From: jd@homxc.att.com (John A Dinardo)
Subject: 4 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: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 18:05:57 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 Pacifica Radio Network station 
                        WBAI-FM Radio (99.5)
                        505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
                        New York, NY 10018        (212) 279-0707

                     ~~ FOREWORD ~~
                  (followed by Part IV)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
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 IV

DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
Allan Nairn, we're going to get into this a little more exactly, how
Americans .... I want to point out once again that Hector Gramajo is going
to graduate from Harvard in the Edward S. Mason program at the Kennedy
Center.  You might want to call and congratulate them, or maybe there's
something else you might want to say. The number there is 617-495-2133.

ALLAN NAIRN:
.... information is effectively shut out, as if there was a censorship
system in the United States, as if you had the same kind of system here as
they had in the old Soviet Union or another system where you actually had a
Ministry of Censorship that deleted paragraphs from articles and said you
can not say this in an article.  We don't have that system in the United
States, but in many cases the end result is precisely the same. If you
took a poll of the American public, 99% would not know the facts about
what has been happening in Guatemala. They would not know about the U.S.
support for this army which has killed more that a hundred thousand people
since 1978. Now that's not because the U.S. Government has prohibited the
press from publicizing that information, and it's not even because the
press has completely refrained from mentioning it. It is mentioned on
occasion, once or twice, here and there -- but the press has refused to
make it a theme. The only way anything gets remembered, and the only
way anything enters people's consciousness and becomes part of the public
debate, is if it gets repeated -- is if it's in the paper day after 
day, and it leads the evening news day after day.  Only then do people 
retain it. You know, I read the paper yesterday but I can't remember
every story that I read. But I do remember some that touched on themes 
that I knew -- that I'd read about before.  And the U.S. press (by that,  
I mean the dozen or so companies that control most of the national and
international news that people get in this country), their owners and
managers make the decision to let Washington set the agenda about what 
will be repeated.  Last year on NIGHTLINE, they had Lawrence Grossman, 
who is the former head of NBC News and PBS. He was on with Michael
Deaver, the former media man for Reagan.  Ted Koppel asked Deaver: 
"How successful were you at controlling the Press?"  And Deaver replied:
"I think we were very successful. All we had to do was choose a story 
of the day, illustrate it with a visual, and that would lead the 
evening news. We had to work a little harder with the Print Press, 
but then, TV matters more anyway".  And then Koppel turned to Grossman
to get the response from the press.  And Grossman said: "I think 
that's perfectly appropriate.  It is the job of the President to 
set the agenda, and the job of the press to follow the agenda that 
the President sets."   And the way that the big Corporate Press 
does this is they treat every statement of the President and the 
Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense as big news by 
definition.  So day after day after day they're on the front page, 
they're leading the evening news. And if they're smart (and they 
usually are) they can decide what gets repeated and what gets 
remembered. So that they can say day after day: "The Sandanistas 
are about to invade Florida! The Sandanistas are about to invade 
Arkansas! The Sandanistas are about to invade California!"  Now this 
may not be true, and maybe even occasionally one press outlet or 
another might point out the fact that it's not true, but they only 
say that once.  What gets repeated -- what is in there day after day 
is what the President is saying, what the Secretary of State is 
saying, and this shapes what people remember so that, in effect, many 
of the most crucial facts are never lodged in the minds of Americans.  
And its only through alternative outlets like WBAI and the alternative
publications that many of these facts remain in circulation. And 
they get out to some people who, in turn, can pass them on to others, 
and pass them on to others. And this is absolutely crucial, because 
this is the basis of information for many people who are activists 
-- those who are creating pressure and keeping pressure on the state 
and the corporations that wield power in this country.  And it also 
keeps some kind of concern for truth alive among people who are able 
to get the facts -- who are able to put their values together with 
the information about what the U.S. Government is really doing.
 
.....`87 through 90, he [Gramajo] built up a core of supporters among 
liberal Democrats in the United States. The Guatemalan Defense Ministry, 
during Gramajo's time, retained their lobbiests in Washington, the law firm 
of Reichler and Appelbaum. Reichler and Appelbaum was a liberal left-wing
law firm which also represents the Sandanistas. During the negotiations
in the Arius Plan which went on for several years, the lawyers from Reichler
and Appelbaum were actually authorized to sign documents on behalf of 
the Sandanistas. So at the same time that they were advising them, they 
were lobbying in Washington on behalf of Gramajo and the Guatemalan Army.
And, in fact, on one occasion, after a massacre in late 1988 in a place 
called Alagra Cate in which 22 people were killed, Reichler and Appelbaum
actually brought up people Gramajo had sent from Guatemala to go around
making the claim that the guerrillas had committed this massacre, even 
though all the investigations up to that time and since have said that
the evidence points to the army. So here you have this liberal law and
lobbying firm going around doing the work of the Guatemalan Army. And 
you have various academics who have been doing the same.  There are
professors at the School of International Studies, an American University 
in Washington, who've been speaking and writing about how the Guatemalan 
Army under Gramajo has become a democratizing influence. You have the 
Kennedy School which brought Gramajo in. And you have the Democrats 
in Congress -- people like Steven Solarz, who pushed through the sale 
of M-16's, who facilitated sending Green Berets to Guatemala where 
they engaged in a joint exercise with the Kaibilets.  The Kaibilets 
are a Guatemalan military unit which describe themselves as the 
"messengers of death". They have been involved in some of the worst 
rural massacres. The liberal Democrats arranged the sending down 
of U.S. National Guard units, of U.S. Reserve units, civilian contract 
pilots who flew Guatemalan military planes and machine gun-mounted
helicopters. This was not something that was set up by the Republican
Administration, although the Republicans for years have been backers 
of military aid to Guatemala. These were Democrats in Congress, in 
the Washington community, who, working with Gramajo, chose to back 
the Guatemalan military, just as they have done with the military 
of El Salvador and many other countries... 
                      (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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