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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Latin America : Regime : Right Wing |
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Kissinger to Argentine Generals in 1976: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly" |
Current rating: 0 |
by National Security Archive
(No verified email address) |
28 Aug 2004
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Newly Declassified Document Shows Secretary of State Gave Strong Support Early on to the Military Junta |
Washington, August 27, 2004 - A newly declassified document obtained by the National Security Archive shows that amidst vast human rights violations by Argentina's security forces in June 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti:
"If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you should get back quickly to normal procedures."
Kissinger's comment is part of a 13-page Memorandum of Conversation reporting on a June 10 meeting between Secretary Kissinger and Argentine Admiral Guzzetti in Santiago, Chile. The document was obtained by the National Security Archive's Southern Cone Documentation Project through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of State filed in August 2002 and appealed in February 2004.
At a time when the international community, the U.S. media, universities, and scientific institutions, the U.S. Congress, and even the U.S. Embassy in Argentina were clamoring about the indiscriminate human rights violations by the Argentine military, Secretary Kissinger told Guzzetti: "We are aware you are in a difficult period. It is a curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation. We understand you must establish authority."
Another document recently unearthed by the National Security Archive and posted for the first time today, shows that on July 9, 1976, Secretary Kissinger was explicitly briefed on the rampant repression taking place in Argentina: "Their theory is that they can use the Chilean method," Kissinger's top aide on Latin America Harry Shlaudeman informed him, "that is, to terrorize the opposition - even killing priests and nuns and others."
"The Memorandum of Conversation explains why the Argentine generals believed they got a clear message from the Secretary that they had carte blanche for the dirty war," said Carlos Osorio, Director of the Southern Cone Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. "It appears that Secretary Kissinger gave the 'green light' to the Argentine military during the June 1976 meeting with Guzzetti in Santiago," he added.
These and other documents, along with a detailed chronology of events surrounding the June 10 meeting, are available here:
http://www.nsarchive.org
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THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.
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See also:
http://www.nsarchive.org
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Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Kissinger Backed Dirty War Against Left in Argentina |
by Julian Borger in Washington and Uki Goni in Buenos Aires
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Aug 2004
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Henry Kissinger gave Argentina's military junta the green light to suppress political opposition at the start of the "dirty war" in 1976, telling the country's foreign minister: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly," according to newly-declassified documents published yesterday.
State department documents show the former secretary of state urged Argentina to crush the opposition just months after it seized power and before the US Congress convened to consider sanctions.
"We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better," Mr Kissinger told Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, the foreign minister, according to the State Department's transcript.
Carlos Osorio, an analyst at the National Security Archive, a US pressure group which published the transcript, said it was likely to be seen by historians as "a smoking gun".
It is likely to be seized on by Mr Kissinger's critics who have been calling for him to face charges for abetting war crimes and human rights abuses in Cambodia, Chile and Argentina.
The Argentine junta formed a secret pact in 1976 known as the Condor Plan with other South American dictatorships in Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Brazil for the eradication of "terrorists". According to official figures, nearly 9,000 people disappeared in Argentina alone but human rights organizations put the figure nearer to 30,000.
"The newly-revealed documents prove that as early as June 1976 Kissinger was informed of the existence of the Condor Plan," said Horacio Verbitsky, head of the Argentine human rights group Cels in Buenos Aires.
Mr Verbitsky, who during the 1970s ran an underground news service, said Mr Kissinger made it difficult for the US embassy in Buenos Aires to pressure Argentina's generals on human rights violations. "When US ambassador Robert Hill met with the generals to demand an end to the violence, the generals could say, your boss Kissinger knows what's happening and he doesn't care," he said.
The documents include a state department transcript of a conversation between Mr Kissinger, then secretary of state in the Ford administration and Mr Guzzetti, on October 7 1976, six months after the Argentine military had seized power.
By that time the regime's brutality had become clear. Mr Hill sent repeated notes to Washington, describing the abuses and his attempts to get the junta led by President Jorge Videla to stop the "disappearances" of its leftwing opponents.
But when Mr Guzzetti raised the issue at the October 1976 meeting at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, Mr Kissinger told him: "Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better.
"If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures."
Mr Kissinger remains an influential voice on foreign affairs in Washington. His office at his lobbying firm, Kissinger Associates, did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.
William Rogers, a former state department official who attended the Guzzetti meeting and is now vice-chairman of Kissinger Associates told the Associated Press: "It's a canard ... The idea that he would tell another country to violate human rights quickly or slowly or under any circumstances is preposterous."
The National Security Archive, which campaigns for government transparency and pursues the publication of classified documents, had received the transcript of the Guzzetti meeting in February, in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act. However, the key passages in the conversation had been blacked out. The organization appealed and the deleted sections were reinstated.
According to another state department document, Mr Hill said the Argentine generals had returned from their meeting "euphoric".
In a memo from a top Kissinger aide at the state department, Mr Hill was assured that Mr Guzzetti had "heard only what he wanted to hear", and that he had in fact been told "the USG [US government] regards most seriously Argentina's international commitments to protect and promote fundamental human rights.."
Mr Hill later found he had been lied to, and confided his disgust to Patricia Derian, a former assistant secretary of state for human rights who visited him in Buenos Aires in 1977.
"He said Kissinger had admitted to him exactly what has now come out in the documents," Ms Derian told the Guardian
"... Kissinger has not been held to account for it. He's only been embarrassed. He has people talk for him and say he's misunderstood ... It's baloney," she said.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk |
