Dwarft will have read in The Observer the CIA planted Reen Got the latin America Tania the guerrilla who died in Bolivial comernondent o Guardian who is based in Chile and knows the well wrote The haracteristically, they refused to print.
ablah it below as a service to readers who may have es mystified by the Unfree Press.
Dear Sir, 1 was surprised to see the Observer giving space to printing Daniel James's sensational and almost wholly inaccurate article about Tania, the girl involved in Che Guevara's guerrilla' campaign in Bolivia. The story is not new and appears to have been concocted by United States intelligence, for reasons which are not immediately apparent. It was first released to a New York Times Washington correspondent, Benjamin Welles, and published in that paper on July 15, 1968. Welles was not the paper's Latin AmeriCan correspondent and consequently was not personally familiar with the Bolivian guerrilla eoisode. His story was full of inaccuracies. But Daniel James's tale vernfurther and appears to be a pack of les from beginning to end First, what are Mr James's credentials? He is well-known as a fanatical anti-Communist, who, before editing the CIA/Bolivian Army version of Chevara's Bolivian diaries (described absurdly Observer the Americas - Guatemalan Prelude", "Cuba: the first soviet satellite in the Americas".
Secondly, where does Mr James's information come from? Chiefly it seems from his fertile imagination and from the CIA. Only this their numbers, nationalities and their ways of agency can have provided him with an interview rith the East German agent Gunther Mannel.
ho allegedly recruited Tania for the Russiar GB and then promptly defected to the Wes ormal journalists do not secure interview with Communist defectors. And how can Mannel claim to know anything about the details of Tania's relationship with Guevara or her activities in Bolivia if he defected in 1961, five or six years before these events took place. How also is Mr James able to reconstruct the sexual dances allegedly performed by two Cuban guerrillas, Joaquim and Braulio, when the only survivor of their group - Jose Carillo (Paco) - was a perjured witness at the trial of Regis Debray who would have told any story that would have got him out of prison. He refers to a notebook kept by Tania, but none but he has seen it.
The only source that Mr James quotes is a copy of the long interview a CIA agent had with the Argentinian Ciro Roberto Bustos in April 1967 in which Bustos under threat of reprisals against his family - revealed much information about the guerrilla group, drew portraits from memory of the leading guerrillas and confirmed the presence of Che Guevara in Bolivia. It would be possible to argue, therefore, that Bustos, more than any other single character in the story, was responsible for the guerrillas downfall. Others have chosen other culprits: Time magazine believes it was Debray; thet Chinese Communists think it was Fidel; most people with a superficial knowledge of Bolivia believe (incorrectly too) that it was the peasants. The CIA, for reasons of their own, have decided it was Tania, and they have used Mr James to tart up their squalid little story with a veneer of verisimilitude.
The facts are as follows: (1) There Is no evidence that Tania was anything other than a Cuban agent operating in Bolivia and Argentina for the purpose of promoting the continental revolution. (2) There is no evidence that she loved, betrayed, or was responsible for the death of Guevara. (3) Cuba has not given up "glorifying" her as a martyr. On January 9 Fidel Castro opened a new clinic in Jaruco, outside Havana, which bears her name. (4) "Andres", the man who met Debray and Bustos outside the Sucre Palace in La Paz, does not exist. He was invented by Debray to muddle his captors. (5) The discovery of Tania's jeep by the army was in no way crucial to the fate of the guerrilla band. The military authorities were already fully aware of what was happening. Since the story is so often misrepresented in press, is worth recapitulating how Guevara's guerrilla foco was discovered.
In February 1967, a police spy arrived at the camp of Mancahuazu. At that time Guevara was absent, on a route march with the bulk of his guerrillas. The spy had been recruited as a bona-fide guerrilla. On March 11, the spy deserted, together erstwhile guerrilla, and gave himself up to the authorities in Camiri. On March 14, he wrote a detailed account for the Bolivian military intelligence about the organisation of the guerrilla force coming and going. He provided maps of their • trails and caves. and contirmed the presence of Che Guevara. On March 16, (not on March 13 as Mr James suggests) the army captured the farm that had been used by the guerrillas and found Tania's jeep.
A week later, while trying to penetrate a ravine that led to the guerrillas principal encampment, an army detachment fell into an ambush that had been ordered expressly by Che Guevara, at a time when other guerrillas had thought it wiser to retreat without offering assistance. Guevara. it seems. was thus not wholly unprepared for the guerrilla foco to move so swiftly out of clandestinity.
The idea of the Observer that "more may never be known" could hardly be further from the truth. There were at least half a dozen British journalists covering events in Bolivia in 1967, and each one of them could have written a better, more informative, and more accurate article than the one you printed by Daniel James.
Yours sincerely, Richard Gott. Dear Sir, I am a fireman in the London Fire Brigade and appeal to your readers to use their influence in the campaign about pay and conditions in the Service. My hours of duty in an average week are as follows:
Monday, nine hours night duty.
Tuesday, leave.
Wednesday, nine hours day duty.
Thursday, nine hours day duty.
Friday, six hours night duty.
Saturday, 15 hours night duty.
Sunday, nine hours night duty.
I take home. less than £16 per week, which includes the Council's help with my fares from Chelmsford.
Any additional qualifications that I earn to enable me to be more proficient in my work are in no way recognised by monetary reward and I am expected to work overtime when required on the above hours, at only the flat rate. I am expected to work on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and all other public holidays as normal days, and as compensation 1 am allowed a day off for each, to be taken later in the year. However, due to undermanning, I can only take it at the Brigade's convenience. My summer annual leave is selected for me and 1 am required to start on a Saturday, on which I may well have performed a nine-hour duty and I am expected to return to duty the following Saturday week.
Housing (which, under the Fire Services Act, may be provided) is insufficient to meet the need and in consequence 1, and others like me nust go far afield to rent or purchase a hous vithin my income and I am further burdene with increased travelling time and costs. After nearly three years with the Brigade I feel that my financial position is driving me to find more remunerative employment, but I hope that my feeling for the work I do and your readers? appreciation of that work will cause the tide to turn.
They may argue that on night duty trestles are provided so that rest may be taken, but a good "turnout" is inconsistent with a good res and successive nights of half-sleep makes sleep imperative in time-off duty. On night shift of 15 hours, and indeed on day shifts, too, no provision is made for meals, other than cooking facilities. Any such meals also have to be provided for out of my take-home pay. Time spent on travelling at weekends is sometimes nearly double that normally required and no assistance is given for travelling when public transport is not available, such as Christmas I feel that some token of appreciation by way of a pay increase should be offered, for the dangers that 1, as a fireman, undertake. Recently qualified in Breathing Apparatus, I am expected, without reward, to approach closer to a fire in a breathing apparatus set, operated on pure oxygen, which as we know, recently caused the deaths of two firemen. Is not this and the many other aspects of a fireman's job worthy of considerably more pay?
FIREMAN J.T.F UPSON, "Ipswood," Main-road, Woodham Ferrers, Chelmsford, Essex