From: jd@homxc.att.com (John A Dinardo)
Subject: 3 WBAI: Harvard Harbors the Adolf Eichmann of Guatemala: Heinous Hector
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Keywords: HARVARD ADMINISTRATORS DESERVE CONDEMNATION FOR SCHOOLING GENOCIDISTS!
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 16:38:02 GMT

   This transcript is part of a very special broadcast by Dennis 
   Bernstein and Allan Nairn, crusaders against ALL holocausts.
   The program was broadcast by 
                        WBAI-FM Radio (99.5)
                        505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
                        New York, NY 10018        (212) 279-0707

                     ~~ FOREWORD ~~
                  (followed by Part III)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
DENNIS BERNSTEIN: Hector Gramajo is about to graduate from Harvard University,
the Edwin S. Mason Program in Public Policy and Management at the Kennedy
Center. We've heard a lot about the rape at the Kennedy compound down in
Florida. Here's a mass murderer, rapist, who has been overseeing horror in
Guatemala for many years. In my hands, I'm holding the graduation program.
They list Hector Gramajo, but they don't talk about him as Defense Minister,
as head of the Army, doing the things Allan is talking about -- he's Director 
of the Center of Strategic Studies for National Stability. This is Hector
Gramajo, and Allan Nairn is confronting him face to face at Brown University
about his death squad activities.

    Hector Gramajo is getting a Master's degree in Civics so that he can go
back and continue the murder. Harvard's phone number is 617-495-2133. 

     [JD: Hector Gramajo graduated from Harvard in June, 1991,
      but there is no statute of limitations for expressing your 
      outrage over Harvard's hospitality toward genocidists. 
      Suppose Harvard enrolled Adolph Eichmann. You couldn't protest
      against Eichmann and neglect to protest against Gramajo.
      Tell Steve Reifenberg, at the above Harvard number, how you
      feel about Harvard University cozying up to genocidists.]

Maybe you agree. Maybe they SHOULD be schooling mass murderers. I don't. 
But this radio station has to remain viable, so that we can bring you 
this kind of material.
     "HECTOR GRAMAJO AT HARVARD!"   Are you reading about this in today's
NEWSDAY? Do you think you're going to hear about this graduation day that's
taking place at Harvard? How does Sister Diana Ortiz feel about that, 
(who was raped and tortured under Gramajo while Gramajo was Defense Minister) 
the American nun who was burned -- cigarette burned -- 126 times?
   Call us at 212-279-0707. We've got some material here that will just 
turn your head around. How do you feel about it?
     American institutions have been playing a role in supporting and 
creating and sanitizing these kinds of dictatorships for years. 
Harvard is no different. [Listen to] my interview with a public relations 
person [Steve Singer] at Harvard. That will get you VERY ANGRY to hear!
I said: "Do you know who this guy Hector Gramajo is? 
He says, "No, not really. I may have read an article or something." 
     It's interesting how they don't ... you know, I'm tongue-tied, it 
makes me so furious, when I think about this ... he tells me, "GRAMAJO IS
VERY POPULAR WITH THE STUDENTS!"  But does anybody know who he is??
Has anybody informed them??  Are there any media around to tell the truth
about something like this?  This graduate of Harvard, wearing a cap and gown,
getting a Master's degree in Civics.  
     You know what he told a reporter, recently, after he got his democratic
education?  I'm paraphrasing: "We used to have to kill 100% of the population.
Now we only have to kill 30% of the population."
              .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

                          PART III
ALLAN NAIRN:
American officials are used to being seen as respectable people, 
to being seen as people who are due a certain prestige, who receive
honors, who receive high salaries, who receive access to the media,
even if they are implicated in high crimes -- crimes like the mass
murder and torture in Guatemala and El Salvador, or the recent 
bombing of Iraq where the U.S. targeted civilian infrastructures
and, as the U.N. documented, set up a situation where perhaps tens,
perhaps hundreds of thousands of people will die as a result of the
destruction of the water and the power facilities, and so on.
I mean, these are defined as crimes under international law.

Now usually, those known as criminals are not supposed to get
much respect from established institutions. They're not supposed
to get prestigious high paying jobs and access to political power, 
but that's the norm in this country. State criminals are the ones
who occupy the highest positions, and Harvard has always been 
key to sustaining that system. .....
..... rather than a Henry Kissinger who says,
"Yes, send him the M-16s", or Steven Solarz who says, "Yes, 
send him the M-16's so he can mow down the peasants as they're
demonstrating, demanding a $4 a day minimum wage." Instead you have 
the military man who's actually there giving the orders to the troops. 
So it dramatizes what the U.S. policy and what so much of the U.S. 
system is all about.

DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
Well you know Allan, old dictators and mass murderers never die -- 
they just go to Harvard and become Presidents.  We're going to talk 
more about that, but I want to spend a minute listening to Steve Singer 
who is the Public Relations person of the Harvard Kennedy center, and 
for the program where Gramajo is going to graduate next week with a 
master's in -- I don't know -- civics or democracy or business or 
something else. Then he's going to go back to Guatemala and I imagine
he'll run for President of Guatemala. But let's just hear what the 
Harvard P.R. man has to say about this mass-murderer. 

DENNIS BERNSTEIN on the phone:
I have a few questions about General Hector Gramajo.
Is he just finishing up at the Kennedy school right now?

STEVE SINGER:
Yup.

DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
So when is he done?

STEVE SINGER:
He'll be getting a Master's in Public Administration the first week in June.

DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
Will there be a ceremony that he'll be a part of?

STEVE SINGER:
I assume so. I mean, I haven't heard otherwise. I assume he'll just
graduate with about four hundred others.

DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
Who financed his stay at Harvard?

STEVE SINGER:
Uhm, I don't know, but that's not something we would discuss 
even if I did.

DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
Is he on a scholarship?

STEVE SINGER:
I don't know, but we generally don't discuss that kind of 
stuff about individual students.

DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
Well as we know, this isn't the typical individual student. This 
is the former Defense Minister of Guatemala. And I'm curious to know, 
is Harvard in any way financing his stay there?

STEVE SINGER:
Well I know that you're asking me that, but I can't tell you that,
is what I'm saying. Not just for him but you could ask me that for 
any student.
 
DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
So he's just like any other student?

STEVE SINGER:
Right. He's in a Master's program for Public Administration. It's 
a one-year mid-career program.

DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
He's not like any other student. He participates in forums 
like the forum at Harvard, at Brown, at Tufts. He's a very public 
figure, and so, he's made a lot of public statements. And so, 
it's not a typical student going through the Kennedy Center. 

STEVE SINGER:
But he's not all that atypical either. We have a lot of ... the 
mid-career program has many, many public figures that go through 
it, from state reps and state senators to people who've headed 
foreign ministries in other countries. And so, he's not as atypical 
as you might think. It's designed for people with his level of ...

DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
That was the Public Relations person at Harvard University. 
Allan, is there anything that you find significant about that?

ALLAN NAIRN:
Well, it just shows that mass murder is not a disqualification 
for Harvard. You might have a problem with your SAT scores if 
they don't match, if they don't measure up. If you do not happen 
to be the former minister of defense and can't get A.I.D. to help 
arrange financing for you and you don't have the money to go to 
Harvard, that might be a problem. But mass killing is not a
disqualification. I mean, the way to put this in context is to imagine
that interview with him talking about Gramajo and him being popular 
among his fellow students. Just substitute the name Mengele, or the 
name Hitler -- names that maybe the audience is a little more 
familiar with. And then think about it. I mean, that shows how in 
this country, it's part of the culture of the American elite and 
the American Government as much as of the U.S. intellectual world, 
that murder, when murder is policy -- state policy as opposed to street 
crime -- it is not only acceptable, but it can become the credential which
advances you, which makes you eligible for higher honors and advancement 
in the political system. In it's way it's similar to the Guatemalan 
military hierarchy. There, in order for a military person to advance, 
they start out as second lieutenants coming out of the military academy. 
One does not go anywhere in the Guatemalan military heirarchy unless 
you have been willing to personally go in there and supervise the 
tortures and the killings of ... It's kind of an initiation rite. 
And you rise with your ability to kill with greater efficiency than
your counterparts, and to instill more terror among the population. 
So, you have figures at the top of the Guatemalan military who in any
reasonable system would be in hospitals for the criminally insane 
rather than occupying high state positions. For example, there was 
a General Chapena, who was head of the national police for quite awhile. 
Even while head of the police, he would personally go in and apply 
the electro-shock apparatus and he would go out and drive around on 
the streets and, with his people, point out women and then have 
them hauled into the back of the van where he would rape them. Then 
his people would torture them and throw them back into the streets. 
It's obvious that this is a demented system that gives advancement 
to these kinds of people. Now if you look at the American system, 
the same kinds of actions are rewarded with advancement. There are 
the same kinds of tortures and killings. But the difference is that 
in the U.S. system there's a distance there. George Bush has never 
had to apply the electrodes to anyone's body. Gates, the new CIA 
Director, probably in his career has never had to pull the trigger 
on anyone he's abducted. But, they make the decisions on sending down 
the electro-shock apparatus to a country like Guatemala -- on deciding:
Yes, let's run this assassination campaign in Angola.  
Yes, let's run this assassination campaign in Nicaragua.
By making those decisions and carrying them out efficiently, 
they advance. They go to Harvard. And so, they fit in and
they're considered part of the system. And the only real difference 
is that Gramajo has some of the blood spattering directly on his hands, 
whereas, here [in the U.S. Government] it doesn't soil the collar.
                      (to be continued)

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

    You have to visualize women and children being decapitated
    -- babies being strangled and crushed to death, in order to
    feel the terror and fury that these victims feel. Then ask
    yourself: If it was my spouse, my sister, my baby who was
    being so heinously murdered, would I lift a finger to protect
    them? And if you would, then conscience dictates that you protect
    these thousands upon thousands of suffering peasants? All we  
    have to do is galvanize our sovereign individual political power, 
    endowed to us at birth, under the Constitution. All we have 
    to do is to focus that galvanized political power upon those
    scoundrels who occupy The People's Congress of the United States,
    so that the battered people of Guatemala can, at last, celebrate
    being rescued from their national mortuary.

    There are organizations already formed, waiting for our help.
    One of these organizations is the Christic Institute which combats
    these U.S. Government atrocities by wielding the most powerful
    societal instrument that we have: the law under the Constitution.

    What laws is the U.S Government desecrating?
    ... The Nuremburg Principles
    ... The International Treaty Outlawing Genocide, signed by President
           Reagan on November 4, 1988
    ... The Fourth Geneva Convention
    ... Our state laws prohibiting murder

    When somebody violates the law, you get an attorney to prosecute them.
    You'll find no more courageous an attorney than Daniel Sheehan.
    Please write him a brief note stating that you want to
    stop the genocide in Guatemala.

            Daniel Sheehan, Lead Attorney
            The Christic Institute
            1324 North Capitol St., N.W.
            Washington, D.C. 20002

    What's in it for us?  The most valuable possession you could have,
    besides your health: A renewed sense of pride and self-esteem;
    and it only costs a 29-cent stamp and about ten minutes of writing.

John DiNardo
~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~
If we seriously listen to this "God within us" ["conscience",
if you will], we usually find ourselves being urged to take the
more difficult path, the path of more effort rather than less.
.... Each and every one of us, more or less frequently, will hold
back from this work. .... Like every one of our ancestors before
us, we are all lazy. So original sin does exist; it is our laziness.

                                        M. Scott Peck
                                   THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~


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