U.S. Major Sought Justice, Was Victim - Salvador Jesuit Killings Led Officer To Come Forward

CUTLINE: RENE EMILIO PONCE: DEFENSE MINISTER

CUTLINE: ARTURO RIVERA Y DAMAS: ARCHBISHOP OF SAN SALVADOR

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - In many people's minds, U.S. Army Maj. Eric Buckland should be a hero: A military adviser in El Salvador, Buckland was the one who came forward to link a top Salvadoran army officer to the massacre last year of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.

Instead, Buckland may be a casualty in the murder mystery.

For his role as whistle-blower, Buckland has received no reward, no medal, not even a kind word in his efficiency report. In fact, military sources say, Buckland barely escaped with his job.

Since he spoke up, Buckland has seen his career threatened by army superiors; he has sobbed and stumbled before FBI interrogators; he has become the target of jokes and innuendo by U.S. diplomats seeking to discredit him.

Buckland's wife, Maureen, describes him as ``someone who came forth and told the truth.''

But Buckland's information was bad news for U.S. officials, who have invested $4 billion in the past decade to bring prosperity and mold a modern, professional military in El Salvador from a corrupt army with little regard for human rights.

``The guy is really upset,'' said a congressional investigator who interviewed Buckland. ``It's destroyed his military career, got his wife flipped out, and he feels he let down one of his best friends'' in the Salvadoran army.

Prompted by the killings - and the military's involvement in them - Congress last month withheld half of El Salvador's $85 million in military aid, the most drastic cut in U.S. assistance to that country in a decade. Lawmakers have threatened to cut all money if the Jesuits' killers are not prosecuted.

A year after the crimes, no trial has been scheduled. But the investigating judge, Ricardo Zamora, determined last Saturday that enough evidence exists to try the nine soldiers accused of the crime.

The Bush administration has played a dual role of calling for justice in the case and seeking to limit its political damage.

The case has been particularly embarrassing for the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, William Walker, who found himself backpedaling from his suggestion that leftist guerrillas were behind the Nov. 16, 1989, murders.

The administration also has been criticized for the handling of witnesses in the case.

Only two people have come forward with testimony. One was Buckland. The other was Lucia Barrera de Cerna, a cleaning woman who worked at the rectory.

Under U.S. care, both grew distraught. Both endured long hours of tough interrogation despite having come forward voluntarily. Both had their credibility cast in doubt by U.S. authorities.

Within hours of the murders, Walker signaled U.S. commitment to justice, offering U.S. protection to any witness who could shed light on the crime. ``I personally have difficulty imagining what sort of animals would execute priests and innocent civilians in cold blood,'' he said.

Cerna, who had glimpsed five men dressed in camouflage enter the priests' residence the night they were killed, spoke up to Jesuit leaders. She soon found herself flying to Miami on a French military jet. Though she had seen very little, Cerna was the only known witness in a case that was generating world headlines. The Jesuits asked Spanish and French diplomats to help Cerna safely reach Florida, where she could stay with Jesuits.

When Walker learned of the plan, he asked the French ambassador to let U.S. Embassy and FBI officials on board ``to facilitate a smooth entry in the United States.'' By the time the plane landed, the State Department had taken charge of Cerna and her husband. They headed for a hotel, where they stayed more than a week. Plans to deliver them to Jesuits in Miami were forgotten.

Day after day, Cerna and her husband were questioned in the Miami hotel room about what she had seen. At first, the interrogators were two FBI agents; then, to the couple's astonishment, the head of the Salvadoran special investigations unit, Lt. Col. Manuel Antonio Rivas, walked in.

Isolated, with no lawyer present, away from home for the first time and probably chilled by the sight of a top Salvadoran officer, Cerna lost her nerve.

``I became scared of these men. I didn't have any confidence anymore. And then I said, `No sir. I don't know anything,' '' she later told congressional investigators who recounted the testimony in a report issued April 30. Cerna and her husband failed their FBI polygraph tests.

Within days, El Salvador's attorney general declared Cerna ``a very unreliable witness.'' The archbishop of San Salvador, Arturo Rivera y Damas, was enraged. He accused the State Department of ``brainwashing'' Cerna and of subjecting her to ``aggressive and violent interrogation.''

Cerna, who now lives in hiding in the U.S. under a witness-protection program, was treated more like a suspect than someone who had volunteered information, congressional investigators concluded. ``One regrettable result of this affair is that witnesses in this or other human rights cases in El Salvador may be less likely to come forward to accept assurances of protection from the United States.''

Enter Buckland, Witness No. 2.

On Jan. 2, the major, plainly nervous, approached his superior officer at the U.S. Embassy. I know who did it, he said. His Salvadoran colleague, Col. Carlos Aviles, had passed on this news, Buckland told his boss: The priests' murders had been ordered by Col. Guillermo Benavides, director of the Salvadoran Military School.

Six weeks after the slaying, it was the first real break in the case. By nightfall, Buckland, accompanied by U.S. officials, was in the office of Salvadoran Army chief of staff Rene Emilio Ponce, confronting an incredulous Aviles.

Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani later credited his government's own detective work with breaking the case, but Buckland clearly had forced his hand. Within 11 days, nine Salvadoran soldiers, including Benavides, were charged. Seven of them confessed; one deserted and escaped. The ninth, Benavides, kept silent before the investigating judge.

For Buckland, who declined to be interviewed for this story, the aftershock was just beginning. His tour of duty in El Salvador was abruptly cut short, and he was put on a plane for the U.S. The major, as one superior officer recalled, ``was seeing his whole career fall apart.'' But he kept talking.

Testifying at FBI headquarters in Washington, Buckland provided a shocker: Ponce, the chief of staff, had known of Benavides' plan to kill the Jesuits and had sent Aviles - the chief of psychological operations - to the Military School to dissuade him about 10 days before the murders. Buckland said he accompanied Aviles on the visit.

According to his account, taken down by hand by FBI questioners and initialed six times by Buckland, the major waited at a distance while a ``very uncomfortable'' Aviles spoke with Benavides on the steps of the Military School, then returned to the car.

``Upon returning to the vehicle, Aviles . . . told me that he had to work something out. Col. Benavidez (sic) is from the old school, he liked to handle things in his own way in the old style. Benavidez stated to Aviles that he wanted to do something about the priests and things coming out of UCA (Central American University). Benavidez told Aviles that Ella Coria (sic) was a problem. Aviles told me they wanted to handle it the old way by killing some of the priests,'' Buckland testified.

``And Aviles added there was some talk about death squads which were run out of the military school.''

The implications were explosive. If true, Ponce, now El Salvador's defense minister, and Aviles would be guilty of covering up the crime. U.S. efforts to clean up the Salvadoran military would be proved a failure from the top down.

The FBI sent the transcripts and a secretly recorded videotape of Buckland's Washington testimony to the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, according to Rep. Joe Moakley, D-Mass., who was briefed by FBI officials. The FBI also sent a summary to the office of Bernard Aronson, the State Department's assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, Moakley said. Aronson denied ever seeing it, Moakley said. Aronson declined to comment.

But in a remarkable decision the embassy has come to regret, officials never passed Buckland's Washington testimony to the Salvadoran judge assigned to investigate the case. Only after Moakley raised an outcry over the missing testimony did the embassy hand over a transcript to the judge.

The very next day, Buckland called the FBI to revise some of the testimony, FBI records show. Over the phone, Buckland said he was ``uncomfortable'' with his statement and had been in a ``poor mental state'' and had imagined seeing Benavides at the Military School.

``His memory had been triggered after seeing a photo of Col. Benevides (sic), and he decided that he had never seen that individual on the steps of the Military School,'' FBI records said.

Congressional investigators are skeptical of his recantation. ``I don't think you can bully somebody into making up three pages of handwritten testimony out of whole cloth,'' one said.

At Fort Bragg, Buckland testified one last time for the FBI.

In contrast to the casual, occasionally rambling speech of his original testimony, this time his statement was formal and flawless. It sounded legalistic, although Maureen Buckland said her husband doesn't have a lawyer. In it, Buckland recanted his account of the trip with Aviles to see Benavides, and said he had no prior knowledge of the murders.

``I do not recall and am not aware of any specific information regarding any proposed threat to or attack on the University of Central America, including any of the Jesuit priests prior to the incident on Nov. 16, 1989,'' the statement said.

The embassy in San Salvador said it couldn't release the videotape for two reasons: The FBI did not get permission to tape Buckland in the first place, so the tape was illegal; and it would be too embarrassing for Buckland - he appeared confused and sobbing.

In March, Moakley, chairman of a special task force investigating the Jesuit murders, began hearing peculiar comments at the U.S. embassy in San Salvador about Buckland: He was nuts.

``They were trying to make him out as a fringe case,'' Moakley said. ``I said, `Hey, isn't this the one who has gotten eight guys indicted?' ''

By October - with little progress registered in the investigation and setbacks including destroyed evidence - Ponce, by now promoted to defense minister, took his own shot at Buckland. After Buckland was flown into San Salvador under tight security for a deposition, Ponce declared him ``unstable.''

Aviles was not far behind. He said the major was ``demented.'' Aviles then claimed he barely knew the major, an odd statement for someone who sent gifts of T-shirts to the Buckland children. ``He (Aviles) was trying to save his ass,'' one U.S. officer said.

At the State Department in Washington, Buckland's diagnosis grew more specific and rather bizarre: The major had suffered an overdose of gung-ho. His heart had been set on ``saving'' El Salvador, then he was cruelly disappointed. Like Lawrence of Arabia, Buckland fell prey to his own illusions.

``He's Eric of El Salvador,'' one diplomat said. ``It's sort of a Lawrence fantasy.''

Maureen Buckland doesn't know what to make of all these disturbing images of her husband.

``Have you seen my husband? He wears these weenie glasses. He reads a lot. He doesn't lift weights,'' she said, standing in the driveway of their suburban home in Fayetteville, N.C.

To her, he is simply a person who did the right thing.

Asked about the recanted testimony, she said her husband had grown confused after 30 hours of interrogation in Washington. ``My husband did not crack,'' she said.

Buckland arrived in El Salvador in the summer of 1989 with a good record - including a stint as a general's assistant - a cursory knowledge of Spanish and a clean bill of health. It was his second assignment to the country. Aviles, the bright, imperious chief of Salvadoran civil military operations, requested Buckland be posted with him.

The two men worked hard together to improve the military's appeal in the countryside, much of which was dominated by the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN.

Around last Dec. 20, Buckland later told the FBI, he and Aviles were discussing the Jesuits' case and how it affected their publicity efforts.

Aviles took Buckland aside. ``Col. Aviles told me he was about to relay information to me not as an El Salvadoran military officer to an American military officer, but from `Carlos to Eric,' '' Buckland testified during his initial interrogation in Washington. ``He said this information, to use an American expression, is `Break in Case of Emergency.'''

Buckland took that to mean in case Aviles were killed.

The news: Benavides had confessed to Lt. Col. Manuel Antonio Rivas Mejia, the chief of the special investigation unit, that he had ordered the killings. Word had percolated down to Aviles.

Buckland and Aviles celebrated New Year's Eve together. Two days later, the secret's strain became too great, and Buckland came forth.

His superior officers were angry. Buckland had defied embassy orders for nearly two weeks and deferred to an officer from another army. Such conduct was so damaging, one boss later reflected, that Buckland would have been better off holding his tongue. ``From a career perspective, Buckland did a dumb thing,'' he said.

On Jan. 13, the Salvadoran military presented its suspects. Buckland had implicated Benavides in the sort of atrocity for which no Salvadoran officer has ever been convicted. He was the colonel's chief accuser; Salvadoran law barred Benavides' co-defendants from testifying against him.

But by then, Aviles was denying Buckland's story. So was Rivas, who said Benavides never confessed anything. Repeated polygraphs didn't help: Both Aviles and Buckland failed.

Buckland felt his credibility start to slip. In the most closely watched trial in Salvadoran history, it would be his word against some of the leading officers of the U.S.-trained Salvadoran military.

And so it remains.

``I . . . now question whether or not Col. Aviles is due my loyalty and respect,'' Buckland reflected in his original FBI testimony. ``I also have grave concern about the future of El Salvador now, and I only hope, rather than sincerely believe, that I have done the right thing.''

The slaying of the Jesuits

The crime: On Nov. 16, 1989, on the fifth day of an intense rebel siege of El Salvador, a group of 50 men thought to be Salvadoran soldiers stormed the Jesuit-run Central American University about 1 a.m. They ordered five priests to lie down on a backyard lawn and shot them point-blank. Their cook and her daughter were gunned down in a nearby room. A sixth priest was shot after fleeing inside the rectory.

The victims: the Rev. Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the Central American University (UCA in Spanish) and informal mediator between the Salvadoran government and leftist rebels; the Rev. Segundo Montes, dean of UCA's department of social sciences; the Rev. Ignacio Martin Baro, vice rector and a leading pollster; the Rev. Amando Lopez Quintanilla, a philosophy teacher; the Rev. Juan Ramon Moreno, in charge of pastoral affairs; the Rev. Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, director of the charity organization, Faith and Joy; Julia Elba Ramos, the cook; and her 15-year-old daughter Celina.

The suspects: Col. Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Morales, former director of El Salvador's Military School and a member of the influential graduating class of 1966; Lt. Yusshy Rene Mendoza Vallecillos; Lt. Jose Ricardo Espinosa Guerra; 1st Lt. Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos; Sgt. Antonio Ramiro Avalos Vargas; Sgt. Tomas Zarpate Castillo; Cpl. Angel Perez Vasquez; Pvt. Oscar Mariano Amaya Grimaldi; Pvt. Jorge Alberto Sierra Ascencio (deserted and escaped).

The witnesses: Lucia Barrera de Cerna, a cleaning woman awakened from sleep in her room near the rectory, and Maj. Eric Buckland, U.S. military adviser assigned to psychological operations.

Other key players: Col. Rene Emilio Ponce, El Salvador's defense minister and former armed forces chief of staff; Col. Carlos Amando Aviles, chief of psychological operations; Lt. Col. Manuel Antonio Rivas Mejia, head of the Special Investigations Unit; the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, William Walker.

Knight-Ridder Newspapers