141. Trump’s Latin America Playbook: How the CIA Toppled a Regime (Ep 2)

Summary

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The Rest Is Classified - Episode 141

Trump’s Latin America Playbook: How the CIA Toppled a Regime (Ep 2)
March 25, 2026

Main Theme

In this riveting episode, David McCloskey and Gordon Corera dissect the CIA-orchestrated 1954 coup in Guatemala—Operation PB Success—unveiling the realpolitik, propaganda, and psychological warfare behind one of America's most notorious regime change operations. Drawing compelling parallels with recent U.S. attitudes toward Latin America and “Trump’s playbook,” the hosts illuminate the covert action's tactics, outcomes, and enduring legacy in modern intelligence and regional geopolitics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The CIA’s Covert Toolkit

[00:41-02:12]

• The episode picks up on the CIA's use of radio-based psychological operations, creating a fictional “Voice of Liberation” station to seed disinformation throughout Guatemala.
• Operation Success, "optimistically entitled" by the CIA, combines media manipulation, psychological pressure, minor paramilitary action, and political maneuvering.
• Propaganda is the central weapon—designed to create panic, divide society, and undermine support for President Jacobo Árbenz, especially within the military.
• Quote: "You dress for the job you want, Gordon, which the CIA is planning to use psychological operations, little bit of paramilitary operations and covert action to overthrow this regime..." —David McCloskey [01:36]

2. Mastering the Airwaves: The Propaganda Machine

[05:28-08:29]

• On May 1st, 1954, the Voice of Liberation begins broadcasting, intended to prepare for a coup—aiming to fracture the Guatemalan military and instill fear.
• Broadcasts are produced in Miami, delivered via courier on Pan Am flights to neighboring countries, then transmitted into Guatemala. Later, operations move to a dairy farm under the codename Sherwood.
• Propaganda is tailored to different groups: warning soldiers and civilians, painting the regime as doomed.
• Quote: "The aim is to prepare the ground and give just that sense that this regime is doomed to end." —Gordon Corera [07:24]
• Government radio going offline for antenna maintenance grants the CIA near-total control of the airwaves during critical weeks.

3. Psychological Warfare & Air Power

[08:29-10:36]

• The CIA supplies rebel leader Castillo Armas with surplus warplanes marked as part of a “charitable foundation.”
• Planes drop leaflets—not bombs—on the army and public, urging abstention from fighting and exaggerating rebel strength; an explicit terror campaign.
• Quote: "...what we want to do was have a terror campaign." —Howard Hunt (CIA), as quoted by hosts [09:46]

4. Amplifying Threats: Arms Shipments & Manipulated Perception

[10:36-14:09]

• Arrival of 2,000 tons of obsolete Czech weaponry (often rusty and marked with swastikas) allows the US to stoke fears of communist “imperialism.”
• Propaganda targets both local and international audiences; the US claims these weapons are for a dangerous “people's militia,” further alienating the military from Árbenz.
• Naval blockade is enforced—illegally, by international law—adding to pressure inside Guatemala.
• Quote: "...the cargo of arms is like an atom bomb planted in the rear of our backyard." —Speaker of the House, cited by hosts [12:32]

5. Orchestrating Paranoia & Political Deterioration

[14:09-21:53]

• Árbenz, described as passive, attempts diplomacy with the US—unaware that regime change is non-negotiable.
• Guatemalan air force is targeted for defection using propaganda, including trick broadcasts with recordings of defected pilots.
• False broadcasts escalate paranoia: threats of labor camps, indoctrination, and conscription are fabricated. Civil liberties are suspended and reports of mass arrests help the US narrative of a repressive regime.
• Quote: "Agency propaganda operations succeeded in making Guatemala into the type of repressive regime the United States liked to portray it as." —Host quoting historian Nick Collada [19:04]
• The CIA’s escalation mirrors later tactics used in other regime change efforts, such as in Syria.

6. The “Invasion” Farce and Show of Force

[24:32-34:49]

• June 18: The attack begins, but the highly-touted rebel invasion is a minuscule force (~480 men). Many are arrested or repelled by local police, dockworkers, or simply fail to advance.
• Radio exaggerates the scale of fighting while both sides largely avoid open combat, waiting for the other to break.
• The psychological effect emerges as more potent than military action; the illusion of uprising is needed for the army (and international actors) to turn.
• Quote: "It's an invasion, but there's not actually much fighting..." —Gordon Corera [26:24]
• Confusion, ineptitude, and comic mishaps abound: e.g., a rebel airstrike mistakenly bombs an American evangelical radio station instead of the government transmitter [31:00-31:22].

7. The Tipping Point: Internal Collapse

[36:15-40:36]

• Persistent propaganda, a single bomb dropped on a military parade ground, and constant pressure cause a psychological unraveling. Árbenz, under immense stress and poorly informed about the true threat, resigns on June 27.
• The military's chief of staff, Diaz, maneuvers for his own power but is ultimately told, "Colonel Diaz, you are not convenient for American foreign policy." —Delivers the US position bluntly [41:19].
• Several short-lived juntas cycle through leadership; only after intense US diplomatic pressure does the US-favored Armas ascend.

8. The Aftermath: Dark Consequences and Shifting Templates

[42:18-48:52]

• Armas’s regime is dictatorial, reversing reforms, and triggers decades of brutal violence, mass killings by death squads, and systemic instability throughout Guatemala—far worse than before the coup.
• The CIA’s intervention is swiftly “whitewashed” as a glowing success in Washington, ushering in a template for future covert actions, including the Bay of Pigs and early Vietnam.
• Quote: "You broke it, you own it." —Gordon Corera, referencing the “Pottery Barn rule” [43:40]

9. Contemporary Parallels: Trump, Cuba, and Modern Regime Change

[48:52-54:43]

• The hosts tie learnings from Guatemala to today’s geopolitics: Trump-era ambitions in Cuba echo the overt, sometimes amateurish, regime-change spirit of the '50s.
• Modern attempts, however, are less covert and more direct—with overt economic, diplomatic, and “truth social” campaigns.
• While information warfare and elite defection remain pillars of regime change efforts, execute such operations now faces higher challenges—target governments are far more aware, and global scrutiny is greater.
• Quote: "There are real elements of [the Guatemala operation] that still very much apply today. We will see." —David McCloskey [53:33]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You dress for the job you want, Gordon, which the CIA is planning to use psychological operations... to overthrow this regime..."
  — David McCloskey [01:36]
• "The aim is to prepare the ground and give just that sense that this regime is doomed to end."
  — Gordon Corera [07:24]
• "What we want to do was have a terror campaign."
  — Howard Hunt, as cited by hosts [09:46]
• "Agency propaganda operations succeeded in making Guatemala into the type of repressive regime the United States liked to portray it as."
  — (Quoting historian Nick Collada) [19:04]
• "Colonel Diaz, you are not convenient for American foreign policy."
  — Message from CIA to Guatemalan military chief [41:19]
• "You broke it, you own it."
  — Gordon Corera [43:40]
• "There are real elements of [the Guatemala operation] that still very much apply today. We will see."
  — David McCloskey [53:33]

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Useful Timestamps for Key Segments

| MM:SS | Topic | |---------|------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:41 | Introduction to the Guatemalan coup and Operation Success | | 05:28 | Voice of Liberation launches, airwave/propaganda strategy | | 08:29 | CIA airpower as psychological weapon | | 10:36 | Arrival and propaganda value of Czech arms shipment | | 14:09 | US naval blockade, Árbenz's failed diplomacy | | 17:06 | Propaganda target: Guatemalan Air Force defectors | | 19:10 | Making the regime fit US propaganda narrative | | 24:32 | The rebel “invasion” and its farcical reality | | 31:00 | Accidental bombing of evangelical radio station | | 36:15 | Pressure culminates in Árbenz's resignation | | 41:19 | CIA to Diaz: “not convenient for American foreign policy” | | 42:43 | Armas's dictatorial regime & aftermath | | 48:52 | Parallels to Trump-era Cuba policy/regime change theory | | 53:33 | Contemporary lessons and closing reflections |

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Tone & Style

The hosts mix deep historical rigor with dry humor and seasoned skepticism, punctuating serious analysis with wry asides (comparing CIA broadcasts to Star Wars jungle bases or political podcasts, lampooning the “heroics” of small-time rebel leaders, etc.). They are candid about the moral ambiguities and tragic legacy of US actions, while linking historical patterns to today’s policy dilemmas with clarity and gravitas.

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For Listeners Unfamiliar with the Episode

This episode demystifies the mechanics and unintended consequences of covert US intervention in Guatemala, highlighting how disinformation and psychological warfare can topple governments—but often at enormous human and geopolitical cost. Whether you’re a true crime buff, a student of foreign policy, or a fan of spy stories, you’ll come away with a nuanced understanding of how “regime change” is plotted, spun, and remembered—and why history keeps repeating itself.

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For next time:
The hosts invite listener questions on regime change and intelligence history, promising further Q&As and discussions on contemporary hotspots.

Transcript

[A]

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com. The US Is trying to affect regime change in Central America. But it's not 2026. It's 1954. And it's not Cuba or Venezuela. It's Guatemala. Welcome to the Rest Is classified. I'm David McCloskey.

[B]

And I'm Gordon Carrera and dear friends,

[A]

we are now on the second episode of our exploration of the CIA's coup in Guatemala in 1954. We left off last time, Gordon, with the primary weapon in this covert war against the obviously despicable red communist Guatemalan regime of Arbenz. The main tool being the radio station, Gordon. The airwaves. Yeah, and we left off last time with this radio station that the CIA had set up that is actually in the outskirts of Miami getting ready to broadcast and getting ready to spread disinformation across all of Guatemala.

[B]

That's right, we're in the optimistically entitled Operation Success.

[A]

You dress for the job you want,

[C]

Gordon, which the CIA is planning to use psychological operations, little bit of paramilitary operations and covert action to overthrow this regime in Guatemala.

[B]

A optimistic let's see how optimistic it

[C]

is as the story unfolds, because it

[B]

is going to be a remarkable tale of a close run operation, a bit like Iran, to try and overthrow the regime, but with this idea of propaganda and the media at the heart of what's going on.

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[B]

So you get to the 1st of May and this new radio station, the Voice of Liberation, starts broadcasting. It appears on the airwaves and the idea, as we said last time, was to divide the population, to create panic, to undermine support for the government, particularly in the army. In six weeks, to prepare for a coup around June 18th. And now the station is made out to be operating secretly from a rebel base in the jungle, which always sounds to me like a kind of Star

[C]

wars base, but really the programs are first made in Miami with the couriers taking the recordings on a Pan Am

[B]

flight to a neighboring country, where they're beamed into Guatemala on a mobile transmitter. But later they actually move the broadcast to a dairy farm. This is all codenamed Sherwood, but the broadcasts are quite interesting. It's a mix of humor and anti government propaganda.

[C]

It's.

[B]

I'm not sure we could relate it

[C]

to any of our podcasts, but it's

[B]

not, you know, I'd like to think

[C]

it was a early version of the

[B]

Rest Is Politics, maybe with Rory and

[C]

Alastair chatting about local politics, but with a particular regime change bent on it. I think real time, that's what it was.

[A]

I'm pretty sure that they record the rest of politics from a Miami air base, and then the. The recordings are brought to the UK and beamed in by a mobile transmitter to make it appear as though Alastair and Rory are actually doing this from the uk.

[C]

Yeah, they're really the Star wars style jungle base. Yeah. But the idea of this is to target propaganda at different groups, remind soldiers

[B]

of their duty to protect the country against foreign communist interference. They're there to warn women, to keep their husbands away from communist trade union meetings. Deeply subversive, all these kind of things. The aim is to prepare the ground and give just that sense that this regime is doomed to end. And then the idea is when the right moment comes, when you prepared the way with all your, you know, rest is anti communism talk, then finally you push them over the edge with a panicked broadcast that there's an invasion coming.

[C]

Kind of bit like Orson Welles famous

[B]

War of the Worlds broadcast, where people started thinking, oh, the aliens are coming here. It's the rebels are coming. One of the things you realize, especially in those days, was just how few information sources there were, because of course, there was no TV then in Guatemala. They're incredibly lucky because by chance, government radio goes off air for three weeks when the rebel radio stations start broadcasting, because their government station is having its antenna replaced. So they effectively have the airways to themselves for at least a good chunk of this period. So you have control over one of the most significant forms of information flow going into this country. And I think only one in 50 people owned a radio in Guatemala at that time, and most of those are in the capital. But the word's going to spread. It's one of the only ways you could have an impact. So it's very interesting that you could do it at that point.

[A]

I think the other piece of this pressure campaign that's interesting is the use of aircraft.

[B]

This was another thing which was obviously new because there weren't a lot of aircraft in Guatemala at the time. But the rebels have got some war surplus old aircraft, which is the CIA, have supplied through cover of a charitable medical foundation. And so Armas, who remember is our Hitlerian moustached rebel leader, the bold but incompetent leader. He's been given three old B26 bombers and some cargo and fighter planes, mainly flown by mercenary. But they are also actually about psychological pressure because there's not much of a Guatemalan air force either. And what they're primarily being used is to fly over places and to drop leaflets. So rather than drop bombs, they're dropping leaflets from the skies for the six weeks ahead of June 18, including leaflets to the army telling them not to fight. And I think it is this psychological effect that seeing these airplanes in the air, they just project power, I think, to the local population, as well as dropping leaflets which are pursuing a certain message. And Howard Hunt, later, Watergate burglar, who's the political warfare officer for the CIA in this, says what we want to do was have a terror campaign.

[C]

Interesting words, isn't it? I mean, you wouldn't say that these days.

[A]

One of those quotes that holds up well over time, doesn't it?

[C]

Yeah, but his point is you're going

[B]

to use air power and radio to create terror, to scare people into thinking something's coming. But then there's a few incidents which also, I do think help the American and the rebel side, particularly in May. So the radio broadcast had started May 1. But something else important happens, which a shipment of arms of foreign weapons turns up in Guatemala. The country had been under an arms embargo, but Arbenz, who's running the country, the one the US wants to topple, had sent one of his ministers to Prague in January of 54 on a secret mission to buy 2,000 tons of former weapons from the Czechs. This is actually former Nazi weapons that the Czechs have got left over from the war.

[C]

And the Americans find out about this.

[B]

It's interesting, Dulles claims that they had this agent in Poland who poses a bird watcher, sees a freighter leaving and then sends a Message to CIA via microdot in Paris. And they track it. It's a little bit exaggerated because actually it seems they did learn of the plan to ship these arms. But then they lose track of the boat as it's heading over the Atlantic because even the captain of the boat doesn't know he's heading for Guatemala. He only learns that two days before he arrives. And he's being told to keep changing the route as he goes. And so it's only after it's docked in Guatemala and they're uncrating the. The weapons under conditions of great secrecy, the boxes say optical laboratory equipment, that the U.S. embassy learns that the weapons have now actually arrived. Amusingly, most of the weapons are rusting and useless and some of them still have swastikas on them, which is not great. The CIA actually at first is worried about this and had thought, well, could we mine the ship so to blow it up?

[C]

Or then they think, well, maybe we

[B]

could sabotage the weapons as they're moving in the country. And the team plants detonators on a railway line, but there's a torrential downpour and it soaks them. But they then realize, I think quite usefully that the fact the weapons have arrived, they can use it as part of this propaganda campaign by making it public.

[A]

Yeah, because they're weapons arriving to help hasten a communist takeover of Guatemala. It's better to have the weapons in the theater than to have stopped them in the first place.

[B]

Yeah, especially because they're rusting. And so they go big on this. And the State Department really does go to town on it. John Foster Dulles makes a big statement. The threat of communist imperialism is no longer academic. It's arrived. The Washington Post writes, the speaker of the House says, and this is a great analogy, the cargo of arms is like an atom bomb planted in the

[C]

rear of our backyard.

[A]

Bunch of rustic weapons sent from Czechoslovakia.

[B]

Yeah. Good grief. Yes.

[A]

You know, what it does remind me of, Gordon, is some faint echoes of the justification for kidnapping Maduro. Maduro is a narco terrorist. The legal basis for the kidnapping having been, you know, Maduro's connections to drug trafficking, which I think, as we talked about in the series we did on that raid back in January, are pretty loose kind of specious connections. Here we have a similar dynamic of a trumped up, exaggerated, somewhat fabricated threat that is being used as political grist to justify the COVID action in the first place.

[B]

They use it quite cleverly within the country as well, because the US says, and the raid radio station particularly says, These weapons are not for the army, not for the military, but they're for a people's militia that Arbenz is going to put together in order to fight and it's undermining the army. So you can see why that's quite a clever move if your overall strategy is to pull the army away from the regime. It's part of the tension. So President Eisenhower also speaks out publicly and this also helps some of the neighbours, like Honduras and Nicaragua, to become quite worried as well and to get on board with the us because they can see communist arms are to some extent, even if they're a bit crappy, coming into Guatemala.

[C]

And the US then imposes this naval

[B]

blockade which it says is to stop more arms, but that adds to the pressure on the regime.

[A]

What is Arbenz doing throughout all of this? He seems to not be particularly active up to this point.

[B]

Yeah, he does feel like a more of a passive participant in this story. And it's interesting because he starts to actually reach out to the US ambassador in Guatemala to try and get talks going. He's saying, we can de escalate this, we can deal with this. He obviously doesn't realise that this is part of a strategy to overthrow him. And so those talks aren't going to go anywhere. The US is deliberately turning up the heat and avoiding those talks. But he seems to think, well, I can just manage this. And the US naval blockade becomes a big thing because they start searching ships because they say, well, maybe more arms shipments are coming into Guatemala. So 24th of May, that comes in. It's actually not legal under international law, which if you worry about international law, I'm not sure anyone does these days, because they even board David British and French ships transiting the Panama Canal looking for weapons. And in London, they are particularly angry about this because they say, what about the special relationship? And I love the fact in London they go, there's a special relationship. It's okay boarding the French ships, but we're supposed to be your allies.

[A]

We're being treated like the French.

[C]

You can't treat us like the French aboard our boats. So there's deep anger, I think, in

[A]

London at this, I guess by the 26th of May. So we've had the blockade going. Our Benz tried to reach out, get something going that's not working. More pressure as arteries and the his CIA air force of a few B26s begin to buzz the capital, dropping leaflets specifically going for areas where the presidential guard, the more elite Praetorian force that arbins would have, trying to tell them to fight against communism and join Armas and his force. Interestingly, again, it's this kind of the psychological dimension of trying to claim that Arbenz is undermining the military with his own militia. So you're trying to, you're trying to crack the military, break pieces of the military off from, from supporting Arbenz. The message is interesting, but also just the fact that they can even fly planes over the capital and do that with impunity is its own message, you know, to show how potentially strong Arbas is relative to Arbins.

[B]

And they're targeting the Air Force, the Guatemalan Air Force as well, with some of this propaganda. June 5th, there's an interesting event where a retired chief of the Air Force senior pilot defects and he flies to Nicaragua where the, at this point, the radio broadcast, the Sherwood radio station, CIA run, is coming from the rebel station in the jungle. They get this Air Force guy drunk and they ask him, would you persuade others to defect as well? And he says no, won't do it.

[C]

They keep plying him with drink.

[B]

And then they say, so hypothetically, if you were to give a speech to persuade more of your former colleagues from the Air Force to defect, how would you do it?

[C]

And they secretly record him giving a

[B]

grandiose speech about how he would persuade his colleagues to defect. So he delivers this speech, they then edit it, taking out the bits where they're prompting him, and they play it on the radio as if he is given that speech.

[C]

I mean, poor guy. I mean, talk about being used.

[B]

But the perils of drinking. It actually has an impact because Arbenz in Guatemala City hears this broadcast next morning, he gets really angry and so he grounds his own air force to stop any more pilots defecting and flying their planes out. Having heard this message. I mean, there's not much of an air force, just a few planes built before 1936. But it's part of Arbenz becoming paranoid. And I think that's what they're doing, is they're making him paranoid. He starts raiding homes of anti communist students. The sense of fear of things closing in on them is growing. There's false propaganda spread on the radio station that labor conscription is coming, that 16 year olds will be sent to special labor camps, that there'll be indoctrination in the camps to break the influence of the church and family on young people. There's just this sense that they're spreading, that the rebels are growing strength and Arbenz is panicking. And then on the 8th of June, he actually suspends civil liberties and puts in place a state of emergency because of the fears that are growing, even though not much is actually happening. And the police round up people, hundreds are round up. Some are tortured, some maybe 75 are killed. The US papers start to talk about claims of mass arrests and torture. John Dulles, Secretary of State, says Guatemalans were living under a communist type regime of terror. I think Nick Collada, one of the historians on this, says an interesting point. He said agency propaganda operations succeeded in making Guatemala into the type of repressive regime the United States liked to portray it as.

[C]

In other words, they've made it into

[B]

what they want it to be.

[A]

It reminds me, obviously this is a very imperfect analogy, but in the very early days of the Syrian rebellion, the Assad regime really wanted the opposition to be armed and to be sort of Salafi extremist, like politically extreme Islamist. That's what they were calling the opposition. It wasn't quite that they had to in part, release people that they had captured. They had to release terrorist leaders that they had captured into the opposition to kind of seed it so that it would eventually become the thing that they had always been portraying it as. So it is this very effective political tactic. I think that sometimes in order to be fighting the thing you were always saying you were fighting, you have to do some things first, I guess, to make them that.

[C]

Yeah, to make them that, yeah.

[B]

And then the government is going to order a blackout in Guatemala City and large towns, possibly to stop people listening to the radio, cut the electricity. They send people out to hunt the transmitters. The radio station fakes the idea. They're on the move. At one point, they, I love this on air. They. They pretend there's the sound of shots and muffled orders of people, someone shouting, hands up to make it sound like they're being raided. But then triumphantly, they come on air

[C]

the next day from a new location. But it's all, all a lie. It's all made up.

[B]

Maybe we should ask, get Rory and Alastair to try that.

[C]

Maybe as part of their politics campaign. We've moved to a new secret location in the jungle.

[A]

But I guess by the 15th of June, Gordon, the agency is hoping for either a coup to take place in the capital, maybe paired with an uprising, or for armas to actually invade and take the capitals. There's kind of two, two tracks moving in order to get this regime change done. And at 7am on the 15th of June, the CIA's chief of station in Guatemala City. Cold calls a military officer at his house. So literally shows up, rings the doorbell and asks him to start a coup, which feels, feels a little bit on the nose, but hey, I mean, at this point you've got the information environment under control. You might as well just wander out there and see what you can make happen.

[C]

But the guy says not yet. And I think they still feel like

[B]

they need a show of force. They need to feel like the the rebels are for real in order to be able to take that step within the military. So there's still this sense that it's the pieces are getting put in place. But is it going to work? Six weeks was the plan. By June 18th they are ready for the big invasion.

[A]

Maybe they're Gordon let's take a break and when we come back, we'll see if the big invasion can pull off the regime change coup that the CIA has wanted or if it's going to devolve into farce, maybe a little bit of both. We'll see you after the break.

[G]

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[A]

Well, welcome back. It's now June 18, 1954, the six week timeline to prepare the ground for the coup. Gordon is up and now we are ready for the assault to begin.

[C]

The radio announces that Armas and his force have invaded. But the reality is that there aren't

[B]

5,000 troops, as the radio claims. There's in fact at most 480 troops who are coming over from Honduras and

[C]

El Salvador in waves. But as we'll see, those waves aren't very big or very successful. But the idea is, I suppose they're going to spread out small rippling waves

[A]

of a few dozen people at a

[C]

time which don't go very far. They spread out over a long distance

[B]

to make it look like they're more of them.

[C]

But even here with this tiny number, it doesn't go well.

[B]

I mean, one group get arrested the day before they're supposed to go over. So on June 17th by El Salvadoran policemen who spot them with a load of guns hidden in their car. And so they get arrested, you know,

[C]

one of the four military forces which

[B]

are supposed to cross the border. And eventually they're going to get out but without their weapons. Then there's another 122 of them who head towards an army garrison. But all but 30 are going to get killed or captured. Armas and I love this idea, he's in a leather jacket and a checked shirt in a battered station wagon. Again, it's the slightly, you know, Graham Greene comic element to this whole thing. But he's leading 100 men from Honduras over the border.

[C]

But the radio is saying there's battles, there's rebel uprisings.

[B]

None of it's true.

[C]

I mean, rebel planes are flying and sandbags are going up in the capital

[B]

and the stores are shuttered because everyone is waiting for this rebel force. But the truth is it's not really going anywhere.

[C]

And this is what I find so

[B]

interesting is it's an invasion, but there's not actually much fighting because Armas doesn't actually have the men to take the capital or to fight the army. He doesn't want to also engage the army directly in battle because the whole

[C]

point is you're trying to get the

[B]

army to change sides, so you don't really want to start killing too many of them.

[C]

And the government also is worried and

[B]

doesn't have the ability to fight the rebels off and is a bit nervous about the army's loyalty, so it doesn't want them to get in a fight. So Benz is hoping that international diplomacy

[C]

and the UN can save the day

[B]

because neither side actually wants to fight.

[C]

So it's a kind of weird invasion, isn't it?

[A]

The scale of this whole story, I find to be very frustratingly small. We're talking about a few hundred guys, essentially, who. Who enter Guatemala in station wagons with their. With their fearless leader having, you know, recently been a furniture salesman in his leather jacket, sort of urging them onward. And then fake, fake strafing runs of the capitol with dilapidated B26 bombers.

[B]

It's mad, isn't it?

[A]

It's wild. But I guess the.

[C]

The.

[A]

By June 19th. So the next day, the US ambassador gets on a secure comms line that the CIA can use at the embassy and. And writes. Write to Dulles, and, I presume, to John Foster Dulles. Or is he writing to Alan Dulles? I guess. Yeah, to Alan, I guess maybe.

[B]

I don't know. Yeah.

[A]

Bomb, repeat, bomb. So he's wanting something to happen, I guess.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

It does sound kind of desperate when you're writing to either the Secretary of State or the CIA director going, bomb, repeat, bomb, because you'll know your invasion is not going well. Al Haney, who's one of the commands of the operation, says to Frank Wisner, another CIA guy, are we going to

[B]

stand by and see the last hope of free people in Guatemala submerged to the depths of communist oppression? But Wisna kind of freezes. I think. They're not sure about how involved they want to get because they don't want the US itself to do any bombing. Because the whole point is this is supposed to be a rebel uprising, and the US is not supposed to be intervening in Latin America, and they don't want to play into communist propaganda. This is all US regime change at the moment. They're thinking, well, we're not going to bomb. We'll just see how it goes. And by the 20th. So the next day, the CIA is reporting that Arbenz is recovering his nerve. I mean, the stores are still shuttered. But the worry shifts to diplomacy because he's taking his Case to the United Nations, John Foster Dulles is pretty worried because there's resolutions from the French saying, you know, this is a terrible, this uprising.

[A]

Oh, the French, the un God forbid our regime change effort be, be deep sixed by a French, a French UN resolution. Good God.

[C]

It's fair to say these were different times, but international opinion is seeing the US is probably behind this and you

[B]

know, British left wing politicians are like,

[C]

it's united fruit, it's big fruit. So I think there is a bit

[B]

of tension at the CIA because it's all looking in doubt, isn't it? I mean, it's not looking like it's going to work.

[A]

And I guess, I mean, it gets worse, doesn't it? Because Allen Dulles, CIA director, gets a phone briefing the afternoon of the 20th from Al Haiti, who's down in Florida, and he's lost three planes. Armas had three F47s to kind of, you know, maintain deniability. Two of those are out of action after being shot. One ran out of fuel and it crash landed in Mexico. And Haiti's saying, you know, we need, we need more planes. And so Dulles and again, this is, it has weird echoes of what is going to happen at Bay of Pigs with the struggle over air cover and, and all of that. Dulles will authorize one airstrike, one airstrike over the capital, presumably not for any military gain, but to kind of demonstrate the power of, of the rebel force. So one of the rebel pilots was targeting the government radio station, which, by the way, Gordon, the government radio station feel, it feels like it's been rather feckless throughout this entire series.

[B]

They've not got gold hanger level of, you know, output. I think they are. I don't know who our rivals are.

[C]

I'm not going to insult any of our rivals. But, but, yeah, they're not in the game. They've not got the mix of humor and news.

[A]

They're the BBC podcast. No, I knew what you wanted to say, Gordon.

[C]

That is not accurate. No, but the point is this rebel pilot is going to target the government

[B]

radio, but he's warned that just down the road there's the transmitter of an American evangelical station which has a red tile roof.

[C]

And he comes back and he's asked, did you, did you bomb the right place?

[B]

And he says, absolutely. You should have seen them red tiles flying.

[C]

He's bombed the evangelical radio station. Rather than, I mean, no one dies, we should say no one dies.

[A]

So that was one of the targets. That was the bombing target.

[C]

Well, no, the target was the government, but that's what they got wrong.

[A]

He blew up an evangelical radio station

[B]

in Guatemala by mistake.

[A]

By mistake.

[C]

So it's not going well.

[A]

So after three days of the four invasion forces, and I should say you really should have used scare quotes of forces in your outline here, Gordon, because it's, it's a couple hundred guys driving in station wagons. Two are turned back, including one by the Salvadoran police, and another one is halted and prevented from actually entering Guatemala.

[B]

And then on June 21st comes news of another big defeat for the rebels because they've attacked the port Puerto Bereas on the Atlantic coast by boat. But they are defeated by policemen and dock workers.

[C]

I mean they are literally, they arrive

[B]

by boat and the policeman and the dock workers turn them back. So things do look pretty bad. Within three days, more than half of Armas's forces of about 480 are gone out of the fight. And these forces are still pretty close to the border. They barely moved inland. They're not attracting that many defectors from the army as the plan was based on. The army is kind of wavering, staying in its barracks, not taking sides and they're struggling and occasionally the local peasants fight him off. So you can see why by time you get to the 22nd, the arguments in Washington are about what more can we do? Because this is looking bad, isn't it?

[A]

It is. It is looking bad. And then in the Afternoon of the 22nd, Dulles goes into the Allen Dulles CIA director, goes into the Oval Office to brief Eisenhower. Eisenhower asks him what are the chances of success? Tullis says zero. Zero, Gordon. And then with more bombs and planes, you know, Eisenhower asks him what could you do with more. Dulles increases the odds to 20%, which again I'm just thinking of the Bay of Pigs series when all of these numbers were so inflated by the time we get to Cuba, which is just six, seven years later, it's crazy, isn't it? It's remarkable. They thought the odds in Cuba were almost is like a near certainty, whereas here it's actually much more realistic. Like it's basically not going to happen to very unlikely.

[B]

So much for PB success.

[C]

I mean that's the thing. It's like normative determin. It didn't work there although does it because Eisenhower tells one of his political

[B]

advisors who's quite rich to get planes to them and this guy, it's so, it's so interesting how this works. He calls Riggs bank and draws out $150,000, which is a lot of money. You know, 1954 goes to see the Nicaraguan ambassador at the Pentagon, and then they give the cash to the US military who transfer ownership of three planes called Thunderbolts to Nicaragua. And they all do that. They do that in a day. They basically get the money and get the plane to Nicaragua. So by the next day, the planes arrive fully armed in Panama from Puerto Rico. And then, you know, they go onwards from there that evening. So that's all happening in a day. And so by the 23rd, they've already got these new planes ready to go into combat and they start to actually do things like strafes from troop trains. But again, when I was reading this, I was like, wow, you know, air power comes in. But you realize when they talk about bombing runs, they are dropping sticks of dynamite and hand grenades out of the planes. I mean, that's the kind of bombing rum we're talking about. It's not modern laser guided munitions and, you know, smart bombs. And one of these planes then drops a bomb on a freighter at a port they think is unloading weapons. Turns out to be a British freighter.

[A]

It probably wasn't a mistake. It probably wasn't a mistake. I mean, blowing up evangelical radio stations and British freighters, they have to pay

[B]

the Brits $1 million in restitution for blowing up, which is a third of

[A]

the entire covert action budget, by the

[C]

way, that was on paying the Brits for burning up one of their freighters.

[A]

Remember, this whole thing was 3 billion bucks.

[C]

Yeah, I think they might have blown the budget.

[A]

They blew the budget. They blew the budget, yeah. Out of the water.

[B]

So they're not actually having that much impact. But it's so interesting. Again, the combination of air power and propaganda is the thing, because they have loudspeakers on top of the U.S. embassy Broadcast sound of fighter planes. So you are giving the impression that

[C]

there are loads of planes flying over

[B]

Guatemala City when there aren't. And the planes are actually called the laxatives for the effect they have on Arbenz and other people in government.

[C]

The idea is they are loosening them.

[B]

Let's say they're loosening their bowels, or

[C]

however you want to put it, because

[B]

of this fear that air power is now going to be used against them. And this is part of that pressure strategy. And now it really does start to work because the tide turns as government forces seem to be less willing to fight. You know, and the Voice of Liberation, the radio station in the jungle, is sending messages that troops are heading to the capital. They're gaining volunteers on the way. Not true. I mean, Armas in his leather jacket and check shirt is still basically keeping his head down near the border.

[A]

He's basically in Honduras still. Right?

[C]

I mean, he's over the border. Let's give him something.

[A]

He's not marching around the streets of the capital engaged in kind of like close combat with Arbenz's troops, though.

[B]

No, no, not at all.

[A]

I mean, he's a long ways away.

[B]

Yeah. And Arbenz is drinking heavily. He thinks he's under attack. He's not sleeping. You know, huge stress. He's a wreck. June 25, they hadn't bombed the Capitol much, but they have a rebel pilot drop one bomb, just one bomb, on a military parade ground, which leads to smoke above the capitol and many people fleeing. That again, starts to have an impact on the officer corps, who are starting to think, you know, this could get bad for us. So then by June 26, Arbenz is hunkered down in the palace. He's fearful. Some of those around him are telling him things. You know, the tide is turning even though it's clearly not.

[C]

And then you get to Sunday the

[B]

27th, the crucial day, one more crucial piece of propaganda. On the Sunday morning of June 27, the Rebel Radio station claims two columns of rebel soldiers are converging on the capital. Now, in fact, Hamas and his small group of miles away. But people start to flee. You know, the radio station is creating this illusion that the city is under attack. It actually broadcasts messages telling people who are on the highways to make way for rebel trucks, you know, because they're incoming. Make way for all of these rebels who are heading there. There are, Eddie. I mean, it's wild, isn't it?

[A]

I would imagine that at this point, I mean, our Benz is getting. Has to be getting some counsel from. From the military because this is becoming an intolerable situation. He's cracking, he's drinking, he's not sleeping. And obviously, you know, one other, I think, thing that strikes me is Arbenz must have terrible intelligence about what's actually going on. Even though he got pieces of the plan from the CIA officer that left papers behind in his hotel room. You know, as we discussed last time, time, it's not like he, unlike Castro, who has the exiles, the Bay of Pigs exiles, basically penetrated from the get go. Arbenz doesn't know what's going on here. He's got no picture for what's actually happening.

[B]

The plotting is also starting here because he's got his chief of staff, a guy called Diaz, who's been talking to the American ambassador. And the American ambassador is kind of getting into the game here politically. And Diaz says to the Americans, he says, I might be able to ask Arbenz to go, but I'm not going to support your guy en masse. You know, he's obviously maneuvered. Maneuvering for himself. And so he goes then to see Arbenz, this is Chief of Staff Diaz, and says, look, it's time to go. I'll continue the fight for you. The army will continue fight. But your. You and your kind of communist friends, it's just too much for us. It's going to destroy everything we've built. And Arbenz, at that point, he agrees. I mean, he resigns on that day, Sunday, June 27, nationwide speech. He gives up because he's convinced that there's no hope for him. And it is that thing, I guess, which is the regime has cracked. And we've been hearing a lot about that in other kind of contexts and other countries, haven't we, with regime change. Once you get that crack, especially at the very top of the elite within the army, and you have your chief of staff and the military coming to you and saying, I think you better go, it's game over, isn't it?

[A]

It is. And Arbenz doesn't seem to be the most elegant or honorable of departures either, because he literally walks out of the Presidential palace. Like, literally walks out, goes out the front. A guard outside asks where he's going. He says, out front. The guard thinks he's going to go

[B]

fight on the front.

[A]

Yeah, because obviously they're in the middle of this conflict. And he says he can't do that. He just means he's literally walking out the front of the palace, but he actually goes out the side door, walks across the street into the Mexican Embassy, and he's gone. He ends up in Mexico. I guess he's strip searched at the airport on the way out.

[B]

Yeah. Humiliated.

[A]

Deliberately, just to make sure he's not taking any liquids with him. And this is quite sad. I mean, he drowns in his bathtub at the age of 58 years later, which seems like a suspicious way to go, but maybe he'd been heavily drinking and just. Just slip beneath the water.

[B]

Yeah. But it's still not done because the US of course, want their man in. And you've had this Diaz, the chief of staff, who's come in, in Arbenz's place, but he says he's going to continue to fight against Armas, the Americans guy. And so the US Ambassador is kind of angry at him. And the ambassador cables Washington to urgently recommend bombing Guatemala City.

[C]

I mean, it's like constantly people are just like, bomb, bomb, bomb. Because they like, well, we still haven't

[B]

got the regime we want. So next morning, two CIA officers go to see Diaz and deliver a message to him. And I mean, this message is. It's just so simple. It's like, Colonel, Colonel Diaz, you are not convenient for American foreign policy.

[A]

At least it's direct.

[C]

It is direct.

[B]

I mean, they're not mucking around. And they take him to see the US Ambassador and he's basically told, nope, you're not our guy, we don't want you. So soon. He is forced out by the ambassador. And it's so interesting because now the ambassador really kicks in him because he just spends the Next, I think, 11 days manoeuvring, getting one leader after another removed, telling them what's acceptable and what's not. I mean, he's told by Dulles, crack heads together. And so it takes 11 days. After Arbenz resigns, five successive juntas take power, each successively more amenable to Washington. But eventually, after two months maneuvering, Armas, their man, is in as President. It is kind of fascinating mix of

[C]

regime change at the moment.

[B]

You get rid of Arbenz, but then still the political maneuvering afterwards to get your guy and the regime in which takes months, but they get it.

[A]

There's a difference between regime change and then a regime being changed into one that you actually want. Isn't that right? And the latter is a lot, a lot harder to engineer. Armas gets a state dinner at the White House. He's welcomed by Vice President Nixon, who says, we in the US have watched the people of Guatemala record an episode in their history deeply significant to all peoples, led by the courageous soldier who is our guest this evening.

[B]

Oh, that courageous soldier sort of whitewashed

[A]

the, the station wagon that he appeared in in quite a city while driving. But Armas becomes quite dictatorial, I guess, although the ineptness carries through, doesn't it? Yeah, he outlaws political parties, brings back an old dictatorial police chief. I would say Washington doesn't really care. I think that'd be fair to say. They move on to other things. And then Armas will be killed by a member of his palace guard in 1957. Series of dictators will follow. Hundreds of thousands of peasants are killed by anti guerrilla death squads in the following years, per Capita becomes one of the most violent places in the entire region. US has to start doing handouts to prop up the economy. So it's not happy. An example here of maybe some of the. The unintended consequences.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Of regime change and the Pottery Bar and Rural Gordon, which I think is always fun to talk about in these kind of situations.

[B]

You broke it, you own it. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, I, I think, I mean, we shouldn't gloss over how bad it gets. I mean, you know, there's death squads, peasants are killed. It's actually one of the worst periods of violence that you see in, in Central and Latin America. And you get this thing which we saw in the Cold War, where the US is not really caring about democracy. It's backing whoever's anti communist, you know, even if it's a nasty bunch of dictators who don't care about human rights, who are killing lots of peasants and workers. What matters is it's anti communists. So it's a pretty dark outcome for Guatemala that comes out of this, out of this coup. I think one of the other interesting things is, you know, we talked about United Fruit, Big Fruit. It doesn't even do. Do that well out of it, which is also, I think goes back to, you know, how much was it all their, their plan, because land reform does get cancelled. But back in Washington there's a big antitrust suit and it gets eventually kind of broken up. It never gets back into Guatemala to quite the same extent it was before. They start using nasty chemicals to improve yields that doesn't work. And by 1972 they sell the last of their land in Guatemala to Del Monte Corporation. The man from Del Monte, he says yes.

[C]

So it doesn't even work out that

[B]

well for United Fruit as well as Guatemala.

[A]

Well, and I guess the, the CIA team, though, Gordon, it is interesting as they're debriefing with Eisenhower afterward, that the revisionism around this starts almost, almost immediately because Eisenhower asks, okay, well, as he's being briefed, you know, how many men did Armas lose? And Eisenhower's told he lost one man, a courier, before the invasion, which is totally false.

[B]

It's a lie.

[A]

At least 43 of Armas's people were. Were killed, maybe, maybe more. But nobody contradicts the person who says that. And Eisenhower shakes Allen Dulles his hand and says, thanks, Alan, and thanks to all of you. You've averted a Soviet beachhead in our hemisphere. So this is a massive PB success is, is what they sold it to be. It's a Success.

[B]

And in the, I think the annals of the White House and the CIA at the time, it is seen as a success. I mean, there is a lot of criticism for it because I think even though it is covert, as we've said all along, it's barely covert. And so you get a lot of criticism from allies in Europe, which may matter to some people. Churchill actually, you know, says, you know, there's a lot of people in London who are kind of been a bit worried about this because the UK is particularly in this time and quite a lot of interest in that, in that region less so now. And Churchill says, I'd never heard of this bloody place, Guatemala until my 79th year. He says, and he basically says, let's not get that worried about it. But I think where it does matter is the damage to the US reputation across Latin America because it creates that resentment against the us. I mean, we talked about this in the Iran episode, didn't we? That Ajax, the coup in Iran in 53 creates a resentment against the U.S. and the U.K. in that case, that lasts for decades, I mean, through to today. And I do think that this operation shapes a generation of left wingers in Latin America to see America as their enemy or as an adversary because it's the one getting rid of democratically elected governments and putting in dictators who don't care about human rights. So it creates a perception of America which is quite influential in Latin America for years.

[A]

I mean, this is interesting. Even a 25 year old Argentine physician happened to have been in Guatemala for some of these events, trying to help the Arbenz regime before he had eventually moved on. And it's, it's Che Guevara.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Who got to Guatemala in January of 1954. He had been there supposedly studying healthcare, but actually trying to organize resistance to support Arbenz. And it's kind of, to some degree, I think Guatemala is kind of a crucible for some of these CIA guys who start to, who see this as now a tried and true template. Iran, it's now Guatemala. We can do this elsewhere, we can do this in Cuba. And it's kind of a mirror image for Latin American leftist slash communist guerrillas like Che, who see the US now as kind of a implacable adversary throughout much of the region and are trying to resist this kind of this, this hemispheric domination that we've been talking about.

[G]

About.

[B]

Yeah, because Che Guevara flees and ends up meeting Fidel Castro. And you're right, the threads from Guatemala lead very directly, don't they to Cuba and to the Bay of Pigs, which we've done in previous episodes, because there's this myth of success. You know, it spreads within the CIA. People are being told this is how you can do it. You can use disinformation, quite a small force, you can overthrow a government and it creates the confidence which is going to draw a direct line to other covert action, including Vietnam, I think, in early 60s, but particularly Bay of Pigs, as we talked about the idea, you can use radio exiles and just a bit of air support, overthrow a regime, no problem. Did it in Guatemala in 54.

[A]

The mention of Bay of Pigs brings us to Cuba, which is part of where we started this series, which is looking at Cuba today as a potential country in the sights of Donald Trump, who's more or less actively talking about regime change in Cuba, is economically and diplomatically squeezing Cuba right now with that. That as kind of a stated goal. I mean, do you think this is. I think the big question is we've been talking about Guatemala and PB success. Are we back to a world similar to the 1950s where we're doing these kind of almost this combination of gunboat diplomacy and covert action in order to regain, I guess you could say, hemispheric domination? It feels that way. What do you think?

[B]

I think the ambition is similar, isn't it, to have regime change and to have hemispheric domination remove regimes you don't like. I guess the differences are. Well, a few, but one is regimes are now much more aware of these dangers and do much more to prepare themselves for it. I don't think you could get away with the amateurishness of the Guatemalan plot to do it. I also guess the US is being much more overt about it now. I mean, Donald Trump doesn't really do

[C]

the COVID action and let's pretend this radio station is somewhere else.

[B]

He just broadcasts on truth, social and social media what he wants to happen and says, we want this regime gone, it's going to go. So the pressure is much more. It is psychological pressure, it is economic pressure, it is diplomatic pressure, but it's very overt on somewhere like Cuba, isn't it? But the aim, I think is similar to Guatemala, which is you try and fracture a regime and get some people to go, this is dangerous to be opposed to Washington. And a bit like Diaz did, the chief of staff to Arbenz, you kind of, you get someone who's going to go to the leader and go, look, this policy is not working. I think you need to Resign, and we need to put someone else in place, the Delsey Rodriguez of Venezuela, who is going to be more amenable to Washington. So you can see in a sense, without the kind of comic aspects of this plot and having a rebel force and all those things. But there are parallels, aren't there?

[A]

There are. I guess it raises the question then of if we looked at Cuba, for example, today, is it in any way realistic that you could affect regime change with only minimal force? Can you do it with economic sanctions and a blockade, plus the diplomatic pressure, plus a relatively on the cheap covert action plan that blends some mix of payouts to members of the military or elites to switch sides? Some of this information warfare we've been talking about to some degree, although I think it's much harder to do today given how many more sources of information there are. But is that even feasible in Cuba? I can see how the Trump administration would convince itself it could be, but you could even see in these cases like Guatemala. And frankly, I think this might be some of the attitude today. If you're Eisenhower or you're Dulles and someone comes to you with a plan and says, look, we think this is going to cost a few million bucks. We think it, maybe it's a coin flip, but we don't have to invest that much. And if it works, it's a big success, it's a PB success, and if it doesn't work, we're no worse off than we were before. So you can see how the logic of the kind of, the risk and reward can make sense as seen from Washington, because all of the nasty outcomes that we talked about, the death squads, the fragmentation of Guatemalan politics and all these, all of those costs are borne by other people who don't vote for American presidents. And I think you could make the same case in Cuba today where you'd say, look, we might be able to do this on the cheap and if it doesn't work, work, we're no worse off than we are right now.

[B]

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question because it definitely feels like the desire is absolutely there in Washington. Regime change in Cuba, Marco Rubio particularly, but also President Trump, but they don't want to do a Venezuela style remove the bleeder. They don't want to do an invasion. And so I think in a sense, we're about to find out whether this works, whether that kind of economic pressure, particularly that's being placed on Cuba with the effective oil blockade and things like that is going to be enough to fracture a regime and to get it to give up. I think it's going to be. I don't know the answer, but I think we may be about to find out.

[A]

The Guatemala operation is not so terrible of a template, is it? I think there are real elements of it that still very much apply today. We will see. We should remind people, though, Gordon, I guess as we come to a close here on this exploration of Guatemala, 1954, we want to remind listeners to send in any questions on social media or to email [e-mail] we want your questions, your comments, your thoughts on this era of regime change and as we look forward potentially to more to come in Cuba or in Iran, please send us your questions on what's going on in the world right now because we'll be doing Some Q&As soon to answer those.

[B]

And don't forget to join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com There, of course, you get early access to all of our series so you can binge listen to them. There's also going to be news of some special events just for members. And of course, members get early access to tickets for live events of which there may be news soon. So do join up there, but otherwise we will see you next time.

[A]

Time we'll see you next time.

[J]

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