Abstract

The C.I.A. censors history

Recently, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a tiny portion of its secret files on the 1954 coup in Guatemala that ousted President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. These files were too little to provide the long-overdue full accounting the American people deserve on one of the blackest episodes in the history of CIA, which set off a chain reaction of death and repression in Guatemala under a succession of U.S.-backed dictators. In the May 29 issue of the newspaper New York Times, reporter Tim Weiner reported some of the chilling facts contained in the files the agency did release. He also noted that, according to a CIA historian, the agency had destroyed most of its files on other covert actions in the fifties and sixties, such as the coup in Iran.