Fort Benning institute's board declares independence

FORT BENNING - The board of the successor to the controversial U.S. Army School of the Americas declared independence Tuesday after concluding its first meeting, which was punctuated by debate over human rights abuses in Latin America. <br> <br> ``This committee will be an independent voice,&#39;&#39; proclaimed Dennis Jett, a University of Florida professor and former U.S. ambassador to Peru who was elected chairman of the Board of Visitors of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. <br> <br> The 13-member board is charged with monitoring the institute to ensure that its graduates do not engage in the atrocities linked to some students of its predecessor, the School of the Americas. <br> <br> Critics have questioned whether the board would ``rubber-stamp&#39;&#39; policies at the institute. <br> <br> Thousands of protesters have descended on Fort Benning for more than a decade to commemorate the Nov. 16, 1989, killings in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests. Some graduates of the Army&#39;s training academy for Latin American officers were linked to the killings. <br> <br> Dozens of demonstrators have been prosecuted over the years for trespassing on Fort Benning property. <br> <br> In December 2000, the Army closed SOA and it was replaced by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which is operated by the Department of Defense. The DOD says the institute&#39;s new mission is to focus on 21st century challenges, not the bloody Latin American insurgencies of the 1980s. <br> <br> The two-day meeting of the institute&#39;s Board of Visitors was supposed to be merely organizational, but it revealed a dynamic board that suggests it may push the envelope of its advisory-only status. <br> <br> Exchanges among board members were sometimes peculiar. At one point, Army officials found themselves advocating more liberal approaches toward human rights training than some of the board&#39;s more staunchly conservative civilian representatives. <br> <br> During a Monday afternoon session on human rights instruction, Daniel Fisk, the State Department representative, questioned why human rights violations committed by the Sandinistas against U.S.-backed contras in the 1980s were not included in the institute&#39;s curriculum. <br> <br> This led board member Jose Sorzano, a former Peace Corps director in Colombia, to question why Monday morning&#39;s lecture by a Chilean human rights activist tortured by Augusto Pinochet&#39;s paramilitary forces in the 1970s was not accompanied by ``the other side of the story.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> ``Do you mean the &#39;torture&#39; side?&#39;&#39; asked Maj. Tony Raimondo, chief of the institute&#39;s human rights and international law division. <br> <br> Coming to Sorzano&#39;s defense, Fisk said the two were suggesting only that the curriculum should reflect an expanded context of how human rights violations occur. ``There are those who claim that had Pinochet not stepped in, (ousted President Salvador) Allende would have engaged in his own form of torture,&#39;&#39; Fisk said. <br> <br> The exchange concluded with a stern response from Lt. Gen. Larry Jordan, one of the Army&#39;s two board representatives. <br> <br> ``I just would not want to get into a situation where students would leave here with any impression that actions like that are justified,&#39;&#39; Jordan said. <br> <br> Following the meeting, Kim Porter, a School of the Americas opponent, said he believed the board would act independently. <br> <br> ``When I came here I honestly believed this would be a rubber-stamp board,&#39;&#39; said Porter, a retired Miami educator who was arrested at Fort Benning during a 2000 protest. ``I believe now they are really going to look into the institute.&#39;&#39;