John Horton

John Horton
Born	November 14, 1920  Chicago,  Illinois,  USA
Died	2007 (Age 86)
Nationality	US
Alma mater	•  Indiana University in Bloomington •  University of Chicago
Mentors	Hans Morgenthau
Member of	Association of Former Intelligence Officers
CIA spook who was active in several countries in Latin America. Clashed with Bill Casey over policy for Mexico.  CIA/Central Eurasia Division/Chief In office 1973 - 1975 Preceded by David Blee Succeeded by Richard Stolz  CIA/Latin American Division/Chief Dates unknown in the early 1970s  CIA/Latin American Division/Mexico City Station/Chief In office 1969 - 1971 Preceded by James Noland Succeeded by Richard Sampson After "an abrupt change of Chief"  CIA/Latin American Division/Montevideo Station/Chief Dates unknown in the 1960s  CIA/East Asia Division/Hong Kong Station/Chief In office 1958 - 1961

John Ryder Horton was a CIA spook who was active in several countries in Latin America

Background

Horton was born November 14, 1920, and raised on the north shore of Chicago. He attended Indiana University in Bloomington before enlisting in the Navy in 1940. He was stationed in the Philippines as an ensign when the Japanese attacked in December 1941. Horton went from the Philippines to Java, then Australia, before going to China for two years where he worked with Chinese guerrilla troops, briefly worked in underwater demolitions and was a reserve Lieutenant Commander when the war ended.

Education

Horton pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago, studying under Hans Morgenthau and taking a master's in international relations.

Career

He joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1948 as an operations officer, working in Washington, the Philippines and Japan, and then as chief of station in Hong Kong, Uruguay, and Mexico (after "an abrupt change of Chief"). In the early 1970s, he was chief of the Western Hemisphere division, and retired as chief of the Soviet Bloc division, covering the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations.

Clash over plans for Mexico

In 1983 he was asked to returned to the CIA as the National Intelligence Officer for Central and Latin America.

Despite his operational background, and professed support for Reagan Administration policies, Horton clashed with Director of Central Intelligence Bill Casey, who was seeking a justification for covert pressure on Mexico over its Central American policy and support for the Sandinistas. The prediction (or plan for) of an "Iranization" of Mexico had been established in 1979 by the then head of the Mexican affairs desk at the CIA, Constantine Menges, in an article called "Mexico: the Iran next door" From 1981 until 1983, Menges was national intelligence officer for Latin America. From 1983 until 1986, he worked as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.

Horton ultimately resigned in 1984 after Casey had one of his estimates rewritten to predict greater instability in Mexico. Horton, who had been chief of the agency's station in Mexico, refused to comply with the order, saying that his data did not reflect that chaos.

Torture

The 1978 book Hidden Terrors, the truth about U.S. police operations in Latin America by A.J. Langguth mentions Horton as Chief of Station in Uruguay, planting false evidence and condoning torture:

Torture was not a total novelty to Uruguay. Even before President Pacheco's war on communism, gangsters and petty thieves had been slapped around in jailhouses. But the use of violence against political prisoners was a barbarity that Uruguayans thought they had put behind them along with the death penalty.

Philip Agee learned otherwise when he went with his CIA station chief, John Horton, to call on Colonel Rodriguez, Montevideo's police chief. The purpose was to involve the chief in a CIA plot that would pressure Uruguay to break diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.

The CIA plan was inventive. Dick Conolly, an operations officer, had chosen four Russians from the Soviet embassy and concocted for them a history of subversion within Uruguay's labor movement. Another CIA man, Robert H. Riefe, made up stories about leftist officials in Uruguay's unions to interlock with Conolly's fiction, thereby suggesting a conspiracy. The fabricated report was to be slipped to an Uruguayan politician who would use it to justify severing diplomatic ties with the USSR. First, though, to give it an appearance of authenticity, Horton and Agee took the CIA handiwork to police headquarters.

As Rodriguez leafed through the false report, Agee heard an odd sound, low at first but gradually growing louder. Agee listened more closely. It was a human voice crying out. Probably a vendor on the street, he thought. Rodriguez told his aide to turn up the radio. A soccer match was in progress. By then the moan had become a scream. The chief called again for the radio to be turned up, but the screaming drowned out the broadcast.

Now Agee knew that a man was being tortured in the small room above Rodriguez's office. He suspected that the victim was a leftist named Oscar Bonaudi, whom Agee had recommended to Otero for preventive detention. The screaming continued. Rodriguez finally accepted the CIA report; and with their mission accomplished, Horton and Agee walked out to their Volkswagen for the drive back to the embassy.

John Horton was a prototype of the sardonic CIA operator. Now on the drive back, he referred to what they had heard from upstairs and gave his usual nervous laugh.[...]

To have an impact, any protest would have to come from either the CIA station chief or from the U. S. ambassador. Horton's dismissive laugh suggested that he would not be the one; and safe at the embassy, the ambassador never heard the screams.

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