2023-05-26 18:49:00
WASHINGTON.– Henry Kissingerone of the most influential and controversial diplomats of the foreign policy of the United States of the 20th century, turns 100 this Saturday. The legacy of his career as National Security adviser, and later as Secretary of State for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, was marked by milestones in Washington’s relations with the world, such as the opening in China. but also for his contempt for human rights and his support for the repression deployed by dictatorships in Latin America, including the Military Junta in Argentina, and his active role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chilewhich is 50 years old this year.
A phrase from Kissinger to the first Argentine foreign minister of the last dictatorship, Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti, during a meeting on June 10, 1976 in Santiago, Chile, was left for posterity: “If there are things that have to be done, they have to be done fast. But they should quickly return to normal procedures.”
Kissinger’s phrase is found in a compilation of documents, declassified by the United States governmentwhich was produced by the National Security Archive on the occasion of Kissinger’s birthday to “contribute to a balanced and more complete evaluation” of his legacy. The documents offer insight into Kissinger’s involvement in the Nixon administration’s criminal abuses, including the scandal. Watergateare “disdain for human rights and support for dirty and even genocidal wars abroad”and the secret bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The thread of documents, some of which were first published more than 10 years ago, provides unique access to the behind the scenes of US foreign policy in one of the most turbulent periods of the modern era.
In the extensive archive of documents, two memoranda regarding two reserved conversations that Kissinger held in Santiago de Chile in June 1976, when he traveled to participate in the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), stand out. There he met Augusto Pinochet for the first time on June 8, and two days later, on June 10, he saw Guzzetti.
“Secretary Kissinger’s abject acceptance of the Pinochet regime, and indifference to his repression, contributed to a broad public and political movement to institutionalize human rights as a priority in US foreign policy,” noted the Archive of Homeland Security, an organization dedicated to the declassification of secret documents. “When Congress began to pass laws restricting US assistance to regimes that violated human rights, Kissinger’s disdain for the issue of human rights intensified.. Their willingness to back, support and accept mass bloodshed, torture and disappearance by allied anti-communist military regimes is reflected in various declassified documents.
Admired and respected by the elite and the North American right, and detested and discredited by activists and defenders of human rights and the left, Kissinger supported the Latin American dictatorships in the framework of the global campaign of the Nixon government once morest communism in the era of the Cold War and the bid between the United States and Russia.
Kissinger’s resistance to pressuring the military regimes of the Southern Cone on human rights, despite internal pressure from Congress, and also from the State Department, extended to the regional assassination operation known as Plan Condor. “Our main problem in Argentina is terrorism. It is the main priority of the government that took office on March 24,” Guzzetti told Kissinger in his conversation in Santiago, detailed in a 13-page memo. “We have closely followed the events in Argentina. We wish the new government the best. We wish you success. We will do what we can to help him succeed,” Kissinger told Guzzetti. The then foreign minister told Kissinger that “the terrorist problem is general throughout the Southern Cone,” and that they were seeking to coordinate with the other dictatorships. That effort became Condor Plan.
Guzzetti and Kissinger’s meeting in Santiago was followed by a meeting at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, on October 7 of that same year. Guzzetti told Kissinger at the time that the “terrorist organizations had been dismantled” and that, by the end of the year, “the danger will be gone.”
“Look, our basic attitude is that we’d like them to succeed,” Kissinger told him. “I have an outdated view that friends should be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that there is a civil war. We read regarding human rights issues, but not the context. The faster they succeed, the better,” she stated.
Kissinger told Pinochet face-to-face in Santiago that he had done the West a great service by overthrowing Allende., who sympathized with what he was doing in Chile, and wanted to help him, and wished the best for his government. “My assessment is that you are a victim of all leftist groups of the world and that their greatest sin was to overthrow a government that was turning communist,” Kissinger said. In that talk, the US chief diplomat tells Pinochet that he will briefly mention the issue of human rights in Chile, but clarifies that he will do so to prevent Congress from imposing sanctions on Chile. “We face massive domestic problems, in all branches of government, especially in Congress, but also in the Executive, due to the issue of human rights,” Kissinger explained to Pinochet.
AP
The declassified documents also show how Kissinger, on repeated occasions, blocked US diplomatic attempts to put pressure on Latin American regimes to stop their abuses. In a conversation at the end of June 1976, following his meeting with Guzzetti in Santiago, Kissinger challenges an aide following learning that the State Department’s bureau for Latin America issued a diligence to the Military Junta for intensifying “the operations of the death squads”, indicates the analysis of the National Security Archive. “How did this happen?” Nixon asks. “What do you think my policy is?” he insists, according to the document. “Better be careful. I want to find out who did this, and consider having it moved,” he continues.
Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam together with the Vietnamese foreign minister, By Duc Tho, who refused the award. For the first time in history, two members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee have resigned. Kissinger did not travel to Olso to receive the award, and his speech was accepted by the US ambassador to Norway, Thomas R. Byrne.
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