Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 23. Mars 2006 / Time Line March 23, 2006
Version 3.503/23/2006
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.
Washington, D.C., 23 March 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 atrocities
committed by the military regime in Argentina.
The documents include a formerly secret transcript of Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger's first staff meeting after the coup during
which he ordered the immediate support of the U.S. government for
the new military regime. Told by his staff that there would be "a
good deal of blood in Argentina before too long" and that
Washington should delay embracing the new junta, according to the
declassified transcript posted today, Kissinger stated: "I do want
to encourage them. I don't want to give the sense that they're
harassed by the United States."
The Archive also posted actual internal records from the infamous
Argentina intelligence unit, Battalion 601, as well as a document
from the Chilean secret police agency, known as DINA, which was
secretly collaborating with the military in Buenos Aires and which
provided an internal military account of the number of dead and
disappeared at the hands of the Argentine security forces.
The DINA document, based on secret body count lists put together by
Battalion 601, put the number at 22,000 people between 1975 and mid
1978. Other Argentine and declassified U.S. documents illuminated
the repression of "Operation Condor" -- a collaborative effort
among the Southern Cone secret police services to track down and
eliminate opponents of their regimes in the mid and late 1970s.
Several documents highlight the case of an Uruguayan couple who
were disappeared in September 1976, as part of a Condor operation
to wipe out an Uruguayan resistance group known as OPR-33.
The Archive's posting on Argentina coincides with a decision made
public today by the Argentine Defense Ministry to open its still
secret archives to researchers and victims of repression during the
eight year military dictatorship. Carlos Osorio, director of the
National Security Archive's Argentina project, hailed the decision
as "a major step toward accountability for the past" that would
"help clarify massive human rights violations during the
dictatorship." But Osorio urged that intelligence documents, such
as the one from Battalion 601 included in this posting, be released
as well. For this new policy of openness to succeed, according to
Marcos Novaro who directs the Political History Project at the
University of Buenos Aires, "it is important that the relevant
archives of the State Intelligence Secretariat be included."
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