The Truth of El Mozote by Mark Danner
In some cases, as we saw later, in late 1981 of course there was, what is now fairly well known, the massacre in El Mazote. And this was a case where the first American trained battalion was sent out over Christmas time in 1981 into rebel controlled territory and it swept through this territory and killed everybody, everyone they could find - including the children. When two American reporters, Ray Bonner and Alma Jimapareta (?), went to the scene of this atrocity in January of 1982, they were able to see some of what was left behind and they interviewed witnesses who had survived, and came out with stories describing what they had found. This was of course extremely upsetting to the Reagan administration, which at that time was about to certify that the Salvadoran military was showing respect for human rights, and that was necessary to get further funding and weapons for the Salvadoran military.
And I was at those hearings which occurred afterwards, on the hill, and when Tom Enders who was then Assistant Secretary Of State for Inter-American affairs gave his description of how the State Department had investigated this and had found really nothing had happened or that they had found no evidence of any mass killing, and they argued with great cleverness that the last census had not shown even that many people in El Mazote - there were not the 800 or so who were alleged to have been killed - only 200 had lived there to begin with, and many still lived there, he said. Of course it wasn't true, but it was, I guess in their view, necessary - it was necessary to conceal what was going on. And, it became necessary then, to also discredit the journalists, so Raymond Bonner, and Alma and others, who were not accepting this story, had to be made to seem to be liars. They had to be destroyed. And the administration began developing their techniques, which they always were very good at - they were extremely good at public relations, that's what's they had - many of them had come from - the President himself had been an advertising figure for General Electric - and they were very adept at how to present things in the most favorable way for them. [1993] Fooling America. A talk by Robert Parry
