The assassination list contained the names of at least 58 Guatemalan supporters of Guzman who the CIA suspected were Communists. Late that year, the National Security Council gave Operation Success the go-ahead. Arbenz resigned, denounced the United States, and took refuge in Mexico. CIA plans for Operation Success called for the assassinations, and these plans were discussed in great detail at very high levels of the agency and the State Department, the records show. No record of the formal approval or disapproval of these plans by Eisenhower or the Dulles brothers has been made public.
None likely exists.
The agency has had Guatemalan military men on its payroll ever since. The 1954 coup was the first chapter in the CIA's long and continuing liaison with the Guatemalan military. Those ties deepened over the decades during a scorched-earth campaign against a small Communist insurgency. The civil war in Guatemala, touched off in part by the coup, ended only five months ago. More than 100,000 civilians were killed.