Evidence mounts against Guatemalan colonel

The State Department provided the classified documents to Congress on Friday, but, citing national security and the secrecy demanded by intelligence services, omitted these documents from thousands of papers on human-rights abuses in Guatemala that it declassified and released to the public Monday.

The classified documents give a more damning depiction of the colonel's role in the killings than do the documents that were released.

``There is a disconnect between what's classified and what's public,'' said one U.S. government official who read aloud from the classified documents in a telephone interview. The official, who insisted on anonymity, said he was disturbed by that ``disconnect'' and wanted it made public.

The case of Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, which came to light in March 1995, revealed the CIA's long and deep ties to Guatemalan military officers who have been suspected of human-rights abuses.
CIA reaction

The case compelled the CIA to dismiss a former chief of covert operations in Latin America and a former station chief in Guatemala and led to stricter rules governing the way the agency recruits and handles thousands of paid informers.

The papers released to the public, while strongly implicating the colonel in the cover-up of the murder of the American innkeeper, Michael DeVine, suggest just as strongly that the colonel was not guilty of the killing.

But a March 24, 1995, cable from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala to the State Department said, ``Alpirez may very well be guilty of DeVine's murder,'' according to government officials. The cable cautions against ``naming Alpirez'' as a suspect in the killing, saying that could lead to legal challenges of the convictions of low-level Guatemalan army officers jailed for the slaying.

A high-ranking CIA official said last year that the colonel's role in the killing of DeVine was ``murky.'' A still-incomplete federal investigation being conducted for a White House panel, the Intelligence Oversight Board, has tentatively concluded that the colonel's role in the killing was limited to covering it up after the fact. The 1990 killing compelled the United States to cut off overt military aid to Guatemala, although covert aid continued until last year.
`A bad egg'

Documents made public Monday say little about the colonel's military conduct.

But a January 1995 intelligence report given to Congress calls Alpirez ``a bad egg'' and says he was guilty of human-rights abuses, said government officials who had read the documents.

According to government officials, the intelligence report said, ``Alpirez has more wealth than can be explained,'' and ``there are persistent rumors of Alpirez's involvement with narcotics trafficking.''

The classified documents also implicate the colonel more directly in the 1990 killing of the guerrilla than anything made public Monday.

The public documents say it is possible that the colonel, a paid agent of the CIA from 1988 to 1992, murdered the captured guerrilla, Efrain Bamaca, who was married to Jennifer Harbury, an American lawyer who conducted hunger strikes and spoke out to force the U.S. government to release information on the case.
Link to Bamaca case

But a March 23, 1995, memorandum from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research links the colonel directly to the killing, government officials said.

The memo says ``it was known within the senior ranks of the army'' in Guatemala that Alpirez killed Bamaca and that a senior Guatemalan military officer confirmed this in 1995, the official reading from the memo said. He said it cited information provided by a ``consistently reliable cooperative source with excellent access'' to the Guatemalan military.

The publication of the Guatemala papers withheld only 8 percent of the documents released to Congress, the State Department said. Groups that had sought the documents praised the State Department.

Ann Manuel of Human Rights Watch called their publication ``a very positive first step,'' and said the intelligence agencies and the Defense Department should follow suit.