El Mozote

During the 1980s, El Salvador was engaged in a brutal civil war between the right-wing anti-communist government and various groups of left-wing guerrillas. The U.S. President at the time, Ronald Reagan, was a vehement anti-communist and supplied the El Salvadoran government with more than $7 billion in aid.

In addition to money, weapons, and international support, the U.S. government also trained Salvadoran troops at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, then located in Panama. It was these soldiers, trained by the United States, that committed some of the worst atrocities of the war. The massacre at the village of El Mozote is but one example.

Before proceeding, it is essential to understand the village of El Mozote itself. El Mozote was not a guerrilla town. Guerrilla support among the religiously devout was often created through the work of left-wing priests teaching Catholic liberation theology, but El Mozote was a stronghold of Protestant evangelicalism. As evangelicals, the people of El Mozote did not pledge allegiance to either side; they simultaneously tried to remain on friendly terms with both government soldiers and rebels.

On December 10, 1981 members of the the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite American-trained Salvadoran group notorious for its brutality, arrived at the rural village of El Mozote. Upon entering the town, the Atlacatl Battalion ordered everyone to lay face down in the dirt while the soldiers stole everything of value. The civilians were then ordered back into their houses until the next day.

On the morning of December 11, everyone was ordered back outside. Men were forced into the church while the women and children were put in the house of one Alfredo Marquez. A handful of men were tortured and decapitated while the majority were taken out into the forest, forced to lie down, and shot in the head. Meanwhile, soldiers picked out young women and girls and proceeded to rape them. The rest of the women were marched into the house of Israel Marquez where they were executed; the house was burned to the ground.

In regards to killing the children, one soldier remarked, “If we don’t kill them now, they’ll just grow up to be guerrillas.” The children were summarily executed and some were hung from tree branches. In all, around 1,000 civilians were murdered.

When reports of the killing appeared in El Salvador, the Salvadoran government denied all accusations, claiming that the incident was a "guerrilla trick." Soon, however, the Salvadoran government could no longer deny what happened and instead falsely claimed El Mozote was a guerrilla stronghold.

The Reagan administration, under pressure to explain the massacre, was being ambiguous at best. A cable from Washington stated,

“It is not possible to prove or disprove excesses of violence against the civilian population of El Mozote by Government troops . . . no evidence could be found to confirm that Government forces systematically massacred civilians in the operation zone.”

Reagan himself publicly stated that the Salvadoran government was “making a concerted and significant effort to comply with internationally recognized human rights.” At the time Reagan was busy petitioning Congress for even more military aid for the Salvadoran government.

After the war ended in 1992, a Truth Commission determined that at least twenty-four people participated in the massacre at El Mozote and that the guns and ammunition used in the massacre were produced in Lake City, Missouri.

Fred Hampton

Fred Hampton was born on August 30, 1948 in Chicago, Illinois. Gifted both academically and athletically, young Hampton cultivated a desire to eventually play baseball with the New York Yankees. The desire to be a professional athlete, however, soon gave way to activism. Hampton joined the NAACP as a youth organizer and worked to improve impoverished and marginalized black communities.

By the late 1960s Hampton had left the mainstream NAACP and instead joined the more radical Black Panther Party. While with the Black Panthers Hampton organized rallies, taught political education classes, and even helped to create a non-aggression pact between Chicago's most powerful gangs. Additionally, he helped organize the Black Panther's Free Breakfast Program and advocated for community supervision of the police. His skills as a revolutionary activist allowed for Hampton to quickly climb the Black Panther hierarchy, but the Panthers were not the only ones to notice Hampton's gifts...Hampton had caught the eyes and ears of the federal government.

F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover saw Hampton and the Panthers as a serious threat to the power of the United States government. In 1967 the F.B.I. officially created a file to keep tabs on Hampton; two years later the file had expanded to twelve volumes and over four thousand pages. Under the auspices of COINTELPRO, Hoover ordered his agents to eliminate the Black Panther Party and everything it stood for. One particular raid saw F.B.I. personnel "smashing typewriters, destroying food and medical supplies for the Panther health clinic and breakfast program, setting several small fires, and beating and arresting a number of Panthers for obstruction." Similar raids and arrests took place all over the country; federal agents infiltrated Panther chapters and spread disinformation, hoping to cause infighting and conflict.

By 1969 Hampton was in line to become Chief of Staff and spokesman for the Black Panther Party. It was at this time, however, that the F.B.I. decided to forever silence Fred Hampton. An infiltrator and informant, William O'Neil, told the F.B.I. that a "provocative" stockpile of weapons was being stored in Hampton's Chicago apartment. The F.B.I., in collaboration with the Chicago Police Department, planned what they claimed was an arms raid. In the pre-dawn hours of December 4, 1969 fourteen officers arrived at the apartment; the group split, with eight officers to enter through the front and six officers to enter through the back. At 4:45 am the police stormed the apartment; armed with twenty-seven weapons, they fired more than ninety bullets. Black Panther Mark Clark was killed instantly while Hampton, still asleep because of barbituates slipped into his drink by O'Neill, was wounded in the shoulder. Upon finding him still alive, the police shot Hampton twice in the head, point-blank. The remaining Panthers in the apartment were dragged into the street and beaten before being arrested on charges of "aggravated assault" and the "attempted murder of the officers;" each was given a $100,000 bail.


The Chicago Police Department defended the actions of its officers, claiming that the assault team showed "remarkable restraint," "bravery," and "professional discipline." Not surprisingly, a grand jury ruled that all of the participating officers were innocent of any crimes.

Though the State silenced Fred Hampton, his ideals live on. Hampton himself said it best:
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."

Smedley Butler

Smedley Darlington Butler was born on July 30, 1881 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Raised by Quaker parents, young Smedley attended prestigious schools and excelled in athletics. Thirty-eight days before his seventeenth birthday, however, Smedley enlisted in the Marine Corps; war had just erupted with Spain and Smedley answered his government's call to arms. He remained in the military for the next thirty-four years, eventually earning the rank of Major General.

During his three-plus decades in the military Major General Butler saw action all over the world: the Philippines, China, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Haiti, and the European battlefields of World War I. To compliment his lengthy list of experiences, Butler earned himself sixteen awards, including not one but two Medals of Honor.

Three years after his retirement from active duty in 1931, Major General Butler stood before the United States Congress and told of a conspiracy to overthrow President Roosevelt. According to Butler, a group of businessmen and a large contingent of ex-soldiers were intending to stage a coup and establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler was privy to this information because he was supposedly asked by the plotters to lead the ex-soldiers. A Congressional Committee found that Butler's allegations were indeed credible, but in the end no one was prosecuted. And while newspapers and publications like Time scoffed at Butler's claims, modern historians believe that a plot actually existed; the plot, however, is believed to have been in its infancy and was never close to being carried out.

When he was not busy exposing fascist plots, the retired Major General traveled the country speaking out against war profiteering. His 1935 book War is a Racket details numerous examples of industrialists, like the du Ponts, who greatly profited from the carnage of war. Reflecting on his long and distinguished military career, Butler wrote:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Smedley Butler passed away on June 21, 1940 from an "incurable condition of the upper gastro-intestinal tract." And though Butler has largely disappeared from collective memory, his accusations against capitalism and the military-industrial complex are just as relevant today as they were in 1935.

"War is a racket.
It always has been.
It is conducted for the benefit of the very few,
at the expense of the very many."

COINTELPRO

In 1956 the Federal Bureau of Investigations began one of its most notorious and covert operations in the history of its existence: the Counter Intelligence Program. Known as COINTELPRO, the program was originally developed to disrupt and interfere with the Communist Party. But as time went on, COINTELPRO began to interrupt, infiltrate, and destroy other movements that challenged the status quo; these include but are not limited to: black nationalists, women's rights advocates, socialists, civil rights activists, and the anti-war crowd. Wishing to maintain the "existing social and political order," F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered his agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" these movements and their leaders.

According to attorney Brian Glick, the federal government used four main methods during COINTELPRO:
1) Infiltration: Federal agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The F.B.I. and police then exploited this fear to make genuine activists appear as agents.
2) Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The F.B.I. and police used a myriad of other "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. The F.B.I. planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications under the authorship of targeted groups. Federal agents forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. Additionally, they spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
3) Harassment Through the Legal System: The F.B.I. and police used the legal system to harass dissidents and make them out appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.
4) Extralegal Force and Violence: The F.B.I. conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.

COINTELPRO, in its 15 year history, successfully infiltrated and harassed thousands of organizations and individuals, including the NAACP, the Black Panthers, the National Lawyers Guild, the American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In one particularly twisted and forgotten incident, the F.B.I. "targeted" American film actress Jean Seberg.

Mrs. Seberg was pregnant and living in Paris at the time with French husband Romain Gary. Seberg was also a well-known advocate for civil rights and was vocal in her support for groups like the NAACP and the Black Panthers. Having already caught the U.S. government's attention, the F.B.I. peeped into Seberg's banking records and found that she had donated over $10,000 to the Black Panther Party.

Taking advantage of her pregnancy, the feds circulated a false story claiming that a member of the Black Panther Party was actually the father; the government's version of the story was eventually widely circulated in Newsweek. By claiming that Seberg became pregnant by sleeping around with Black Panthers, the F.B.I. engaged in what is known as gray propaganda: half-true information intended to discredit groups and individuals in the eyes of the public.

The false story drove Seberg into an intense depression; her child was born prematurely in August of 1970 and died two days later. Severely depressed over the loss of her child and paranoid that the U.S. government was following her every move, Seberg committed suicide on September 8, 1979.

In 1971 COINTELPRO went public. Radical left-wing activists calling themselves the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the F.B.I. broke into a federal field office in Pennsylvania and stole numerous documents and dossiers; among the information were important files regarding COINTELPRO. After the files went public, J. Edgar Hoover "officially" shut down his COINTELPRO operation and declared that all future counter-intelligence operations would be done on a case-by-case basis.

In 1975 the Church Committee, led by Idaho Congressman Frank Church, investigated the government's counter-intelligence programs. In its Final Report, the Church Committee found that:

"Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association."

Sedition Act of 1918

In April of 1917 the United States of America declared war on Germany and entered World War I. According to President Woodrow Wilson, the United States intended to "make the world safe for democracy." One month later, the Selective Service Act reinstated the military draft. Protest erupted almost immediately, with many Americans angered about both about the war and the draft. The Wilson administration, worried that protesters would disrupt the war effort, passed the Sedition Act of 1918.

An amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act made it a felony to:
(1) Convey false statements interfering with American war efforts;
(2) Willfully employ "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the U.S. government, the Constitution, the flag, or U.S. military or naval forces;
(3) Urge the curtailed production of necessary war materials;
(4) Advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any such acts.

According to historian Alice Wexler, the law provided an excuse "for the prosecution of labor activists, dissidents, and radicals -- especially the anarchists, the I.W.W., and left-wing socialists -- who had gained considerable strength during the previous decade." Violators of the law were subject to fines, prison, and deportation. Anarchist Emma Goldman, for example, was imprisoned and later deported for speaking out against the draft.

But the law was most fiercely enacted against the radical anarcho-syndicalst union, the Industrial Workers of the World. The I.W.W. had long been a thorn in the side of big business and government, and the Sedition Act allowed the Wilson administration to legally break the union. All over the United States, federal agents raided I.W.W. meeting houses and offices; the U.S. Postal Service even withheld all I.W.W. mail. Mass arrests soon followed; in one instance, 166 people who were (or had been) members in the I.W.W. were arrested and charged with trying to "cause insubordination, disloyalty, and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces" -- in violation of the Espionage Act. One hundred and one defendants were found guilty; they received prison sentences ranging from ten days to twenty years.

The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled the Sedition Act as constitutional in the case of Abrams v. United States. But on December 13, 1920 Congress repealed the Sedition Act. By that time however, the war was over, and the United States could return to being a country that claimed to embrace free speech.

Ben Reitman

Ben Reitman (1879-1942) was an American anarchist and physician to the poor. Known as the "hobo doctor," Reitman offered his services to prostitutes, the homeless, and other outcasts of capitalism.

In 1912, Reitman and fellow anarchist Emma Goldman were in San Diego fighting the city's ordinance prohibiting free speech. As the city's jails filled with free speech advocates, violent vigilante groups formed to "re-educate" protesters on what it meant to be "patriotic." Reitman was abducted by one such group and his story was subsequently printed in the New York Times....

REITMAN DESCRIBES HOW HE WAS TARRED

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Emma Goldman’s Manager Tells About Tortures Inflicted by Vigilantes on California Desert.

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RAMMED FLAG IN HIS THROAT

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Beat Him With Clubs, Too, He Says, for His Inability to Sing “Star-Spangled Banner.”

LOS ANGELES, Cal., May 16-Dr. Ben Reitman, Anarchist and manager of Emma Goldman, dictated to-day his account of the tar-and-feather episode at San Diego, of which he was the central figure. He denied himself to newspaper men and sent copies of the following story to the hotel lobby.

“I was taken from the U.S. Grant Hotel Tuesday night by fourteen men and placed in an automobile. When I refused to go, four of them placed revolvers against my body. They were well dressed and, apparently, refined. One clapped his hand over my mouth and the police cleared a path to the waiting machine.

“We drove thirty miles into the lower California desert, followed by another automobile crowded with vigilantes. The torture began at once. Fingers were thrust into my eyes, they tore out hair by the roots, and applied epithets worse than one could hear in the vilest criminal dens in the lowest country on earth.

“At a certain spot more men were awaiting us around a fire. The automobile searchlights illuminated the place. First my clothing was torn off. Then their treatment of me was gross, fiendish, and barbarous.

“Screaming in pain, I begged them to kill me. ‘No,’ they replied; they wanted me to go away and tell how they received advocates of free speech in San Diego. Being unable to sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ I was beaten with a club. I stood unclothed in a yelling circle of white men, who advanced in pairs, their eyes glittering in the searchlights, to inflict pain. I have read of Indians; even they could not devise means of producing suffering than those fourteen Americans. They vied to see who could conceive the most diabolical torture.

“One asked me if I believed in God. I replied that no God could permit such desperate deeds. Each of the fourteen stepped forward and propounded a question. I answered truthfully, and each smashed me in the face as I spoke. Their final scheme before the burning was ‘running the gauntlet.’ I ran through a double row of men, each beating me with a club as I passed. They got that from the Indians.

“Then while six held me on the ground, another slowly traced figures [“I.W.W”] on my back with a lighted cigar, searing the flesh horribly. Their cry was: “We’re Americans, and we’ll teach you to keep away from San Diego.’

“The American flag was rammed into my throat until I was strangled. After enduring two hours of torture, the boiling tar was applied, with desert grasses stuck to it. Then I was chased into the desert, one man following and beating me with my own cane until he stopped from exhaustion. They said they’d treat Miss Goldman the same way if she was captured.

“At dawn I reached a little town called Bernardo and entered it. Before turning me loose, my underclothes, vest, and $20 in money were given to me. I didn’t get my watch or papers. I bought turpentine and the clothes I now have on, washed and dressed as well as I could.

“We cannot prosecute. Gov. Johnson has been appealed to in vain. What are we going to do?”

Published May 17, 1912 in the New York Times