At CIA headquarters in the summer of 1953, Alan Dulles, the agency's director,
recruits E.
Howard Hunt as his propaganda chief in the plot to oust Arbenz.
And they took me into a small room in the agency and swore me a special oath.
I must never tell what they were going to tell me.
The American's strongest ally inside Guatemala is the Catholic Church.
The CIA contacts Cardinal Spellman in New York to take part in their psychological
war against Arbenz.
The Cardinal uses his authority to enlist the full cooperation of the head of the
Guatemalan Church, Archbishop Arellano.
Cardinal Spellman convinced his counterpart in Guatemala to issue a
pastoral letter several months before the coup in which the Cardinal basically
spelled out his message to the flock that they should rise up against the communists
in Guatemala and overthrow them.
And then the CIA took that pastoral letter and airlifted it around Guatemala.
We had gotten the okay from Cardinal Spellman to go ahead with this.
And I wouldn't presume to trace the lines of authority within the Catholic Church
how they get their information, but they do.
And we've always said, in an admiring way, that the Jesuits form the greatest
intelligence service in the world.
The Jesuits form the greatest intelligence service in the world.