As recently as three years ago, American military officers in El Salvador trained a group of wealthy Salvadorans associated with right-wing death squads, State Department documents show.
The training occurred at a time when the threat of communism was receding and the Bush administration was pursuing peace settlements in Central America.The documents are the first to describe Americans as training civilians tied to political killings in El Salvador and the first to link American support to Salvadoran death-squad activities in the 1990's.
"My worst fears are realized," the U.S ambassador, William G. Walker, wrote in a cablegram from San Salvador to the State Department in October 1990. The ambassador said he had learned that American officers were giving weekly military training to a group of 50 to 60 wealthy Salvadorans who called themselves Los Patrioticos, the Patriotic Ones.