Relatives continue to search for the tens of thousands of disappeared in Argentina.Washington, D.C., March 23, 2006 - On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the military coup in Argentina, the National Security Archive posted a series of declassified U.S. documents and, for the first time, secret documents from Southern Cone intelligence agencies recording detailed evidence of massive atrocities committed by the military junta in Argentina. The documents include a formerly secret transcript of Henry Kissinger's staff meeting during which he ordered immediate U.S. support for the new military regime, and Defense and State Department reports on the ensuing repression. The Archive has also obtained internal memoranda and cables from the infamous Argentina intelligence unit, Battalion 601, as well as the Chilean secret police agency, known as DINA, which was secretly collaborating with the military in Buenos Aires.
Admiral Emilio Massera and Junta chief General Rafael Videla.The documents record Washington's initial reaction to the military takeover. "I do want to encourage them. I don't want to give the sense that they're harassed by the United States," Secretary of State Kissinger ordered his staff after his assistants warned him that the junta would initiate a bloodbath following the coup. According to the transcript, Kissinger's top deputy on Latin America, William Rogers, told him two days after the coup that "we've got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long."
State Department cables, including some obtained previously by the Argentine newspaper, Clarin, show that U.S. officials had prior knowledge of coup plotting. More than a week before the coup, Ambassador Robert Hill sent Assistant Secretary Rogers a secret cable reporting that the commander of the Navy, Admiral Emilio Massera, had requested that the U.S. embassy "indicate to him one or two reputable public relations firms in the U.S. which might handle the problem for a future military government." Massera, according to the cable, promised that the Argentine military would "not follow the lines of the Pinochet takeover in Chile," and would "try to proceed within the law and with full respect for human rights."
But although the military repression in Argentina drew less international attention than the Pinochet regime's in Chile, it far exceeded it in terms of human rights violations. By mid 1978, according to a secret cable from the DINA station in Buenos Aires, posted here publicly for the first time, the secret police battalion 601 had "counted 22,000 between dead and disappeared, from 1975 to the present date [July 1978]." Thousands of additional victims were killed between 1978 and 1983 when the military was forced from power.
A secret Argentine military document revealed here for the first time records the capture of Jorge Zaffaroni and his wife Maria, who were never seen again. (Source: Sin Olvido)Some of the victims were Uruguayans living in Buenos Aires at the time of the coup. A secret Argentine intelligence report records an operation to kidnap two Uruguayan citizens who were then disappeared. "From: State Intelligence Secretariat. To: Intelligence Battalion 601... Primary objective: Jorge Zaffaroni [and] Maria Zaffaroni, Results: Positive..." reads the military form dated September 29, 1976. Other records posted today provide details on efforts to wipe out a Uruguayan resistance group known as OPR-33 through Operation Condor, a network of Southern Cone secret police services that worked together to eliminate opponents of their regimes.
"For the sake of history, memory and justice, it is extremely important that this kind of information from the Argentine intelligence and security services be made public and rigorously analyzed," said Professor Marcos Novaro, who directs the political history project at the University of Buenos Aires.
"It is clear from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's reaction that Argentina had to pay in blood for the sake of stability in the region," said Archive analyst Carlos Osorio. "The U.S. knowingly supported a national security doctrine that disregarded all civilized norms and any adherence to human rights, and tens of thousands of Argentines paid the ultimate price."
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger meets with Argentine foreign minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, on October 7, 1976 (Photo courtesy of Clarín.com (Argentina),Washington, D.C., 4 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. 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.
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.
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. Schlaudeman cabled, "Guz;etti [sic] heard only what he wanted to hear."
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."
One day earlier, on October 6, 1976, Admiral Guzzetti had been told by Acting Secretary of State Charles W. Robinson "that it is possible to understand the requirement to be tough." But Robinson also remarked on the "question of timing of the relaxation of extreme countersubversion measures" before Congress voted sanctions on Argentina. The memcon with Robinson goes on to note that "[t]he Acting Secretary said... The problem is that the United States is an idealistic and moral country and its citizens have great difficulty in comprehending the kinds of problems faced by Argentina today. There is a tendency to apply our moral standards abroad and Argentina must understand the reaction of Congress with regard to loans and military assistance. The American people, right or wrong, have the perception that today there exists in Argentina a pattern of gross violations of human rights."
Beginning in September 1976, the U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Robert Hill, had been pressing the Argentine military on human rights issues, amid a dramatic increase in the number of victims being disappeared, killed and tortured, including half a dozen American citizens. The Argentine generals dismissed Ambassador Hill's demarches, according to previously declassified cables written by Hill, and alluded to an understanding with high ranking U.S. officials "that the USG's overriding concern was not human rights but rather that GOA 'get it over quickly.'"
After Admiral Guzzetti returned from Washington, Ambassador Hill wrote "a sour note" from Buenos Aires complaining that he could hardly present human rights demarches if the Argentine Foreign Minister did not hear the same message from the Secretary of State. Guzzetti had told Hill that "[t]he Secretary... had urged Argentina 'to be careful' and had said that if the terrorist problem was over by December or January, he (the Secretary) believed serious problems could be avoided in the U.S..." Wrote Ambassador Hill, "Guzzetti went to U.S. fully expecting to hear some strong, firm, direct warnings on his government's human rights practices, rather than that, he has returned in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real problem with the USG over that issue."
Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Harry W. Shlaudeman, who attended both the Kissinger and the Robinson meetings with Guzzetti, responded to Hill on behalf of Kissinger with a cable that directly misrepresented the actual conversations recorded in the memcons: "As in other circumstances you have undoubtedly en countered 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... [T]he USG regards most seriously Argentina's international commitments to protect and promote fundamental human rights. There should be no mistake on that score..."
A final note from Hill shows that the Ambassador was appeased by the strong response from Washington. "Your message on Guzzetti's visit was most helpful. It is reassuring to have chapter and verse on what Guzzetti was told. We will keep after him and other GOA officials," Hill wrote. There is no evidence that Ambassador Hill ever saw the actual transcripts of the conversations with Guzzetti included here.
The two new memorandums of conversation (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 decisionmaking now being used in dozens of 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 included documents from the often-vigorous internal U.S. policy debates over Argentina; and neither the CIA nor the Pentagon participated in the declassification effort. 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.
In the following selection of documents, the memoranda of conversations Guzzetti had at the Department of State are preceded by two cables from Ambassador Hill reporting on the fruitless human rights demarches he had made to Admiral Guzzetti and President Jorge Rafael Videla in September, together with the contemporaneous Department of State intelligence analysis of the counter-terrorism practices of Argentine military, and the testimony of an American citizen tortured by the Argentine security forces.
The torture report was written after an interview with the victim on October 4, 1976 by the same U.S. official, Fernando Rondon, who served as the notetaker at the October 7, 1976 Kissinger-Guzzetti meeting.