U.S. ARMY SCHOOL FOR LATIN OFFICERS MAY BE REFORMED

Congress gets plans for academy with notorious graduates

WASHINGTON - Critics have branded it the School of Assassins. Now the
Pentagon wants to remake the Army's School of the Americas, to put a more
humanitarian face on the controversial 54-year-old training academy for
Latin American military officers and police.

Last week, the Clinton administration sent a reform package for the Fort
Benning, Ga., school to Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have tried for years
to close it down, complaining that its less illustrious students include a
death squad leader, a drug-connected dictator and roving bands of killers.

The administration's proposals include more rigorous oversight of the school
by the secretary of defense, additional civilian instructors and students,
and more instruction on human rights and peacekeeping.

In addition, the plan calls for the inclusion of members of Congress and
human rights activists on the school's board of visitors, according to
documents and congressional sources.

The school would also get a new name: The Institute for Professional
Military Education Training.

Army Secretary Louis Caldera told a congressional committee last week that
the proposals would result in more professional military organizations in
Latin America.

He also defended the school, saying, "We don't teach American soldiers to
torture, or rape, or murder or be human rights violators ... and we don't
teach that to other countries."

But Rep. Joe Moakley, a Massachusetts Democrat and a leading critic of the
school, likens the reform proposals to putting a perfume factory on a toxic
waste dump. "It still smells. As long as the school is there - even with a
new name - we're going to have problems," he said yesterday.

Last year, the House approved, by a vote of 230-197, Moakley's amendment to
eliminate $2 million from the school's $4.4 million budget, complaining that
the school was a training ground for military strongmen.

The money was later restored in a conference with the Senate. The Army then
promised to rewrite the school's charter and alter its curriculum.

House opponents of the school have pointed to those who have attended the
school: Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian leader now in a U.S. jail on a
drug conviction and the late Roberto d'Aubuisson, one-time leader of death
squads in El Salvador. Both men attended the school in Panama, where it was
located until 1984.

Others trained at the School of the Americas include current Colombian
officers with links to right-wing militias and former members of a notorious
Honduran Army unit - Battalion 316 - that was responsible for kidnapping,
torturing and executing hundreds of suspected subversives in the 1980s.
Battalion 316 was the subject of a Sun investigative series in 1995.

The 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador were carried out by a
group that included 19 Salvadoran officers who had been trained at the
school, a United Nations panel found.

Four years ago, the Pentagon acknowledged that training manuals used at the
school in the 1980s recommended bribery, blackmail, threats and torture
against insurgents.

The Pentagon has said the training manuals were mistakenly based on old
material reflecting policies of the 1960s. The manuals were destroyed in
1991 after an internal investigation.

One congressional critic, Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, a Georgia Democrat, has
called the facility the School of Assassins, a label other detractors have
employed against it.

Army Secretary Caldera, in a widely repeated comment defending the school,
said last summer, "Nobody condemns Harvard because the Unabomber went
there." In fact, relatively few of its 59,000 graduates have been accused of
human rights abuses, officials said.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen told Congress two years ago that the
school's instruction and training allows the United States to positively
influence the militaries of the region by actively promoting democratic
values.

The School of the Americas has weathered 12 investigations since 1989 -
including one from the General Accounting Office, the watchdog of Congress -
and no link was found between the curriculum and any human rights abuses,
officials said.

Those investigations, however, resulted in a number of recommendations for
changes in the curriculum, which have already been implemented, including a
greater emphasis on human rights, international law and civil-military
relations.

There has been a shift from the school's Cold War-era courses dominated by
counterinsurgency training to those that focus on peacekeeping, mine
clearing and counter-drug operations, said school officials.

Courses such as Sniper have been eliminated, replaced with new ones
including Border Observer.

The proposals sent to Capitol Hill this week would expand on those reforms,
moving beyond the curriculum into the management and oversight of the
school.

Under the plan, which requires congressional approval, the defense secretary
would replace the secretary of the Army as the official responsible for the
school, providing a more powerful voice over its affairs.

An estimated 650 to 1,000 students attend each year, according to school
officials, with Colombia and Venezuela providing the most students.

There would be mandatory courses on the rule of law, due process, civilian
control of the military and the role of the military in a democratic
society, the draft documents said.

The eight-member Board of Visitors, which oversees the school and includes
diplomats, academics and military officers, would be expanded by five
members under the administration's proposal.

Moreover, there would be a greater push to attract more civilian faculty and
students, officials said. There are 85 civilians among the 288-member staff.

Last year's student body was 8 percent civilian, up from 3 percent in 1998.

While there is not enough support in the Senate to close the school, a
Senate staffer said, lawmakers may try to increase the school's emphasis on
human rights training.

Moakley, however, said he is wary of the proposals, especially the term
professional military education, adding that that means they can do anything
they want.