Kenneth Maxwell
Encyclopedia
Kenneth Robert Maxwell is a British
historian who specializes in Iberia
and Latin America
. A longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations
, for fifteen years he headed its Latin America Studies Program. His May 13, 2004 resignation from the council involved a major controversy over whether there had been a breach of the so-called "church-state separation" between the council itself and its magazine Foreign Affairs
. , Maxwell is a Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University
and a senior fellow at the university's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
, where he directs the Center's Brazil Studies Program.
' November/December 2003 of Peter Kornbluh
's book The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. The review was written in his capacity as a scholar, independently of his role as an employee of the Council. Maxwell's review was, in part, critical of Henry Kissinger
's relationship with the regime of Chile
an dictator Augusto Pinochet
. Maxwell claims that key Council on Foreign Relations acting at Kissinger's behest put pressure on Foreign Affairs editor, James Hoge, to give the last word in a subsequent exchange about the review to William D. Rogers
, a close associate of Kissinger's, rather than to Maxwell; this went against established Foreign Affairs policy.
The core subject matter of the abruptly terminated exchange was Operation Condor
: the campaign of assassination
and intelligence-gathering conducted jointly by the security services of Argentina
, Bolivia
, Brazil
, Chile, Paraguay
, and Uruguay
in the mid-1970s. Discussion turned particularly on the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier
in Washington, DC.
Maxwell had long been something of a public figure before what he refers to as "The Case of the Missing Letter... a Nixonian
drama in four acts: preemption, suppression, and cover-up followed by denial" [Maxwell 2004, 1], brought him to far wider attention. Maxwell's review in Foreign Affairs' November/December 2003 of Kornbluh's The Pinochet File occasioned a letter to Foreign Affairs from Rogers; that letter and Maxwell's reply were published in the January/February 2004 issue. Maxwell characterizes Rogers' letter as a "counter review", and claims to have evidence that much of it had circulated previously to Maxwell's own review in Foreign Affairs, and that allusions to Maxwell's review were simply pasted in so that it would appear more relevant. [Maxwell 2004, 7]
Rogers wrote again, accusing Maxwell of "bias". This letter was published in the March/April 2004 issue. Contrary to all precedent a Foreign Affairs, Maxwell was not given the right to reply. He claims that "serious misrepresentations of historical fact and ad hominem accusations of bias" were thus allowed "to stand unchallenged" and that "This converted a controversy over the historical record into a suppression of free debate." [Maxwell 2004, 2]
The matter has had little further discussion in Foreign Affairs; the September/October 2004 issue contains a letter of protest signed by Harvard Professor John Coatsworth and ten other scholars of Latin America, all members of the Council on Foreign Relations; it also contains a reply from James Hoge. Characterizing Maxwell's original review as "balanced and thoughtful", they describe themselves as "dismayed by the tone and the content" of Rogers' letters and "appalled by the journal’s decision not to publish a response by Maxwell". [quoted at Maxwell, 2004, 3] Their original letter ended with the sentence, "We urge you to find an appropriate way to repair this lapse before it becomes a permanent stain on the reputation of Foreign Affairs". The magazine did not see fit to include this sentence and, in what Maxwell claims was another unprecedented decision, the "Letters to the Editor" section of the September/October 2004 issue has not been posted in the magazine’s online edition. [Maxwell, 2004, 3]
Hoge has publicly denied that any of this was due to direct or indirect pressure from Kissinger, Rogers, or their associates. Maxwell's paper "The Case of the Missing Letter..." lays out extensive evidence to that it was, indeed, due to such pressure. He cites Peter G. Peterson, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, as confirming in an interview for Chronicle of Higher Education that he communicated Kissinger's anger to Hoge. Further pressure may have been put by Maurice ("Hank") Greenberg
, vice chairman emeritus of the Council's board. Maxwell sent emails in December 2004 mentioning pressure from Greenberg; this was before he was aware of Hoge's intent to give Rogers the last word. [Maxwell, 2004, 11-12] Peterson and Greenberg were both major donors to the Council; between them they were directly or indirectly responsible for $34 million in donations. Both had helped endow Hoge's chair. [Maxwell, 2004, 16]
All parties agree that Kissinger did not express his displeasure directly to Hoge; in fact, Maxwell quotes Hoge as saying in January 2004, "Henry will not speak to me or shake my hand," but that he was "called and 'sworn at for half an hour' by Greenberg". [Maxwell, 2004, 14]
After the Rogers letter was published without Maxwell being given the right of reply, Maxwell stayed several months in his job working for the Council, continuing a lengthy exchange with Hoge, hoping to be allowed a belated reply in Foreign Affairs, and arranging a new job at Harvard. His letter of resignation read, in part, "I have no personal ax to grind in this matter, but I do have a historian's obligation to the accuracy of the historical record. The Council's current relationship with Mr. Kissinger evidently comes at the cost of suppressing debate about his actions as a public figure. This I want no part of." [Maxwell, 2004, 4]
and in the Chilean coup of 1973
, and Kissinger's possible relationship to Operation Condor. Kornbluh is the lead researcher on Chile at the National Security Archive
(NSA), a research group at George Washington University
. NSA has been the leader in using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain U.S. government documents related to the U.S. role in Chile in the 1970s, and his book dealt in large part with what can be learned from these documents.
When Kornbluh's book came out, Kissinger and Rogers attempted to get Foreign Affairs to run an article by Mark Falcoff
of the American Enterprise Institute
minimizing Kissinger's role in the events in Chile. Foreign Affairs rejected the article. According to Maxwell, Hoge found it "too narrow a defense of Kissinger," and then asked Maxwell to write a review. (Falcoff's rejected article was subsequently published in Commentary
as "Kissinger & Chile: The Myth That Will Not Die.") Maxwell points out several places in which Falcoff misquoted documents in ways favorable to Kissinger, for example changing a remark of Kissinger's, talking to Nixon on the phone about the coup, from "Well we didn't – as you know – our hand doesn’t show on this one though," to simply "We didn't do it." [Maxwell, 2004, 5]
Maxwell argues that Foreign Affairs has attempted to whitewash even the nature of the historical controversy: "In his editorial response Hoge claims that Kissinger's and Rogers' unhappiness was prompted by the 'damaging implication' in my review that 'Rogers and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had contributed to the creation of a permissive environment for political violence by the Chilean government under Augusto Pinochet.' This was not the issue at the center of the controversy. In fact, I can think of very few objective historians who would dissent from such an overall assessment." He points out that this conclusion was reached as early as the Church Committee
in the 1970s and that even a "heavily hedged" 2000 report from the CIA states, "Although the CIA did not instigate the coup that ended Allende's government on 11 September 1973, it was aware of the plotting by the military, had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters and – because the CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970 – probably appeared to condone it." [Maxwell, 2004, 17]
Paramount among the specific matters at issue: Maxwell points out that U.S. policymakers were aware not only of Operation Condor in general, but in particular "...that a Chilean assassination team had been planning to enter the United States." A month before the Letelier assassination, Kissinger ordered "... that the Latin American rulers involved be informed that the 'assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone
countries and abroad ... would create a most serious moral and political problem.'" Maxwell wrote in his review of Kornbluh's book, "This demarche was apparently not delivered: the U.S. embassy in Santiago demurred on the ground that to deliver such a strong rebuke would upset the dictator," and that on September 20, 1976, the day before Letelier
and his assistant Ronni Moffitt
were killed, "the State Department instructed the ambassadors 'to take no further action' with regard to the Condor scheme." [Maxwell, 2004, 18]
Rogers, in his first response, refers to "...the stern human rights warning Kissinger delivered directly to Pinochet at their only meeting... " (the meeting took place in Santiago June 8, 1976), points to "...Kissinger’s statement, made in an address to the region’s foreign ministers, that the regime's human rights violations '[had] impaired our relationship with Chile and [would] continue to do so,'" and that "Kissinger’s warning was delivered in robust fashion to the Argentine president–there are cables to prove it...–and probably to Pinochet’s underlings in Santiago," and claims that Kissinger did not send, and probably did not even see, the "take no further action" cable. [Maxwell, 2004, 18–19] [Rogers and Maxwell, 2004]. Declassified documents obtained and posted by the National Security Archive on April 10, 2010 confirm that Kissinger sent a cable to his assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs on September 16, 1976 rescinding delivery of the Condor demarche and terminating diplomatic efforts to warn the Condor military regimes against planned assassinations. These declassified documents definitively contradict Kissinger's and Roger's account and confirm that Kissinger was not only aware of the rescission of the Condor demarche but personally responsible for it.
With reference to the human rights speech, Maxwell argues in reply, that Kissinger there is clear documentary evidence that Kissinger "...personally assured Pinochet that he was giving it for U.S. domestic consumption," and quotes the notes from a meeting at which Rogers was present to validate this. He further points out that the delivery of the message to Argentina has no bearing on the matter, and that the declassified copy of the cable Rogers claims Kissinger never saw shows it addressed to "secstate washdc". He also points out that the declassified record is clear that, at the time, Rogers viewed Pinochet's Chile as "...a symbol of right-wing tyranny" and referred to the U.S.'s "strong interest in getting the GOC [Government of Chile] to pursue acceptable human rights practices" because "Like it or not, we are identified with the regime's origins and hence charged with some responsibility for its action." Maxwell writes, "Rogers' loyalty to his former boss and current business associate is commendable, but it was not reciprocated at the time, with Kissinger saying privately to Chilean foreign minister Patricio Carvajal, "the State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there are not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State." [Maxwell, 2004, 19–20] [Rogers and Maxwell, 2004]
Rogers, in his second response, tries to present Maxwell as claiming that Kissinger or the U.S. State Department gave a direct go-ahead for the Letelier assassination. Maxwell, in his further reply that Foreign Affairs refused to print, points out that he made no such claim, simply referring to the "cruel coincidence" of the timing of the assassination relative to the "take no further action" cable. He also presents a circumstantial argument as to why the cable should be seen as representing policy emanating from the highest level. [Maxwell, 2004, 21]
Maxwell summarizes by saying that his argument is simply that lives might have been saved if the State Department had steadfastly pursued its intent to have U.S. ambassadors inform the "...heads of state of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay... that the American government knew of their Condor assassination plans and condemned them wherever they might take place." [Maxwell, 2004, 24]
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
historian who specializes in Iberia
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
and Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. A longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
, for fifteen years he headed its Latin America Studies Program. His May 13, 2004 resignation from the council involved a major controversy over whether there had been a breach of the so-called "church-state separation" between the council itself and its magazine Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
. , Maxwell is a Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and a senior fellow at the university's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
Founded in 1994, Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies works to increase knowledge of the cultures, economies, histories, environment, and contemporary affairs of past and present Latin America. The Center's main office is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard...
, where he directs the Center's Brazil Studies Program.
"The Case of the Missing Letter"
Maxwell wrote a review in Foreign AffairsPeter Kornbluh
Peter Kornbluh is director of the National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project and of the Cuba Documentation Project.He played a large role in the campaign to declassify government documents, via the FOIA, relating to the history of the U.S. Government's support for the Pinochet...
's book The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. The review was written in his capacity as a scholar, independently of his role as an employee of the Council. Maxwell's review was, in part, critical of Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
's relationship with the regime of Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an dictator Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
. Maxwell claims that key Council on Foreign Relations acting at Kissinger's behest put pressure on Foreign Affairs editor, James Hoge, to give the last word in a subsequent exchange about the review to William D. Rogers
William D. Rogers
William Dill Rogers was an American lawyer. He served as U.S...
, a close associate of Kissinger's, rather than to Maxwell; this went against established Foreign Affairs policy.
The core subject matter of the abruptly terminated exchange was Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
: the campaign of assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
and intelligence-gathering conducted jointly by the security services of Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Chile, Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
, and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
in the mid-1970s. Discussion turned particularly on the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier
Orlando Letelier
Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...
in Washington, DC.
Maxwell had long been something of a public figure before what he refers to as "The Case of the Missing Letter... a Nixonian
Nixonian
The term Nixonian, or "Nixonite" is a term used to signify extreme secretiveness or corruption. It can also refer to liberal Republicans.The term is used to refer to a regime of dirty election tricks or abuses of power for political gain.-Other usage:...
drama in four acts: preemption, suppression, and cover-up followed by denial" [Maxwell 2004, 1], brought him to far wider attention. Maxwell's review in Foreign Affairs
Rogers wrote again, accusing Maxwell of "bias". This letter was published in the March/April 2004 issue. Contrary to all precedent a Foreign Affairs, Maxwell was not given the right to reply. He claims that "serious misrepresentations of historical fact and ad hominem accusations of bias" were thus allowed "to stand unchallenged" and that "This converted a controversy over the historical record into a suppression of free debate." [Maxwell 2004, 2]
The matter has had little further discussion in Foreign Affairs; the September/October 2004 issue contains a letter of protest signed by Harvard Professor John Coatsworth and ten other scholars of Latin America, all members of the Council on Foreign Relations; it also contains a reply from James Hoge. Characterizing Maxwell's original review as "balanced and thoughtful", they describe themselves as "dismayed by the tone and the content" of Rogers' letters and "appalled by the journal’s decision not to publish a response by Maxwell". [quoted at Maxwell, 2004, 3] Their original letter ended with the sentence, "We urge you to find an appropriate way to repair this lapse before it becomes a permanent stain on the reputation of Foreign Affairs". The magazine did not see fit to include this sentence and, in what Maxwell claims was another unprecedented decision, the "Letters to the Editor" section of the September/October 2004 issue has not been posted in the magazine’s online edition. [Maxwell, 2004, 3]
Hoge has publicly denied that any of this was due to direct or indirect pressure from Kissinger, Rogers, or their associates. Maxwell's paper "The Case of the Missing Letter..." lays out extensive evidence to that it was, indeed, due to such pressure. He cites Peter G. Peterson, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, as confirming in an interview for Chronicle of Higher Education that he communicated Kissinger's anger to Hoge. Further pressure may have been put by Maurice ("Hank") Greenberg
Maurice R. Greenberg
Maurice Raymond "Hank" Greenberg is an American business executive and former chairman and CEO of American International Group , which was the world's 18th largest public company and its largest insurance and financial services corporation.He is currently chairman and CEO of C.V. Starr & Co., Inc....
, vice chairman emeritus of the Council's board. Maxwell sent emails in December 2004 mentioning pressure from Greenberg; this was before he was aware of Hoge's intent to give Rogers the last word. [Maxwell, 2004, 11-12] Peterson and Greenberg were both major donors to the Council; between them they were directly or indirectly responsible for $34 million in donations. Both had helped endow Hoge's chair. [Maxwell, 2004, 16]
All parties agree that Kissinger did not express his displeasure directly to Hoge; in fact, Maxwell quotes Hoge as saying in January 2004, "Henry will not speak to me or shake my hand," but that he was "called and 'sworn at for half an hour' by Greenberg". [Maxwell, 2004, 14]
After the Rogers letter was published without Maxwell being given the right of reply, Maxwell stayed several months in his job working for the Council, continuing a lengthy exchange with Hoge, hoping to be allowed a belated reply in Foreign Affairs, and arranging a new job at Harvard. His letter of resignation read, in part, "I have no personal ax to grind in this matter, but I do have a historian's obligation to the accuracy of the historical record. The Council's current relationship with Mr. Kissinger evidently comes at the cost of suppressing debate about his actions as a public figure. This I want no part of." [Maxwell, 2004, 4]
Kissinger and Chile
All of this would provide little more than a moderately interesting insight into the inner workings of an influential institution, were it not for the historical subject matter that occasioned the dispute: Kissinger's possible role in the 1970 assassination of Chilean General René SchneiderRené Schneider
General René Schneider Chereau was the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army at the time of the 1970 Chilean presidential election, when he was assassinated during a botched kidnapping attempt. His murder virtually assured Salvador Allende's eventual overthrow and death in a coup three years later...
and in the Chilean coup of 1973
Chilean coup of 1973
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event of the Cold War and the history of Chile. Following an extended period of political unrest between the conservative-dominated Congress of Chile and the socialist-leaning President Salvador Allende, discontent culminated in the latter's downfall in...
, and Kissinger's possible relationship to Operation Condor. Kornbluh is the lead researcher on Chile at the National Security Archive
National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
(NSA), a research group at George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
. NSA has been the leader in using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain U.S. government documents related to the U.S. role in Chile in the 1970s, and his book dealt in large part with what can be learned from these documents.
When Kornbluh's book came out, Kissinger and Rogers attempted to get Foreign Affairs to run an article by Mark Falcoff
Mark Falcoff
Mark Falcoff is an American scholar and policy consultant who has worked with a number of important think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute , the Hoover Institution, and the Council on Foreign Relations....
of the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
minimizing Kissinger's role in the events in Chile. Foreign Affairs rejected the article. According to Maxwell, Hoge found it "too narrow a defense of Kissinger," and then asked Maxwell to write a review. (Falcoff's rejected article was subsequently published in Commentary
Commentary (magazine)
Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
as "Kissinger & Chile: The Myth That Will Not Die.") Maxwell points out several places in which Falcoff misquoted documents in ways favorable to Kissinger, for example changing a remark of Kissinger's, talking to Nixon on the phone about the coup, from "Well we didn't – as you know – our hand doesn’t show on this one though," to simply "We didn't do it." [Maxwell, 2004, 5]
Maxwell argues that Foreign Affairs has attempted to whitewash even the nature of the historical controversy: "In his editorial response Hoge claims that Kissinger's and Rogers' unhappiness was prompted by the 'damaging implication' in my review that 'Rogers and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had contributed to the creation of a permissive environment for political violence by the Chilean government under Augusto Pinochet.' This was not the issue at the center of the controversy. In fact, I can think of very few objective historians who would dissent from such an overall assessment." He points out that this conclusion was reached as early as the Church Committee
Church Committee
The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...
in the 1970s and that even a "heavily hedged" 2000 report from the CIA states, "Although the CIA did not instigate the coup that ended Allende's government on 11 September 1973, it was aware of the plotting by the military, had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters and – because the CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970 – probably appeared to condone it." [Maxwell, 2004, 17]
Paramount among the specific matters at issue: Maxwell points out that U.S. policymakers were aware not only of Operation Condor in general, but in particular "...that a Chilean assassination team had been planning to enter the United States." A month before the Letelier assassination, Kissinger ordered "... that the Latin American rulers involved be informed that the 'assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone
Southern Cone
Southern Cone is a geographic region composed of the southernmost areas of South America, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Although geographically this includes part of Southern and Southeast of Brazil, in terms of political geography the Southern cone has traditionally comprised Argentina,...
countries and abroad ... would create a most serious moral and political problem.'" Maxwell wrote in his review of Kornbluh's book, "This demarche was apparently not delivered: the U.S. embassy in Santiago demurred on the ground that to deliver such a strong rebuke would upset the dictator," and that on September 20, 1976, the day before Letelier
Orlando Letelier
Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...
and his assistant Ronni Moffitt
Ronni Moffitt
Ronni Moffitt , was a American political activist.-Early Life:She was born in Passaic, New Jersey as Ronni Susan Karpen on January 10, 1951 to Murray and Hilda Karpen. She was the oldest of three children including Harry Karpen and Michael Karpen. Her family owned a restaurant called "Karpen's" and...
were killed, "the State Department instructed the ambassadors 'to take no further action' with regard to the Condor scheme." [Maxwell, 2004, 18]
Rogers, in his first response, refers to "...the stern human rights warning Kissinger delivered directly to Pinochet at their only meeting... " (the meeting took place in Santiago June 8, 1976), points to "...Kissinger’s statement, made in an address to the region’s foreign ministers, that the regime's human rights violations '[had] impaired our relationship with Chile and [would] continue to do so,'" and that "Kissinger’s warning was delivered in robust fashion to the Argentine president–there are cables to prove it...–and probably to Pinochet’s underlings in Santiago," and claims that Kissinger did not send, and probably did not even see, the "take no further action" cable. [Maxwell, 2004, 18–19] [Rogers and Maxwell, 2004]. Declassified documents obtained and posted by the National Security Archive on April 10, 2010 confirm that Kissinger sent a cable to his assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs on September 16, 1976 rescinding delivery of the Condor demarche and terminating diplomatic efforts to warn the Condor military regimes against planned assassinations. These declassified documents definitively contradict Kissinger's and Roger's account and confirm that Kissinger was not only aware of the rescission of the Condor demarche but personally responsible for it.
With reference to the human rights speech, Maxwell argues in reply, that Kissinger there is clear documentary evidence that Kissinger "...personally assured Pinochet that he was giving it for U.S. domestic consumption," and quotes the notes from a meeting at which Rogers was present to validate this. He further points out that the delivery of the message to Argentina has no bearing on the matter, and that the declassified copy of the cable Rogers claims Kissinger never saw shows it addressed to "secstate washdc". He also points out that the declassified record is clear that, at the time, Rogers viewed Pinochet's Chile as "...a symbol of right-wing tyranny" and referred to the U.S.'s "strong interest in getting the GOC [Government of Chile] to pursue acceptable human rights practices" because "Like it or not, we are identified with the regime's origins and hence charged with some responsibility for its action." Maxwell writes, "Rogers' loyalty to his former boss and current business associate is commendable, but it was not reciprocated at the time, with Kissinger saying privately to Chilean foreign minister Patricio Carvajal, "the State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there are not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State." [Maxwell, 2004, 19–20] [Rogers and Maxwell, 2004]
Rogers, in his second response, tries to present Maxwell as claiming that Kissinger or the U.S. State Department gave a direct go-ahead for the Letelier assassination. Maxwell, in his further reply that Foreign Affairs refused to print, points out that he made no such claim, simply referring to the "cruel coincidence" of the timing of the assassination relative to the "take no further action" cable. He also presents a circumstantial argument as to why the cable should be seen as representing policy emanating from the highest level. [Maxwell, 2004, 21]
Maxwell summarizes by saying that his argument is simply that lives might have been saved if the State Department had steadfastly pursued its intent to have U.S. ambassadors inform the "...heads of state of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay... that the American government knew of their Condor assassination plans and condemned them wherever they might take place." [Maxwell, 2004, 24]