A small act years ago reveals much about Hillary. While she was First Lady, a small act of kindness and political will may have gone unnoticed. But it helped the powerless and voiceless. There was no political upside for Hillary, no currying favor with Wall Street. Just a courageous and effective use of power on behalf of the downtrodden.
In 1989, Sister Dianna Ortiz, a Catholic nun from New Mexico was serving in Guatemala. She was abducted, raped and tortured. An American finally told her captors in the torture chamber to release her. She fled to the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. The U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala was the boyfriend friend of Dick Cheney who got him into Yale. U.S. officials refused to accept her account or that an American was controlling the torture chamber. It was confirmed that she had over 100 cigarette burns on her back. The Guatemalan military said the burns were due to rough lesbian sex.
Here is a WaPo account: www.franksmyth.com/… Here is her book: www.amazon.com/… Wikipedia has a reasonably decent summary. en.wikipedia.org/...
In April 1996, Sr. Dianna was conducting a vigil outside the Whitehouse. Hillary took her into the Whitehouse and was photographed with her. (The photo is in Sr. Dianna’s book but I have not been able to show this because I cannot find my copy of the book.) This was an act of validation that had previously evaded Sr. Dianna. Many U.S. officials said she was lying. Others, who were normally sympathetic to claims of human rights abuses in Guatemala, abandoned her. This is from the WaPo: prop1.org/...
A senior official said yesterday that Hillary Clinton asked to meet with Ortiz because she "felt some personal concern for her." Ortiz has been keeping her vigil about 20 hours a day since Monday.
Sr. Dianna wanted the U.S,. to release documents regarding U.S. involvement in Guatemala:
A year ago, President Clinton asked the Intelligence Oversight Board to conduct a probe of the case and whether U.S. government backed forces were involved or the United States was making payments to those involved in her torture. Despite previous pledges from administration officials to speed the process of searching for any classified material about her case and releasing it, none has emerged.
Id. WaPo (Emphasis Added.)
So, after a year, no documents. But Hillary promised a release of documents within six months:
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday promised an American nun that the Clinton administration will get "appropriate documents" related to her abuse by Guatemalan military officials declassified and released within six months, officials said yesterday.
Id. WaPo (Emphasis Added.)
And how long did it actually take? One month.
From the May 6, 1996 New York Times: www.nytimes.com/...
The State Department provided the classified documents to Congress on Friday, but, citing national security and the secrecy demanded by intelligence services, omitted those documents from thousands of papers on human-rights abuses in Guatemala that it declassified and released to the public today.
In December 1996, the Guatemala Peace Accords were signed, ending a decades long civil war. www.nytimes.com/... In 1997, the CIA released documents proving what had been long suspected regarding the U.S. 1954 overthrow of the democratically elected Arbenz. nsarchive.gwu.edu/...
The Peace Accords allowed a reckoning of sorts, with the Catholic Church publishing in 1998 its official account of the atrocities committed during the civil war. Gerardi Report: en.wikipedia.org/... That was followed by the 1999 report of the UN Truth Commission that validated the findings of the Gerardi Report, and found that the U.S.-aided Guatemalan military engaged in torture and genocide, killing 200,000 people, and specifically found that over 90% of the atrocities were committed by the Guatemalan military. www.nytimes.com/... In March 1999, Bill Clinton formally apologized to the people of Guatemala for U.S. support of Guatemalan military dictatorships that tortured and killed thousands upon thousands of its own people. www.nytimes.com/...
Hillary played a role in helping the people of Guatemala. She showed Sr. Dianna kindness and respect. She was able to kick the bureaucracy in the teeth and shake loose important documents detailing how the the U.S. government was complicit in torture in Guatemala. The documents she shook loose started an avalanche of highly incriminating documents. Until her involvement, nothing was happening. And, she was directly challenging the CIA establishment--not a comfortable or politic place to be. This occurred during an election year.
Hillary did not help Sr. Dianna and the people of Guatemala in order to curry political favor. Sr. Dianna and the people of Guatemala do not matter. They control no votes, have no money, and have no influence. There was no political upside to helping Sr. Dianna and cracking open the CIA vault on Guatemala. There was plenty of political downside to siding with Sr. Dianna, whom the U.S. government had labeled a liar, and to challenging the CIA, which had no interest in having its complicity in torture and genocide exposed.
Hillary's caring, effective help of the nobodys shows her character and compassion.
