Che Guevara And The Destruction Of Americas Values By Jacob G. Hornberger!!
(2017-10-10 at 13:31:56 )

Che Guevara and the Destruction of Americas Values by Jacob G. Hornberger

Yesterday, thousands of people gathered in Bolivia to honor Che Guevara, the communist revolutionary and Fidel Castro ally who was executed by Bolivian troops on October 9, 1967.

Yesterdays event could also have served as a commemoration of the destruction of American values by the United States national-security establishment, namely the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Prior to his execution, Guevara had been organizing and leading an insurgency against the Bolivian government. His aim was the same as Castros in Cuba - to oust a brutal United States-supported right-wing dictatorial regime and replace it with a left-wing communist regime.

In the course of the insurgency, Guevara and his small force had ambushed and killed Bolivian soldiers. Such being the case, the natural question arises: What was wrong with killing him?

The answer is: Bolivian military forces had captured Guevara. They had him in custody. And then they shot him.

No trial. No military tribunal. No judicial process at all. Just a summary execution.

That is murder, pure and simple.

No matter what one may think about communists, no matter what atrocities that communists had committed around the world, no matter how despicable one might view communist ideology, no matter what Guevara had done, the fact is that once he was taken into custody, it was a criminal offense to summarily kill him. That criminal offense constituted murder, pure and simple.

When enemy soldiers are taken captive, they cannot be executed except after having been convicted of war crimes. The conviction might be by military tribunal or in a civilian court. Either way, United States personnel, either soldiers or police officers, were and are prohibited from summarily executing prisoners.

Our American ancestors ensured that that principle was enshrined into law by enacting the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the federal government from taking anyones life without "due process of law," a legal phrase that stretches all the way back to Magna Charta.

It holds that before the federal government can kill a person, it must provide, at the very least, notice and a hearing or trial in which the accused has the right to defend himself. On the battlefield, that might mean a military tribunal. Away from the battlefield, that might mean a trial in a civilian court.

That founding principle of the United States, however, was destroyed, after World War II, when the federal government was converted from a limited-government republic to a "national-security state," which consists of the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency.

From that point forward, the federal government automatically acquired the power to kill people without due process of law. That is, it acquired the power to commit murder, with impunity.

It should not have surprised anyone that a Central Intelligence Agency agent was present when Bolivian forces captured and, later, executed Guevara.

Remember: this was 1967, when the United States national-security state was convinced that communists were coming to the United States to take over the federal government and turn American red.

This was also the period when United States forces had invaded Vietnam with the aim of killing communists.

This was also the period during which the United States national-security state was initiating regime-change operations, some of which involved the violent ouster democratically elected socialist and communist foreign leaders from power and replacing them with brutal pro-United States right-wing foreign dictatorships. Many of those regime-change operations had built into them the assassination of foreign officials who had never initiated any acts violence against the United States.

One example was the Central Intelligence Agencys ouster of the democratically elected president of Guatemala in 1954, Jacobo Arbenz, who was deemed a threat to United States national security. As part of the coup, the Central Intelligence Agency had prepared a list of Guatemalan officials to be assassinated.

Another example was the Pentagons and Central Intelligence Agencys regime-change operations against Castro in Cuba in the 1960s, which included invasion, terrorism, sabotage, and assassination.

Then there was the United States-instigated and United States-supported coup in Chile in the early 1970s, which included attempts by the Chilean national-security establishment to assassinate Chiles democratically elected president with a missile attack.

The Central Intelligence Agency has long maintained that it had expressed opposition to Guevaras execution and that the execution order had been issued by Bolivian officials over the Central Intelligence Agencys objection.

One big problem, of course, is that, as everyone knows, the Central Intelligence Agency lies. Do not forget, after all, that after Central Intelligence Agency Director Richard Helms was convicted of lying to Congress regarding the Chilean coup, Central Intelligence Agency officials honored and glorified him for lying. Moreover, there is one thing everyone agrees on: If "national security" requires the Central Intelligence Agency to lie, the Central Intelligence Agency will lie.

Another problem is the fact that the United States government had installed the Bolivian military dictatorship into power in a coup against the countrys democratically elected president and then trained many of its personnel at the Pentagons School of the Americas, also known as the School of Assassins. In a review of a book entitled "Who Killed Che? How the Central Intelligence Agency Got Away with Murder" by Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith, the reviewer, James Cockcroft, writes:

-The Central Intelligence Agency had tried to follow Che ever since 1954, and in 1962, with the help of Chicago mobster Johnny Rosselli, it tried to poison Che in Cuba (more than 600 botched Central Intelligence Agency attempts on Fidel Castros life also took place in those years and afterwards).

-The Central Intelligence Agency, with the United States military, vowed to track down Che and to "eliminate the guerrillas" operating under Ches command in Bolivia in 1966-67 in an operation supervised by sixteen Green Berets (United States Special Forces) charged with training the 2nd Ranger Battalion-Bolivian Army, the unit that captured Che.

-Twenty of the top twenty-three Bolivian military men heading Bolivias dictatorship at the time were trained at the United States School of the Americas, as were 1,200 other officers and men in the Bolivian Armed Forces and countless military dictators of Latin America.

-The Central Intelligence Agency country chief in Bolivia, by his own admission, had an understanding with Bolivias president, General René Barrientos, that Che must be killed if captured, and Barrientos gave his word that Che would indeed be executed.

-The head of the Bolivian Interior Ministry was on the Central Intelligence Agencys payroll, and the United States "military attaché" in La Paz was a Central Intelligence Agency agent.

-Two Central Intelligence Agency operatives, both ultra-rightist Cuban Americans, disguised themselves as Bolivian soldiers, and one of them, Felix Rodríguez, would later claim to be the highest-ranking military officer at the scene of Ches murder.

-The fingerprints from Ches cut-off hands were promptly matched in Washington with prior copies of Ches fingerprints.

What is the possibility that a United States puppet regime in Latin America would execute Guevara without getting a green light from its puppet-master? So remote as to be practically nonexistent.

Another problem is that one of the established practices of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency was to use local agents to do their dirty work, so that the Central Intelligence Agency could "plausibly deny" involvement in the crime.

That is what happened, for example, when United States intelligence officials used Chilean goons under Gen. Augusto Pinochet to murder two innocent Americans, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.

It is also why United States officials hired local goons in Chile to violently kidnap the commanding general the Chilean armed forces, Gen. Rene Schneider, which left him shot dead by the kidnappers.

In other words, Central Intelligence Agency complicity in Guevaras murder would have been entirely consistent with the United States national-security states mindset and actions during the Cold War, including its anti-communist assassination programs in Vietnam, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, and other parts of Latin America.

While the United States would not have had jurisdiction over an execution committed in Bolivia, it did have jurisdiction over a conspiracy here in the United States to commit murder in a foreign country.

Thus, the Justice Department had a duty to target the Central Intelligence Agency with a full investigation into whether it was complicit in Guevaras murder.

But that never happened. For one thing, the president of the United States would never have permitted the Justice Department to pursue such an investigation. For another, neither would the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

By the 1960s, the destruction of Americas founding principle of due process of law had become complete, at least insofar as the murder of communists was concerned.

The Pentagon’s and Central Intelligence Agencys power to murder communists was as omnipotent as their power to assassinate "terrorists" today.

Printed here with permission from Mr. Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation!! Their Great Website!!