Full disclosure. I am the public affairs officer at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which was created in public law in 2000, opening in 2001 as a replacement for the Army’s School of the Americas. The reason I answer questions about the school is that I am a retired Army officer, and the people who taught there were my peers.

The entry about Posada having been to the school is completely false. He was one of those people involved in the Bay of Pigs who was later commissioned in the US Army and was at Fort Benning in 1963-4 or thereabouts. The school was in Panama at that time.

Please don’t try what one correspondent did–he said that because Posada had been at Ft. Benning, and the school came to Ft. Benning, his claim that Posada attended the school was a ‘reasonable approximation of the truth.” Sorry, there is no ‘reasonable approximation of the truth.’

Having said that, you might want to look into the truth about the school and the institute. Note that not one person who ever attended has been accused of using what he learned there to commit a crime–not one. Mere association is not proof of anything.

Come see us for yourself. Getting into Fort Benning is as easy as showing a photo ID, and I’ll send you directions to our door.

Sincerely,
Lee Rials

I have corrected that; you are, in fact, right. It has been amended on my previous entry as well. That said, it does not mean that he did not attend the school in Panama, which was wholly US funded (under all three names). The US Lawyers Guild has gone on record stating that he did attend it. It may have been after the Bay of Pigs, as he remained a CIA asset until 1968, according to the CIA anyway, though very probably well beyond, and was all over Central America during those years, operating in Guatemala and so forth. Like many of his ilk, he delved into various nefarious areas linked to organized crime and drugs, which isn’t all that uncommon with regards to the CIA’s history in Latin America.

As for criminality. Over 60,000 military personnel were trained at the school. Are you suggesting that none of them were paramilitaries, that none of them took part in operations that resulted in the killing of civilians, political dissidents, clergy, or opposition groups? That they were not used by dictatorial regimes in training roles, or as assets in their own domestic intelligence services or secret police? That out of 60,000 graduates, not one of them has blood on their hands?

In 2003, after WHINSEC was instituted, did Colonel Cid Diaz attend the institute or not? The State Department, your State Department, has him on a list of gross human rights abusers. So please do explain that discrepancy to me.

The entry about Posada having been to the school is completely false. He was one of those people involved in the Bay of Pigs who was later commissioned in the US Army and was at Fort Benning in 1963-4 or thereabouts. The school was in Panama at that time.

Please don’t try what one correspondent did–he said that because Posada had been at Ft. Benning, and the school came to Ft. Benning, his claim that Posada attended the school was a ‘reasonable approximation of the truth.” Sorry, there is no ‘reasonable approximation of the truth.’

Having said that, you might want to look into the truth about the school and the institute. Note that not one person who ever attended has been accused of using what he learned there to commit a crime–not one. Mere association is not proof of anything.

Come see us for yourself. Getting into Fort Benning is as easy as showing a photo ID, and I’ll send you directions to our door.

Sincerely,
Lee Rials

that’s what i’ve always said and argued about this ‘war on terror’ bullcrap.