The Foreign Service Journal, May 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2013 49 Countering Military and Security Threats To counter Cuban support of guerrilla warfare, Kennedy rebuilt the Army Special Forces and authorized them to don the green beret as their distinctive mark. The Special Forces’ most prominent achievement against Castro-supported revolution was to come in 1967 when they helped Bolivian forces find and eliminate Che Guevara, who had been having little success ignit- ing revolution in the Andes. Che’s death weakened the revo- lutionary threat in the region, but contributed to an aura that made posters of his likeness the most popular decorations for U.S. college dorm rooms for more than a generation. In a later assignment, Dorcas and I arrived in São Paulo with two preschoolers in 1969—just after Ambassador C. Burke Elbrick had been kidnapped and was being held hostage by Marxist guerrillas. At the urging of the Nixon administration, the Brazilian government met the kidnappers’ demands and released 15 jailed leftists into exile abroad. A few months later, the killing of the Marxist guerrilla Carlos Marighela by Brazilian security agents, down the street from the consulate general on a weekday afternoon, provided another reminder that we were immersed in a war zone. Marighela’s Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla had complemented Mao’s writings on rural guerrilla warfare. The following year, Curtis Cutter, principal officer in Porto Alegre, heroically avoided kidnappers by driving forcefully through the roadblock they had set for him. The guerrillas wounded him with a shot through his back, but he and his wife made it to safety and a full recovery. During our time in Brazil, President Nixon adopted a policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. It seemed initially that he was throwing diplomats to the wolves, but in retrospect the pol- icy seems to have protected them by removing the rewards that kidnapping diplomats might produce. Unfortunately, this effect was not immediately appreciated. When the demands of Marxist Tupamaro guerrillas in Uruguay were not met, they murdered Dan Mitrione, a U.S. public safety adviser they had kidnapped. In 1981, I was posted as deputy chief of mission in Guate- mala, where John Gordon Mein had earlier become the first U.S. ambassador assassinated while in office. Men belonging to the