Kissinger cable adds to questions about 1976 Operation Condor

A newly uncovered document from the secretary of State rejects warning South American governments against international terrorism. Five days later, a bombing linked to Chile killed 2 in Washington.

By Andrew Zajac and David S. Cloud
LA Times
April 10, 2010
Reporting from Washington

A newly declassified document has added to long-standing questions about whether Henry Kissinger, while secretary of State, halted a U.S. plan to curb a secret program of international assassinations by South American dictators.

The document, a set of instructions cabled from Kissinger to his top Latin American deputy, ended efforts by U.S. diplomats to warn the governments of Chile, Uruguay and Argentina against involvement in the covert plan known as Operation Condor, according to Peter Kornbluh, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a private research organization that uncovered the document and made it public Saturday.

In the cable, dated Sept. 16, 1976, Kissinger rejected delivering a proposed warning to the government of Uruguay about Condor operations and ordered that "no further action be taken on this matter" by the State Department.

Five days after Kissinger's message, Chilean exile Orlando Letelier and a colleague were killed in Washington's Embassy Row in a car bombing later tied to Chilean secret police working through the Condor network. The assassinations are considered one of the most brazen acts of terrorism ever carried out in the capital.

(More here.)