The disappearance of the Rev. James Francis Carney is significant because Carney had been a U.S. citizen and because of credible allegations that U.S. military and intelligence personnel were directly involved.

A Jesuit priest from St. Louis, Carney began working as a missionary in Honduras in 1961. He dedicated his life there to helping organize the poor in their struggle for land and labor rights. Carney took the name “Padre Guadalupe” to show his reverence for the Virgin of Guadalupe. His deep connection with the country and its people led him to renounce his U.S. citizenship and become a naturalized Honduran citizen in 1974.

Carney wrote in his autobiography, published posthumously as “To Be a Christian Is... To Be a Revolutionary”: “Why are the campesinos so poor in this rich valley? They are farmers who do not have any land! We rebel against that, even if they call us communists, even if they kill us. We have to wake our people up, tell them to get organized, help them to change the situation.” Because of Carney’s work for social change, the Honduran government in 1979 revoked his citizenship and expelled him.

Carney relocated to a parish in Nicaragua and worked with campesinos there during the early years of the Sandinista government. He continued, however, to feel an inseparable tie with Honduras. In 1983 he became chaplain to a group of 96 Honduran guerrillas from the Central America Revolutionary Workers Party who were training in Nicaragua. Their mission was to return to Honduras and launch a fight for land reform and social justice.

The armed group entered Honduras in July 1983 and and began operating in the remote, mountainous region of the Olancho province. However, on Aug. 1 a pair of deserters alerted the Honduran Army to the group's presence. The military immediately launched Operation Patuca to locate and capture the guerrillas, and over the course of two months they were handily defeated by Honduran troops with U.S. logistic support. Most members of the group were killed, captured, deserted or died of starvation; as many as 70 may have been executed.

On Sept. 19, 1983 the Honduran military held a press conference to publicize its success to date in the Olancho counterinsurgency operation; it reported Carney’s participation with the group and displayed his religious vestments, chalice and bible, which had reportedly been found in an arms cache. On Sept. 21, a Honduran Army spokesman announced the priest had been killed during a combat operation three days earlier; however, the following day a spokesman revised that account, saying Carney, who was suffering from exhaustion caused by malnutrition, died while attempting to flee Honduran troops.  

A primary source of information was Florencio Caballero, a former army officer in Battalion 3-16 who deserted in 1986 and was granted political asylum in Canada. Caballero, in interviews with the Carney family and The New York Times, said Carney was taken to Aguacate, a military base operated by the CIA inside Honduras for the Nicaraguan Contras. He said execution orders came from the commander of the Honduran Armed Forces, Gen. Gustavo Álvarez Martínez, in the presence of a CIA officer, and that Carney was subsequently tortured and thrown alive out of a helicopter over the Honduran jungle.

The hypothesis that Carney was captured by the Honduran military, and possibly tortured and executed, received further credence in 2002. In January of that year,  Lucas Aguilera of the Christian Democrat Party in Honduras stated publicly and later gave a sworn court statement that he had seen Carney alive in military detention in Olancho. In November, former U.S. Army Delta Force member Eric Haney, who claimed to have been involved in the Olancho operation, stated on a radio talk show that Carney had been killed during the operation and, according to a CIA agent he spoke with, that "… he was brutalized prior to his death, that the marks that were on his body had to have been inflicted while he was still alive."

In the United States, family members contacted the White House, Congress, and the State Department, and also submitted Freedom of Information Act requests in 1983 and 1984. Although the family did receive some documents from the CIA, the Army, and the State and Defense departments, substantial portions were blacked out. Government agencies also withheld more than 300 requested documents under the guise of “national security.” The family continued to pursue the release of those documents that had been withheld, going so far as to file a lawsuit against 10 government agencies in 1988 under the FOIA and Privacy Acts to compel the release of requested records, but without success.

In the 1990s, requests for U.S. government information submitted by The Baltimore Sun and Honduran government representatives yielded some additional information regarding the Carney case. In 1997, the CIA and Defense Department released new, but heavily censored, documents to the Carney family and Honduran government officials. That same year, the CIA inspector general issued a classified report on an internal investigation into CIA activities in Honduras in the 1980s, including its knowledge of human rights abuses. The report was partially declassified the following year, but more than half of its text was blacked out. (See Access to U.S. Government Information on Human Rights Violations in Honduras for more information.)

Despite the trickle of U.S. government information over the past two decades, there is still no official answer to how Carney died and who was responsible. Declassified documents reveal that U.S. military and embassy personnel were involved in debriefing captured guerrillas, but deny any knowledge of Carney’s whereabouts. While the CIA adamantly denies any role in the Carney case, it does now acknowledge that the Honduran military may have captured and killed the priest. Nevertheless, it has failed to provide to Honduran investigators the detailed information that led the agency to reach that conclusion. The CIA has yet to respond to current Freedom of Information Act requests for information that may be hidden within the many blacked-out pages of its released documents.

The Carney family and Honduran human rights investigators continue to hope that the priest’s remains will one day be found. Investigators continue to locate secret burial sites and human remains dating back to the 1980s. As recently as January 2003, remains were found that were thought to be Carney’s but this was later proven not to be the case. The discovery of Carney’s remains would increase the possibility that the case could be prosecuted in Honduran courts.

For more information

“In Search of Hidden Truths. An Interim Report on Declassification by the National Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras.” Leo Valladares Lanza and Susan C. Peacock.

“To Be a Christian Is ... To Be a Revolutionary.” Padre J. Guadalupe Carney. Harper & Row, 1985.

"Honduras now says exhaustion killed U.S. priest reported slain." Associated Press. New York Times; Sept. 22, 1983.

“The U.S. in Honduras: Mysterious Death of Fr. Carney.” George Black and Anne Nelson. The Nation, Aug. 4-11, 1984.

Excerpts from “Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980s.” U.S. CIA, Office of the Inspector General; Aug. 27, 1997. 

"U.S. Soldier Kills Former Green Beret & Admits Priest Was 'Brutalized'." Joseph Mulligan. Witness Magazine; Jan. 28, 2004.  

"Opinion: Dear CBS, Did 'The Unit' Kill U.S. Citizen Father James Carney, Too?" Joseph E. Mulligan. May I Speak Freely; June 9, 2006.

"Ex-Green Beret's Sandinista story emerges 20 years later." Juan O. Tamayo. The Miami Herald; Sept. 3, 2003. 

"CIA Stipulations to Facts Regarding Honduran Military Activities and U.S. Intelligence in Honduras in the 1980s." Excerpt from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the nomination of John D. Negroponte to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (S. Hrg. 107-781); Sept. 13, 2001.