Reed Irvine - Editor
Communist terrorists' decade-long campaign to seize El Salvador reached a propaganda high-water mark Nov. 23 when a New York Times editorial pronounced, "The last thing Americans want is to be forced to fight for a rightist regime associated with the killings of priests." Three major distortions in a 21-word sentence illustrate the skill with which the terrorists and their claque of American supporters have beguiled the media into distorting reality beyond recognition in Salvador.
Distortion #1 was the implication Americans might be "forced to fight in Salvador," a prospect existing chiefly in the fantasies of editorialists and leftists who reflexively want to "avoid another Vietnam" regardless of the circumstances. Distortion #2 is the charge that the Cristiani government committed or condoned the murder of six Jesuit priests. Distortion #3 is the implication that it has been proven that the murders were the work of rightist foes of the FMLN. That is a premature verdict as yet unsupported by any evidence published in the Times or elsewhere. Indeed, circumstances suggest the FMLN--abetted by the Times and other media--might have succeeded in a cruel deed of disinformation to save their failing offensive.
We refer to the rush-to-judgment by the media in blaming the deaths of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter on "right wing death squads" supported or condoned by the government of President Alfredo Cristiani. The rush started when NYT reporter Lindsey Gruson made two serious errors in his original story on the murders and then used his own flimsy circumstantial evidence to write, "It is just short of inconceivable that anyone except right-wing fanatics had actually ordered the murders."
In fact, a plausible case can be made that the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) brutally murdered the priests for propaganda purposes, to divert attention from its guilt in causing hundreds of civilian and military casualties with its callous urban offensive. The FMLN knew our media would reflexively blame the military or "right-wing death squads."
The New York Times' bias is shown both in its news stories and its editorial pages. The paper's major opted article on El Salvador during the offensive was by Robert White, ambassador to that country under Carter and now director of a leftist think tank in Washington. White wrote on Nov. 21, "The guerrillas are not trying to shoot their way into power. They are trying to shoot their way into serious negotiations." He claimed the FMLN "revolution is homegrown, authentic and enjoys wide popular support." He asserted, "Modern engines of war supplied by the U.S. strafe, bomb and burn the shantytowns of San Salvador, maiming and killing thousands of innocent civilians." All of this is false, as was White's charge that the six priests had been tortured for nearly an hour before they were "executed."
All the letters to the editor published in the Times since the terrorist attack began have been supportive of the FMLN. Three such letters ran on Dec. 5. One writer, a graduate student, ranted, "The main culprit continues to be the bloodthirsty, undemocratic and self- aggrandizing United States-backed military, which, like a pit bull terrier, will heel only to the hand that feeds it." Another ran under the headline "Another Vietnam," a non-applicable scare slogan used to discourage Americans from trying to keep terrorists from toppling a freely elected government.
Ironically the Times is implicitly lending support to a Marxist-Leninist terror umbrella group at the very time Eastern Europe is throwing off the yoke of communism. Having played a major role in putting Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega into power, the Times is now doing its best to undermine our efforts to keep El Salvador free.
As the events of November dramatically illustrate, the FMLN succeeded in making Salvador "another Vietnam" in one vital area, that of public perceptions. On Feb. 26, 1982, the New York Times quoted Hector Oqueli, one of the leaders of the communist rebellion, "We have to win the war inside the United States." A colleague, Ruben Zamora, indicated the success of the Vietnamese communists taught the FMLN a lesson in American media manipulation. The NYT quoted Zamora, "The American media, especially television, turned public opinion against the war." The Times learned nothing from what the communist strategists told its reporters.
The FMLN offensive, which bore an uncanny strategic resemblance to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam of January 1968, started the night of Nov. 11 when their death squads tried to murder Cristiani and top government leaders in their homes. When these missions failed, the next phase was an invasion of working districts of San Salvador by a force first estimated at 1,500 FMLN guerrillas (subsequent reports put the total at 2,500). The terrorists, saying they hoped to spark a "mass insurrection," deliberately fortified themselves in private homes in working-class neighborhoods, endangering the lives of thousands of innocent people. They calculated that civilian deaths would turn public opinion against Cristiani and that the people would rise up and support them. Not so.
The guerrillas infuriated residents through wanton destruction of their homes. They knocked out interior walls of blocks of row homes so they could move from house to house undetected. They conscripted civilians at rifle point to dig trenches and build barricades.
The Times' Lindsey Gruson admitted (on Nov. 26) that the FMLN "had more guns than volunteers, and the civilians did not rise" to join the offensive. "Most Salvadoraris," he wrote, "are fed up with the war and see it as a continuing cycle of killing and poverty." In the working-class district of Soyopango, "workers stayed at their posts in a shoe factory caught in the crossfire. Evidently they saw steady jobs as offering a better future than revolution."
Even though the Salvadoran military used marked restraint, the communist offensive was sputtering to an end by Nov. 16. A New York Times headline that morning said, "Guerrillas Are Reported 'on Brink of Defeat.'" Gruson reported a consensus by diplomats, military commanders and reporters that the guerrillas "were weakening and might be squeezed out soon."
Then came the dramatic murders of the Jesuit priests at the University of Central America, on the outskirts of San Salvador. The most well known of the victims were Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria, the university rector, and vice rector Ignacio Martin-Baro. Both men enjoyed popularity with the U.S. media as articulate spokesmen for the FMLN cause. Martin-Baro was featured last March on ABC's "20/20" decrying any chance of a democratic Salvador resulting from free elections, but his leader, Fr. Ellacuria, had undergone a sea change of political opinion in recent months, as we point out below. Three of the priests are said to have been far less involved politically than these two.
Gruson's lead on his story about their murder said they were shot "by what one witness described as a group of 30 men dressed in military uniforms." He did not identify the witness, "an employee of the university," nor claim to have done an interview; the witness's account was supposedly given to "colleagues" of the slain priests.
Americas Watch, a left-oriented "human rights organization," quickly produced a report that on Nov. 27 the Times claimed contained "evidence pointing to military involvement." The Times quoted the report as criticizing American diplomats for "ignoring what it calls 'overwhelming' circumstantial evidence pointing to the culpability" of the Salvadoran armed forces.
Circumstantial -- or Contrived?
Americas Watch repeated the original statement about "30 heavily armed and uniformed soldiers" entering the university grounds. Its "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" made these points: (1) the university grounds "had been under strict army control for several days prior to the killings;" (2) under an army curfew, no one was allowed out of doors in the area from 6 P.M, through 6 A.M.; (3) the killings and destruction of the priests' offices took 40 to 45 minutes; nonetheless, "the assassins were undisturbed by troops occupying the area;" (4) the priests bad been "denounced and explicitly threatened on a radio station under government control on Nov. 12;" (5) the victims "were shot dead with high-powered rifles of the caliber used by the army and security forces;" and (6) Jesuits and the university "have been targets of right wing violence and intimidation for at least a decade."
Mark Uhlig, Gruson's colleague in El Salvador, wrote a 17-inch article on the Americas Watch report Nov. 27. Uhlig did not bother to analyze the "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" presented by the leftist group.
The most glaring omission was any mention of why the FMLN could have considered the priests expendable-- men more valuable politically if slaughtered than alive.
In his first story on the murders Gruson concealed a significant change of mind on Ellacuria's part. He depicted Ellacuria as a Cristiani adversary. He wrote that Ellacuria had given an interview on Nov. 14 calling on the government to recognize the FMLN "as representing an important and disenchanted part of the country and to find a political solution to the civil war." He quoted Ellacuria as saying, "I think the predominant feeling is that the FMLN has a lot of force and that the violence should end through negotiations."
Douglas Farah of the Washington Post the same day gave a very different picture of Ellacuria's views. He wrote that the rector was long considered an FMLN supporter by the military, "hated by the far right and often denounced" as an apologist for the communists. But in the past year, and especially since Cristiaui's election, Farah said, he "has become one of the harshest critics" of the FMLN. Farah reported that in recent interviews Ellacuria argued the FMLN's intent to foment an insurrection could not succeed, and he urged its leaders to become more flexible.
Farah wrote that Ellacuria's last published work, an editorial in the magazine ECA reviewing Cristiani's first months, "surprised many by speaking favorably of the president and saying he had consolidated his position and staved off the violent right led by Roberto d'Aubuisson."
It has been reported that Ellacuria went to Managua last fall to visit FMLN leaders there to urge them to abandon the armed struggle. That Ellacuria had essentially broken with the FMLN has never been made known to persons who rely upon the Times. The Times' omission is critical.
The Times, along with other media, ignored another event that may have given the FMLN a motive to kill Ellacuria. On Oct. 31, a powerful bomb destroyed the headquarters of the leftist National Trade Union Federation of Salvadoran Workers, FENASTRAS. Ten persons died, another 29 were wounded. FMLN cited this bombing as the pretext for launching its November offensive, a claim the media reported.
What the media did not report was Cristiani's appointment of a commission to probe the bombing. He named representatives from the Organization of American States, the United Nations, the Salvadoran Catholic hierarchy, the Attorney General's Office, and FENASTRAS itself.
The Catholic hierarchy designated Fr. Ellacuria as its member and he accepted--to the outrage of the Salvadoran far left. FENESTRAS refused to participate, its leadership showing no interest in finding any proof as to who did the bombing. A U.S. intelligence analyst told us he found this sequence "most interesting." With scores of thousands of persons already dead, what value would the FMLN put on what he called a "handful of labor leaders." He said, "They're the sort of people the hard-core communists would kill anyway should they seize power." And should a commission, which included Ellacuria, blame the FMLN, the communists would be permanently discredited.
Ellacuria's turnabout was no secret to the Times. Bernard Aronson, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Nov. 17 that Ellacuria had said publicly he thought Cristiani was moving in the right direction. Robert Pear of the Times' Washington bureau wrote more than 30 inches on Aronsou's testimony; he did not mention the comment about Ellacuria. Nor, so far as we could find, did any other newsman covering the hearing.
Media coverage of the murders did not explore any possible motives for the FMLN to have killed the priests. Nor did the media point out the obvious fact that the murders would be a political disaster for the government, given its violent antecedents and the imminent late- November vote on continuation of American aid. An intelligence analyst told us, "This is too stupid even for the Salvadoran military to pull off." Nonetheless, Gruson wrote on Nov. 19: "El Salvador's violent history made it just short of inconceivable that anyone except right-wing fanatics had actually ordered the murders." On Nov 21 he wrote that the killers were "widely believed to have been associated with the military," which is certainly true. But one reason for that belief is that so much of the reporting was so biased in that direction.
How firm is the "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" cited by Americas Watch, and uncritically reprinted by the Times? The "witness" cited by Gruson in his original story proved to be Lucia Barrera de Cerna, a cleaning woman. Gruson's claim that the murders were done by "30 men dressed in military uniforms" suggested that a sizable party of soldiers got through military cordons onto the campus. Barrera, however, emerged and gave a deposition to authorities. She was quoted in the Times as saying she saw only five men, "three of them in camouflage and two others in dark uniforms." She could not see their faces in the dark.
Gruson reported this new tally in the 19th paragraph of a 22 paragraph story published on Nov. 28; he did not point out the error of the earlier "30 men" statement, which appeared in the first sentence of his lead story in the paper on Nov. 17. Farah of the Washington Post gave a different account. He wrote that Barrera "observed five persons thing into the priests' residence, and three others, all masked, standing beside them." She said they were wearing the kind of uniforms like the soldiers wear, but without insignia. Both sides wear camouflage uniforms.
Assuming the campus was under military surveillance, it would have been far easier for a group of five men to penetrate than 30. But the impression that the campus was cordoned off is also false. Those familiar with the campus, which is on the outskirts of the city and abuts a wooded area, say that it would be impossible to cordon off the campus. Its penetration by terrorists was possible.
The "radio threats" to the priests cited by Americas Watch to show military culpability came during a call-in show designed for people to let family members know where they were. A caller said the priests should be assassinated for supporting the FMLN. The announcer immediately cut him off.
Persons familiar with Salvadoran military armament dispute Americas Watch's claim that empty rifle casings found at the scene necessarily "were of the caliber used by the army and security forces." Most of the casings were AK-47--the basic rifle of the FMLN. The most common weapon for the Salvador army is the American-made M-16.
Gruson's first story on the killings contained a grisly detail that proved wrong. He quoted the Rev. Jose Maria Tojeira, Jesuit Provincial for Central America, as saying, "They were assassinated with lavish barbarity. For example, they took out their brains." Lee Hockstader and Douglas Farah of the Washington Post wrote more cautiously, but also created the impression of torture. They wrote that several bodies "appeared to have chunks of flesh gouged out, and what appeared to be brain tissue from those shot in the head lay several feet from the body." Richard Jacobsen of Reuters quoted the Rev. Walter Farrell, "a Jesuit leader in the United States," as saying, "They took out their brains. They just gouged them out." Both television and still photographs suggest reporters saw the bodies at the scene. No TV network reported the brain-gouging claim. To columnist Mary McGrory of the Washington Post, the removal of the brains became "a gruesome metaphor of the murderers."
The Jesuit Order asked the American Association for the Advancement of Science to supply a team to do autopsies on the priests. Dr. Robert Kirschner, deputy medical examiner of Cook County, Ill., took the assignment along with two other pathologists. They examined five of the bodies, and found no evidence of torture, much less any "brain gouging."
Kirschner gave press interviews in New York en route from San Salvador back to Chicago. He said, "Much of the talk of torture and mutilation came from people who were unfamiliar 'with the effect of high-velocity gunshot wounds." A Reuters account of the interview was incorporated into a Washington Post article on Nov. 21. That an experienced pathologist debunked the most grisly aspect of the murder story did not deter the Post from publishing McGrory's "metaphor" column the same day.
The AAAS issued a statement on Nov. 22 summarizing the pathologists' findings, repeating Kirschner's statements that "we have not seen any obvious evidence of torture or post-mortem mutilation." But our newspaper of record, The New York Times, has not reported this. As far as its readers are concerned, Gruson's brain-gouging report and White's hour-long torture claim in his op-ed article are the last word on the subject.
White acknowledged to us that he saw Dr. Kirschher's denial of any evidence of torture before his op-ed article was published by the Times. He said he called and found that the article had already been set in type, and so he made no effort to change it. He did not inform the op-ed page editor of the report that refuted his torture charge. Nor did he ever ask the Times to correct this error that has helped fuel anti-Cristiani-- and anti-U.S.--propaganda fires throughout the Hemisphere. The New York Times News Service has more than 250 client newspapers. Its erroneous information was printed in many of these papers.
The lie was repeated in a letter to the NYT on Dec. 5-- 14 days after the AAAS statement--written by Christopher Lydon, a former Times reporter now with WGBH, the public television station in Boston. The Jesuits, Lydon wrote, "had their brains carved out." Thus the Times' lie lives.
Military Loss, Psychological Win
It is now clear that the terrorist attack on San Salvador was a military defeat comparable to the one suffered by the Vietcong in the Tet offensive of 1968. It is said that the terrorists lost about half the forces they threw into the attack. In addition, they surfaced many of their previously covert supporters, such as workers in human rights groups that were FMLN fronts. The death and destruction that their attack caused should have earned them universal condemnation and strengthened support in this country for President Cristiani. Instead, the left's successful exploitation of the tragic death of the six priests weakened support for continuing aid to Cristiani and increased support for the terrorists. The New York Times is not alone in having contributed to this, but its influence and its jettisoning of professional, objective reporting in this case justifies singling it out for special attention.
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AIM Report NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF
IN CRITICIZING MEDIA COVERAGE OF El SALVADOR IN THIS ISSUE, WE FOCUSED almost entirely on The New York Times. This is not because the Times is the only one guilty of seriously flawed and biased reporting. It is because it has been one of the worst and, as our newspaper of record, it should be the best. Joe Goulden, who wrote this report, said in his book Fit to Print: A.M. Rosenthal And His Times that AIM had helped move the Tames from the left more to the center. If true, our criticism of the paper's coverage of El Salvador back in 1982 was largely responsible. At that time, the Times had a reporter named Ray Bonner covering Central America. We exposed how biased and badly flawed Bonner's reporting was, and he was recalled before his time. He and the Times have since parted company, but he now has a worthy successor in Lindsey Gruson, son of Sydney Gruson and Flora Lewis. His father was formerly vice chairman of the New York Times Co. and his mother is a Times columnist.
ACCORDING TO GRUSON REPORTERS WERE WITH A GROUP OF COMMUNIST terrorists as they set out to assassinate President Crisfiani on November 11. Gruson's Nov. 13 story said: "'This is just the beginning of what's coming up,' a rebel commander told reporters today as he led his assault team to help attack the president's luxurious private home in the capital's most exclusive neighborhood. 'We're giving the death squads of the governing party an example of what we can do.'" Was Gruson one of those reporters? He denies it, saying he got the quote from a tape made by. Another reporter. He refuses to identify the reporter. He acknowledges having accompanied the terrorists on other occasions. They evidently trust him, and the tenor of his stories suggests that trust is justified.
NOTE, FOR EXAMPLE, THE CAREFULLY CHOSEN LANGUAGE ABOVE. GRUSON could have said that the "rebel commander led his death squad to murder Alfredo Cristiani, the democratically elected president of El Salvador." That would have suggested a bias in Cristiani's favor. Surely, to describe a murder attempt as an "attack on the president's luxurious private home in the capital's most exclusive neighborhood" reflects a strong bias in the other direction.
NOTE ALSO THAT THERE IS A BIG STORY HERE THAT HAS NOT RECEIVED THE attention it deserves. Who were the reporters who accompanied the terrorists on their failed murder mission? Were they Americans? Why shouldn't they be identified if what they were doing was perfectly ethical and legitimate?
THIS REMINDS ME OF AN EXCHANGE THAT OCCURRED ON A PROGRAM TITLED "Under Orders, Under Fire," that was part of a PBS series on the military and the media. The program's interlocutor, a lawyer named Ogletree, posed this hypothetical situation to ABC's Peter Jennings and CBS's Mike Wallace: You are a journalist traveling with an enemy unit that surprises American soldiers. What would you do? Jennings decided that he would try to warn the Americans. Mike Wallace said: "Some reporters would have a different reaction. They would regard it simply as another story they are there to cover." This exchange ensued. Ogletree: They are going to cover enemy soldiers shooting and killing American soldiers? Wallace: Yes. (Addressing Jennings): I'm a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you are an American, you would not have covered that story. Ogletree: Don't you have a higher duty to save lives? Wallace: No, you do not have a higher duty. No, no, no. Peter Jennings, impressed by Mike Wallace's "reasoning," then changed his mind and decided that he wouldn't try warning the victims. He would conduct himself as a disinterested journalist.
HOWEVER, LINDSEY GRUSON DOES NOT COME ACROSS AS DISINTERESTED. IN HIS Nov. 14 story he said, "The armed forces seem to have caused the majority of the civilian casualties." "The boys don't shoot at the people," he quoted a construction worker as saying. He quoted one of the terrorists (a label he avoids) as saying, "The people know we're on their side. They know we're the people. If we give them a bomb, they throw it. If we give them a gun, they fight--even the children." The fact is that the people did not respond that way at all. They were angry with the terrorists for invading their neighborhoods and homes, exposing them to death and destruction. They were the ones responsible for the civilian casualties, as U.S. Ambassador William Walker pointed out. Gruson reported that in the 27th paragraph of his 32-graph story. As in the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the terrorists were disappointed when the people failed to rise up and support them. The only thing that saved their operation from being a total disaster was the murder of the six Jesuit priests and the reaction it evoked in this country.
THE HANDLING OF THAT STORY BY THE TIMES IS ADDITIONAL PROOF OF ITS pro-terrorist slant, as this AIM Report shows. The failure of the Times to report that the American medical examiners who examined the bodies of the murdered priests found no evidence of torture is unconscionable. Another important story that was ignored was the discovery that women who had worked in the offices of various human rights organizations in San Salvador were really part of the terrorist network. Douglas Farah disclosed this in the last paragraph of a story on page 28 of The Washington Post on November 15. Farah wrote: "As journalists talked to the (terrorist) commanders, heavily armed women who have worked in the offices of various human rights offices long accused by the government of being front groups for the rebels appeared and greeted their acquaintances. 'We ale no longer front groups,' said a woman. 'Now we are the FMLN.'" End of story. That is the only place we have seen this mentioned. It should have been a front-page story, with the organizations identified. One that has long been known to be a front group, the mothers group, Comadres, was honored here with the Robert F. Kennedy Award in 1984.
AIM'S NEW FILM ON THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT MAY BE SHOWN ON TV IN Czechoslovakia before it is shown in a major market in the U.S. John Hasek, the producer of "The Seductive Illusion," has been invited to go back to Czechoslovakia, his native land, and advise those working for democratization. He is taking the tape with him and is optimistic about getting it shown there! That would be great, but we want to get it seen by a wide audience here. A recent article in The Washington Post said that many schoolteachers were puzzled at the lack of interest shown by many students in the historic changes taking place in Eastern Europe. One teacher said the problem is that students "don't understand what communism is in the first place.... So when you say it's the death of communism, they don't know what you're talking about."
YOU CAN HELP REMEDY THIS BY CONTACTING YOUR LOCAL OR STATEWIDE CABLE access TV channels to apprise them of the availability of this excellent, one-hour documentary that tells the history of the communist movement and its relevance to recent developments in the U.S. Most cable systems need all the quality programming they can get and are grateful for help in getting it. If you can interest a cable system (or broadcast station) in "The Seductive Illusion," notify Debby Lambert at AIM. Her number is 202-371-6710. The address is 1275 K St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005. We will provide the station with a broadcast quality tape and, if necessary, generate some publicity for the airing.