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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, JUNE 18–24  
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_ CIA Carries United Fruit’s Water (1954), “Radical Plot” Gets
Saber-Rattling Response (1919), A Deadly Managua Roadblock (1979),
Murders Most Foul (1964), DC Metro Cover-Up (2009), Mournful Gallery
of Loss (1969), Cruel Enslaver Robert E. Lee (1859) _

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_CIA IMPOSES REGIME CHANGE IN GUATEMALA_

70 YEARS AGO, on June 18, 1954, 480 men trained, funded and armed by
the CIA, invaded Guatemala and began a 10-day battle that ended in the
overthrow of the country's democratically elected government. It was
the CIA's second successful effort to replace a popular, democratic,
regime with a violent, despotic one (Iran had been the first victim in
1953) solely because the incumbent government had believed that U.S.
corporations that did business within their borders were subject to
the rule of domestic law. Iran had tried to nationalize property owned
by the Arabian-American Oil Company; Guatemala had tried to do the
same to the property of the United Fruit Company.
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_“RADICAL PLOT” GETS SABER-RATTLING RESPONSE_

105 YEARS AGO, on June 19, 1919, police and military officials
throughout the U.S. were warning that a national anti-government plot
was under way. The identity of the alleged plotters was not known, but
every well-publicized official denunciation characterized them as
Reds, or radicals or anarchists or supporters of the Industrial
Workers of the World.

The alleged plot’s existence had been revealed on June 2, when
package bombs exploded simultaneously in nine locations, including
Manhattan, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and
Cleveland. The bombs did substantial damage to the homes of Attorney
General A.M. Palmer, three federal judges, a federal immigration
officer, a mayor and others. 

Three of the people who set the bombs were killed by them, but none of
their targets had been injured. Federal and local officials had no
suspects, other than the three bombers who had died, but they
questioned hundreds of radicals in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and
Cleveland. The head of Army Military Intelligence told the U.S.
Senate’s Military Affairs Committee that the Army had prepared maps
of Manhattan and Brooklyn that “charted the haunts of Bolshevists,
anarchists, and other extreme radicals.”

In the midst of the ongoing furor, on this day the New York State
National Guard conducted what it called a “routine” exercise in
Manhattan and Brooklyn that was, in fact, far from being routine. 

Every National Guard unit in the two boroughs was mobilized to
practice the suppression of a civil uprising. Members of the Guard
were ordered on short notice to assemble at the Guard’s many
fortified armories, and from there take up defensive positions around
nearby public buildings, bridges, tunnels, reservoirs, railroad
stations and power and lighting plants. According to the New York
Times report of the event, "Every important place on Manhattan Island
was guarded by the troopers within one hour after the various units
left their armories.” 

The investigation of the June 2 bombings produced no suspects or
arrests, but it left a lasting legacy. As part of the investigation,
the Justice Department established a Division of Intelligence, and
appointed J. Edgar Hoover to lead it.
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_A DEADLY MANAGUA ROADBLOCK_

45 YEARS AGO, on June 20, 1979, ABC News journalist Bill Stewart was
executed in Managua at a government roadblock. The shooter was a
Nicaraguan soldier manning the roadblock. Stewart was in Managua to
cover the civil war between the U.S.-supported Somoza regime and the
Sandinista revolutionaries. 

Stewart, who had, with his interpreter, approached the roadblock on
foot to present his press credentials, was ordered to lie face down on
the pavement and was almost immediately murdered. A video of the
entire interaction between Stewart and the soldiers, including his
execution, was recorded by a member of Stewart’s crew, who had
stayed behind in the press van. Stewart’s interpreter Juan Francisco
Espinoza was executed at the same time, but off-camera.

ABC News smuggled the video out of the country, and it was aired on
all three major networks, giving rise to widespread condemnation,
including from President Jimmy Carter, who called it “an act of
barbarism.” Less than a month after Stewart had been killed, the
popular Sandinista revolution prevailed, forcing Somoza and his
henchmen to leave the country. This link is a brief, and graphic,
report of the events at the roadblock. 
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_MURDERS MOST FOUL_

60 YEARS AGO, on June 21, 1964, a trio of Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) volunteers – James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael
Schwerner – were kidnapped and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in
east-central Mississippi. The infamously brutal killings were intended
by the Klan to terrorize all the participants in Mississippi Freedom
Summer, a state-wide effort by CORE and three other major civil rights
organizations.

The three victims were among more than two thousand volunteers who
were blanketing the state for three months to challenge Jim Crow by
helping disfranchised Mississippians register to vote, while providing
a broad spectrum of sorely needed social and educational services and
directly challenging the Klan’s terrorism.

The murders led to many criminal investigations and judicial
proceedings, but very little justice. Seven men, including a Klan
“Imperial Wizard,” were convicted in 1967 on federal civil rights
charges; none served more than six years. In 2005 an 80-year old
Mississippi preacher was indicted on three state murder charges. He
was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, on June 21, 2005, 41 years
to the day he had been one of the large gang of killers who never paid
for their crimes.
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_DEADLY COVER-UP ON THE DC METRO_

15 YEARS AGO, on June 22, 2009, a Washington, D.C., subway train
rear-ended another train while operating above ground in broad
daylight, killing the train operator and eight passengers, and
seriously injuring more than 70. It was by far the deadliest mishap
ever to have occurred in the 33-year-old Washington Area Metropolitan
Transit system. As bad as the collision was, what followed was even
worse.

As soon as the trains collided, some WMATA managers began to worry
that the cause of the wreck might have been a failure in an electrical
circuit that was designed to detect train traffic and automatically
prevent collisions. For more than a year, the circuit on that stretch
of track had been failing intermittently for no apparent reason. All
efforts to detect the source of the problem had failed, and the
intermittent failures continued. 

Without knowing if the bad track-circuit had been at fault,
immediately after the wreck WMATA officials raised the possibility
that the collision had been caused by the dead train operator’s
having been distracted by her cell phone. Three weeks after the wreck
WMATA management announced they were establishing a zero-tolerance
policy for operator texting. 

Weeks after imposing the zero-tolerance policy, accident investigators
made a pair of discoveries. First, that the train-detection circuit
had not been functioning at the time of the crash and second, that
management had been aware of the problem for 18 months, but had failed
to find a way to fix it.
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_A MOURNFUL GALLERY OF LOSS_

55 YEARS AGO, on June 23, 1969, Life – one of the world’s most
widely circulated magazines – ran an 11-page photo spread that
quickly became a watershed of distressed public opinion. Under the
headline, “One Week’s Dead,” Life published photos of 217 U.S.
military personnel who had been killed in Vietnam during the week
ending June 3, along with their names, ages, ranks, and hometowns. In
addition it published the same information about 25 others who had
been killed but whose photos Life could not obtain.

"When the nation continues week after week to be numbed by a
three-digit statistic which is translated to direct anguish in
hundreds of homes all over the country, we must pause to look into the
faces,” wrote a Life journalist. “The faces of one week's dead,
unknown but to families and friends, are suddenly recognized by all in
this gallery of young American eyes."
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_ROBERT E. LEE THE CRUEL ENSLAVER_

165 YEARS AGO, on June 24, 1859, more than a year before Robert E. Lee
became famous as the commander of the Confederate Army, he was a
little-known Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army. On this day, the New
York Daily Tribune, which was the biggest U.S. newspaper at the time,
published an anonymous letter stating that Lt. Col. Lee had personally
inflicted extremely cruel punishment on an enslaved woman who worked
on the Virginia plantation that Lee owned. The letter was newsworthy
as a reflection on the cruelty of a relatively unknown Army officer,
and not on the Confederate Army, which was established in 1861.

According to the letter, three enslaved people had self-emancipated
themselves from Lee’s plantation and fled north, but were captured
and returned to him. Lee ordered that the three should receive 39
lashes and then be jailed. According to the letter, the three were
"taken into a barn, stripped, and the [two] men received thirty and
nine lashes each from the hands of the slave-whipper. When he refused
to whip the girl, Mr. Lee himself administered the thirty and nine
lashes to her. They were then sent to Richmond jail, where they are
now lodged." 

Lee was aware of the letter’s publication, and wrote to his son
about it: "The N. Y. Tribune has attacked me for my treatment of your
grandfather's slaves, but I shall not reply.” The enslaved people
were in fact Lee’s, who had owned them since his father-in-law’s
death in October 1857. If the report in the letter had been false, Lee
could have sued the Tribune’s publisher – the famous abolitionist
Horace Greeley – for libel, but he chose to do nothing.
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