|
Edited
by
Carlos
Osorio
Director of the Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay Documentation
Project
National Security Archive
202/994-7000
301/442-7551
cosorio@gwu.edu
Marcos
Novaro
Director of the Political History Project, Universidad
de Buenos Aires-CONYCET
and National Security Archive Latin America Fellow
marcosnovaro@gmail.com
John
Dinges
Professor of Journalism at Columbia University and National
Security Archive Fellow
Business: 212/854-8774
Cell: 202/222-8476
jcd35@columbia.edu
Assisted
by Karina Banfi
Previous
Archive postings on Argentina
|
 |
Relatives
continue to search for the tens of thousands of disappeared
in Argentina.
|
|
Washington,
D.C., March 23, 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 massive atrocities committed
by the military junta in Argentina. The documents include a formerly
secret transcript of Henry Kissinger's staff meeting during
which he ordered immediate U.S. support for the new military regime,
and Defense and State Department reports on the ensuing repression.
The Archive has also obtained internal memoranda and cables from
the infamous Argentina intelligence unit, Battalion 601, as well
as the Chilean secret police agency, known as DINA, which was
secretly collaborating with the military in Buenos Aires.
The documents record Washington's initial reaction to the military
takeover. "I do want to encourage
them. I don't want to give the sense that they're harassed by
the United States," Secretary of State Kissinger
ordered his staff after his assistants warned him that the junta
would initiate a bloodbath following the coup. According to the
transcript, Kissinger's top deputy on Latin America, William Rogers,
told him two days after the coup that "we've
got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal
of blood, in Argentina before too long."
State Department cables, including some obtained previously by
the Argentine newspaper, Clarin, show that U.S. officials
had prior knowledge of coup plotting. More than a week before
the coup, Ambassador Robert Hill sent Assistant Secretary Rogers
a secret cable reporting that the commander of the Navy, Admiral
Emilio Massera, had requested that the U.S. embassy "indicate
to him one or two reputable public relations firms in the U.S.
which might handle the problem for a future military government."
Massera, according to the cable, promised that the Argentine military
would "not follow the lines of the Pinochet takeover in Chile,"
and would "try to proceed within the law and with full respect
for human rights."
But although the military repression in Argentina drew less international
attention than the Pinochet regime's in Chile, it far exceeded
it in terms of human rights violations. By mid 1978, according
to a secret cable from the DINA station in Buenos Aires, posted
here publicly for the first time, the secret police battalion
601 had "counted 22,000 between dead
and disappeared, from 1975 to the present date [July 1978]."
Thousands of additional victims were killed between 1978 and 1983
when the military was forced from power.
|
|
A
secret Argentine military document revealed here for
the first time records the capture of Jorge Zaffaroni
and his wife Maria, who were never seen again. (Source:
Sin
Olvido)
|
|
Some of the victims were Uruguayans living in Buenos Aires at
the time of the coup. A secret Argentine intelligence report records
an operation to kidnap two Uruguayan citizens who were then disappeared.
"From: State Intelligence Secretariat. To: Intelligence
Battalion 601... Primary objective: Jorge Zaffaroni [and] Maria
Zaffaroni, Results: Positive…" reads the military
form dated September 29, 1976. Other records posted today provide
details on efforts to wipe out a Uruguayan resistance group known
as OPR-33 through Operation Condor, a network of Southern Cone
secret police services that worked together to eliminate opponents
of their regimes.
"For the sake of history, memory and justice, it is extremely
important that this kind of information from the Argentine intelligence
and security services be made public and rigorously analyzed,"
said Professor Marcos Novaro, who directs the political history
project at the University of Buenos Aires.
"It is clear from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's
reaction that Argentina had to pay in blood for the sake of stability
in the region," said Archive analyst Carlos Osorio. "The
U.S. knowingly supported a national security doctrine that disregarded
all civilized norms and any adherence to human rights, and tens
of thousands of Argentines paid the ultimate price."
The
Documents in Historical Perspective
In the year preceding the coup, Argentina descended into a spiral
of violence. On one side, death squad operations carried out by
the Anti-communist Argentine Alliance (AAA), sponsored by the
government, the Federal Police and the Armed Forces, claimed hundreds
of victims per month; on the other side the People's Revolutionary
Army (ERP) and the Montoneros guerrillas attacked a number of
economic installations. Scores of union leaders, popular activists,
journalists, scientists, lawyers and intellectuals as well as
public servants, military men and business people were targeted.
Private companies, many of them U.S. corporations, saw their executives
threatened and killed. The U.S. Embassy received numerous threats
and attacks; one of its staffers was wounded and another killed
in 1975. Political chaos was compounded by economic upheaval.
By early 1976, Isabel Peron, who had succeeded her late husband
as president, was weak and isolated. The military coup was seen
by many in the Argentine polity as an inevitable step to bring
stability.
Washington welcomed the military takeover. Initially, reports
by the U.S. Embassy branded it as "moderate in character"
and the "most civilized coup in Argentine history."
The administration of President Gerald Ford was ready to support
the new Junta financially and with security assistance. But, as
the U.S. Ambassador put it: "the USG [U.S. government]
of course should not become overly identified with the Junta,
but so long as the new govt can hew to a moderate line the USG
should encourage it by examining sympathetically any requests
for assistance." At the very first State Department
staff meeting after the coup, Assistant Secretary William Rogers
predicted to Secretary Kissinger that the Argentine military was
"going to have to come down very hard not only on the
terrorists but on the dissidents of trade unions and their parties,"
and recommended that "we ought not at this moment rush out
and embrace this new regime."
Kissinger, however, ordered U.S. support for the new government.
"Whatever chance they have," Kissinger noted, "they
will need a little encouragement from us."
As predicted by the State Department, the military Junta instituted
widespread and vicious repression following the coup. Not only
Argentines were targeted, but also citizens from Chile, Paraguay,
Bolivia and Uruguay who had taken up political exile in Argentina
to escape repression in their home nations. As part of Operation
Condor-a network of Southern Cone secret police services collaborating
to eliminate opponents of their regimes--the Argentine military
carried out numerous operations against foreigners trapped in
Buenos Aires after the coup.
The clandestine effort to capture, kidnap, detain and disappear
two Uruguayans, Jorge Zaffaroni and his wife Maria Islas de Zaffaroni,
is recorded in dramatic detail from documentation obtained from
intelligence agencies in four countries. The National Security
Archive has reconstructed the paper trail on the chilling events
of September 1976 that led to the disappearance of these two Uruguayan
citizens:
- By May 1976, Uruguayan intelligence is keeping track
of dozens of OPR-33 uruguayan guerrillas operating in Buenos Aires. A
secret document
published here shows a list built between May and
October 1976,listing the Zaffaroni couple and 60 other
members of the OPR-33. The information found in the archive of the
Paraguayan Secret Police was likely being shared with Southern Cone
intelligence services. (Source:
The secret police archive in Paraguay)
- A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency cable written in mid-September
1976, states that a high ranking delegation of Argentine generals
has traveled to Montevideo, Uruguay to coordinate intelligence
operations. (Source: Italian judicial official from a FOIA request
to the U.S.)
- An Argentine intelligence report obtained by the Archive through
a confidential source records information provided by the Uruguayans
authorizing the State Intelligence Secretariat to order Intelligence
Battalion 601 to kidnap the Zaffaroni couple; the operation
is successfully carried out, and the couple is handed to the
Uruguayan authorities and never heard from again.
- An October 1, 1976, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency cable
reports that in a one week operation the intelligence cooperation
of Argentina and Uruguay has destroyed the OPR-33.
By mid 1978, military repression in Argentina had already peaked
and was winding down, but human rights violations nevertheless
continued. The Carter administration's policy of open diplomacy
on human rights brought significant international pressure on
the Junta to begin to curtail its abuses. But torture, disappearances,
and executions continued at a reduced level until the military
was defeated during the Falklands war, and forced to withdraw
from power.
How many people were killed and disappeared during the seven
years of dictatorship? "It is our estimate that at least
several thousand were killed and we doubt that it will ever be
possible to construct a more specific figure," says the U.S.
Ambassador in one cable in early 1978. The National Commission
on the Disappeared (CONADEP) was able to document 9,089 persons
disappeared at the hands of the regime. Another U.S. declassified
State Department memo, titled "Disappearance Numbers,"
places that figure at 15,000 by late 1978.
But one internal DINA document, obtained by journalist John Dinges
for his book, The
Condor Years, recorded secret numbers on the dead and
disappeared compiled by Argentine Intelligence Battalion 601 between
1975 and July 1978. The cable, sent by DINA's attaché to
Buenos Aires, Enrique Arancibia Clavel (using the code name Luis
Felipe Alemparte Diaz) stated that that he was "sending a
list of all the dead" which included the official and unofficial
death toll. Between 1975 and mid 1978, Arancibia reported, "they
count 22,000 between the dead and the disappeared."
The DINA cable, according to Dinges, "provides important
corroborating evidence that the true number of disappeared is
significantly higher than the 9,089 persons listed by CONADEP
in the 1980s."
READ
THE DOCUMENTS
The
U.S., the Argentine Military and the Coup
This section was drafted in collaboration with
Fernando Rocchi and Catalina Smulovitz of Universidad Torcuato
Di Tella.
March
26, 1976 - [Staff
Meeting Transcripts] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Chairman,
Secret, [pages
1, 19-23 regarding Argentina]
[Full
document]
Source:
Collection compiled by National Security Archive analyst William
Burr. Selected by Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh.
Two days after the military coup, Secretary of State Kissinger
convened his weekly staff meeting. In this declassified secret
transcript of the first conversation on Argentina, Assistant
Secretary for Latin America, William Rogers informs Kissinger
that for the Argentine generals' government to succeed, they
will make "a considerable effort to involve the United
States - particularly in the financial field.". Kissinger
responds "Yes, but that is in our interest."
Rogers advises that "we ought not at this moment rush
out and embrace this new regime" because he expects significant
repression to follow the coup. "I think also we've got
to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal
of blood, in Argentina before too long. I think they're going
to have to come down very hard not only on the terrorists but
on the dissidents of trade unions and their parties." But
Kissinger makes his preferences clear: "Whatever chance
they have, they will need a little encouragement… because
I do want to encourage them. I don't want to give the sense
that they're harassed by the United States."
[Note: On March 27, 1976, the IMF released a $127 million credit
for the Military Junta]
February
16, 1976 - Military
Take Cognizance of Human Rights Issue *
Source: U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification
Project, 2002. Originally released through FOIA request by and
published in Suplemento Zona, Diario Clarín in 1998.
More than two months before the coup, U.S. intelligence agencies
and the Department of State learn that the Argentine military
is planning to take power. In this secret cable U.S. Ambassador
to Argentina Robert Hill reports directly to Secretary of State
Kissinger and his Assistant Secretary for Latin America, William
Rogers, that officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
journalists in contact with the Argentine Army Chief of Staff
Roberto Eduardo Viola, have been told that the military are
drafting a public relations plan to accompany the upcoming coup.
The public relations plan is intended to cast the new military
government in a positive light, in order to avoid human rights
sanctions from the U.S. Congress. But the Argentine military
passes word to the U.S. Embassy that "some executions would…probably
be necessary" and "they wish to minimize any resulting
problems with the US."
In his conclusion Ambassador Robert Hill observes: "it
is encouraging to note that the Argentine military are aware
of the problem and are already focusing on ways to avoid letting
human rights issues become an irritant in US-Argentine relations."
March
16, 1976 - Ambassador's
Conversation with Admiral Massera
Source:
U.S. Department
of State Argentina Declassification Project, 2002. Originally
released through FOIA request
to and published in Suplemento Zona, Diario Clarín in 1998.
Eight days before the coup, Ambassador Hill reports to Assistant
Secretary of State William Rogers about a conversation about
the pending coup with the Argentine Navy Chief, Emilio Eduardo
Massera. Massera reassures the Ambassador stating that the military
will operate in the most "democratic and moderate manner
possible." According to Massera, the military government
"will not follow the lines of the Pinochet takeover
in Chile… will try to proceed within the law and with
full respect for human rights…had no intention of resorting
to vigilante-type activities, taking extra-legal reprisals or
of taking action against uninvolved civilians."
Massera asks whether the Ambassador can recommend a public
relations company to manage the military government's public
image. Hill responded "I emphasized that the US government
could not in any way become involved in the Argentine internal
affairs." Hill then offers Admiral Massera a list
of reputable public relations firms that the Embassy keeps.
March
30, 1976 - Videla's
Moderate line Prevails *
Source: U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification
Project, 2002. Originally released through FOIA request to and
published in Suplemento Zona, Diario Clarín in 1998.
A week after the military putsch, an extremely optimistic Ambassador
Hill sends a seven-page assessment about the new military Junta.
He reports that the head of the Junta, General Jorge Videla,
"is at least for the time being in a strong enough
position to keep the hardliners in check and impose a moderate
approach." Hill concludes:
"This was probably the best executed and most civilized
coup in Argentine history. It was unique in other ways too.
The US has not been accused of being behind it, except by Nuestra
Palabra, the organ of the PCA. The Embassy hopes to keep it
that way."
"The U.S. government of course should not become overly
identified with the Junta, but so long as the new government
can hew to a moderate line the U.S. government should encourage
it by examining sympathetically any requests for assistance."
[Note: In early April 1976, the U.S. Congress approved a request
by the Ford Administration, written and supported by Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger, to grant $50 million in military assistance
to the new Argentine military regime.]
Operation
Condor: The Machinery of the Dirty War
May-October
1976 - Relacion
de Requeridos del OPR-33 [OPR-33 Most Wanted List]
[First
page of the Uruguayan military intelligence report containing
this list]
Source: Documentation Center and Archive for Human
Rights of the Paraguay Supreme Court, aka. "Archive of Terror."
Collected by Carlos Osorio.
The Uruguayan Army Intelligence Department II sent this list
of OPR-33 most wanted members to intelligence services of the
Southern Cone. Among those listed are Jorge Roberto Zaffaroni
Castilla (Page 4, second from the bottom), and Maria Emilia
Islas Gatti de Zaffaroni (Page 5, 4th from the bottom). The
document was obtained from the Archive and Documentation Center
for Human Rights (CDyA) of the Paraguayan Supreme Court, or
"Archive of Terror" of the Paraguayan Secret Police
where several unique documents have been found pertaining to
the Southern Cone cooperation of intelligence services known
as Operation Condor. Of the people listed in this document,
many were kidnapped and tortured and twelve were disappeared
at the hands of Argentine and Uruguayan security forces who
coordinated their repression in the mid 1970's. Four children
that were captured with their parents, or were born in captivity,
were stolen and raised by their kidnappers--intelligence officers.
September
22, 1976 - Counter
Subversion
Source: Declassified by DIA in response to request
by Italian Judge GianCarlo Cappaldo. Copy obtained by John Dinges.
This Defense Intelligence Agency Intelligence Report (IR) records
the Operation Condor collaboration between secret police officials
in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. DIA sources report that "On
September 15 1976… Roberto Viola, Chief of the Army Staff,
Brigadier General Suarez Mason, I Corps Commander and Colonel
Juan Saa, Assistant Army G-2… [were] en route to Montevideo…
A senior Army Colonel responsible for internal Argentine intelligence…
was leaving on September 17, 1976 for Brasilia to discuss intelligence
matters with the Brazilian armed forces… [an unidentified
source states] the mission was secret and that the Argentine
Army was exchanging information on subversion… but did
not elaborate to what extent coordination took place beyond
exchange of intelligence information.
The visit of the Army officer to Brazil provides firm information
that the Argentines are actively coordinating with their neighbors
on counterinsurgency matters. While the purpose of BG Viola's
trip to Uruguay is not clear, it could very well have been to
coordinate counter subversion activities…"
September
29, 1976 - Entregados
a OCOAS XXX URUGUAYOS [Handed down to OCOAS]
[Note: This document has been digitally enhanced for readability
and to protect the identity of the source]
Source:
Protected. Obtained by Carlos Osorio
This military form records, in bureaucratic language, the repression
of Battalion 601. It states that Uruguayan citizens Jorge Zaffaroni
and Maria Emilia Islas de Zaffaroni have been captured in Buenos
Aires and handed to the Uruguayan government's Anti-Subversive
Operations Coordinating Organization (OCOAS - Organismo Coordinador
de Operaciones Anti-Subversivas).
"Military Intelligence Battalion 601
Handed to OCOAS"
"From: State Intelligence Secretariat.. To: Intelligence
Battalion 601... Primary objective: Jorge Zaffaroni [and] Maria
Zaffaroni, Results: Positive…"
The Zaffaroni couple disappeared on September 29 in Buenos
Aires. The record shows that information coming from abroad
("Exterior" most likely means from Uruguayan intelligence)
prompts the Argentine State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE -
Secretaria de Inteligencia del Estado) to order, on September
18, the capture of the Zaffaroni couple. Battalion 601 then
records that the operation was successfully completed on September
27 or 29. The document was obtained by the National Security
Archive through a confidential source.
October
1, 1976 - Special
Operations
Source: Chile Declassification Project, Department
of Defense, 1999. First published in The Pinochet File, by Archive
analyst Peter Kornbluh.
This Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Intelligence Report
(IR) provides information on joint counterinsurgency operation
by Southern Cone countries in what was known as Operation Condor.
"Operation Condor is the code name given for intelligence
collection on leftists, communists and Marxists in the Southern
Cone Area. It was recently established between cooperating intelligence
services in South America in order to eliminate Marxist terrorist
activities in member countries with Chile reportedly being the
center of operations. Other participating members include: Argentina,
Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia… Members showing the most
enthusiasm to date have been Argentina, Uruguay and Chile."
In particular, the document accounts for the recent joint Argentine
and Uruguayan raid in Buenos Aires during which the Zaffaroni
couple was kidnapped and disappeared. The document refers to
a high-ranking Argentine military delegation to Montevideo reported
a few days earlier in the DIA cable above, as a sign of the
preparation for these operations.
"During the period 24-27 September 1976, members of
the Argentine State Secretariat for Information (SIDE), operating
with officers of the Uruguayan Military Intelligence Service
carried out operations against the Uruguayan terrorist organization,
the OPR-33 in Buenos Aires. As a result of this joint operation,
SIDE officials claimed that the entire OPR-33 infrastructure
in Argentina has been eliminated…"
Casualties
of Repression: Accounting for the Dead and Disappeared
March
28, 1978 - The
Problem of Those Who Disappeared
Source: U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification
Project, 2002. Selected and previously published by Carlos Osorio
in the National Security Archive briefing book 77, Argentine Junta
Security Forces Killed Disappeared Activists, Mothers and Nuns
Under US pressure, the Argentine government began to release
information that accounts for the officially recognized 3,000
PEN prisoners (People held under National Executive Powers).
In this memo, the U.S. Ambassador Raul Castro reflects on how
the release of these names will surely lead relatives to demand
accountability for those thousands whose names are not listed.
Ambassador Castro describes the issue of the disappeared:
"Civil violence, terrorism and counterterrorism in
Argentina over the past half dozen years have probably taken
thousands of lives. A great many of those have been shot or
victims of bomb attacks. There is a large category, however,
generally described as "the disappeared". The conventional
government explanation for these persons who have vanished without
a trace is that they:
1) have gone underground
2) were terrorists who were killed by their companions
3) have fled the country
4) Had been killed in battle and bodies were unrecognizable,
or
5) Were victims of counter-subversive excesses
While we know that there are significant numbers in the
first four categories, we are convinced that the majority fall
in the fifth. These individuals have been seized by elements
of the security forces and have been summarily executed…
… It is our estimate that at least several thousand
were killed and we doubt that it will ever be possible to construct
a more specific figure."
Taking into account the small positive steps the military Junta
has taken so far, Ambassador Castro concludes: "The
USG should concentrate its efforts on the opportunities created
for continued progress toward return to the rule of law. While
not condoning or pardoning the GOA for its part in the disappearances,
we should avoid endorsing demands for an accounting."
April
26, 1978 - [Letter
on Human Rights from Political Officer F. Allen "Tex"
Harris]
Source: U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification
Project, 2002. Copy collected by Carlos Osorio in 2006.
Reporting on several human rights issues to his colleagues
at the Department of State, U.S. Embassy Human Rights officer,
Tex Harris writes that in addition to the PEN prisoners, "One
of the jargon breakthroughs we have made recently concerns the
DAMs - Personas bajo disposicion autoridad militar. This is
the argot for the disappeared but alive non recognized prisoners…."
Harris identifies a new prison and suggests that intelligence
reports estimate that it could hold up to 1000 "non recognized"
prisoners. The problem, he writes, "is that very few people
are released from the detention centers which are "outside
the law."
July
13, 1978 - International
Red Cross Appeal for Support for Argentine Program
Source: U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification
Project, 2002. Copy collected by Carlos Osorio in 2006.
The Embassy sends a cable to the Department of State explaining
how important it is to support the Red Cross work in Argentine.
The cable reports that according to a secret source, the U.S.
embassy has learned that "the Red Cross has begun to have
access to political prisoners being held at the Disposition
of Military Authority ("DAM") … The ICRC's [International
Committee of the Red Cross] central tracing agency's work here
is important in the effort to establish an accurate number of
quote disappeared unquote in Argentina. REFTEL B reports that
the current ICRC files contain more than 20,000 cards of detained
and missing persons in Argentina…"
Mid-July
1978 - [Argentine
Military Intelligence Estimates 22,000 people Dead or Disappeared,
page A-8]
[Note:
this page has been digitally enhanced for readability. For
the full original scanned document click here]
Source: Copy obtained by John Dinges at Argentina's Federal Courts.
Cited in 2005 in John Dinges' book The
Condor Years and published here for the first time.
The document excerpted here contains the only known report
of the calculation by Argentine military intelligence itself
of the number of people their operatives had killed in the repression.
The document was sent to Chile's DINA headquarters by Chilean
intelligence official Enrique Arancibia Clavel, who used the
pseudonym "Luis Felipe Alemparte Diaz," and is based
on records he was allowed to examine in the headquarters of
Army Intelligence Battalion 601. Arancibia Clavel was Chile's
representative in Argentina of the "Operation Condor"
network created in November 1975 by the security forces of Chile,
Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Weeks before
writing this report, he had been requested by his superiors
in Chile to send names and numbers of killed and disappeared
in Argentina. The report provides important corroborating evidence
that the true number of disappeared is significantly higher
than the 9,089 persons listed by the National Commission on
the Disappeared (CONADEP) report in the 1980s. It is also significant
that the military intelligence count starts in 1975, at a time
the military took over national repressive activities from the
national police but several months before the military coup
in March. Since the disappearances are known to have continued
several more years, the actual total of those disappeared by
the military should be extrapolated beyond the 22,000 who had
already been killed at the time the report was written in July
1978. The document is among approximately 1500 pages of documents
confiscated from Arancibia's office and home by the Federal
Court of Argentina in November 1978 and held in court archives.
John Dinges obtained a copy of the Federal Court's five volume
compilation of Arancibia's documents in January 2002 and provided
them to the National Security Archive. The document displayed
here is Volume V, p. 238. The document was first published in
John Dinges, The
Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism
to Three Continents (The New Press).
Chilean intelligence officers had requested that Arancibia
produce names and numbers of those dead and disappeared in Argentina.
In a series of memorandums dated between the first half of June
1976 and mid 1978, the Chilean agent sent to Santiago thousands
of names and dates of deaths and disappearances. In this particular
report, Arancibia seems to summarize his accounting work and
writes
"[T]hese lists include 'official' as well as 'non official'
deaths. We got this from the Army Intelligence Battalion 601,
located on Callao and Viamonte streets, which is under the Army
Chief II of Intelligence at the Army general Command of the
Chiefs of Staff of the Army. Those listed as NN are those unidentifiable
corpses, almost 100% correspond to extremist individuals eliminated
by "left hand," by the security forces. The tally
of those killed and disappeared from 1975 up to date is 22,000.
Luis Felipe Alemparte Diaz"
[Note: Left handed operations in the vocabulary of the security
forces' secret trade meant anything that was illegal. For a
description of the secret operations leading to the assassination
and disappearance of people by security forces during the Argentine
dictatorship, see the description by an Argentine intelligence
officer in the section describing the "Fate of the Disappeared"
on page 5 of the August 7, 1979 memorandum titled Nuts and Bolts
of the Government's Repression of Terrorism-Subversion (National
Security Archive briefing book 73, State
Department Opens Files On Argentina's Dirty War)]
August
1, 1978 - Follow
up to Human Rights Round Up
Source: U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification
Project, 2002. Copy collected by Carlos Osorio in 2006.
Responding to requests by the Department of State to clarify
the latest U.S. Embassy's Human Rights Round Up, the Embassy
reports that "Information regarding the elimination of
terrorists and subversives is understandably an area of great
sensitivity within the GOA [Government of Argentina] and is
very closely held. Consequently, the Embassy has no current
information regarding the magnitudes of eliminations of terrorists
and subversives…"
December
27, 1978 - Disappearance
Numbers
Source: U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification
Project, 2002. Copy Collected by Carlos Osorio in 2006.
The U.S. Embassy officer in charge of human rights, F. Allen
"Tex" Harris, writes a report on the number of disappeared
in Argentina. The Argentine Ministry of the Interior statistics
passed to the Embassy show the numbers of disappeared declining
from 2500 in 1976 to 800 in 1978. The overall numbers of disappeared
tallied by the Ministry is 4,780 for the period. In several
other reports, Harris estimates that the official figures, including
the 9000 names of disappeared compiled by the human rights office
at the Embassy, are but a fraction of the actual total of disappeared
people. In this memo, Harris opens his report stating "Disappearance
numbers… a senior army official had informed the [Catholic]
Nuncio that the armed services had been forced to 'take care
of' 15,000 persons in its anti-subversion campaign."
* The documents marked with an asterisk
were published jointly in 2001 by the National Security Archive
and the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales CELS.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment