Reply #103: NEW DECLASSIFIED DETAILS ON REPRESSION AND U.S. SUPPORT FOR MILITARY DICTATORSHIP

[L. Coyote]

ON 30th ANNIVERSARY OF ARGENTINE COUP
NEW DECLASSIFIED DETAILS ON REPRESSION AND U.S. SUPPORT FOR MILITARY DICTATORSHIP

Kissinger sought immediate support for the new military regime in spite of staff warnings on bloodshed
22,000 people murdered or disappeared by military between 1975 and 1978 according to secret Chilean intelligence report
Secret Argentine documents record Operation Condor kidnappings and disappearances carried out by military intelligence Battalion 601.

Posted - March 23, 2006 - http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/index.htm

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 (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/index.htm#19760326) 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.

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. ..................

READ THE DOCUMENTS ..........