[Previous entry: "A New Ethics Needed to Save Life on Earth"] [Next entry: "The Crisis in Black Leadership"]

03/26/2006:

"Kissinger Backed Argentine Junta 30 Years Ago"

Two days after the coup d'etat that brought a brutal military junta to power in Argentina, then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered his subordinates to "encourage" the new regime by providing financial support, according to a previously classified transcript released here by the independent National Security Archive (NSA).

The document, whose public release came on the 30th anniversary of the coup, depicts Kissinger as uninterested in warnings by his assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs, William Rogers, that the junta would likely intensify repression against suspected dissidents in ways that could make U.S. support for the regime embarrassing.

"The point I'm making is that although they have good press today, the basic line of all the interference was that they had to do it because she [ousted President Isabel Peron] couldn't run the country," Rogers told his boss. "So I think the point is that we ought not at this moment to rush out and embrace this new regime – that three-six months later will be considerably less popular with the press."

"But we shouldn't do the opposite either," Kissinger insists, adding that "whatever chance they have, they will need a little encouragement from us."

"I do want to encourage them," he went on, asking to review the instructions to Washington's ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill, on his first meeting with the junta's yet-to-be-named foreign minister. "I don't want to give the sense that they're harassed by the United States."

Washington approved 50 million dollars in military aid the following month.
antiwar.com