Kissinger and Argentina: a case study in US support for state terror

[Aidoneus]

thought this might get more attention above, but it would last longer in this forum instead.

Kissinger and Argentina: a case study in US support for state terror
By Bill Vann
31 December 2003

Only days before the US government and media launched their propaganda campaign over the capture of Saddam Hussein, the US State Department was obliged to release a set of 27-year-old, previously classified documents. These documents provide a revealing glimpse into the real attitude of successive US governments toward dictatorships and terror.

The documents concern a closed-door meeting in October, 1976 between then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the foreign minister of the Argentine military dictatorship, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti. The documents were brought to light December 4 by the National Security Archive <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/index.htm>, a non-governmental research institute that specializes in obtaining secret US government documents under the Freedom of Information Act and making them available to the public.

The principal document is a “memorandum of conversation”—referred to in State Department parlance as a “mencon”—that recorded the hitherto secret discussions held between Kissinger and Guzzetti at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, where the US secretary of state was participating in a United Nations debate on the Middle East.

Guzzetti gave Kissinger a progress report on the “dirty war” that the Argentine military regime was carrying out against the country’s workers, students and intellectuals:

“Our struggle has had very good results during the last four months,” he said. “The terrorist organizations have been dismantled. If this direction continues, by the end of the year the danger will have been set aside.”

In point of fact, the savage repression unleashed by the dictatorship was only then reaching its apogee. The mass killings, “disappearances” and torture would continue unabated for several more years, claiming the lives of some 30,000 Argentines.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/kiss-d31.shtml