in "interrogation techniques". An investigative report published in the San Francisco Chronicle in August 1981, American newspaper columnist Jack Anderson, that the CIA was using Cuban exile groups to train security forces in Guatemala; in this operation, Anderson wrote, the CIA had arranged for "secret training in the finer points of assassination." Stan Goff, a Vietnam veteran and former Staff Sergeant in the US Army 2d Ranger Battalion who served in Guatemala with the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (SFOD-D) in 1983, claims that CIA paramilitary personnel (operating out of the US Embassy) participated directly in combat against the EGP alongside the Guatemalan army. This included planning and executing ambushes with the Guatemalan Army in the hotly contested northern provinces. The CIA provided intelligence to the army for its long war against guerrillas, farmers, peasants and other opponents. The CIA station chief in Guatemala from 1988 to 1991 was a Cuban American. He had about 20 officers with a budget of about $5 million a year and an equal or greater sum for "liaison" with Guatemalan military. His job included placing and keeping senior Guatemalan officers on his payroll. Among them was Alpirez, who recruited others for CIA. Alpirez's intelligence unit spied on Guatemalans and is accused by human rights groups of assassinations. In the latter stages of the thirty-six-year Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), however, the CIA helped reduce the incidence and number of the violations of the human rights of Guatemalans; and, in 1983, thwarted a palace coup d’ état, which allowed the eventual restoration of participatory democracy and civil government; the resultant national election was won by Democrácia Cristiana, the Christian Democracy party, and Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo became President of the Republic of Guatemala (1986–91). It must be noted that the reasons for the human rights related activities were due to the increase of abductions and deaths of Guatemalan citizens that were tied to politics. There were reports from the UN Human Rights Commission Special Rapporteur (Lord Colville) that stated that Guatemala did violate basic rights but was improving. It was recorded that about 500 Guatemalan citizens were killed in the year 1983, many which were deaths tied to the government. In the same year about 300 people vanished, which were linked to politics, government, and guerrillas. The killings were a result of the tit for tat battle between the government and guerrilla forces. According to a