U.S. Rangers Killed Guerrillas In Secret Raid, Newspaper Says

U.S. Army commandos killed 83 leftist guerrillas in El Salvador in 1985 in a secret raid carried out in retaliation for the massacre of six Americans, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Thursday.

The raid, carried out by 11 Rangers from Fort Lewis, was kept secret because the Reagan administration feared the political and public backlash and to avoid embarrassment for the Salvadoran government, unidentified sources told newspaper.

Asked about the story at a news briefing Thursday, Ken Bacon, chief Pentagon spokesman, said: “We checked this allegation with the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, with the Special Operations Command in Floria; we find no information to substantiate the report.”

The newspaper said it based its report on accounts from an exRanger who took part, a former Army special operations officer and a former government official.