrast, the media never once suggested that he was a regrettable victim of escalating conflict between the state and rebellious forces (or between East and West). That situation was much simpler than the one in El Salvador: Popieluszko was murdered by officials of the state, and
64 MA:-JUFACTURING CONSENT
this was intolerable. The complexities and resort to philosophical in- anities about unallocable "violence" are reserved for deaths in the provinces.
2. 4. 3. The lack of zeal in the search for villainy at the top
As we saw earlier, in the Popieluszko case the mass media eagerly, . . aggressively, and on a daily basis sought and pointed to evidence of top-level involvement in the killing. In the case of the killings of the four women, we can observe a completely different approach. Here the media found it extremely difficult to locate Salvadoran government involvement in the murders, even with evidence staring them in the face. Their investigatory zeal was modest, and they were happy to follow the leads of ("Trust me") Duarte and U. S. officials as the case
unfolded. They played dumb. The Salvadoran army and security forces had been killing Salvadorans, in the same way they had killed the four women, for months. What is more, the churches with which the women were connected had been recently threatened by the army. More direct evidence was that local peasants had been forced to bury the bodies by the local military. But the media did not use this information to help them find the locus of the murders.
The initial line of the U. S. and Salvadoran governments was that there was no proof of military involvement, although the military's, concealment of the bodies was not proper. A statement issued by the junta on December 8 claimed that the murderers were "terrorists ofthe extreme right,"55 and Duarte reiterated this view to the press, which passed it along. In keeping with the government line, twenty days after the murders, the New York Times still spoke only of "unidentified assailants," although the leads to the National Guard were already plentiful, and it repeated the Rogers report finding that the security forces may have tried to "conceal the deaths" after the bodies had been found. 56
Gradually, so much evidence seeped out to show that the women had been murdered by members of the National Guard that the involve- ment of government forces could no longer be evaded. A two-part process of "damage limitation" ensued, expounded by Salvadoran and U. S. officials and faithfully reflected in the media. One was a distinction between the government and the National Guard. In the Popieluszko case, the reader was never allowed to forget that the murdering police
were part of the Polish government. In the case of the four American women, it was barely evident in the mass media that the killers had any connection with the Salvadoran government. This was in keeping with the basic myth, also consistently foHowed by the media, that the Sal- vadoran government was reformist and centrist, trying to control kill- ings by extremists of the right and left. 57 This fabrication allowed a two-track system of massive killing by the army and its affiliates and simultaneous claims of regret by the reformers unable to control the extremists. This was reminiscent of the heyday of mass murder in Argentina, when the New York Times regularly portrayed the junta and people like the recently convicted General Videla as moderates "unable to control the right-wing extremists" who were killing people. 58
The most important goal of the immediate damage-containment process was to stifle any serious investigation of the responsibility of the officials of the Salvadoran government. The Salvadoran strategy was foot-dragging from beginning to end, as the idea of convicting soldiers for killing anybody was contrary to Salvadoran practice, and, moreover, there is little doubt that the responsibility for the crime went high. The U. S. official strategy, once it was clear that the National Guard was responsible for the killing, was to get the low-level killers tried and convicted-necessary to vindicate the system of justice in EI Salvador, at least to the extent of keeping the dollars flowing from Congress- while protecting the "reformers" at the top. On September 30, 1981, Ambassador Deane Hinton stated with assurance that the local national guardsmen "were acting on their own," although internal State Depart- ment documents of the time recognized that the Salvadoran investiga- tion had been a joke, and other evidence existed suggesting top-level involvement. 59 Nonetheless, the official position was clear. To go along . . with the official line, the mass media had to stop investigating high-level involvement and even to suppress evidence emerging from other sources. And so they proceeded to do this.
After a two-month investigation of the murders, the reporter John Dinges filed a story through Pacific News Service that showed the murders to have been preplanned in some detail. 60 First, there were intercepted radio communications indicating military discussions ofthe arrival of the women at the airport, and other evidence of close surveil-
lance of their flight plans, all suggesting a coordinated and extensive military operation. Second, a former deputy minister of planning de- scribed to Dinges a half-hour presentation by Salvadoran Defense Minister Guillermo Garcia in the national palace, denouncing the nuns
Land priests in the very area of the murders and stating that something must be done, only two weeks prior to the murders.
WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS 6S
66 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
In a remarkable feat of self-censorship, most of the mass media completely ignored the Dinges findings. Dinges's report appeared in the Washington Pos~ the Los Angeles Times, and some fifteen other papers, but not a word of it found its way into the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, or CBS News, and its leads were not pursued by any media. Instead, the media kept repeating the assurances of Duarte and U. S. officials that they were satisfied that the killings did not go beyond the local national guardsmen, and that the matter would be pursued dili- gently through proper legal channels.
In March 1984, Colonel Roberto Santivanez, a high official in Sal- vadoran intelligence, agreed to "talk" about the death-squad network in EI Salvador, and his claims found their way onto CBS News and the front page of the New York Times. 61 Santivanez gave highly credible details about the murder of the four women, indicating that the act had been committed on the specific order of Colonel Oscar Edgardo Casa- nova, who was in charge of the zone in which the killings took place. Colonel Casanova was transferred to another assignment two weeks after the murder as part of the official cover-up. His first cousin Eu- genio Vides Casanova, the minister of defense chosen by Duarte and head of the National Guard in December 1980, knew about the murder order by his cousin, as did Duarte. Although this crushing evidence implicated a high officer in the murder and the current minister of defense and Duarte in the cover-up, there was no follow-up to this story, no connection back to the Dinges story of high-level discussions of the need to do something about the religious workers-no editorials, no indignation, and no pressure for action.
In sum, the leads provided by Dinges, and the testimony of Santi- vanez, strongly suggest that the killing of the women was based on a high-level decision. The evidence is even clearer that middle-level officials of the government ordered the killing, and that the highest- level officials engaged in a continuing and systematic cover-up. In the Polish case, the evidence of top-level involvement was never forthcom- ing, bur the issue was pursued by the U. S. mass media relentlessly. In the case of the four churchwomen, where the evidence of top-level involvement was abundant, the U. S. mass media failed to press the matter, or even to engage in the pursuit of obvious investigative leads.
We cannot describe here the full details ofthe failure ofthe Salvado- ran process of justice, which never moved forward except under U. S. pressure and threats. 62 The mass media did at one point berate the Salvadoran government for "stonewalling" the investigation,63 but the media entirely failed to capture the depth and scope of the stonewalling process, or to remark on its significance in this "fledgling democracy,"
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and they generally transmitted Salvadoran and U. S. government claims about the state of the process without sarcasm or expressions of out- rage. If they had given full details, the Salvadoran government would have been thoroughly discredited. Thus, the extensive evidence con- cerning official Salvadoran refusals to take action or to interrogate relevant witnesses, and concerning threats to witnesses, lawyers, and judges-which would have been aired with delight if applicable to a Polish investigation-were ignored.
A few illustrations of the Salvadoran proceedings will have to suffice here. Two years after the crime, for example?
. . .
' the prosecutors expressed ignorance of the testimony [in the
court record] of former guardsman Cesar Valle Espinoza, dated August 9, 1982, which quotes Subsergeant Colindres Aleman as stating on December 2, 1980, that there were "superior orders" to apprehend the women. They were also ignorant of the statement offormer National Guard Sergeant Dagoberto Martinez, taken by the FBI in Los Angeles, California, which establishes the exis- tence of a cover-up of the crime as early as December 1980. 64
A second illustration of the process: two of three judges assigned to the case resigned for fear of their lives. As we noted, Judge Ramirez, who was investigating the Romero murder, fled for the same reason. This line of evidence has cumulative weight, but it was never treated as a whole by the press (and was barely mentioned as individual items of back-page news). A third illustration: according to former ambassador Robert White, two national guardsmen who might have been able to link higher-ranking officers to the murders of the women were killed by military death squads, then listed as missing in action. 65 A final illustration: when the Salvadoran triggermen were finally assigned at-
- torneys, one of the three, Salvador Antonio Ibarra, was prepared to defend the men seriously. His colleagues pressed Ibarra to abide by the statement that "the possibility of a cover-up had been thoroughly investigated" and rejected. He refused to go along with this request, with the consequence that on October 3? ,1983, Ibarra was seized by the National Guard and tortured at its headquarters. 66 Released only under U. S. pressure, Ibarra fled the country,leaving the way clear for a lawyer team that would accept the notion that there had been a "thorough investigation" of top-level involvement. This last incident alone made it into the mass media in isolated and fleeting treatment; the others, and the package, were not featured in the free press.
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I,
WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS 67
The U. S. government also engaged in a systematic cover-up--of
WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS 69
blatantly prejudged the case. The only plausible rationale for the U. S. cover-up is that the administration wanted to minimize adverse public- ity concerning the performance of its murderous client. Information on what was really going on, or its own internal analyses of the case or appraisals of the Salvadoran legal process, would make the client look bad. The administration hoped that the case would "go away," but until that happened, it wanted the publicity flow to be under its control.
Part of the reason the administration wanted control was to allow it to claim reasonable progress in the pursuit of the case whenever the military government was due for more money. As with other right-wing satellites, "improvement" is always found at money-crunch time. In its July 1982 certification report, the State Department found that "sub- stantial progress" had been made in the case and predicted a trial in the fall of 1982. In early 1983, the certification report noted "significant developments" in the case. This manipulation of evidence to protect the flow of arms and money to the regime would not be easy with full disclosure---or with a critical and honest press.
This cover-up of the SaJvadoran judicial process, even though four murdered American women were involved, did not arouse the press to indignation or satire, nor did it cause them to provide more than mini- mal coverage of the inquiry.
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2. 4. 4. The trial-five national guardsmen for $19. 4 million
The trial of the five immediate killers of the four women should have been presented in a Kafkaesque framework, but the U. S. media played it very straight. The trial took place three-and-a-half years after the acts of murder, despite the fact that the triggermen were immediately identified and despite enormous U. S. pressure. Two of three judges assigned to the case had resigned out of fear for their lives, and the only independent defense attorney had fled the country after a session of torture at National Guard headquarters. The defense at the trial made no effort to defend the men on the grounds of "orders from above," although this is a standard defense in such cases, and significant evi- dence was available for use in this instance. The mass media failed to note the point, although it suggests fear, a deal, or both, and although, as we saw in the Popieluszko case, the media are sometimes immensely alert to cover-ups. In March 1984, former intelligence officer Santi-
68 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
both the Salvadoran cover-up and the facts of the case. The U. S. mass media, while briefly noting the Salvadoran stonewalling, failed to call attention to the equally important lies and suppressions of their own government. As we have pointed out, both the Carter and Reagan administrations put protection of its client above the quest for justice
for four U. S. citizens murdered by agents of that government. The U. S. government's stonewalling to protect its client took many forms. One was an active collaboration in the Salvadoran cover-up. Former Na- tional Guard sergeant Dagoberto Martinez was allowed to emigrate to the United States in December 1980, and although a subsequent inter- view by the FBI indicated that Martinez admitted knowledge of the perpetrators of the crime and a failure to report that information-in violation of Salvadoran law-no action was taken against him. U. S. officials also reiterated that there was no reason to believe that higher- level officials knew about the crime or participated in it, when they had clear knowledge of a cover-up and a refusal to investigate. 61 The State Department also regularly lied about the thoroughness ofthe investiga- tion. Ambassador Hinton stated in public that national guardsman Perez Nieto "was thoroughly interrogated and repeatedly denied that anyone superior to him had ordered him to watch the women.