OPERATION CONDOR: National Security Archive Presents Trove of Declassified Documentation in Historic Trial in Argentina


National Security Archive Presents Trove of Declassified Documentation in Historic Trial in Argentina. Argentine Newspaper, Pagina 12, Highlights Evidence Presented by Archive Southern Cone Project Director Carlos Osorio. Documents given to Court Reveal Condor Precedents. Secret Summary of Inaugural Condor Meeting Introduced into Court for First Time.
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 514 Posted – May 6, 2015. Edited by Carlos Osorio

The National Security Archive today posted key documents on Operation Condor, presented by its Southern Cone analyst, Carlos Osorio, at a historic trial in Buenos Aires of former military officers. During 10 hours on the witness stand recently, Osorio introduced one hundred documents into evidence for the court proceedings. His testimony was profiled on May 3 in a major feature article published in the Buenos Aires daily, Pagina 12.
Operation Condor was an infamous secret alliance between South American dictatorships in the mid and late 1970s a Southern Cone rendition and repression program-formed to track down and eliminate enemies of their military regimes. The Condor trial charges 25 high-ranking officers, originally including former Argentine presidents Jorge Videla (deceased) and Reynaldo Bignone (aged 87), with conspiracy to “kidnap, disappear, torture and kill” 171 opponents of the regimes that dominated the Southern Cone in the 1970s and 1980s. Among the victims were approximately 80 Uruguayans, 50 Argentines, 20 Chileans and a dozen others from Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador who were targeted by Condor operatives (…)
Para seguir:
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB514/

The Dominican Intervention 1965

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 513
Edited by David Coleman

Washington, D.C., April 28, 2015
LBJ Regretted Ordering U.S. Troops into Dominican Republic in 1965 (…) Dominican Intervention 50 Years Ago Sparked Mainly by Fear of Communists: “I Sure Don’t Want to Wake Up … and Find Out Castro’s in Charge,” President Said
New Transcripts of Key White House Tapes Clarify and Illuminate LBJ’s Personal Role in Decision-Making during the Crisis

– President Lyndon Johnson regretted sending U.S. troops into the Dominican Republic in 1965, telling aides less than a month later, “I don’t want to be an intervenor,” according to new transcripts of White House tapes published today (along with the tapes themselves) for the first time by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).
Johnson ordered U.S. Marines into Santo Domingo 50 years ago today. Three weeks later, he lamented both that the crisis had cost American lives and that it had turned out badly on the ground as well as for the United States’ – and Johnson’s own – political standing. Nevertheless, he insisted he would “do the same thing right this second.”
In conversations with aides captured on the White House taping system, Johnson expressed sharp frustrations, including with the group surrounding exiled President Juan Bosch, whom the United States was supporting. Speaking in late May 1965, Johnson told an adviser, “they have to clean themselves up, as I see it, where we can live with them. Put enough perfume on to kill the odor of killing 20 Americans and wounding 100.”
Johnson’s public explanation for sending the Marines into Santo Domingo was to rescue Americans endangered by civil war conditions in the Dominican Republic. But his main motivation, the tapes and transcripts confirm, was to prevent a Communist takeover. Basing his decision largely on assertions by the CIA and others in the U.S. government that Cuba’s Fidel Castro had been behind the recent uprising, Johnson confided to his national security advisor, “I sure don’t want to wake up … and find out Castro’s in charge.”
That intelligence, along with other information Johnson received during the crisis, turned out to be erroneous – a possibility LBJ himself worried about at the time.
The tapes, transcript and introductory material presented in this posting were provided by David Coleman, former chair of the Presidential Recordings Program at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, and a Fellow at the National Security Archive. As Coleman notes, the materials are revelatory about Johnson’s personal conduct of the crisis and his decision-making style as president. The transcripts, in several cases newly created by Coleman, are crucial to understanding the material on the tapes, which can be hard to decipher and are therefore often of limited usefulness on their own to researchers (…)
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB513/

RELATED SITES
Telephone Conversations Collection at the LBJ Library
LBJ White House Recordings at the Miller Center, University of Virginia

For more on this context, see: Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), p.633; Alan McPherson, “Misled by Himself: What the Johnson Tapes Reveal About the Dominican Intervention of 1965,” Latin American Research Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 (June 2003): 127-46

Declassified Diplomacy with Brazil: National Security Archive Hails Obama Administration Decision to Assist Brazilian Truth Commission


Declassified Diplomacy with Brazil
The Obama administration advanced the principle of international openness, accountability and support for human rights this week when Vice President Joe Biden transferred to President Dilma Rousseff a set of newly declassified U.S. government documents relating to Brazil’s military dictatorship, which held power from 1964 – 1985.
Visiting Brazil for the World Cup soccer competition, Biden announced that the Administration would conduct a further review and release of still secret U.S. records to help to the Brazilian Truth Commission; the commission is investigating human rights abuses under military rule and due to issue its final report at the end of 2014.
(…)
The United States covertly supported the military coup that deposed President Joao Goulart on April 1, 1964, and maintained close ties to Brazil’s military rulers during the dictatorship. American diplomats, intelligence operatives and military personnel reported routinely, and in detail, about regime policies – and abuses. The Archive has obtained the release of portions of this critically important historical record through the Freedom of Information Act, and has posted a number of files relating to the U.S. role in the 1964 coup that brought the dictatorship to power (…)

National Security Archive June, 20, 2014

U.S. Covert Intervention in Chile: Planning to Block Allende Began Long before September 1970 Election

U.S. Covert Intervention in Chile: Planning to Block Allende Began Long before September 1970 Election
Nixon Alerted in Advance to Date of Coup, Retired CIA Operative Writes in Foreign Affairs
Archive Commends Long-Awaited Release of State Department Compendium of Records on U.S. Involvement in Promoting Chilean Coup
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 470

Posted May 23, 2014
For more information contact:
peter.kornbluh@gmail.com

The Pinochet File
By Peter Kornbluh, The New Press, Updated edition (September 11, 2013)

Washington, DC, May 23, 2014 – Covert U.S. planning to block the democratic election of Salvador Allende in Chile began weeks before his September 4, 1970, victory, according to just declassified minutes of an August 19, 1970, meeting of the high-level interagency committee known as the Special Review Group, chaired by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. “Kissinger asked that the plan be as precise as possible and include what orders would be given September 5, to whom, and in what way,” as the summary recorded Kissinger’s instructions to CIA Director Richard Helms. “Kissinger said we should present to the President an action plan to prevent [the Chilean Congress from ratifying] an Allende victory…and noted that the President may decide to move even if we do not recommend it.”

The document is one of a compendium of some 366 records released by the State Department as part of its Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. The much-delayed collection, titled “Chile: 1969-1973,” addresses Richard Nixon’s and Kissinger’s efforts to destabilize the democratically elected Socialist government of Salvador Allende, and the U.S.-supported coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power in 1973. The controversial volume was edited by two former officials of the State Department’s Office of the Historian, James Siekmeier and James McElveen.

“This collection represents a substantive step forward in opening the historical record on U.S. intervention in Chile,” said Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Chile documentation project at the National Security Archive, and is the author of The Pinochet File (…)

In the aftermath of General Augusto Pinochet’s arrest in October 1998, the National Security Archive, along with victims of the Pinochet regime, led a campaign to press the Clinton administration to declassify the still-secret documents on Chile, the coup and the repression that followed (…) The release of the records comes amidst renewed debate over the CIA role in supporting the military coup in Chile.

The Kissinger-Nixon transcript is reproduced in the 2013 edition of The Pinochet File. http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21

KISSINGER AND CHILE: THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD ON REGIME CHANGE

KISSINGER AND CHILE: THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD ON REGIME CHANGE
Kissinger pressed Nixon to overthrow the democratically elected Allende government because his “‘model’ effect can be insidious,” documents show
On 40th anniversary of coup, Archive posts top ten documents on Kissinger’s role in undermining democracy, supporting military dictatorship in Chile
Kissinger overruled aides on military regime’s human rights atrocities; told Pinochet in 1976: “We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 437
Washington, D.C., September 11, 2013 –
Henry Kissinger urged President Richard Nixon to overthrow the democratically elected Allende government in Chile because his “‘model’ effect can be insidious,” according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The coup against Allende occurred on this date 40 years ago. The posted records spotlight Kissinger’s role as the principal policy architect of U.S. efforts to oust the Chilean leader, and assist in the consolidation of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.

The documents, which include transcripts of Kissinger’s “telcons” — telephone conversations — that were never shown to the special Senate Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in the mid 1970s, provide key details about the arguments, decisions, and operations Kissinger made and supervised during his tenure as national security adviser and secretary of state.

“These documents provide the verdict of history on Kissinger’s singular contribution to the denouement of democracy and rise of dictatorship in Chile,” said Peter Kornbluh who directs the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. “They are the evidence of his accountability for the events of forty years ago.” (…)

THE DOCUMENTS

Document 1: Telcon, Helms – Kissinger, September 12, 1970, 12:00 noon.

Document 2: Viron Vaky to Kissinger, “Chile — 40 Committee Meeting, Monday — September 14,” September 14, 1970.

Document 3: Handwritten notes, Richard Helms, “Meeting with President,” September 15, 1970.

Document 4: White House, Kissinger, Memorandum for the President, “Subject: NSC Meeting, November 6-Chile,” November 5, 1970.

Document 5: Kissinger, Memorandum for the President, “Covert Action Program-Chile, November 25, 1970.

Document 6: National Security Council, Memorandum, Jeanne W. Davis to Kissinger, “Minutes of the WSAG Meeting of September 12, 1973,” September 13, 1973.

Document 7: Telcon, Kissinger – Nixon, September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m.

Document 8: Department of State, Memorandum, “Secretary’s Staff Meeting, October 1, 1973: Summary of Decisions,” October 4, 1973, (excerpt).

Document 9: Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, “Secretary’s Meeting with Foreign Minister Carvajal, September 29, 1975.

Document 10: Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, “U.S.-Chilean Relations,” (Kissinger – Pinochet), June 8, 1976.

Posted – September 11, 2013
Edited by Peter Kornbluh
Para seguir: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB437/

“Godfather” of Colombian Army Intelligence Acquitted in Palace of Justice Case

Gen. Iván Ramírez Led Unit that “Tortured and Killed” Palace of Justice Detainees in 1985. “Infamous” Commander “was “Passing Military Intelligence to the Paramilitaries,” according to U.S. Ambassador

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 368       Posted – December 16, 2011

A Colombian army general acquitted today in one of the country’s most infamous human rights cases “actively” collaborated with paramilitary death squads responsible for dozens of massacres, according to formerly secret U.S. records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive.
Once the third-highest-ranking officer in the Colombian military and later a top adviser to President Álvaro Uribe’s Department of Administrative Security (DAS), Iván Ramírez Quintero was acquitted today in the torture and disappearance of Irma Franco, one of several people detained by the army during the November 1985 Palace of Justice disaster (…)

Para seguir: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB368/index.htm

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