Who killed Jorge E. Gaitan?
The solution to the enigma is fantastic and it might be nearby.
By Daniel Samper Pizano
Published October 11, 2000 in El Tiempo, and October 15, 2000 in El Nuevo HeraldOne of the questions that has most formulated our national history is that of who killed Gaitan. The answers have been of very distinct colors, but now a solution is planned that might clarify the enigma. The bad part is that it requires the collaboration of the intelligence agencies of the United States, Cuba and England.
Last week this column described how the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency of the United States) rejected a legal petition of north American historian Paul Wolf, directing that the Agency would release its files about Jorge Eliecer Gaitan and the events of the 9th of April, 1948. Versions are now appearing founded that might explain the silence of the CIA. According to them, the organization was compromised in backing the assassination of the liberal leader and had the approval of the government of the time and of some political sectors, including a liberal boss whose name was not revealed.
The version has fantastic characteristics, entering the dance are the CIA, Fidel Castro, Scotland Yard (British police) and the owner of the Kokorico chickens. But our country often explains itself better as a novel than through exhaustive investigations.
One of the keys to the plot is an ex CIA agent named John Mepples Espirito. This man, born in the United States but of Italian origin, was captured by the Cuban authorities in the early 1960s when he worked as a spy on the island. Subjected to interrogation, he confessed to having participated, among other actions, in one called "Operation Pantomime," the goal of which was to bribe Gaitan with house, property, a professorship in Europe and scholarships for his children. When he was not succesful, his supervisor in Bogota, a man named Thomas Elliot, communicated the decision to "work another way then" so it was necessary "to bring about his physical elimination." For this he turned to Juan Roa Sierra, a person who had done other work for the CIA. The broken link was forseen, with a bonus: the excited crowd liquidated the author of the crime, a thing that fell perfectly into the Agency's plans.
Espirito made his confession before a movie camera. A couple of years later - about 1962 or 1963 - commander Pineiro, Chief of Cuban Intelligence, invited Gloria Gaitan, daughter of the leader, spokesperson of his memory and figure of the left, and showed her the unedited film. The declaration coincided with something else she had heard from her father at home in 1947 when he revealed that seductive offers had been made if he would set aside his political campaign and dedicate himself to teaching law in Paris or Rome. Astonished, Gloria asked for a copy of the document. But Pineiro didn't want to give it to her because, it appears, it might damage relations with a son of ex President Ospina Perez who would maintain good commercial relations with Havana.
Another Colombian, on the other hand, was allowed some years later to view the edited film, and made a tape recording of the words of the old spy. He was Arturo Alape, author of The Bogotazo, one of the indispensible books about the event. By then something had changed, because the Cubans told Alape - according to the version of Gloria Gaitan - that Espirito was "delusionary" and had invented his confession.
In 1994 Gloria visited Fidel Castro, whom she found in Bogota for the change of government, and she asked him for a copy of the documentary. But she was enormously surprised, because now Castro denied the existence of the movie, of the confession and even of the spy. When Gloria said that she had an audio recording, it produced, according to her, a strong discussion between the two,
Not much time would pass before a version supporting the story of the agent would appear. Says Gloria Gaitan "In 1993, Dr. Yesid Castano (today director of Fedecafe) contacted me to tell me that Dr. Robayo, owner of Kokorico, had all the documentation of a CIA agent named Thomas Elliot who had been his close friend and who he left, before he died of cancer, the entire file about the preparation of the assassination of my father." Castano told Gloria that Robayo was disposed to make the documentation known, including photographs of the earlier pursuit that was practiced on the victim. "Nevertheless - adds the daughter of the leader - he has been impossible to find and until now never returned my calls. He owes a repentance."
The latest chapter advanced two months ago in London, when the daughter of Gloria, Maria Valencia Gaitan, discovered in the archives of Scotland Yard that John Mepples Espirito married a Cuban woman, became a citizen of that country and resides there.
Gloria Gaitan proposes that she believes an ad hoc independent international tribunal in which are released the files of the CIA, the original film of the confession of Espirito and the papers of Scotland Yard with the purpose of establishing once and for all, "and who may fall, may fall," who killed Gaitan.
I think that it is a legitimate and just aspiration.
Translation by Paul Wolf