CIA cryptonyms are code names or code words used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to refer to projects, operations, persons, agencies, etc.
Hugo Spadafora Franco was an Italian and Panamanian physician and guerrilla fighter in Guinea-Bissau and Nicaragua. He criticized the military in Panama, which led to his murder by the government of Manuel Noriega in 1985.
Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the 25th President of Guatemala. He was Minister of National Defense from 1944 to 1950, and the second democratically elected President of Guatemala, from 1951 to 1954. He was a major figure in the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution, which represented some of the few years of representative democracy in Guatemalan history. The landmark program of agrarian reform Árbenz enacted as president was very influential across Latin America.
Carlos Castillo Armas was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who was the 28th president of Guatemala, serving from 1954 to 1957 after taking power in a coup d'état. A member of the right-wing National Liberation Movement (MLN) party, his authoritarian government was closely allied with the United States.
Stephen Kinzer is an American author, journalist, and academic. A former New York Times correspondent, he has published several books, and writes for several newspapers and news agencies.
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was the result of a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess. It deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954. It installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala.
John Leavitt Stevens was the United States Minister to the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 when he was accused of conspiring to overthrow Queen Liliuokalani in association with the Committee of Safety, led by Lorrin A. Thurston and Sanford B. Dole – the first Americans attempting to overthrow a foreign government under the auspices of a United States government officer. Apart from his work as a politician and diplomat, he was also a journalist, author, minister and newspaper publisher. He founded the Republican Party in Maine and served as Maine State Senator.
Operation PBFortune, also known as Operation Fortune, was a covert United States operation to overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1952. The operation was authorized by U.S. President Harry Truman and planned by the Central Intelligence Agency. The United Fruit Company had lobbied intensively for the overthrow because land reform initiated by Árbenz threatened its economic interests. The US also feared that the government of Árbenz was being influenced by communists.
Blowback is a term originating from within the Central Intelligence Agency, explaining the unintended consequence and unwanted side-effects of a covert operation. To the civilians suffering the blowback of covert operations, the effect typically manifests itself as "random" acts of political violence without a discernible, direct cause; because the public—in whose name the intelligence agency acted—are unaware of the effected secret attacks that provoked revenge (counter-attack) against them.
William Nelson Cromwell was an American attorney active in promotion of the Panama Canal and other major ventures especially in cooperation with Philippe Bunau-Varilla.
Historically speaking, bilateral relations between the various countries of Latin America and the United States of America have been multifaceted and complex, at times defined by strong regional cooperation and at others filled with economic and political tension and rivalry. Although relations between the U.S. government and most of Latin America were limited prior to the late 1800s, for most of the past century, the United States has unofficially regarded parts of Latin America as within its sphere of influence, and for much of the Cold War (1947–1991), actively vied with the Soviet Union for influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Operation Charly, was allegedly the code-name given to a program during the 1970s and 1980s undertaken by the junta in Argentina with the objective of providing military and counterinsurgency assistance to right-wing dictatorships and insurgents in Central America. According to Noam Chomsky, the operation was either headed by the Argentine military with the agreement of the United States Department of Defense, or was led by the US and used the Argentinians as a proxy.
The United States has been involved in numerous foreign interventions throughout its history. By the broadest definition of military intervention, the US has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions between 1776 and 2019, with half of these operations occurring since 1950 and over 25% occurring in the post-Cold War period. The objectives for these interventions have revolved around economy, territory, social protection, regime change, protection of US citizens and diplomats, policy change, empire, and regime building.
The First Spooner Act of 1902 was written by a United States senator from Wisconsin, John Coit Spooner, enacted on June 28, 1902, and signed by President Roosevelt the following day. It authorized purchasing the assets of a French syndicate called the Compagnie Nouvelle du Canal de Panama, provided that a treaty could be negotiated with the Republic of Colombia.
The Guatemalan Revolution was the period in Guatemalan history between the popular uprising that overthrew dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944 and the United States-orchestrated coup d'état in 1954 that overthrew the democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz. This period has also been called the Ten Years of Spring, highlighting the only years of representative democracy in Guatemala from 1930 until the end of the civil war in 1996, which saw the implementation of a program of social, political, and especially agrarian reform that was enormously influential across Latin America.
Since the 19th century, the United States government has participated and interfered, both overtly and covertly, in the replacement of several foreign governments. In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. government initiated actions for regime change mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, including the Spanish–American and Philippine–American wars. At the onset of the 20th century, the United States shaped or installed governments in many countries around the world, including neighbors Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
Birch O'Neill was the CIA station chief in Guatemala in 1953, succeeding Collins Almon. When the CIA began Operation PBSuccess, whose goal was to overthrow Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, O'Neill objected, so director Allen Dulles transferred him out so that the operation could proceed..
Participation of the United States in regime change in Latin America involved US-backed coups d'état aimed at replacing left-wing leaders with right-wing leaders, military juntas, or authoritarian regimes. Lesser intervention of economic and military variety was prevalent during the Cold War in line with the Truman Doctrine of containment, but regime change involvement would increase after the drafting of NSC 68 which advocated for more aggressive combating of potential Soviet allies.
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War is a 2019 book by the New York Times journalist and historian, Stephen Kinzer. It has been described as “a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of “inconvenient” regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world.” Kinzer traces how the activity of Dulles brothers "helped set off some of the world's most profound long-term crises." It is a based on secondary sources.
