CIA’s psyop: Operation PBSuccess and PBHistory

Although the tools have become more powerful with social media, AI and a constantly connected population, the principles are the same now as then. The CIA-led coup in Guatemala in 1954 is one of the psyops mentioned in the analysis “The hidden history of psyops”, which was published recently. This example shows how a single psyop crushed democracy and began decades of military dictatorship and violence with hundreds of thousands of dead and missing. It is an excellent case study, as it demonstrates basic methods that are still used today, and also shows how effective they were even before the breakthrough of the internet, social media or even television.

The CIA’s psychological warfare (psyop) in Guatemala in 1954 – which went by the lesser-known name Operation KUGOWN – was a crucial part of the much more famous Operation PBSuccess, which aimed to overthrow Guatemala’s then-president Jacobo Árbenz. The underlying reason was that financial interests (read: bankers and multi-millionaires) in the United States resented the fact that Árbenz’s land reforms threatened their corporate interests, such as the United Fruit Company (UFCo), which later changed its name to Chiquita Brands International and is known for its bananas. These forces therefore wanted to stop the development and labeled the reforms “socialist” while calling their own interests “American interests”.

Jorge Ubico was a Guatemalan military dictator who ruled Guatemala from 1931 to 1944. UFCo was given a monopoly on the country’s banana and coffee trade. They also owned Guatemala’s ports, railways and communications infrastructure. Ubico exempted them from taxes, gave them 200,000 hectares of land and immunity so that they could summarily execute undesirable workers. These were often landless people who were legally obliged to work 100–150 days a year. Wages were not always paid. Failure to report for manual labor was enough to be executed. Photo: Gobierno de Guatemala

In reality, Árbenz was trying to reform the country’s feudal system from the colonial era to modern capitalism, the opposite of communism. The American financial interests needed an alibi to carry out a coup and for that the outside world had to be made to believe that Guatemala had fallen into the clutches of the communists. The CIA was called in to launch a psyop that would pave the way for and support the coup.

Fear As a Weapon

The psyop component of Operation PBSuccess included the use of propaganda, disinformation, political pressure, foreign radio broadcasts, a small “rebel force,” some World War II-era aircraft, and assassinations. The aim was to create confusion and fear, undermine public confidence in the authorities and the military’s will to defend itself, and pressure the democratically elected Árbenz to resign.

The psyop was successful in creating the illusion of communist influence behind the land reform, and thus a fear of it. This in turn created suspicion of the political leadership, which was effectively undermined. Loyal government officials and officers, who wanted to defend their country and thus go against the narrative of the financial elite, were immediately branded as Soviet agents and traitors, rhetoric we recognize from today with Russia.

Jacobo Árbenz was Guatemala’s second democratically elected president from 1951 to 1954. What seems to be crucial to his decision not to offer resistance and resign, despite thousands of civilians volunteering to help the security forces, was a CIA-recorded radio broadcast that convincingly made it sound as if all the soldiers at a major military base had defected to the rebel army, which was allegedly approaching the capital very quickly. Photo: Gobierno de Guatemala

The psyop began in January 1954 and paved the way for the mini-invasion on June 18, which created panic among the already destabilized political and military leadership.

After just ten days, on June 27, Árbenz resigned and was replaced by the CIA-backed military junta of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.

The Methods

The following six components were crucial to the success of the psyop and thus the coup:

Media/Radio Liberación: A secret radio station was said to be broadcasting from deep within the Guatemalan jungle and to be the mouthpiece of the Liberation Army. The least people safely at home could do, it was said, was to follow the instructions of these heroes who were risking their lives for the people. However, it broadcast pre-recorded messages from CIA headquarters in Miami, Florida. The messages were then flown to Nicaragua, a few hundred kilometers away, where they broadcast from a shed on a farm. The “radio station” spread fake news of major rebel victories, fabricated internal conflicts, and uprisings to demoralize the Guatemalan military and frighten the population.

Disinformation and Propaganda: The spread of first false communist accusations against the government, followed by anti-communist propaganda against the fabricated threat, created an atmosphere of confusion and destabilized the entire society. This made the Árbenz government appear weak and infiltrated by communist agents.

The coup plotters. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) approved the coup plans in August 1953 after pressure from US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. His brother Allen Dulles (right) was head of the CIA during the 1954 coup. Both brothers had long-standing financial and professional connections to the United Fruit Company (UFCo). Not only did they have large stockholdings, but John Foster had personally negotiated UFCo’s advantageous contract with Guatemala with former dictator Jorge Ubico. Photo: US Government

Black propaganda: Deception and lies were widely used to undermine confidence in the government and military leadership, as well as key figures who could not be threatened or bought and remained loyal. These were attributed with false statements and actions that were said to show that they were Soviet agents and traitors. The country’s army, in reality mostly patriots, was now called “communist forces” and was allegedly hunting anti-communists in the streets and committing abuses against patriotic citizens on the orders of the president. The country’s police chief was alleged to have ordered the arrest of all anti-communist officials, which created panic among them, as they all were. When a CIA Cessna plane ran out of fuel while distributing leaflets and was forced to make an emergency landing in Mexico, it was made to appear that the “communist forces” (the country’s army) had shot down a plane carrying American tourists and were celebrating it in their hateful communist zeal. But it was all lies and damned lies. In the end, no one knew who said what or what happened.

Feigned invasion: A small force of 480 CIA-trained exiled Guatemalans, led by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, launched a small-scale invasion at four locations along the country’s borders. It was supported by mock airstrikes, assassinations, and staged radio reports to create the illusion of a successful invasion by a large “liberation army” and a growing “anti-communist popular uprising,” convincing Árbenz that his nearly 9,000-strong security force would not or could not take the fight. The 480 men, thanks to the CIA’s psyop, kept a population of 3.2 million in fear. CIA agents on the ground in Guatemala created a large amount of fictitious radio communication between scores of non-existent rebel units that won fictitious battles and reported positions, making it appear as if they were advancing.

Carlos Castillo Armas led the CIA-trained group of 480 men that invaded Guatemala in July 1954. The colonel then took power on July 7 of that year. Here Armas (standing right, wearing sunglasses) is seen during a victory parade in Guatemala City on September 28. However, the photo was presented to the outside world as showing his entry into the city in June, over three months earlier, as part of the follow-up psyop PBHistory. On July 27, 1957, Armas was assassinated by Romeo Vásquez Sánchez, a soldier from his own presidential guard, who then ran out of sight and killed himself. Officially, Sánchez was described as a “communist fanatic,” but many historians believe that it was more a conspiracy involving rival groups and/or the CIA. Photo: UPI

Phantom aircraft: The “Liberation Air Force” consisted of a mix of surplus World War II aircraft such as P-47 Thunderbolt fighters, C-47 Dakota cargo planes, and small civilian Cessnos. A total of about a dozen. They had little military function, but were crucial to the psyop. They flew in formation over Guatemala City to intimidate the population. Since the Guatemalan military had almost no modern air defenses or air force at all, these flights created the illusion of an unstoppable invasion force with its own air force. The transport planes were used to drop anti-government leaflets. They also dropped small bombs on targets such as fuel tanks or an ongoing military parade for maximum visual effect in order to scare the public and demoralize the army. Low-flying P-47s fired machine guns into the air, raining spent cartridges on terrified crowds who fled in panic, giving the illusion of an air raid.

Political pressure: The US State Department and the embassy in Guatemala City conducted an aggressive political and diplomatic pressure campaign, while the CIA bribed military officers to defect. Every frightened politician who yielded to pressure or officer who distanced himself from the leadership seemed, through his actions or statements, to be proof of communist infiltration or the unstoppable success of a powerful rebel army, respectively, even though neither existed.

Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations, who was hired by the United Fruit Company to develop the coup’s psyop, writes this in his book Propaganda (1928). Still image: Brut

As Edward Bernays noted: “The conscious manipulation of the opinions of the masses is an important element of a democratic society. Those who manipulate this invisible social mechanism constitute a hidden government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

Horrifying Results

The CIA’s psyop thus succeeded in breaking the democratically elected President Árbenz’s will to fight, leading to his resignation and the installation of Colonel Castillo Armas’ right-wing military junta. PBSuccess thus paved the way for a pro-American dictatorship and ensured the continued predatory activities of American companies in the poor country, which saw its newly won ten-year democracy shattered.

It was the start of a period of extreme political repression, systematic dismantling of democracy and deepening social instability. The “Dirty War” (1960–1996), a 36-year civil war, was a direct consequence of the CIA-led coup. It resulted in widespread human rights abuses, 200,000 deaths and 45,000 disappearances, in the relatively small country. The conflict was between US-backed “right-wing” military dictatorships and their notorious death squads and paramilitary militias against left-wing rebels supported by Cuba, where the indigenous Mayan population was squeezed and disproportionately subjected to massacres, primarily by the death squads.

UN investigations have concluded that the military junta’s forces and CIA-trained paramilitary militias were behind 93 percent of all reported human rights violations. This included torture, systematic rape, forced displacement, and outright massacres of entire villages.

However, the CIA ensured that American and almost all Western mainstream media presented the 1954 coup as a victory for democracy and freedom, while the subsequent terror and the continued predatory activities of American fruit companies were effectively silenced.

Several countries in Central and South America later met similar fates.

Psyop Hides Psyop

PBSuccess was based on gross lies and fabrications, which made the CIA feel compelled to launch a follow-up operation called PBHistory. Its main aim was to rewrite the country’s history and distort the population’s perception of reality about what happened during the coup and afterwards. The main aim was to make the original false communist accusations appear true, while at the same time wanting to hide the CIA’s involvement. The clean-up operation therefore also needed a psyop to succeed, so Operation KUGOWN continued in the background. It rewrote history and invented various narratives, which were then said to be proven by, among other things, government documents that were “found”. Most of the time these were pure fabrications, but sometimes the documents were genuine, and then information was taken out of context and distorted. One of the most important goals was to make the people believe that Árbenz was a Soviet puppet and also a spy, and that the coup junta leader Colonel Armas, who had seized power by force for the CIA, was a champion of democracy and beloved leader of the non-existent popular uprising.

Psyop flights. The CIA borrowed three F-47Ns, known as P-47s during World War II, two from the Nicaraguan Air Force and one from the US, to create the “Liberation Air Force”. Here one of them is seen at La Aurora Air Base in Guatemala City in July 1954, after the almost 20 times larger government forces surrendered to 480 men supported by a handful of older aircraft, whose main task was psychological warfare since their military utility was negligible. The Psyop tactics, which were almost entirely based on deception, were so successful that the “rebel” P-47s came to be called “El Sulfato” by the population, which was the name of a laxative of the time. This was because it had that effect on many when they appeared in low-flying mock attacks. Photo: Augusto de León Fajardo

The CIA primarily used the regional media for these purposes. The psyops then focused on using “found” documents to blackmail anyone who saw through or opposed the coup as communist sympathizers. A total of 15,800 people were blacklisted, who could thus be purged from government and media outlets to secure the power of the CIA-backed coup junta.

It is interesting to note that the CIA had in effect fallen for their own lies, as they had expected to find something they could build PBHistory and the subsequent psyop around. They meticulously reviewed over half a million documents from the government, political parties and unions without finding anything at all that could demonstrate Soviet influence. No funding, direct or indirect political influence. But the damage was already done and the goals of faceless and borderless capital had been achieved – something we can again draw parallels to in our day.

Photo: Alexander Guzman

Facts: Psyop Radio

Radio Liberación was not a secret resistance radio station in the Guatemalan jungle, but pre-recorded tapes from the CIA headquarters in Miami, which were flown and played back via transmitters in Nicaragua, which is not even Guatemala’s neighbor. They reported daily on the victories of the rebel forces and how they were rapidly advancing towards the capital. A crucial factor in psyops is to isolate people from society and each other. Therefore, they warned that all vehicles were military targets to be immediately wiped out by their powerful air force, that bridges had been blown up, and that staying home and being quiet was the only safe thing to do, since the anti-communist resistance movement had eyes and ears everywhere. The streets of the capital were soon empty as 450,000 residents went into self-quarantine and nervously awaited the latest news. The roads throughout the country were soon just as empty. No one traveled between villages or cities anymore, so no one could see that no large liberation army columns were rolling towards the capital. Here, the “brave hero reporters” Mario López Villatoro and José Torón Barrios from Radio Liberación are seen “reporting from the front where the rebels won victory after victory.” But they are only posing for a propaganda photo and everything said was made up.