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Washington, August 27, 2004 – A newly declassified document obtained by the National Security Archive shows that amidst vast human rights violations by Argentina's security forces in June 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti:

“If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you should get back quickly to normal procedures.”

Kissinger's comment is part of a 13-page Memorandum of Conversation reporting on a June 10 meeting between Secretary Kissinger and Argentine Admiral Guzzetti in Santiago, Chile. The document was obtained by the National Security Archive's Southern Cone Documentation Project through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of State filed in August 2002 and appealed in February 2004.

At a time when the international community, the U.S. media, universities, and scientific institutions, the U.S. Congress, and even the U.S. Embassy in Argentina were clamoring about the indiscriminate human rights violations by the Argentine military, Secretary Kissinger told Guzzetti: “We are aware you are in a difficult period. It is a curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation. We understand you must establish authority.”

Another document recently unearthed by the National Security Archive and posted for the first time today, shows that on July 9, 1976, Secretary Kissinger was explicitly briefed on the rampant repression taking place in Argentina: “Their theory is that they can use the Chilean method,” Kissinger's top aide on Latin America Harry Shlaudeman informed him, “that is, to terrorize the opposition – even killing priests and nuns and others.”

“The Memorandum of Conversation explains why the Argentine generals believed they got a clear message from the Secretary that they had carte blanche for the dirty war,” said Carlos Osorio, Director of the Southern Cone Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. “It appears that Secretary Kissinger gave the 'green light' to the Argentine military during the June 1976 meeting with Guzzetti in Santiago,” he added.

These and other documents, along with a detailed chronology of events surrounding the June 10 meeting, are available here:

www.nsarchive.org
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