Newly declassified documents emanating from the US Embassy in Guyana in 1980 indicate that evidence at the time, including the aid reportedly given to accused Gregory Smith to leave the country and secure a job with a shrimp company, strongly suggested that head of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) Dr. Walter Rodney was assassinated.
To mark the 40th anniversary of Rodney’s death last Saturday, the National Security Archive at The George Washington University published a selection of previously classified cables sent between the American Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, and the Department of State in Washington, DC, in 1980.
Rodney, an acclaimed historian and political activist, was killed on June 13th, 1980, when a bomb in a walkie-talkie given to him and his brother Donald exploded in a car.
His death has long been a stain on the history of this country as many believe that the then PNC government, led by Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, had a hand in it, especially because of the established fact that the walkie-talkie device was given to Donald Rodney by then Guyana Defence Force (GDF) officer Gregory Smith. Smith was subsequently spirited out of the country, an act said to be orchestrated by a then top GDF official.
The National Security Archive obtained the documents from the U.S. Department of State through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all mentions of Walter Rodney during 1980. The request was made on behalf of the Rodney family, which wanted to learn what the American Embassy in Georgetown knew about his death and how it reacted. “The American diplomats seem genuinely interested in finding out what happened but troubled at growing evidence that the U.S.-backed regime was covering up the existence (and then whereabouts) of an active duty sergeant who allegedly gave the booby-trapped walkie-talkie to Rodney,” the National Security Archive notes in its report on the material, which includes diplomatic cables on government officials, and unnamed individuals, and articles in government-controlled and opposition newspapers.
The 66 documents arrived after the 2014–2015 Commission of Inquiry (COI) in Guyana completed its report but the collection was given to the Rodney family.
The COI, which was abruptly aborted when President David Granger came into office in 2015, had also concluded that the government of the day had a hand in Rodney’s death.
Suspicious
According to the National Security Archive, Smith’s name appears for the first time in a June 17, 1980 correspondence as the provider of the walkie-talkie which contained the bomb. “The identity of this person and his disappearance were major factors leading to embassy officials becoming suspicious of GOG [Government of Guyana] involvement,” the National Security Archive said.
According to one cable, an anonymous source gave information to an embassy’s political officer about a late night request by a then senior GDF official to an old friend to secretly transport Smith from Guyana to French Guiana, where he would be employed for a year under an alias in a shrimping company.
“The friend complied, according to the source, apparently without knowing the identity of the individual he was harboring, but later realized that it was the person accused of killing Rodney. Of significant concern to the embassy was the U.S. citizenship of the friend and the company owner, which would give the appearance of U.S. ‘complicity in a GOG cover-up,’” the cable said.
The cable concluded that if it were true the senior GDF official assisted Smith, it represented another strong implication of the then government’s guilt in planning and carrying out Rodney’s assassination.
Another cable noted that Richard Dwyer, an officer from the US Embassy in Guyana who became the American consul in Martinique in early July 1980, pursued the Rodney investigation and visited the Cayenne location of a seafood company where Smith was believed by some to be an employee. The company’s manager, Bill Charron, proved eager to talk about the case and indicated he was a friend of the GDF official who was reported to have orchestrated Smith’s covert departure from Guyana. The manager indicated that sources had told him that Smith was a government double agent and responsible for giving the Rodney brothers an explosive device. The plan, he claimed, was to alert GOG security forces that the Rodney brothers were in possession of a bomb and then arrest them. However, the device reportedly went off accidentally.
Why the Rodney brothers wanted the device was not explained by the manager who insisted that his sources “knew the facts of the matter.”
When he testified before the COI in 2014, then Chief of Staff Norman McLean had said that even though he knew questions were being asked about Smith’s involvement, he personally did no investigation on the former soldier turned deserter. He accepted that shortly after Rodney’s death he did tell members of the press that no Gregory Smith was a member of the GDF and this was done after he would have asked the relevant officer-the now dead Major Alan John Lewis-to check the records. However, after he was contacted again and given the service number 41/41, it was later revealed to him that indeed a William Gregory Smith was a member of the maritime division of the GDF but that he had deserted.
He also said that even with the interest shown in Smith and him being fingered in the death of Rodney, he was not inclined to take a look at his personal file or to find out more about him nor did he actively try to find him.
Justifiable
In another cable, the US Ambassador of the time George Roberts detailed the strong although admittedly “circumstantial case” for the government of the day’s responsibility for Rodney’s death.
“He starts with his 6 February meeting with Prime Minister Forbes Burnham and ends with a series of recommendations, including to avoid being closely identified with the GOG, to provide a ‘frank’ treatment of the matter in the State Department’s annual Human Rights report, and to delay any new US aid to Guyana,” the National Security Archive said.
Ambassador Roberts also pointed to some risks with this approach, including possibly strengthening the position of long-time leftist politician and future President Cheddi Jagan, who remained “unacceptable to US.”
According to the university, the problem is obtaining conclusive evidence that Rodney’s death was not the result of an accident. Government officials whom the then ambassador met repeated the same reasoning – that Rodney’s death was “justifiable self-defense by the GOG since he had been planning the violent overthrow of the government.” The ambassador at the time advised continuing “our low profile policy and our avoidance of new initiatives which might be interpreted as supportive of the GOG.”
A cable before his death indicated that Rodney had requested to meet discreetly with James L. Adkins, who was the embassy’s political officer at the time. The two had briefly met earlier in 1979 and Rodney was comfortable talking with him. Rodney would not have known at the time that Adkins was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee attached to the embassy.
The conversations between the two covered the increasingly repressive tactics the government was using against opposition groups, leaving the WPA, in Rodney’s view, no alternative but violence, which Rodney predicted could result within the next year. Rodney said while he “abhorred terrorism, the WPA may be forced to it.”
“Then, the conversation assumed a dark side when Rodney predicted that because violence might result within the year, he was asking for Adkins’ assistance in obtaining permanent resident alien status for his family to go to the U.S. in case he was killed,” the National Security Archive said.
At the time Rodney claimed US funding for Guyana was not being used to promote social services but instead abetted GOG control over opposition parties by freeing funds for surveillance technology and military equipment. He asked why the US praised human rights progress in Barbados while criticizing those of Grenada but ignored human rights abuses in Guyana.
Following Rodney’s death the ambassador met with Burnham on his request and the cable on the meeting said the opportunity was used to explain the new human rights policy of the US. Even though he reported that the meeting was “non-contentious,” he stated that Burnham was not having any of it (human rights policy issue) and “launched into a defense of Guyana’s human rights situation,” declaring the “United States had too many beams in its own eye to make accusations about human rights and democratic processes in Guyana.”
The ambassador noted that concerns raised by the State Department’s Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, “along with other offices in the Department,” included “various reports about the death of Dr. Walter Rodney” and issues surrounding elections in the country. Burnham believed that U.S. complaints reflected the fact that Guyana had never been forgiven for nationalizing the bauxite industry. Regarding Rodney’s death, Burnham said the late activist had been up to “no good” and had blown himself up with his own bomb.
“But overall, Forbes Burnham seems confidently, even arrogantly in control, and remains the only individual who makes the important decisions,” the cable said.
The COI, which was aborted by President Granger, had been set up in 2014 by then President Donald Ramotar to determine, as far as possible, who or what was responsible for the explosion that killed Walter Rodney on June 13, 1980. It concluded that Rodney was the victim of a state-organized assassination and this could only have been possible with the knowledge of Burnham.
The three-person inquiry, also found that Smith carried out the killing and was then spirited out of the country to French Guiana in an elaborate operation spearheaded by the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force.
