FRINFORMSUM 1/17/2012

EPA: The Pentagon emits less carbon dioxide than George Washington University!

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency publicly released, for the first time, greenhouse gas data for 2010.  One of the most interesting features of this release is an online tool that shows the largest greenhouse gas emitters in a specified state or county.  In the District of Columbia, George Washington University, home of the National Security Archive, makes the list of the top seven greenhouse gas emitters notably beating out the Pentagon with over 1000 metric tons more carbon dioxide emissions!

In the UK, web-savvy citizens have submitted over 100,000 Freedom of Information requests through WhatDoTheyKnow.com.  Run by the nonprofit organization mySociety, the website is a powerful tool for enabling the masses to send FOI requests through a simplified interface.  Beyond simplifying the process, WhatDoTheyKnow also publicly posts the requests and responses and maintains some FOI statistics.  Though not the largest statistic on the website, the most impressive number, coming from someone who has dealt with a few dozen federal agency FOIA departments and would not want to deal with more, is the 5550 authorities that WhatDoTheyKnow.com provides access to.

Catching up on a notable story from late December, the Associated Press reported that a number of European countries were failing to comply with FOI requests concerning their involvement with secret CIA rendition flights.  London-based Reprieve and Madrid-based Access Info Europe claimed that of the “28 mostly European countries” surveyed, only seven countries, including the US, released information regarding these flights.  Five countries replied that they did not have the data, three refused to release the data, and 13 had not replied within 10 weeks.

On December 23, President Obama approved the fiscal year 2012 spending package which included a number of relevant provisions.  One notable victory for transparency advocates is the boost to information technology and electronic transparency projects.  The sad state of the Electronic Government Fund was reported in a June 2011 FRINFORMSUM, but a $4 million boost in funding is a reason for optimism.  The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s product safety database, lauded in FRINFORMSUM, was under threat from proposed measures in the budget, but these measures were ultimately struck before passage.

With austerity seemingly on the horizon for the U.S. government, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence jumped the proverbial gun and cut the number of its employees by more than 12% in 2011.  A former ODNI official was quoted saying that the workforce reduction indicated the loss of “hundreds” of positions.  Finding a silver lining in the cloud of lost jobs, the number of classification decisions made by ODNI dropped by 17.9% over the last year.  The ODNI Information Management chief wrote that the reduction in decisions was largely driven by the workforce reductions.

Finally, the FOIA Ombudsman blog from the National Archives and Records Administration teased a future FOIA portal.  This fall, NARA, in collaboration with the EPA and the Department of Commerce will launch a website that automates the FOIA request and reporting process for those agencies.  Requesters will be able to submit, track, receive, and download FOIA requests and responses to the aforementioned agencies and any agencies that decide to join in the future.  This new FOIA portal would be a fantastic tool for FOIA requesters and will hopefully gain momentum and attention from other agencies.

Kim Jong-Il: The “Great Successor”

Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung

Updated after the death of the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il.

As the world speculates over what makes “Brilliant Comrade” Kim Jong-Un tick,  I figure it may be worthwhile to give this 1994 cable a re-read and remember that the next leader of North Korea won’t necessarily be better than the last.

It’s the 9 July 1994 cable announcing the death of North Korea’s “Great Leader,” Kim Il-Sung.  This State Department cable reported to embassies that it had learned of Kim Il-Sung’s death through North Korean media reports (not intelligence sources), and implied that other countries may have better intelligence on the situation than the US.  It instructed embassies abroad to use their foreign contacts because they “have representation in Pyongyang and are well positioned to provide information on developments.”

One Year since Landmark Ruling: A Call to Action

panel discussion

Yesterday, the National Security Archive marked the one year anniversary* of the Inter-American Court for Human Rights issued its landmark ruling in the case “Gomes Lund and Others (Guerrilha do Araguaia) v. Brazil” with a public event co-sponsored by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). The event featured a panel discussion with experts on Brazil, access to information and archives, as well as the emerging right to information and justice movement in Latin America. At the conclusion of the presentations, Kate Doyle of the National Security Archive called on human rights organizations to join the regional movement and launch a campaign for release of Latin America human rights information. (See videos of full event below.)

The panel discussion, moderated by WOLA’s Program Director, Geoff Thale, included the following speakers:

• Michael Camilleri, senior legal advisor to the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
• Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center
• Jo-Marie Burt, a senior fellow at WOLA and professor of political science and director of Latin American studies at George Mason University
• Kate Doyle, senior analyst and director of the Evidence Project at the National Security Archive

Michael Camilleri provided a brief history of Inter-American Court jurisprudence on the right to information that led up to the Araguaia ruling, including the case of Myrna Mack of Guatemala and Rosendo Radilla of Mexico. The Araguaia case, as Camilleri explained, brings together citizens’ right to justice and the right to access to information. The ruling states that that information on human rights cannot be denied to prosecutors, and that victims should also have a right to this information. Camilleri suggested future opportunities the commission could take to further the right to information, specifically mentioning the “Diario Militar” case of Guatemala, coming before the Inter-American court in 2012.

Paulo Sotero spoke about the current situation in Brazil, one year after the Araguaia ruling, and one month after President Dilma Rousseff signed into law the Truth Commission Law and the Law of Access to Public Information. While Sotero praised the achievement of the Araguaia ruling in setting a precedent for the region regarding the right to information, he worries that the implementation and enforcement of the ruling does not look promising. Currently, Brazil is mired in corruption scandals involving government officials, and its judicial system is struggling to address these issues. Additionally, Sotero explained that there is a lack of political will and public engagement on past human rights violations. On a hopeful note, Sotero anticipates that at the conclusions of the mandate of the Truth Commission and the release of the report in two years, Brazilians may be at a point where want to revisit the pains of the past.

Jo-Marie Burt used the case study of Peru as a comparison to Brazil to explore a truth commission process, obtaining government documents for evidence in human rights trials and the country’s struggle in effectively using its freedom of information law. Burt explained the various processes of obtaining documents for trials, including leaks from whistleblowers, military officer testimony, court seizure of documents, and declassified documents from the U.S. She also explored issues of political will to release documents and evidence in the trials. According to Burt, Peru’s legal system is inefficient. It continues to provide inadequate legal services for victims, has moved from focusing on human rights trials to terrorism trials, and is lacking victim protection services. Additionally, Burt described many of the problems Peru faces in using its own FOI law. However, she ended hopefully with a list of suggestions to improve the state of affairs in Peru, suggesting that Brazil may look to learn from Peru’s challenges.

Kate Doyle

Finally, National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle closed the discussion by describing the emerging right to information and human rights justice movement throughout the hemisphere. She touched on various country’s experiences and struggles through the lens of the Encuentro Evidencia, a September meeting the Archive convened in Lima, Peru. The meeting brought together 30 experts from ten countries to discuss access to archives, the right to truth, and use of documents as evidence in human rights trials. In realizing the importance of government documents in evidence in a few paradigmatic cases, this movement in Latin America is urging access to information activists, prosecutors, human rights organizations, judges, and others to demand information and transparency from their governments. Additionally, this movement continues to push for the implementation of freedom of information laws, some of them including a clause that strictly prohibits the withholding of information that relates to human rights violations.

Doyle called upon human rights organizations in the region to join the movement in a variety of ways. She suggested the following actions:

1. Promoting dialogue on human rights and national security as it applies to/and infringes upon access to information;
2. Recognize that lack of access to information is a form of torture;
3. Work on generating a Washington campaign for the right to know and obtaining human rights information with the intention to pass a law requiring expedited declassification of documents with direct ties to human rights for use in Latin American  human rights trials; and
4. International human rights organizations (Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, WOLA, etc.) should incorporate demands that states honor their commitments to open archives into their regular human rights work.

It is apparent that we have reached a moment of action to fight for the right to information. The meeting in Lima was a clear sign that while challenges remain, the right to information movement is gaining momentum and is stronger than ever before.

*The Araguaia ruling was formally presented on December 14, 2010, and the event to mark the anniversary was held on December 15, 2011, one day after the actual anniversary.

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For more, see videos of the panel discussion here:

Introduction by Geoff Thale and presentation by Michael Camilleri

Presentation by Paolo Sotero

Presentation by Jo-Marie Burt

Presentation by Kate Doyle

Questions and Answers

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Related post: “The Right to Information” Gaining Ground in Latin America?

Where Archives and Human Rights Connect: Millions of pages of Guatemalan Police Archive released digitally

Image of one of millions of documents now available online on through AHPN and the University of Texas Austin

***Abajo la versión en Español***

In a public event held in Guatemala City today, Friday, December 9, the Guatemalan Historical Archive of the National Police (Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional—AHPN) and the University of Texas at Austin unveiled an extraordinary collaboration by making 10 million pages of digitalized police records available to researchers on a special Web site hosted by the university. The event followed a U.S. launch of the Web site at a conference held in UT Austin’s School of Law on December 2.

The project permits researchers from anywhere in the world to examine the entire digitalized collection of Guatemalan police documents via the Internet, without having to travel physically to Guatemala to see them in the archive’s reading room. Following the guidelines established by the AHPN, access is wholly unrestricted, and the collection will continue to grow as the police archive digitalizes additional records and makes the images available to UT Austin.

Since 2005 when the archives were discovered on a police base in downtown Guatemala City, a staff of dozens has labored for years to rescue the massive collection of government records. After cleaning, sorting, describing, and digitalizing more than ten percent of the estimated 80 million pages of documents found, the AHPN opened a public reading room in 2009 and granted access to anyone able to visit in person. The AHPN also accepted requests for specific documents from prosecutors, human rights investigators, families of the disappeared, scholars and journalists.

When the documents were first discovered, many showed signs of decay. Since then, staff members have been working tirelessly to preserve and digitize them.

The archive’s holdings cover the entire history of the Guatemalan National Police, from its creation in the late 19^th century to its dissolution in 1997. Staff investigators and most researchers have focused on records from the most violent years of Guatemala’s internal armed conflict (1975-85), however, when human rights violations spiked in intensity and security forces operated in the capital and other urban centers with impunity. In October 2010, a trial of two former police agents for the 1984 forced disappearance of labor activist Edgar Fernando García resulted in their conviction, based in part on documents located in the AHPN. The Public Ministry, Guatemala’s office of the attorney general, opened a special office inside the archive’s installations in May 2011, in order to be able to conduct continuous investigations into key human rights criminal cases.

There is no parallel for on-line, unrestricted access to an archive of this magnitude anywhere in the world. Less than one week after its first unveiling in the United States, UT Austin reports that there have been over 17,000 page-views by individuals from 47 countries.  Without a doubt, the digitalized repository of the AHPN through the UT Austin servers will not only serve as a rich resource for historians, social scientists, journalists and human rights investigators for decades to come, it will also serve to protect the integrity and security of the holdings inside Guatemala.

The decision on the part of the Guatemalan Police Archive to provide unrestricted digital access to records that contain countless references to private individuals – many of them entrapped by a security system designed to identify suspected subversives and kidnap or kill them solely on the basis of those suspicions – is highly controversial within the archiving world. Even in countries with no formal privacy or archive laws such as Guatemala, standard archival practice strives to protect the privacy of the victims of repression – whether by withholding entire records or selectively deleting individual names and other identifying information.

Antonio González Quintana is a renowned Spanish archivist and author of a seminal report on the “archives of repression,” written in 1995 for UNESCO and the International Council of Archives (ICA). In 2008, the ICA published an updated and expanded version of the report, Archival Policies for the Defense of Human Rights, in which González Quintana made a clear case for the protection of personal data even in the records of formerly repressive regimes. In a section on the ethical obligations of archivists, for example, González Quintana observed: “The most common and also the most difficult conflict is usually produced between the right to privacy and the right to historical research. In those cases, the deletion of the possible names of victims or third parties in the reproduction of original documents can be a solution.” (See page 106)

This was an approach ultimately rejected by the Guatemalan Police Archive. The process by which the archive decided to open the records related to political repression without restriction involved a long internal debate within the archive’s management and staff, as well as a panel discussion held in 2009 inviting public comment. It is also described in the archive’s own report, published in June 2011.

Citing several legal instruments, including Guatemala’s Constitution and an article in the country’s freedom of information law that prohibits the denial of records relating to gross human rights violations, the report, From Silence to Memory: Revelations from the Historical Archive of the National Police, found: “The armed internal conflict and repressive practices characterized a recent historic period in Guatemala that affected and continues to affect society enormously. In the face of this reality, the conclusion is inevitable that the political events that took place between 1960 and 1996 form part of the collective history of the Nation. This should be understood in its fullest dimension, so that no one has the right to hide information that comes from the actions by the State and its officials.”  (See pp. 37-39)

Some of these issues were touched on in a day-long conference held in UT Austin’s School of Law on December 2, called “Politics of Memory: Guatemala’s National Police Archive.” University scholars – including Charles Hale, director of the Latin American Studies Institute and the Benson Latin American Collection; Karen Engle and Daniel Brinks, co-directors of the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice; and Ariel Dulitzky, director of the law school’s Human Rights Clinic – joined Gustavo Meoño, coordinator of the Police Archive, and Jorge Villagrán, the archive’s information systems manager, to launch the digital repository before an audience of over 100 students and scholars. Panels on Guatemala’s history of violence and contemporary political challenges – including one in which I spoke, along with Patrick Ball, vice president of the Human Rights Program  at Benetech, and Virgilio Álvarez Aragón, director of the Guatemalan research institute FLACSO – helped define the context within which the unprecedented research site was announced and unveiled.

For press coverage from the conference, background information, and additional resources, please visit the “Related Links” page of UT Austin’s conference website:

http://www.utexas.edu/law/conferences/guatemala/relatedlinks.php

For photos and video from the event, please visit:

http://www.utexas.edu/law/conferences/guatemala/photovideo.php

The University of Texas at Austin agreed to host the digital collection after years of discussions with the AHPN, with input and support from the National Security Archive and Benetech, among other international and national institutions. The resulting letter of understanding, signed in January 2011, created a broad partnership between the two institutions – not only in support of universal access to the police records, but also to promote the exchange of technical expertise, bi-lateral cooperation in research, and mutual capacity-building for legal and academic networks. Read more about the agreement between UT Austin and the AHPN here.

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Donde los Archivos y los derechos humanos se encuentran: Millones de documentos del Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional de Guatemala son publicados en formato digital

Traducción:
Bettina Gómez Oliver
Centro Académico de la Memoria de Nuestra América
Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México

En un acto público celebrado en la ciudad de Guatemala hoy, viernes 9 de diciembre, el Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional de Guatemala (AHPN) y la Universidad de Texas (UT Austin), dieron a conocer  una extraordinaria contribución, al poner a disposición de los investigadores 10 millones de páginas digitalizadas de registros policiales, las cuales serán accesibles desde un sitio web auspiciado por la Universidad. La presentación en Guatemala siguió al lanzamiento del sitio web en los Estados Unidos, que se realizó el pasado 2 de diciembre en una conferencia celebrada en la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Texas, en Austin.

El proyecto permite a los investigadores, de cualquier lugar del mundo, consultar toda la colección digitalizada de los documentos de la policía guatemalteca, a través de Internet, sin necesidad de viajar físicamente a Guatemala para revisarlos en la sala de lectura del Archivo. Siguiendo las pautas establecidas por el AHPN, el acceso es totalmente libre, y la colección seguirá creciendo conforme el Archivo de la Policía digitalice registros adicionales y facilite las imágenes a la UT Austin.

Desde el 2005, cuando los archivos fueron descubiertos en una base policial, en el centro de la ciudad de Guatemala, docenas de personas han trabajado para rescatar la colección masiva de registros gubernamentales. Después de limpiar, clasificar, describir y digitalizar más del diez por ciento de los, aproximadamente, 80 millones  de documentos encontrados, el AHPN abrió una sala de lectura pública en 2009 y garantizó el acceso a todo aquel que pudiera visitar personalmente el Archivo. El AHPN también atendió las solicitudes para revisar documentos específicos que le hicieron fiscales, investigadores de derechos humanos, familiares de los desaparecidos, académicos y periodistas.

Los documentos del archivo cubren toda la historia de la Policía Nacional guatemalteca, desde su creación a finales del siglo XIX, hasta su disolución en 1997. La mayoría de los investigadores, tanto los del equipo del Archivo, como externos, se han concentrado en los registros de los años más violentos del conflicto armado interno de Guatemala (1975-85), cuando las violaciones a los derechos humanos llegaron a su máxima intensidad y las fuerzas de seguridad operaban con toda impunidad en la capital y otros centros urbanos. En octubre de 2010, el juicio contra dos agentes de la ex policía acusados de la desaparición forzada, en 1984, del activista laboral Edgar Fernando García, fueron llevados a juicio y  condenados, gracias en parte, a documentos localizados en el AHPN. En mayo de 2011, el Ministerio Público -equivalente en Guatemala a la Fiscalía General- abrió una oficina especial dentro de las instalaciones del Archivo, con el fin de poder realizar investigaciones continuas sobre casos claves de violación criminal de los derechos humanos.

No existe, en todo el mundo un archivo de esta magnitud, que sea accesible en línea y sin ninguna restricción. Menos de una semana después de su primera presentación en los Estados Unidos, UT Austin informó que ha habido más de 17.000 visitas a la página, por parte de personas ubicadas en 47 países.  Sin duda, el repositorio digital del AHPN, a través de los servidores de la UT de Austin, no sólo funcionará como una fuente invaluable de información para  historiadores, científicos sociales, periodistas e investigadores de derechos humanos durante las décadas por venir, sino que servirá también para proteger la integridad y seguridad de la documentación física, resguardada en Guatemala.

La decisión, por parte del Archivo de la Policía guatemalteca, de proporcionar acceso digital sin restricciones a registros que contienen innumerables referencias personales -muchas de ellas obtenidas mediante un sistema de seguridad, diseñado para identificar a presuntos subversivos y secuestrarlos o matarlos únicamente sobre la base de esas sospechas-, es altamente polémica dentro del mundo archivístico. Incluso en países que carecen de leyes formales que protejan la privacidad,  como es el caso de Guatemala, se practica un criterio archivístico que se esfuerza por proteger la privacidad de las víctimas de la represión; ya sea mediante la retención de registros completos o bien, por la eliminación selectiva de los nombres individuales y otros datos de identidad.

Un reconocido archivista español, Antonio González Quintana, es autor de un informe fundamental sobre los “archivos de la represión,” escrito en 1995 para la UNESCO y el Consejo Internacional de Archivos (ICA). En 2008, el ICA publicó una versión actualizada y ampliada del informe, Políticas Archivísticas para la defensa de los Derechos Humanos, en la que González Quintana se refiere claramente a la necesidad de proteger los datos personales, incluso aquellos que aparecen en los registros de los antiguos regímenes represivos. Por ejemplo, en una sección sobre las obligaciones éticas de los Archivistas, González Quintana observa: “La más frecuente y también la más difícil confrontación se suele producir entre el derecho a la privacidad y el derecho a la investigación histórica. En tales casos la despersonalización de los posibles nombres de víctimas o terceros en reproducciones de los documentos originales puede ser una solución.” (Véase página 141, en la versión en español)
Este enfoque fue finalmente rechazado por el Archivo de la Policía guatemalteca. La decisión de abrir a la consulta sin restricción, los registros relativos a la política de represión, pasó por un largo proceso de debate interno, entre el personal y la administración del Archivo, que también incluyó una mesa redonda, celebrada en 2009, para la cual se invitó al público en general a opinar al respecto. Este proceso está descrito en el Informe del Archivo, publicado en junio de 2011.

El Informe Del Silencio a la Memoria. Revelaciones del Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional, cita varios instrumentos jurídicos, incluida la Constitución de Guatemala y un artículo de la Ley de Acceso a la Información Pública, que prohíbe la reserva de documentos relativos a violaciones manifiestas de los derechos humanos; argumenta: “El conflicto armado interno y las prácticas represivas, caracterizaron un período de la historia reciente de Guatemala, que afectó y sigue afectando enormemente a la sociedad. Frente a esta realidad resulta inevitable concluir que los acontecimientos políticos acaecidos entre 1960 y 1996 forman parte de la historia colectiva de la Nación. Ésta debe ser conocida en su justa dimensión, sin que nadie tenga el derecho a ocultar la información que proviene de las acciones del Estado y sus funcionarios”. (Veánse páginas 37 a 39)

Algunas de estas cuestiones fueron abordadas en una jornada de Conferencias celebrada el 2 de diciembre en la Facultad de derecho de UT Austin, denominada “Políticas de la Memoria: el Archivo de la Policía Nacional de Guatemala.” Académicos universitarios – incluyendo a Charles Hale, director del Instituto de Estudios sobre América Latina y de la Colección Latinoamericana Benson; Karen Engle y Daniel Brinks, co-directores del Centro Rapoport para los Derechos Humanos y la Justicia; y Ariel Dulitzky, director de la Clínica de Derechos Humanos de la Facultad de Derecho – se reunieron con Gustavo Meoño, Coordinador del Archivo de la Policía Nacional y Jorge Villagrán, administrador de sistemas de información del Archivo, para lanzar el repositorio digital ante una audiencia de más de 100 estudiantes y eruditos. Las mesas sobre la historia de la violencia en Guatemala y sus actuales desafíos políticos –incluyendo una en la que participé, junto con Patrick Ball, vicepresidente del Programa de Derechos Humanos en Benetech y Virgilio Álvarez Aragón, director del Instituto Guatemalteco de Investigación FLACSO– ayudaron a definir el contexto dentro del cual se anunció y dio a conocer este sitio web de investigación, que no tiene precedentes.

Para la cobertura de prensa de la Conferencia, información y recursos adicionales, visite la página de “Related links” del sitio web de la Conferencia de UT Austin:

http://www.utexas.edu/law/conferences/guatemala/relatedlinks.php

Para fotos y videos del evento, por favor visite:

http://www.utexas.edu/law/conferences/guatemala/photovideo.php

La Universidad de Texas en Austin decidió acoger la colección digital después de años de discusiones con el AHPN, para lo cual ha contado con las aportaciones y el apoyo del National Security Archive y Benetech, entre otras instituciones nacionales e internacionales. El resultado fue una carta de entendimiento, firmada en enero de 2011, que establece una  amplia cooperación entre las dos instituciones, no sólo para posibilitar el acceso universal a los registros de la policía, sino también para promover el intercambio de conocimientos técnicos, cooperación bilateral en investigación y la mutua capacitación para establecer intercambios jurídicos y académicos. Lea más sobre el acuerdo entre UT Austin y la AHPN aquí: here

Chile: Judgement Day on the US

The 1982 Oscar-winning film depicts the disappearance of American journalist Charles Horman

This article was first published in The Nation. 

In 1982 the poignant Oscar-winning Costa Gavras movie Missing depicted the true story of two US citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, seized and executed by the Chilean military after the September 1973 coup. The film focused on the disappearance of Horman, and the desperate attempts by his father and wife to find him in the face of cold indifference, and possible participation, of pro-coup US officials in Chile.

Now, thirty-eight years after they were killed, a Chilean judge, Jorge Zepeda, has issued an indictment in the case that not only vindicates the premise of the film but appears to go well beyond it in asserting US complicity. On November 29 Zepeda indicted a Chilean intelligence officer, as well as the former head of the US Military Group, Navy Capt. Ray Davis, as accomplices to the murders. In a petition to the Chilean Supreme Court to authorize an extradition request, Zepeda stated that Davis was responsible for a “secret intelligence-gathering investigation of US citizens” in Chile. Information casting them as “extremists” was allegedly turned over to the intelligence branch of the Chilean High Command after the coup. Zepeda suggests that intelligence on Teruggi, including his address in Santiago, led to his detention on September 20, 1973.

While the film postulated that Horman was detained because he had inadvertently stumbled across proof of US involvement in the coup, Zepeda’s investigation has produced a different scenario: the military believed that Horman was involved in “subversive” work with a Chilean government film company, Chile Films, that was under surveillance for its pro-Allende media activities. A declassified US document cited in the indictment speculated that Horman may have been killed because he was working on a film about the Allende government at the time of the coup.

In its most chilling statement, the indictment alleges that Davis was in a position to “override the will” of the Chilean military to execute Horman—but chose not to do so.

Captain Davis, as it tragically turns out, has advanced Alzheimer’s disease and is confined to a nursing home in Florida. There will be no extradition, nor will there likely be a courtroom verdict. But if—and it is a big if—the judge can produce evidence to back up his charges, he will finally provide a verdict of history on US complicity in the deaths of two of its young citizens in Chile.

Astonishing Discovery of Remains of Guatemalan Death Squad Diary Victims

Page from "Death Squad Diary"

The National Security Archive recently published an electronic briefing book detailing  the discovery of the remains of two victims listed in the famous “death squad diary.” The Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala, a non-profit based out of Guatemala City, was able to identify the remains using DNA, as reported in their press statement on November 22.

The remains of Amancio Samuel Villatoro (death squad diary entry number 74) and Sergio Saúl Linares Morales (death squad diary entry number 55) were found in a mass grave at the former military detachment in Comalapa, Chimaltenango.

These two men were abducted by security forces in early 1983; their families never heard from them again. Their fates were not known until 1999 when the National Security Archive publicly released the death squad diary which recorded the disappearance of 183 people, including Villatoro and Linares. The handwriting at the bottom of their entries in the log book records the date they were murdered, March 29, 1984, and indicates their murder with the code “300.”  Linares’ entry includes the date of his capture, February 23, 1984.

As Kate Doyle, senior analyst at the National Security Archive stated in the posting, “It is an astonishing development in a case that has come to symbolize the impunity and injustice that persist in Guatemala 15 years after its bloody civil conflict ended.” (See the full electronic briefing book on the National Security Archive’s website, here.)

Family Members of Saul Linares Speak at FAFG press conference 11-22-11

Why is this so important? For many reasons…

The friends and families of these two men have been anguishing for over 27 years to know the fate of their loved ones, and to have their remains returned and given a proper burial. By locating the remains of the disappeared, many families are able to finally receive the closure of having the remains returned, and knowing, to a certain degree, what happened to their loved ones.  As Villatoro’s widow, María del Rosario pleaded (recounted in the posting),

“We hope there will be justice one day and that at least we will be able to learn where his remains are to give him a dignified Christian burial.”

By locating the remains of these two disappeared men, the families and friends of these activists have “re-discovered” their bodies and denied the military’s effort to “erase” them from existence.  Forced disappearance was a popular tool used by the Guatemalan government (and governments around the world) against the dissenting groups. The governments and militaries believed they could break the morale of a movement by erasing community leaders and prominent activists from their communities, the media, and public discourse. This was routinely done by kidnapping the person, holding them in a clandestine prison, most likely torturing them, killing them, and then disposing of the body in an unmarked location. The government denied involvement in the disappearance and provided no information to family members of the detention, or the whereabouts of the body.  For just an example of this heinous practice, see Mirtala Linares’ testimony as recounted in the posting:

“He wouldn’t tell us anything; he claimed they hadn’t captured [Sergio], that he knew nothing of his whereabouts – and that maybe my brother had gone as an illegal alien to the United States! That was how he answered us.”

Son of Amancio Villatoro speaks at FAFG press conference 11-22-11

This discovery further validates the power of government documents in the search for truth and the fight against impunity. These two men are recorded as being murdered on the same day, March 29, 1984, and their bodies were found near each other in the mass grave, along with other yet to be identified victims. This document proves that these two men were kidnapped and murdered by the Guatemalan government’s secret military intelligence unit, the Archivos, the authors of the death squad diary. The discovery of the remains put together with the government document, along with witness testimony, rounds out an important story, giving light to a truth that has been kept in the dark for over 27 years.  This shows that the government has been able to get away with these crimes and other crimes for decades, enjoying impunity while family members wait in anguish for decades, suffering from injustice. However, as discussed in the Archive’s posting, the period of impunity and injustice may be coming to an end…

“The extraordinary work of the FAFG team is all the more important because there is a collective human rights case based on the disappearances of the death squad diary currently pending in the Inter-American system. Filed in 2005 by the Myrna Mack Foundation of Guatemala and involving the family members of 26 of the victims in the logbook, it was remanded to the court by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights on February 18, 2011, and is scheduled to be heard some time in 2012.”

**For more information and to read the complete posting, visit the National Security Archive’s website, here.

Tunisia and the Archives of the Secret Police

Farah Hachad of Tunisia, Virgiliu-Leon Tarau of Romania, and Kate Doyle of the National Security Archive speaking at conference

As the Arab Awakening continues to rock the Middle East and North Africa, Tunisia’s civil society has launched a national dialogue about one of the thorniest issues facing the country: how to bring former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s brutal security system under civilian control?

From November 12-13, the Tunisian NGO Le Labo’ Democratique teamed up with Geneva-based Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) to convene a public meeting on “The Archives of the Political Police: A Challenge for Transitional Democracy?” The conference brought security experts, archivists, intellectuals, journalists, bloggers, artists and activists together with members of Tunisia’s interim government to discuss strategies for obtaining and preserving the records of the old regime’s hated security apparatus. For comparative purposes, the organizers invited four international specialists with experience in archives: from Poland, Germany, Romania, and the National Security Archive. (See conference agenda, here.)

Tunisian street art post-Arab Spring. Photo by Kate Doyle.

Tunisia’s revolution began on December 17, 2010, when a young street vendor in the town of Sidi Bouzid, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in protest of repeated harassment by local officials. His act inspired angry demonstrations by citizens fed up with an abusive and corrupt regime; after he died from his burns on January 4, the riots became a general uprising, and on January 14 Ben Ali stepped down after 23 years in power.

Now Tunisia struggles to build a democratic nation out of the ruins of authoritarian rule. Although the country has navigated the dangers of political transition with an extraordinary calm and national cohesiveness, the old governing structures and many of the former officials remain in place. The November conference was designed to address one of the regime’s most despised legacies: the secret police.

Operating out of the Interior Ministry and other federal agencies, the intelligence and security forces known collectively as the secret police, or political police, excelled in spying on citizens, infiltrating civil society groups, trolling emails and social media sites for information, and harassing, intimidating and torturing suspected opponents of Ben Ali’s regime. Conference participants agreed that no space, public or private, was safe from the surveillance state. As Farah Hachad, a lawyer and president of Le Labo’, recalled at the start of the conference, “Since I was born, even conversations inside our house would be silenced because of the fear inside our hearts that we would be heard and punished.”

The Importance of the Iran-Contra Scandal, 25 Years Later

The "diversion" was the diversion.

It has been 25 years since President Ronald Reagan stepped up to the microphone in the White House press room and made the announcement that launched one of the greatest scandals in modern American politics.

Reagan announced that his administration had sent “small amounts of defense weapons and spare parts to Iran” not to trade arms for hostages, but to improve relations and support moderate mullahs. There was “one aspect” of the operation that, the President said, he had been “unaware of.” His attorney general, Edwin Meese, then stepped forward to describe how “private benefactors” had transferred profits from those sales to counterrevolutionary forces, the contras, fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.  No U.S. officials were involved, according to Meese, in this “diversion” of funds that linked two seemingly separate covert operations.

The focus on the diversion, as Oliver North, the NSC staffer who supervised the two operations wrote in his memoir, Under Fire, was itself a diversion. “This particular detail was so dramatic, so sexy, that it might actually—well divert public attention from other, even more important aspects of the story,” North noted, “such as what the President and his top advisors had known about and approved.”

The list of the “other… more important ” aspects of the sordid story that became known as “Iran-contra” scandal is a long one but worth recalling 25 years later. The Reagan administration had been negotiating with terrorists (despite Reagan’s repeated public position that he would “never” do so). There were illegal arms transfers to Iran, flagrant lying to Congress, soliciting third country funding to circumvent the Congressional ban on financing the contra war in Nicaragua, White House bribes to various generals in Honduras, illegal propaganda and psychological operations directed by the CIA against the U.S. press and public, collaboration with drug kingpins such as Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, and violating the checks and balances of the constitution.

“If ever the constitutional democracy of the United States is overthrow,” the leading political analyst of the scandal, Theodore Draper wrote at the time, “we now have a better idea of how this is likely to be done.”

Continue reading at Salon.com

Brazil Takes Steps on Truth, Human Rights, and the Right to Know

By Erin Maskell

“The truth about our past is fundamental, so those facts that stain our history will never happen again.”

On November 18, 2011, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff signed two major pieces of legislation: the Law of the Truth Commission (Lei da Comissão da Verdade) and the Law of Access to Public Information (Lei da Acesso à Informaҫão), making Brazil the 89th country in the world to enact a freedom of information law. These laws are interconnected and mark an important step in bringing Brazil into the modern world by finally opening a window of public scrutiny on its dark past.

After years of ignoring the abuses that occurred under the military dictatorship in Brazil, the Lei da Comissão da Verdade establishes a seven member truth commission to investigate and report on the murders, torture, and disappearances perpetrated by both the government and the resistance from 1946-1988. The commission will have two years to complete its investigation. The law empowers the commissioners to summon witnesses under oath as well as gain access to all government documents—at least in theory.

“The truth commission law is a political compromise with a resistant and obstinate Brazilian military which has repeatedly refused to produce records on repression,” points out Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Brazil Documentation Project at the Washington D.C.-based National Security Archive. “Truth can be a powerful first step toward accountability for the repression of the military era,” Kornbluh notes, “but only a first step.”

The Department of Justice’s Quest to Weaken FOIA Still Going Strong

Eric Holder is having a hard time defending the DOJ Office of Information Policy's FOIA stance.

Updated Below on November 14th.  

As we recently reported, the Department of Justice was considering amending its FOIA regulations so that it could lie to FOIA requesters and deny the existence of certain documents.

Fortunately, after the condemnation of Senators Grassley, Udall, and Leahy, the ACLU, Openthegovernment.org, and many, many others, the Department of Justice abandoned the proposed regulation.

Despite this FOIA victory, the fight is not over. The DOJ is attempting to push through a dozen other changes to its FOIA regulations, some of which are just as alarming as that which was taken off the table.

For the best overview of all of these unnecessary regulations, see the letter submitted to the Department of Justice by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). EPIC argues that in addition to exceeding the agency’s statutory authority, these brazen proposals:

1)     Put an unreasonable burden on the requester

2)     Place new constraints on educational institutions and reporters

3)     Wholly frustrate the intent of the FOIA