On Nov. 3, 1989, Sister Dianna Ortiz was in desperate straits, yet she was afraid to seek help in the most logical place. An American citizen working as a missionary in rural Guatemala, she had just been abducted, tortured and raped by men who were apparently members of the Guatemalan military. Now she was free, but she felt she could not seek sanctuary at the U.S. embassy. Why? Because the man who gave orders to her kidnappers was a fellow American, she believed, and was somehow connected to the U.S. government.

In the end Sister Dianna made her way to the Vatican mission, which provided the distraught woman with medical assistance. The U.S. embassy helped her leave the country. Almost seven years have passed since the ordeal, but Ortiz, 37, is still seeking justic--and the identity of that mysterious American she knows only as Alejandro. Her quest finally took her to a park opposite the White House, where she staged a two-week bread-and-water fast until the Clinton Administration last week released more than 6,000 documents concerning human-rights abuses in Guatemala. The censored papers did not give Ortiz the answers she is seeking--she described them as "worthless"--but her pursuit of the truth has raised congressional and public interest in the secret ties between the CIA and Guatemala's military.

Ortiz was largely ignorant of that relationship in September 1987 when she arrived in the remote northern Guatemalan village of San Miguel Huehuetenango to teach indigenous youngsters to read and write. A year later, she began getting threatening letters. She and her Ursuline order of nuns, based in Kentucky, had never been involved in politics, but had collaborated with some community groups that the military regarded as leftist. As time passed, the threats became more ominous, warning her to leave the country.

On Nov. 2, 1989, Ortiz was abducted from a walled Catholic retreat and taken to what appeared to be a warehouse on the outskirts of Guatemala City. For the next 24 hours, she was interrogated by three men, burned more than 100 times with cigarettes and raped time and again.

At one point Ortiz's tormentors yelled to another room, inviting Alejandro to "come and have some fun." Apparently recognizing Ortiz from news reports, he exclaimed, "Idiots, she is a North American. It's already on the television news." He then told her he would drive her to the U.S. embassy, where he knew someone who could get her out of the country. When his jeep stopped in heavy traffic, she fled.

In a 1991 statement, Ortiz said Alejandro spoke to her only in Spanish, but she knew he was American by his accent; she described him as fair skinned with a tall athletic build. In an interview with Time last week, she said he also spoke to her in standard American English.

After her escape Ortiz filed charges against the Guatemalan national police and army. The government has never arrested anyone for the crime, but claims it is still under investigation. The U.S. embassy assisted with this investigation, but documents released last week indicate that some officials doubted Ortiz's allegations. In cables to Washington, the embassy charged that her story was full of inconsistencies and embellishments.

The Clinton Administration has been decidedly more supportive. During her vigil Ortiz was invited to speak with National Security Council adviser Anthony Lake and with officials of the Intelligence Oversight Board, which is expected to issue a report on the Ortiz case by the end of June. The nun was even invited into the White House for a half-hour talk with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Justice Department has launched its own investigation, but has been frustrated by Guatemalan stonewalling, both in this case and in the murders of two men allegedly involving a Guatemalan army colonel in the pay of the CIA. "There has been a cover-up in the past," says State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns. "Officials in the Guatemalan government have repeatedly tried to cover up for Guatemalan military officials who, we believe, are implicated in some of these murders and in the torture of Dianna Ortiz."

And what of the mysterious Alejandro? Is he a figment of Ortiz's overactive imagination, as some skeptics suggest? A knowledgeable U.S. administration official insists that so far investigators have found no trace of Alejandro. "It is quite conceivable that whether he exists or not, nobody would put it on a piece of paper," the official said.

But if Alejandro can be found, it may be the relentless Sister Dianna who unearths him. Strengthened by years of therapy at a Chicago center for torture victims, she has returned to Guatemala four times to push the investigation there. She has demanded information from the CIA, FBI and Pentagon through the Freedom of Information Act, and last week filed suit because the agencies had not responded quickly enough. "What I want to know is the truth," she says. --Reported by Mike Leffert/Guatemala City and Ann M. Simmons/Washington