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The article discusses the career of former U.S. government official Elliott Abrams. Topics include Abrams' role in lying about purported genocide carried out by former Guatemalan political leader Efraín Ríos Montt, Abrams purported roles in trying to subvert election results in Venezuela and the Palestinian territories, and his denunciations of human rights activists in Guatemala.

The article comments on the claim that the administration of then U.S. president Ronald Reagan has helped empower Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and then cover up the genocide crimes of the Guatemalan military. It is said that the Guatemalan military forces committed genocide against the indigenous people in the Ixil region of Quiché. According to the author, Guatemala was an important ally of the U.S. in its anticommunist fight in Central America.

The article narrates Jennifer Harbury's fight not only for justice for her husband but also for a reasonable definition of the government's right to lie. Her husband, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, was killed in army custody during the counterinsurgency war in Guatemala in the early 1990s. A report alleged that Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez plotted against her husband, held him responsible for creating a plot to destroy Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers' careers and of being an agent of the guerrillas. According to her, she could have saved her husband's life through the U.S. court system had she known the truth during the period between his capture in and his murder. She argued that despite the truth being known, the government concealed the truth.