UNITED STATES—The ad wiz Bernie Lukasey had been behind a piece by Brenda Starr, pulling the strings and pressing the right buttons. Bernie got the gal from the Times posted in Guatemala City. It was bespoke journalism that got showcased in the Sunday magazine, where Raynaud was depicted as a “man of action” as opposed to a diplomat.
The diplomat in Raynaud wanted his boss, one of the placidly sinister Dewey Bros. to feel placated and appeased in the report transmitted by private cable. When it came time to draft the report, Raynaud stepped up and said this man had done no wrong, meanwhile Bernie Lukasey was perfecting “It Can’t Happen Here—It already has” His bold booklet asserting that a Communist beachhead already raised its ugly red head in our own hemisphere. Only a day’s drive from Texas.
“Resignation is an option,” said Ambassador Reynaud.
“I shall never resign,” said a resolute President Gascón.
After the eight-hour meal, Ambassador Roy Renaud shlepped to the Embassy in Guatemala City in the wee small hours. He knew that there would be no way out for the leader who had stirred a hornet’s nest by promising to give land to landless peasants. President Gascón signed it into the law by executive order. They’ve got you over a barrel, the ambassador thought, seeking utmost detachment from the gloom that pervaded him when he glimpsed the fate awaiting an honestly elected leader who wanted only the best for his country. Not looking for justice, he thought, guilty or not guilty, but what would make the most impact. They believed they were serving national security, schematic. Knew and socialized and established.
If you want to fight a preemptive war best have a triggering event, you write history, fictionalize to create policy. All the better if it can be photographed. Point out to the public, this is why! In Guatemala was a shipload of armaments sent from Czechoslovakia but seized by the U.S. Navy before it was able to land in Puerto Barrios. The Swedish vessel falsified its papers and switched flags at various ports, but the CIA had tracked its every move since it set sail from the seaport of Stettin, Poland loaded to the gunwales with ordnance. The cargo included 7mm Mausers, Howitzers, hand grenades, mortars between 65 and 81 mm (crated in pyramidal boxes), anti-tank guns and anti-tank mines in “champagne boxes” and though no aircraft were among the cargo, the Agency reported rumors of knock-down aircraft, including five Spitfires and four huge crates, presumably containing fuselages.
Everyone from the Dewey Bros., who’d done legal counsel for AFCO on down, had either stocks or family connections with Allied Fruit Co. The only one who did not was President Krautheimer.
“These people operating on the everyday level are not even conscious of their conflict of interest. They felt they were doing something good for the land of the free and home of the brave in the symbolic Cold War with the Soviets.”
Its holds were inspected, and its cargo seized: bombs rifles, ammo, anti-tank mines and artillery that seemed to prove Soviet support of the Renaud’s government. Renaud said the Swedish ship proved only no other nation would sell him weapons because of the American led embargo. President Gastón needed weapons to fight the imminent invasion of Colonel Castillo Guerra and his army. An agent on the ground in Guatemala City, a former fratboy recruited from the University of Southern California, sent a communique:
“Gascón’s emissaries had been busy behind the Iron Curtain procuring large quantities of Czech arms and munitions, from with Soviet sphere of influence. The development has been watched with apprehension, for if the armaments reach Gascón before we are able to mount an invasion, the odds will be more heavily weighed against Guerra and his men.”
The agent concluded:
“This ship proves only that no other nation would sell me weapons because of the ongoing American embargo.”
Weapons were needed to fight the coming invasion of Castillo Guerra and his army. If the weapons reached Gascón, they feared, it would be more of an uphill battle for an American invasion. Spread on the deck of the ship, the guns proved the right photographic evidence. The American public went bananas. As Bernie Lukasey said, the masses follow symbols, blood and war, the stars and the stripes. In April that spring of love and death, the President declared, The Reds are in control of Guatemala and they are trying to spread their influence to San Salvador as a first step to breaking out of Guatemala to other South American countries. On June the 15th, the Company was given the green light for Operation Succes$.
“Be damn good and make sure you succeed,” President Krautheimer told Alfred Dewey. “When you commit the flag, you commit to victory.”
To be continued…
