VIGIL FOR FATHER CARNEY

Apdo 2419

Managua, Nicaragua

tel: 011-505-278-6965

e-mail: guvols@nicarao.org.ni

Dec. 16, 1997

Dear Friends,

The following is a free Op-Ed article which I would like to submit to newspapers, newsletters, bulletins, etc.

I would be very grateful if you would submit it to your local newspaper for the editor's consideration. Thanks very much.

Sincerely,

Joe Mulligan, S.J.

ON BEING THROWN OUT OF THE U.S. EMBASSY

by

Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

On Oct. 30 at 10 a.m., Sister Jean Brenner, John Patrick Carney, and I entered the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras to discuss the case of Father James (Guadalupe) Carney, who disappeared in Honduras in 1983 when he entered that country as a chaplain to a revolutionary group.

We intended to await "a serious response" from the U.S. government to our demands, which include a review by top government officials of the heavily blacked-out documents concerning Father Carney released by the CIA and the Pentagon to the Honduran government earlier this year.

We also proposed that the U.S. offer the Honduran government whatever technical assistance may be necessary to find Father Carney's remains.

The night before, after talking with the ambassador in the morning and waiting for an adequate response from Washington all afternoon, we had agreed to leave the embassy after the ambassador assured us that we could return on Oct. 30. However, upon return, we were told by security officers that, according to the ambassador's orders, only Mr. Carney (Father Carney's brother) could enter. Considering this a violation of the ambassador's promise, we decided to stay in the embassy entrance to continue the vigil we had started the previous day.

When we were ordered to leave the embassy at 5:30 p.m., Mr. Carney chose to comply since he had been told that in that way he could return to the embassy on Oct. 31. Sister Jean Brenner (Father Carney's cousin) and I decided to maintain our vigil in the embassy; each was picked up by U.S. Marines and carried out of the building, where we remained on the sidewalk for one hour.

During the day Matthew Eisen of Cincinnati and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop of Detroit, had continued as spokespersons.

"Unfortunately, our government has a history of broken promises, especially in its dealings with the Indian population," one of our group said. "In our work on the Fr. Carney case, we have been given a series of empty promises. We hope that the Clinton administration will be different."

In addition to our demands and sample copies of the heavily excised CIA and Pentagon documents, we sent the following letter to President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Attorney General Janet Reno while we were conducting our vigil in the embassy.

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Forgive us, dear friends, for the fracture of embassy protocol. But how many bones of Fr. Jim Carney's body were fractured when he was beaten and tortured at the Reagan administration's Contra base, El Aguacate? And how was his body fractured when he was thrown from a helicopter to his death?

Or can you prove that he did not suffer these atrocities?

Forgive us, dear friends, for staying in the embassy in a non-violent vigil until you make a serious commitment to uncover the truth and work for justice in this case. How long was Fr. Carney forced to stay in El Aguacate, a base under U.S. control?

Forgive us for going beyond letter-writing and petitioning, but from the very beginning in 1983 the U.S. government has not taken this case of a U.S. citizen seriously. The Reagan administration slammed the door shut on the family's efforts to find their brother's body and to discover the truth about his "disappearance."

A handwritten memo dated Aug. 19, 1985, which was declassified and released to the Honduran government in 1996 along with other State Department documents, reported: "Fr. Carney case ... is dead. Front office does not want the case active.... We aren't telling that to the family."

The Clinton administration has opened the door slightly with its declassification of State Department, CIA and Pentagon documents, but our hopes were dashed when these papers turned out to be heavily blacked out and thus practically useless to us and to the Honduran government.

The heavily censored documents make a mockery of your stated intentions, Mr. Clinton, to work for justice in Honduras. We ask you, Madeleine Albright, and Janet Reno to make a serious commitment now, after so many years of procrastination, to do everything possible to help attain justice in the case of Fr. Carney and the 183 other disappeared persons in Honduras.

We would ask you to examine the following specific point among others. On August 29 the CIA released over 300 pages of previously classified documents concerning Father Carney, four other disappeared persons, and one survivor of torture. Like the documents released in March, these pages show that extraordinary amounts of material have been excised.

Among these documents is a 1988 CIA report on its investigation of a June 5, 1988 New York Times article by James LeMoyne entitled "Testifying to Torture." The CIA report noted: "In the New York Times article, Sgt. Caballero said he had interrogated an American priest. This reference probably to Father James Francis Carney..." (Florencio Caballero was a deserter from the Honduran army's Battalion 3-16; he lived in political exile in Toronto until his recent death.)

There is no indication in its report that the CIA investigated this important statement by Caballero. It is curious that the CIA reports the statement and then gives no follow-up comments; perhaps they are in the excised sections. We demand to know whether the U.S. government has investigated the statement by Caballero.

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Fr. Mulligan, a Jesuit from Detroit, works with Christian base communities in Nicaragua.