Notes on Meeting of the
National Bipartisan Commission on Central America

SUBJECT: **Social Development: Population Issues**

PRESENTATION BY: **Mr. Elliott Abrams**, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs

DATE: September 29, 1983
TIME: 1:45 - 3:30
PLACE: Room 1105

SUMMARY:

Mr. Abrams said that human rights considerations and the promotion of democracy in El Salvador are crucial to the success of our policy there. Any advances that may be achieved militarily will be meaningless if they are not supported by democratic structures. Our policy of using threats to induce the Government of El Salvador to follow our advice has become incredible. We should develop incentives which would induce them to follow appropriate policies. This is entirely feasible.

Several measures can be taken to improve democratic systems and the observance of human rights in El Salvador. The most important is the restructuring the various branches of the armed forces, which would increase supervision and result in greater efficiency. The human rights situation in El Salvador has improved. The Salvadoran Peace Commission, the Amnesty Law and the Human Rights Commission would have been unthinkable three years ago. Salvadoran soldiers trained by the US Army have a good human rights record. There is in El Salvador an element of good will on which we can build by further efforts.

NOTES:

Kissinger: Elliott Abrams is Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights issues. We have had a worrisome presentation from the previous group and we are glad to get the perspective of the administration. We don't want to turn these countries over to Marxism, but we don't want to support governments which violate human rights either.

Abrams: These views are not the administration's views, but my views. Some of them are also the views of the administration; some are not.

The human rights question is not marginal. If we fail to progress in achieving the observance of human rights, the support for our efforts in Congressional funds will dry up. I see this as central. The promotion of democracy in El Salvador is essential. Any advances made will be ephemeral if not supported by democratic structures. We need effective short and medium term strategies for dealing with human rights violations. If we do nothing, our problems here and in El Salvador will be great. We have made lots of constant demands, continually linking human rights issues to military and economic aid. We have threatened to withdraw.

We have had some success. The level of violence has declined. A Peace Commission has been established, which has conducted talks with the guerrillas, an Amnesty has been arranged, under which many prisoners have been released, and a Human Rights Commission has been formed, with the participation of the head of the National Police. It constantly debates human rights issues and has saved a number of lives. Three years ago anyone advocating these programs would have been branded a Communist.

However, it is clear to me that the policy we have been pursuing, a policy of threats, should be reconsidered. Unfulfilled threats become incredible. Our threat to withdraw and abandon the Government of El Salvador is not perceived as credible. To base a policy on threats is wasting an asset. A policy based on threats provokes nationalistic reactions. We make threats to Magana and people like him, who have not pulled triggers, and who have no power to prevent human rights abuses. We should devise a policy not based on threats.

From our history - Madison - we can learn two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: by removing causes and by controlling effects. In the next few

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years nothing will be done to remove the causes,
which are poverty, injustice and subversion from
abroad. We should concentrate on controlling effects;
on controlling the level of human rights abuse in
El Salvador. We should create incentives for better
behavior in the armed forces, by professionalizing
and restructuring them. Our military training of the
Salvadoran Army is effective. US trained soldiers
have a better record on the observance of human rights.
Our threat to end our military training program defeats
the very purpose of the program. We should supply the
lack of better motives. This is not a matter of simple
exhortation toward institutional arrangements.

The Treasury Police should be eliminated. They are
the worst violators of human rights. They should be
merged into the National Police. The National Police
should be under the Minister of the Interior. We
should begin to sever the tie between the police and
the army, and stimulate the ability to police the
military. There should be a bounty program for security
personnel, rewarding them for bringing in live captured
guerrillas.

It would be particularly advantageous to integrate the
National Guard into the Army because they could then
be eligible for US training. The typical National
Guard establishment consists of six semi-literates
under a semi-literate sergeant, in the center of the
countryside, with no communication to San Salvador or
headquarters. Once a day they walk three miles in one
direction, and the next day they walk three miles in
another direction.

Kissinger: Why do they do that? Is there some local reason?

Abrams: National Guardsmen are permanently stationed and they
build up a strong tie with the local landlords. It
would break sweetheart deals if they were rotated.
This can be done in the Army but not in the National
Guard.

What I meant to say is that there is no sensible
reason for their march guard activity. They make
no particularly useful contribution. Merging with
the army would ameliorate this.

A new national intelligence center is being established.
I think it should be separate, with its own chain of
command. It should report directly to the Minister of
Defense. They would be a little like political commis-
sars, reporting back on local conditions, on morale,
human rights abuses and other activities, from units
around the country. In turn they could help the local
units with the central bureaucracy.

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A military police and Judge Advocate General's unit should be established, headed by the Deputy Minister of Defense, and the Deputy Chief of Staff, to pro-secute human rights abuses, keep prisoners alive by taking responsibility for the custody of guerrilla prisoners, and to respond to accusations against Security Force personnel. This new institution would have an interest in seeking out human rights abuses to justify its own existence and to increase its power. The basic aim of this organization would be to create units in the military and security forces which can monitor each other's behavior, which have an interest in improving behavior and ending abuses. We would be professionalizing the military and supply-ing, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives.

Why should the Government of El Salvador be in favor of this? Our threats policy won't work. We should use the carrot, and tempt them with significant military assistance increases. This would be less demeaning than threats. We could put our suggestions to the military as an increase in efficiency. Treat it as a human rights objective with the Government of El Salvador.

Another measure we can take is the effective use of visas. Intelligence channels furnish reliable information concerning death squads, although it is not proven data. We should stop the issuance of visas for these people. We should stop facilitating the issuance of visas for the girlfriends, wives and friends of death squad members. This is not a petty thing to do. Visiting Miami is not a petty thing to them.

We can undertake a major interagency effort to inves-tigate and sever the connections between Salvadorans living in the United States and death squads operating in El Salvador. We do not have proof, but we have information we could investigate.

We could try to change the refusal of Congress to help compensate former landowners for land taken away from them for land reform. To date much of the compensation has been in government bonds whose value is not 100 cents on the dollar. This spurs landlord resistance - often by human rights abuses - to land reform. They are only trying to get paid for land taken away from them.

Why haven't we done these things? Because our own political and institutional structures militate against it. The press, the human rights groups, and the

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Congress still believe human rights is aortatory,
non-serious matter. There has been little discussion
of institutional changes. Speeches denouncing vio-
lations are not a policy. We waste time on trivia.
During August 1983, there were 33 congressional visits
to the area. There was hardly time for serious work
by the Embassy, they were so busy catering to the
visitors.

The Foreign Service as an institution is suspicious
of this kind of thinking and activities, and they are
not good at it. There are few incentives in the press
and Congress for the development of long range planning.
It commands few resources.

Our policy of fostering democracy is attacked by the
right on the grounds that democracy is alien to El
Salvador, and attacked by the left on the grounds
that elections are meaningless in the current violent
climate. It is silly to say that Salvadorans are unfit
for democracy, and the notion that this is not a good
time for elections is silly. The Government of El
Salvador is a weak government; too weak to protect
human rights. We should look for means to strengthen
it and make it accountable for human rights. To
enable the government to control the governed and to
enable it to govern itself (Madison). We should force
it to undergo the test of free elections, and make it
accountable to the popular will, thereby institutional-
izing a decline in human rights violations.

Kissinger: Thank you. I must say you came at a moment when we
were experiencing a sense of hopelessness about the
problem. I would like to be sure of what you suggested.

You think your measures would reduce human rights
violations significantly. You're not saying the
system is hopeless, if we could get these measures
implemented. You think the best method is not to
cut off aid, but to establish two levels of desiderata:

1. Measures necessary for survival. We will not
threaten the survival of the Government of El
Salvador. Not as a favor to Salvadorans, but as
in our own interest.

2. Measures to achieve a level at which society can
grow and develop. Presented as more essential for
you. Unless you do the following we will not
cooperate.

Abrams: Not exactly. I suggest we approach the government
and say, "Here's a program we think will strengthen
the government and enhance human rights."

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Kissinger: If this Commission would write a recommendation cold...

Abrams: We can't ask for results before the process is in-
augurated. No significant improvement is possible
until we get the program.

Kissinger: Two parts: 1 - essential to survival, and 2 - incre-
mental, conditioned on human rights improvement.

Abrams: The way to present the whole plan is to present it
publicly. Present it to the military by showing it
helps them and provides real incentives to them.

Stewart: Only military aid?

Abrams: Here, yes.

Silber: Can we make reforms fundamental? If the use of mili-
tary service as the road to riches is a way of life,
can we make that stick?

Abrams: I think so. There are differences of opinion. There
are lots of honest soldiers from 1979 who remain com-
mitted, and committed also to a professional military.
They know they don't have one, and that they don't
compare to the Guatemalan Army.

Silber: What if we threatened to help the guerrillas if they
don't cooperate?

Abrams: If so the situation in El Salvador might never recover.

Silber: I don't think there is much in it for the Army. It
has zero appeal for the Army.

Abrams: I think they're professional soldiers, and I think
the majority of them would want an opportunity to have
a professional army. The average soldier is not a
human rights violator. They want to win the war and
to have an army with prestige in El Salvador.

Strauss: How would the US and the Commission write a report in
which we restructure the army, the policy, etcetera
of another country without ridicule and without hurt-
ing their pride?

Abrams: I don't think the report is the place to discuss these
details, but a place to say there are a number of ways
to reorganize El Salvador's security forces, and we
should help them to do so. This is not demeaning.
For four years we have threatened them publicly. With
regard to Americans murdered in El Salvador the threats
were demeaning to both sides. "We need more cooperation
between your military and ours."

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Dias

Alejandro: If you tell the officer corps that torture is not effective, they can point to Uruguay and Argentina where they liquidated the guerrillas. Guatemala succeeded this way also. Is the army that lost Vietnam telling us?

Abrams: Many in the Salvadoran military served as the security force for the people in the elections of 1982. They don't want to be a hated army of occupation in their own country. We offer a role as saviors of El Salvador. Italy and others defeat the threat of guerrillas without torture. The American military has trained some professional soldiers in El Salvador.

Dias

Alejandro: How long will it last?

Abrams: We've had luck with those we trained. Creating order in the Treasury Police would have results on the death squads. The officer to men ratio is very poor in the National Guard. Integration into the army would improve matters. Human rights violations are mainly perpetrated by lower ranks.

Dias

Alejandro: Why hasn't this been done already?

Abrams: We have tended to blame the government for seeing human rights as peripheral. Speechmaking and threats are a wasted asset, in the press, on the Hill, in the Government.

Kissinger: This Commission deals only with Central America. No other problems concern us. The Seventh Floor has five or sometimes seven major problems to deal with simultaneously. It is conceivable that our Commission may contribute to the discovery of an answer.

Abrams: There is fear that this reform would disrupt security forces and overload the system. However, if we don't achieve the reform, support for the Government may decrease. I think they will succeed.

Walsh: I assume you have bounced these ideas off Congressmen. If Congress doesn't increase appropriations, what happens to our credibility?

Abrams: No we haven't got clearance to do this. We would have to have important people on the Hill aboard to achieve that. I think a number of people would agree that we should get to Dodd and Barnes first. If they privately say that it is a good idea to try, then we might go forward. One of your functions is to influence public opinion and formulate opinion.

Notes of the
National Bipartisan Commission on Central America

Witness: Bruce McColm, Freedom House

DATE: September 30, 1983

TIME: 3:00-4:00

PLACE: Rm 1105

SUMMARY:

Mr. McColm reviewed the current political situation in Central America. He suggested a significant military component to US assistance in attempting to achieve US foreign policy objectives. He believes that co-existence with Nicaragua is not possible and that the Sandinistas are creating a Marxist-Leninist society. He also stated that El Salvador's insurgency was a "prairie fire" that was solvable.

NOTES:

McColm: Due to a variety of factors, including the collapse of center-left coalitions, the rise of Socialist International, US can not exercise the leverage in multilateral fora as in past. Other US instruments also ended with the Falkland crisis. Even the Contadora countries can not bring Central America group together because of their own internal political instability.

El Salvador is a "prairie fire" that is solvable. Military assistance is inadequate and economic assistance small. Military is too late as a viable option due to corruption. Right wing death squads have ties with Miami than with right wing political parties in Salvador. Guerrillas have new strategy of infiltrating the labor unions and emphasizing urban terror. Guerrillas willing to offer large coalitions freedom from terrorism if they can take over unions.

In Nicaragua, Sandinistas attempting to consolidate revolution. Need 18 more months and will stall US efforts for peaceful coexistence. Current plans include moving populations away from border to prevent anti-Sandinista groups to form.

US has no military strategy to overthrow
Marxist-Leninist regimes; no plan. Covert oper-
ations have tight restrictions. Operations
have temporarily stopped. Nicaragua support for
other guerrilla groups. Cuban intervention is
unreasonable to assume.

Suggestions: high component of military assistance to assist Honduras, Salvador. Costa Rica is banking on US security shield. Also, no single proxy for US to use. Need new officer corps not linked with oligarchy.

Kissinger: How to replace oligarchy with new leadership is conceptual problem. Difficult to discuss US conception of democracy and Spanish law and other cultural influences.

Strauss: Military solution is political unacceptable to American public.

McColm: Human rights certification process has no teeth. Need to build in components into system to increase security of peasants.

Kissinger: We need to define how to co-exist with Nicaragua.

McColm: Can not co-exist with Nicaragua. Need plan to neutralize and/or eliminate. One option: direct military intervention. Permanent threat to region.

Massive passive demonstrations by other groups to force Nicaragua to fulfill OAS responsibilities. Myth that 60% land owned by private sector; reality: 30%. Western Europe only thing keeping Nicaragua going.

Walsh: Possible recommendation, to pressure Europe to end aid?

Kissinger: Impossible, short of massive effort and even then French would not go along.

McColm: Ortega buying MIGs and French weapons, creating vanguard Marxist society. Any air superiority would doom Honduras. Nicaragua threaten neighbors, Finlandization. Can't live with Soviet bases in CA.

SUMMARY

Bruce McColm, Freedom House

September 30, 1983

After a review of the political milieu in Central America, Mr. McColm suggested that the US policy in Central America contain a significant component of military assistance, since co-existence with Nicaragua is not possible. He posited that the Sandinistas were creating a Marxist-Leninist regime and that they would "Finlandize" the region. He indicated that El Salvador's insurgency was a "prairie fire" that was "solvable." US human rights certification process, McColm suggested, had no hard requirements and the right-wing death squads had more connections in Miami than with the right-wing of the Salvador political system.

SUBJECT: *Human Rights*

PRESENTATION BY: *Mark K. Benenson* (Lawyer)

DATE: September 29, 1983
TIME: 3:55 - 4:55
PLACE: Room 1105

SUMMARY:

Mr. Benenson described the development of human rights concern
in the US, the danger to human rights from the Soviet Union, the
necessity to deal with contemptible, repressive governments to
advance other foreign policy interests, and the danger of
automatically expecting revolutionary successor regimes to end the
abuses of the old regimes. He pointed out that the inability of
the USG to force the Salvadoran Government to punish the murderers
of US citizens indicates lack of US leverage on human rights. He
called for US support for judicial reform, including a witness
protection program, and for continuation of the land reform
program in order to give more Salvadorans a stake in the system.
Benenson also recommended that any contras supported by the USG be
led by Nicaraguans with no ties to the Somoza regime.

NOTES:

Kissinger: Welcome. Please let us hear your comments.

Benensen: (Copy of remarks attached).

Kissinger: How do you connect your assertion that one must cooperate with human rights violators for security interests with bringing about the changes you advocated?

Benensen: Dealing with societies which do not have rule of law as we know it. Part of oligarchy had power at any given time. Very difficult. Now training soldiers to take prisoners; succeeding to a very slight extent -- number of murders going down. No change in kind. May be unable to do it. Must provide economic assistance to bring people away from edge of privation. Establish economic institutions in which population has a stake. Long way to go.

Kissinger: As one who has conducted foreign policy, I disagree with those who would put foreign policy in service only of human rights. At same time, I don't see why we cannot serve human rights at same time as other objectives. What can one do to make progress on human rights?

Benensen: Nostalgia for age of imperialism. Land reform bids fair to be successful. Powerful chunk of El Salvadoran society opposes it, however. If Soviets were not in competition with US, it would be easy to tell governments to forget it. We will have to muddle through, although that will be difficult because we prefer quick and easy solutions.

Strauss: Well put.

Kissinger: Thank you, Mr. Benensen.

Mark K. Benenson

September 29, 1983

My name is Mark K. Benenson. I am a New York City
attorney. I appreciate this opportunity to appear before the
Commission and give my views on the vexing and complex relation-
ship between human rights principles and our foreign policy in
Central America. From 1966 through 1981, I was active in the
United States branch of Amnesty International, serving con-
tinuously on the Board of Directors and as general secretary,
chairman, vice-chairman and general counsel. I am now counsel
and a director of Democracy International, a new organization
which seeks to promote plural democracy throughout the world.
Today, I speak only for myself, not for those organizations.

For most of our history, human rights factors were not
considered important in the making of foreign policy. Americans
have usually supported in other countries, the democratic prin-
ciples which are part of our own political heritage. In the nine-
teenth century, for instance, Americans supported the Greek indepen-
dence effort and the 1830 and 1848 revolutionary upheavals against
Continental autocracies.

However, professional diplomats in the State Department were
always uneasy at complaining to other governments about their
treatment of their own citizens. They followed John Quincey Adams'
dictum, "We are friends of liberty everywhere, but the custodians
only of our own."

That attitude ignored the special role of our country as a
catalyst of progressivism in the history of civilization. For
all of our materialism and capitalism, we Americans are not just
economic men. Woodrow Wilson once said we were "... the only

Mark K. Benenson
September 29, 1983

Page 2

idealistic nation in the world." Many of us believe that our
country and our institutions exist for more than merely to assure
security and comfort for ourselves. Despite all our flaws and
faults, history requires America to illuminate for humanity
the potential for national success in the pursuit of happiness.
We have also felt that our own security was greater if other
countries had stable democratic governments, and we have sought
to help them along their way.

The Holocaust demonstrated that indifference to human rights
violations could have catastrophic consequences. When the United
Nations was established, an international declaration of human
rights was adopted, modeled on our own Bill of Rights. Virtually
every member of the U.N. has adopted the Declaration. Too many
of them promptly proceeded to ignore those parts of it which it
was inconvenient for them to honor.

In the Soviet Union, in South Africa, on every continent,
governments which faithfully professed their adherence to the
Declaration tilted towards barbarism. Firing squads flourished
and in gulags in dozens of countries, prisoners of conscience
were incarcerated and forgotten.

These abuses led in 1961 to the founding of Amnesty Inter-
national by my British cousin Peter Benenson. The American
section was established five years later. Amnesty's efforts,
together with those of such other organizations as the Interna-
tional League for Human Rights and the International Commission
of Jurists, have created a human rights constituency. Bipartisan,

Page 3

institutionalized in government, the media, the churches, in academia and foundations, that constituency above all commands a broad base of support among our citizenry. It holds our own government to strict account when it deals with repressive and inhumane regimes. Supporting human rights around the world is now essential to our foreign policy continuum. Every administration, Republican or Democratic, must accept that reality.

In 1972 in an article in the Christian Science Monitor, I called for the creation of an Assistant Secretaryship of Human Rights in the State Department. I may have been the first person to do so. That office was established during the Carter administration. Unique among the nations, our statutory scheme insists upon the observance of human rights principles in foreign policy-making. The Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs issues reports and statements which, *mirabile dictu*, frequently criticize our own friends and allies. The Bureau and its activities in both the Carter and Reagan Administrations exemplify the principles of humanity and liberty on which the United States was founded, and in the light of which, I hope and trust, we have by and large continued to function.

But an adherence to principles of human rights by no means requires that other imperatives involving the welfare of the United States should be slighted or ignored. The national security cannot be made secondary to satisfy what Michael Novak has called the humanitarian "dream of ... a non-ideological Archimedean point ... above the fray." Today, mankind's liberties rest in the last analysis upon the freedom and power of the United States.

Mark K. Benenson

September 29, 1983

There are ethical differences between our coalition and the
communist world which reasonable people may discern. The new
nuetralists of West Germany should compare the national origins
of most of this generation's innumerable refugees and exiles with
their destinations, and be enlightened thereby. The principal
danger to liberty at this moment in history emanates not from
fascism, but from the formidably organized totalitarianism of
the Soviet Union, crushing independent nations, arming its
surrogates and threatening the peace around the world. There
lies the real threat.

No doubt the governments of Honduras and Guatemala and especially of El Salvador, which we support and in the last-named sustain, are contemptible regimes. They richly deserve the condemnation they regularly receive in, among other places, the United States Congress. Dominated by military and civilian oligarchies, the phrase "the public welfare" has little meaning. As we all well know, human rights and especially the right to life are regularly violated; torture, murder, imprisonment without charge or trial are the normal and accepted ways in which those establishments deal with their opponents and with dissenters. Even those who have no political stake, but believe that they are morally required to help all of the disadvantaged, like members of the religious and health care professions, regularly have been made the victims of official repression.

Tens of thousands have died in Central America. Arguably,
there is less personal security and more risk of death in El
Salvador than in any other country in the world at the present time

Mark K. Benenson

September 29, 1983

except, I suppose, Afghanistan. I don't intend to relate the detailed statistics to you, on the number of persons killed, maimed, or missing as a result of actions by official and semi-official security forces. The precise numbers in each category of cruelty in each country, and the details of the outrages, may be the subject of dispute. However, none, including to its credit our own State Department, deny that the statistics are horrifying. There is no doubt that American assistance, both economic and military, goes to brutal and abusive regimes and unquestionably helps perpetuate them in power.

Nevertheless, it is possible, in principle, to defend our present policies, even from the human rights viewpoint, and I am one of those who somewhat reluctantly finds himself doing so. First of all, there is no assurance, should a repressive government fall, that its successor will be more liberal. I am not an historian, but my impression is that in the twentieth century, the odds are that the next government will be as bad or worse. The Czar was followed by the Bolsheviks. The Weimar Republic lasted for only a few years after the fall of the Kaiser, then Hitler took power. The Koumintang was succeeded by Mao-Tse Tung, and Batista by Castro. In Latin America, the trend, now perhaps abating a little, has been for military autocracies to succeed more pluralistic governments.

Withdrawal of American assistance from despotic states by no means guarantees a transition to democracy. Many human rights advocates, myself included, were glad to see the Carter administration heavily pressure the Shah of Iran over human rights abuses.

Page 6

Some of us, too late, have had second thoughts. The lessening of American support, in large part deriving from criticism of Iranian government repression, unquestionably emboldened the revolutionists. They overthrew a faithful ally; his successor, who hates our country and everything it stands for, governs Iran in a way that combines the worst features of the Spanish Inquisition and the Stuart Star Chamber. In Nicaragua, an idiosyncratic tyrant whom we could no longer assist has been replaced by well-organized Marxist totalitarians. Only reactionary Nicaraguans want to return to Somoza, but not everyone thinks the new government is an immense improvement. Certainly the Miskito Indians, whose villages have been burned, and many of whom have been killed by the Sandinists, were better off before. The tiny Jewish community in Nicaragua has fled and the pressures are beginning against the Catholic Church.

I don't mean to say that the Shah and Somoza would not have fallen if we had not withdrawn our help. By their own exactions and abuses they had probably alienated too many of the power centres in their own societies to survive. Perhaps they would still be in power if we had begun to hound them about their human rights abuses twenty years ago, and if they had paid attention. Those governments collapsed because their time was up, but the cause of human rights has not been served by their replacements. Thus there is no assurance, if we pulled out and El Salvador's government fell, that the victorious revolutionaries would be any less repressive. Perhaps they would be, but there is nothing objective to tell us so and the human rights situation could turn out to be no better, or even worse.

However, there is one thing we can be sure of. In the worldwide struggle between our system, which focuses on individual rights, and the other one which exalts the power of the state, a Marxist takeover in Central America would be disastrous. Mexico, which is hanging from the edge of the economic precipice, would be next in line.

Mark K. Benenson

September 29, 1983

The Panama Canal, still very important to our economic and military welfare, would be put at risk. Democratic Latin American governments would be endangered. The Russians would have yet another area nearby for airfields and submarine bases.

Thus our national interest sometimes may require, even if we have to hold our noses, giving economic or military aid to inhumane governments. Winston Churchill supposedly said, granted while Britain was at war, that if Hitler invaded Hell, he, Churchill, would at least make a favorable reference to Satan in the House of Commons. Like it or not, we are sometimes compelled, in the short term and with our eyes wide open, to support some truly odious regimes in Central America.

That does not mean we should ignore their repressive activities. We must continue to pressure our Central American clients to moderate their behavior. The certification process, which keeps the heat on, is essential. We must increase the kind of assistance that will make it possible to ameliorate the social and economic conditions which have given rise to revolutionary movements. I would rather see us spending money in Central America than in the Lebanese quagmire. It is curious that there can be so much objection to our expenditures in Central America, and so little to pouring our funds into the bottomless rathole of Lebanese anarchy.

In what I have said up to now I have basically agreed with our current Central American policy. I do not, however, support all of it in detail. I have always assumed our government has a duty to protect, at a minimum, the human rights of our own citizens. This administration and its predecessor have failed to make El Salvador punish themurderers of a number of American citizens. The most outrageous

Mark K. Benenson

September 29, 1983

cases are those of the four women, three of them members of a
religious order, who were kidnapped, brutalized and then slain
and buried in a common grave in 1980, and the two AFL-CIO land
reform experts, who were killed in a restaurant the following
year. Low-ranking National Guardsmen have been identified and
charged with the murders of the American women, but the prose-
cution has been stalled. In any event, it seems clear that
they would not have acted without authorization. New York
magazine said in its September 12, 1983 issue, in an article
by Michael Kramer, and I quote,

"The killer of the American nuns, well known in El Salvador, is still not convicted. The officer responsible for murdering two American officials in broad daylight at San Salvador's Sheraton Hotel in 1981 is also known. He has red hair and a red mustache -- extremely rare in El Salvador. For his lineup, he dyed his hair and shaved off his mustache. The witnesses couldn't identify him, and the court refused an appeal based on the soldier's altered appearance (Because of the war, the army has the power to move on its own in such investigations. A Salvadoran colonel was asked why the military couldn't correct the obvious injustice in the Sheraton case. He explained that the army's special powers could not be used for 'common crimes, and murder is a common crime in El Salvador')."

The women were not partisans - they were not taken in arms.
From everything one learns about them they were, despite some con-
trary calumnies, innocent of political intent, unless to their
slayers, relieving poverty and suffering was political. Few can
doubt that the affair was other than a deliberate act of official
terrorism by government security forces.

The unionists who were killed, in supporting the cause of
land reform in El Salvador, were furthering not merely the ideals
of their employer, the American labor movement, but our own

government's policies. Both the Carter and Reagan administrations correctly have emphasized land reform as a principal obstacle to Marxist success in El Salvador. It has been said by some that the two men were professionals knowingly going into a war, and that they assumed the risks of the assassination they suffered. The women too, it is asserted, were sophisticated enough to understand that they were courting danger. I cannot, and the United States should not, accept these convenient rationalizations.

The knowledge to accuse, convict, and punish all the murderers exists. They are known. The conspiracy of silence and complicity in El Salvador must be shattered. If we cannot persuade or indeed force that country's rulers to bring condign punishment upon the malefactors, of whatever rank, class or condition, our power to influence the treatment of Salvadorans, modest enough today, will surely even more be diminished. When we cannot even make that government punish killers of Americans, why should they care what we think of their crimes against their own population? How weak, and how contemptible in resolution, we must appear to the jackbooted oligarchs who are the real rulers of that unfortunate country!

Cannot proof be produced by the conventional law-enforcement methods, of promising one criminal immunity to testify against others, offering a substantial reward, protection during the trial, and U.S. immigration visas for witnesses and families? I do not suggest that an American's life is worth more than a Salvadoran's, but a nation that does not protect its own fails in the first function of statehood. I urge this Commission to press upon the administration the importance and urgency of seeing that these crimes are punished.

Mark K. Benenson

September 29, 1983

instincts of the American people, and for all the political heat
they generate, they must remain subordinate, in Central America
at least, to a dispassionate consideration of the hard necessities
of national security.

When we assist, as undoubtedly we do, evildoing governments,
let it not be construed as approval. To the contrary, we must
unremittingly press for reform, for renewal, for an attachment
to democratic and humanitarian principles of governance. And in
all of this, our government must actively protect our own
citizens in these countries. I reiterate that the failure to
bring the murderers of Americans in El Salvador to judgment dis-
honors the memory of the victims, and will not cease to trouble
the nation's conscience.

Gentlemen, thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN
DR HENRY A. KISSINGER

COMMISSION MEMBERS
MR NICHOLAS F. BRADY
MAYOR HENRY G. CISNEROS
GOV WILLIAM P. CLEMENTS JR
DR CARLOS F. DIAZ-ALEJANDRO
MR WILSON S. JOHNSON
MR LANE KIRKLAND
MR RICHARD M. SCAMMON, JR.
DR JOHN SILBER
JUSTICE POTTER STEWART
AMB ROBERT S. STRAUSS
DR WILLIAM B. WALSH
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
AMB HARRY W. SHLAUDEMAN

THE NATIONAL BIPARTISAN COMMISSION
ON CENTRAL AMERICA

SENIOR COUNSELLORS
REP MICHAEL D. BARNES
SEN LLOYD BENTSEN
REP WILLIAM S. BROOMFIELD
SEN PETE V. DOMENICI
SEN HENRY M. JACKSON
REP JACK F. KEMP
AMB JEANE KIRKPATRICK
MR WINSTON LORD
SEN CHARLES MCC. MATHIAS
MR WILLIAM D. ROGERS
REP JAMES C. WRIGHT

SESSION ON DIPLOMATIC OPTIONS AND POLITICAL NEGOTIATIONS

SEPTEMBER 30
(Revised Agenda)

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

<table><tr><td>10:00 - 11:00</td><td>Ambassador Richard Stone</td></tr><tr><td>11:00 - 12:10</td><td><u>Overview by Lead Consultants</u><br>Dr. Mark Falcoff, American Enterprise Institute<br>Dr. Robert Hunter, Georgetown University</td></tr><tr><td>12:10 - 1:00</td><td><u>LUNCH BREAK</u> (No lunch will be served)</td></tr><tr><td>1:00 - 2:00</td><td><u>Negotiating Possibilities</u><br>Dr. Robert Pastor, University of Maryland</td></tr><tr><td>2:00 - 3:00</td><td><u>Global Perspective</u><br>Mr. William Hyland, Carnegie Endowment</td></tr><tr><td>3:00 - 3:10</td><td><u>BREAK</u></td></tr><tr><td>3:10 - 4:10</td><td>Ambassador Deane Hinton</td></tr></table>

2201 C STREET NW, ROOM 1004, WASHINGTON D.C. 20520 TEL. (202) 632-7804

MANUSCRIPTS AND ARCHIVES
YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

CLASSIFIED ITEM(S) REMOVED

The following item(s) have been removed from the collection because they
contain security classified information:

**Collection:** Henry A. Kissinger papers

**Box Number:** 664

**Folder Number:** 2

Item(s) and Security Classification:

1 Notes, "Diplomatic problems and options in Central America", 30 Sep 1983 6pp S