Monitoring Military Aid in Latin America

Declassified Army and CIA Manuals Used in Latin America: An Analysis of Their Content
On September 20, 1996, the Pentagon released to the public seven training manuals prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses in Latin America and at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). A selection of excerpts was distributed to the press at that time. The Pentagon press release accompanying the excerpts states that a 1991-92 investigation into the manuals concluded that "two dozen short passages in six of the manuals, which total 1169 pages, contained material that either was not or could be interpreted not to be consistent with U.S. policy." A January 1997 "information paper" sent out by the School of the Americas in response to public inquiries on the manuals claims that SOA training material merely contained several passages with "words or phrases inconsistent with U.S. government policy." A close reading of all seven manuals, however, reveals many more passages, and indeed an entire framework, that should be deemed inconsistent with U.S. policy and democratic standards. This memo contains excerpts from these manuals, and two other CIA manuals declassified in January 1997 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Baltimore Sun.