Kissinger cable heightens suspicions about 1976 Operation Condor killings
A document suggests the secretary of State rejected warning South American governments against international terrorism. Five days later, a bombing linked to Chile killed 2 in Washington.
http://www.latimes.com.nyud.net:8090/media/photo/2010-04/53222489.jpgIn this Sept. 21, 1976 black-and-white file photo, firemen remove victims from a car
shattered by a bomb blast on Embassy Row in Washington. Orlando Letelier, former Chilean
ambassador to the U.S., and Ronne Karpen Moffitt, his aide, were both killed in the blast.
(Associated Press / April 10, 2010)
By Andrew Zajac and David S. Cloud
April 10, 2010 | 7:29 p.m.
Reporting from Washington
A newly declassified document has added to long-standing questions about whether Henry Kissinger, while secretary of State, halted a U.S. plan to curb a secret program of international assassinations by South American dictators.
The document, a set of instructions cabled from Kissinger to his top Latin American deputy, ended efforts by U.S. diplomats to warn the governments of Chile, Uruguay and Argentina against involvement in the covert plan known as Operation Condor, according to Peter Kornbluh, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a private research organization that uncovered the document and made it public Saturday.
In the cable, dated Sept. 16, 1976, Kissinger rejected delivering a proposed warning to the government of Uruguay about Condor operations and ordered that "no further action be taken on this matter" by the State Department.
Five days after Kissinger's message, Chilean exile Orlando Letelier and an American colleague were killed in Washington's Embassy Row in a car bombing later tied to Chilean secret police working through the Condor network. The killings are considered one of the most brazen acts of terrorism ever carried out in the capital.
"The document confirms that it's Kissinger's complete responsibility for having rescinded a cease-and-desist order to Condor killers," said Kornbluh, author of a 2004 book on Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
In a statement, Kissinger said Kornbluh "distorted" the cable's meaning and said it was intended only to disapprove a specific approach to the Uruguayan government, not to cancel the plan to issue warnings to other nations in the network.
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