General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Hillary "We came, we saw, he died" (yes, smiling gleefully) [View all]Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)for, for example, his involvement in the coup in which the democratically-elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, who was holed up in the Chilean mint, was bombarded by forces of Gustavo Pinochet, the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army who had the backing of Mr. Kissinger. Pinochet went on to murder countless numbers of Chileans in his reign of terror.
Kissinger also wholeheartedly supported Operation Condor, which led to the deaths of untold numbers of desaparecidos thoughout South America in the 1970s.
"Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well aware of the Condor plan. According to the French newspaper L'Humanité, the first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-Castro groups, and the right-wing death squad Triple A, set up in Argentina by Juan Perón and Isabel Martínez de Perón's "personal secretary" José López Rega, and Rodolfo Almirón (arrested in Spain in 2006).[68]
"On 31 May 2001, French judge Roger Le Loire requested that a summons be served on Henry Kissinger while he was staying at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris. Le Loire wanted to question the statesman as a witness regarding alleged U.S. involvement in Operation Condor and for possible US knowledge concerning the "disappearances" of five French nationals in Chile during military rule. Kissinger left Paris that evening, and Loire's inquiries were directed to the U.S. State Department.[69]
"In July 2001, the Chilean high court granted investigating judge Juan Guzmán the right to question Kissinger about the 1973 killing of American journalist Charles Horman. (His execution by the Chilean military after the coup was dramatized in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film, Missing.) The judge's questions were relayed to Kissinger via diplomatic routes but were not answered.[70]
"In August 2001, Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba sent a letter rogatory to the US State Department, in accordance with the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), requesting a deposition by Kissinger to aid the judge's investigation of Operation Condor.[71] On 10 September 2001, a civil suit was filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court by the family of Gen. René Schneider, murdered former Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, asserting that Kissinger ordered Schneider's murder because he refused to endorse plans for a military coup. Schneider was killed by coup-plotters loyal to General Roberto Viaux in a botched kidnapping attempt. As part of the suit, Schneider's two sons filed for civil damages against Kissinger and then-CIA director Richard Helms for $3 million.[72][73][74]
"On 16 February 2007, a request for the extradition of Kissinger was filed at the Supreme Court of Uruguay on behalf of Bernardo Arnone, a political activist who was kidnapped, tortured and disappeared by the dictatorial regime in 1976.[75]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor