Will
Kissinger be Brought to Trial?
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Will
Kissinger be Brought to Trial?
Latest BBC news on Kissinger
--- Latest
other news on Kissinger
12Jun02 - Guardian - Kissinger may face extradition to Chile
31May02 -Reuters - Kissinger to advise Hicks Muse on Europe
23May02 - Workers' World - She defied Henry Kissinger
28Apr02 - Daily Telegraph - The doctor versus the judges
26Apr02 - Associated Press - Vietnam says Kissinger should bear responsibility for Vietnam War
18Apr02 - Guardian - Met asked to question Kissinger
18Apr02 -Pravda - Henry Kissinger, If You Want To Kill, Do It Fast
April 24 2002 protest rally as Kissinger dares to come to London
26Feb02 - Kissinger cancels Brazil visit to avoid protests
Kissinger Watch - Brought to you by the International Campaign Against Impunity - Inspired by the success of the Pinochet Watch bulletin 'Kissinger Watch' will be published as an email bulletin distributed several times per annum. To subscribe to KissingerWatch (free of charge), send an email to: subscribe-kw@icai-online.org
Before Donald Rumsfeld, who visited Afganistan on Sunday December 16th 2001, the last senior US figure to visit Afghanistan was Henry Kissinger in 1974 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4321105,00.html
East Timor Action Network: 10 Years for Self-Determination & Justice http://www.etan.org/news/kissinger/
Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize winner http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/1973/kissinger-bio.html
"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/HKissinger.html
Human Rights Abuses - Remember Chile http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F05%2F31%2Fwkiss31.xml
The Ruttenberg lecture 2001 by Henry Kissinger - 31st October 2001 "Foreign Policy in the Age of Terrorism" http://www.cps.org.uk/kissinger.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4431760,00.html
Judge investigating US role in 1973 coup considers forcing former secretary of state to give evidence
Jonathan Franklin in Santiago and Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Guardian Wednesday June 12, 2002
Henry Kissinger may face extradition proceedings in connection with the role of the United States in the 1973 military coup in Chile.
The former US secretary of state is wanted for questioning as a witness in the investigation into the events surrounding the overthrow of the socialist president, Salvador Allende, by General Augusto Pinochet.
It focuses on CIA involvement in the coup, whether US officials passed lists of leftwing Americans in Chile to the military and whether the US embassy failed to assist Americans deemed sympathetic to the deposed government.
Chile's Judge Juan Guzman is so frustrated by the lack of cooperation by Mr Kissinger that he is now considering an extradition request to force him to come to Chile and testify in connection with the death of the American film-maker and journalist Charles Horman, who was killed by the military days after the coup.
Horman's story was told in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film, Missing, starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.
Judge Guzman is investigating whether US officials passed the names of suspected leftwing Americans to Chilean military authorities. Declassified documents have now revealed that such a list existed. Sergio Corvalan, a Chilean lawyer, said that he could not divulge the "dozens" of names on the list.
At the time of his death, Horman was investigating the murder of Rene Schneider, the chief of staff in the Chilean army whose support for Allende and the constitution was seen as an obstacle to the coup.
The CIA had been involved with groups plotting Schneider's murder, providing them with weapons and advice, according to a CIA internal inquiry in 2000. It found that the agency had withdrawn its support for the plotters before the murder but had paid them $35,000 afterwards "to maintain the goodwill of the group".
At the time of his murder, Schneider had five young children, who filed suit in a Washington DC court last year against Mr Kissinger and other top officials in the Nixon administration. They are seeking $3m (£2.15m) in damages.
Horman's wife, Joyce, suspects that he was targeted because he unwittingly stumbled upon a gathering of US military personnel in Chile in the days before the coup.
The American journalist Marc Cooper and the British journalist Christopher Hitchens have been in Santiago during the past month to give evidence in the investigation of America's role.
Cooper, who was Allende's translator at the time of the coup and now writes for the Nation and LA Weekly, knew Horman and gave sworn testimony last month.
Cooper said: "Guzman says that if the US doesn't act soon on his request to gather testimony from Kissinger and other US officials, he'll have no choice but to file for their extradition to Chile."
Cooper, who wrote the book Pinochet and Me about his time in Chile, said that the Nixon government had been more interested in supporting General Pinochet than in investigating the deaths of its citizens at the hands of the Chilean military.
This is not the first attempt to interview Mr Kissinger about the turbulent period in Latin America.
During a visit to London in April, judges in Spain and France unsuccessfully tried to question him about America's role in Operation Condor, which has been described as a coordinated hit squad organised from Chile and including six South American nations aimed at dealing with leftwing opposition groups.
Several declassified documents which have emerged over the past two years have shown an increasingly visible American hand in Operation Condor.
Hitchens gave evidence on the Operation Condor case which he researched for his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, published last year.
In Santiago, Hitchens said: "Today Henry Kissinger is a frightened man. He is very afraid of the exposure that awaits him."
Mr Kissinger's lawyer William Rodgers, said that such questions should properly be directed to the US state department and not to Mr Kissinger.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4431760,00.html
http://www.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-9985428-0.html?tag=ats
NEW YORK, May 31 (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was named European adviser to Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, the latest Washington power broker to join a major U.S. private equity firm, the firm said.
Kissinger, considered the most influential foreign policy adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, is joining the European strategy board of Hicks Muse, a $10 billion fund based in Dallas, Hicks Muse announced.
It is the latest assignment for the 79-year-old statesman and 1973 Nobel Peace Prize winner. New York-based Kissinger Associates gives geopolitical advice to financial firms including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., American International Group Inc., American Express Co., Forstmann Little & Co. and others.
Private equity or buyout firms, which take large stakes in companies with the aim of selling them at a profit later, often hire Washington insiders to open doors for potential business transactions. The hard negotiations are done by the firms' financial engineers.
"Few people would not return Henry's phone call," said John Muse, founder and partner in Hicks Muse, told Reuters. "Kissinger is very well known and connected in the European landscape on history and economic development. He will help us get better access and better information on people."
In recent years, large U.S. buyout firms like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Carlyle Group and Blackstone Group have targeted Europe as a new growth market to offset a slump in the U.S. deal making market. Such firms have targeted corporate divestitures as a key growth opportunity where Europe is considered farther behind than the U.S. market.
Kissinger joins other top government officials at buyout firms, notably Washington-based Carlyle Group, a $13 billion fund whose roster of advisers includes former President George Bush, ex-Secretary of State James Baker and former British Prime Minister John Major.
Hicks Muse also said Richard Fisher, former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative under President Clinton, will join the firm's Latin American strategy board. At the same time, Kissinger McLarty Associates, an affiliated firm founded by Kissinger and Mack McLarty, former White House chief of staff, announced that Fisher had joined the firm as managing partner.
Hicks Muse, said Muse, has significant assets in various Latam countries, but is particularly concerned with Argentina, which recently faced a major debt crisis and currency tumult that could affect media assets held jointly with Liberty Media.
"No one in the country is better qualified to help us understand the macro environment in Latin America better than Richard," said Muse. "For now, we have definitely pulled in our horns and become more cautious in the region. We have a lot of capital there we are husbanding carefully."
Muse said Kissinger would be paid a fee for being on the firm's European board and would also likely get consulting fees for additional work. Brian Mulroney, the former Canadian prime minister, is also adviser to Hicks Muse.
http://www.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-9985428-0.html?tag=ats
http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/binh0523.php
Nguyen Thi Binh, vice president of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, met with a group of U.S. activists in New York on May 9. Many remembered her as the incomparable Madame Binh who had headed the delegation of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam at the Paris peace talks in the 1970s. She had faced down former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who threatened the Vietnamese with nuclear bombs several times during the negotiations. Her skill and grace under pressure gave inspiration to women everywhere to take their place in the leadership of progressive causes.
Madame Binh thanked the movement here for its work to stop the war. She also explained that Vietnam today, although reunited and at peace, continues to suffer serious health problems from the heavy use of toxic chemicals--like Agent Orange--that the U.S. dropped all over the countryside. Its economy is still one of the poorest in Asia, and has never received the reparations promised for the terrible damage done by the U.S. war.
Reprinted from the May 23, 2002, issue of Workers World newspaper
http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/binh0523.php
This article appeared in the Daily Telegraph, owned by Conrad Black, fellow
Bilderberger with Kissinger. If D'Ancona is to be believed this is
the ONLY media interview given by Kissinger on his visit to Europe. Ensuring
he is portrayed in a good light.
Note the expression "there is absolutely no respectable evidence of his own
or the US Government's involvement in these cases." In fact there is plenty
of evidence - and the evidence is mounting Mr Kissinger - you cannot expect
sycophantic journalists to lie for you for ever.[TG]
HENRY KISSINGER'S visit to London last week was overshadowed by the campaign of European judges to settle 30-year-old scores. In his only interview of the trip, he tells Matthew d'Ancona why he is undeterred.
'If you're here to see Kissinger, you are scum," chants the mob outside the Royal Albert Hall. Well, I guess that's me, then. [among others such as 'Kissinger, Terrorist; Police Protect the Criminals; and Hey, Hey, Henry K, How Many Kids Did you Kill Today? TG]
On the road, dozens of demonstrators are blocking the traffic in a sit-down protest. Their comrades brandish placards with slogans such as "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", which seem to hold the good doctor responsible for just about every misfortune to befall humanity since the Flood.
Inside the hall, 2,800 businessmen are awaiting
Henry Kissinger's speech to the Institute of Directors' annual convention.
But first I am whisked off to meet him in a tiny, brightly-lit changing room
which is being used as an improvised audience chamber for the morning.
As I enter, Lord Young of Graffham, Margaret Thatcher's Trade and Industry Secretary, is leaving. Deep in the bowels of the Albert Hall, the baying crowd can no longer be heard. But Dr Kissinger's numerous Special Branch officers are taking no chances: officially, I am told, he is not here yet.
In fact, he is most definitely here. Reclining on a sofa, immaculate in dark suit and maroon polka dot tie, the former American Secretary of State takes the melee around him in his stride, issuing instructions to his entourage in the unmistakable, slow baritone.
His visit has been overshadowed by requests from French and Spanish judicial investigators to question him in connection with "Operation Condor", an alleged campaign of terror in Latin America during the 1970s when he was in office. Has it spoiled his trip to Britain to be hounded in this way?
"Look," he says, examining the back of his hand, "this is, as it happens, the first country I came to after I left Germany in 1938.
"It was only for a few weeks, but, nevertheless, it was my first experience of freedom. It's a country in which I served in the 84th infantry division in 1944. It is a country with which I have a long association and I have many friends here."
True: but that hasn't stopped Baltasar Garzon - the magistrate who attempted to extradite General Pinochet in 1998 - and others from trying to intercept the 78-year-old Dr Kissinger on his trip to London.
The campaign, he says, is an abuse of the principles it claims to uphold: "What they are attempting to do is to use universal human rights to settle scores from 30 years ago. They're not making any charges involving universal violations. They're getting into specific issues of the management of American foreign policy with respect to one very geographically confined situation."
He is annoyed by "major misrepresentation" in the press of the last attempt to apprehend him, in Paris last year. On that occasion, Judge Roger Le Loire issued a summons to Dr Kissinger to appear as a witness in the Pinochet case.
The matter was handed over to the US Government and he did not, as was widely reported, "flee" the French capital: "I maintained my regular schedule and I left on the flight two days later exactly as planned."
The real question is whether Dr Kissinger, chased around Europe by campaigning lawyers, expects ultimately to face cross-examination. "The issue last time was alleged complicity in the disappearance of a Frenchman in Argentina [Jean-Yves Claudet-Fernandez, a member of the Chilean Left, who disappeared in Buenos Aires in 1975].
"I'd never heard of the Frenchman - as you would expect. I'd never heard of the case. But my position is that if the US Government thinks it is appropriate for me to answer the questions of foreign judges about the conduct of American policy I will cooperate to the fullest extent."
This seems an unlikely outcome, given that there is absolutely no respectable evidence of his own or the US Government's involvement in these cases. Even so he believes that the new vogue for pursuing unsettled scores from the Cold War using human rights legislation may be storing up serious trouble for the future.
"People should ask whether it is actually feasible to conduct international policy if high officials, 30 years after the event, are hounded on tactical matters, on individual matters about which common sense tells you they couldn't possibly have any knowledge. The pursuit of high officials of foreign governments - especially friendly governments - should be reserved for truly major human rights violations."
Nonetheless, it is clear that being hounded by continental lawyers has not diminished his sense of humour (later, he says the reason that he speaks so slowly is that he is translating himself into English). He chuckles when I quote a passage from his most recent book Does America Need A Foreign Policy? (2001) on future diplomacy in the Middle East in which he predicted that "the American contribution will depend on its ability to insist on a strategic and political concept for the enterprise".
He knows what I am going to ask: do President Bush and his recent envoy in the Middle East, Colin Powell, have such a "concept"? The man whose shuttle diplomacy secured the Arab-Israeli ceasefire in 1973 smiles wryly, and chooses his words with care.
"I do not think they have yet settled on what the precise concept is, but I hope they will before Colin Powell launches himself into the region again. On this particular trip, his mission was to calm the situation. And that he did."
He admits that he was "concerned at the beginning" that America might be seen to be weakening its position on Palestinian terrorism, but applauds Powell for "eliminating the incipient fatalism" on both sides of the conflict.
On the day we meet, the papers are full of stories about the Bethlehem siege and the aftermath of the Jenin confrontation, with calls for international diplomatic intervention becoming ever more clamorous.
Dr Kissinger's warning is that the objectives of any subsequent interference must be utterly realistic: "When one enters a negotiation, one ought to be able to describe the outcome towards which one is aiming," he says.
"I believe that simple coexistence between the Israelis and Arabs would be a tremendous achievement. It should not simply be a ratification of the status quo. It should give the Palestinians satisfaction of some of their demands". But questions such as the fate of Palestinian refugees and the final borders of a Palestinian state must, he says, be deferred for now.
As for Yasser Arafat, Dr Kissinger believes that only pressure from Arab states can dislodge him. "It's not possible for Israel to say who should be the Palestinian negotiator.
We should say to the Arab states: given your interests, and given your constructive approach, you have to settle who should perform that role. And if you decide on Arafat, you have to take into account what will happen if he is untrustworthy."
Dr Kissinger is full of praise for the Prime Minister's conduct since September 11, although he says that if he lived in Britain he would probably vote Conservative.
In answer to one of my questions, he admits that Tony Blair's evangelical foreign policy - which he calls "Gladstonian" - contrasts sharply with his own "Disraelian" preference for realpolitik and geopolitical realism. "I question the idea of universal crusades," he says, "because I think, looking at it as an American, they will eventually go beyond our capacity."
Realistic to the last: unlike the mob outside, and, one suspects, the judges who think they can outfox this formidable survivor.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020426/ap_wo_en_ge/vietnam_kissinger_1
HANOI, Vietnam - Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger should "bear responsibility" for the human suffering caused by the Vietnam War, Vietnam's government said Friday.
During a speech by Kissinger in London on Wednesday, dozens of protesters outside the meeting hall accused him of war crimes for his role in U.S. actions in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the war.
Kissinger ignored the protesters, but acknowledged in his speech that mistakes had "quite possibly" been made by administrations in which he served.
Asked to comment on the accusations, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh noted that Kissinger had served as U.S. President Richard Nixon's national security adviser and secretary of state during the war.
"We hold that as a key official with an important role in the U.S. administration during the time the United States waged a war of aggression against Vietnam, Mr. Kissinger should bear responsibility for the losses and suffering caused by the war to the Vietnamese people," she said in a brief statement. She did not elaborate.
The war, which spilled over into neighboring Cambodia and Laos, ended with a communist victory in 1975 over the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam. An estimated 3 million Vietnamese and more than 58,000 Americans perished in the conflict.
Thousands of other Vietnamese continue to be affected by poisonous defoliants used by U.S. forces during the war, and by accidental explosions of buried bombs and shells left over from the fighting.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020426/ap_wo_en_ge/vietnam_kissinger_1
25 April 2002 http://www.independent.co.uk
There are problems in the European-American relationship. A new generation is coming into power in Europe and the Soviet threat is gone. On the US side there has been a shift in the geographic locus of power. My generation had experience of Europe, we took vacations there, we knew Europeans. The new generation of US leaders is from the south. It's an explanation of a US policy often termed "unilateral".
At the end of World War Two the generation of leaders had experience in international affairs even though their countries had been greatly weakened by the war. Leaders are now more preoccupied with their own politics at home. For all of these reasons, dialogue has been more difficult. Europe has been absorbed by its own integration. American has, by definition, been sidelined by the events. This is the context in which events are evolving.
For America the most immediate problem has been the terrorist attacks. In Europe every country has suffered direct attacks from abroad. America never had and never imagined it would.
In American history every problem has proved to be solvable. There is a natural proclivity to eliminate the source of danger. This sometimes clashes with the European attitude in which problems sometimes have to be managed rather than solved and in which there are no final solutions.
The great achievement of Britain in the 19th century was that it was able to translate its power into consensus. The challenge for America is to do the same.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4396298,00.html
Guardian - Thursday April 18, 2002
The Spanish judge who was responsible for the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in Britain in October 1998 is attempting to have Henry Kissinger interviewed by British police when he arrives in London next week.
Judge Baltasar Garzon has told the British authorities via Interpol that he wants the former US secretary of state questioned as a witness in his investigations into the torture, genocide and acts of terrorism allegedly committed by the Chilean dictator and other military strongmen in Latin America.
If the request was accepted, Mr Kissinger - Richard Nixon's assistant for national security from 1969-1973 and secretary of state between 1973-1977 - would have his first ever personal encounter with international human rights law at the hands of Metropolitan police officers, who would present him with a list of questions from Judge Garzon.
Mr Kissinger has managed to avoid similar requests from courts in France and Chile in the past year.
William D Rogers, a member of Kissinger Associates in Washington, said yesterday he believed Mr Kissinger still planned to travel to London and was prepared to "provide whatever evidence his memory can generate". But, he added, Judge Garzon ought to direct his questions to the US state department.
The document sent by Judge Garzon to Interpol on Monday said he needed to know if Mr Kissinger would be in London "in order to request that he declare before the competent authorities in relation to the case in which Augusto Pinochet has been indicted by this court".
Any questions are likely to concentrate on Operation Condor, a secret agreement under which half a dozen Latin American military regimes allegedly agreed to eradicate leftwing opponents. Spanish prosecutors claimed that documents released recently by the CIA showed that the US knew about Operation Condor and trained many of the military officers from the death squads.
Mr Kissinger is not a suspect in the case and would simply be required to answer questions as a witness.
The request to question Mr Kissinger was sparked by lawyers representing victims of Gen Pinochet's regime who spotted an article in The Guardian last month which said that Mr Kissinger was due to be a speaker at the Royal Albert Hall on April 24, as part of a convention organised by the Institute of Directors.
A Met spokeswoman said she was unable to say whether Judge Garzon's request had been received or acted on.
However, an Institute of Directors spokesman said they were still expecting Mr Kissinger to speak at the conference next week.
Prosecuting lawyers were confident yesterday that, due to treaties signed by Britain and Spain on judicial cooperation and terrorism, Mr Kissinger would not be able to avoid questioning in Britain.
"Mr Kissinger has two options: either he can travel and expose himself to questioning or he can not travel," Carlos Slepoy, a Madrid-based prosecution lawyer, said.
"If he does not go, it would be a demonstration that he wants to avoid a justice system which, at the moment, is only asking him what he knows."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4396298,00.html
Vasily Bubnov
PRAVDA
Translated by Maria Gousseva
18Apr02
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/18/27754.html
On April 17, it became known that Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon intended to interrogate ex-US State Secretary Henry Kissinger about the case of Operation Condor. The judge is known with its insistence. That was because of this inquiry several years ago, that the former Chilean dictator was detained in Great Britain. Thanks to Garzon, Russian media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky spent several months in prison. And now Garzon encroached upon Henry Kissinger.
And what's the matter? What is it, the Operation Condor?
It was planned in 1975, in Santiago, at the meeting of police leaders of South America, for fighting against enemies of dictators - Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Hugo Banzer (Bolivia), Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), Figeredo (Brasilia) - and governments Isabel Peron (Argentina) and Juan Maria Bardaberri (Uruguay). A system was created for exchange of information, physical annihilation of suspect elements and for coordination of "death squadrons" activities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brasilia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Chile. "Death squadrons" acted in spite of national borders. This could be seen from archives found in Paraguay in 1992. So, in 1975 in Rome, Chilean Vice President Bernardo Leighton (who was Vice President in Christian democrat Eduardo Frei's government and convinced opponent of Salvador Aliende, as well as of Pinochet) and his wife were wounded.
In 1976, in Washington, foreign minister of Aliende's government, Orlando Letelier (to the point, Henry Kissinger's friend) was killed in a car explosion. Among the greatest victims of Operation Condor, there was general Carlos Prats, Uruguayan politicians Selmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz. Main supporters of such actions were Chileans, while their main executor was DINA - secret political police with colonel Manuel Contreraz, whose direct curator was Augusto Pinochet.
So, and why Henry Kissinger? It is not a secret that Americans did their best to avert Salvador Aliende' coming to power. This could be seen from minutes of Committee 40 sittings, headed by Henry Kissinger. The committee worked out and coordianted activities aimed initially at averting Aliende's coming to power, and afterwards - at weakening and destabilizing his government. It was not without Kissinger's assistance, that FBI helped Pinochet to identify and to detain in Paraguay Chilean oppositionist George Isaak Fuentez Alarchon.
Interrogations and tortures of Alarchon were leaded by Contreras, paid by CIA. These data could be found in CIA memorandum from August 1978 and which was declassified several years ago, as well as other documents of the Department of State and of FBI.
Apropos, Baltasar Garzon was not the first who tries to interrogate Henry Kissinger. May 28, 2001, a similar attempt was made by French judge Roge Le Loir. Though, former Secretary of State, who was in Paris at that time, did not come according to subpoena and hastily left French capital. At that he was supported by US embassy in Paris and by State Department of the US which discreetly informed French side that for receiving information diplomatic channels should be used. While Le Loir addressed to Washington in 1999 through diplomatic channels, but he received no answer.
One more judge, Argentine Rodolfo Canocoba Chorral investigating cases of human rights' violation, kidnapping and murders of dissidents by Latin-American special services in 2001 took a decision about imprisonment pending trial of Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981 Argentine dictator) and about arrest if his property in sum of 1 million dollars because of accusing him of implication in a criminal organization carrying out Condor Operation. In the framework of the case, kidnapping of at least 80 people is being investigated. The judge addressed to the Interpol to arrest ex-Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner, Manuel Contreras and three officers and a policemen from Uruguay, who committed over 20 kidnappings in Buenos Aires. The judge confirmed that he could call ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ex-Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Rodolfo Chorral hoped in particular that through putting Henry Kissinger to the investigation, it will manage to get new information about Operation Condor.
While Chilean judge Juan Gusman Tapia who carried on the case of Pinochet addressed to US authorities asking for permission about receiving information from Kissinger about the fate of US journalist Charles Horman, killed by Pinochet's agents in 1973. Apropos, Horman became pre-image of main character of well-known Costa-Gavras film "Missing" which was awarded in 1982 with US Academy of Cinema's prize. According to one of the authors of a book about Videl, Kissinger once said to Argentine foreign minister of dictatorship time: "If you want to kill, do it fast." Therefore, now US administration defends a person, who is wanted to testify in two continents.
Baltasar Garzon hardly will be more lucky than his colleagues from other countries. However, the Spanish judge is known with his insistence and his principles. So, the "great Henry" should better not appear in Spain in the nearest future, not to get to prison.
One more time it should be noticed that US authorities fully mastered the principle of double standards. For the sake of justice (as it is understood in Washington) the White House is ready to send soldiers even to Antarctica. While at the same time, it did not want to help to other countries' justice. For, Kissinger is being called only to testify. Could it be, that official Washington is afraid of Kissinger's evidence to damage US prestige as the main bastion of democracy? Probably, it is really so. Therefore, ex-Secretary of State hardly will appear before Spanish trial.
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/18/27754.html
Henry Kissinger was Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State, his second in command.
He was a driving force behind the US war on Vietnam which killed 1 million Vietnamese people.
Kissinger was directly responsible for ordering the carpet-bombing of Cambodia in 1969.
He gave full backing and military assistance to the Pinochet coup in Chile, later sanctioning the murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976.
Kissinger backed the Pakistani government in opposing Bangladeshi indpendence. Once again he supplied arms and intelligence.
He gave the go-ahead for the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. Over 200,000 people were killed as a result.
He was also responsible for souring relations between Turkey, Greece and Cyprus, a division which still produces murder and maiming.
Kissinger’s legacy of American brutality around the world survives. He remains a hero to the warmongers in Washington and Downing Street.
Kissinger is arriving in London to talk to the top 2,000 businessmen in Britain. He has his snout in the corporate trough too. Kissinger Associates’ clients have included Union Carbide, Coca-Cola, American Express, ITT Lockheed, Arco and HSBC.
http://www.resist.org.uk/diary/kissinger.html
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Sao Paulo, Feb 26, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Former U.S. Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Henry Kissinger cancelled a planned March visit to Sao Paulo to avoid protests by human rights groups, the Brazilian press said Tuesday.
These groups allege that Kissinger supported "Operation Condor" - a collaborative effort by the military regimes of Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Paraguay to track down their political enemies in the 1970s - during his time in office.
Kissinger had intended to visit Sao Paulo March 12-13 to participate in the 65th anniversary of the Israelite Congregation of Sao Paulo, one of the largest Jewish organizations in Brazil. He was also to be awarded the Cruzeiro do Sul (Southern Cross) Order of Merit by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Kissinger informed event organizers of his decision, citing "unforeseen" circumstances, several newspapers reported Tuesday.
Jewish community leaders, however, told the press that fear of protests from human rights groups was the real motive for Kissinger's cancellation.
"It is unofficially known that Kissinger, after being informed of objections by certain groups (to the award), decided to avoid a politically embarrassing situation," Rabbi Henry Sobel of the Sao Paulo Israelite Congregation said.
Several human rights groups have collected signatures in the last few weeks petitioning Cardoso not to bestow Brazil's highest honor on Kissinger.
"We strongly urge (the government) not to bestow this honor, in the name of democracy, human rights, and human dignity," said a message from one group posted on the Internet.
Students
protest as Kissinger visits college
http://www.online.ie/news/irish_examiner/viewer.adp?article=1675681
ANGRY students protested at former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's visit to University College Cork yesterday.
Dr Kissinger was shielded by gardaí and college security staff as he made his way into the university's Boole library.
More than 400 students took part in the protest, chanting "The Hague not the Boole" and "No grand prize for genocide", claiming Dr Kissinger should be indicted for war crimes. They then held a minute's silence for what they called the victims of Dr Kissinger's foreign policy.
Two women from the Cork Atlantis Foundation approached gardaí manning the barriers and demanded they arrest Mr Kissinger.
English and sociology student Tracey Ryan, from Tipperary, said: "I'm outraged that he was invited here, especially as there was no consultation with the students."
Dave Edmond, 55, said: "I came to join the students. If we didn't protest we'd be genuflecting to American power."
Once inside Dr Kissinger said: "I have not responded to accusations like this in the past."
He dismissed the claims against him as "distortions and misrepresentations of the facts". He added: "Things have been taken out of context. They are fundamentally beneath contempt."
During the questions and answers session after the conference Dr Kissinger rejected out of hand suggestions that the US "illegally bombed Cambodia" during the Vietnam war.
He said that when President Richard Nixon took office 500 Americans were dying every week in Vietnam.
After "repeated warnings" to the North Vietnamese to quit the Cambodia region bordering Vietnam, the US had bombed the area.
The zone that was attacked had been cleared of Cambodians and the country did not object to the campaign. That was a matter of record, Dr Kissinger said.
Groups including the Cork Peace Alliance, Earthwatch and the Socialist Party joined in yesterday's protest.
Dozens of students sat in front of Dr Kissinger's car. Gardaí warned them they could be arrested for obstruction but the students refused to budge.
They braced themselves for trouble but the gardaí suddenly dispersed, leaving the protesters perplexed.
It later emerged that Dr Kissinger had been taken out a back door.
http://www.online.ie/news/irish_examiner/viewer.adp?article=1675681
Visiting
Kissinger enraged by link to Milosevic
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=697780&issue_id=6958
FORMER US Secretary of State, Dr Henry Kissinger, denied being a war criminal yesterday, claiming it was an insult to human intelligence for protestors in Cork to compare him with Slobodan Milosevic.
Protestors at University College Cork chanted and waved banners bearing the slogan 'The Milosevic of Manhattan' prior to the arrival of the 56th US Secretary of State, who was in office during the controversial Nixon administration.
"These people are throwing around allegedly criminal charges without a shred of real evidence. I don't know who they represent but I wish their knowledge equalled their passion."
The elderly statesman, who was visiting the university to deliver a speech at an MBA Association of Ireland business conference, said he has never replied to derogatory remarks in the media.
"I consider them (the accusations) fundamentally beneath contempt. They are based on distortions and misrepresentations."
The focus of Kissinger's' address was on US foreign policy particularly in aftermath of September 11.
Dr Kissinger said the international scene is experiencing an extraordinary period of change for which there is no historical precedent. One of the biggest challenges facing the US administration, he said, was to bring countries together to prevent the spread of biological and chemical weapons.
Dr Kissinger's visit was condemned by human rights organisations who claim he flouted international law in his dealings with Bangladesh, Chile and East Timor.
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=697780&issue_id=6958
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/letters/2002/0302/index.html
Sir, - Please allow me to summarise future European foreign policy, as advocated by Dr. Henry Kissinger, speaking in University College Cork:
1. Russia is a threat (or will be, once again, in a few years time).
2. Japan is a threat.
3. China is a threat.
4. The United States is not a threat to anyone.
5. Europe should ally itself with the United States in opposing the threat of 1 to 3 above (and all others).
Our future is secure. - Yours, etc.,
CATHERINE FORDE,
MacCurtains Villas,
College Road,
Cork.
Sir, - I would like to commend the students and workers who gave Henry Kissinger an appropriate welcome TO UCC last Wednesday. Their principled stand throws into relief the moral bankruptcy of the assorted worthies who fêted this grotesque fraud.
Kissinger's crimes against humanity are a matter of public record. For those seeking the "real evidence" demanded by Kissinger in Cork, I would recommend Christopher Hitchens's damning book The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Verso, 2001). - Is mise,
DONAL Ó DRISCEOIL,
Annmount,
Friars Walk,
Cork.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/letters/2002/0302/index.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former President George Bush was dismissed as "too weak" for a secret breakthrough mission to China in the 1970s by then-President Richard Nixon and his foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger, according to a White House telephone transcript obtained by Reuters on Monday.
When Nixon proposed Bush as a cloaked emissary for a trip that would eventually pave the way for the reopening of U.S.-Chinese relations, Kissinger responded, "Absolutely not, he is too soft and not sophisticated enough."
The gravelly voiced national security adviser, who ended up undertaking the diplomatic journey himself, added: "Bush would be too weak."
"I thought so, too, but I was trying to think of somebody with a title," Nixon replied. At the time of the call -- April 27, 1971 -- Bush was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The transcript is one of more than 20,000 pages documenting Kissinger's telephone diplomacy, which are to be made available to the public after being kept under lock and key for three decades.
On Monday the National Archives took delivery of copies of Kissinger's telephone transcripts made between 1969 and 1974.
A National Archives spokeswoman said the documents would be kept at College Park, Maryland. Researchers will sift through and then officially release them to the public, in a process that could take up to a year.
"These are the Kissinger wire-taps," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, who lobbied for public access to the papers.
"U.S. foreign policy has never been so centralized in two people as it was in the Kissinger-Nixon era. And these transcripts put you in the room when Kissinger's talking to his boss and every world leader," Blanton added.
Until recently, Kissinger, 78, fiercely guarded access to his transcripts, saying they were personal and 90 percent of the information was in documents already in the public domain.
His papers were kept in the Library of Congress, with Kissinger designated as the gatekeeper. Five years after his death the papers were due to pass into public hands.
Monday's bequest was his second in a year. After pressure from Blanton's organization, Kissinger last August gave the State Department 10,000 pages of documents. He was secretary of State between 1973 and 1977, under first Nixon and then Gerald Ford.
"Once the State Department took the official position that these were government records then Kissinger could hardly say no when, at our request, the National Archives came calling for the White House transcripts," Blanton said.
German-born Kissinger shaped policies behind major world events of the 1970s, including the growing contact between Israel and the Arab world and U.S.-Soviet arms control talks.
Secrecy was a Kissinger hallmark. After rejecting Bush for the Chinese mission, he went on to negotiate himself on behalf of Nixon to open the Communist country to the West without even telling the then-U.N. ambassador.
Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his role in talks to end the Vietnam War.
But in the 1971 declassified transcript he boasted: "Mr. President, I have not said this before but I think if we get this thing working, we will end Vietnam this year."
Kissinger, who set up a consulting firm, continues to be an independent diplomatic mover-and-shaker, recently urging nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan to sort out their differences at the negotiating table.
Early last month, a distinguished American went to see a British regiment. After more than 30 years at the centre of events, Henry Kissinger has an excuse for being blasé about such excursions. Yet there was none of that on this occasion. The helicopter was fog-bound and it is a long journey to Hereford by road, but Dr Kissinger’s hosts at the SAS’s Stirling Lines HQ were delighted by his obvious enthusiasm. In turn, he was ‘tremendously impressed’ by their ‘high motivation and professionalism’.
The visit was not confined to pleasantries at senior level. The Doctor had a lively meeting with 70 SAS men of all ranks. The regiment is much the least hierarchical outfit in the British army; the respect due to rank has to be earned, and constantly re-earned. As the men are used to speaking their minds to their own officers, they naturally extend the same courtesy to everyone else. Nor are they big on ‘Sirs’. Dr Kissinger was addressed as ‘Boss’ or ‘Boss Kissinger’, which amused him. Indeed, his unstuffiness and evident enthusiasm for vigorous debate impressed a group of men who pride themselves on being hard to impress. ‘Good bloke, that,’ said a sergeant afterwards: probably the most complimentary remark he had ever made about someone of his own sex.
Boss Kissinger rapidly realised that he would have to defend his country. He was talking to men with a grievance, who believed that American generals had let bin Laden escape. Some of Dr Kissinger’s audience had just come back from Afghanistan. They had taken part in the attack on the cave complex at Tora Bora, where two squadrons of the SAS went into action: a significant proportion of its total strength. Fully manned, a squadron has 64 men; not since the second world war have so many SAS men fought in the same engagement.
It is to be hoped that someone will eventually write an account of the battle of Tora Bora, for it was a feat of arms; an epic of skill and courage, even by the standards of the SAS.
And not only British skill and courage. The SAS was fighting alongside Delta Force, the US army’s special forces, and though the Brits did not think that the Yanks were quite their equal, our men were impressed by their men. Delta Force is not the same as the SAS. Much larger, its nearest British equivalent would be the SAS, merged with 3 (commando) brigade and 16 (air assault) brigade. As a result of Afghanistan, there are now pressures in the Pentagon to create an inner-core special force on British lines. Donald Rumsfeld’s enthusiasm for the SAS goes beyond tributes at press conferences; he wants one of his own.
But the SAS was happy enough with Delta Force. It was the American high command which let their own men down, and everyone else. The SAS and Delta Force won a victory for the West. The American generals then ensured that the full fruits of victory could not be harvested.
By the end of the battle, the SAS was certain that it knew where bin Laden was: in a mountain valley, where he could have been trapped. The men of the SAS would have been happy to move in for the kill, dividing themselves into beaters and guns. Going round the side, the guns would have positioned themselves at the head of the valley to cut off bin Laden’s retreat. The beaters would then have swept up the glen. If such a drive had taken place, the SAS is convinced that bin Laden would not have escaped. It would have been happy to fight alongside Delta Force and would have been glad of the assistance of American ground-attack aircraft. But it would also have been confident that it could finish the job on its own.
It did not get the chance. The SAS was under overall US command, and the American generals faltered. Understandably enough, they wanted Delta Force to be in at the death; they would have preferred it if bin Laden had fallen to an American bullet. So would Delta Force; every bit as much as the SAS, its men were raring to go. It was their commanders who held them back.
Being in at such a death involves the risk of death. It seems unlikely that bin Laden could have been bagged without casualties. The men on the ground did not quail at that prospect; the generals on the radio did. They wanted Delta Force to kill bin Laden; they were not prepared to allow their men to be killed in the process. They would not even allow USAF ground-attack aircraft to operate below 12,000 feet. As far as the SAS could tell, their hope was that the ragged-trousered militants of the Northern Alliance would do most of the dangerous stuff — and take most of the casualties — while Delta Force came in for the coup de grâce. Nor were the American generals willing to allow the SAS to win the glory which they were denying to American troops.
So strategy was sabotaged by schizoid irresolution. There followed hours of fiffing and faffing, while gold coins were helicoptered in, to encourage the Northern Alliance. The USA is the greatest military power in the history of the planet, spending well over $300 billion a year on defence, yet everything was paralysed because it would not allow its fighting men to fight. While the generals agonised about bodybags, bin Laden was escaping.
Henry Kissinger tried to put all this in context. He told the SAS that in his first five weeks as National Security Adviser, the US lost at least 400 lives every week in Vietnam, and that was only a small percentage of the total casualties. The scars of those losses in a lost war take a long time to heal.
Naturally, Henry Kissinger was only prepared to explain the American generals’ mindset, not to criticise it. There are reports that Secretary Rumsfeld is less restrained, and that he has made his dissatisfaction clear. But if Dr Kissinger is right, Mr Rumsfeld will have to do more than that. The SAS formed the firm impression that in Dr Kissinger’s view, Iraq will be the next big target; that it is no longer a question of whether, but when.
If so, it is time for the Americans to discard fantasies about toppling Saddam by airpower plus local surrogates: Northern Kurds, Southern Shia, et al. If the US wants to get Saddam, it will have to go in and get him, with a full-scale invasion. But are the generals who hung back at Tora Bora the right men to invade Iraq?
When Charles Guthrie was Chief of our General Staff, he had a simple principle when choosing generals. His reading of military history had taught him that the generals who rise to the top during long periods of peace are rarely fitted to fight a war. So he was determined to promote men whose temperament was not that of a peacetime soldier, and to ensure that all the key commands in the British army were held by warriors.
It is now time for Donald Rumsfeld to retire a number of his Vietnamised, risk-averse generals, and to replace them with warriors. After all, he will shortly have a war to fight.
http://www.abc.net.au/international/stories/s407737.htm
A Nobel Peace Prize winner has joined court action seeking to try former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger for torture, disappearances and murders in South America during his time in office.
Guatamalan indigenous leader Rigaberta Menchu has joined individuals and human rights groups in the suit against Dr Kissinger and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Courts in Chile are being asked to rule that the two men were responsible for Operation Condor, a secret agreement between various South American governments to eliminate opposition in the 1970s.
Ms Menchu, who won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, has joined the prosecution after meeting with the head of Chile's appeals court.
She says declassified CIA documents will prove that Dr Kissinger and General Pinochet co-authored Operation Condor as part of a wider plan to prevent any leftist governments being elected in South America.
http://www.abc.net.au/international/stories/s407737.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1536000/1536547.stm
A lawsuit has been filed against the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger over his alleged role in the death of the former Chilean army commander, General Rene Schneider, in 1970. The suit was filed in Washington by members of the general's family. They accuse Mr Kissinger of being involved in what they say was a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plot to kill him.General Schneider died after resisting a kidnapping attempt which, the family says, was part of a wider plot to prevent the Chilean Marxist leader, Salvador Allende, from becoming president.Mr Kissinger has repeatedly denied any involvement in General Schneider's death. The court action follows several requests by judges in Chile and Argentina judges to question Mr Kissinger over human rights abuses committed during the military regimes of the 1970s.The BBC correspondent in Washington says the lawsuit stems from an investigation by a US television network, which claims that CIA communications contradict Mr Kissinger's version of events. Conspiracy
General Schneider's family say the botched kidnapping attempt took place as part of a covert White House campaign to prevent Socialist Salvador Allende from becoming president.
Both Mr Kissinger and his boss, the then-president Richard Nixon, were heavily involved in backing anti-Allende factions in Chile, the indictment alleges. The general was a key player in Chile at the time as he had provided crucial backing to Mr Allende after his narrow presidential election victory on 4 September 1970. In an apparent attempt to remove Mr Allende's military support, coup plotters attempted to kidnap General Schneider, but shot him when he reached for his gun in self-defence. He died two days after the attempt on 24 October 1970 in Santiago's Military Hospital. 'No connection'
Mr Kissinger, President Nixon's national security adviser at the time, and later secretary of state for both Mr Nixon and his successor, Gerald Ford, has always denied his involvement.
In 1975, a US Senate investigation established that America had indeed backed a coup which eventually brought down Mr Allende three years later, and set up the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.However, Mr Kissinger testified before the Senate hearing that he cut off all support for the coup plotters the week before General Schneider was murdered.A high-ranking State Department official referred to previously declassified documents about the situation in Chile during the 1960s and '70s, saying "the documents speak for themselves".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1536000/1536547.stm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7048-2001Sep10.html
The family of Chilean military commander Rene Schneider, who was killed 31 years ago during a botched kidnapping, filed a federal lawsuit in Washington yesterday accusing Henry A. Kissinger, Richard M. Helms and other officials in the Nixon administration of orchestrating a series of covert activities that led to his assassination.
The lawsuit, which attorneys said is based heavily upon recently declassified CIA documents, seeks more than $3 million in damages from Kissinger, Helms and the U.S. government for "summary execution," assault and other civil rights violations. It alleges that Schneider was targeted because he stood in the way of a military coup designed to keep leftist Salvador Allende from taking power as Chile's president. At the time, Kissinger was Nixon's national security adviser, and Helms headed the CIA.
The suit revisits one of Chile's most notorious crimes and marks the first time that high-level U.S. officials have been sued in connection with the shooting. Schneider was the left-leaning head of the Chilean Armed Forces, and his murder was long considered to have been carried out by right-wing extremists within the military. The suit focuses on U.S. government ties to the assailants that were described in the declassified papers.
"The United States did not want Allende to assume the presidency, and my father was the only political obstacle for a military coup," said Schneider's eldest son, also named Rene Schneider, who resides in Chile. He and his brother, Raul, an artist living in Paris, are the named plaintiffs. "Obviously, he had to be taken out of the way."
The family chose to sue after carefully reviewing the materials that became public in the past two years, Schneider said. The documents, he said, "made me realize that my father's death is perhaps the one crime perpetrated outside the U.S. that most clearly links back to the U.S. government, the CIA, and Kissinger in particular.
"I don't want revenge," he said. "I want the truth to be established."
Kissinger did not return a telephone message left at his New York office. Helms denied wrongdoing but would not discuss details, saying that he hadn't seen the suit and that "it's a long and complicated case."
In his 1979 autobiography, Kissinger denied involvement in Schneider's death. He wrote that the group that tried to kidnap Schneider "proceeded on its own in defiance of CIA instructions and without our knowledge."
The role of the United States in Schneider's death has been studied for years. A Senate committee in 1975 found evidence that U.S. officials hoped to instigate a coup to stop Allende and provided arms and encouragement to those plotting the general's kidnapping. But the committee said its evidence showed the CIA had withdrawn support of the kidnapping before it was carried out and never envisioned that he would be killed.
Thousands of additional documents were declassified in recent years and provided a more comprehensive account of what happened. In addition, the CIA provided a report to Congress last year that detailed the agency's activities in Chile in the early 1970s.
According to the Schneider family, the materials showed that the CIA continued to encourage a coup in the days leading to the kidnapping. The CIA also provided $35,000 to some of those jailed for Schneider's death, the suit said.
"Every single factual assertion in this complaint is based on a document that has been furnished by the U.S. government," said Michael E. Tigar, the family's attorney.
The chain of events began Sept. 15, 1970, when Nixon met with Kissinger and Helms and ordered that action be taken to prevent Allende from assuming office after an election in which he had won the most votes. According to the lawsuit, Nixon said he was not concerned about risks and authorized $10 million to be spent on a military coup.
But military officials in Chile made clear that Chile's commander in chief, Schneider, would not go along with a coup, the suit said. The lawsuit said Kissinger and the CIA supported a secret plan to kidnap Schneider so that the military could take over before Allende's election could be approved by Chile's Congress.
On the morning of Oct. 22, 1972, after two aborted kidnapping attempts, Schneider was ambushed en route to work. The general's car was surrounded by about six cars, and struck from behind by one of them. The kidnappers smashed the back-seat windows on both sides. As Schneider was getting out his gun to defend himself, the assailants shot him. He died three days later at a military hospital, one day after Allende's victory was ratified.
Allende remained in power until a 1973 military coup that was indirectly supported by the CIA; he killed himself while under siege. Gen. Augusto Pinochet then began a 17-year reign in which thousands of people were killed or tortured. Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998 and indicted in Chile last year. But an appellate court recently suspended the legal proceedings because of concerns about his mental fitness for trial.
Military courts in Chile found that Schneider's death was caused by two military groups, one led by Roberto Viaux and the other by Camilo Valenzuela. Viaux and Valenzuela, both generals, were convicted of charges of conspiring to cause a coup, and Viaux also was convicted of kidnapping. The CIA aided both groups, the lawsuit said.
In a section of his autobiography entitled "The Coup That Never Was," Kissinger recounted the September 1970 meeting with Nixon and the plans to move forward with a secret coup agenda. He said there was less to the plan "than met the eye" because Nixon had a history of backing off plans as their implications became clearer.
Kissinger wrote that he ended the plan Oct. 15 and that Viaux's group acted on its own. He also wrote that no one, not even Viaux, ever intended to assassinate Schneider.
Peter Kornbluh, a Chile expert at the nonprofit National Security Archive, who lobbied for full declassification of Chile documents, said the lawsuit could force Kissinger, Helms and others to provide more information about what took place.
"This crime was Chile's equivalent of the Kennedy assassination at the time," Kornbluh said. "It was an unparalleled, unprecedented act of political terrorism."
Kissinger has faced other recent scrutiny. In May, he declined to appear before a French judge who wanted to question him about allegations of human rights violations in Latin America during the 1970s. He referred the request to the State Department.
Staff writer Anthony Faiola, staff researcher Robert Thomason and special correspondent Pascale Bonnefoy contributed to this report. Bonnefoy reported from Santiago, Chile.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7048-2001Sep10.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,309983-412,00.shtml
60 Minutes has learned that the family of a murdered Chilean general plans to file a lawsuit seeking damages against Henry Kissinger for his alleged role in the death of Gen. Rene Schneider, the commander of the Chilean Army who was killed by kidnappers in 1970. Citing recently declassified government documents, the civil suit is expected to claim that the CIA supported a kidnapping plot which led to the death of the Chilean general. The CIA’s support for the kidnapping was part of a larger effort by the Agency to instigate a coup in Chile – an objective ordered by President Nixon and overseen by Kissinger. Bob Simon reports.
Rene Schneider Jr., son of the late general, tells Simon, “I always wanted to put all this behind me, but we have a duty to humanity to speak about this. It would be irresponsible to remain silent.” Accounts of the former U.S. ambassador to Chile and the embassy’s former military attaché - both of whom appear in the report - and the documents tell the Cold War story of the Nixon administration’s desire to thwart leftist politician Salvadore Allende’s successful election to Chile’s presidency. The Nixon White House sought a military coup in Chile before Allende’s inauguration, but Schneider, a constitutional defender, stood in the way. Schneider was shot by the would-be kidnappers when he reached for his revolver.
Kissinger declined to speak to 60 Minutes, but when questioned about Chile in the past, he has responded that he personally cut off support for the coup conspirators during a meeting with the CIA on Oct. 15, 1970, a few days before Schneider’s murder. CIA officials, however, differed with Kissinger on this point in subsequent investigations. The Senate committee that investigated the matter could not determine who was telling the truth.
http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,309983-412,00.shtml
SANTIAGO, July 5 (AP)- Thursday July 5 4:30 PM ET
The judge who indicted Gen. Augusto Pinochet wants to question former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about the assassination of an American filmmaker in Chile during the former dictator's rule, a court official said Thursday.
Judge Juan Guzman has prepared more than 50 questions to be posed to Kissinger about the killing of Charles Horman shortly after the 1973 coup led by Pinochet, Supreme Court clerk Carlos Meneses said. Guzman also prepared questions for Nathaniel Davis, the U.S. ambassador to Chile at the time.
No details about the questions were immediately available, but they are believed to center on any knowledge the U.S. officials may have had about the case. The Supreme Court must approve the questions before they are sent to Kissinger and Davis through the Foreign Ministry and the State Department. Approval is considered certain.
Kissinger was former President Richard Nixon's assistant for national security affairs from 1969 to 1973 and was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.
Guzman, who indicted Pinochet on human rights charges, is also handling a criminal lawsuit filed in Chile against the former ruler by Horman's widow, Joyce. Horman was arrested Sept. 17, 1973, six days after the bloody coup in which Pinochet toppled Marxist President Salvador Allende.
He was taken to the main Santiago soccer stadium, which was used as a detention camp, where he was killed. According to an official report, hundreds were tortured and executed at the site. Horman's case was the subject of the film "Missing," starring Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon.
Joyce Horman's legal action against Pinochet is sponsored in Chile by local lawyers Sergio Corvalan and Fabiola Letelier - sister of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean socialist killed by a car bombing in Washington, D.C., in 1976. That crime was subsequently traced to Pinochet's security services.
Joyce Horman came to Chile last December to file suit against Pinochet. At the time, she said she decided to act because documents declassified by the Clinton administration had shed new light on her husband's case. "I hope to get more truth and more justice, and I expect the United States government will support this effort," she said.
The 85-year-old Pinochet, meanwhile, remained at the Santiago Military Hospital recovering from dental surgery. "My father has deteriorated, his condition has worsened," Pinochet's younger son, Marco Antonio, said as he left the hospital after visiting his father. Pinochet's daughter, Lucia, angrily rejected suggestions by opponents that the hospitalization may be an attempt to escape legal problems, saying: "We do not lie about my father's health."
Pinochet been hospitalized repeatedly in recent months - times that coincided with rulings in his legal fight against trial on human rights charges.
Rulings are expected as early as next week on appeals he has filed over his indictment on charges of covering up 18 kidnappings and 57 homicides in the case known as the "Caravan of Death," a military operation that executed political prisoners shortly after the coup.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F05%2F31%2Fwkiss31.xml
HENRY KISSINGER, the former US Secretary of State, left Paris yesterday after declining to answer the questions of a French magistrate seeking information about political killings in Chile.
The American embassy told Judge Roger Le Loire that he should ask the State Department for details of American knowledge of the murder and disappearance of political opponents - including five French nationals - under the Pinochet regime after the 1973 coup.
Mr Kissinger was visiting Paris when police delivered a summons to the Ritz, where he was staying, asking him to present himself at the Palais de Justice.
The embassy later sent a letter to M Le Loire saying other obligations had prevented the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize winner from replying to the request and that he should direct his questions to Washington through official channels.
A State Department spokesman said it would pass on to the French authorities what information it had about the disappearance of French citizens during the post-coup era.
Maitre William Bourdon, representing families of the missing French nationals, said Mr Kissinger - Secretary of State from 1973-77 - had a duty to tell what he knew. M Le Loire is pursuing a campaign to discover the fate of the five French people who went missing in the years after Gen Pinochet came to power.
One, Jean-Yves Claudet-Fernandez, disappeared during an operation codenamed "Condor" in which Chile and other South American regimes co-operated to eradicate political opponents. M Le Loire says the Americans knew about the plan.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F05%2F31%2Fwkiss31.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1357000/1357632.stm
A US embassy has reportedly told a French judge probing the 1970s disappearance of French citizens in Chile that it does not want him to question former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
French Judge Roger Le Loire is looking into allegations that five French citizens who disappeared in Chile during General Augusto Pinochet's military regime were kidnapped and tortured. French justice officials on Monday delivered a summons to a Paris hotel where Mr Kissinger was staying on a private visit. But the US embassy in Paris told a French court that Mr Kissinger had other obligations and was unable to appear, judicial sources said on condition of anonymity.
The former US secretary of state under Presidents Richard M Nixon and Gerald Ford, was under no legal obligation to answer the summons. A spokesman for the US embassy said officials wished the court had not gone directly to Mr Kissinger with the request.
"We understand that the court is examining a period when Dr Kissinger was an official of the US Government," spokesman Richard Lankford said. "We therefore believe the court should present its request through government channels to the Department of State."
Lawyer William Bourdon, who represents families of French citizens who disappeared during the 1973-1990 Pinochet regime, had requested the summons. Mr Kissinger's testimony is wanted in connection with alleged exchanges between US and Chilean secret services that took place after the 1973 coup that brought General Pinochet to power.
A Chilean judge has indicted General Pinochet on homicide and kidnapping charges, holding him responsible for the atrocities committed by the Caravan of Death, a military group that executed 75 political prisoners shortly after the coup in which the general ousted President Salvador Allende.
General Pinochet is currently under house arrest and awaiting trial in Chile.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1357000/1357632.stm
http://books.guardian.co.uk/digestedread/story/0,6550,507485,00.html
The United States believes that it alone pursues and indicts war criminals; nothing in its political or journalistic culture allows for the fact that it might be harbouring or sheltering such a senior one. Yet one man has now grasped what so many others have not: if Augusto Pinochet is not immune then no one is. And that man is now extremely twitchy.
It is hard to imagine that the pudgy man in the black tie who picks up $25,000 for an after-dinner speech, is the same man who ordered or sanctioned the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient politicians and the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers, journalists and clerics who got in his way. But it is.
In writing this book I have been amazed by the wealth of hostile and discreditable material, such as the betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds and the support for South African destabilisation of Angola, that I have been compelled to omit.
Morally repulsive as these may be, I have limited myself to those Kissingerian offences, as revealed in declassified documents, for which there is a prima facie case for prosecution on counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and offences against international law.
Kissinger symbolises the pornography of power. In 1968, he was negotiating a Vietnam peace treaty in Paris for President Johnson. He did a deal with the Republicans to sabotage the peace negotiations to help secure Richard Nixon's election to president. In return, the world's self-styled "greatest peacemaker" would be promoted under the new administration. Kissinger's venality extended the war by four years and cost the lives of millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians - not to mention many thousands of US servicemen.
Indictments should also include deliberate mass killings of civilian populations in Indochina, collusion in mass murder and assassination in Bangladesh, the personal planning of the murder of General Schneider in Chile, involvement in a plan to murder Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus and the incitement and enabling of genocide in East Timor.
In the name of innumerable victims, it is time for justice to take a hand. So, Harold Evans and Tina Brown, the next time Kissinger attends one of your elegant soirees, rather than fawning to him, why don't you arrest him?
And if you really are pressed: The digested read, digested ...
A compelling polemic that makes Hitler seem like a straightforward kinda guy, and will leave Augusto Pinochet and Slobodan Milosevic hoping they get to do their time in solitary
http://books.guardian.co.uk/digestedread/story/0,6550,507485,00.html
"In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here." - To Augusto Pinochet, June 8, 1976
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people." - About Chile prior to the CIA overthrow of the popularly elected government of Salvadore Allende
"Covert action should not be confused with missionary work." - To Congress in explaining why the US betrayed the Iraqi Kurds in 1975.
Kissinger and Ford visited Jakarta in early December, 1975. Less than 48 hours after they left, Indonesia invaded East Timor, beginning a genocidal campaign that would claim the lives of over 200,000 East Timorese. Philip Liechty, the CIA desk officer in Jakarta, said, "They came and gave Suharto the green light. Š We were ordered to give the Indonesian military everything they wanted. I saw all the hard intelligence; the place was a free-fire zone. Women and children were herded into school buildings that were set alight - and all because we didn't want some little country being neutral or leftist at the United Nations."
The CIA sponsored the 1973 coup against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, funding reactionary military elements and helping them to draw up lists of over 20,000 people to be assassinated after the coup. Kissinger was an integral part of this, arguing for the coup as above. He was also in charge when Chilean secret police murdered Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffit in Washington in 1976.
In 1969, Kissinger and Nixon authorized the "secret" bombing of Cambodia, a neutral country, followed by the overthrow of its legitimate government in 1973. "U.S. B-52s pounded Cambodia for 160 consecutive days [in 1973], dropping more than 240,000 short tons of bombs on rice fields, water buffalo, villages Š and on such troop positions as the guerrillas might maintain." All of this against a peasant society with no air defense whatsoever. Estimates are that over 500,000 people were killed, and the country's agricultural base destroyed, leading to widespread starvation.
Not only did Kissinger and Nixon continue the war for several years, after saying they wouldn't, they escalated it in many ways. They mined North Vietnam's harbors and reinstated the bombing of North Vietnam, ordering the massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, some of the most severe aerial assaults in history. Their policies resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and the destruction of the country.
Kissinger is also responsible for crimes in too many other countries to name, including Palestine, where his support for Israel enabled them to continue their occupation of the West Bank and other areas, and Bangladesh, where Nixon's "tilt" toward Pakistan caused the murder of millions.
SINGAPORE, DEC. 7 (2001). Twenty-six years to the day, the Indonesian dictator, General Suharto, ordered his troops to invade East Timor with the full backing of the United States Government, declassified documents posted on the website of the National Security Archive of the George Washington University show. Operation Komodo was launched on December 7, 1975, a day after Gen. Suharto held talks with the then U.S. President, Mr. Gerald Ford, and the powerful Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, in Indonesia.
A declassified ``secret'' cable dated December 6, 1975, shows a confident Gen. Suharto pushing Mr. Ford and Dr. Kissinger on the East Timor issue, something which the two leaders have been quiet about. Gen. Suharto: ``....It is now important to determine what we can do to establish peace and order for the present and the future in the interest of the security of the area and for Indonesia. These are some of the considerations that we are now contemplating. We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action.``
Mr. Ford: ``We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have.''
Dr. Kissinger: ``It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self-defence or it is a foreign operation. It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly. We would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens after we return....we understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned....whatever you do, however, we will try to handle in the best way possible.''
Mr. Ford: ``We recognise that you have a time factor. We have merely expressed our view from our particular point of view.'' To a question from Dr. Kissinger whether a long guerrilla war was anticipated in the then Portuguese colonial possession, Gen. Suharto responded: ``There will probably be a small guerrilla war....the UDT (Timorese Democratic Union) represents former Government officials and Fretilin (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor) represents former soldiers. They are infected the same is the Portuguese Army with communism.'' With those words, Gen. Suharto ended the conversation on East Timor and turned to the issue of ``trade relations'' between Indonesia and the United States. And, then, there was no stopping Gen. Suharto. He sent in his troops, who according to one account, killed between 60,000 to 100,000 East Timorese in the period 1975-76 alone.
Both Mr. Ford and Dr. Kissinger seemed to be smarting from the debacle of Vietnam and the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In an earlier meeting with Gen. Suharto at Camp David on July 5, 1975, Mr. Ford said: ``Let me say that we are as firmly committed and interested in Southeast Asia. The events in Indochina have in no way diminished our interest or commitment in the area.''
The issue of East Timor and possible Indonesian action was raised by the General at the Camp David meeting. He told Mr. Ford, as per the contents of another declassified document, ``....The third point I want to raise is Portuguese decolonisation....with respect to Timor, we support carrying out decolonisation through the process of self-determination.''
``In ascertaining the views of the Timor people, there are three possibilities: independence, staying with Portugal, or to join Indonesia. With such a small territory and no resources, an independent country would hardly be viable. With Portugal it would be a big burden with Portugal being so far away. If they want to integrate into Indonesia as an independent nation, that is not possible because Indonesia is a unitary State. So the only way is to integrate into Indonesia,'' the document, as seen on the website, said.
So, Gen. Suharto had prepared his ground well before acting as he did. He had softened the Americans up before making his move. There is little doubt that the Indonesian dictator, who ruled his country for 32 long years, comes across as a canny politician, who had no doubts about his course of action.
The United States offered full and direct approval to Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor, a move by then-president Suharto which consigned the territory to 25 years of oppression, official documents released Thursday show.
The documents prove conclusively for the first time that the United States gave a 'green light' to the invasion, the opening salvo in an occupation that cost the lives of up to 200,000 East Timorese.
General Suharto briefed US president Gerald Ford and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger on his plans for the former Portuguese colony hours before the invasion, according to documents collected by George Washington University's National Security Archive.
When Ford and Kissinger called in Jakarta on their way back from a summit in Beijing on December 6, 1975, Suharto claimed that in the interests of Asia and regional stability, he had to bring stability to East Timor, to which Portugal was trying to grant autonomy.
"We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action," Suharto told his visitors, according to a long classified State Department cable.
Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have."
Kissinger, who has denied the subject of Timor came up during the talks, appeared to be concerned about the domestic political implications of an Indonesian invasion.
"It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly, we would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens, happens after we return.
"The president will be back on Monday at 2:00 pm Jakarta time. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better, if it were done after we returned."
The invasion took place on December 7, the day after the Ford-Suharto meeting.
Kissinger has consistently rejected criticism of the Ford Administration's conduct on East Timor.
During a launch in 1995 for his book "Diplomacy," Kissinger said at a New York hotel it was perhaps "regrettable" that for US officials, the implications of Indonesia's Timor policy were lost in a blizzard of geopolitical issues following the Vietnam War.
"Timor was never discussed with us when we were in Indonesia," Kissinger said, according to a transcript of the meeting distributed by the East Timor Action network -- which advocated independence for East Timor.
"At the airport as we were leaving, the Indonesians told us that they were going to occupy the Portuguese colony of Timor. To us that did not seem like a very significant event."
The documents also show that Kissinger was concerned at the use of US weapons by Indonesia during the East Timor invasion.
By law, the arms could only be used in self defense, but it appears that Kissinger was concerned mostly on the interpretation of the legislation -- not the use of the weapons.
"It depends on how we construe it, whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation," he is quoted as saying.
The eastern part of the island of Timor, situated north of the Australian coast, was invaded by Jakarta in 1975 and annexed the following year.
After a 25-year independence campaign and guerrilla war, the territory voted overwhelmingly for independence in August 1999 in a referendum which triggered a wave of murderous violence by pro-Jakarta militias.
When the names of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger popped up intertwined in the news last week, it was a magical moment for human rights activists worldwide. For Kissinger, no doubt, it was something very different: a source of great displeasure, certainly, and perhaps a harbinger of worse things to come.
Last Monday, an appeals court in Santiago ordered Pinochet to submit to the humiliation faced by any common criminal: to have his fingerprints and mug shots, front and profile, taken by the national police. The former general's defense lawyers are still fighting bitterly to spare him this humiliation.
But the battle was lost even before their defeat last week. For those of us who survived Pinochet's 1973 military coup and his ensuing 17 bloody years of dictatorship, and especially for the relatives of those who didn't, the fight has never been about the narrow issue of hauling the 85-year-old former general before a police camera or a magistrate's bench. Much more important has been to correct the historical record and to forever bestow upon Pinochet and his collaborators their soiled legacy: primary responsibility for the murder, or "disappearance," of more than 3,100 civilians, and the systematic torture and jailing of ten of thousands of others. The human rights battle in Chile transcended individual trials and focused on rescuing and restoring a collective, historic memory that was nearly expunged by the powerful and the arrogant.
Which brings us to Kissinger. At roughly the same hour that this latest decision in the Pinochet case came down, agents of the French police arrived at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, where Kissinger was participating in a seminar, and served him with a summons requesting that he testify as a witness in the investigation of five French citizens who disappeared under Pinochet's rule.
The summons, which carried no legal obligation for Kissinger to appear, was issued at the request of William Bourdon, a lawyer representing the French victims. Bourdon insists it is "essential" that the former secretary of state testify, given the manifold exchanges between the U.S. and Chilean intelligence services at the time Kissinger was overseeing the U.S. foreign policy apparatus.
Kissinger, who first served as President Richard M. Nixon's national security advisor and then as secretary of State from 1973 to 1977 under both Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, was neck deep in U.S. intrigues that led to Pinochet's ascension. Kissinger was point man in the covert plotting by the U.S. to destabilize and overthrow the elected Chilean government of Socialist Salvador Allende, for whom I served as translator in the early 1970s. One of those plots resulted in the kidnap and murder of Chilean Army Chief of Staff Rene Schneider. Recently declassified U.S. documents suggest that Kissinger and the Nixon administration actively supported Pinochet's 1973 coup against Allende, in which the Chilean president perished, and more than a century of Chilean democratic rule was ended.
Those same documents further reveal that Kissinger's State Department had knowledge of "Operation Condor," a scheme concocted by Pinochet and other South American dictators to coordinate the assassination of opposition leaders. The most dramatic of those killings took place just blocks from Kissinger's Foggy Bottom offices in September 1976, when Pinochet's secret police set off a car bomb in downtown Washington D.C., killing Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier and his American associate Ronni Moffit.
While Kissinger obviously has much he could tell about these dark chapters, he ignored the French summons and flew on to Italy. The U.S. Embassy in Paris told the French court that issued the subpoena that it did not want Kissinger questioned, and that he had other pressing "obligations." It was not surprising. As the Chileans like to say, in this world there are Big Dogs and Little Dogs. And Kissinger is about as big as they get.
But he should neither be cocky nor confident, for his circumstances are starting to become tantalizingly similar to the discredited dictator he once coddled. When Chilean courts originally refused to prosecute Pinochet, his victims turned to international venues for justice. In 1998 Pinochet, while on a private visit to London, was finally arrested by British police acting on a warrant issued by crusading Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzon. Garzon has been investigating the deaths of Spanish citizens in Operation Condor.
In Kissinger's case, it is Parisian Judge Roger Le Loire who has been investigating the disappearance of his countrymen into the macabre abyss of Condor, and he has already issued his own warrant for Pinochet's arrest. Two years ago, Judge Le Loire reportedly sent a request to the Clinton administration asking permission to question Kissinger, but his request was ignored. So when Kissinger showed up on his own private visit to Paris last week, the judge allowed attorney Bourdon to send police to his hotel with the written request to testify.
In Argentina, yet another magistrate, Federal Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, told reporters a few days ago that as part of his own probe into Operation Condor, he will most likely subpoena Kissinger as either a "defendant or suspect."
The Argentine judge, nevertheless, went on to muse that getting Kissinger to actually show up would be "very problematic." After all, Kissinger's place in history still rests primarily on his reported mastery at shuttle diplomacy, on his reputation for brilliance as a geo-political strategist, on his lucrative corporate and media consultancies, and on his winning of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.
But then again, as recently as 1998, Pinochet was also a snarling and fearsome Big Dog, considered absolutely untouchable by human law. In the face of overwhelming prima facie evidence of massive crimes, only a single courageous Chilean judge dared to entertain even the most basic charges against him. When the general retired from his armed forces command in 1998, the U.S. press celebrated him (with only casual mention of his human rights record) as the prescient architect of a pro-American, free-market economic model. The post-Soviet Russians held him up as an example of inspired anticommunist governance. His own country lauded him as a "liberator," rewarding him with the title of senator-for-life.
And yet, a scant three years later, reduced to something more like a whimpering puppy, stripped of his parliamentary immunity, wanted by a long list of European courts and under formal indictment in Chile, Pinochet pathetically scampers to avoid putting inked fingers to paper.
One way or another, the registry of Augusto Pinochet's fingerprints and mug shots will take place. And the images of the fallen hero that will flash around the globe will be sure to haunt the midnight nightmares of Henry Kissinger. As they well should.
Marc Cooper is a contributing editor to the Nation and author of "Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti-Memoir."
Twenty-six years ago, as the forces of Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Socialist government of Salvador Allende, two American supporters of President Allende were killed in Chile under circumstances that stirred suspicions of C.I.A. involvement.
American officials categorically denied any role in the young men's deaths, which were dramatized in the 1982 movie "Missing."
Compelled by the Freedom of Information Act, the government in 1980 released the results of classified internal investigations, heavily censored in black ink, that appeared to clear the American and Chilean governments of any responsibility.
But now, those thick black lines have been stripped away. Spurred by the arrest of General Pinochet in 1998, President Clinton has ordered the declassification of "all documents that shed light on human rights abuses, terrorism and other acts of political violence during and prior to the Pinochet era in Chile."
Some of those documents make clear for the first time that the State Department concluded from almost the beginning that the Pinochet government had killed the men, Charles Horman, 31, and Frank Teruggi, 24. The investigators speculated, moreover, that the Chileans would not have done so without a green light from American intelligence.
"U.S. intelligence may have played an unfortunate part in Horman's death," said one newly declassified memo. "At best, it was limited to providing or confirming information that helped motivate his murder by the government of Chile. At worst, U.S. intelligence was aware the government of Chile saw Horman in a rather serious light and U.S. officials did nothing to discourage the logical outcome of government of Chile paranoia."
With most of the blacked-out portions now restored, the documents declassified by the State Department illustrate how exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act -- a law that was meant to reduce secrecy -- can be misused.
Two principal exceptions that the department used allow the government to withhold information on the grounds of national security and executive privilege. "They're not protecting national security information at all," said Peter Kornbluh of the nonprofit National Security Archives, which promotes the declassification of government documents. "Preventing embarrassment is not an exemption clause."
Even after extensive Senate intelligence committee hearings in the 1970's, the American role in the overthrow of Mr. Allende remains a matter of dispute and conjecture. Mr. Kornbluh said that other government agencies responsible for carrying out United States policy in Chile, including the C.I.A. and the Pentagon, have so far failed to release key records on the era.
Regarding Mr. Horman's death, Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the C.I.A., recently released a 22-year-old letter denying any role by the agency and said it would show the public files on the case this spring.
The State Department refused to address questions about the two deaths, saying few of the people involved in the case still work for the government. The former officials, most of them retired and scattered around the country, largely disavow any responsibility for what happened.
Mr. Horman's widow, Joyce, is hoping that enough has changed to finally learn what really happened to her husband. She is asking for Washington's help in her quest for an honest explanation of his murder from the new Socialist government in Chile.
"I want to know who gave the order," said Mrs. Horman, who has never remarried. "Nobody's held accountable."
Her husband and Mr. Teruggi were friends who belonged to a group of young left-of-center Americans attracted by Mr. Allende's socialist experiment in the early 1970's. In Santiago, they worked for a newsletter that reprinted articles and clippings from American newspapers critical of United States policy.
When General Pinochet seized power on Sept. 11, 1973, Mr. Horman was at Viña del Mar, a coastal resort, with Terry Simon, a family friend from New York who was vacationing in Chile.
Ms. Simon said she and Mr. Horman saw American warships offshore and spoke to American naval officers stationed in nearby Valparaiso, who appeared elated at the coup's success. The two interpreted what they saw as proof of American connivance in the military takeover.
Eager to return to Santiago, they rode back with Capt. Ray E. Davis, chief of the United States Military Group at the American Embassy, who had been making his weekly visit to the naval station.
Two days later, as General Pinochet's forces moved to arrest thousands of people around the country, men in military uniforms abducted Mr. Horman, ransacking his apartment. His wife, Joyce, was out at the time. She never saw him again. Ms. Simon searched with Joyce for Mr. Horman and eventually flew home to New York.
Around the same time, security forces arrested Mr. Teruggi and his roommate, David Hathaway, at their apartment. They were held at the national stadium with thousands of other political prisoners. Mr. Teruggi never returned from his second interrogation.
Mr. Hathaway was released alone and later flew home to the United States.
A friend identified Mr. Teruggi's body in the government morgue. His throat had been slashed, and he had been shot twice in the head.
The search for Mr. Horman was more tortuous. His father, Edmund, flew in from New York to help. He and Mr. Horman's wife followed whatever leads they could, keeping in close touch with the embassy, which supplied escorts and pressed Mrs. Horman for a list of her husband's friends. Doubting the diplomats' motives, she says, she never supplied it.
Captain Davis, now 74 and retired, said in a recent interview that he had nothing to do with the deaths and he appeared offended by the resurgence of questions about the killings.
He talked of his close ties to the Chilean military during his time there and said he had welcomed General Pinochet at his home, but was in no position to demand that Chilean Army commanders answer for the killings, and had not been ordered to do so. "We weren't down there to cause trouble," he said. "We sold them weapons."
He called Mr. Teruggi and Mr. Horman "part of the problem" in Chile. "They were down there handing out pamphlets against the government," he said.
The two men, actually, had been supporting the Allende government, not the one Captain Davis hoped to see in power. He corrected himself: "against the people who were trying to do something about it."
The Hormans have long contended that despite the embassy's avowal that it was doing all it could to find Charles, its officials would merely confirm information the family had obtained for itself. Taken together, the newly released documents support their suspicions.
It was not until 1976 that the State Department took a critical look at the killings. The move was prompted by a disaffected Chilean intelligence officer, Rafael González, who told reporters that he had witnessed Mr. Horman being held prisoner by Chile's chief of intelligence.
Mr. González quoted the intelligence chief as saying Mr. Horman "had to disappear" because he "knew too much," and said a man he presumed was American was in the room.
Mr. González also described a "cozy relationship" between American and Chilean intelligence services to destabilize the Allende government, and said that American operatives had even given their Chilean counterparts lists of suspected leftists to be rounded up in the first days of a military takeover.
(In its hearings, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that the C.I.A. had in fact compiled arrest lists but said it had no evidence that they were passed to the Chileans. Those lists are among the documents the C.I.A. has not released.)
Facing pressure from Congress, the State Department ordered two internal reviews in 1976. The first, completed in August, was carried out by Rudy V. Fimbres, regional director for Bolivia and Chile in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. The second was conducted by Frederick Smith, a State Department lawyer, in November and December.
The investigators were permitted to examine only documents either publicly released or already available in the State Department. Their reviews appeared to confirm doubts and inconsistencies that American newspapers had already reported but that State Department officials had repeatedly discredited.
The documents showed that an embassy official had received a tip that Mr. Horman had already been killed before his father arrived in Chile. That tip was not followed up.
Instead, embassy officials told Edmund Horman that leftists may have kidnapped his son, contradicting their own cables home, which quoted neighbors who said they had witnessed Chilean security forces taking Mr. Horman away.
The internal reviews also questioned the time of Mr. Horman's death, saying there was no reason to accept the Chilean government's assertion that he died just before the American Embassy learned of his disappearance.
The Pinochet government had ignored numerous requests from the United States for an autopsy report on Mr. Horman, the documents show.
One review asked why Captain Davis, who had driven Mr. Horman and Ms. Simon to Santiago, had taken their registration card from the hotel where they were staying.
Captain Davis at first denied that he had taken the card, but changed his mind when read a passage from a letter he wrote to one of the investigators, now among the declassified documents, mentioning the registration card.
"I don't see why it's important," he said.
The Horman family believes the card was given to the Chilean military, and tipped them off to the new address of the Hormans, who had moved just a few days before.
"Based on what we have," the first inquiry concluded, "we are persuaded that the government of Chile sought Horman and felt threatened enough to order his immediate execution. The government of Chile might have believed this American could be killed without negative fall-out from the U.S. government."
The memo said that there was "circumstantial evidence" that the C.I.A. "may have played an unfortunate part in Horman's death," as well as Mr. Teruggi's. It also said the State Department had the "responsibility" to refute baseless allegations and "to proceed against U.S. officials if this is warranted."
The second investigation, completed a month before Gerald Ford's presidency ended, drew a similar conclusion. It blamed the Chilean government for both deaths and said it was "difficult to believe" that the Pinochet government would have carried out the killings without some signal, perhaps even an inadvertent one, that the deaths would not cause "substantial adverse consequences" in Washington.
The memo -- to Harry W. Shlaudeman, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs -- recommended interviewing Mr. González, the disaffected Chilean intelligence officer, again and going back to the C.I.A. for a full accounting.
"If an explanation exists," a memo in the investigation said, "it does not appear in the files and must be sought elsewhere."
But both inquiries appear to have ended there. Mr. Shlaudeman himself recommended interrogating Mr. González further, even submitting a detailed list of questions for the purpose that the C.I.A. was allowed to review. But he dismissed the call for investigating the actions of the C.I.A.
Interviewed recently, Mr. Shlaudeman said that he remembered little about the issue. "A lot of things have happened since then," he said.
Until jarred loose by General Pinochet's arrest in London in October 1998, these reports remained largely hidden from the public.
In 1978, State Department officials debated how much of the documents to show the Horman family, which was then suing the United States government for "wrongful death," a case that was dismissed "without prejudice," meaning that it could be reopened.
One official, Frank McNeil, then deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, urged the department to err on the side of greater disclosure.
"Classification should not be used to prevent embarrassment of government agencies or officials, which would be the principal reason for withholding when one gets down to the bone," he said.
Nonetheless, the documents released to the Hormans omitted large swaths of material on the grounds of national security and executive privilege.
Experts note that executive privilege protects the president's deliberations with his advisers, in this instance Henry A. Kissinger, who served Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford as secretary of state.
Dr. Kissinger said he had never seen the documents or the recommendations and had been out of the country much of the time. "It's very easy, 30 years after the event, to be so heroic and to create the impression that one had nothing else to do except follow one particular case," he said.
"If it were brought to my attention I would have done something."
Mr. Fimbres himself, who is now retired, said recently that he was not surprised at the State Department's apparent failure to pursue the investigation further.
"Something like this easily goes into the black hole," he explained. "And everybody watches it go down."