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Snippet of the detailed memo outlining the program for Operation PBSuccess. The CIA outlines their objectives, their statement of the problem, and the six-stage playbook of the operation.

The United States was not at war with Guatemala in 1954. But the Boston-based conglomerate known as the United Fruit Company was at war with President Árbenz.

United Fruit (also known as UFCO) had been cheating on its taxes for years, lying to the Guatemalan government about the value of its banana plantations and the hundreds of thousands of acres of unused land the company was sitting on. Now that Árbenz had passed an agrarian reform bill (similar to those that had in decades past allowed countries like Ireland, Colombia and Canada to break agricultural monopolies and create more competition), Guatemala was buying back untilled land for the value that companies like UFCO had reported on its tax bill. UFCO was being forced to sleep in the bed they’d made, and they were pissed.

If only someone could get rid of Árbenz.

The most powerful pair of brothers in the United States, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Director Allen Dulles, were not legally allowed to do that sort of thing. But they wanted to. Both were UFCO shareholders and advocates, having worked for the firm for many years. But in a time of peace, well, doing anything more aggressive than writing angry letters would be illegal.

The U.S. was, however, at symbolic “war” with Communism. Eisenhower had won the U.S. presidency on a campaign promise to stop its spread. And the Dulles brothers were particularly eager to help him do that. They held a deep religious belief that Jesus Christ had called on them to use their influence to spread American business interests across the world, while simultaneously beating back the Soviets. For decades, the United States had thrown its weight around Latin America when it suited the U.S. financially — such as seizing Puerto Rico from Spain and secretly helping Panama secede from Colombia. And in 1953, the U.S. successfully overthrew the Shah of Iran after he tried to nationalize oil. The success of that operation confirmed for the Dulleses that Communist prevention and American business interests were indeed a winning combination.

So, even though the U.S. State Department knew that Jacobo Árbenz was not a Communist, the Dulles brothers decided it was God’s plan to get rid of him.

This is not, strictly speaking, a legal justification for overthrowing a democratically elected leader of a nation. So the Dulleses decided to do so without anyone knowing about it.

According to declassified documents, Allen Dulles had as far back as July 1952 proposed putting together a private “syndicate” to fund Árbenz’s ouster. But after over a year of plotting, he and his brother got the official green light from Eisenhower to use U.S. tax funds to make Árbenz go away…

How the CIA hired an American actor and two radio DJs to launch a revolution and oust an elected President. thus creating a playbook being used in– and on– the U.S. today: “The (Literally) Unbelievable Story of the Original Fake News Network.”

* Joseph Goebbels

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As we watch what goes around come around, we might recall that it was on this date in 1833 that The (New York) Sun began publishing.  It cost one penny (at a time when other papers were 5¢), was easy to carry, and it featured illustrations, crime reporting, and personal stories (suicides, deaths, and divorces), all of which made it popular with working-class readers.  Indeed, it inspired a new genre across the nation, “the penny press,” which specialized in more “sensationalistic” content (e.g., “The Great Moon Hoax“).  Still, for most of its run (until 1950) it was considered, with its two broadsheet competitors, the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune, a serious paper; The Sun was consistently the most politically conservative of the three.

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