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ABSTRACT
Recent scholarship debates the signaling function of secrecy and covertness. At the international level, covertness is used to achieve strategic objectives without risking escalation or openly violating international law. Domestically, secrecy is understood as a method to pacify domestic constituencies. These are typically understood as obstacles to the conduct of (covert) foreign policy. Building primarily on archival material, the analysis highlights the role of ‘selective disclosures’ of information regarding covert operations. This article analyses the Eisenhower Administration’s 1954 intervention in Guatemala (PBSUCCESS). We find that the executive used disclosures – and not secrecy – to pacify hawkish domestic constituencies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Dulles, “Memorandum for the Record, ‘Project PBSUCCESS’”
2. Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community: 1947–1994, 4–5.
3. Understood here as CIA, White House, and State Department.
4. Cormac and Aldrich, “Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Implausible Deniability”.
5. Smith, ‘Secret but Constrained: The Impact of Elite Opposition on Covert Operations’; Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics; Carson, ‘Facing off and Saving Face: Covert Intervention and Escalation Management in the Korean War’; Carson and Yarhi-Milo, ‘Covert Communication: The Intelligibility and Credibility of Signaling in Secret’.
6. Pozen, “The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information,” 522; Perina, “Black Holes and Open Secrets: The Impact of Covert Action on International Law,” 542.
7. Banka and Quinn, “Killing Norms Softly: US Targeted Killing, Quasi-Secrecy and the Assassination Ban”.
8. Vlad, “The Perils of Presidential Openness: Strikes, Secrecy and Performative Opacity” and Stamnitzky, “Truth and consequences? Reconceptualizing the politics of exposure”.
9. Barrett, “Glimpses of a Hidden History: Sen. Richard Russell, Congress, and Oversight of the CIA”.
10. Secrecy has also been the object of extensive ‘critical’ scholarship. See for example Walters, State Secrecy and Security: Refiguring the Covert Imaginary; and Melley, The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State.
11. Cormac and Aldrich, “Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Implausible Deniability”.
12. Poznansky, “Revisiting Plausible Deniability”.
13. O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War.
14. Poznansky, ‘Feigning Compliance: Covert Action and International Law’.
15. Cormac and Aldrich, “Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Implausible Deniability” 481 and 488.
16. Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics. Looking at assassination, Hanni and Grossman have also discussed ‘theatrical murder’ and the signaling function of the assassination of dissidents in Putin’s Russia. Hanni and Grossman, ‘Death to traitors?’
17. Carson and Yarhi-Milo, “Covert Communication: The Intelligibility and Credibility of Signaling in Secret,” 125.
18. Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, 54.
19. Carson and Yarhi-Milo, “Covert Communication: The Intelligibility and Credibility of Signaling in Secret,” 135.
20. Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, 12.
21. Carson and Yarhi-Milo, “Covert Communication: The Intelligibility and Credibility of Signaling in Secret,” 135.
22. See for example the concern of members of the NSC for hawkish domestic constituencies at the time of the Korean War. Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, 170.
23. Callanan, Covert Action in the Cold War (London: Bloomsbury, 2020) and O’Rourke, Covert. See also Gibbs’ view on the ‘internal threats’ rationale for secrecy. David Gibbs, ‘Secrecy and International Relations’, 219.
24. Smith, “Secret but Constrained: The Impact of Elite Opposition on Covert Operations,” 686 and 689.
25. Cormac and Aldrich, ‘Grey is the new black’.
26. Pozen, “The Leaky Leviathan”.
27. Banka and Quinn, “Killing Norms Softly”.
28. Stampnitzky, “Truth and consequences?” 5.
29. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954, 297.
30. Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. For an extensive discussion of the role of United Fruit in setting the stage for the intervention see Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations; Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention; Appy, ‘Eisenhower’s Guatemalan Doodle, or: How to Draw, Deny, and Take Credit for a Third World Coup’; Johnston Huntington, ‘Saving Face, Sacrificing Democracy: American Ontological Security and the 1954 Intervention in Guatemala’.
31. Callanan, Covert Action in the Cold War, 125.
32. Hadley, The Rising Clamor, 49–53.
33. Johnson, Spy Watching.
34. Manosevitz, ‘The Intelligence Politics of Early Congressional Oversight of CIA’.
35. Snider, The Agency and the Hill; Barrett, The CIA and Congress, and Barrett, ‘Glimpses’.
36. Barrett, “Congress, the CIA and Guatemala, 1954,” 23.
37. See Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala for the first view, Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, for the second.
38. Cook, “The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy,” 221–25.
39. Dulles, “Memorandum RE: PB FORTUNE, March 8, 1953”.
40. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, 115.
41. Tofte, “Chief P/P Ops, Memorandum for the Record, ‘Senator Hickenlooper’s Statement on Guatemala’, November 24, 1953”.
42. Meeting, “Office of the DCI, DCI, CIA Officials, and Senator Hickenlooper, November 28, 1953”.
43. Ibid.
44. Memorandum for Senator Hickenlooper, Subject: ‘Background Information on Guatemala’.
45. See exchange of letters between Julius Cahn and Bernays, as well as Wiley’s public denials that he was in touch with United Fruit. Senator Wiley Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 15, Folder 18.
46. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, 115.
47. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 262.
48. ‘Letter from Julius Cahn (Committee Counsel), to Edward Bernays, 15/1/1954’.
49. ”Letter Bernays to Cahn, Senator Wiley Papers”.
50. ”Memorandum from Jack Neal to Mr Holland (ARA), May 5, 1954”.
51. ”Letter from John M. Cabot to Wiley, February 9, 1954”.
52. Memo Pforzheimer to Dulles, January 13, 1954”.
53. Memorandum, Lunch Dulles – Saltonstall, January 18, 1954”.
54. Memorandum for DDP, 26 January 1954.
55. Wisner, “Memorandum for the DCI, February 1, 1954”.
56. Fulbright, Congressional Record, February 1, 1954.
57. Wisner, “Memorandum for the DCI, February 1, 1954”.
58. Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 163.
59. Bolton, Congressional Record, February 3, 1954.
60. ‘Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, February 15, 1954’.
61. See Margaret Chase Smith’s column ‘Washington and You’ in the Lewiston Sun, February 16, 1954
62. ‘Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, 15 February 1954’.
63. Morton, “Letter to Wiley, February 23, 1954”.
64. Gleijeses, Shattered, 256.
65. ”189th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, March 18, 1954”.
66. ‘Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’, Volume 6, 83rd Congress, 1954, 192
67. Gleijeses, Shattered, 265.
68. ”Memorandum, May 17, 1954”.
69. Barrett, The CIA and Congress, 155.
70. ”Lunch between Senator Knowland and DCI, DDCI, Acting DDP, Acting DDI, and Legislative Counsel for February 12, 1954”.
71. ”Deputies Meeting, February 15, 1954”.
72. ‘Memorandum for the Record, Weekly PBSUCCESS Meeting with DD/P, 9/3/1954’.
73. ”Pforzheimer Diary, April 1, 1954”.
74. Dulles, “Memorandum for the Record, ‘Project PBSUCCESS’”
75. ‘Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency, April 4, 1954, Subject: Disadvantages and Damages Resulting from a Decision to Discontinue or Substantially Modify PBSUCCESS’.
76. ”Memorandum from [Redacted] to Wisner, April 22, 1954, Folder Weekly Psych Intelligence Report − 5–12 April 1954”.
77. ”Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Holland) to the Acting Secretary of State, April 20. 1954,” FRUS 1952–1954 The American Republics, Volume IV.
78. ”Excerpt From the Diary of James C. Hagerty, Press Secretary to the President, April 26, 1954”.
79. Barrett, The CIA, 163.
80. US House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, “Situation in Guatemala and Costa Rica,” 467.
81. Jackson, “Congressional Record, House, February 25, 1954’.
82. ”Telephone Conversation with Knowland, May 18, 1954, 11:38am”.
83. ”Telephone Conversation with AD, 18/5/1954, 5:10pm”.
84. White House Office, National Security Council Staff, Papers: 1948–1961
85. Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles, 380.
86. Gruson, “Guatemala Fails to Grasp US Concerns over Reds”.
87. Gruson, “US Stands on Arms Unites Guatemala”.
88. 199th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, May 27”.
89. ”Dulles as DCI Entry for May 28, 1954”.
90. Ibid.
91. ”Telegram from Director to [Redacted], Info: Lincoln, May 30, 1954”.
92. ”Memorandum, Cutler to Dulles, May 26, 1954, White House Office”.
93. ”Telegram from Director to [Redacted], Info: Lincoln, May 30, 1954”.
94. The codename for Armas.
95. ”Telegram from Director to [Redacted], Info: Lincoln, May 30, 1954”.
96. Potentially Hillings himself or someone with contacts in Congress.
97. ”Telegram from Director to [Redacted], Info: Lincoln, May 30, 1954”.
98. Barrett, The CIA, 163.
99. ”Telegram from [Redacted] to Director, June 14, 1954, Folder Official Routing Slip − 11 June 1954”.
100. The Washington Post ‘Red Plot to Seize Latin America Seen’, June 6, 1954.
101. ”Dulles as DCI, Undated, June 7, 1954”.
102. James Hagerty, Diary Entry, June 19, 1954.
103. McMahan, “Memorandum for the President’, June 20, 1954, Summary of the Situation in Guatemala Prepared by AWD”.
104. Immerman, The CIA, 152
105. Barrett, The CIA, 168.
106. ”Guatemala Briefing, Dated 5/6/1954”.
107. Pforzheimer, Diary 22 June 1954 Entry”.
108. ‘Memo from Robert Woodward (ARA) to Mr Raine and Mr Herron (ARA), June 23, 1954’.
109. Abell, Drew Pearson Diaries: 1949–1959, 323.
110. Holland, “Private Sources”.
111. Pawley, Russia is Winning, 343–44.
112. ”Memorandum for Holland, 25 June 1954, Reports Meeting between R. L. O’Connor and David Keyser”.
113. ”Statement by Democratic Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, 25/6/1954”.
114. ”Telephone Call from Senator Knowland, June 24, 1954, 11:50am”.
115. Appy, “Eisenhower’s Guatemalan Doodle, or: How to Draw, Deny, and Take Credit for a Third World Coup”.
116. ”Meeting with President and Congressional Leadership, June 28, 1954”.
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Funding
Notes on contributors
Luca Trenta
Luca Trenta is Associate Professor in International Relations, Department of Politics, Philosophy, and IR, Swansea University
Kevin T Fahey
Kevin T Fahey is a Assistant Professor of Political Science, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
Douglas B Atkinson
Douglas B Atkinson is a Assistant Professor, Political Science, Brigham Young University