Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 18 Oktober 2006 / Time Line October 18, 2006
Version 3.517. Oktober 2006, 19. Oktober 2006
10/18/2006
National Security Archive Update, October 18, 2006
LITEMPO: The CIA's Eyes on Tlatelolco
CIA spy operations in Mexico
Washington, DC, October 16, 2006 - The CIA's reliance on high-level
informants including the President and a future President of Mexico for
"intelligence" about the student protest movement in 1968 that
culminated in the infamous Tlatelolco massacre misled Washington
about responsibility for the repression, according to documents
obtained by journalist Jefferson Morley and posted today on the Web
by the National Security Archive at George Washington
University.
The declassified U.S. documents reveal CIA recruitment of agents
within the upper echelons of the Mexican government between 1956
and 1969. The informants used in this secret program included
President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and future President Luis
Echeverría. The documents detail the relationships
cultivated between senior CIA officers, such as chief of station
Winston Scott, and Mexican government officials through a secret
spy network code-named "LITEMPO." Operating out of the U.S. Embassy
in Mexico City, Scott used the LITEMPO project to provide "an
unofficial channel for the exchange of selected sensitive political
information which each government wanted the other to receive but
not through public protocol exchanges."
This posting also includes the article "The CIA's Eyes on
Tlatelolco," written by Morley and published in the October 1, 2006
edition of Proceso magazine. The article uses first-hand accounts
from former associates, friends and family of Winston Scott,
detailing how Scott relied on his friendships with Díaz
Ordaz, Echeverría and other senior Mexican officials to
inform Washington about the student movement whose demands
challenged the government's monopoly on power.
The newly-declassified U.S. government documents and interviews
shed new light on the CIA reporting on the terrible events of 1968.
Winston Scott's reliance on powerful government officials for
information led to one-sided reporting on the student movement of
1968, ending in the 2 October massacre in Tlatelolco. Scott relied
on the government's version of the Tlatelolco killings, reporting
as "intelligence information" its fictional accounts of the
events.
"When the Tlatelolco crisis exploded, the CIA's Mexico station
could not deliver the goods," said Kate Doyle, Director of the
Archive's Mexico Project. "Jefferson Morley's important research
reveals that instead of independently collecting information and
analyzing what happened, the agency served as stenographer for its
friends and allies in the Mexican government. As a result, the CIA
helped protect Mexico's ruling party from bearing responsibility
for the massacre, and delivered a muddled and misleading account of
it to Washington."
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