Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. The school of the Americas and terror in El Salvador
• 2. Guatemala: a country incommunicado
• 3. Chile: the forgotten past is full of memory
• 4. Argentina's dirty war
• 5. South Africa, apartheid, and terror
• 6. Indonesia: three series of massacres
• 7. The Root Doctrine and some notorious instances of U.S. support for dictators
• 8. The roots of the war on terrorism
• 9. The war on terrorism
• 10. Conclusions and recommendations
• Endnotes
• Index

About the Author

Frederick H. Gareau is professor at Florida State University. His previous publications include The United Nations and Other International Institutions: A Critical Analysis (Rowman & Littlefield).

Reviews

'Frederick Gareau's State Terrorism and the United States is an important, courageous analysis of America's long involvement in the training of foreign military and police organizations in techniques of torture, assassination, and ethnic cleansing. The U.S. military itself directly committed these types of war crimes in the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, where we killed a minimum of 20,000 people, and in Central America during the Reagan administration. Gareau's research and documentation is path-breaking. The day has arrived when we in the United States desperately need a "truth commission" to examine our own many secret "dirty wars" and hold our military and political leaders accountable. Gareau's chapter two, "The School of the Americas and Terror in El Salvador," is itself worth the price of admission.' - Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequencs of American Empire 'In his State Terrorism and the United States, Frederick Gareau shows that, contrary to the war on terror imagery of a United States hostile to terrorism and dedicated to its elimination and to democracy-building, this country has regularly supported state terrorists (and dictators) who serve U.S. economic and political interests. Using as his evidentiary base the truth commission reports that have followed the ouster of terror regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina and South Africa, along with a varied array of sources for Indonesia, Israel, Iraq (until August 1990), and Nicaragua, he makes his case for vital U.S. support for these regimes compellingly and soberly. Gareau stresses throughout how little the U.S. public is permitted to hear about what its government has done, which provides a cover for actions the public might well disapprove, and he ends with an appeal for a much needed truth commission for the United States itself. This book is a valuable addition to the literature on terrorism.' - Professor Ed Herman