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2. In a letter of December 20, 1984, to one of his constituents who had complained of his gullibility as an observer, Brier asserted that his obligation was to report “observed election fraud, coercion of the voters, or denials of the right to vote . . .” On fundamental conditions, Brier wrote: “I made and make no statements concerning pre-election day freedom of speech, although the election I just witnessed in Guatemala would lead me to believe it existed because of the 14 to 16 different political parties and based on press accounts, we have been led to believe it does not exist in Nicaragua as they prepare for elections.” Actually, the occasional press accounts in the United States about state-organized murder in Guatemala might have alerted Brier to the possibility of some constraints on freedom there, but he apparently asked no questions and did no reading up on the subject. His inference from numerous parties to freedom of speech is a non sequitur—an authoritarian and terror-ridden state can easily allow, and may even encourage, a proliferation of candidates within a prescribed political spectrum. Brier cites press accounts on constraints on freedom of speech in Nicaragua as if this is a relevant subject, but he failed to pursue the matter with regard to Guatemala. He also makes the patriotic assumption that press accounts in the United States about conditions in client and disfavored states are objective. Brier wears blinders in U.S.-sponsored elections that he is prepared to set aside in talking about the integrity of an election in an enemy state. This dichotomization is openly employed by the State Department, and was followed by Hedrick Smith, of the Times, and the media more generally, as we have seen.

Brier distinguished himself as a member of the official delegation to the Philippines election of February 1986 won by Ferdinand Marcos by attacking the media’s focus on negatives like “violence, vote-buying and fraud,” with the result that “they missed entirely the fact that 20 million people conscientiously went to the polls without intimidation and wrote down their choice for President” (Robert Pear, quoting Jack Brier, “U.S. Observers Disagree on Extent of Philippines Fraud,” New York Times, Feb. 12, 1986). Brier was so accustomed to focusing on the superficial in his apologies for client-state elections that he failed to grasp the fact that the administration’s line was in the process of shifting—which caused him some embarrassment a few days later, when the freedom-loving Marcos was escorted out of the country.

3. He did not mention or attempt to evaluate actual institutions in Guatemala, such as the civil-defense patrols, nor did he or any other member of the observer team even mention the pacification program and killings of peasants, which had been the subject of innumerable reports. We suspect that Edwards’s “research” consisted of advice by the U.S. embassy, in addition to the fact that he did not see any peasants killed in his presence.

4. In the text above, we point out that the terror in Guatemala began with the U.S. intervention in 1954, and that its subsequent growth was correlated with enlarged U.S. counterinsurgency and police aid and training. See also Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, 1982), pp. 175–76.

APPENDIX 2

1. Immediately after the shooting of the pope in 1981, Tagliabue, then a Times correspondent in West Germany, wrote some enlightening articles on Agca’s Turkish Fascist connections. All of this material was ignored by Tagliabue after he became the Times’s correspondent at the Rome trial in 1985. His first story on the trial, significantly, was coauthored with Claire Sterling, and his coverage of the trial remained faithful to her model.

2. The Plot to Kill the Pope (New York: Scribner’s, 1985), p. 196.

3. For example, Martella’s lack of control over Agca’s visitors and reading materials badly compromised the case, as did the distressing number of leaks that came out of his supposedly