GUATEMALA (CIA al Descubierto) Golpe de Estado Fantasma - Documentales

Guatemala 1954.

The Central Intelligence Agency launches

an operation codenamed

BABY'S ACCESS to overthrow the government

that threatens

US interests in the region. It

will be its first mission of this kind.

Operation BABY'S ACCESS was

risky and dangerous. 500 rebels will

face the

president's 6,000-strong army. The stakes were high,

and they couldn't afford for it to go wrong.

The CIA has already chosen the next leader of

Guatemala and is at the head of the rebel army.

The soldiers will be trained by Rich

Roberts, a legendary

paramilitary agent, and the decision has been made to resort

to psychological warfare, used for the

first time by the city.

A covert psychological warfare operation

is based on deception and

lies.

Based on recently declassified files,

we reveal the

CIA's first attempt to overthrow a

left-wing government in Latin America.

[Applause]

August 12, 1953, Washington

[Music]

A top-secret meeting is held

at the White House. Its objective is

to confront a new threat to the

country's security. A small country of

Central America, Guatemala:

the most powerful men

in the US attend, including President Dwight

Eisenhower, his Secretary of State, and Aleix Esther,

Director of the

Central Intelligence Agency.

Eisenhower ran the government

very clandestinely, and the three of them devised

many strategies that they applied

worldwide. Now they have a new problem:

a country less than 1,300 km from the

southern border of the US. Guatemala has

recently elected a leader with

well-known communist ties,

Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. He has

already begun to threaten

US interests. His government

confiscates thousands of hectares from the

multinational company United Fruit. In addition, he will

be a threat to

the national security of the

US.

With the Cold War well underway, the great

concern in Washington is to prevent

communism from spreading throughout the

world, and more specifically, throughout the

Western Hemisphere. The CIA began to

see communists everywhere and

was prepared to use its troops

to reduce their power.

The decision has been made: they must overthrow

Arbenz.

The CIA wanted an operation to... To

overthrow the Guatemalan government,

they presented the president with a

top-secret document containing an extraordinary plan,

the so-called 'Operation Babies Access.'

It was summarized as how an

established regime could be overthrown without using US troops.

The plan was to secretly support an

armed uprising against the

democratically elected leader of Guatemala and overthrow him through

a coup.

But Sean Hauer wondered how he had to prevent

the CIA plot from being linked

to the US president.

Why were the US so afraid of being

involved? The operation could

be perceived as the overthrow of

a democratically elected government—a

violation of the principles of the treaty they

had signed before the

United Nations—and it would have damaged the reputation of

American ideals.

No one could attribute the operation to the

president.

The operation combined three key strategies:

first, an invasion with a

small, specially trained army;

second, the application of foreign political pressure;

and finally, the use of a whole

range of deceptions by the CIA.

Operation Babies Access proposed a

new strategy, things that had never been

seen before, actions that had never been

put into practice.

These methods were so novel that the

CIA didn't even know If they were to work, it

was dangerous because no one knew

exactly what was going to happen.

They considered that the operation only had

a 40% chance of success. If the

CIA had to quickly plan a

covert and feasible operation,

Eisenhower said, "Go ahead, we must do it. I

think it will work, and I think it is

important to do it." The

CIA's first move was to

establish a command center at

Opa-locka Air Force Base in Miami, Florida. The

secret command center, Opa-locka, Miami,

was so secret that

only a few men who worked

directly under the

president knew its location.

Why Miami, first of all, because it

was far from Washington. If they did it

from Washington, the whole operation could be

exposed.

With the command center ready, the CIA

needed a straw man who could

lead a rebel army against the

president of Guatemala.

The leader had to be someone malleable

who would obey the CIA's orders and

be loyal to the US government.

He placed his bet on a man named

Carlos Castillo Armas.

Armas was a

charismatic and ambitious Guatemalan colonel.

Three years earlier, he had participated in a

military coup. The failed operation

had been imprisoned

and, according to rumors, had managed to

escape through a very daring plan.

The CIA finds him living in exile in

Honduras.

The CIA had decided he was the

perfect candidate to lead the

attack and, through him, reestablish

American control over Guatemala.

Weapons are flown to the command center in

Opa-locka.

Both sides reach an agreement.

The next challenge is to create a

rebel guerrilla force that will lead the

uprising. The CIA establishes a

secret training base in the jungles

of Central America, specifically Honduras.

The man

chosen to train the

secret army is Rich Roberts, a former

specialist in

covert paramilitary operations. He loved

being in the jungle; some people

thrive there. A true warrior

never stops fighting, and

Roberts, a Rep. Roberson,

loved that kind of thing. He was

born to do it and to get paid for it,

acting with the protection of the US

government. It must have seemed like

paradise to him.

Rebel Army training camp, Honduras. In January 1954,

the training period begins.

Roberson is ordered to convert... Those

men, a well-trained fighting force

in six months, were

Guatemalan exiles

recruited from other Central American countries.

Among them were professional mercenaries.

[Music]

Keeping the number of personnel

below 400 men allows them

to be trained in secret.

[Music]

Repair Robertson had to train his

team in guerrilla tactics, as they

say in the world of

special operations: to be able to enter, cause the

desired damage, and leave undetected.

Robert trains them to master

sabotage, explosives, and various

weaponry. He

implements a grueling

physical exercise program that will allow them to

advance through the complicated terrain of

Guatemala.

[Music]

But that's the easy part.

Armas and his group of mercenaries must

now face a formidable opponent:

the Guatemalan army.

Guatemala had the largest army and the

largest police force in

Central America,

with 6,000 men in its

army and 3,000 in the

police force—figures far superior to those of

any other Central American country.

For the moment, the army remains

loyal. Arbenz, their newly elected leader

who enjoys the support of the

Guatemalan people, was also an

expert general.

Arbenz himself was a

respected military man, considered brilliant and cultured

by the CIA.

Against such a popular and

powerful opponent and his loyal army, the

CIA's chances of success

appeared very slim.

The big question was how to defeat a

rebel army of 200 or 400 men against

one of 5,000 or 6,000.

The CIA believed it had the answer:

a secret weapon developed

covertly within the agency that had not been

tested so close to

US territory

until now:

psychological warfare.

Psychological operations are based on deception and

lies; they involve employing

dirty tricks, and nothing works if one reveals their

identity.

Psychological operations have been used

since World War II, but

until now they had never been attempted on

such a scale.

It was the first time the CIA attempted such a

maneuver to overthrow

a government,

and the CIA recruited the expert

radio announcer and public relations man David Attlee

Phillips to execute the

psychological phase of the operation.

[Music]

The so-called 'Operation Be What'

aimed to undermine the president's popularity so he would

lose all his

support.

What they did was create a

clandestine radio station called Radio

Liberation.

The idea was to present this

radio station as the secret voice of the

liberation army that was about to

arrive to liberate the people of

Guatemala.

[Music]

Opa Locka Recording Studio, Miami. The

first phase of the operation will take

place in Guatemala.

Phillips has the help of two

Guatemalan broadcasters who appear in

the declassified files as Mario

and PP.

As part of the psychological offensive,

they must record hundreds of hours of

radio programs that will

later be broadcast in

Guatemala itself. One of the first questions

the CIA agents ask themselves is, "

Who do we address?" Phillips has to

choose between addressing the

Guatemalan people, the intellectual elite, or

even the religious leaders. "All of

them, but our main target is

the army.

The army and the generals are the

fundamental target."

Phillips knows that the generals and the

higher command are... The biggest obstacle

[Music]

everything contributes to the central objective of

the covert psychological operations

which is to open a rift between Arenys and

the army.

Phillips develops a series of

radio programs designed to distance the

army from its leader.

One was called "We Accuse Him of High

Treason." In it, they accused Arbenz of

having abandoned the army, of having

betrayed it, of being a traitor against whom

immediate action had to be taken. The

objective of the programs about this

treason is to sow the idea that

officers who support the government

will receive severe treatment after

the coup.

Here are more names to add to the

blacklist of traitors to the

fatherland.

Next, Philip addresses the

officers' weak point: their wallets. In

one of his campaigns, they suggested that the

currency was about to collapse and

Arbenz wouldn't have money to pay

the officers. Nothing inspires more fear in

the ranks of soldiers who are there for

money than the idea of ​​not being paid

day after day, night after night, for

six whole weeks. Phillips and his

team make hundreds of recordings.

When the recordings are The

CIA lists the tapes transporting them from Opa-

locka, Florida to a secret radio station

near the Guatemalan border.

To this day, we still don't know

where Operation Web was broadcast from.

Some reports place it in the

Honduran jungle, and others in a barn on the

Nicaraguan dictator's ranch.

May 1, 1954: Less than three months

after Phillips was recruited,

Radio Liberación begins

broadcasting from a

secret location within the

republic.

The propaganda of the

radio programs recorded in Opa-locka is

heard by tens of thousands of

listeners throughout Guatemala who are unaware

that it is a city plot.

[Music]

While the rebel army trained

by Reeve Roberson is ready to

attack, the CIA executes the final phase of

its plan: to

politically isolate President

Arbenz. In

late October 1953, the

plot to isolate him begins. The CIA sends the

American diplomat

Jon Perfil to Guatemala.

The ambassador Perfil was Chosen

carefully for his

arrogant personality and staunch opposition to

communism,

his job was to increase the

pressure against President Arbenz.

But today he was very ostentatious;

he wore a Borsalino hat adorned with

feathers and always seemed to carry a

pistol in its holster. His

first attack against Arbenz came only

a few weeks later when he was

invited to meet with the president. It

must have been an extraordinary scene,

and all Perfil did was criticize

the presence of communists in his

government. It

could be said that it served as an indicator

of what Perfil's behavior would be like

in the future.

[Music]

One of Perfil's first jobs

was to create a secret

CIA delegation within Guatemala City.

[Music]

But where could he establish an ambassador,

an operations center, without being

discovered by the government?

Evidently, in the US embassy

where he himself worked. They

occupied an entire floor of the

embassy to handle all the

internal planning necessary to

achieve their ultimate goal, which was to

get rid of Jacobo Arbenz. It

was an area of ​​the embassy whose sole

function was to work to overthrow the

Arbenz government. We can imagine

maps, chains of command, the people to

contact. The planning of the

various tactics to be

employed was a set of actions

designed to deliberately figure out

how to overthrow that

government

once the CIA had established its base in

the embassy. But now, they begin

investigating which members of the

Guatemalan elite might turn against

their own government.

One of the things done from

the US embassy was to pay

army officers to

desert. This was a crucial operation, as

the CIA planners

believed that if they could influence the

army, it would be the end of Arbenz. At times, he

considered it an impregnable defense,

and it was difficult to figure out how to

break it. They invested a lot of time in

encouraging officers to desert

through cash payments. In

fact, at one point, someone

offered money to Arbenz himself to

relinquish power.

Evidently, this person was removed from his

office simply for

suggesting it. They tried to eliminate all of Arbenz's

support in the army to weaken it

until it was practically useless for

protecting Arenys.

While drilling, the CIA tries to win over the

enemy from within Guatemala.

The CIA focuses on searching in The rest

of the world ways to undermine Arbenz's power.

The FIA ​​needs a major event,

a political incident so serious that it

allows the US to unleash a major

political attack against the Arbenz.

They were looking for something to justify what they

were about to do

and they found it by surprise. The

CIA's stroke of luck doesn't

happen in Guatemala but 10,000

kilometers away in a

communist country in Eastern Europe.

[Music]

On April 17, 1954, a

CIA spy stationed in Poland discovers a

suspicious cargo on a ship

called the Al-Front. In this Poland,

they realized that the ship

had certain unusual characteristics

that could carry weapons.

The spy informs the CIA about the Al-Front,

warning that it could head for

America.

The CIA monitors the Al-Front's route

as it heads towards the Caribbean.

They control the Al-Front's journey, which passes

through Dakar in Africa and then the

Dutch Antilles,

but after three weeks, it suddenly

looks south. To their surprise and

satisfaction, its destination is Puerto

Barrios in Guatemala

[Music]

Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, May 17th. Four

weeks later, when the

Alzheimer docks, the CIA obtains from its

cargo all the evidence it

needs.

In total, it's 2,000 tons of

light weapons such as rifles, machine guns, and

mortars.

They obtained proof that the

communists were infiltrating

that country and a justification to

invade it.

Eisenhower has all the

diplomatic ammunition he needs to unleash

a political storm against Arbenz.

In response to the arms shipment, he

sends army ships,

planes,

and submarines to patrol

the coast of Guatemala.

They used their entire arsenal to overthrow

the government of Guatemala.

Eisenhower was determined to achieve it.

Arbenz can only watch in horror

as his country is strangled by a

naval blockade.

He and his generals even wonder

if the US might invade their country. At

that moment, Arbenz understood that they

had organized a great campaign against him.

Alarmed by the show of force

from Washington,

Carmen tries to get help.

Political bridges with the US: sent its

foreign minister by

ice to meet with Perfil to see if they

could agree to a third peace,

but the last thing the CIA wanted at that

moment was a truce.

Operation Peace Access had a single

objective: regime change.

June 15, 1954: The rebel army,

made up of 500 men, was transported

to more advanced offensive bases

near the border with Guatemala.

The troops were deployed at five

offensive points along

Guatemala's eastern border.

[Music]

By dividing them into five, the CIA intended to create

the illusion of a much larger army than it

actually was

and tried to make them believe that it was

a large-scale attack from

the Pacific coast, the Atlantic coast, and

neighboring countries that would destroy all of

Guatemala's defenses and allow

Castillo Armas to seize power.

[Music]

To support the ground invasion, the CIA

flew a dozen unmarked planes

to the front lines. They

were piloted by

US Air Force officers who have

not yet been identified. From a

military psychology perspective, the

use of aircraft was tremendously

important.

The planes would not only support the

troops but also play a

key psychological role, as they would intensify

the illusion of a major invasion.

[Music]

With air support prepared and the

army positioned and ready to act, the

CIA contacted the leader of

the Guatemalan rebels, Castillo

Armas, and gave the green light to the invasion. A

lot was at stake, and they couldn't afford for it to

go wrong. June 18, 1954:

The coup begins.

Late in the afternoon, the

coup leader, Castillo Armas, is on a

remote road near the Guatemalan border. He

leads a group of 120 of the

500 soldiers who make up the

eastern contingent of the invasion.

If everything goes according to plan, in a

few days he will be the next president of

Guatemala.

As they approach the border, they see

two guards.

One of them is a customs official and

is quickly shot down.

[Music]

The first shot of the attempted coup is heard. From then on,

chaos ensues.

[Music]

The second falls dead as the convoy

crosses the border. From Guatemala,

the plan is to continue advancing on foot.

The CIA has opted for a

guerrilla attack to conceal the true

number of soldiers.

The longer they can make

the army believe it is facing thousands of

people, the greater their advantage will be.

The men-at-arms advance through

rugged terrain for three whole days. It

is difficult to orient themselves in the

thick jungle,

and torrential rains are falling. On

the third day of the invasion, they reach the

small town of Esquipulas.

[Music]

After a brief battle with

local police, Castillo de Armas achieves his

first victory.

The inhabitants of Esquipulas must have been

thrilled to see

those guerrillas appear in the main square.

Some of the soldiers handed out weapons

to several of the bewildered

townspeople to give the impression that they

were joining Castillo de Armas to

overthrow Arabs.

Meanwhile, 160 kilometers north

of Armas's position, the second

contingent of the invasion crosses the

border at Hualán. They encounter an army

garrison,

and Hualán, west of Guatemala

[Music],

is the battle. The fiercest phase of the

invasion so far

lasts 36 hours.

It's the first major test for the

CIA mercenaries trained by

Reeve Roberson:

kill them or they'll try to kill you—

a matter of life and death.

But the situation worsens.

One by one, the rebels begin to flee.

When the remaining soldiers realize

what's happening, none want to

be captured and accused of treason.

Seeing two, three, five, or six

people flee, they begin to think that perhaps it's

the best option. It's one of the

problems that arise with an irregular army.

Finally, almost the entire second column

flees back toward the border. It

's the first major setback for the rebel army.

Many of its soldiers end up wounded

or dead

in Washington. The situation is about to get

worse.

The plan was to increase pressure on the

president of Guatemala in the diplomatic arena,

but world leaders are suspicious of

the US stance.

The Ardennes government decided to turn

to several international organizations for

protection.

The first was the United Nations; the

second was the Organization of

American States (OAS).

[Music] The

United Nations They even agree to

form an investigation team to

analyze the invasion.

The CIA plot risks

being discovered,

and those responsible for Operation

Babies Access have little time

to prevent it from becoming a

failed coup that would have

cost millions of dollars and

resulted in international humiliation. In

Guatemala, the following phases of the

invasion go from bad to worse.

The third invasion detachment,

which departs from El Salvador, doesn't even manage

to enter Guatemala.

60 rebels are arrested while

trying to cross the border.

The fourth detachment, tasked with

attacking Puerto Barrios in the north of the

country, is defeated by

armed dockworkers.

The situation seemed to be getting worse and worse,

and this isn't the only bad news

the CIA receives. Not even the

air strikes manage to reach their targets.

Almost all the fighter jets are

disabled by mechanical failures.

The air attack was reduced to 50 or

60 percent. As a result, the

invading army practically lost

all its air support, and the CIA was

worried that it wouldn't be able to win

without that show of force.

Vital air support remains on the ground, and

the uprising has only

Having penetrated 10 kilometers into

the country, the entire operation hangs by a

thread.

Only the top brass of the CIA knew

how close the operation was to

ending in failure.

[Music]

June 23, 1954. A few days after

the attack began, the CIA receives

a declassified secret report from intelligence services

stating, "We do

n't know how this will all end. If

the army remains loyal to Arbenz, all

is lost. But if they turn

against him, we could win."

The operation is approaching a

critical point, and Lindhal, the

CIA director, holds

a secret emergency meeting with President Eisenhower.

The president is surprised by the failures

of the military operations.

Eisenhower is baffled, as he

thought everything had gone according to the

CIA's plans.

Dales tells him directly that the only

option to reverse the catastrophic

invasion is for the president himself to

authorize a small contingent of the

best US fighter jets.

So he asks Dales, "

Can you really win if I give you two more planes?" And

Dales... I replied, I think we'd have a

20 percent chance,

and after a few seconds, Eisenhower

said, "Okay, I'll give it to you."

[Music]

Declassified files have

revealed that the president provided

these two new F-47 fighter-bombers

valued at $150,000.

[Music]

The F-47 Thunderball was undoubtedly the

best fighter jet in Central America

at the time. The CIA was worried that

someone would discover

US involvement and had the American markings removed

from planes

flying illegally to Central America.

They had a feeling that this could

go wrong, but they had to try

anyway.

It was unlikely that the F-47s would be enough

to change the course of the investment,

but the CIA still had another ace up its

sleeve.

[Music]

The psychological warfare

in Operation Babies Access was all

based on illusions. It was based on the idea

of ​​making the Guatemalan people believe

that a huge rebel army was about to

take over the country.

The CIA increased the frequency of

Radio Liberation transmissions and It

begins to continuously broadcast

news bulletins that speak of a

devastating invasion. If you tune in to

that station, you'll hear story after story

about rebel victories.

You can hear about bombed railway lines,

sabotaged food depots, but the reality is

completely different. The army of

weapons was hundreds of kilometers

away.

The next target of the CIA is the

Guatemalan army. The CIA and

Operation Sherwood achieved a great

victory when a colonel who had

led the Guatemalan air force

defected, crossed the border

piloting his private plane, and surrendered

to the

Davies chair. Gleave Phillips, the head of

the radio campaign, wants the

colonel to announce his defection live,

but he refuses.

Phillips pretends to accept his refusal and

serves him a whiskey, then another,

until the guy is half-drunk.

[Music]

The colonel is getting more and more drunk.

Phillips uses a tape recorder to record

the account of his defection without him

noticing.

As soon as he can, Phillips edits the

recording and...

[Music]

Not only did the other

air force officers hear the recording,

President Arbenz also heard it.

[Music] He

immediately ordered the

Guatemalan air force to remain

grounded, fearing that other commanders might

desert. It was a great triumph of the

operation. To be handsome is to be good,

and they will continue to use tricks of this

kind, more and more deceptive.

He used an ingenious trick to try to

gain the listeners' trust. He

faked an attack on the station.

Those who had it tuned in were

listening to a normal broadcast and suddenly

heard screams, shrieks, children

crying,

and then he cut the broadcast. There was

silence.

But it was all a deception to make the

listeners believe that the clandestine station

had managed to resume broadcasting.

The next day the radio station

broadcast again with a triumphant tone, as if

saying, "We're back." June 23,

1954, Guatemala City. The next

deception occurred when two new EFE

47s arrived in Guatemala

six days after the

invasion began. The air attack began.

[Music] They

had never seen anything. Like an F-47

Thunderball attacking their city, flying

low and so aggressively,

when we heard the planes,

my mother was very scared and didn't give me any

courage.

It was quite complicated

at the time; we had

n't experienced a war before.

The air raid was so shocking that

Guatemalans invented a

very appropriate nickname for the bombs: "sulfates."

Sulfate was the term they used to

refer to a laxative, something that makes you

go to the toilet. That was the effect they

produced on the population of Guatemala.

And after the bombs, the machine guns

[Music] It's

probably one of the

most terrifying experiences a

person can suffer on land.

Imagine a plane making a tremendous noise, one that

seems impossible to get away from,

coming directly towards you

with its weapons roaring on its wings. It

was panic, a

terrible thing,

something very frightening.

Imagine such a scene in Guatemala, a

country that hadn't experienced

terrifying bombings. Suddenly,

a plane arrives flying low with its engines

roaring,

dropping explosives,

and today it's close to you. A tremendous noise.

Despite the terror caused, the

declassified files of the The CIA reveals something

surprising. I do

n't think they intended to cause great

damage.

If they had wanted to use the F-47s

to launch a devastating air strike,

they would have used the 227-kilogram bombs they were

designed for, but they did

n't.

The F-47s can carry three

227-kilogram bombs; they could have

caused a lot of damage with them.

In fact, the damage was more apparent

than real.

According to reports, there wasn't a

single death, nor was a single

truly powerful bomb dropped during the attack.

The truth is that in some cases

they dropped Coca-Cola bottles from the

plane, since the shattering of the glass

sounded like a loud explosion.

All of this is part of the psychological operation.

The objective of the air strike is not to kill,

but to sow chaos and panic among

the Guatemalan population. They

dropped a large bomb

that wasn't actually an

explosive device, but it created a huge

black cloud over the city, giving the impression

that something horrible had happened.

Yes,

the smoke bomb leads many

Guatemalans to believe they are

suffering a direct attack. That's

when we spotted

black smoke coming

from somewhere, or from the From the capital, the

CIA's psychological tactics went

even further. They used another trick

typical of covert operations:

replicating the sounds of a bombing raid.

They installed enormous loudspeakers at the embassy in

Guatemala City that

reproduced the noises of a bombing raid

and jet aircraft to

instill fear in the population.

[Music]

The older people

were saying that many people were going to be killed

and that it was better not to participate further in the

defense of the government.

[Music]

Although the psychological offensive is

beginning to yield results, the

rebel army has been reduced to a handful

of desperate soldiers who have only

penetrated 10 kilometers into the country,

and Arben remains in power.

The CIA is about to make an

incredible gamble, a bluff that will turn its

defeat into a stunning victory.

[Music]

Right at that critical moment, Phillips

resorted to what he called his biggest and most

important lie.

His biggest and most important lie is the

final phase of the fake radio broadcasts

that offered a

completely fabricated version of the invasion.

In a way, there were two invasions: on the

one hand, the real one, which consisted of

an invading force... On top of that, with their

forces reduced by half, and on the other hand,

the situation invented by Radio

Liberación, which suggested that those

troops were continuing to advance without obstacles, the

CIA radio broadcasts spoke

of one victory after another,

an invasion that in reality did not exist. They

said that the rebel forces were advancing

towards the capital, that the invasion was a

success, that the uprising was

underway; it was one story after another about the inevitable victory of the rebel forces. The biggest lie of all came when the radio reported that thousands and thousands of soldiers were approaching Guatemala City. The lie was those two columns of the army that were advancing towards the capital,

ready to take it.

The bet on the big lie paid off.

Thousands of Guatemalans fled the

city; traffic was paralyzed; the

city gradually ground to a halt, and

people went to the outskirts of the

city and evacuated; families were evacuated.

The critical moment of the big lie

came when the high command turned its

back on the president of Guatemala. The

great moment of the covert psychological operation

came when several

army colonels made it clear to Arbenz that They will not

remain by his side. Basically, they

tell him, "You and your communist friends

have created problems for us with the

Americans, and now you must resign."

11 officers surrounding Arbenz

distance themselves from an increasingly

isolated president. Imagine the colonels of the

Guatemalan army listening to the

news about those

military operations and wondering, "Where will I end up?

Where will I be when the situation

calms down?"

The pressure on Arbenz, politically

isolated, reaches enormous proportions. He

not only fears defeat at the hands of

his great enemy, but

also the terrifying possibility

that it is the US

behind him. The question was not whether they

were fighting against Castillo Armas and his

men, but whether it was the US that

threatened to invade the country and

whom they would have to face. He

sat in the

presidential office, bewildered and not knowing

what to do. He had

collapsed internally. The

chair had managed to look at him,

and that was truly the end of his

term.

[Music]

As the army command turned

against him, Arbenz resigned on June 27. He

could not bear it. The

psychological pressures were too great.

[Music]

Ten days later, Castillo Armas is sworn in

as the new president of Guatemala.

The colonel, exiled until just over

a week ago, is a

relatively unknown figure, but he has

become the most powerful man in the

country.

In Washington, Operation Baby's Access

is considered a huge victory by

all standards. It was an operation

that shouldn't have gone well, and it was made

possible by audacity, willpower,

and, in a way, a reckless

lack of prudence. Operation Baby

Shaq 6 was a brilliant deception, one of

the great achievements of artistic deception

carried out by the CIA.

Operation Baby's Access demonstrated that

psychological warfare could be

used as a lethal and effective weapon. It

deceived an entire country and managed to

overthrow a president.

Within the CIA, Baby's Access

becomes the model for future

regime changes around the world.

[Music]

[Music]