Operation WASHTUB was a covert operation organized by the United States

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

to plant a phony

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

arms cache in

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...

. It was a part of the CIA's effort to portray the administration of Guatemalan President

Jacobo Árbenz Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán (; 14 September 191327 January 1971) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the 25th President of Guatemala. He was Minister of National Defense from 1944 to 1950, and the second democratical ...

as having ties to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, prior to the CIA sponsored

1954 Guatemalan coup d'état The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was the result of a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess. It deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954. It installed the mi ...

which overthrew Árbenz later the same year. On 19 February 1954, the CIA, working through the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua, planted a cache of Soviet-made arms on the Nicaraguan coast near the fishing village of Masachapa to be "discovered" weeks later by Rafael Lola, a lieutenant in the Nicaraguan army, and fishermen in the pay of Nicaraguan president

Anastasio Somoza García Anastasio Somoza García (1 February 1896 – 29 September 1956) was the leader of Nicaragua from 1937 until his assassination in 1956. He was only officially the 21st President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1937 to 1 May 1947 and from 21 May 195 ...

. The CIA also wished to dispose of the weapons, which were to have been used by Carlos Castillo Armas, and were therefore incriminating to the CIA. On May 7, 1954, President Somoza told reporters at a press conference that a Soviet submarine had been photographed, but that no prints or negatives were available. The story presented to the press was embroidered with the involvement of Guatemalan assassination squads. Somoza was supposed to convince the public that the arms had been intended for Guatemala. The press and the public were skeptical and the story did not get much press. However, the story became part of the Nicaragua local legends until the

1979 revolution The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...

. The operation received attention again during the attempts by the U.S. government to exploit the products of

Operation PBHistory Operation PBHistory was a covert operation carried out in Guatemala by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It followed Operation PBSuccess, which led to the overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in June 1954 and ended ...

, the CIA effort to gather intelligence from documents left in Guatemala after the 1954 coup by the government and the communist party. Anti-Communist members of the US Congress, especially

Charles J. Kersten Charles Joseph Kersten (May 26, 1902 – October 31, 1972) was a U.S. Representative from Wisconsin.'Wisconsin Blue Book 1954,' Biographical Sketch of Charles J. Kersten, pg. 17 Born in Chicago, Illinois, Kersten graduated from Marquette Unive ...

and

Patrick J. Hillings Patrick Jerome Hillings (February 19, 1923 – July 20, 1994) was a Republican U.S. Representative from California who succeeded Richard M. Nixon in Congress. He was initially elected to California's 12th congressional district, which was re ...

of the Kersten Committee, began to use PBHistory documents in their reports, provided by the CIA to forestall the possibility that members of Congress, officially ignorant of the CIA's role in the Guatemalan coup, would expose other CIA projects. A subcommittee headed by Hillings produced a final report. In addition to stating without evidence that the Guatemalan government had been acting under orders from the Soviet Union, this report also claimed that Soviet weapons had been brought covertly to Guatemala by submarine. This unintentionally drew attention to Operation WASHTUB.

References

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* * * * {{Central Intelligence Agency Conflicts in 1954 Central Intelligence Agency operations False flag operations Guatemalan Revolution Covert operations Guatemala–United States relations Nicaragua–United States relations