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CHILE (PART II): DEATH IN THE SOUTH
On November 9, 1970, Henry Kissinger authored National Security Council Decision Memorandum 93, which reviewed policy toward Chile in the immediate wake of Salvador Allende's confirmation as president. Various routine measures of economic harassment were proposed (as per Nixon's instruction to "make the economy scream"), with cutoffs in aid and investment. More significantly, Kissinger advocated that "close relations" be maintained with military leaders in neighboring countries, in order to facilitate both the coordination of pressure against Chile and the incubation of opposition within the country. In outline, this prefigures the disclosures that have since been made about Operation "Condor," a secret collusion among military dictatorships across the hemisphere, operated with the United States government's knowledge and indulgence.
The actual overthrow of the Allende government in a sanguinary coup d'etat took place on September 11, 1973, while Kissinger was going through his own Senate confirmation process as secretary of state. He falsely assured the Foreign Relations Committee that the United States government had played no part in the coup. From a thesaurus of hard information to the contrary, one might select Situation Report No. 2, from the Navy Section of the United States Military Group in Chile and written by U.S. Naval Attache Patrick J. Ryan. Mr. Ryan describes his close relationship with the officers engaged in overthrowing the government, hails September 11, 1973, as "our. D-Day," and observes with satisfaction that "Chile's coup de etat [sic] was close to perfect." Or one may peruse the declassified files on "Project FUBELT"--the code name under which the CIA, in frequent contact with Kissinger and the 40 Committee,(1) conducted covert operations against the legal and elected government of Chile.
What is striking, and what points to a much more direct complicity in individual crimes against humanity, is the microscopic detail in which Kissinger kept himself informed, after the coup, of Augusto Pinochet's atrocities. On November 16, Assistant Secretary of State Jack B. Kubisch delivered a detailed report on the Chilean junta's execution policy, which, as he notes to the new secretary, "you requested by cable from Tokyo." The memo goes on to enlighten Kissinger in various ways about the first nineteen days of Pinochet's rule. Summary executions during that period, we are told, totaled 320. (This contrasts with the publicly announced total of 100 and is based on "an internal, confidential report prepared for the junta" to which American officials are evidently privy.) Looking on the bright side,
On November 14, we announced our second CCC credit to Chile--$24 million
for feed com. Our long-standing commitment to sell two surplus destroyers
to the Chilean navy has met a reasonably sympathetic response in Senate
consultations. The Chileans, meanwhile, have sent us several new requests
for controversial military equipment.
Kubisch then raises the awkward question of two American citizens murdered by the junta--Frank Teruggi and Charles Horman--details of whose precise fate are still, more than a quarter century later, being sought by their families. The reason for the length of the search may be inferred from a telegram, dated February 11, 1974, which reports on a meeting with the junta's foreign minister and notes that Kubisch raises the matter of the missing Americans "IN THE CONTEXT OF THE NEED TO BE CAREFUL TO KEEP RELATIVELY SMALL ISSUES IN OUR RELATIONSHIP FROM MAKING OUR COOPERATION MORE DIFFICULT."
To return, via this detour, to Operation "Condor": "Condor" was a machinery of cross-border assassination, abduction, torture, and intimidation coordinated among the secret police forces of Pinochet's Chile, Alfredo Stroessner's Paraguay, Jorge Rafael Videla's Argentina, and other regional caudillos. This internationalization of the death-squad principle is now known to have been responsible for the murder of the dissident general Carlos Prats of Chile (and his wife) in Buenos Aires, the murder of the Bolivian general Juan Jose Torres, also in Argentina, and the maiming of a Christian Democratic Chilean senator, Bernardo Leighton, in Italy, to name only the most salient victims. A "Condor" team also detonated a car bomb in downtown Washington, D.C., in September 1976, killing the former Chilean foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, and his aide, Ronni Moffitt. United States government complicity has been uncovered at every level of this network. It has been established, for example, that the FBI aided Pinochet in capturing Jorge Isaac Fuentes de Alarcon, who was detained and tortured in Paraguay, then turned over to the Chilean secret police and "disappeared." Astonishingly, the surveillance of Latin American dissident refugees in the United States was promised to "Condor" figures by American intelligence.
Stroessner has been overthrown; Videla is in prison; Pinochet and his henchmen are being or have been brought to account in Chile. And what of Kissinger? All of the above-cited crimes, and many more besides, were committed on his "watch" as secretary of state. And all of them were and are punishable under local or international law or both. It can hardly be argued, by himself or by his defenders, that he was indifferent to, or unaware of, the true situation. In 1999 a secret memorandum was declassified, giving excruciating details of a private conversation between Kissinger and Pinochet in Santiago, Chile, on June 8, 1976. The meeting took place the day before Kissinger was due to address the Organization of American States. The subject was human rights. Kissinger was at some pains to explain to Pinochet that the few pro forma remarks he was to make on that topic were by no means to be taken seriously. My friend Peter Kornbluh has performed the service of comparing the "Memcon" (Memorandum of Conversation) with the account of the meeting given by Kissinger himself in his third volume of apologia, Years of Renewal:
The Memoir: A considerable amount of time in my dialogue with Pinochet
was devoted to human rights, which were, in fact, the principal obstacle to
close United States relations with Chile. I outlined the main points in my
speech to the OAS which I would deliver the next day. Pinochet made no
comment.
The Memcon: I will treat human rights in general terms, and human rights
in a world context. I will refer in two paragraphs to the report on Chile
of the OAS Human Rights Commission. I will say that the human rights issue
has impaired relations between the U.S. and Chile. This is partly the
result of Congressional actions. I will add that I hope you will shortly
remove these obstacles.... I can do no less, without producing a reaction
in the U.S. which would lead to legislative restrictions. The speech is not
aimed at Chile. I wanted to tell you about this. My evaluation is that you
are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and that your
greatest sin was that you overthrew a government that was going Communist.
The Memoir: As Secretary of State, I felt I had the responsibility to
encourage the Chilean government in the direction of greater democracy
through a policy of understanding Pinochet's concerns.... Pinochet reminded
me that "Russia supports their people 100 percent. We are behind you. You
are the leader. But you have a punitive system for your friends." I
returned to my underlying theme that any major help from us would
realistically depend on progress on human rights.
The Memcon: There is merit in what you say. It is a curious time in the
U.S. ... It is unfortunate. We have been through Viet Nam and Watergate. We
have to wait until the [1976] elections. We welcomed the overthrow of the
Communist-inclined government here. We are not out to weaken your position.
In an unpleasant way, Pinochet twice mentioned the name of Orlando Letelier, the exiled Chilean opposition leader, accusing him of misleading the United States Congress. Kissinger's response, as can be seen, was to apologize for the Congress and (in a minor replay of his 1968 Paris tactic over Vietnam) to suggest that the dictator hope for better days after the upcoming elections. Three months later, a car bomb in Washington killed Letelier, the only such outrage ever committed in the nation's capital by agents of a foreign regime (and an incident completely absent from Kissinger's memoirs). The man responsible for arranging the crime, the Chilean secret policeman General Manuel Contreras, has since stated in an affidavit that he took no action without specific and personal orders from Pinochet. He remains in prison, doubtless wondering why he trusted his superiors.
"I want to see our relations and friendship improve," Kissinger told Pinochet (but not the readers of his memoirs). "We want to help, not undermine you." In advising a murderer and despot, whose rule he had helped impose, to disregard his upcoming remarks as a sop to Congress, Kissinger insulted democracy in both countries. He also gave the greenest of green lights to further cross-border and internal terrorism, neither of which could have been unknown to him. (In his memoirs, he does mention what he calls Pinochet's "counterterrorist intelligence agency.") Further colluding with Pinochet against the United States Congress, which was considering cutting off arms sales to human-rights violators via the Kennedy Amendment, Kissinger obsequiously remarked,
I don't know if you listen in on my phone, but if you do you have just
heard me issue instructions to Washington to [defeat the Kennedy Amendment]
if we defeat it, we will deliver the F-5Es as we agreed to do.
The foregoing passage is worth bearing in mind. It is a good key for decoding the usual relationship between fact and falsehood in Kissinger's ill-crafted memoir. (And it is a huge reproach to his editors at Simon & Schuster, and Weidenfeld & Nicolson.) It should also act as an urgent prompting to members of Congress, and to human-rights organizations, to reopen the incomplete inquiries and thwarted investigations into the multifarious crimes of this period. Finally, and read in the light of Chile's return to democracy and the decision of the Chilean courts to pursue truth and justice, it repudiates Kissinger's patronizing insult concerning the "irresponsibility" of a dignified and humane people, who have suffered very much more than verbal insult at his hands.
A rule of thumb in Washington holds that any late disclosure by officialdom will contain material that is worse than even the cynics suspected. In September 2000, however, the CIA disgorged the results of an internal inquiry on Chile, which had been required of it by the Hinchey Amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act for that fiscal year. And the most hardened critics and investigators were reduced to amazement:
Support for Coup in 1970. Under "Track II" of the strategy, CIA sought
to instigate a coup to prevent Allende from taking office after he won a
plurality in the 4 September election and before, as Constitutionally
required because he did not win an absolute majority, the Chilean Congress
reaffirmed his victory. CIA was working with three different groups of
plotters. All three groups made it clear that any coup would require the
kidnapping of Army Commander Rene Schneider, who felt deeply that the
Constitution required that the Army allow Allende to assume power. CIA
agreed with that assessment. Although CIA provided weapons to one of the
groups, we have found no information that the plotters' or CIA's intention
was for the general to be killed. Contact with one group of plotters was
dropped early on because of its extremist tendencies. CIA provided tear
gas, submachine-guns and ammunition to the second group, mortally wounding
him in the attack. CIA had previously encouraged this group to launch a
coup but withdrew support four days before the attack because, in CIA's
assessment, the group could not carry it out successfully.
This repeats the old canard supposedly distinguishing a kidnapping or abduction from a murder, and once again raises the intriguing question: What was the CIA going to do with General Schneider once it had kidnapped him?(2) (Note, also, the studied passivity whereby the report "found no information that the plotters' or CIA's intention was for the general to be killed." What would satisfy this bizarre criterion?) But then we learn of the supposedly unruly gang that actually took its instructions seriously:
In November 1970 a member of the Viaux group who avoided capture
recontacted the Agency and requested financial assistance on behalf of the
group. Although the Agency had no obligation to the group because it acted
on its own, in an effort to keep the prior contact secret, maintain the
good will of the group, and for humanitarian reasons, $35,000 was passed.
"Humanitarian reasons." One has to admire the sheer inventiveness of this explanation. At 1970 prices, $35,000 was, in Chile, a considerable sum. Not likely the sort of sum that a local station chief could have disbursed on his own. One wants to know how the 40 Committee and its vigilant chairman, Henry Kissinger, decided that the best way to dissociate from a supposedly loose-cannon gang was to pay it a small fortune in cash after it had committed a cold-blooded murder.
The same question arises in an even more acute form with another disclosure made by the CIA in the course of the same report. This is headed "Relationship with Contreras." Manuel Contreras was the head of Pinochet's secret military police, and in that capacity organized the death, torture, and "disappearance" of innumerable Chileans as well as the use of bombing and assassination techniques as far afield as Washington, D.C. The CIA admits early on in the document that it
had liaison relationships in Chile with the primary purpose of securing
assistance in gathering intelligence on external targets. The CIA offered
these services assistance in internal organization and training to combat
subversion and terrorism from abroad, not in combating internal opponents
of the government.
Such flat prose, based on a distinction between the "external targets" and the more messy business of internal dictatorial discipline, invites the question: What external threat? Chile had no foreign enemy except Argentina, which disputed some sea-lane rights in the Beagle Channel. (In consequence, Chile helped Mrs. Thatcher in the Falklands war of 1982.) And in Argentina, as we know, the CIA was likewise engaged in helping the military regime to survive. No, Chile had no external enemies to speak of, but the Pinochet dictatorship had many, many external foes. They were the numerous Chileans forced to abandon their country. Manuel Contreras's job was to hunt them down. As the report puts it,
During a period between 1974 and 1977, CIA maintained contact with
Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, who later became notorious for his involvement
in human rights abuses. The U.S. Government policy community approved CIA's
contact with Contreras, given his position as chief of the primary
intelligence organization in Chile, as necessary to accomplish the CIA's
mission, in spite of concerns that this relationship might lay the CIA open
to charges of aiding internal political repression.
After a few bits of back-and-forth about the distinction without a difference (between "external" and "internal" police tactics), the CIA report states candidly,
By April 1975, intelligence reporting showed that Contreras was the
principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the Junta,
but an interagency committee directed the CIA to continue its relationship
with Contreras. The U.S. Ambassador to Chile urged Deputy Director of
Central Intelligence [General Vernon] Walters to receive Contreras in
Washington in the interest of maintaining good relations with Pinochet. In
August 1975, with interagency approval, this meeting took place.
In May and June 1975, elements within the CIA recommended establishing a
paid relationship with Contreras to obtain intelligence based on his unique
position and access to Pinochet. This proposal was overruled, citing the
U.S. Government policy on clandestine relations with the head of an
intelligence service notorious for human rights abuses. However, given
miscommunications in the timing of this exchange, a one-time payment was
given to Contreras.
This does not require too much parsing. Some time after it had been concluded, and by the CIA at that, that Manuel Contreras was the "principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy," he is given American taxpayers' money and received at a high level in Washington. The CIA's memorandum is careful to state that, where doubts exist, they are stilled by the "U.S. Government policy community" and by "an interagency committee." It also tries to suggest, with unconscious humor, that the head of a murderous foreign secret service was given a large bribe by mistake. One wonders who was reprimanded for this blunder, and how it got past the scrutiny of the 40 Committee.
The report also contradicts itself, stating at one point that Contreras's activities overseas were opaque and at another that
[w]ithin a year after the coup, the CIA and other U.S. Government agencies
were aware of bilateral cooperation among regional intelligence services to
track the activities of and, in at least a few cases, kill political
opponents. This was the precursor to Operation Condor, an
intelligence-sharing arrangement among Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay
and Uruguay established in 1975.
So now we know: The internationalization of the death-squad principle was understood and approved by American intelligence and its political masters across two administrations. The senior person concerned in both administrations was Henry Kissinger. Whichever "interagency committee" is meant, and whether it is the 40 Committee or the interagency committee on Chile, we are led back to the same source.
On leaving the State Department, Kissinger made an extraordinary bargain whereby he gifted his papers to the Library of Congress (having first hastily trucked them for safekeeping to the Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills, New York) on the sole condition that they remain under seal until five years after his death. Kissinger's friend Manuel Contreras, however, made a mistake when he killed an American citizen, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in the Washington car bomb that also murdered Orlando Letelier in 1976. By late 2000, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had finally sought and received subpoena power to review the Library of Congress papers, a subpoena with which Kissinger dealt only through his attorneys. It was a start, but it was pathetic when compared with the efforts of truth-and-justice commissions in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, which have now emerged from years of Kissinger-befriended dictatorship and are seeking a full accounting. We await the moment when the United States Congress will inaugurate a comparable process and finally subpoena all the hidden documents that obscure the view of unpunished crimes committed in our names. |
