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| Kissinger Watch #6 - 04 | |
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| KISSINGER AND HIS HUMAN RIGHTS CRIMES | |
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| By Saul Landau - progreso weekly http://www.rprogreso.com slandau@igc.org | |
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| Human rights laws are great, a friend told me, but they seem to apply only to losers. The post World War II trials in Germany and Japan, the genocide trials of Rwandan officials and that of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic all deal with the defeated. The winners who drop atomic or fire bombs on civilians slip easily through the crack of justice. Even when we get close to bringing the bad guys to court as in the case of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 2000, politicians intervene to help these criminals en jefe elude the bar of justice. Now emerges the case of the mother of modern war criminals, former Secretary of State (1973-77) and National Security Adviser (1969-73) Henry Kissinger (under Presidents Nixon and Ford), whose mass murderous activities stretch from the secret bombing of Cambodia 1970, his role in extending the Vietnam War, 1969-74, and in this same era to his giving the green light for Indonesians to commit slaughter in East Timor. In addition, he apparently authorized and supported the dirty wars of South America in the early and mid 1970s. I conceded that my skeptical friend had a cogent point about criminals who win getting away with their foul deeds. If we can't bring the geriatric Pinochets and Kissingers to trial for their crimes, since US opposition to the International Criminal Court means that such an entity will have less than full power, we might at least seek ways to make their retirement years as anxiety-ridden as possible. In other words, we look for a small measure of justice. Such an instance occurred between late 1998 and March 2000 when British authorities humiliated Pinochet, one of the kings of the world, by acceding to a Spanish judge s detention order and arresting him, forcing him to undergo 15 months of home incarceration. But in 1996, when Spanish lawyer Joan Garces first brought the case in Spain, charging Pinochet with torture, genocide and terrorism, sophisticated jurists laughed. Pinochet laughed. When he triumphantly returned to Chile in March 2000, thanks to the sneaky cabal pulled off by Chilean, British and Spanish political bosses, Pinochet found himself further disquieted when a Chilean judge, emboldened by the British process, charged him with numerous crimes. He and his lawyers have resorted to faking senility and physical infirmity as excuses to avoid trial and he no longer laughs. Now, Kissinger also faces discomfort because judges seek him for questioning and because writers like Christopher Hitchens (The Trial of Henry Kissinger, 2001) have publicized his felonious activities. In mid April, after discovering that Kissinger had planned an April 24 visit to London, Spanish Judge Balthazar Garzon and French Magistrate Sophie-Helene Chateau both requested permission from British authorities to question the former US official related to ongoing trials in Spain and France regarding his knowledge of Operation Condor, the cabal established between intelligence agencies of South American dictatorships from the mid 1970s through the 1980s. After British authorities assured him that he would not be arrested, Kissinger flew to London to give the keynote speech to a business convention. Kissinger gave an interview to the right wing Daily Telegraph in which he called Garzon's procedures a "new vogue" of employing human rights legislation to settle Cold War debts. "What they are attempting to do is to use universal human rights to settle scores from 30 years ago," he said as protesters outside London's Royal Albert Hall held signs calling Kissinger a "serial killer." Others demanded that Britain indict Kissinger for his war-crimes in Southeast Asia. Kissinger accused his legal pursuers of "getting into specific issues of the management of American foreign policy with respect to one very geographically confined situation." In his speech to business leaders, Kissinger admitted that as Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford quite possibly" mistakes had been made. "No one can say that he served in an administration that did not make mistakes," Kissinger confessed. But, he continued, "The issue is whether 30 years after the event courts are the appropriate means by which determination is made. Kissinger blamed the US government for his refusal to answer questions about his behavior. My position is that if the U.S. 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." But Kissinger clarified his own position by telling the Daily Telegraph that: "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. The pursuit of high officials of foreign governments -- especially friendly governments -- should be reserved for truly major human rights violations," he said. Kissinger obviously did not think that major human rights violations occurred when he gave bright green lights in the mid 1970s to several South American military governments to a cabal of secret police and intelligence agencies. The dead in Argentina's Dirty War, Chile's massive repression and the combined operations in Uruguay, Paraguay and at times Bolivia and Brazil totaled more than 40,000. Indeed, the United States actively helped the Condor operatives to spy on and assassinate political dissidents including former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier in Washington DC in 1976. In Chile, Pinochet's goons tortured or assassinated more than eighty Spanish and five French citizens as well. Although Britain rejected Garzon's request, other European judges continue to insist that Kissinger answer questions. In addition, Kissinger has a pending demand from Chilean Judge Juan Guzman who has threatened to try to start extradition proceedings if he refuses to answer questions related to on-going criminal cases in Chile. Guzman sent Kissinger a list of questions last year, but has received no answers. What a way to treat an old man who was gloating happily in his fortune! Is this fair to hassle an aging celebrity whose occasional speeches yield him $50K and up, to pester a man who collects millions in fees for arranging high level visits by businessmen to China, to distract a man basking, nay smirking, in his partly self created international reputation? Why should a Nobel Peace Prize winner answer questions about his link to terrorist crimes orchestrated by tin horn Latin dictators in the 1970s? (One wit remarked after Kissinger received the Peace Prize that he should have gotten it for Physics. "What does he know about physics?" asked a stooge. "Uh huh", responded the wit.) Kissinger wanted to deliver a prestigious keynote address to some rich business leaders and enjoy a London vacation and now this intrusive Garzon threatened him! How ironic! Terrorism has become Bush's and war criminal Ariel Sharon's word and now, as part of the very fight against terrorism Judge Garzon wanted "to ask Dr. Kissinger about his knowledge of the Condor plan," because, said Joan Garces, "he was among the immediate circle of those military rulers, including General Pinochet, who carried out tortures and illegal executions for which they were never punished." For those who dismiss the possibility that the court could question the great and powerful, Garces reminds us that in March 2000 the British government freed General Pinochet on administrative grounds, "not judicial, so the case remains open." In France, William Bourdon, who represents French victims of Pinochet, told the British daily The Independent that France had also requested Interpol to detain Kissinger for questioning. Bourdon petitioned Judge Sophie-Helene Chateau to ask "authorities in Britain for Kissinger to answer questions about the Condor plan, and about Europeans who disappeared immediately after Pinochet's coup in Chile." Bourdon referred to recently declassified CIA documents and testimony from witnesses questioned by a French judge [that] lead us to suspect that Dr Kissinger was closely informed about the Condor plan and about French and Spanish nationals who disappeared after the 1973 coup. He is a witness. He has to contribute to the truth. He has nothing to fear. He will not be indicted." Why not, I asked myself. Why should he escape indictment? Will the US government bomb a government that indicts him? Bourdon claimed that Kissinger as Secretary of State informed the US Embassy in Paris that he intended to make that city Condor's European headquarters. In addition to his European tormenters, the family of General Rene Schneider has brought a suit against Kissinger in Washington DC. They claim he played a role in the October 1970 assassination of Schneider who commanded the Chilean armed forces during the period between Salvador Allende's September election and his November inauguration. According to the suit, Kissinger, under President Nixon's general orders, had apparently authorized the CIA to pay a gang of fascist thugs to hit Schneider as a way to stop Allende's inauguration. As if this wasn't enough, poor old Henry also faces a suit from Joyce Horman for his role in the murder of her husband, Charles Horman, during the 1973 Pinochet-led coup. The case was dramatized in the film "Missing," with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. CIA and State Department documents make it clear that Kissinger knew about the Horman case and either let the Chilean military kill him or, at best, covered up the details of his murder. The US government's cooperation with Kissinger s refusal to talk to answer Garzon's questions about Operation Condor in general, also means that Kissinger stays mum on what he knew about the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, DC. This brings the murder trail back home. The Department of Justice has yet to indict Pinochet for Letelier's murder even though FBI Agents claim that they have more than enough evidence to bring the old tyrant trial. Kissinger's links to this and other Condor cases relies on more than speculation or deduction. In 1992 Martin Almada, a Paraguayan lawyer, discovered some Condor records in a small Paraguayan town. In some of these documents, Kissinger appears as a link to the dirty war in Argentina (upwards of thirty thousand died in that one) as well as to the brutal repression in Chile. Who else, I ask myself, would have had that Germanic impulse to clean out leftist opposition by coordinating intelligence services in the Southern Cone? Who always preferred military to civil governments, because they obeyed and carried out commands quickly instead of debating like democratic governments? With Condor military governments monitored or assassinated "dangerous" left wing dissidents, no matter in what country they resided, no matter their nationality. Murder them in their country of exile, like former Chilean Chief of Staff General Carlos Prats, exiled in Argentina in 1974, or contract with foreign fascist assassins to whack them abroad, as in the 1975 assassination attempt against Bernardo Leighton in Rome they seriously wounded him and his wife. On September 21, 1976, Chilean secret agents car bombed former Chilean Ambassador Letelier in Washington DC. Letelier worked with me at the time at the Institute for Policy Studies, along with Ronni Moffitt, who also suffered fatal injuries from the bomb. I first heard of Condor from an FBI agent investigating the case. Special Agent Robert Scherrer, stationed in Buenos Aires at the time of the assassination, sent a cable to FBI headquarters a week after the Letelier-Moffitt murders suggesting that Condor might be involved. In later conversations that John Dinges and I held with Scherrer as we researched for our book, Assassination on Embassy Row (Pantheon, 1980), the Special Agent of the FBI told us that a pro Nazi Argentine officer had told him about this nefarious conspiracy and that he had then reported it as a likely MO for the Letelier murder. Dinges and I believed Scherrer, whose information to us on the Letelier case proved remarkably accurate. But, as declassified documents now show, Scherrer misled us about his own knowledge and involvement. He had even cooperated with a May 1975 Condor operation that resulted in a Chilean leftist named Fuentes being arrested in Paraguay and then being delivered to the Chilean secret police. Fuentes, like 1200 other Chileans, disappeared. The State Department under Kissinger promised Chile that it would ask the FBI to follow up on names of people that Fuentes had in his address book. Kissinger, the declassified cables make clear, also knew that the United States had helped Condor with its communications by making space and technology available at a US military base in Panama. Previously, the CIA had helped Condor set up a computer that linked the intelligence agencies. No wonder Kissinger has failed to respond to Judge Guzman's questions and ignored the queries of French judge Roger Le Loire about his knowledge related to Condor's operations against French citizens. Now, Garzon, the world's toughest anti-terrorist judge (he has taken on the Basque bombers, Pinochet and Al Qaeda members) pursues the 78-year old Kissinger. What will his next move be? It's a fantasy to imagine Kissinger in court facing war crimes charges! I recall Kissinger saying that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." I never understood whether he meant that he used power to attract women or just thought about his own power to stimulate himself. In any case, I wonder if all these legal actions have tickled Henry's prostate. It might be as close as we get to a measure of justice in our time. But, then again, who expected Pinochet to be under arrest for fifteen months? Stay tuned and find out if Henry will have his day in court. | |
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