Paging Dr. Kissinger

The Riggs Bank/Pinochet scandal continues to unfold, dumping dirt everywhere, including a big pile of it on the doorstep of the U.S. government. Now we learn from The New York Times:

The former Chilean dictator received multimillion-dollar payments from the governments of several countries, including the United States, during his 25-year tenure as Chile's ruler and military chief, according to documents recently uncovered during a Senate committee investigation into suspected money laundering at Riggs Bank.

In 1976, the Ford administration – with Henry Kissinger at the State Department—slipped Pinochet $3 million. That was a bloody year in the annals of the Chilean dictatorship:

In 1976, the year General Pinochet received his payment from the United States, there were two pivotal events for Chile. The intelligence services of Chile and other South American countries agreed on a wide-ranging campaign to kill exiled political opponents. Shortly after that, a former Chilean foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, and his American assistant were blown up in their car on a busy street in Washington, an event that led to a reassessment of the United States' relationship with the Pinochet government.

Well, not exactly. There was no real American “re-assessment” about Pinochet for nearly another full decade. But there’s a bigger question here. Just what did the U.S. want in return for its $3 million payout to this already notorious butcher?

No clear answer is available. But Randy Paul wonders aloud if  some of that American cash might have been plowed back into Pinochet’s politico-criminal operations which exploded that year in the streets of Washington with the car-bombing murder of Letelier?

It’s a question – among many many others—that a lot of people would like to ask Dr. Kissinger, among the most enthusiastic supporters, defenders and, now we learn, financiers of General Pinochet. This is all hardly dead history, if you will excuse the pun. Scott Sherman shows us how Kissinger and his Kronies recently exercised their clout inside the Council On Foreign Relations to squelch the historical debate over just how deep Dr. K's legacy should be immersed in the sea of blood spilled by Pinochet.

Comments

[Randy Paul]

Thanks for the mention Marc. I read Sherman's article and I imagine that Kissinger could probably have taught Pinochet a thing or two.

The Letelier-Moffitt murders, the attempt to murder Bernardo Leighton and the murder of General Prats in my mind show that Pinochet believed not only in domestic terrorism against his own people, but international terrorism designed to intimidate his non-violent opponents.

[GMRoper]

Marc, I followed your link to Randy's blog. Left a comment. Good Stuff. Thanks Randy, Thanks Mark.

[Randy Paul]

Thanks for the kind words, GM. Didn't get your comment on my blog, however.

[GMRoper]

Randy, I don't know what happened. At any rate, I noted that I went there via Marc and that I thought the report and the writing good. Sorry about that

[L.]

Yeah. The gist of loving Pinochet is the same as supporting monetarily and militarily many, many
brutal dictators like that. They do it because that's their man, and it keeps the population afraid and
docile while USA extracts all the resources.
A few mainstream papers even lightly touched on, after he died, the fact that during reagan (really just
12 years of papa bush) there were more than 300,000 killed in Southern America by the extremely brutal
folks in power that we supported the whole way through. Now your underwear is made in Honduras, El
Salvador, etc., and what's going in Colombia right now is the same. In 2000 we started giving Colombia
$1 billion a year, through clinton, because FARC and normal peasants were tired of the horrible death
squads sponsored by bush/clinton years.
blah, blah, blah. but check www.zmag.org under Colombia to see if there's any recent reports from there.

[steve]

Yes, it is odd how the anger at Pinochet is not directed toward today's favorite dictators, be they Saudi, Pakistani, Uzbekhi...