Cold War Intelligence Discussion 105-20. 10/31 by Julian Dodson

Cold War intelligence Discussion

2025-10-31 20:34:21 UTC

Names: Hunter Jones, Myles Lee, Jackson Losee, Kallie Blas, Evan Salvador

1) The Church Committee report had opposing views from the Department of state stating that the US should get involved with Latin American countries and try to end communist ideas. The Department of State thought that getting involved was a bad idea and could cause further issues. To not spark further issues with communist based countries the US held a "hands off" approach.

a) CIA was a much more targeted attack on specific issues like communism and getting rid of leaders and assassinations.

b) Latin American and CIA were similar with their methods of assassinations and hands on.

c) The Department of State was not on the same page they wanted to not get involved and cause further issues. They also didn't want the assassinations.

Amber Richards, Malvina Haziri, Tanja Valancic, Malia Ruud

2025-10-31 20:35:05 UTC

The report and telegram suggests the priority of individual differing ideals. for example, the document about operation condor was sent to specific representatives to address personal concerns on their individual agendas from the united states. this secured military occupation, assassination, and puppet leaders in areas that opposed the ideals of the American way, presumably in support of the American emissaries the message is sent to. with the context of operation condor, we can infer that the main ideal the CIA stands for in this context is military occupation of communist locations. each individual country beyond that will have their own methods of going about this, and if they refused to compromise with the methods presented, the leaders were assassinated and the replacement would agree with the capitalist ideal. we see this in both the telegram where individual priorities are settled, and in the document on assassinations where we can see anyone who did not comply or were aggressive on denying American occupation had their leaders removed, sans one survivor.

Evie Johnson, Maile Givens, Keana Cornelissen

2025-10-31 20:35:13 UTC

1)Their priorities differ, with the CIA aiming to stop communism, while the State Department focuses on diplomacy and human rights. Latin American military regimes wanted control and to crush leftist groups, creating tension between U.S. agencies and their goals.

2)They all seemed not to be on the same page. The CIA and military regimes shared anti-communist goals, but the State Department opposed their violent methods. An example of the anti-communist goals from the text is, "Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations." Another example from the text was it discussed how the CIA was behind the assassination of a lot of communist leaders. Also, in the text, it discusses a senator from Idaho holding hearings to look into the CIA because he didn't agree with their ideas.

Emeline Baker and Caroline Harron

2025-10-31 20:35:23 UTC

The CIA didn’t want to work things out while the Department of State was more likely to want to work things out. The CIA just wanted to assassinate the leaders from those countries and not compromise with them to find a solution. They don’t seem to be on the same page about how they want to handle these issues. The Department of State says in the document that is the U.S. were to assassinate then it would create a world problems and it would go against their morals. They also talk about how these activities will cause world criticism. In the CIA it talks about how the U.S. talk about how and why they assassinated 5 major leaders of different countries.

Olivia Lockwood, Janessa Faraon,Georgia Kenee, Pearl Spurrell and Madalyn Macdonald

2025-10-31 20:35:25 UTC

1) Both the CIA and Latin America typically referred to assassinations and other violent approaches to counteract communism.

2) Their shared priorities differed in approach as the CIA aimed to remove communism from America by immigration restrictions and assassinations.

3)The Latin America military regime aimed to remove communism on a national security grade. Overall, they shared the same goal of abolishing communism through assassinations, however their methods differed.

Group: Callie Harnagy, Lola Stark, Emerson Trader, Brianna Brownlee, Clara Hickman, Troy ML

2025-10-31 20:35:47 UTC

The Church Committee Report discusses that the CIA was primarily focused on eliminating the figures in power in Latin America that supported communist ideas. This aligned in a way with the opinions of the Department of State, who also wanted to eliminate communist influence and protect the U.S. image in the hemisphere, but differed in the approach. The Department of State more so took a "peaceful" approach by directing their efforts to stopping the planning of assassinations, whereas the CIA was actively working behind the scenes to take out these people in power. Finally, the military regimes priority is implied to be assassination as the first document discusses the response from the Department of State to rumored planning of assassinations. An in-text example to support this statement of the CIAs stance can be found in the Church document where they mention that two CIA agents plotted to poison Patrice Lumumba in the 1960s. The Department of State document then allows us to infer the motives of the Latin military regimes as there is a heavy focus on a volume of rumors that had arose of their planning for assassination of officials. The stance for the Department of State is also supported by the second page of this document where it is discussed that the Department of State doesn't support the assassination plans and believes that it will damage the image and international relations of these nations.

Nina Nowak, Caitlyn Manchester, Meg Hoffman

2025-10-31 20:36:02 UTC

The Church Committee Report and the Department of State telegram suggests that the CIA mostly cared about stopping communism even if that meant using harsh military tactics. The State Department was more focused on keeping good diplomatic relationships to avoid bad publicity about the U.S.
We think that they were not always on the same page because they didn't agree on tactics to stop communism even though they all wanted to do so. For example, the state departement focused on how the actions made would make the US look, whereas the Latin American regimes mostly wanted to keep power and oppose people who didn't agree with them.

Problems in Modern Latin American History: "The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation." (208)
Problems in Modern Latin American History: "Two brothers will killed on Nov 2, 1963, in the course of a South Vietnamese Generals' coup. Although the U.S government supported the coup, there is no evidence that American officials favored the assassinations." (210)
Department of State: "We propose to engage the highest level of government in Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia, in a broad discussion of the issues and security questions involved." (2)

Ashlee Fenley, Reis Oenning, Adelaide Contreras

2025-10-31 20:37:43 UTC

1) The Department of State telegram seems to be more concerned with passing around information. The document shows concern with security threats and the control of those threats. For example, the document says that the U.S. is aware of the security issues occurring in Argentina. Conversely, the Church Committee Report provides insight into the U.S.'s involvement in the assassination of several different people. For example, the source explains the assassination attempts of individuals through a one or two paragraphs. All in all, the report is more concerned with explaining the U.S.'s involvement during the Cold War whereas the telegram was a primary source that provided instruction on how to deal with the issues present.

2) There is a slight connection between the two issues as both documents address Cold War issues. However, the documents differ in how they address the issues. For example, the telegram document is meant specifically only for American Ambassadors meaning that they are blunter and straight forward about what they believe is the issue. However, the report document is meant for the general public, so it is more of an umbrella of information that is meant to inform the public on their findings which changes its purpose. Both documents don't want communism but differ on the prevention methods. For example, the telegram states that they are aware of the communism issues which is similar to the report document. However, the report document suggest they are on the same page but do not agree with the assassination attempts.

Alexa T, Peyton B

2025-10-31 20:38:53 UTC

The CIA, State Department, and regional military regimes were nominally aligned in ideology but divided in execution and values. "We recognize that the internal problems in the three condor countries, are significantly different". This often led to contradictory policies and long-term consequences for U.S. and Latin American relations. They are not fully on the same page, "The Committee makes four other major findings. The first relates to the Committee's inability to make finding that the assassination plots were authorized by the Presidents or other persons above the governmental agency or agencies involved". All parties shared a general anti-communist goal, they diverged sharply in methods and values. "Therefore, the Committee has endeavored to explore as fully as possible the questions of how and why the plots happened, whether they were authorized, and if so, at what level".

Dylan Neal, Brooklyne Condreay

2025-10-31 20:38:57 UTC

The Church Committee Report and Department of State telegram reveal significant tensions between the CIAs covert operations, the State Department’s diplomatic goals, and Latin American military regimes’ authoritarian priorities, highlighting that these actors were often not on the same page.

1) "The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta Agreement in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria",

2) "To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations."

3) "in the Fall of 1960, two CIA officials were asked by superiors to assassinate Lumumba. Poisons were sent to the Congo and some exploratory steps were taken toward gaining access to Lu-mumba. Subsequently, in early 1961, Lumumba was killed by Congolese rivals. It does not appear from the evidence that the United States was in any way involved in the killing"

Louis Huerta

2025-10-31 20:44:57 UTC

All three parties never seemed to be on the same page, at most it was two out of three that agreed on something. For example both the Dept. of State and the Latin American governments thought it was a good idea for the latter to be sharing information about subversive information within the Latin American countries. In document 1 page 2 it says "there is a degree of information, exchange and coordination among various countries of the southern cone with regard to subversive activities within the area. This we consider useful." Then there is how both the Latin American regimes and the CIA both thought it would be beneficial to remove many of the subversive elements. While the Dept. of State thought that such plans would merely make things worse on the global stage. In document 2 pages 8 to 9 the document talks about how many of the ones who were opposed to the US were killed by either the CIA or revolutionaries. And finally there is how both the CIA and The Dept. of State thought that the chaos going on within Latin America were beneficial to their plans. As the chaos would allow them to play kingmaker and decide who was in charge and if someone who opposed them disappeared they could just blame the dissidents.

Ella Gilbertson, Megan Xiong

2025-10-31 21:08:08 UTC

Cia was targeted onto much more specific issues ie. communism and leadership. Most specific, the stop of spread of communism regardless of the lengths they had to go to. The state departments main goal was based on diplomacy and human rights, making them less directley invested. Latin American CIA wanted to be the most hands on, and get rid of leftist movements.
2. The Church committee report revealed the truth of how divided US agencies were and worked very closely with the Latin CIA. This division eventually affected US through politics and division with their senators and government. There efforts were not very succesful though as the department of state resisted them.