US President Barack Obama is to declassify US military and intelligence records related to Argentina’s “Dirty War,” the White House said on Thursday, aiming to bring closure to questions of US involvement in a notorious chapter in Argentina’s history.
Obama’s visit to Buenos Aires next week coincides with the 40th anniversary of the 1976 military coup that started Argentina’s 1976 to 1983 dictatorship. Little is known about the US role leading up to that period, in which thousands of people were forcibly disappeared and babies systematically stolen from political prisoners.
US National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Obama would use his trip to announce a “comprehensive effort” to declassify more documents, at Argentina’s request. She said Obama would also visit Remembrance Park in Buenos Aires to honor victims of the dictatorship.
“This anniversary and beyond, we’re determined to do our part as Argentina continues to heal and move forward as one nation,” Rice said in a speech ahead of Obama’s trip.
The announcement promised to reverberate across Argentina, where even today the events of the dictatorship are a major topic of national interest and concern.
“This is transcendental. We believe it’s a huge gesture,” Argentine Chief of the Cabinet Marcos Pena told TV station Todo Noticias.
The US has previously released 4,000 US Department of State documents related to that period, but those documents tell only part of the story.
Notes from a 1976 meeting between then-US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and the Argentine foreign minister, for example, seemed to show Kissinger urging his new counterpart to clamp down on dissidents they referred to as “terrorists.”
“If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly,” Kissinger said, according to a transcript the US declassified more than a decade ago.
In Argentina, human rights advocates have repeatedly called for the US to divulge the rest of the information it has in hopes of exposing any wrongdoing.
As part of the new declassification effort, the US is to search for additional records related to rights abuses committed by the junta, said a senior Obama administration official, who was not authorized to discuss the program by name and requested anonymity.
That search is to for the first time include records from US intelligence agencies, along with the Pentagon, US law enforcement agencies and presidential libraries, the official said.
Argentine Human Rights Secretary Claudio Avruj said opening the archives could shed light on Argentine soldiers trained at the School of the Americas and the so-called Plan Condor, a coordinated effort between South American dictatorships to stamp out dissent through assassinations, torture and repression.
“This is also going to help in the search for grandchildren taken during the dictatorship,” Avruj wrote on Twitter.
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