140. Trump’s Latin America Playbook: Before Venezuela, There Was Guatemala (Ep 1)

20:41Gordon:Friend of the show. Yeah. Friend of the show, Alan Dulles. Well, and it is true because it It is the same sort of wave affects the Iran operation against Mossadegh, which we talked about in our first two episodes ever of The Rest is Classified, because under Truman, you didn't have the political kind of momentum for these kind of, I guess, really muscular, cold warrior efforts. And once Truman is gone and Eisenhower is in, and in particular, once you have Alan Dulles at CIA and his brother John Foster Dulles at State, who have a very similar mindset, you now all of a sudden, by the time you get to 1953, you've got political momentum behind these kind of, I guess the way I'd put it, Gordon, is exploring our sort of near abroad with an eye toward changing regimes to be friendly ones.

21:35Gordon:It's one way of putting it, right?

21:37David:Yeah. But their first priority, of course, is Iran. And we talked about that before. You have this big operation in 1953, which succeeds. And that is important, isn't it? The fact that they succeed in regime change in 1953, to some extent, surprisingly, perhaps, given how crazy that operation was, gives this momentum, the idea you can do it. And I always think that operation was led by the wonderfully named Kermit Roosevelt. And when he goes to brief the White House on the success of Iran, he notices that John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, is there. And Kermit Roosevelt says, Dulles' eyes were gleaming.

22:20David:He seemed to be purring like a giant cat. My instincts told me that he was planning something else as well. And it's Guatemala. I mean, that's what's being planned, isn't it? Because they're immediately off the back of Iran going to go, well, we've done regime change in the Middle East. Let's now do it in our backyard. There's a momentum to it and a belief you could do it, which again, maybe is redolent recently this year of first Venezuela and then Iran. Administrations get confident.

22:46Gordon:Absolutely. And interestingly, Kermit is asked to do it again. He says no. He actually seems to have taken a look at the plans and says, you know, you don't have the intelligence on the ground. You don't have the kind of knowledge to do it. Remember, in the Mossadegh operation in Iran, much as it pains me to say, the reason, the it succeeded was that the CIA essentially came in and took over networks that MI6 had put together, on-the-ground networks of support assets that were critical in driving the street action that would eventually kind of force the showdown with Mossadegh and eventually depose him, right?

23:24Gordon:But there were deep networks that the Brits had cultivated for years that Kermit Roosevelt used. doesn't seem that the agency had similar networks in Guatemala. So Roosevelt's reacting to that. He says you don't have really good sources to know either kind of critical elements of the populace thing or really importantly, where's the military in all this, right? Because that was a big piece of the story in Iran as well. And if you don't know who's who in the military and who's loyal and who's not, it's really hard to pull off these kind of operations.

23:57David:Yeah. So in Kermit Roosevelt, they turned to a guy called Colonel Al Haney, handsome six-footer, who's described as preferring spying to his old business career and loves being on the road and in the mix so much that his wife divorces him. He didn't know much about Central America. This is telling, as he'd just been in Korea. But the view is he's got some experience of guerrilla warfare from Korea. he's told that previous attempts had been bungled by United Fruit and he needed to come up with a new plan but he's told to go see the United Fruit fixer in Washington and he's told if you think you can run this operation without United Fruit you're crazy so it's an it is an example there where Big Fruit is the ally I think of the US if not the entire driver of it and then you have Frank Wisner this fascinating character I think we should do some more on in the future maybe He's a really interesting person who's an overall charge in Washington.

24:52David:Al Haney is the field commander on the ground. There's a guy called Tracy Barnes who's head of the political warfare bit of it. Barnes is a classic Office of Strategic Services guy from World War II. And they are going to be the leadership team around it with Dulles at the top. So by December the 9th, 1953, Dulles approves it with a$3 million budget. And it's got a great name, hasn't it? It does. They give it for the operation.

25:20Gordon:PB as the digraph, success. So, you know, I mean, you're baking the victory already into the code name. I love it.

25:31David:What a thing to do to call your operation when you commission it, success. I mean, imagine if it failed, which, as we'll see, it comes pretty close to doing.

25:39Gordon:Comes close. And we should say that the$3 million budget is worth somewhere between maybe$35 and$40 million today, which is not a particularly large covert action budget. So they thought they could do this one kind of on the cheap. And I think I remember, Gordon, from our Mosadex series that Kermit Roosevelt had claimed that he could do a Ron for a couple hundred thousand dollars. The price is going up. The price has gone way up in just a few months. Inflation. But it does speak to, I guess, the extreme optimism that was just filling the hallways of the Central Intelligence Agency at this point.

26:27Gordon:Because you thought, well, we did Iran. We did it pretty easily. We got the Shah out of that. That's going well. And now we'll do Guatemala. What could go wrong? Yeah.

26:37David:And those corridors, I mean, the CIA at this time isn't yet in Langley, is it? It's in the center of Washington. But they're going to base this operation out of Miami, out of Opaloka Air Base, just outside of Miami, to try and keep it away from Washington and a bit closer to the action. new locks put on doors two-way mirrors and reception that base is code named lincoln there'll be about 100 cia officers there they've also got a station in the embassy in guatemala which is important they put in a new ambassador to help a guy called puerifoy who's a hardcore anti-communist from south carolina so he's sent to be the theater commander for the coup because he's the current ambassador has actually moved out specifically to make way for him with the idea is that he's going to do the political end of this on the ground of bringing in a new regime.

27:28David:He's a kind of tough guy, like carrying a gun. I don't think he was a deep thinker, it's fair to say. But there's also going to be a station in the embassy, which is going to grow fast, next to the ambassador's suite in Guatemala City, part of the walled compound, where they're going to execute this plan. And we're going to look in detail at this plan. But overall, I guess it's got a few different elements, hasn't it? It's got psychological, economic, diplomatic, and paramilitary operations.

27:53Gordon:Gordon, I know it just blows your British mind, but I do think that you can carry a gun and also be a deep thinker. You put those two things right next to each other in the notes as if somehow they, you know, if A, then B. But come on. You're exposing your continentalist sort of, your transatlanticist.

28:19David:There was not necessarily a direct connection with those two things. He carried a gun. He was not a deep thinker. Okay, let me just leave it at that. Yeah, just two statements that are just disconnected from each other. Totally connected. You wouldn't need to say the two. You just say he carried a gun, therefore he couldn't be a deep. So I'm going to defend myself there. But back to the plan, which is going to be economic pressure. So that's going to be using US businesses to create import shortages, limit export earnings, put pressure on the country. That's interesting, isn't it? Because it's what we talked about at the start is happening with Cuba, isn't it?

28:57Gordon:Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's essentially, I guess, a mirror to the oil blockade that we're conducting today that is strangling Cuba's economy.

29:08David:And then there's going to be diplomatic pressure, isolate the country, put pressure on the regime. That's going to be led by John Foster Dulles and the State Department lobby against them. And then when you put enough pressure, is the idea, you grow that pressure economically and diplomatically. Then you shift to paramilitary action, political agitation, sabotage and propaganda to topple the regime and bring in their own man. But who is their man going to be?

29:37Gordon:Who is their man? And I think maybe there, Gordon, let's take a break. And when we come back, we will see who the CIA and Big Fruit elect as their successor.

29:51David:So, David, our live show, our first live show at the South Bank went so well in January, they've allowed us to come back for more.

29:58Gordon:That's right. We are coming back for our second live show, this time as part of Goalhanger's The Rest is fest which is a whole weekend of incredible podcast live shows as part of that you're going

30:11David:to be able to catch us both on friday night where we'll be chatting about all things spies

30:16Gordon:tradecraft and international intrigue last time we talked about spy fact and fiction looking at some of your favorite spy films and talking about what they get right what they get wrong about the secret world we also did a debate about the biggest intelligence failure in history in which I was roundly defeated by, I would say, a hostile crowd, a hostile British crowd, Gordon, who was very favorable to you and the argument you presented.

30:44David:And then we launched some squirrels into the crowd, which is another story. But if that's not enough, there's going to be even more of us at that weekend because we're doing a little crossover event with Anthony Scaramucci, no less, the Mooch from The Rest is Politics US, and it's called Team America, World Police.

31:05Gordon:Question mark at the end. Exactly. Yeah. We will be talking about America's internationalist agenda, looking at Venezuela, Iran, Greenland. It should be an absolutely fascinating debate and one that Gordon is moderating, which sounds like it will be an amazing struggle for you to keep us contained. So best of luck. Looking forward to that one.

31:25David:So the Rest is Fest is running from the 4th to the 6th of September at London's South Bank Centre.

31:32Gordon:The Rest is Classified members can get tickets now and you will have received a link in your inbox to buy tickets.

31:39David:General sale though goes live this Thursday the 26th of March at 10am GMT and you can find out more at southbankcentre.co.uk. It's not just something you made.

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32:05David:And we do too. Which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours. With purpose in every detail and crafted with intention.

32:18Gordon:Timberland. Built on craft. Visit Timberland.com to shop.

32:26Well, welcome back.

32:29Gordon:The CIA and Big Fruit are squeezing the Guatemalans economically, isolating them diplomatically, Gordon, but they need a replacement for Arbenz as the leader of Guatemala. And who do they find? And Colonel Amas, again, my pronunciation may be wrong. Apologies. There was a lot of buildup for what I'm sure was an absolute flub of the pronunciation.

33:00David:But he is. Amas is a great character, I think. To me, he's like something from a Graham Greene novel. He is described by some CIA people as bold but incompetent, which I just think is a great, great description. And he also looks at, I mean, the pictures of him, it's worth looking at pictures of him because he's got a kind of Hitlerian moustache, you know, which you think this is the 50s, it's not the 30s. You just think that would be discredited, having one of those little things. But he's physically unimposing, about 40 years old. Someone said he always looked immaculate, though, like he'd been packaged at Bloomingdale's department store.

33:40David:No real politics, always useful when you're trying to install someone, isn't it? Blank slate. Blank slate. Better than some of the alternatives who have a reputation for rape and imprisoning children. So that's the kind of the exile community they're picking from. But I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because the CIA essentially pick him because he's malleable. Because they think he's going to do what we want. He's got a bit of a military background. He attacked a military base in 1950. He'd been imprisoned, but he tunnels himself out and flees abroad.

34:10Gordon:What do you mean he attacked a military base in 1950? We're skipping over that part of the biography.

34:18David:I think when there was the election around then, you're constantly getting these minor revolts, I think, from military people. So he is a military man, but then he gets captured. He goes to live after fleeing capture in Honduras during various jobs, including, I discovered, as a furniture salesman, which is a classic figure who is then planning to be the next leader of his country and lead a rebellion. You're selling furniture in Honduras. But he's the one they pick.

34:50Gordon:So he's a Hitler mustachioed former military man who had recently been selling furniture in Honduras. This is who the CIA picks.

35:01David:Yeah.

35:01Gordon:And he will now be known as the liberator when they fly him to Miami. There's also, I think, a lesson here for, or just maybe some echoes with just when you are looking to do regime change and you look at the exile population and you think, who will lead these people once we have deposed the sort of hideous regime in name your country? When you're looking at the exiles, it can be tough. You're usually not dealing with the great and the good here. He's a furniture salesman. I guess he does have military experience, though. So that's something.

35:47David:So they picked him by the end of 1953. The CIA are going to establish camps in Honduras and Nicaragua, neighboring Guatemala, where they can train the rebels. One of the facts I like is that the plan is not that secret, what they're hoping to do, because on January 30th, 1954, so just about a month or two after it had been formulated, events reveals there's a plot and a secret rebel training camp in nicaragua and it's picked up around by newspapers around the world and it came due to and there are a lot of comic elements in this slightly occasionally dark elements as well to this story but this was a security breach because a cia officer had left documents about the plot in his guatemalan hotel room and he he He gets hospitalized for a stomach ulcer, so leaves his hotel room with the documents about the plot in his hotel room, which is then inevitably searched by the local police and authorities.

36:46David:And they find out about it and publicize it. I like this detail. As soon as he could walk after the operation for his ulcer, he's pulled back to Washington for three days of polygraphing and sent a long way away. Never happened to you, though, David, did it?

37:00Gordon:Your time in the CIA. No, I always made sure that if I had to be hospitalized in some foreign country and I just happened to have a bunch of covert action documents in my briefcase, that I would eat the documents before I would leave them in the hotel room. So the Guatemalan government essentially had the plans. Or some, not the master plan, but they knew that there was a plot. It's not that covert.

37:27David:And then Al Haney, the commander of the plot, who does come across as a bit of a loose cannon, he starts asking Washington desperately for ways to distract the revelations about the plot. And he cables headquarters, he says, if possible, fabricate big human interest story like flying saucers, birth of sextuplets in remote area. Or come up with headlines that Arbenz is forcing Catholics to join a church that worships Stalin. I mean, it's like all that a Soviet sub was heading to class. He's like just throwing. I mean, this is pretty wild stuff. He's just saying, please, can you come up with something that will make the news to stop people talking about our plot?

38:11Gordon:I mean, the idea of fabricating a story about the birth of sex tuplets in a remote area to distract from your coup plotting is pretty wild. But this does speak to the fact that I think in these kinds of operations, everyone is just more or less winging it. And you're hoping that it works and you're improvising and seeing what happens. Throw stuff against a wall and see what sticks. What does that sound like, Gordon? Does that sound like what's going on right now geopolitically?

38:39David:Actually, I did see that there's plans to release some more UFO flying saucer files soon. So if we suddenly get a load of flying saucer files out, we'll know that it's a distraction from some revelation. But actually, it kind of half works because a lot of people are thinking, well, maybe it's the Arbenz government making up the idea of a plot to distract from what's going on at home. So there's a bit of confusion. And the CIA go, well, it's kind of been blown, but not enough to stop us doing it. So they're going to go for it. They still double down on this idea of regime change.

39:10Gordon:And importantly, the idea is that this is not going to be a full scale invasion. Right. So the aim is to topple Arbenz with as little fighting, as little bloodshed as possible. Again, interesting parallel to Venezuela, where the idea was, let's just remove Maduro. Very kind of, I think, similar dynamic here in Guatemala. I mean, Arbenz is even offered, he's even offered a Swiss bank account if he just leaves. Of course, he refuses, which again, echoes the Maduro case. And so if the goal is just to get rid of him, and he won't leave, obviously, you now have to turn the system against him, which involves turning elements of the population, and I think really critically, the army, the military, against Arbentz.

40:03David:yes that's right it's it's this idea we've heard about recently as well is cracks in a regime you want to find fissures or cracks and then prize them further apart and the key target here is the army and there are some signs that our benzo's was nervous about loyalty of the army and he'd had some officers moved out of the capital and the u.s is clearly hoping to exploit that although as we said earlier part of the problem is they don't really know that much about it. They don't have great networks and sources. In early 1954, they actually send an officer under non-official cover. So he's posing as, I think, a European coffee merchant into the country to try and talk to military officers and try and recruit some who will join the US side when the right moment comes.

40:55David:I mean, this officer, though, speaks no Spanish, which I guess if he's a European coffee merchant and being posed as such, it's maybe plausible. It still might have been useful. It might have been useful. He's got a German accent, I think. And he's authorised to offer$10 ,000 a month bribes to any officers who are willing to turn eventually. But he doesn't seem to have much success. And he actually gets, I think, rumbled and so has to leave the country before he's arrested. and so they've still got this question which is how do you build enough pressure how do you pressure a a system a regime enough that you can get the military to act and to turn against its current leader that's the issue and that's where we get to this really interesting question of

41:41Gordon:psychological warfare i think which seems to be a method that a lot of cia officials at the time are pretty excited about, doesn't it? Because it's building off of a lot of the, I guess, kind of the science and the research that's being done in this era on advertising and psychology and sort of how do you convince someone to go out and buy something? You could sort of walk some of the learnings from that into how do you convince a population or segments of a population or segments of a military to sit on the sidelines or that Arbentz himself maybe is already weakened and on his way out. You can imagine all these different kind of parallels, I guess, between marketing and psychology and then how the CIA deploys information in the context of attempting a coup.

42:35David:Yeah, I found this aspect of it really interesting. And the official CIA historian of But Nick Collather talks about this a bit, how people at that time really were obsessed with this idea that you could persuade people through marketing and advertising and it could work. I guess we've seen it recently with social media influence campaigns and things like that. But at that point, I think in the 50s, which was the new era of television, wasn't it? And marketing and the ability to sell ads to people. This was something which people really thought could make the difference. Although here it's not going to be TV.

43:08David:It's going to be radio. We do love a bit of audio. No podcasting yet. And what's good is there's a memoir actually of the CIA agent who is in charge of this guy called David Phillips, which is called The Night Watch, which talks about this use of radio to persuade. He's an interesting chap. He's born 1922 in Fort Worth, Texas. He gets recruited actually as an agent of the CIA rather than as an officer in Chile where he was running a newspaper for exiles and particularly for expats. Although I noticed that the British expats don't like his newspaper because he keeps writing about softball and they don't know what softball is and various American games.

43:46David:And they're really annoyed because there's a lot of British expats in Chile where he's writing his newspaper. But he's recruited by the CIA while he's there, I guess, because they can see his value. And then in 1954, asked to run the Guatemalan propaganda operation. It's interesting because he's told the Arbenz government has been getting close to Moscow. He says, well, is it right to top an elected government? And he's told, well, the Soviets are coming. And it's unacceptable to have a commie run in Guatemala. And he's told the order comes directly from Eisenhower. But he's convinced that this is something worth doing.

44:24Gordon:One question I have as we're talking about this is, did this idea to change the regime in guadabala did it originate in the white house or did it originate at cia and then or big fruit

44:39David:or big fruit yeah i think it was in the system and and swirling around thanks to cia and big fruit and then i think once you get to eisenhower dollars and the two dollars brothers can push it so i think it's a kind of washington-led decision but it's pretty clear it's got presidential approval. And David Phillips, the propaganda guy, is told that pretty clearly when he's briefed. I think he's originally briefed by Tracy Barnes, who briefs him first. But then hands over the running to another person in political warfare, Howard Hunt, who we should say is a figure of CIA legend, isn't he, David?

45:20Gordon:Yes, that's right. Future Watergate burglar.

45:24David:Yeah.

45:24Gordon:I mean, he'll be involved in Bay of Pigs as well. I mean, he's one of these guys who's going to be involved in a number of these covert action plots from the 1950s and 1960s uh also a you know sometime novelist um he'd been with the oss in china so he's he's a colorful guy kind of conservative very devious um i'd say big party animal likes to party and likes to go out and party in Miami with the Guatemalans. Apparently at one point Howard Hunt had gotten into a car crash. He'd been driving a bunch of Guatemalans and they'd all had too much to drink. Crashed his car in Miami when it was full of Guatemalans.

46:07Gordon:And then he wrote here, Gordon, tells them to scarper. What does that mean?

46:13David:Scarper means do a runner. Do a runner. Run. Because it's supposed to be Guatemalan exiles plotting a coup and they've got, they're all in a car crash with Phillips and Hunt and these guys. I mean, it's not, which is not good because you've got to explain,

46:28Gordon:who are these Guatemalans in the car? I'm sure the Miami Police Department would let them off with just a slap on the wrist.

46:34David:Yeah, maybe in those days. So Phillips and Hunt are there doing the political warfare bit of it. It's interesting because the plan is they're going to set up a radio station in a cow barn in a neighboring country, but pretend, and this is a crucial bit, pretend that the radio station is in Guatemala and it's going to be called the voice of liberation codenamed Sherwood and the aim is to basically spread I mean spread alarm amongst the people and undermine support particularly within the army and it's part of a bigger campaign because the US media is also being brought into this there's a documentary on NBC the TV station in the US called Red Rule in Guatemala, which is broadcast in the spring of 54.

47:21David:It's interesting, they work on the US press quite hard because Alan Dulles goes to see the publisher of the New York Times and actually gets him to pull the correspondent who normally covers Guatemala, who's based in Mexico, but that's part of his patch, because he's seen as too sympathetic to the left. And Dulles actually basically smears this guy and says that the correspondent travels on British passports, which I love the idea that might make him some kind of lefty, and that he and his wife have liberal leadings. The implication is clearly the New York Times correspondent is maybe a Soviet agent or some kind of commie.

47:59David:And as a result, the New York Times actually tell him, stay in Mexico, don't go to Guatemala. So they're managing the media environment around it. But this radio station, I think, is going to be the key to the actual plot for regime change.

48:15Gordon:Because I guess the reality, if we kind of tick through the levers that the CIA is attempting to pull in the spring of 1954, you've got the economic pressure. But so far, that has not brought Arbenz down or forced him to capitulate. The CIA is training a small group of rebels who will presumably be able to do some fighting, but that's a pretty small force and they're not particularly well trained. And certainly they don't have the same manpower capacity as the Guatemalan military under Arbenz. And yeah, Arbenz might be sort of diplomatically pressured or isolated, but he controls the military.

49:03Gordon:And unlike the Mossadegh operation in 1953, there's no Shah here. There's no sort of pliable senior leader inside the regime that the agency is using. So they really are reliant on that kind of information warfare, on that psychological component, because they actually don't have anything.

49:28David:They don't have much else. No, they've got Armass with his mustache and a few rebels, and that's it. So it's so interesting. I agree that they think they can do this. But by the start of May 1954, 1st of May, the pieces are in place and the radio station is ready to broadcast. And it is so interesting because the aim is to have a coup within six weeks of the start of a radio station broadcasting. It's incredibly ambitious. And as we'll see, the whole thing will be almost comic and nearly collapsing chaos.

50:04Gordon:Well, Gordon, maybe there with the coup scheduled for six weeks out at the radio station starting to pump out that disinformation. Let's end this first episode and we come back next time for our exciting conclusion. We will see if the CIA can pull off Operation PB success.

50:26David:But of course, you don't have to wait because you can get access to that episode right now if you're a member of the Declassified Club. So if you're not a member, go sign up at therestisclassified.com. Lots of other great things there. early access to tickets if we should be potentially maybe doing some more live events, David. Don't forget as well, everyone, please do sign up for our free newsletter where you can hear from Becky and the team about what's going on in the classified world. But otherwise, we will see you next time. We'll see you next time.

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