MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Kissinger accused of turning blind eye to Latam military regimes political killings

The dark side of former Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize

Henry Kissinger while United States Secretary of State, halted a plan to warn South American military regimes against international political assassinations such as those involving the 1976 death in Washington of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier, a document shows.

The Los Angeles Times reports the newly declassified document reveals Kissinger halted the warning days before a bombing linked to Chile killed two people in Washington, one of them the former Foreign Affairs minister Letelier.

Peter Kornbluh, an analyst with the non-profit National Security Archive, which uncovered the document and made it public Saturday, said the document, cabled from Kissinger to his top Latin American deputy, halted US diplomats' efforts to warn Chile, Uruguay and Argentina against involvement in the covert plan “Operation Condor”.

The South American military regimes’ secret program of planned international assassinations began in 1975 and targeted political opponents throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States.

In the September 16, 1976, cable, Kissinger rejected delivery of a proposed warning to the government of Uruguay about Condor operations and ordered “no further action be taken on this matter” by the US State Department.

Five days later, Chilean exile Orlando Letelier and a US colleague were killed in a Washington car-bombing later linked to Chilean secret police working through the Condor network, the Times said.

“The document confirms that it's Kissinger's complete responsibility for having rescinded a cease-and-desist order to Condor killers,” said Kornbluh, the author of a 2004 book on Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

In a statement, Kissinger charged Kornbluh “distorted” the cable's meaning and said it was meant to stop a specific approach for dealing with Uruguay and was not a cancellation of warnings to other nations involved in Operation Condor.

Former State Department officials who worked under Kissinger at the time said the cable disrupted the US effort to curtail Operation Condor, not only with Uruguay but also with other countries in the region, the Times said.

In May 1976 former Uruguayan members of Parliament Zelmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz, exiled in Buenos Aires were kidnapped and executed in a combined operation allegedly of Uruguayan and Argentine agents under the umbrella of Operation Condor.

In June 1973 Uruguay’s congress was closed by the military, the beginning of an eleven year authoritarian regime that lasted until March 1985.

Kissinger learned of Condor from the CIA in mid-1976 and at first ordered US ambassadors in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and other countries involved in the operation to issue formal diplomatic warnings to leaders that “Condor activities would undermine relations with the United States.”

In his statement, Kissinger said, “The instructions were never rescinded.”