THE CIA OVERLOOKED ME



Snow is a Forensic anthropologist, has helped investigate many massacres and political killings. Snow has worked extensively with Americas Watch and other human rights groups. In the 1980's he went to Argentina to exhume mass graves filled with innocent civilians who had been killed by government death squads during the war. He has worked in Argentina, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Philippines, Croatia and others. So far his work has led to the conviction of five officers in Argentina (Huyghe 166). Hundreds of officers were involved of course, but this is a start. More than anything, his work has brought these atrocities to the surface, where the bodies have to be dealt with and questioned by the public and governments.

Currently, Snow is working in former Yugoslavia, near Ovcara. It has become one of the largest forensic excavations ever dealing with war crimes (Stover 40). Snow still teaches at the University of Oklahoma and sometimes lectures to Forensic Science organizations and Law Enforcement personnel. When he's not traveling he lives near Oklahoma City with his wife Jerry Whistler (Current Biography 54). He maintains his Texas roots and personality that may help him cope while wading through so much sadness each day. His advice to co-workers in the field is, "you do the work in the daytime and cry at night" (Green 111). Dr. Clyde Snow is a member of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

The CIA has always had an interest in Guatemala. When thousands of pages of documents regarding the CIA's complicity in Latin American death squads were released Snow was called upon to investigate. There is no doubt in my mind that Clyde lied to me when he said the Domestics Contacts Division of the CIA overlooked him. The Agency has an interest in anything to do with Guatemala: 1960-90. Human rights groups say at least 40,000 Guatemalans "disappeared" in last three decades. Most were poor Indians. Anthropologists, led by Clyde Snow, dug away at a village site.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 11, 1997

GUATEMALAN FORENSIC TEAM TO BEGIN EXHUMATIONS

The Guatemala Forensic Anthropology Team, working under the authority of the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA), will begin gathering evidence this week from a remote mass grave site in Guatemala. The team will initiate their investigations on December 8 in Acul, established in 1983 by the government as the first "model" village in the country after the original town was destroyed by the Guatemalan army. Acul is located in the mountainous highland region of Guatemala known as the Ixil Triangle, where some of the worst human rights abuses in Central American history took place. After conducting field work on site in Acul, the forensic team will continue their investigations with clinical work to be done in their laboratories in Guatemala City.

This December 29 marks the one year anniversary of the signing of the Guatemalan Peace Accords, which ended the 36 year civil war that left more than 100,000 dead and 40,000 'disappeared.' Largely fought in rural areas, the conflict profoundly affected members of the 21 Mayan ethnic groups living in these remote parts of the country The forensic team was established by the American Asssociation for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1992. Initial training was directed by Clyde Snow, Ph.D. (Norman, Oklahoma), internationally known forensic anthropologist who has worked in Chili, El Salvador, Argentina, Guatemala, and Bosnia, and is currently investigating human rights abuses in the Congo.

In 1991, Snow was appointed by President George Bush to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, held in Geneva, Switzerland. All but one of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology team are Guatemalan. Vince Heptig (Ft. Worth, Texas), an award-winning photojournalist and author of A Mayan Struggle: Portrait of a Guatemalan People in Danger, is the team's photographer and will Email photographs of the project to Amnesty International USA on a daily basis.

Massacre Survivors in Mayan Village Want the Truth to be Told

by Scott Ashley

On April 23, 1981 in the remote Mayan village of Acul in the northern part of the Quiche department of Guatemala, a brutal massacre deviously plotted by the Guatemalan Army took the lives of 23 Indigenous Ixil Maya. Nearly 17 years later, the survivors and relatives of the slain (the same ancestors of the Maya who built the great pyramids of Mexico and Central America) are seeking reconciliation for the torture and murder of their husbands, brothers, fathers, sons and uncles. One year after the signing of the December 29, 1996 Peace Accords ending the 36 year internal struggle in Guatemala, "The truth will sing!", as one survivor of the massacre proclaimed.

The peasants of Acul have asked the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG) to help them in the process of reconciliation. I had received permission from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG) to accompany them on their December excavation of 23 bodies whose secrets lie beneath several meters of black, volcanic earth. This team will aid the Maya of Acul in recording a historical reconstruction of the 1981 massacre and the ensuing repression based on oral testimonies given by eyewitnesses. These testimonies will support the forensic evidence unearthed in the bones of the slain that lie in the mass grave.  The historical reconstruction and forensic evidence will be used in a report written by the Historical Clarification Commission (HCC). The HCC, under the administration of the United Nations, was created as a result of the 1994 Peace Accords that finally went into effect in December of 1996. This report will clarify the role of the Guatemalan Army and guerrilla organizations in the atrocities committed against the right to life during the 36 year struggle. The findings of FAFG will also be used by the District Attorney of Nebaj and the Human Rights Ombudsman of Guatemala. They will use this information in the prosecution of military officials and guerrilla combatants that are guilty of these war crimes.

FAFG had its roots sewn by Clyde Snow, the American and international folk hero of forensic anthropology who has gained fame for his intrepid efforts to identify human remains in more than a dozen countries. In 1992 he led a group of forensic scientists organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to Guatemala where more than 100,000 people have been killed by the Guatemalan military and civil patrols since the 1960s. FAFG will select paradigmatic cases throughout Guatemala that will be valuable as potential precedent-setting cases of human rights atrocities.