Clinton Orders Probe Of Killings Committee To Investigate If Cia Involved In Any Way

President Clinton, reacting to a spate of reports that Americans have been killed and tortured by Guatemalan police and army death squads, on Thursday ordered a littleknown intelligence watchdog committee to find out if the CIA, the American Embassy or any other U.S. agency is implicated in committing the crimes or in covering them up.

White House spokesman Mike McCurry said Clinton ordered the Intelligence Oversight Board to conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations. He promised that the White House will “provide to the American public as much information about the review as possible.”

McCurry said Clinton instructed the CIA, the National Security Agency, the State Department and other agencies to make sure that no relevant documents are destroyed.

The probe was prompted by reports that a Guatemalan army colonel, a paid informant for the CIA, had ordered the killing in 1990 of an American citizen who owned a Guatemalan hotel and had supervised the torture and murder in 1992 of a leftist guerrilla leader married to a Harvardeducated American lawyer.

In addition to investigating the deaths of innkeeper Michael DeVine and guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca Valazquez, McCurry said the probe would “also include any available information on the deaths or human rights abuses of other Americans, including the torture of Sister Dianna Ortiz in 1989, the death of Griffith Davis in 1985 and the death of Nicholas Blake in 1985.”

About the time McCurry was describing the investigation to reporters in Tallahassee, Fla., where Clinton was addressing the Florida Legislature, seven Americans, including Ortiz, Blake’s brother and Bamaca’s widow Jennifer Harbury, held a news conference in Washington to tell harrowing stories of murder, rape and torture.