In 1999, the U.S. national press corps, which had obsessed for months over allegations regarding President Bill Clinton's sex life, treated the Guatemalan disclosures, including the Reagan administration's complicity in genocide, as a one-day story that got almost no attention on the 24-hour cable TV networks.
During a visit to Central America, on March 10, 1999, President Clinton apologized for the past U.S. support of right-wing regimes in Guatemala.
"For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake," Clinton said.
Last week, the Obama administration issued a similar apology for the medical experiments in the 1940s, but there is no indication that either the U.S. government nor the American news media has learned any lasting lessons or will act any differently in the future.
If the United States were really sorry for all the harm it has inflicted on Guatemala -- and other developing nations in Latin America and around the world -- it might at least dial back next year's celebrations of Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday. But there is no sign even of that.
[Many of the declassified U.S. government documents regarding Guatemala are posted on the Internet by the National Security Archive.]
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