Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [68]
A few illustrations of the Salvadoran proceedings will have to suffice here. Two years after the crime, for example,
. . . the prosecutors expressed ignorance of the testimony [in the court record] of former guardsman César Valle Espinoza, dated August 9, 1982, which quotes Subsergeant Colindres Alemán as stating on December 2, 1980, that there were “superior orders” to apprehend the women. They were also ignorant of the statement of former National Guard Sergeant Dagoberto Martínez, taken by the FBI in Los Angeles, California, which establishes the existence of a coverup of the crime as early as December 1980.64
A second illustration of the process: two of three judges assigned to the case resigned for fear of their lives. As we noted, Judge Ramírez, who was investigating the Romero murder, fled for the same reason. This line of evidence has cumulative weight, but it was never treated as a whole by the press (and was barely mentioned as individual items of back-page news). A third illustration: according to former ambassador Robert White, two national guardsmen who might have been able to link higher-ranking officers to the murders of the women were killed by military death squads, then listed as missing in action.65 A final illustration: when the Salvadoran triggermen were finally assigned attorneys, one of the three, Salvador Antonio Ibarra, was prepared to defend the men seriously. His colleagues pressed Ibarra to abide by the statement that “the possibility of a coverup had been thoroughly investigated” and rejected. He refused to go along with this request, with the consequence that on October 30, 1983, Ibarra was seized by the National Guard and tortured at its headquarters.66 Released only under U.S. pressure, Ibarra fled the country, leaving the way clear for a lawyer team that would accept the notion that there had been a “thorough investigation” of top-level involvement. This last incident alone made it into the mass media in isolated and fleeting treatment; the others, and the package, were not featured in the free press.
The U.S. government also engaged in a systematic cover-up—of both the Salvadoran cover-up and the facts of the case. The U.S. mass media, while briefly noting the Salvadoran stonewalling, failed to call attention to the equally important lies and suppressions of their own government. As we have pointed out, both the Carter and Reagan administrations put protection of its client above the quest for justice for four U.S. citizens murdered by agents of that government. The U.S. government’s stonewalling to protect its client took many forms. One was an active collaboration in the Salvadoran cover-up. Former National Guard sergeant Dagoberto Martínez was allowed to emigrate to the United States in December 1980, and although a subsequent interview by the FBI indicated that Martínez admitted knowledge of the perpetrators of the crime and a failure to report that information—in violation of Salvadoran law—no action was taken against him. U.S. officials also reiterated that there was no reason to believe that higher-level officials knew about the crime or participated in it, when they had clear knowledge of a cover-up and a refusal to investigate.67 The State Department also regularly lied about the thoroughness of the investigation. Ambassador Hinton stated in public that national guardsman Pérez Nieto “was thoroughly interrogated and repeatedly denied that anyone superior to him had ordered him to watch the women.” A State Department cable, however, describes Nieto’s testimony as “incomplete,