How Much Did the US Know About the Kidnapping, Torture, and Murder of Over 20,000 People in Argent

[Judi Lynn]

 How Much Did the US Know About the Kidnapping, Torture, and Murder of Over 20,000 People in Argentina?

Now, President Obama has the chance to apologize for US complicity in the dirty war.

By Martin Edwin Andersen


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The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo engage in an anti-government protest over the imprisonment and kidnappings of their husbands and children in Buenos Aires in November 1977. (AP Photo)
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 Dear Mr. President,

After a historic visit to Cuba, later this month on March 24, you plan to be in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the fortieth anniversary of a vicious military coup that resulted in the secret kidnapping, torture, and murder of more than 20,000 people, including leftist guerrillas, nonviolent dissidents and even many uninvolved citizens caught in the web of terror.

In an October 1987 article in The Nation (PDF), I broke the story about how the murderous generals and their neo-Nazi minions received a “green light” for their clandestine repression from then–Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Although buttressed by other sources, the Nation story was largely based on a memorandum of conversation I received from Patricia Derian, the wonderfully feisty activist and Mississippi civil rights hero.

Appointed by President Jimmy Carter as the first Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Patt’s role was key in bringing to life Carter’s desperately needed post-Vietnam and post-Watergate Human Rights Revolution.

 The “memcom” Derian gave me was based on her 1977 conversation in the Buenos Aires Embassy with then-Ambassador Robert Hill, a conservative five-time GOP ambassadorial appointee. It was Hill who had bravely waged a behind-the-scenes struggle against Kissinger’s secret stamp of approval for those who had earlier staged the coup, refusing to back off when Kissinger’s aides warned Hill he might be fired even as he sought to save lives in Argentina.

 “It sickened me,” Patt told me in the home she shared in Alexandria, Virginia, with fellow Mississippi human rights crusader Hodding Carter III, her husband and Jimmy Carter’s State Department spokesman, “that with an imperial wave of his hand, an American could sentence people to death on the basis of a cheap whim. As time went on I saw Kissinger’s footprints in a lot of countries. It was the repression of a democratic ideal.”

. . .



More:
http://www.thenation.com/article/how-much-did-the-us-know-about-the-kidnapping-torture-and-murder-of-over-20000-people-in-argentina/

[Herman4747]

1. Hillary's good buddy Henry Kissinger shows up here...

...no surprise at all.

[forest444]

3. Here's a little snippet showing Kissinger's attitude toward the Argentine dictator, Gen. Videla.

He sounds like Hillary whenever she was asked as Secretary of State about Colombia, Mexico, and Honduras (each of them with ongoing dirty wars that are as bad of worse than Argentina's 40 years ago).

[forest444]

2. To his great credit, Carter asked an embassy staffer, Tex Harris, to compile all the intel he could

Last edited Thu Mar 24, 2016, 10:40 AM - Edit history (2)

Information which the Carter administration then effectively used to pressure and discredit the Argentine dictatorship into loosening their iron fist.

And they did: it's widely accepted by historians that 1976 and 1977 (when Kissinger's blind eye policy was in effect) were the worst years in the Dirty War by far; but that once Carter began to turn the heat on the dictators in August 1977, the pace of disappearances declined sharply - and practically stopped by 1980.

Here's a brief preview of a recent Carter Center conference on the subject, featuring some of the true American heroes in the effort to stop Argentina's Dirty War. It's a shame that Carter's Secretary of State Cy Vance had already passed away, since he contibuted so much.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Carter's actions haven't been given the recogition they deserve.

For some reason, humanity in a President doesn't seem to impress too many. What a damned shame.

Very interesting to have heard in your clip what the man at the prison in Argentina told Mr. Deutsch's father, regarding Carter's intercession on their behalf.

They were very, very much luckier than the rest of the 30,000 people who were disappeared.

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

5. That cartoon will be...

...Kissinger's legacy, and it is richly deserved.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Wish he knew how many people loathe his place in our country's history.

If I'm not mistaken, he claimed long ago that in his view, power is an aphrodisiac. It's the Republican in him, apparently.