W HO ARE THE REAL TERRORISTS?
"In other less publicized incidents, the United States is no less culpable. Consider the events which occurred during the decade of the 1980's reported by a former leader in the CIA in Central America. John Stockwell spent 13 years with the CIA serving as a case officer, among other duties. "In that job I sat on the subcommittee of the National Security Council. So I was like the Chief of Staff, with GS-18s, like three-star generals,
Henry Kissinger, [CIA Director] Bill Colby -- the GS-18s in the CIA making important decisions.
My job was to put it all together, make it happen, and run it. It was an interesting place from
which to watch a covert action being done."
Describing their activities he says, " We were doing things that seemed sick because we were there --because it was our function. We were bribing people, corrupting people, and not protecting the U.S. in any visible way. I had a chance to go drinking with a well known CIA case leader; I talked with him at length one night, and he was giving me an explanation. I was telling him:
'Frankly, sir, you know, this stuff doesn't make any sense. We're not saving anybody from
anything, and we are corrupting people. And everybody knows we're doing it. And that
makes the United States look bad.' He said I was getting too big for my britches."
thewinds.arcsnet.net
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PROBLEMS IN SOUTH AMERICA for KISSINGER!
For Chilean Coup, Kissinger Is Numbered Among the Hunted
The New York Times
March 28, 2002
By LARRY ROHTER
ANTIAGO, Chile - With a
trial of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet increasingly unlikely
here, victims of the Chilean
military's 17-year dictatorship are
now pressing legal actions in
both Chilean and American
courts against Henry A. Kissinger
and other Nixon administration
officials who supported plots to
overthrow Salvador Allende
Gossens, the Socialist president,
in the early 1970's.
In perhaps the most prominent of
the cases, an investigating judge
here has formally asked Mr.
Kissinger, a former national
security adviser and secretary of
state, and Nathaniel Davis, the
American ambassador to Chile at
the time, to respond to questions
about the killing of an American
citizen, Charles Horman, after
the deadly military coup that
brought General Pinochet to
power on Sept. 11, 1973.
General Pinochet, now 85, ruled
Chile until 1990. He was arrested
in London in 1998 on a Spanish warrant charging him
with human rights violations. After 16 months in custody,
General Pinochet was released by Britain because of his
declining health. Although he was arrested in Santiago in
2000, he was ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial.
The death of Mr. Horman, a filmmaker and journalist, was
the subject of the 1982 movie "Missing." A civil suit that
his widow, Joyce Horman, filed in the United States was
withdrawn after she could not obtain access to relevant
American government documents. But the initiation of
legal action here against General Pinochet and the
declassification of some American documents led her to
file a new suit here 15 months ago.
Last fall, after gaining approval from Chile's Supreme
Court, Judge Juan Guzmán, who is also handling the
Pinochet case, submitted 17 questions in the Horman
case to American authorities. An American Embassy
official here confirmed that the document, known as a
letter rogatory, has been received in Washington, but said
it has not yet been answered and that he did not know if
or when there would be a response.
"We're pressing the case in Chile because this is the first
opportunity we have had to see if there is still some real
evidence there," Mrs. Horman said by telephone from New
York. "But the letters rogatory seem to be in a paralyzed
state."
William Rogers, Mr. Kissinger's lawyer, said in a letter
that because the investigations in Chile and elsewhere
related to Mr. Kissinger "in his capacity as secretary of
state," the Department of State should respond to the
issues that have been raised. He added that Mr. Kissinger
is willing to "contribute what he can from his memory of
those distant events," but did not say how or where that
would occur.
Relatives of Gen. René Schneider, commander of the
Chilean Armed Forces when he was assassinated in Oct.
1970 by other military officers, have taken a different
approach than Mrs. Horman. Alleging summary
execution, assault and civil rights violations, they filed a
$3 million civil suit in Washington last fall against Mr.
Kissinger, Richard M. Helms, the former director of the
Central Intelligence Agency, and other Nixon-era officials
who, according to declassified United States documents,
were involved in plotting a military coup to keep Mr.
Allende from power.
In his books,<bZ> Mr. Kissinger has acknowledged that he
initially followed Mr. Nixon's orders in Sept. 1970 to
organize a coup, but he also says that he ordered the
effort shut down a month later. The government
documents, however, indicate that the C.I.A. continued to
encourage a coup here and also provided money to
military officers who had been jailed for General
Schneider's death.
"My father was neither for or against Allende, but a
constitutionalist who believed that the winner of the
election should take office," René Schneider Jr. said.
"That made him an obstacle to Mr. Kissinger and the
Nixon government, and so they conspired with generals
here to carry out the attack on my father and to plot a
coup attempt."
In another action, human rights lawyers here have filed a
criminal complaint against Mr. Kissinger and other
American officials, accusing them of helping organize the
covert regional program of political repression called
Operation Condor. As part of that plan, right-wing military
dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay
and Uruguay coordinated efforts throughout the 1970's to
kidnap and kill hundreds of their exiled political
opponents.
Argentina has also begun an investigation into American
support for and involvement in Operation Condor. A judge
there, Rodolfo Cancioba Corral, has said he regards Mr.
Kissinger as a potential "defendant or suspect." But
lawyers say it is virtually impossible for a foreign court to
compel former American officials to answer a summons.
During a visit by Mr. Kissinger to France last year, for
instance, a judge there sent police officers to his Paris
hotel to serve him with a request to answer questions
about American involvement in the Chilean coup, in
which French citizens also disappeared. But Mr. Kissinger
refused to respond to the subpoena, referred the matter to
the State Department, and flew on to Italy.
"I think it is clear that Kissinger is now one of many,
many officials who have to think twice before they travel,"
said Bruce Broomhall, director of the international justice
program at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. "It
will be surprising to many that an American secretary of
state is among that group, but times have certainly
changed" as a result of the Pinochet case, he said.
The uproar appears to have forced Mr. Kissinger to cancel
a trip to Brazil. He was scheduled to make a speech and
receive a government medal in São Paulo on March 13,
but withdrew after leftist groups there said they would
demonstrate against him and also called on judges and
prosecutors to detain him for questioning about Operation
Condor.
A spokeswoman for Kissinger Associates in New York
attributed the change of plans to a "scheduling conflict."
But the organizer of the event, Rabbi Henry Sobel of the
Congregacão Israelita Paulista, said "the situation had
become politically uncomfortable" both for Mr. Kissinger
and local Jewish community leaders who had invited him.
"I spoke with him many times on the telephone and made
it very clear to him what was happening behind the
scenes, and he was very sensitive to that," Rabbi Sobel
said in a telephone interview. "This was a way to avoid any
problems or embarrassment for him and for us."
nytimes.com |
