1954, Guatemala - CIA & the United Fruit Company

Jacobo Arbenz, President of Guatemala, committed two sins in the eyes of the Eisenhower administration. First, when he opened the system to all political parties he recognized the Communists too.

Arbenz also embarked on a massive land reform program. Less than 3 per cent of the land owners held more than 70 per cent of the land. So Arbenz nationalized more than 1 ½ million acres, including land owned by his own family and turned it over to peasants. Much of that land belonged to the United Fruit Company, the giant American firm that was intent on keeping Guatemala, quite literally, a banana republic. United Fruit appealed to its close friends in Washington, including the Dulles brothers, who said that Arbenz was openly playing the Communist game. He had to go.

The National Security Act of 47 gave us the National Security Council. Never have we had a National Security Council so concerned about the nations security that were always looking for threats and looking how to orchestrate our society to oppose those threats. National Security was invented, almost, in 1947, and now it has become the prime mover of everything we do as measured against something we invented in 1947." -- U.S. Navy Admiral Gene La Rocque in PBS Documentary "The Secret Government"