CIA KNEW PAID INFORMERS WERE ASSASSINS, BOARD SAYS.

Byline: Tim Weiner The New York Times

The Central Intelligence Agency knowingly hired as paid informers a number of Guatemalan military officers suspected of political assassinations, extrajudicial killings, kidnapping and torture, a presidential panel reported Friday.

In a sweeping review providing new details about the agency's deep and longstanding ties to the Guatemalan military, the presidential board went far beyond what was previously known about the agency's relationship with one Guatemalan officer, Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, who was on the CIA's payroll from 1988 to 1992.

The presidential panel, named the Intelligence Oversight Board, sifted through what its chairman called a myriad of ``maddeningly contradictory'' intelligence reports, then concluded that several Guatemalan officers and officials who were paid informers for the CIA covered up the military's role in the 1990 killing of an American citizen, Michael DeVine.

The panel concluded that Alpirez was guilty in that cover-up and participated in the interrogation and likely torture of Efrain Bamaca, a captured Guatemalan guerrilla who was married to Jennifer Harbury, an American lawyer.

Alpirez himself probably did not kill either man, but other Guatemalan officers paid by the CIA may have been involved, the panel said.

The board concluded that the CIA broke the law by failing to keep the congressional intelligence committees fully informed about its activities in Guatemala.

The 67-page report is the first published by the Intelligence Oversight Board, Chairman Anthony Harrington said.

The CIA's Guatemala station was capable of good work - such as working to counter a 1993 coup and helping to rescue a kidnapped American girl in 1994 - but generally ignored human-rights abuses by its paid informers, Harrington said.

Some of the CIA's closest allies were killers, the report said. In one case, the CIA took no action against one of its paid informers, despite a reliable report that he was directly involved in an assassination, until a review of such relationships in September 1994.

One Guatemalan officer on the CIA payroll ordered and planned assassinations of political opponents, a second took part in assassinations or assassination attempts, and a third ``participated in assassination, extrajudicial killing and kidnapping during and before his time as an asset,'' the report concluded. Nor were these the only such examples, Harrington said.

The report did not identify any of the other agents but said none is still on the CIA payroll.

The report said U.S. ambassadors to Guatemala were not informed the CIA had suspected killers and torturers on its payroll, despite a 1977 agreement between the CIA and the State Department stating clearly that the station chief must tell the ambassador who his contacts were. Such secrecy, the report said, tended to breed ``a general atmosphere of distrust between the State Department and the CIA.''

Harrington said the board wondered why the CIA maintained relations with violent military officers in Guatemala.

``The board asked itself: The Cold War's over; what are we doing there?'' said Harrington, a Washington lawyer.

The board's inquiry began 15 months ago, after Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to President Clinton charging that Alpirez had ordered the killings of DeVine and Bamaca. His letter was prompted by Harbury's efforts to find out from the U.S. government what happened to her husband, a leftist rebel captured by the Guatemalan army in 1992.

Torricelli said Friday that the report proved that ``American taxpayer money was used by the CIA to pay Guatemalans who murdered, tortured and then covered up their crimes.''