Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [69]
A second form of official U.S. participation in the cover-up was a refusal to make public information on the Salvadoran investigation and evidence uncovered by the United States itself. The Rogers report was released belatedly, in a version that edited out the original report’s statement about the sad state of the Salvadoran system of justice. In response to a growing chorus of criticism of the delays, Judge Harold R. Tyler was appointed by the U.S. government to carry out a further investigation. His report was kept under wraps for a long time, again apparently because it had some serious criticism of the Salvadoran judicial process that would have interfered with Reagan administration plans to claim progress every time such certification was required.69 The families of the victims and their attorneys regularly found the U.S. government unwilling to release information on the case. The argument given was that the information was sensitive, and that releasing it would interfere with the legal process in El Salvador. As the Salvadoran process was a sick joke, moving only in response to U.S. threats, the official rationale was transparently fraudulent. Furthermore, Duarte was regularly making statements that the arrested guardsmen were surely guilty, and that nobody higher than them was involved, which blatantly prejudged the case. The only plausible rationale for the U.S. cover-up is that the administration wanted to minimize adverse publicity concerning the performance of its murderous client. Information on what was really going on, or its own internal analyses of the case or appraisals of the Salvadoran legal process, would make the client look bad. The administration hoped that the case would “go away,” but until that happened, it wanted the publicity flow to be under its control.
Part of the reason the administration wanted control was to allow it to claim reasonable progress in the pursuit of the case whenever the military government was due for more money. As with other right-wing satellites, “improvement” is always found at money-crunch time. In its July 1982 certification report, the State Department found that “substantial progress” had been made in the case and predicted a trial in the fall of 1982. In early 1983, the certification report noted “significant developments” in the case. This manipulation of evidence to protect the flow of arms and money to the regime would not be easy with full disclosure—or with a critical and honest press.
This cover-up of the Salvadoran judicial process, even though four murdered American women were involved, did not arouse the press to indignation or satire, nor did it cause them to provide more than minimal coverage of the inquiry.
2.4.4. THE TRIAL—FIVE NATIONAL GUARDSMEN FOR
$19.4 MILLION
The trial of the five immediate killers of the four women should have been presented in a Kafkaesque framework, but the U.S. media played it very straight. The trial took place three-and-a-half years after the acts of murder, despite the fact that the triggermen were immediately identified and despite enormous U.S. pressure. Two of three judges assigned to the case had resigned out of fear for their lives, and the only independent defense attorney had fled the country after a session of torture at National Guard headquarters. The defense at the trial made no effort to defend the men on the grounds of “orders from above,” although this is a standard defense in such cases, and significant evidence was available for use in this instance. The mass media failed to note the point, although it suggests fear, a deal, or both, and although, as we saw in the Popieluszko case, the media are sometimes immensely alert to cover-ups. In March 1984, former intelligence officer Santivánez stated that the guardsmen knew that “If they don’t name Casanova, they will get out of jail as soon as it is feasible.”70 This testimony was not referred to in the trial context—the media played dumb.
Like the Salvadoran elections of 1982 and 1984, this trial was thoroughly American