Romero_Trial_Transcript_8_25_04_53_2

8-25-04 Trial Transcript
9 reasoning behind that was that these were so thoroughly
10 repressive and corrupt that they could not be saved, they had
11 to be completely dismantled, there was a great deal of fear
12 that the death squad apparatus that operated out of both of
13 these forces, the National Police and the Treasury Police,
14 would continue to operate. In other words, that you could
15 dismantle the formal institutions, but you would not find a
16 way to dismantle the death squads. And that is the same
17 policemen taking off their uniforms and acting as a death
18 squad.
19 And that meant that it became very important to try
20 to figure out how to dismantle the death squads as well as the
21 formal military apparatus.
22 Q. And that concern of the United Nations and the U.S.
23 government led to --
24 A. The U.S. government. And they were ordered to do that,
25 since death squads are very secret by their nature, it was
KARL - D
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1 important to have as much information as possible about
2 everything everybody knew about death squads, so that pressure
3 could be put in the appropriate places after the signing of
4 peace agreements to make sure that these squads couldn't
5 continue to operate in the ways they had. That was the hope.
6 It was not entirely realized.
7 But because of that, the Clinton Administration
8 declassified an enormous amount of documents. I believe that
9 I think over the years, I probably read somewhere between 8-
10 and 10,000 of them. That --
11 Q. So you reviewed some of the documents that were released
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