After 32 years, mystery persists in death of rebel priest in Central America
After 32 years, mystery persists in death of rebel priest in Central America
By James Eli Shiffer
September 19, 2015 — 6:08pm
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The Rev. James Carney, known in Honduras as Padre Guadalupe, was a Jesuit priest who worked for years on behalf of the poor.
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The letter to a Minnesota senator from the CIA expressed regret. The nation’s storied intelligence agency was at a loss to explain how the Rev. James Francis Carney, an American Jesuit priest turned radical revolutionary, disappeared in the misty jungles of Honduras.
“Unfortunately, the documents in our files give no conclusive evidence as to the fate of Father Carney,” a CIA official, John Moseman, wrote to then-Sen. Paul Wellstone in January 1998.
The family and friends of Carney, some of whom lived in Minnesota, did not believe it then, and they don’t believe it today. So they continue their three-decade quest to force the government to reveal everything it knows about one of the most enduring mysteries of U.S. foreign policy in Central America.
Despite four Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, Congressional hearings and a presidential promise of transparency, key records held by the CIA and other agencies that could shed light on what happened to Carney in September 1983 remain heavily redacted or withheld in their entirety.
The Rev. Joe Mulligan, an American Jesuit in Nicaragua, thinks he knows why: Carney must have been captured by Honduran forces and then killed with the approval of the U.S. government.
More:
http://www.startribune.com/after-32-years-mystery-persists-in-death-of-rebel-priest-in-central-america/328380761/