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The essence of PB/Success was not military or political but psychological. Allen knew that his ragtag “liberation army” would hardly be able to win a battle, much less a war. His plan was to destabilize Guatemala so fully that military commanders would conclude they had no choice other than to overthrow Arbenz. This required him to dig deep into his tactical arsenal. American hearts and minds had already been won. Thanks largely to a brilliantly executed propaganda campaign paid for by United Fruit and directed by the legendary opinion-maker Edward Bernays, press coverage of Arbenz in the United States was overwhelmingly negative. When a New York Times reporter in Guatemala, Sydney Gruson, began filing stories about the benefits of land reform, Allen quietly protested, and the Times’s publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, obligingly had Gruson recalled.
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Stephen Kinzer (The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War)