Kissinger Gave Argentines Green Light on Dirty War
National Security Archive Update, December 4, 2003
KISSINGER TO ARGENTINES ON DIRTY WAR:
"THE QUICKER YOU SUCCEED THE BETTER"
Newly declassified documents show Secretary of State gave green light to
junta,
Contradict official line that Argentines "heard only what [they] wanted to
hear."
While military dictatorship committed massive human rights abuses in 1976,
Kissinger advised "If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better."
http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/index.htm
Washington, D.C., 3 December 2003 – Newly declassified State Department
documents obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of
Information Act show that in October 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
and high ranking U.S. officials gave their full support to the Argentine
military junta and urged them to hurry up and finish the "dirty war" before
the U.S. Congress cut military aid.
Posted on the Web today at www.nsarchive.org, the new documents are two
memoranda of conversations (memcons) with the visiting Argentine foreign
minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti – one with Kissinger himself on
October 7, 1976. At the time, the U.S. Congress was about to approve
sanctions against the Argentine regime because of widespread reports of human
rights abuses by the junta. A post-junta truth commission found that the
Argentine military had "disappeared" at least 10,000 Argentines in the
so-called "dirty war" against "subversion" and "terrorists" between 1976 and
1983; human rights groups in Argentina put the number at closer to 30,000.
According to the verbatim memcon, Secretary of State Kissinger told Guzzetti:
"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."
The memcons contradict the official line given by Assistant Secretary of State
Harry Shlaudeman in response to complaints from the U.S. ambassador in Buenos
Aires that Guzzetti had come back "euphoric" and "convinced that there is no
real problem with the USG" over human rights. Shlaudeman cabled, "Guz;etti
[sic] heard only what he wanted to hear."
The two new memcons were not among the 4700 documents released in August 2002
by the Argentina Declassification Project of the U.S. Department of State.
Much to the credit of Secretary of State Colin Powell and his predecessor,
Madeleine Albright, who began the project, that release made front page news
in Argentina, contributed dramatically to civilian control of the military,
provided documentation on military decision making now being used in court
cases related to the "dirty war," and for some of the families of the
"disappeared," gave the first available evidence of what had actually happened
to their loved ones.
The State Department project, however, did not include documents from the
often-vigorous internal U.S. policy debates over Argentina; and neither the
CIA nor the Pentagon participated in the declassification effort. Carlos
Osorio and Kathleen Costar of the National Security Archive obtained the new
memcons in November 2003 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request
filed with the Department of State in November 2002, seeking to fill in the
missing pieces from the larger release.
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