PBFORTUNE
CIA, 1952. Truman's approved covert line against Arbenz in Guatemala. Category I list of fifty-eight names for elimination if a coup works. Leaks in weeks and is cut. PBSUCCESS finishes the job two years later.
077°08'00 W
1. Public Record
PBFORTUNE. CIA cryptonym, 1952. Truman's first approved covert line against Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala. Somoza in Washington in April saying he and Castillo Armas can do it if someone sends arms. Planning starts. A Directorate of Plans list already exists from January: fifty-eight names in Category I for immediate elimination if a coup works, seventy-four more for prison or exile. The project leaks in weeks and is cut. PBSUCCESS takes the same country two years later and finishes the job this one only sketched.
This folder already holds PBSUCCESS. This page is the dress rehearsal that blew its own cover. Arms and money promised. Aircraft talked of from Nicaragua and Honduras. Trujillo offering help if four Dominicans in Guatemala die first. Then the cable traffic that says the room is no longer quiet enough. The hit list does not get used under this name. It does not get unwritten either.
A month of planning. A leak. A second name waiting.
The initial covert action program approved by Truman in 1952, designed to oust Jacobo Árbenz. Succeeded by PBSUCCESS.
2. Date of Incident
Planning 1952. Formal approval often given as 9 September 1952. Cut the same autumn. PBSUCCESS 1953-54.
3. Location
CIA desks, Washington, with Guatemala as the target. Approximate 38°57 N 077°08 W.
4. Official Narrative
A documented precursor, later released in part. Official narrative treats it as a cancelled sketch. The list of names is in the paper whether the sketch ran or not.
5. Witness Layer
CIA officers on the Directorate of Plans. Somoza. Castillo Armas. Later historians with the cryptonym table.
Top flight Communists whom the new government would desire to eliminate immediately.
Terminated after barely a month due to the fact that its security had been blown.
6. Recovery Logistics
Declassified cables. Cryptonym tables. No coup completed under this title.
7. Assessment
Do not let PBSUCCESS eat this page. The second name did the overthrow. The first name wrote the list. Fifty-eight people already sorted for a morning that had not been scheduled yet. That is the load-bearing paper.
A leak is not innocence. It is only a delay. This folder files PBFORTUNE as the month the Agency practiced on paper, then changed clothes and went back.
8. Materials & Remains
Cables. The January list as later printed. PBSUCCESS as the sequel already on this shelf.
9. Key Personnel
Truman administration / CIA Directorate of Plans : Approval and the list.
Árbenz : The target who would fall under the next name.
Castillo Armas / Somoza : The men who offered to work.
10. Aftermath
PBSUCCESS runs. Árbenz goes. The first cryptonym becomes a footnote that still has a body count attached to a list nobody used in 1952.
11. Current Archive Status
Status: 1952 sketch. List written. Leak. Sequel later.
Confidence: High that PBFORTUNE was approved and cut and that a Category I list existed. High that PBSUCCESS is a different operation. Low that every later Guatemala crime belongs on this first cover sheet.
Filing note
A 1952 desk, a president who said yes, a list of fifty-eight names for a morning that had not been called, a leak that stopped the month, a second cryptonym that did not leak in time.
Terminated after barely a month. The people on the list did not get the same courtesy.