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This letter was sent to Brian Knighten, Coordinator of the Latin American
Studies Program at Tulane University, on October 15, 2003. It was not sent to me.
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Dear Mr. Brian Knighten:
(please c:: to Executive Director Thomas F. Reese)
I am Ken LaPlante, the Executive Liaison for the Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) here in
Washington, DC and I note that on the SOA Watch web site the screening of
this video is sponsored by the Latin American Studies of Tulane
University. This video interjects allegations directed, in part, toward
WHINSEC.
As co-director, John Smihula, did not seek out any current
officials of the Headquarters, US Army or Department of Defense during
his preparation and filming in order to get any documentation and or
facts relating to the US Army School of the Americas and WHINSEC, I have
concerns that this screening will present the best possible academic
environment to the attending audience especially students due to the
videos inherent bias -- and the one-sided position of the director. I do
note that he spoke to four US Representatives, two on each side of the
political issue part of this. While artistically good and with some
really good food for thought relative to national and international
policies, past and present -- the interweaving of international affairs,
diplomacy, national security policy and the use of one institution as a
symbol and the stated and implied relationships to criminal activities
and illegal acts is quite a leap in logic and very disconcerting.
Case in point: In the development phase of the video, Mr. Smihula did
speak to the then-Commanding General of Fort Benning, MG John LeMoyne, and
the current Commandant of WHINSEC, COL Richard Downie -- but no one from his
team, including himself, spoke to (or sought out) WHINSEC's actual
higher command: the Army's Combined Arms Center; the Army's Training and
Doctrine Command, the Headquarters, US Army, the Office of the Secretary
of Defense. WHINSEC is a tenant element of Fort Benning therefore the
Commanding General has no influence on the operational and educational
aspects of the institute where as the others I mentioned all have
influence. Mr. Smihula also used a video clip from a 6-7 year-old (1996,
I believe) Army production on SOA, a clip of then-UN Ambassador Jean
Kirkpatrick. Had Mr. Smihula sought out Department of Defense and Army
representatives so he would have invariably spoken to me to assist
facilitate his endeavor to present both sides as factually as humanly
possible.
I would recommend that consideration be given for professors of Latin
American Studies to be present at the screening to address questions and
concerns so as to assist the student distinguish facts from allegations.
Very Respectfully,
Ken LaPlante
Executive Liaison, WHINSEC
Headquarters, Department of the Army
Pentagon
Washington, DC
(703) 692-7419
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After Knighten replied to LaPlante, assuring him that there would "a
recognized, balanced view on all subject matter" (to this end, Knighten read much of
LaPlante's letter before my film screened), LaPlante wrote again.
October 15, 2003
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Mr. Brian Knighted
Thank you for your timely and frank response. A balanced presentation is
all I could ask or expect; the final position an individual takes is an
after-the-fact consequence and what makes open, frank dialog and
discussion so dang exciting. Unfortunately, over the past four years I
have encountered a disquieting number of universities presenting this
issue, wrongly titled "SOA/WHISC", in a most one-sided and negative
fashion. So I do appreciate your efforts and those of the CLAS at Tulane
seeking to provide a solid academic learning environment.
You can read my email as you wish. I have sent a more detailed letter to
Mr Shimula, of course that was before I had the benefit of viewing the
video -- now I am preparing a more pointed letter to him taking to task
some of the "facts" attributed to SOA and, in more recent instances, to
WHINSEC..
VR
Ken LaPlante
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MY REPLY
December 19, 2003
We will never be free until the last CEO is
strangled with the entrails of the last general.
– Saint Nicholas
Dear Mr. LaPlante:
Now that I have the time, and am in the holiday spirit, I will take a break
from hanging my red, white and blue Christmas lights and reply to your three
letters. The first, dated July 1, I did not respond to because you had not seen
my film. The others were sent not to me but to the Latin American Studies
Department at Tulane University a day before my mid-October visit. I was
disappointed that you did not write me as well, and in effect warn me about
myself (such warnings are always appreciated), but I felt honored that the
Pentagon–the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent Pentagon, the closest thing we
have to a Godhead on this earth, the paragon of testosterone-driven
realpolitik–would pause between bombing campaigns to acknowledge me and my humble little
film. Perhaps a bunch of Iraqi or Afghani children breathed a few more
minutes of life while the Pentagon's attention was elsewhere.
I should tell you that the good folks at the University of Louisiana at
Lafayette and also at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon felt neglected.
Why didn't you send a warning to them? I know why: neither school has the
second biggest Latin American Studies Department in the country like Tulane
does--one which is partly funded by the federal government. The government hopes
that graduate students pass through the program and go on to join the State
Department or right-wing think tanks, or become counter-revolutionary
professor-hacks disseminating imperialist propaganda about Latin America. Monitoring
the program, I've been told, is a CIA agent posing as a graduate student.
Indeed, the government has much invested in Tulane–as it has in the University of
Texas's LAS Department–so it's understandable that my visit to Tulane was
preceded by letters of warning. The government certainly doesn't want an
independent, freethinking, freespeaking filmmaker like myself throwing a
monkeywrench into their plans!
Before I address the concerns you express in your letters to Tulane, I wonder
where my letter is. You tell Mr. Knighten that you are "preparing a more
pointed letter" than the one you sent me on July 1, "taking [me] to task" for my
transgressions against the good name of the SOA/WHINSEC. For two months I
have eagerly anticipated this missive, but it has not arrived. But it will
someday, won't it? I hope what you are now reading will be the spur you need to
complete it.
I had to laugh at your letters for a number of reasons. You say, for
example, that my film has an "inherent bias" and that I am "one-sided." Did I tell
General LeMoyne to lie? (Actually I caught him in two lies, but only one made
it into the final cut.) Did I tell Colonel Weidner and Congressmen Bishop and
Collins to sound completely unconvincing? Did I fabricate the video clips in
which President Reagan and President Bush the Elder make fools of themselves?
I find such criticism of me odd coming from someone working at the Pentagon,
an institution which perpetually churns out the most sophisticated and malignant
propaganda the world has ever known (a propaganda campaign which amounts
to a psychological war against the American people). Let me tell you, Mr. LaPlante,
that I would like nothing better than to be able to make a film that shows the
goodness and benevolence of U.S. foreign policy: how it brings peace to war-torn
nations and replaces despotism with democracy, how it frees the oppressed, feeds
the hungry, succors the innocent, and punishes the guilty. If this were the truth,
I would be so happy and would sleep so much better at night. But it is not the truth.
Very little effort and research are needed to discover the crimes perpetrated
(the millions murdered, the popular movements for self-determination and
democracy decimated, the dictators and death squads armed and funded, the
environments destroyed, the hopes dashed) by the U.S. Imperium around the world. The
crimes are innumerable and often quite conspicuous. This is why it is
astonishingly easy for a (former) working-class stiff like Michael Moore or a mere
comedian like Al Franken to expose the lies and double-talk of the Bush
Administration and the servile corporate media. In a time of tyranny, Albert Camus
says, "one has to take a stand, be either for or against." Like Camus, Moore and
Franken, I am against tyranny. I therefore see it as my duty, as both
filmmaker and teacher, and as a citizen of an ostensible democracy, to uncover our
hidden history and reveal the truth when truth is everywhere opposed. If that
is being "one-sided," then I am proud of my one-sidedness.
I have come a long way since my callow youth. Perhaps because of my views
you think I was a red diaper baby, or the child of communards, but I grew up in
a conservative Republican lower middle-class household in the sterile New York
City suburbs. My father was a clergyman and my uncle a police officer and
World War II veteran who made it to the rank of lieutenant colonel. They each
voted for Richard Nixon three times, and were heartbroken when he was forced
out of office. They never demonstrated against their government, but they
resented those who did. My "inherent bias" was when, as a teenager, I simply
spouted the opinions which had been inculcated into my head by my father and his
circle of relatives and friends. I was indeed "one-sided," but then I grew up,
evolved, individuated. I went to college, I read voraciously, I traveled, I
studied different languages and cultures, I encountered and learned from people
of diverse backgrounds--I became, in sum, multi-sided.
Another reason I laughed at your letters is your claim that I did not "seek
out any current officials of the Headquarters." This is patently absurd. I
interviewed both General LeMoyne and Colonel Downie, and neither one suggested or
recommended that I interview other officials. Were they remiss? Maybe, yet
they spoke with a great deal of knowledge and pride about the school and about
the Army. To contend, as you do, that LeMoyne, a two-star general and the
Base Commander, "has no influence on the operational and educational aspects of
the institute" is erroneous. LeMoyne likened himself to the mayor of a town,
with the school being part of his jurisdiction. Sure, he had nothing to do
with education, but he controlled the operation of the entire base.
What seems to bother you is that I did not interview you. I denied you your
fifteen minutes of fame. But why should I have interviewed you or some other
low-ranking official? Army officers, WHISC instructors and students, Bishop
and Collins all gave me the same story. They all read from the same script, as
if they were professional actors. If I had interviewed you, I probably would
have heard nothing new. I realize you all have to watch what you say,
because if you say the wrong thing you would be in trouble. As underlings, you do
not have freedom of speech. Perhaps I could have gotten something interesting
from Donald Rumsfeld or Paul Wolfowitz, but probably not, for they abide by
the same script. Regardless, I would not have been allowed to interview either
man. Other than "Rummy" and "Wolfie," no one else in the government was worth
the hassle of setting up and conducting an interview. I did try, as you
know, to get an interview with a "scholar" from the Hoover Institute or the
Heritage Foundation, but I was treated as if I had leprosy. So I was forced to use
a soundbite from Jeanne Kirkpatrick--and it works because she was a major, and
controversial, figure in U.S. politics and diplomacy during the Reagan
presidency. She was Reagan's brain.
While I'm on the subject of brains, what I really want to know is this: Who
writes the scripts? Who's in charge? Who runs the show? Who pulls the
strings? Who's the puppetmaster? Who's directing this ongoing movie? It's not
Bush: his only responsibility is not to look like a deer caught in the
headlights or an opossum cornered in the garage while reading the lines handed to him.
Is it Dick Cheney, the actual president? Henry Kissinger? Ken Lay? Is it
some all-powerful CEO whose name no American has ever heard, whose face no
American has ever seen? Is it someone in RAND, the NSA, or the Council for
National Policy? Is it Moloch? Pluto? Jimmy Swaggart? Martha Stewart? the
Wonderful Wizard of Oz? I'm curious. If you know who it is, please inform me.
The final reason I chuckled at your letters is your concern that Tulane
"provide a solid academic learning environment." I wonder if you feel such concern
when an Army or ROTC officer attempts to "sell" military service (which is as
neatly packaged as an automobile or brand-name beer) to college students, or
when the Pentagon sends military recruiters to neglected inner city schools to
entice poor minority youth–"children ardent for some desperate glory"–into
becoming cannon fodder for the greater good of "their" country. But, as
Wilfred Owen tells us from the World War I battlefield, "Dulce et decorum est Pro
patria mori" ("It is sweet and appropriate to die for one's country") is an
"old lie."
What is interesting is that you like my film ("artistically good and with
some really good food for thought") but not the conclusions it arrives at. You
appreciate it intellectually but not ideologically. This is fine; at least you
watched my film. That's more than I can say for my father, uncle, and
brother; they have no interest in watching my film, nor do they ever mention it. It
doesn't exist in their universe. Moreover, because of my film and political
views, my father has broken off contact with me. We haven't talked in over
two years. But this, too, is fine: what matters most to me is not my family
but my principles, and I will renounce them for no one.
You watched my film, but you misinterpreted it. As is evident in your first
letter--which was written, of course, before you had seen my film--you think
the subject is the School of the Americas when, in fact, it is the role of the
United States in the world. Since this is a very broad subject, I had to
narrow it, and make it manageable, through synecdoche. The SOA, as a symbol of
the machinations of Empire, serves to illustrate the nature, aims, and
consequences of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. "Hidden in Plain Sight" provides
part of the picture of how the American Empire operates on the world stage,
but for a complete or comprehensive picture one would have to watch many more
documentaries, such as "Hearts and Minds" (1974), "The Panama Deception"
(1992), "Hidden Wars of Desert Storm" (2000), "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the
Iraq War" (2003), "Condor: Axis of Evil" (2003), "The Corporation" (2003),
and "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (2003).
You write in your first letter that you "do not agree with the SOAW position
that SOA is the reason or cause of the evils of the regions (especially Latin
America)." Although I know a few members who seem to believe that the birds
will sing again in Latin America once the SOA is shut down, the SOAW as an
organization does not take such a position; that is why, for example, it is
involved in the movement to stop the FTAA.
You note several other major training schools and claim that I "paint SOA as
somehow the key to US foreign policy." I guess you missed Martin Sheen saying
that the SOA is but one of over a hundred training schools (did you see the
images from Forts Rucker, Jackson, and Bragg?). As I have told audiences
across the country, the SOA is a small part of a very large problem, and one that
extends far beyond the borders of Latin America. According to Amnesty
International in Unmatched Power, Unmet Principles: the Human Rights Dimensions of US
Training of Foreign Military and Police Forces (2002), the U.S. military
trains about 100,000 soldiers and police officers from more than 150 countries
each year, roughly half in the U.S. and half in their own countries. Many are
admittedly trained in benign skills like disaster relief, bridge and road
construction, and engine maintenance, but the majority are trained in war-fighting
skills, "anti-terrorism," and "public security" (which means controlling a
population so the oligarchy in a country can function without fear or inhibition;
thus public security merges with anti-terrorism, does it not?). Wherever
there are human rights violations committed by security forces--in Mexico,
Colombia, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Rwanda, Cote d'Ivoire, Northern
Ireland, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.–the odds are that the U.S. is present,
providing training, funding, and arms. These "military-to-military contacts" are
"meant primarily to benefit US forces or US interests" (Unmatched Power, 15).
Today the SOA–or WHISC or WHINSEC or WAL-MART or whatever you're now calling
the school–appears to have only a minor role in training Latin American
security forces. Other schools and the Special Forces have taken over much of
this training. For example, just prior to and after the Mapiripán massacre in
Colombia on July 20, 1997, when several dozen people were pulled from their
homes and tortured and murdered, "the US Army 7th Special Forces Group trained
Colombian forces at the Colombian Army Special Forces School at El Barrancón,
near the town of Mapiripán" (Unmatched Power, 61). Additional military training
is delivered covertly by private military contractors (like Dyncorp and MPRI
in Colombia) and the CIA. Can it be that the now-transparent SOA is being
phased out because it has become a lightning rod for controversy?
Regardless of its present stature, the legacy of the SOA is well-known in
Latin America. Your contention that the critics of the SOA have slandered the
school shows utter disrespect, even contempt, for those Latin Americans who have
suffered at the hands of soldiers trained by the U.S. Army to torture and
kill. The highlight of my film tour was having Latin Americans–as well as nuns
and the mother of Benjamin Linder--thank me for making my film, thank me for
revealing the truth about U.S. involvement in El Salvador, Colombia, Nicaragua,
and so forth. Sometimes with their hand in mine, with tears in their eyes,
with their voice breaking, they would tell me how SOA-trained soldiers tortured
or killed their husband or sister or son. Or they would tell me that they
themselves were tortured.
You spend a good part of your letter trying, disingenuously, and in a rather
convoluted way, to exonerate the SOA from the charge that it trained most of
the soldiers involved in the 1989 massacre of the six Jesuit priests and their
two co-workers. This is shameful. The Atlacatl Battalion, the most notorious
death squad in El Salvador, was responsible for the massacre, and, as
Christopher Hitchens says in a sequence which will be included on the forthcoming
special-feature DVD, this is the battalion that received the most training and
support from the U.S. Army, both at the SOA and in El Salvador. It was being
trained "by US Army Special Forces in El Salvador in the days before and after
the murders" (Unmatched Power, 4). Further,
"Three of the four Atlacatl officers implicated had received
some human rights training while attending the Salvadoran
cadet course at the School of the Americas--two officers in
1982 and one in 1988. Overall, 19 of the 26 soldiers linked
to the murder had taken some training at the SOA. One of them
also attended the Special Forces Officer Course at Ft. Bragg
during late 1988 and early 1989." (Unmatched Power, 43)
Now you have the right, of course, to continue to denounce these documented
facts as allegations and propaganda, just as you have the right to denounce
people like Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, Sister Dianna Ortiz or me as
liars–or, even worse, liberals! Go ahead. You are free to do so. But your
position–or, I should say, the U.S. government's position, since you have no position
of your own--is seriously undermined by the fact that the U.S. REFUSES to
join the International Criminal Court. Gee, I wonder why. Can it be that the
first person tried would be the world's number one war criminal, Henry
Kissinger? And that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, James Baker, Caspar Weinberger, and
John Negroponte would follow? I also wonder why Bush the Younger refuses to
release Reagan's presidential records and why he is attempting to gut the
Freedom of Information Act. What are Bush and Cheney and the rest of the U.S.
government trying to hide?
It is time for our great nation to grow up and take responsibility for its
actions. For too long being an American has meant never having to say you're
sorry. It is time for the U.S. to follow the example of countries like El
Salvador and Guatemala, Chile and Haiti, post-Nazi Germany and post-apartheid South
Africa, and establish a Truth and Justice Commission. You close your letter
by expressing the hope that "someday, someone will do justice to history."
This can indeed happen, but only if the U.S. joins the International Criminal
Court and establishes a Truth Commission. The truth must come out.
It won't be easy. Consider, for instance, the consequences of the U.S.
military presence in the Philippines. Thousands of people are suffering from the
hazardous waste and unexploded bombs left behind by Subic Bay Naval Station and
Clark Air Base when they closed in the early 1990s because of Philippine
pressure. Many children born near the bases were born with cerebral palsy. Many
children have died. Skin disorders and various unexplained illnesses are
common. Many people are missing an eye or a hand or a leg because of an explosion.
The Pentagon claims no responsibility. How does that, Mr. LaPlante, "do
justice to history"?
Sincerely,
John Henry Smihula