Last week, the House voted to restore public access to the names of graduates and instructors at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas, as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Bill. This is a good amendment for a couple of reasons.

First, it restores the status quo in existence up to 2006, when Congress voted to classify the names of the institute’s graduates and instructors for the first time in history. Up until then, those names were available to civil-society organizations, either through the school itself or through the Freedom of Information Act.

Second, the amendment restores the principle of transparency that needs to be at the center of U.S. security cooperation with Latin America. WHINSEC, based in Columbus, Ga., has been widely criticized for its past history of training Latin American officers who were later implicated in serious human rights abuses in their home countries. This is a shameful history for which the United States, through its military training programs, shares responsibility. The institute maintains that it has long since added human rights and respect for the rule of law to its curriculum. But by keeping the names of its personnel and students secret, Congress undermined WHINSEC’s claims to transparency and accountability and added a cloak of secrecy.

WOLA has long felt that the U.S. government can play an important role in cooperating with Latin American governments to develop professional, rights-respecting security forces. This bill goes in that direction. We congratulate Congressmen McGovern (D-MA), Sestak (D-PA) and Bishop (D-GA) and Chairman Skelton for making it happen.

Roger Atwood is communications director for the Washington Office on Latin America.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 10:56 am and is filed under Politics .