236. Circular Telegram From the United States Information Agency to Certain Posts1
389. The following is intended for placement in radio or press without attribution to USIS.
Title: Kremlin Coordination of Guatemalan Moves
Evidence that the Guatemalan incident is a carefully considered and precisely coordinated Communist thrust at the Americas continues to mount.
The evidence that top-flight agents of the Kremlin are guiding all acts both in the field and on the diplomatic front can be found in the fact that events have a way of waiting on other events before they occur, plus the fact that this interlocking of a grand design is not local, but coordinated in all the Republics. This kind of an operation is beyond the scope of any national Communist group.
Here are some examples:
Not only do the Communists form and finance the Societies of the Friends of Guatemala, they work them like the pawns on a chess board. The entire lecture circuit from Santiago to Mexico City is coordinated; a vote in one society is instantly echoed in another; the wording of resolutions, although seemingly sponsored by men and people thousands of miles away from each other, is often absolutely identical. All these things are the mark of the experienced agent, rather than the political amateur.
The same skilled hand can be found on still a higher level, the diplomatic level. Guatemala’s insistence on bringing an American problem before the United Nations’ Security Council is the right of any nation with any problem, but the skill she has displayed in keeping the problem away from the body most capable of handling it––the Organization of American States––shows that there is an overall plan in this department too. Despite the carefully laid plan, it was forced into the open when the Soviet delegate Tsarapkin cast the Soviet veto against transferring the Guatemalan charge to the OAS.
Yesterday, Americans were treated to a view of the apparatus at work from top to bottom:
[Page 384]Guatemala bypassed the OAS.
The Soviet Union approved her bypassing.
The Security Council wanted the OAS.
The Soviet Union cast a veto to see that OAS did not get the problem.
That’s only in the past; now look at the pattern working yesterday:
Guatemala presses for still another meeting of the Security Council.
Even as she presses, pickets are marching in front of the UN headquarters, carrying placards for Guatemala. The pickets organized by the American Peace Crusade, a Communist-front organization.
Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge agrees that Guatemala should have another meeting of the Security Council.
Then comes the one slip of the day—the one which displays the coordination behind all these Communist moves:
After—a few minutes after—Ambassador Lodge had sent out the call for the new meeting of the Security Council, Soviet delegate Tsarapkin put in his own demand for a Council meeting “without delay.”
Just a few minutes time and there would have been no need of the Tsarapkin demand; just a few minutes time and the world would not have got this first-hand picture of how closely-knit the overall plan is.
The hand within the glove had peeped out for just a second, and for a second time—first the veto, and now the demand that the situation be kept within reach of further Soviet vetoes.
- Source: Central Intelligence Agency, Job 79–01025A, Box 82, Folder 5. Confidential. Drafted by Stephen Baldanza (IOP/A), cleared by Edmund Murphy (IOP/A), and approved by Ralph Hinton (IOP/A). Sent to Mexico City, Havana, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Quito, and Panama.↩