Sections for: asset
1. guatemala/otr02/iob_mu.htm

<title>ASSET INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS </title>


<do>

<title>DO Guidance on Human Rights </title>

<text>The CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) and Guatemala station were clearly aware of the potential for human rights violations by assets and liaison contacts. In November 1988, the DO's Latin America (LA) division provided a guidance cable to its Central American stations, in which it noted that human rights violations were being used politically by Washington opponents of CIA programs in Central America, but went on to state:
Point we would like to make is that we must all become sensitized to the importance of respecting human rights, and we must ensure that those assets and resources we direct and/or fund are equally sensitive. The issue will only become more important, and we serve our objectives best if we remember that if we ignore the importance of the human rights issue in the final analysis we do great damage to our mission. We are under great scrutiny. Finally, aside from the legal and policy considerations which are constant in any allegations concerning violation's [sic] of human rights we also recognize a basic moral obligation. We are Americans and we must reflect American values in the conduct of our business. We are all inherently opposed to the violation of human rights. Those who work with us in one capacity or another must also respect these values.
DO instructions on warning targets of assassination issued in September 1989 stated, "Participation of an asset in an assassination may constitute a violation of US law or regulations and is grounds for immediate termination of the Agency's relationship with the asset. Thus, complete information of any such incident should be sent to Headquarters as soon as possible."

In 1990, the LA division chief warned the Guatemala chief of station (COS) that human rights performance was high on the agenda for the executive and legislative branches, with Guatemala seen as second only to El Salvador among human rights violators in the region.

In August 1992, the Latin American division chief provided guidance to his stations to check all new liaison contacts carefully for possible human rights violations. The guidance cable also directed stations to follow up on all accusations of human rights violations in order to corroborate or refute them.

In May l993, the Guatemala COS initiated a review of many of his assets "to ensure that no station unilateral asset is, or has been involved in human rights violations." The station started by questioning some of its assets and planned to polygraph them. No station personnel recall, however, what prompted this review or why it was apparently never completed. It may have been overtaken by Serrano's "auto-coup" later that month and by the COS's departure soon thereafter.

In September 1994, because of a human rights issue unrelated to Guatemala, the LA division directed all of its stations to review their current assets for human rights violations. In Guatemala, this review ultimately identified a few asset relationships for termination. All but one of these terminations of relationship were carried out in early 1995--before this IOB review had been ordered--and the last occurred soon thereafter. Relationships with a few more assets identified as possible human rights abusers had already been ended prior to September 1994 for various reasons.

Apart from the guidance to Guatemala station and other Latin American stations that is described above, there was no CIA-wide policy before 1995 that spelled out in detail the danger of human rights abuse by assets and what specific actions were to be taken by the stations and at CIA headquarters in such circumstances.
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</do>


<allegations>

<title>Allegations of human rights abuse by assets </title>

<text>In the course of our review, we learned that in the period since 1984, several CIA assets were credibly alleged to have ordered, planned, or participated in serious human rights violations such as assassination, extrajudicial execution, torture, or kidnapping while they were assets--and that the CIA was contemporaneously aware of many of the allegations. A number of assets were alleged--though with varying degrees of reliability--to have been involved in similar abuses before their CIA asset relationships began. In several other cases, the alleged abuses occurred or came to light only after the CIA was no longer in contact with the asset. A few assets were reportedly present while non-assets engaged in acts of intimidation, and another engaged in such an act before becoming an asset. Another asset was the subject of an unspecified allegation of human rights abuse. Several of the above assets were also involved in covering up human rights abuses, as was one additional asset. In addition, a number of the station's liaison contacts--Guatemalan officials with whom the station worked in an official capacity--were also alleged to have been involved in human rights abuses or in covering them up.

In many of these cases, however, US intelligence learned of the allegations only by virtue of reports from other assets who were themselves alleged to have engaged in similar abuses. Some of these sources, though, had grudges against those about whom they reported and thus may have had an incentive to fabricate or exaggerate allegations.

The IOB notes that US national interests, with respect to Guatemala and elsewhere, can in some cases justify relationships with assets who have sordid or even criminal backgrounds, including human rights violations. In fact, it will often be the case that the best placed sources of information on nefarious activities are not entirely clean themselves. There should be, however, an effort explicitly to balance the value and uniqueness of an asset's contributions against the seriousness and reliability of any allegations against him. We believe it critical that this balancing process take place in the context of broad US interests. It should be noted that, in carrying out domestic law enforcement activities, US authorities regularly weigh such considerations in entering into informant relationships with persons who have criminal backgrounds. Among the potential costs to be considered in establishing or continuing such relationships with foreign intelligence assets are: their moral implications, the damage to US objectives in promoting greater respect for human rights, the loss of confidence in the intelligence community among members of the Congress and the public, and the effect of such relationships on the ethical climate within US intelligence agencies. In February 1996, largely as a result of the inquiries related to Guatemala, the CIA did issue guidance for dealing with allegations of serious human rights violations or crimes of violence by assets and liaison services. We believe this new policy strikes an appropriate balance: it generally bars such relationships, but it permits senior CIA officials to authorize them in special cases when national interests so warrant, We are disturbed, however, that until the recent Guatemala inquiries, the CIA had failed to establish agency-wide written guidance on such an important issue.

Among the most serious examples of credible allegations against a then-active CIA asset were those involving an asset who was the subject of allegations that in multiple instances he ordered and planned assassinations of political opponents and extrajudicial killings of criminals, as well as other, less specific allegations of unlawful activities. Although some of these allegations were from sources of undetermined or suspect reliability, one was from a source considered credible by the station at the time. Another asset was alleged to have planned or to have had prior knowledge of multiple separate assassinations or assassination attempts before and during his asset relationship. A third asset has been alleged to have participated in assassination, extrajudicial killing, and kidnapping during and before his time as an asset.

The station informed DO headquarters through intelligence reports or operational cables of those allegations against its assets and liaison contacts of which it was aware. (In one significant instance, though, when the station requested authority to recruit a particular asset, it failed to remind headquarters of an assassination allegation previously made against him.) DO headquarters, however, appeared in practice to attach too little weight to human rights issues and reacted contemporaneously to human rights allegations against only a few of the assets. This conduct was probably the predictable result of an arrangement in which the necessary balancing, when done, was conducted informally, and was done exclusively by CIA DO division-level managers and chiefs of station--whose performance and awards systems emphasized recruiting and maintaining productive intelligence assets.

Of great concern to the IOB is the apparent lack of sensitivity before September 1994 by DO headquarters or the station to the series of allegations against a particular asset, especially in light of a reliable report that he was directly involved in an assassination. No CIA officials we interviewed recalled this asset as having presented a human rights problem, nor could any officials provide an explanation for the absence of an reaction to the allegations. We found no cable traffic or other written record of deliberation concerning the asset prior to late 1994. The CIA maintained its relationship with the asset despite his egregious record of human rights abuse allegations until the relationship was finally terminated as part of the September 1994 review.

Of those assets alleged to have committed serious human rights violations, relationships with all but a few were terminated prior to September 1994 for a variety of reasons; of these, only one relationship was ended principally because of a human rights allegation. After the September 1994 review of Latin American assets, relationships with the few remaining such assets were terminated because of allegations of human rights abuse such as assassinations and kidnapping.
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</allegations>


<title>ASSET VALIDATION SYSTEM </title>

<text>In analyzing the apparent breakdown of the process for identifying assets against whom allegations of human rights abuse had been made we reviewed the functioning of the "asset validation system." CIA's Directorate of Operations instituted this system in 1989 in order to advance two primary objectives unrelated to human rights: to cut ties to assets believed to be counterintelligence risks and to end relationships with assets whose information production was not worth the payments they received. Stations were directed to test and to polygraph assets continually and to analyze their likely intelligence contributions. This process was to be completed for existing assets within two years of the system's implementation, but in practice the process usually took much longer or was never completed.

We found that the CIA showed an inadequate commitment to the asset validation system. Although we understand that validating assets will never take on the same cachet as recruiting new ones, we believe it requires greater emphasis in the field. Despite repeated statements by DO managers on the importance of asset validation, a 1994 survey by the CIA Inspector General found that only 9 percent of DO personnel surveyed believed that promotion panels rewarded quality work in asset validation. Even when one makes allowances for the amount of time it takes to validate new assets and the difficulties of validating tenuously controlled assets by excluding such assets from the pool of unvalidated assets, only two-thirds of the assets in Guatemala had been "validated" by late 1994.

Because the validation system's nearly exclusive focus, at that time, was upon counterintelligence concerns and the purging of non-performing assets, even more vigorous asset validation would not have identified those assets involved in human rights abuses. The asset validation system has recently been changed to take into consideration all derogatory allegations against assets, including allegations of human rights abuse. With this change, it will be important for the DO to review all sources of derogatory information, including reporting from the embassy, other agencies, the press, and human rights groups.
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