-Caveat Lector- >GUARDIAN (London) Tuesday November 21, 2000 > Isabel Hilton > >Getting away with murder > >The US has admitted its involvement in Latin America, but those >responsible are immune > >It has been a curious few days for followers of US foreign policy. >President Clinton, now safely at the end of his presidency, has afforded >himself a trip to Vietnam in a long-delayed postwar reconciliation. >Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the latest release of US >declassified documents has added more detail to the suspicion that has >been officially denied for decades - that US interference in the internal >politics of Latin America over fifty years from the end of the second >world war was widespread, relentless and, for the most part, disastrous in >its consequences. > >Last week, the US released 17,000 previously classified documents relating >to CIA interference in Chile. The documents - many of them heavily >censored - were released by the US state department, the defence >intelligence agency, the CIA, the FBI and the justice department. They are >the fourth and last round of disclosures ordered by President Clinton. > >The "revelation" that the US helped to bring Augusto Pinochet to power by >destabilising the government of President Salvador Allende can have come >as a surprise only to those who have spent the last 27 years in a state of >acute denial. (This includes, notoriously, substantial sections of the >British Conservative party as well as many Chilean supporters of the >right.) > >But still, the documents confirm that, in addition to the well-known dirty >tricks against Allende, between 1971 and 1973 the US government gave $4m >to opposition political parties, mostly to the Christian Democrats; that >the CIA spent $2.6m supporting the Christian Democrats in the 1964 >election in Chile; and that the US went on paying political parties into >the 1980s. The newspaper El Mercurio received about $1.6m in covert >support from US agents. El Mercurio was a leading critic of the government >of Allende. None of this has raised public confidence in Chile's political >parties, or in their version of history. > >A CIA memo prepared three years before the 1973 coup states: "If civil >disorders were to follow from a military action, the USG [US government] >would promptly deliver necessary support and material, (but not >personnel)." In a state department memo written weeks after the coup that >put Pinochet in power, Jack Kubisch wrote: "The junta does not appear to >represent a threat to our major national interest. No overriding national >objective seems to me to be served by supporting opposition to it." > >Chile, of course, is not the only case. The truth is that US policy in >Latin America was for several decades in thrall to a security doctrine >that argued that considerations of human rights or democracy were >secondary to the fight against what the US perceived as Soviet and Cuban >influence, however broadly defined. It came to include almost all attempts >to achieve political change or social justice. Its executives were the >Latin American military officers trained by the US in the School of the >Americas in Panama. There they learned to conduct dirty warfare against >their own civilian populations and went on to practise their lessons with >enthusiasm. > >So while US diplomats publicly promoted democratic ideals, US government >was sponsoring armies and intelligence services that waged savage internal >war against political opponents - many of the left, others simply >reforming democrats, trade unionists or campaigners for land rights. When >this provoked civil war or military dictatorship, successive US >administrations colluded in the concealment of massive human rights >violations, misinforming not only US public opinion but, on occasions, >Congress itself. > >The price was paid in Latin America in the deaths and disappearance of, at >a conservative estimate, around 100,000 people throughout the >subcontinent. Their ghosts continue to haunt the countries in which they >occurred. > >Anything up to 30 years later, the truth is partially leaked, long after >the guilty men are dead, retired or, in the case of President Reagan, >senile. The Gipper himself, of course, was pardoned by George Bush, >without the crimes for which he was pardoned ever being officially >acknowledged. Is there such a great moral difference between Bush's >granting a pardon to Reagan for his pursuit of a war that was in violation >of US law and his government's publicly stated policy, and Pinochet's >amnesty for himself and his cohorts for the crimes they committed in >Chile? As an operation, the concealment of US operations in Latin America >for long enough for the guilty men to escape punishment rivals the worst >practices of the countries that were victims of these policies. > >It has been, though, an effective strategy. By the time the documents are >allowed to filter out, the events they reveal are over; domestic public >opinion in the US, in that depressingly anti- historical phrase, has >"moved on"; the details have grown fuzzy. On the ground, the orphans have >grown up and the widows are dead or discouraged. > >Just for the record, then, what were the consequences of that era when, in >the words of one US analyst, "the gang that blew Vietnam went Latin"? >Chile was the most notorious case, Central America an even more tragic >one. It covered the civil war in El Salvador, the Contra war in Nicaragua >and the genocide perpetrated against the Indian population of Guatemala by >a series of military regimes that held power after a US-sponsored coup in >the 1950s. A legion of US officials spent their careers pretending that >the deaths and disappearances, the torture and terror, were the >responsibility of a few isolated extremists who were out of the control of >the fine democrats whom the US supported. Limited US admissions, produced >decades after the event, come too late for the victims. > >In Argentina, Chile and Central America, the consequences of US policy >persist in over-powerful militaries and in the conflicts provoked by the >continuing efforts of the victims' families to locate the remains of their >relatives and bring the perpetrators to justice. But in the country that >proclaims itself the world's best democracy there is impunity for the men >who conceived and executed these policies. In the case of the Iran-Contra >affair, for instance, in the words of the Walsh report, "the underlying >facts ... are that ... President Reagan, the secretary of state, the >secretary of defence and the director of central intelligence and their >necessary assistants committed themselves ... to two programmes contrary >to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the >law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up >the president's wilful activities." > >George Bush pardoned Reagan, but what of Bush's own role? After heading >the CIA, he was vice-president throughout the Reagan presidency then >succeeded Reagan as president. On December 24 1992, 12 days before former >secretary of defence Caspar W Weinberger was to go on trial, a trial in >which Bush himself might have been called as a witness, Bush pardoned him >and five other defendants. The criminal investigation of Bush himself was >never completed. > >Bush continues to enjoy his position as ex-president and respected father >of the man who may well get the current presidential job. 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