In the 1980s, the U.S. military was restricted to providing no more than 55 advisors to El Salvador's government in its fight against the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front insurgents.
Notes on verification
Confirmed by multiple independent sources including journalistic accounts, a U.S. Naval War College case study, and a GAO report. The 55-advisor cap was an informal arrangement between the Reagan administration and Congress tied to War Powers Act concerns, though actual personnel numbers sometimes exceeded this via technicalities. [tier=gold indep_score=0.9 clusters=4 claim_tier=notable]
Sources
- Special Warfare: The Missing Middle in U.S. Coercive ... (seed:military_and_intelligence)
- https://aliciapatterson.org/michael-massing/the-stale-small-war-in-el-salvador/ (corroboration)
- https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=ciwag-case-studies (corroboration)
- https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-90-227fs.pdf (corroboration)
- https://peacehistory-usfp.org/central-america-wars/ (corroboration)