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<TITLE>(3/8/99) Kissinger Encouraged Chile's Brutal Repression, New Documents Show</TITLE>
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<p><br>

Kissinger Encouraged Chile's Brutal Repression, New Documents Show
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by Lucy Komisar

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<a href="../9812a/copyright/ns-pinochet.html">READ</a><br>
"Pinochet Case Makes U.S. Media Squirm"
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(AR) NEW YORK  --  <strong><font size=+2>
	The secret 
</strong></font>
  government files on Chile, which the
Clinton Administration says will be opened to the Spanish prosecutor of 
former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, will prove a major embarrassment 
for Henry Kissinger, the American most tied to the U.S.-assisted plot to 
the 1973 overthrow the elected government of President Salvador.  
<p>
They will show how, in the months and years following the 1973 coup, 
Kissinger covered up U.S. information about atrocities in Chile and sought to 
persuade Pinochet that the U.S. government did not consider his behavior a 
major problem.
<p>
A newly declassified memorandum 
about Kissinger's only meeting with Pinochet, in 1976,  details just 
how hard the former Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford tried to 
shield the Chilean general from criticism.  [Versions of this report also 
appear in El Pais in Madrid and The Observer, in London.] 
Kissinger also served as Secretary of State from 1973 to 1974 under former 
President Richard Nixon.  
<p>
The memorandum describes how Kissinger stroked and bolstered
Pinochet, and how, with hundreds of political prisoners still being jailed 
and tortured, Kissinger assured Pinochet that the Ford administration would
not punish him for violations of human rights.  Kissinger assured him that
he was a victim of Communist propaganda and urged him not to pay too much 
attention to his American critics.  
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<font   face="Arial,Helvetica,Verdana"> 
 Kissinger kept a
public distance from Pinochet, but in private he
promised warm support
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 <strong><font size=+2>
	Kissinger 
</strong></font>


 knew of Pinochet's operations. In 1974, when the
CIA discovered that Chile and its allies wanted to set up a covert office
in Miami for the terrorist Operation Condor, which targeted political
enemies around the world, Kissinger rejected his own State Department
officials' advice to publicly protest the plan to the governments involved
-- Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.  
<p>
That would have been a warning to prospective victims who had
sought safety in exile, but it also would have raised questions about
Kissinger's support for the six repressive governments.  When Kissinger
refused to issue a public attack on the attempt to open the office in
Miami, the CIA instead passed on the word to Chile's secret police, the
Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), and the office wasn't opened.
<p>
But the conspiracy continued to target and murder the regime's
enemies, including hits against Chile's former army chief, in Buenos Aires,
and a political opponent, in Rome.  Then in September 1976, the operation
returned to the U.S. with a vengeance, planting the car bomb that killed
Orlando Letelier, former Chilean foreign minister and ambassador to the
U.S., and his Institute for Policy Studies colleague Ronni Moffitt in
Washington.
<p>
Contreras, who is serving seven years in Chile for his role in the
murders, declared in December 1997 that he was following Pinochet's
orders.  Pinochet had no reason to believe the bombing would cause
problems for him.  After all, he had had a warm private meeting with 
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger a few months before.
<p>
The meeting occurred in Santiago, June 8, 1976, during a gathering
of the Organization of American States.  Against the advice of most of the
Department's Latin America staff, Kissinger had decided to go to Chile for
the opening of the OAS general assembly, his first trip to Latin America.
<p>
Kissinger and Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs
William Rogers flew into Santiago June 7 and met with Pinochet the next
day in the presidential suite in Diego Portales, an office building used
during repairs on La Moneda, the presidential palace Pinochet had bombed.
Foreign Minister Patricio Carvajal and Ambassador to the U.S. Manuel
Trucco were also there.  (I've interviewed Rogers, Carvajal and Trucco,
but not Kissinger, who has refused requests.)
<p>
Kissinger was dogged by charges he had promoted the military coup
against an elected Allende government, and he sought to maintain a cool
public distance from Pinochet.  But at his confidential meeting, he
promised warm support.
<p>
Kissinger made clear how much he backed Pinochet, saying, "In the
United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to
do here.  I think that the previous government was headed toward
Communism.  We wish your government well."<p>

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 Many reports of torture: Gang rapes, genitals burned with cigarettes, disappearances
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 <strong><font size=+2>
	The
</strong></font>

 former secretary. who now advises U.S. corporations on foreign 
issues and writes for a number of U.S. newspapers, dismissed American
human rights campaigns against Chile's government as "domestic problems"
and assured Pinochet that he was against sanctions such as the proposed
Kennedy Amendment to ban arms aid to governments that were gross human
rights violators.
<p>
Still, Kissinger was being pressured by the U.S. media to make a
statement on human rights.  The OAS report to the Santiago meeting said
that mass arrests, torture, and disappearances continued in Chile.  An
earlier OAS report had detailed those tortures:  women beaten, gang raped,
and electric current applied to their bodies; men subjected to electric
current, especially to their genitals, burned with cigarettes, hung by the
wrists or ankles.
<p>
So the speech Kissinger would give that afternoon couldn't ignore
human rights.  It had to be something Republicans could point to -- but it
also couldn't offend or weaken Pinochet.
<p>
Kissinger wanted Pinochet to know that the speech should not be
interpreted as a criticism of Chile.  He told him, "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 those obstacles."
<p>
He added, "I will also call attention to the Cuba report and to
the hypocrisy of some who call attention to human rights as a means of
intervening in governments." 
<p>
But Kissinger suggested to Pinochet that his statements on Chile
were calibrated to avoid greater damage to the country.  He told him, "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."
<p>
And he emphasized that he did not credit the charges.  "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
which was going Communist.  But we have a practical problem we have to
take into account, without bringing about pressures incompatible with your
dignity, and at the same time which does not lead to U.S. laws which will
undermine our relationship."
<p>
"If we defeat the Kennedy amendment -- I don't know if you listen
in on my phone," he interjected jocularly, " -- but if you do, you have
just heard me issue instructions to Washington to make an all-out effort
to do just that -- if we defeat it, we will deliver the F-5E's as we
agreed to do.  We held up (the fighter planes) for a while in order to
avoid providing additional ammunition to our enemies."  
<p>
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<font   face="Arial,Helvetica,Verdana"> 
 Kissinger made it clear he didn't sympathize even with the
dictator's moderate critics
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 <strong><font size=+2>
	Both men 
</strong></font>


 also indicated worry about an amendment by Democratic
congressman Donald Fraser of Minnesota to ban non-military aid to
egregious human rights violators.
<p>
Kissinger explained, "My statement and our position are designed
to allow us to say to the Congress that we are talking to the Chilean
government and therefore Congress need not act."  He emphasized, "My
statement is not offensive to Chile.  Ninety-five percent of what I say is
applicable to all the governments of the Hemisphere.  It includes
things your own people have said."
<p>
As if Pinochet could have had any doubt, Kissinger said, "We
welcomed the overthrow of the Communist-inclined government here."  By
overthrowing Allende, Pinochet had done a great service to the West,
Kissinger told Pinochet. "We are not out to weaken your position."  He
told him he had encouraged the OAS to have its meeting in Santiago to give
Chile prestige.
<p>
Kissinger made it clear he didn't sympathize even with the
dictator's moderate critics.  When Pinochet complained that the Christian
Democrats had a strong voice in Washington, "not the people in the
Pentagon, but they do get through to Congress," Kissinger bragged, "I have
not seen a Christian Democrat for years."  Later in the talk he repeated,
"I haven't seen one since 1969."
<p>
So, the Americans didn't have any concern about Christian
Democrats.  That must have pleased Pinochet, since Europeans had loudly
condemned his secret police attack against exiled Chilean Christian
Democrat congressman Bernardo Leighton in Rome.
<p>
Kissinger's address to the assembly that afternoon was one of his
usual tour d'horizon speeches.  He noted the reports of human rights
abuses in Chile but didn't condemn the government.  "The condition of
human rights as assessed by the Organization of American States' Human
Rights commission has impaired [the U.S.] relationship with Chile and will
continue to do so.  We wish this relationship to be close, and all friends
of Chile hope that obstacles raised by conditions alleged in the report
will soon be removed."
<p>
Secretary Rogers thought they had "pushed Henry's envelope to the
outer edge in terms of emphasizing human rights."  The statement about the
U.S. vote on authorization of a human rights commission was worked over
carefully.  Rogers got him to say it, but noticed that he chafed over it
before and after the speech.  Nobody else thought it was terribly bold. 
<p>
Foreign Minister Carvajal thought Kissinger's speech "balanced,"
and was pleased that it referred to the exaggerations of  the Chilean
problem.  Carvajal told me when I saw him in Santiago that he took
Kissinger's private remarks to Pinochet to mean that he didn't really
believe what he had said publicly.  Carvajal said, "The U.S. understands
that things in Chile are difficult, that maybe the steps taken by
Washington were exaggerated, that things would have been worse if 
Chile hadn't acted."
<p>
Kissinger and Rogers left two days later.  Kissinger was pleased
with the visit; he told a Chilean diplomat in Washington that he and Nancy
had been received like pop stars.  A State Department official who dealt
with human rights issues at the time recalls that on his return, Kissinger
passed the word to his staff that he did not want all he had said publicly
applied too literally in practice.  

 <p><br><p>
<center><font size = -1>Lucy Komisar, a New York journalist, is working on a book about U.S.
foreign policy and human rights in several countries, including Chile, in
the 1970s and '80s.   Kissinger has repeatedly refused her requests for an
interview</font></center>
<HR><center>Comments? Send a  <A HREF="mailto:editor@monitor.net">letter to the editor</a>.<P><font size=1>Albion Monitor <EM>
March 8, 1999 </EM> (http://www.monitor.net/monitor)<P>All Rights Reserved.<P>Contact  <A HREF="mailto:rights@monitor.net">rights@monitor.net</a> for permission to use in any format.</center></font></td></tr></table>
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