The Smoking Gun on Kissinger?

One of the best websites for obtaining information on the inner workings of government especially where it concerns foreign policy is the National Security Archive at George Washington University. They file Freedom of Information Act Requests to get documents released and this latest document release may be the most convincing bit of evidence yet that Henry Kissinger, while Secretary of State, gave not merely tacit but explicit permission for the Argentine Junta to commit human rights abuses:

At the height of the Argentine military junta's bloody ''dirty war'' against leftists in the 1970s, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Argentine foreign minister that ''we would like you to succeed,'' a newly declassified U.S. document reveals.

The transcript of the meeting between Kissinger and Navy Adm. César Augusto Guzzetti in New York on Oct. 7, 1976, is the first documentary evidence that the Gerald Ford administration approved of the junta's harsh tactics, which led to the deaths or ''disappearance'' of some 30,000 people from 1975 to 1983.

Here's what appears to be the smoking gun:

According to the memcon's verbatim transcript, Secretary of State Kissinger interrupted the Foreign Minister's report on the situation in Argentina and said "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… The human rights problem is a growing one. Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help." [my emphasis]

I strongly urge you to read the accompanying documents from the National Security Archive. They can be accessed here (Adobe Acrobat Reader required). I especially encourage you to pay attention to documents 6 through 10. They portray the situation as follows:

Document 6: The memorandum of Kissinger's conversation with Argentine Foreign Minister Cesar Augusto Guzzetti from which the above quote was taken.

Document 7: A telegram from US Ambassador to Argentina, Robert Hill about his meeting with Guzzetti and his comments that "Guzzetti's remarks both to me and to the Argentine press are not those of a man who has been impressed by the gravity of the human rights problem as seen from the US."

Document 8: A SECRET note to Henry Kissinger, from Assistant Secretary Shlaudeman reporting that Ambassador Hill "has registered for the record his concern for human rights in a bitter complaint about our purported failure to impress on Foreign Minister Guzzetti how seriously we view the rightist violence in Argentina" and Shlaudeman's proposal to "respond for the record" with Kissinger's approval.

Document 9: Shlaudeman's response to Hill:

As in other circumstances you have undoubtedly encountered in your diplomatic career, Guz;etti [sic] heard only what he wanted to hear. He was told in detail how strongly opinion in this country has reacted against reports of abuses by the security forces in Argentina and the nature of the threat this poses to argentine interests.

Finally, with respect to Guzzetti's "jubilation" and its effect, we doubt that the GOA has such illusions. It was obvious in our contacts that Guzzetti knew his country has a problem--one that requires a speedy solution. And we will continue to impress on argentine representatives here, as we expect you to do there, that the USG regards most seriously Argentina's international commitments to protect and promote fundamental human rights.

Document 10: Ambassador Hill's response thanking Shlaudeman and Kissinger for the "clarification."

Kissinger lied to his own ambassador. Meanwhile, people continued to be tortured, disappeared, imprisoned, thrown alive, but drugged out of airplanes, babies were sold or given away, and families were torn apart while Kissinger looked away or chose to ignore these acts of state-sponsored terrorism. What a morally obtuse monster he is.

Comments

[Martin Edwin Andersen]

The original reporting on Kissinger's "green light" for the Argentine Dirty War came in an article I did in the Fall of 1987 for The Nation magazine. The story was again reported in my book, "Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the Dirty 'War'" published in 1993 by Westview Press.

Among the sources I cited in support of the story, which was "discovered" by other researchers more than a decade later (and then published as "news" by the Miami Herald and The New York Times, among others), was a memorandum of conversation between former senior State Department human rights official Patt Derian and the then U.S. Ambassador to Argentina Robert Hill.

I also interviewed various other U.S. official and Argentine military sources for additional confirmation, as well as former New York Times South America correspondent Juan de Onis, who attested to Hill's remarkable (pre-Carter Administration) efforts on behalf of human rights.

Unfortunately, the conservative Hill was posthumously smeared by, on the one hand, Kissinger associates who tried to deny what had occurred, and on the other, by leftwing historians and journalists bent on portraying the 1976 Argentine coup as U.S.-orchestrated, as it had been against the government of Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973.

I recommend both Dossier Secreto and The Nation to your readers for greater context and detail about one of the truly great tragedies of U.S. Latin American policy in recent times.

Martin Edwin Andersen
5547 Harford Street
Churchton, Maryland 20733

[Martin Edwin Andersen]

As I write this, controversy has kindled anew over the role that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played in the repression that left 30,000 Argentines and others "disappeared" during the 1970s and early 1980s.

I am proud to report that recently declassified documents from the U.S. State Department, some of which can be viewed at: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB135/index.htm, together with those released two years ago, confirm every aspect of a story I originally broke for The Nation magazine in October 31, 1987 (17 years ago this month), then amplified in my book "Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the 'Dirty War'" (Westview, 1993).

Not only was Dossier Secreto the first book to report authoritatively on Kissinger's "green light" to Argentina's military "dirty warriors," resulting in the kidnapping, disappearance, torture and death of as many as 30,000 people.

I believe it remains today the best single (most comprehensive) narrative about what happened one June day 28 years ago in the Carrera Hotel in downtown Santiago, Chile, when Kissinger met with the Argentine military regime's foreign minister.

The book is also important because it makes the point (easily missed in today's poisonous political atmosphere in the U.S.) that one of the real American heroes of the Argentine human rights drama was not a liberal Democrat, but rather a conservative Republican, Amb. Robert C. Hill.

Even before the Carter Administration came on to the scene, it was Hill who tried mightily to change the Kissinger policy of complicity with the dictatorship, an ethical dissent that may have added to the growing toll on his physical health.

(A narrative accompanying the announcement that Dartmouth College holds the collection of Amb. Hill's papers--which can be viewed at http://diglib.dartmouth.edu/library/ead/html/ml38.html--notes simply:

"Hill's final Ambassadorship was to Argentina, at a time when that country's internal affairs were being torn asunder by terrorism and political unrest. Correspondence and official documents from that post provide an excellent view of this unfortunate period of Argentina's history. Once, for example, the Embassy residence was machine-gunned while the Ambassador watched from behind bullet-proof windows. The tension of living under such unstable conditions undermined Hill's health, and he resigned from the post in 1977; he returned to his home in Littleton (New Hampshire), where he died in 1978."

Hill's quiet but courageous stand is part of the story readers are unlikely to find elsewhere, due in no small part to the fact that leftwing historians and rights advocates long tried to portray--against all evidence--that the 1976 military coup was hatched in Hill's embassy in Buenos Aires.

The Left's attacks against Hill--including that he was somehow responsible for the creation of Argentina's rightwing death squads during the earlier kleptocracy of Isabel Peron--not only falsified history and libeled the long-dead envoy, but also helped delay a final reckoning about who was truly responsible for one of the cruelest periods in Latin American history.

Sincerely,
Martin Edwin "Mick" Andersen
Author, "Dossier Secreto"

5547 Harford Street
Churchton, Maryland 20733

P.S. "Dossier Secreto" also broke the story about Uruguay's fascistoide military's plans to assassinate then Rep. Edward Koch of Manhattan, too.

Here is the original article in The Nation:

The Nation

October 31, 1987

Kissinger and The 'Dirty War'

Martin Edwin Andersen

Just three months after Argentina's generals took power in 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave that country's military a green light to continue its "dirty war," according to a State Department memorandum obtained by InterNation. This document shows that in early 1977 Robert Hill, then the U.S. Ambassador to Buenos Aires, told a top Carter Administration official that Kissinger had given his approval to the repression in which at least 9,000 people were kidnapped and secretly murdered. Kissinger, he charged, put his imprimatur on the massive disappearances in a June 10, 1976, meeting in Santiago, Chile, with Argentina's Foreign Minister, Adm. Cesar Guzzetti. Both men were attending the Sixth General Assembly of the Organization of American States, whose agenda, ironically, had been dominated by the human rights issue.

Guzzetti was one of the most outspoken advocates of the dirty war. In August 1976 he told the United Nations: "My idea of subversion is that of the left-wing terrorist organizations. Subversion or terrorism of the right is not the same thing. When the social body of the country has been contaminated by a disease that eats away at its entrails, it forms antibodies. These antibodies cannot be considered in the same way as the microbes."

The ninety-minute early morning meeting, at Santiago's Hotel Carrera, across from the Moneda Palace, came just three weeks after Hill had urgently warned Kissinger of the worsening Argentine rights record. A word from the Secretary of State would have helped rein in the generals. Although a secret analysis by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, dated April 5, 1976, noted that "human rights could become a problem area as the military clamps down on 'terrorism, " it went on: "To date, however, the junta has followed a reasonable, prudent line in an obvious attempt to avoid being tagged with a 'Made in Chile' label. " According to the records of the Center for Legal and Social Studies, Argentina's foremost human rights group, by the time Kissinger and Guzzetti met, 1,022 people had been "disappeared" forever. At least another 7,938 met the same fate afterward.

When Kissinger arrived at the Santiago conference, Hill said, the Argentine generals were nervous about the prospect of being called on the carpet by the United States for their human rights record. But Kissinger merely told Guzzetti the regime should solve the problem before the U.S. Congress reconvened in 1977. A buen entendedor, pocas patabras ("To those quick to understand, few words are needed"). Within three weeks of the meeting a wave of wholesale executions began, and hundreds of detainees were killed in reprisal for attacks by leftist guerrillas. The memo- randum shows that Hill believed the responsibility for this ballooning state terrorism to be Kissinger's.

Hill is dead; Guzzetti suffered lasting brain damage in a 1977 attack. Kissinger referred inquiries to former Secretary of State William Rogers, who was with him in Santiago. Rogers did "not specifically remember" a meeting with Guzzetti, but added: "What Henry would have said if he had had such a meeting was that human rights were embedded in our policy, for better or worse. He'd have said sympathetic things about the need for effective methods against terrorism, but without abandoning the rule of law." But Patricia Derian, Carter's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, confirmed the account of Hill's charges and was "nauseated" to learn of Kissinger's role. Two former U.S. diplomats also corroborate Hill's story.

Hill's own past appears to put him above suspicion that his charges against Kissinger were politically motivated. "Hill's biography reads like a satirical left-wing caricature of a 'yanqui imperialist,"' noted the authoritative newsletter "Latin America." He was a former vice president of W.R. Grace and a former director of the United Fruit Company. Despite five ambassadorial postings to Spanish-speaking countries, he never mastered the language. Hill was directly linked in testimony before the U.S. Senate with the planning of the coup that overthrew the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Before being assigned to Buenos Aires by Richard Nixon, he was Assistant Secretary of Defense responsible for international security.

Like many others, Hill had greeted the coup against the outrageously corrupt, incompetent government of Juan Peron's widow, Isabel, with relief. He was especially impressed by the military's willingness to crack down on top drug traffickers, who had been protected by Isabel Peron's inner circle. By the time of the coup, a siege atmosphere was gripping the U.S. Embassy; a U.S. honorary consul had been murdered by the left-wing Peronist Montoneros, and a U.S. diplomat had been wounded by the Marxist E.R.P. guerrillas. The Ambassador's residence was heavily fortified; Hill shuttled back and forth under a guard worthy of Al Capone. Most U.S. businessmen had fled Buenos Aires, fearful of kidnapping or death. "There are difficult days ahead," Hill warned the National Security Council in a secret Country Analysis and Strategy Paper (CASP) the day before the March 24 coup. "The strategy is essentially one of protecting our people and property from terrorism and our trade and investments from economic nationalism during this trying period."

Moreover, human rights did not immediately appear to be a problem to Hill. The April 5 Bureau of Intelligence and Research analysis concluded that "terrorism from the right will be more susceptible to control than that from than that from the left, because right-wing operatives frequently have been attached to groups now directly under military supervision."

Less than a month later events had overtaken any such wishful thinking. On May 18 two prominent Uruguayans exiled in Buenos Aires were dragged from their homes by unidentified men. Hector Gutierrez Ruiz was a former president of the Uruguayan House of Deputies; Zelmar Michelini, a charismatic former senator. Neither was involved in armed politics, nor did they belong to the ultraradical left. Kissinger himself cabled the U.S. Embassies in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, asking for more details following reports by Amnesty International about the "brutal detention" of the pair. Two days later Hill cabled Kissinger that "such an operation would be extremely difficult if not impossible to carry out without (government of Argentina] acquiescence. "

On May 20 the politicians' bodies were found in a car with those of two other people. One of Gutierrez Ruiz's eyes was poked out, his knuckles were mangled and burns scarred his front and back. Half his face had been crushed. Michelini had a bullet through his head. Their killers left leaflets suggesting the slayings were the work of leftists angered by the victims' supposed "betrayal" of an Uruguayan guerrilla group. On May 25 Hill sent a secret cable to the Secretary of State, requesting instructions. The page-long copy made available to me was heavily excised, with only the first two and the last lines left untouched.

Hill wrote: "In view of the general worsening human rights situation here, I believe the time has come for a demarche at the highest level. Hence, I request instructions to ask for an urgent appointment with the foreign minister.... In view of the pace of developments, I would appreciate reply by immediate cable." Hill's request was approved by Under Secretary of State Joseph Sisco.

On May 27 Kissinger sent a secret cable, "Subject: Human Rights Situation in Argentina," to the embassies in Montevideo and Buenos Aires:

Acting Assistant Secretary [Hewson] Ryan called in Ambassador Vasquez May 27 to warn him about the growing concern in the US about the violence in Argentina and the reported disappearances of individuals. This concern is being expressed by major universities, the responsible press-such as The New York Times-and by members of both Houses of Congress, and is having an unfavorable impact on Argentina's image in this country. If this continues, it would make cooperation with Argentina difficult, as happened in the case of Chile.... Ambassador Ryan said there is concern in the US not only about the arrests being carried out by the [Argentines] but also about the failure of the [government] to control the activities of right-wing terrorist groups.

If Kissinger had any lingering doubts about what was happening in Argentina, they were dispelled by subordinates such as Hill. Yet his cable is noteworthy for its blandness; his rendition of Ryan's meeting shows the Argentines were told outside pressure--not U.S. policy--endangered business as usual. Two weeks later Kissinger went to Chile.

Hill had quickly realized what was occurring. The new military regime was not limiting its rampage to the guerrillas, against whom it used methods that violated every accepted convention of warfare and the treatment of prisoners. It had embarked on a crusade against anyone threatening the armed forces' version of what they called "Western Christian civilization." Hill's alarm grew as he heard of examples of the horror. Three priests and two seminarians were murdered by vengeful police; an American priest and the daughter of a U.S. missionary were tortured; a progressive Catholic bishop was killed in a staged car crash.

"Hill was shaken, he became very disturbed, by the case of the son of a thirty-year embassy employee, a student who was arrested, never to be seen again," recalled former New York Times reporter Juan de Onis. "Hill took a personal interest. " He went to the Interior Minister, an army general with whom he had worked on drug cases, saying, "Hey, what about this? We're interested in this case." He buttonholed Guzzetti and, finally, President Jorge R. Videla himself. "All he got was stonewalling; he got nowhere," de Onis said. "His last year was marked by increasing disillusionment and dismay, and he backed his staff on human rights right to the hilt." This view of events was confirmed by Wayne Smith, who was Hill's political officer at the time.

It was a troubled, angry Hill who met in early 1977 with a senior Carter Administration official, eager to unburden himself about Kissinger's role and explain why the generals were only partly to blame for the slaughter. According to the memorandum:

Hill said that he had made arrangements seven times for a Kissinger visit to Argentina. Each time the Secretary can- celled. Finally Kissinger decided to go to the OAS meeting.... In the middle of the meetings, the Secretary wanted to visit Buenos Aires. This time the Argentines refused because they did not want to interrupt OAS activities being held in a neighboring state. Kissinger and Foreign Minister Guzzetti agreed to meet in Santiago.

The Argentines were very worried that Kissinger would lecture to them on human rights. Guzzetti and Kissinger had a very long breakfast but the Secretarv did not raise the subject. Finally Guzzetti did. Kissinger asked how long will it take you (the Argentines) to clean up the problem. Guzzetti replied that it would be done by the end of the year. Kissinger approved.

In other words, Ambassador Hill explained, Kissinger gave the Argentines the green light. [Emphasis added.]

Later (about August), the Ambassador discussed the matter personally with Kissinger, on the way back to Washington from a Bohemian Grove meeting in San Francisco. Kissinger confirmed the Guzzetti conversation. Hill said that the Secretary felt that Ford would win the election. Hill disagreed. In any case, the Secretary wanted Argentina to finish its terrorist problem before year end--before Congress reconvened in January 1977.

In September, Hill prepared an eyes only memorandum for the Secretary urging that the U.S. vote against an IDB [Inter-American Development Bank] loan on Harkin [human rights] grounds. Hill felt that he would strengthen his hand in dealing with the Argentines. The memo was given to Assistant Secretary (Harry] Shlaudeman. The latter asked the Ambassador personally if Hill really wanted to send the memo to the Secretary, who had already decided to vote for the loan. Shlaudeman suggested that the Secretary might fire Hill. Hill told Shlaudeman to send the memo. (Hill's IDB memo was ignored. We voted for the loan, warning the Argentines, however, that we might not be able to support future Argentine projects in the IDB unless the human rights picture changes.)

When I asked Kissinger spokesperson Chris Vick about what transpired in Santiago, she said the former Secretary of State "doesn't have a great deal of memory about events in 1975 and 1976." She said Kissinger expressed "a great deal of affection for Ambassador Hill." Asked about whether they shared the trip back from the Bohemian Grove retreat, she replied, "Yeah, I guess he was on the plane." Vick also referred me to Kissinger's public address at the O.A.S. conference, titled "Human Rights and the Western Hemisphere," in which Kissinger proclaimed: "One of the most compelling issues of our time, and one which calls for the concerted action of all responsible peoples and nations, is the necessity to protect and extend the fundamental rights of humanity."

The rhetoric, however, was at variance with accounts of Kissinger's meeting with Guzzetti, with the background to the O.A.S. speech itself and with the Secretary of State's attitude once he was out of public office. A U.S. diplomat who asked to remain anonymous told me he had been told of Kissinger's green light by Argentine military sources. Wayne Smith, Hill's political officer, says, "Kissinger told Guzzetti in Santiago, Look, we have to do these things [speak out publicly on the rights issue], but don't take it too seriously." Certainly some of the Latin Americans at the O.A.S. remained unimpressed by Kissinger's speech. "He said genocide gets you 'adverse international judgment,"' said one Venezuelan representative of the social democratic government of Carlos Andres Perez. "Has he forgotten where he comes from?"

There was a further suggestion that Kissinger's commitment on human rights was meant for public consumption only. Robert White, who later became Ambassador to El Salvador, was deputy representative of the U.S. delegation at the Santiago conference. He had made a public statement there on human rights, based on a position paper approved by the State Department. Kissinger sent him a telegram of reprimand (although he later backed down after former Representative William Mailliard, the head of the delegation, sent his own stinging reply to Kissinger). White also had a report from what he regarded as a reliable Chilean source of a meeting between Kissinger and Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. "Kissinger told Pinochet he would have to make reference to human rights in his speech," White told me, "but that's all he would hear on the subject."

In 1978, long after the Argentine military's policy of creating massive disappearances had been conclusively demonstrated, making the country an international pariah, Kissinger was the guest of Argentine President Videla during the World Cup soccer competition. The generals used the visit to show they enjoyed the sympathy of the onetime superstar of U.S. diplomacy. At the end of the tournament Kissinger held a news conference in which he criticized the Carter Administration for not understanding that human rights were a necessary casualty in the battle against terrorism. He also spent much time in public in the company of the regime's Minister of the Economy--and David Rockefeller's friend--Jose Martinez de Hoz. Known as "the Wizard of Hoz," his policies were the ideological framework for the murder of hundreds of labor activists unconnected to the guerrillas.

A firm, principled word from Kissinger in June 1976 might have stopped the bloodbath in the making. In the early months of military rule, the armed forces were not unaware of international pressure for human rights. Even as late as the end of 1976, U.S. diplomats learned, Argentina's top military leaders were still debating the international consequences of the repression. By the time Jimmy Carter took office, however, the killing had gone too far for the generals to turn back.

Hill returned to Buenos Aires from the United States in early September 1976. "The Argentine press had been saved for him and he sifted through stacks of newspapers," the Hill memorandum reads. "He saw that the terrorist death toll had climbed steeply. The Ambassador said that he wondered--although he had no proof--whether the Argentine government was not trying to solve its terrorist problem before the end of the year."

As Hill suspected, the mass execution of prisoners and suspects became a generalized phenomenon only after the Kissinger-Guzzetti meeting. More than seventy people, including the three priests and two seminarians, were murdered in reprisal for the July 2 bombing of a police head- quarters by the Montoneros in which a score of people were killed. On August 20, thirty people were executed and their bodies blown up in reprisal for the assassination of retired Gen. Omar Actis. More than fifty were executed in response to the bombing of a police station in the provincial capital of La Plata. Thirty others were slain in reprisal for an attack on the Ministry of Defense. Forty more died over the New Year's holiday in retaliation for the killing of a colonel.

"It sickened me," said Patt Derian, "that with an imperial wave of his hand, an American could sentence people to death on the basis of a cheap whim. As time went on I saw Kissinger's footprints in a lot of countries. It was the repression of a democratic ideal."