Latin American gossip or Caribbean Basin intelligence sharing?: operation PBFORTUNE, 1952

ABSTRACT

This article reexamines the rise and fall of Operation PBFORTUNE by restoring the contributions of its Latin American participants. In 1952, a loose network of Caribbean Basin regimes sought to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz’s democratically-elected government in Guatemala. At the same time, the U.S. government’s State Department and CIA held the same goal. Lobbied by Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza on behalf of Guatemalan counterrevolutionary Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, the Truman Administration inadvertently approved what Caribbean Basin officials interpreted as their own scheme. Although the CIA would be regularly notified of meetings among Latin American actors, Assistant Secretary of State Edward Miller grew increasingly frustrated as Caribbean Basin officials contacted State Department officials whom Miller intended to keep unaware. When the State Department ended the program, U.S. officials blamed their Latin American counterparts in order to maintain plausible deniability and circumvent any discussions about their respective department’s role in Operation PBFORTUNE.

KEYWORDS:

• Latin America
• dictators
• exiles

Acknowledgments

This work was only possible thanks to those at the Archivo General de la Nación in Santo Domingo; Randy Sowell and everyone at the Truman Presidential Library; and David Fort, Amanda Weimer, and others at National Archives II who facilitated FOIA requests and more. The author thanks Amber Batura, Jeffrey Peter Crean, Roberto García Ferreira, David Hadley, Matt Jacobs, Matt Loayza, Michelle Paranzino, Samuel Sutherland, and his U.S.-Latin American Relations Seminar students Lea Colby, Oscar Gurrola, Christopher Smith, and Chelsea Venglar.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Memorandum for the Record, Washington, October 8, 1952, “Document 24,” in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954: Guatemala, ed. Susan K. Holly and David S. Patterson (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2003) (hereafter FRUSG).

² Quote from Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 562; Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), 338; Nelson D. Lankford, The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of David K. E. Bruce, 1898–1977 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1996), 249, 275; Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 582–585; Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954, second ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 27–32; Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (New York: Henry Holt, 2013), 101–102.

³ James Lockhart, “The Dulles Supremacy: Allen Dulles, the Clandestine Service, and PBFortune”, in Spy Chiefs: Volume 1: Intelligence Leaders in the United States and United Kingdom, ed. Christopher Moran, et al. (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2018), 105–106.

⁴ Michael J. Hogan, “The Next Big Thing: The Future of Diplomatic History in a Global Age”, Diplomatic History 28, no. 1 (2004), 3, 13; Gilbert M. Joseph, “What We Now Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin America More Meaningfully into Cold War Studies”, in In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 7; Daniela Spenser, “Standing Conventional Cold War History on Its Head”, in In from the Cold, 381–382.

⁵ Philip H. J. Davies and Kristian C. Gustafon, Editors, Intelligence Everywhere: Spies and Espionage outside the Anglosphere (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2013); Zakia Shiraz and Richard J. Aldrich, “Secrecy, Spies and the Global South: Intelligence Studies beyond the Five Eyes Alliance”, International Affairs 95, no. 6 (2019): 1313–1329.

⁶ Daniela Richterova and Natalia Telepneva, “An Introduction: The Struggle for the Global South – Espionage, Military Assistance and State Security in the Cold War”, The International History Review 43, no. 1 (2021).

⁷ Although participants in Operation PBFORTUNE never employed the words ‘plausible deniability’, this article uses the phrase to contrast Caribbean Basin and U.S. officials’ differing concerns over preserving the principle of nonintervention in line with how the phrase ‘lacks a clear conceptual grounding’. In doing so, this article can highlight how participants sought to engage in ‘unacknowledged activity’ while pursuing covert action, as suggested in Rory Cormac and Richard J. Aldrich, “Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Impalusible Deniability”, International Affairs 94, no. 3 (2018): 479.

⁸ E. Howard Hunt, Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent (New York: Putnam, 1974); David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch (New York: Ballantine, 1977); Ludwell Lee Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence: October 1950-February 1953 (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 1992); Robert M. Hathaway and Russell Jack Smith, Richard Helms: Director of Central Intelligence, 1966–1973 (Washington: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1993); Richard M. Bissell, Jr., Jonathan E. Lewis, and Frances T. Pudlo, Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Richard Helms and William Hood, A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: Random House, 2003); Max Holland, “Private Sources of U.S. Foreign Policy: William Pawley and the 1954 Coup d’État in Guatemala”, Journal of Cold War Studies, 7, no. 4 (2005): 36–73; E. Howard Hunt, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond (Hoboken: John Wiley, 2007).

⁹ Herbert L. Matthews, A World in Revolution: A Newspaperman’s Memoir (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 262–264; repeated in Richard Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), 119–121; Bryce Wood, The Dismantling of the Good Neighbor Policy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 159; Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 48–49; Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 228–231; Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2005), 91–92, 101–102; Michael Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008), 15; Daniel K.R. Crosswell, Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 53–54. This also relates to the reliance on limited sources or the incomplete N. Stephen Kane and William F. Sanford, Jr., eds. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954: The American Republics, Volume IV (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1983) (hereafter FRUSIV), that was followed by FRUSG.

¹⁰ Lankford, The Last American Aristocrat, 249; Beisner, Dean Acheson, 576, 584–585; Cullather, Secret History, 30–31.

¹¹ Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, ed. Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War, 1944–1948 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

¹² Aaron Coy Moulton, “The Dictators’ Domino Theory: A Caribbean Basin Anti-Communist Network, 1947–1952”, Intelligence and National Security 34, no. 7 (2019): 945–961.

¹³ Aaron Coy Moulton, “El frustrado bombardeo a la Ciudad de Guatemala: El General Federico Ponce y Rafael Trujillo en 1947”, Anales de la Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, XCIII (2018), 151–176; Aaron Coy Moulton, “Counter-Revolutionary Friends: Caribbean Basin Dictators and Guatemalan Exiles against the Guatemalan Revolution, 1945–1950”, The Americas 76, no. 1 (2019), 107–135.

¹⁴ On these perceptions, Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala; Wood, The Dismantling of the Good Neighbor Policy; Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America; Thomas M. Leonard, “Nationalism or Communism?: The Truman Administration and Guatemala, 1945–1952”, Journal of Third World Studies 7, no. 1 (1990), 169–191; Gleijeses, Shattered Hope; Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994); James Siekmeier, Aid, Nationalism, and Inter-American Relations: Guatemala, Bolivia, and the United States, 1945–1961 (Lewiston, NY, 1999); Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions.

¹⁵ César Pina Barinas, No. 488-A, Managua, 08 abril 1952, Carpetilla ‘1, 1951–1953, Nicaragua’, Caja 2,903,352, Colección Secretaría de Estado de Relaciones Exteriores, Fondo Presidencia, Archivo General de la Nación, Santo Domingo (en adelante AGNRD).

¹⁶ Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, No. 858-B, Managua, 18 julio 1952, Carpetilla ‘1’, Caja 2,903,352, AGNRD.

¹⁷ Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, No. 971-B, Managua, 02 septiembre 1952, Expediente ‘Nicaragua, Sec. Calderón’, Caja 2,903,958, AGNRD.

¹⁸ Héctor Incháustegui Cabral, No. 130, México, 23 enero 1952, Expediente ‘México’, Caja 2,903,957, AGNRD.

¹⁹ Héctor Incháustegui Cabral, No. 137, México, 25 enero 1952, Expediente ‘México’, Caja 2,903,957, AGNRD.

²⁰ Héctor Incháustegui Cabral, No. 151, México, 30 enero 1952, Expediente ‘México’, Caja 2,903,957, AGNRD.

²¹ Salvador A. Monclús, Núm. 1799, Habana, 08 abril 1952, Expediente ‘Informaciones Confidenciales, Venezuela’, Caja 2,903,956, AGNRD.

²² Luis F. Thomen, Washington, 12 abril 1952, Expediente ‘Informaciones Confidenciales, Venezuela’, Caja 2,903,956, AGNRD.

²³ Ramón Brea Messina, No. 29/52, Caracas, 03 marzo 1952, Expediente ‘México’, Caja 2,903,957, AGNRD.

²⁴ Héctor Incháustegui Cabral, No. 274, México, 19 febrero 1952, Expediente ‘México’, Caja 2,903,957, AGNRD.

²⁵ On the Soviet Union’s limited inroads into the Caribbean Basin before 1959, Rodolfo Cruz Cerdas, La hoz y el machete: La Internacional Comunista, América Central y la revolución en Centro América (San José: Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, 1986); Erik Ching, ‘El Partido Comunista de Costa Rica, 1931–1935: los documentos del Archivo Ruso del Comintern’, Revista de Historia 37 (enero-junio 1998): 7–226; Sandra Pujals, ‘¿Una perla en el Caribe Soviético?: Puerto Rico en los archivos de la Comintern en Moscú, 1921–1934’, Op. Cit. 17 (2006–2007): 117–157; Víctor Jéifets y Lázar Jéifets, ‘Los archivos rusos revelan secretos: El movimiento de la izquierda latinoamericana a la luz de los documentos de la Internacional Comunista’, Anuario Americanista Europeo 8 (2010): 35–64; J. A. Zumoff, ‘Ojos que no ven: The Communist Party, Caribbean Migrants, and the Communist International in the 1920s and 1930s’, The Journal of Caribbean History 45, no. 2 (2011): 212–247. On how U.S. government’s operations against Arbenz’s government sparked Soviet officials’ attention toward the Western Hemisphere, Michelle Denise Getchell, “Revisiting the 1954 Coup in Guatemala: The Soviet Union, the United Nations, and Hemispheric Solidarity”, Journal of Cold War Studies 172 (2015): 73–102.

²⁶ Ramón Brea Messina, No. 102/52, Caracas, 13 junio 1952, Expediente ‘Informaciones Confidenciales, Venezuela’, Caja 2,903,956, AGNRD.

²⁷ Héctor Incháustegui Cabral, No. 380, México, 29 febrero 1952, Expediente ‘México’, Caja 2,903,957, AGNRD.

²⁸ Héctor Incháustegui Cabral, No. 632, México, 17 abril 1952, Expediente ‘México’, Caja 2,903,957, AGNRD.

²⁹ Ramón Brea Messina, No. 29/52, Caracas, 03 marzo 1952, Expediente ‘México’, Caja 2,903,957, AGNRD.

³⁰ Ramón Brea Messina, No. 65/52, Caracas, 15 abril 1952, Expediente ‘Informaciones Confidenciales, Venezuela’, Caja 2,903,956, AGNRD.

³¹ ‘Ofensiva comunista en A. Latina’, Novedades (Managua) 01 julio 1952.

³² Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, No. 1032-A, Managua, 08 octubre 1952, Carpetilla ‘1951–1953, Nicaragua’, Caja 2,903,352, AGNRD.

³³ Ramón Brea Messina, Caracas, 28 mayo 1952, Expediente ‘Informaciones Confidenciales, Venezuela’, Caja 2,903,956, AGNRD.

³⁴ Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, No. 816-B, Managua, 01 julio 1952, Carpetilla ‘1951–1953, Nicaragua’, Caja 2,903,352, AGNRD.

³⁵ Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, Cable No. 962-B, 29 agosto 1952, Expediente ‘Nicaragua, Sec. Calderón’, Caja 2,903,958, AGNRD.

³⁶ Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, No. 969-B, Managua, 01 septiembre 1952, Expediente ‘Nicaragua, Sec. Calderón’, Caja 2,903,958, AGNRD.

³⁷ Ramón Brea Messina, Caracas, 05 agosto 1952, Expediente ‘Informaciones Confidenciales, Venezuela’, Caja 2,903,956, AGNRD.

³⁸ Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, Managua, 10 septiembre 1952, Expediente ‘Nicaragua, Sec. Calderón’, Caja 2,903,958, AGNRD.

³⁹ Ramón Brea Messina, ‘SITUACIÓN POLÍTICA VENEZOLANA’, septiembre 1952, Expediente ‘Informaciones Confidenciales, Venezuela’, Caja 2,903,956, AGNRD.

⁴⁰ Álvaro Logroño Batlle, No. 49, Mangua, 26 abril 1952, Expediente ‘Guatemala’, Caja 2,903,351, AGNRD.

⁴¹ ‘Memorandum From the Acting Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, Central Intelligence Agency ([name not declassified]) to the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (Helms)’, Washington, March 17, 1952, Document 7, FRUSG, 14.

⁴² Dean Acheson, Telegram 202, April 15, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua’, ‘Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Office of the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Edward G. Miller, Subject File: 1949–1953’, Record Group 59 (hereafter EGM), National Archives II, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NARAII).

⁴³ Edward G. Miller, Jr., to Dean Acheson, April 9, 1952; Edward G. Miller, Jr., to Dean Acheson, April 28, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua’, Box 8, EGM, NARAII; Dean Acheson to Harry S. Truman, April 18, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua’, OF 432, Box 1434, OF 439, Box 1435, Official File (hereafter OF), President’s Secretary’s File (hereafter PSF), Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri (hereafter HST).

⁴⁴ César Pina Barinas, No. 122-A, Managua, 28 enero 1952, Carpetilla ‘1951–1953, Nicaragua’, Caja 2,903,352; ‘Memorándum Al Excelentísimo Señor Secretario de Estado de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto’, con Virgilio Díaz Ordóñez 15,511, Ciudad Trujillo, 07 mayo 1952, Expediente ‘1952’, Caja 2,903,920, AGNRD.

⁴⁵ Matthews, A World in Revolution, 262–263.

⁴⁶ ‘(Est. Pub Date) Memo (Deleted) to JCK re: Guatemala 1954 Coup’, Estimated 1954, Document 0000914985, CIA FOIA; William Kirten, Jr., 181–52, November 28, 1952, with Rolland Welch to John L. Ohmans, Managua, December 22, 1952; Charles B. Layton, CARMA S-2-52, Managua, December 1, 1952, with Garrison B. Coverdale, G-2-CDR, Washington, December 24, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua: General Somoza’, Box 2, ‘Records of the Office of Middle American Affairs, Records Relating to Costa Rica and Nicaragua, 1951–1955’, Record Group 59 (hereafter OMAA/CRN), NARAII.

⁴⁷ Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi a Rafael L. Trujillo, Managua, 21 julio 1952, Expediente ‘Nicaragua, Sec. Calderón’, Caja 2,903,958, AGNRD; ‘Memorandum of Interview’, Washington, November 13, 1952, Document 31, FRUSG. Beisner, Dean Acheson; Thomas Tunstall Allcock, Thomas C. Mann: President Johnson, the Cold War, and the Restructuring of Latin American Foreign Policy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018); and others stress Miller and Thomas Mann’s leadership on such matters and Acheson’s consistent opposition to schemes that could jeopardize the image of U.S. nonintervention.

⁴⁸ Rodríguez Demorizi a Trujillo, 21 julio 1952; ‘MEMORANDUM: Conversaciones con el Dr. Eduardo Zuleta Ángel, en Panamá, del 2 al 5 de octubre de 1952’, Expediente ‘Panamá’, Caja 2,903,958, AGNRD; Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa, John L. Ohmans, Memorandum of Conversation, August 8, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua: Military Assistance Program’, Box 1, OMAA/CRN, NARAII; Document 0000937555, October 16, 1952, CIA FOIA.

⁴⁹ John L. Ohmans to Thomas C. Mann, ‘Subject: Conversations with Colonel Neil Mara, Assistant Military Aide to the President’, July 21, 1952, 717.00/7–2152, Box 3262, Decimal File 1950–1954, Record Group 59, NARAII; Cornelius J. Mara to Harry S. Truman, ‘Memorandum for the President’, July 11, 1952 Folder ‘Nicaragua’, OF 432, Box 1434, OF, PSF, HST; Cornelius J. Mara, Handwritten Note, Folder ‘G’, Box 156, Foreign Affairs File, Subject File, PSF, HST; ‘Memorandum of Interview’, Washington, November 13, 1952, Document 31, FRUSG.

⁵⁰ ‘Memorandum From [name not declassified] of the Western Hemisphere Division, Central Intelligence Agency to the Deputy Director for Plans of the Central Intelligence Agency (Wisner)’, Washington, July 09, 1952, Document 12, FRUSG.

⁵¹ Document 12, FRUSG.

⁵² Héctor Incháustegui Cabral, México, 21 agosto 1952, Expediente ‘México’, Caja 2,903,957, AGNRD.

⁵³ ‘Memorandum for the Record’, Washington, July 15, 1952, Document 13, FRUSG.

⁵⁴ ‘Memorandum of Conference’, Washington, July 21, 1952, Document 14, FRUSG.

⁵⁵ Document 14, FRUSG.

⁵⁶ ‘Telegram From the CIA Station in [place not declassified] to the Central Intelligence Agency’, June 23, 1952, Document 10, FRUSG; ‘Guatemala (Handwritten)’, July 10, 1952, Doc 0000915033, CIA FOIA.

⁵⁷ Document 14; ‘Memorandum From [name not declassified] of the Central Intelligence Agency to the Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, Central Intelligence Agency (King)’, Washington, October 8, 1952, Document 21; ‘Chronology Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency’, Washington, October 8, 1952, Document 22; ‘Memorandum for the Record’, Washington, October 8, 1952, Document 23, FRUSG; Document 0000915033, July 10, 1952; Document 0000136383, July 21, 1952, CIA FOIA. The CIA would note the Smith-Bruce phone call in Documents 21 and 22, FRUSG, but Bruce did not comment on the call in his diaries (David K. E. Bruce Diaries, Virginia Historical Society) and would deny having given clear approval in Document 23, FRUSG.

⁵⁸ Rodríguez Demorizi a Trujillo, 21 julio 1952; ‘MEMORANDUM … octubre de 1952’.

⁵⁹ Rodríguez Demorizi a Trujillo, 21 julio 1952. On Figueres’s relationship with influential U.S. officials who defended him against Caribbean Basin regimes, Charles Ameringer, Don Pepe: A Political Biography of José Figueres of Costa Rica (Albuquerque, NM, 1978); Kyle Longley, The Sparrow and the Hawk: Costa Rica and the United States during the Rise of José Figueres (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1997).

⁶⁰ ‘Intermediate Report on Military Plans for Guatemala’, Washington, September 1, 1952, Document 16, FRUSG.

⁶¹ José A. Paniagua, Núm. 570, Tegucigalpa, 10 septiembre 1952, Expediente ‘Guatemala’, Caja 2,903,351, AGNRD.

⁶² Paniagua, Núm. 570, 10 septiembre 1952; Document 16, FRUSG.

⁶³ José A. Paniagua, Núm. 572, Tegucigalpa, 12 septiembre 1952, Expediente ‘1949–1953’, Caja 2,903,825, AGNRD; ‘Memorandum From Jacob R. Seekford to the Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, Central Intelligence Agency (King)’, Washington, September 18, 1952, Document 18, FRUSG.

⁶⁴ Document 18, FRUSG.

⁶⁵ ‘Intermediate Report on Military Plans for Guatemala’, Washington, September 1, 1952, Document 16, FRUSG.

⁶⁶ Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi a Rafael Trujillo, Managua, 10 septiembre 1952, Expediente ‘Nicaragua, Sec. Calderón’, Caja 2,903,958, AGNRD.

⁶⁷ Rodríguez Demorizi a Trujillo, Managua, 10 septiembre 1952.

⁶⁸ ‘Telegram From the CIA Station in [place not declassified] to the Central Intelligence Agency’, September 12, 1952, Document 17, FRUSG.

⁶⁹ Rodríguez Demorizi a Trujillo, 10 septiembre 1952.

⁷⁰ Arturo Calventi, No. 2602, La Habana, 18 septiembre 1952, Expediente ‘V, 1948–1953’, Caja 2,904,034, AGNRD.

⁷¹ Rodríguez Demorizi a Trujillo, 10 septiembre 1952.

⁷² Luis Francisco Thomen and Edward G. Miller, Jr., Memorandum of Conversation ‘Subject: Conversation Between President Somoza and General Trujillo re: Anti-Communistic Activities’, September 11, 1952, Folder ‘Dominican Republic, 1949–1952’, Box 6, EGM, NARAII.

⁷³ Luis F. Thomen, 3248, 12 septiembre 1952, Expediente ‘Nicaragua, Sec. Calderón’, Caja 2,903,958, AGNRD.

⁷⁴ Thomen, 3248. Underline in original.

⁷⁵ Thomas E. Whelan, ‘Subject: Memo of Conversation Held with President Somoza’, September 2, 1952, with Rolland Welch to Thomas C. Mann, Managua, September 3, 1952, 717.00/9–352, Box 3262, Decimal File 1950–1954, Record Group 59, NARAII.

⁷⁶ Edward G. Miller, Jr., to Thomas E. Whelan, September 17, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua’, Box 8, EGM, NARAII.

⁷⁷ John L. Ohmans, ‘Ref: Your letter September 3 Panama “good will” mission’, September 12, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua: Political Relations with Neighbors’, Box 2, OMAA/CRN, NARAII.

⁷⁸ Rolland Welch to Edward G. Miller, Jr., Managua, September 23, 1952, Box 8, EGM, NARAII, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request.

⁷⁹ Fletcher Warren to Edward G. Miller, Jr., Caracas, September 25, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua: Political Relations with Neighbors’, Box 2, OMAA/CRN, NARAII.

⁸⁰ Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa, Thomas C. Mann, and John L. Ohmans, Memorandum of Conversation ‘Subject: Action against Guatemala’, September 26, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua’, Box 8, EGM, NARAII; Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa, Thomas C. Mann, and John L. Ohmans, ‘Memorandum of Conversation, by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mann)’, September 29, 1952, Miller files, lot 53 D 26, ‘Nicaragua’, FRUSIV.

⁸¹ ‘MEMORANDUM … octubre de 1952’.

⁸² Matthews, A World in Revolution, 264.

⁸³ See Thomas C. Mann to Dean Acheson, ‘Memorandum by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mann) to the Secretary of State’, 714.00/10–352, [Washington,] October 03, 1952, FRUSIV.

⁸⁴ Beisner, Dean Acheson, 576.

⁸⁵ Document 23, FRUSG.

⁸⁶ This adds to Dulles’s image put forward in Lockhart, ‘The Dulles Supremacy’.

⁸⁷ Document 24, FRUSG.

⁸⁸ Edward G. Miller, Jr., to Fletcher Warren, October 8, 1952, Folder ‘Venezuela, 1949–1952’, Box 14, EGM, NARAII.

⁸⁹ Fletcher Warren to Edward G. Miller, Jr., Caracas, October 27, 1952, Folder ‘350: Caribbean Area, Jan. 1950-Dec. 1952’, ‘Venezuela, US Legation and Embassy, Caracas, Classified General Records, 1935–1961’, Box 79, Record Group 84 ‘Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State’, NARAII.

⁹⁰ Thomas C. Mann to Thomas E. Whelan, October 22, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua: 1952, Arms, Ammunition, Aircraft, Equipment’, Box 1, OMAA/CRN, NARAII.

⁹¹ Thomas Mann to Thomas Whelan, October 13, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua: Political Relations with Neighbors’, Box 2, OMAA/CRN, NARAII.

⁹² Matthews, A World in Revolution, 263; ‘Memorandum of Interview’, Washington, November 13, 1952, Document 31, FRUSG.

⁹³ Rolland Welch to John L. Ohmans, Managua, December 22, 1952, Folder ‘Nicaragua: General Somoza’, Box 2, OMAA/CRN, NARAII.

⁹⁴ Edward W. Clark, ‘More On Proposed Intervention by President Somoza in Communist Situation in Guatemala’, January 6, 1953, Folder ‘Nicaragua: General Somoza’, Box 2, OMAA/CRN, NARAII.

⁹⁵ Edward W. Clark to Rolland Welch, January 8, 1953, Folder ‘Nicaragua: Political Relations with Neighbors’, Box 2, OMAA/CRN, NARAII.

⁹⁶ John Moors Cabot, Thomas C. Mann, John L. Ohmans, ‘Visit of Ambassador Sevilla-Sacasa’, March 10, 1953, Folder ‘Nicaragua: 1952, Personnel’, Box 1, OMAA/CRN, NARAII.

⁹⁷ ‘Memorandum for the Record’, Washington, September 11, 1953, Document 51, FRUSG. This is a common note in Cullather and other works on Operation PBSUCCESS.

⁹⁸ Studies on this backlash include Mark T. Hove, “The Arbenz Factor: Salvador Allende, U.S.-Chilean Relations, and the 1954 U.S. Intervention in Guatemala”, Diplomatic History 31, no. 4 (2007): 623–663; Roberto García Ferreira, ‘“El caso de Guatemala”: Arévalo, Arbenz y la izquierda uruguaya, 1950–1971’, Mesoamérica 49 (2007): 25–58; Max Paul Friedman, “Fracas in Caracas: Latin American Diplomatic Resistance to United States Intervention in Guatemala in 1954”, Diplomacy & Statecraft 21, no. 4 (2010): 669–689.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Phi Alpha Theta [John Pine Memorial Scholarship]; Stephen F. Austin State University College of Liberal and Applied Arts [Professional Development Funds]; Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations [Samuel Flagg Bemis Dissertation Research Grant]; Stephen F. Austin State University [Faculty Research Pilot Studies Grant]; Stephen F. Austin State University [Department of History Faculty Travel Award]; Truman Library Institute [Dissertation Year Fellowship].

Notes on contributors

Aaron Coy Moulton

Aaron Coy Moulton is Associate Professor of Latin American History at Stephen F. Austin State University. His current manuscript, Caribbean Blood Pact: The Guatemalan Revolution and the Origins of the Caribbean Basin’s Cold War, 1944-1954, reveals how Guatemalan counterrevolutionaries, Caribbean Basin dictators, transnational corporations, and British intelligence put into motion what would become the United States government’s Operation PBSUCCESS that in 1954 overthrew Guatemala’s democratically-elected government.