Latest leaks from Edward Snowden say American agents recorded more than 70 million French phone calls in just 30 days – including those of politicians and businessmen

The French government has summoned the US ambassador in Paris to provide an explanation for fresh Edward Snowden revelations about the NSA.

According to reports this morning in Le Monde, the American National Security Agency recorded more than 70 million phone calls made France over the course of just 30 days.

If accurate, the reports are the latest indicator of the extraordinary reaching of US electronic spying, and come alongside the news that agents also hacked the email account of former Mexican president Felipe Calderon.

The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, told reporters at an EU meet in Luxembourg: “I have immediately summoned the US ambassador and he will be received this morning at the Quai d’Orsay [French Foreign Ministry].”

“Rules are obviously needed when it comes to new communication technologies, and that’s something that concerns every country,” he the Europe-1 radio station. “If a friendly country – an ally – spies on France or other European countries, that is completely unacceptable.”

Le Monde’s story, which included the byline of the outgoing Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, said that the communications of prominent businessmen and politicians were spied on alongside those of suspected security threats.

It said the NSA had targeted Orange and Alcatel-Lucent – two of the biggest network operators in France – and that it used keyword technology and lists of certain types of numbers to automatically pick up millions of records a day.

The 70.3 million pieces of data came from 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013, and it was not made clear whether they included the full content of conversations or just the metadata – the information of who, when and where the call was made.

The programme of surveillance, codenamed US-985D, also reportedly stored millions of intercepted text messages.

The article followed reports in the German weekly Der Spiegel that the NSA accessed the email account of Felipe Calderon, the former Mexican president. Mexico said it would be seeking an explanation from US officials “as soon as possible”.

Mr Snowden, a former contractor with the NSA who first went public about US surveillance techniques in June, warned then that he had gigabytes of data full of other revelations, to be released over time.

He is currently a refugee at an unknown location in Russia, after he was granted one year’s asylum on the condition, president Vladimir Putin said, that he stop leaking US secrets.

It is not known whether today’s revelations come straight from Mr Snowden himself, or if they are part of a large stock of data given in bulk to journalists at an earlier date.

The US has, as with other Snowden stories, refused to comment on what it calls confidential information.

Officials nonetheless referred Le Monde to a statement made in June, in which US director of national intelligence James Clapper defended the NSA’s programmes.

“They are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorised by Congress,” he said. “Their purpose is to obtain foreign intelligence information, including information necessary to thwart terrorist and cyber-attacks against the United States and its allies.”

Adam Withnall
Monday, 21 October 2013

Find this story at 21 October 2013

© independent.co.uk

The future will perhaps tell us one day why France has remained so discreet in comparison with Germany or Brazil, for example, after the first revelations about the extent of the American electronic espionage programmes in the world as revealed by Edward Snowden, the ex-employee of an NSA (National Security Agency) sub-contractor. France was also concerned and today has at its disposition tangible proof that its interests are targeted on a daily basis.
According to the documents retrieved from the NSA database by its ex-analyst, telephone communications of French citizens are intercepted on a massive scale. Le Monde has been able to obtain access to documents which describe the techniques used to violate the secrets or simply the private life of French people. Some elements of information about this espionage have been referred to by Der Speigel and The Guardian, but others are, to date, unpublished.

Amongst the thousands of documents extracted from the NSA by its ex-employee there is a graph which describes the extent of telephone monitoring and tapping (DNR – Dial Number Recognition) carried out in France. It can be seen that over a period of thirty days – from 10 December 2012 to 8 January 2013, 70,3 million recordings of French citizens’ telephone data were made by the NSA. This agency has several methods of data collection. According to the elements obtained by Le Monde, when a telephone number is used in France, it activates a signal which automatically triggers the recording of the call. Apparently this surveillance system also picks up SMS messages and their content using key words. Finally, the NSA apparently stores the history of the connections of each target – or the meta-data.

This espionage is listed under the programme US-985D. The precise explanation of this acronym has not been provided, to date, by the Snowden documents nor by the former members of the NSA. By way of comparison, the acronyms used by the NSA for the same type of interception targeting Germany are US-987LA and US-987LB. According to some sources, this series of numbers corresponds to the circle referred to by the United States as the ‘third party’, to which belong France, Germany but also Austria, Poland or again Belgium. ‘The second party’ concerns the English-speaking countries historically close to Washington: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – this group is known by the name the ‘five eyes’. ‘The first party’ concerns the sixteen American secret services of which today the NSA has become the most important, according to a senior official from the French Intelligence community.

The techniques used for these interceptions appear under the codenames ‘DRTBOX’ and ‘WHITEBOX’. Their characteristics are not known either. But we do know that, thanks to DRTBOX, 62.5 million data were collected in France and that WHITEBOX enables the recording of 7.8 million elements. The documents which Le Monde has been able to see have not enabled the provision of further details on these methods. But they give sufficient explanation to lead us to think that the NSA targets concerned both people suspected of association with terrorist activities as well as people targeted simply because they belong to the worlds of business, politics or French state administration.

The NSA graph shows an average of 3 million data intercepts per day with peaks at almost 7 million on 24 December 2012 and 7 January 2013. But between 28 and 31 December no interception seems to have taken place. This apparent stoppage of activity could be explained, in particular, by the time required at the end of December 2012, for the American Congress to renew section 702 of the law dealing with electronic espionage abroad. Similarly nothing appears on the 3, 5 and 6 January 2013; this time we cannot suggest any plausible reason. Many questions are still posed by this diagram – to start with the precise identity of the targets and the justifications for such a large-scale collection of data in a foreign country which is both sovereign and an ally.

When questioned, the American authorities did not wish to comment on these documents which they considered to be ‘classified’. Nevertheless, they do refer to the statement made on 8 June 2013 by the Director of National Intelligence according to which, ‘the government cannot target anyone under the court-approved procedures for Section 702 collection unless there is an appropriate, and document foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States. We cannot target even foreign persons overseas without a valid foreign intelligence purpose.

France is not the country in which the NSA intercepts the most digital or telephone connections. The ‘Boundless Informant’ system, revealed in June by Edward Snowden to the British daily The Guardian, enabled an overall vision and in real time of the information gathered throughout the world, by means of the various NSA wire-tapping systems. This system gathers not only telephone data (DNR) but also digital data (DNI Digital Network Intelligence). One of the documents which Le Monde was able to consult notes that between 8 February and 8 March 2013, the NSA collected, throughout the world, 124,8 billion telephone data items and 97,1 billion computer data items. In Europe, only Germany and the United Kingdom exceed France in terms of numbers of interceptions.

Le Monde.fr
21.10.2013 à 06h08
Par Jacques Follorou et Glenn Greenwald (Journaliste)

Find this story at 21 October 2013

© Le Monde.fr

Agents said to have intercepted 70 million calls and text messages a month
France had previously blamed the United States of America
U.S. was first suspected of hacking into Nicolas Sarkozy’s phone in 2012
Americans insisted they have never been behind hacking in France
Comes after it emerged German officials are planning trip to U.S. to discuss allegations Angela Merkel’s phone was hack by the NSA
The German Chancellor said President Obama’s reputation has been shattered on an international scale because of espionage scandal

Israel and not America was behind the hacking of millions of French phones, it was claimed today.

In the latest extraordinary twist in the global eavesdropping scandal, Israeli agents are said to have intercepted more than 70 million calls and text messages a month.

Up until now the French have been blaming the U.S., even summoning the country’s Paris ambassador to provide an explanation.

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France first suspected the U.S. of hacking into former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s communications network when he was unsuccessfully trying for re-election in 2012

But today’s Le Monde newspaper provides evidence that it was in fact Israeli agents who were listening in.

France first suspected the U.S. of hacking into former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s communications network when he was unsuccessfully trying for re-election in 2012.

Intelligence officials Bernard Barbier and Patrick Pailloux travelled from Paris to Washington to demand an explanation, but the Americans hinted that the Israelis were to blame.

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The Americans insisted they have never been behind any hacking in France, and were always keen to get on with the French, whom they viewed as some of their closest allies.

They were so determined to be friends with the French, that U.S. briefing notes included details of how to pronounce the names of the Gallic officials.

A note published in Le Monde shows that the Americans refused to rule out Mossad, Israel’s notoriously uncompromising intelligence agency, or the ISNU, Israel’s cyber-intelligence unit.

Today’s newspaper report was co-written by Glenn Greenwald, whose main contact is NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (pictured)

Tailored Access Operations (TAO), the branch of the US National Security Agency (NSA) which deals with cyber-attacks, is referred to throughout the note.

It reads: ‘TAO intentionally did not ask either Mossad or ISNU whether they were involved as France is not an approved target for joint discussions.’

Le Monde’s article, co-authored by U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose main contact is NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, however, hints that the Israelis were doing the spying.

Both US and French intelligence work closely with Mossad, but there is known to be a great deal of suspicion between all the agencies.

A 2008 NSA note says that the Israelis are ‘excellent partners in terms of sharing information’, but it also says that Mossad is ‘the third most aggressive intelligence service in the world against the United States’.

A spokesman for the Israeli government told Le Monde: ‘Israel is a country which is a friend, ally and partner of France and does not carry out any hostile activity which could pose a threat to its security.’

France has complained in the past about Mossad’s use of its soil to plan so called black operations including the 2010 assassination in Dubai of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh of the Palestinian movement Hamas.

The revelation comes after senior German officials said they would be travelling to the U.S. ‘shortly’ to talk about allegations the NSA bugged Angela Merkel’s phone.
Obama orders review of surveillance activities

Anger: German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff (right) have both voiced concerns over the NSA’s infiltration of the online communications of foreigners

The heads of Germany’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies will participate in high-level discussions with the White House and National Security Agency, government spokesman Georg Streiter said.

News of the talks signals an escalation in the diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and its allies after it was claimed the NSA had monitored the calls of 35 world leaders.

Brazil and Germany have joined forces in an attempt to pile pressure on the United Nations to rein in the snooping activities. They want a UN General Resolution that promotes the right to online privacy.

This step, the first major international response to the NSA’s infiltration of the online communications of foreigners, comes after German Chancellor Merkel said the recent U.S. espionage scandal has shattered international trust in Barack Obama.

Angela Merkel said the recent espionage scandal has shattered international trust in President Obama

Not hacked: The White House has denied that David Cameron’s communications were ever monitored

A month earlier Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff branded the NSA’s clandestine activities ‘a breach of international law’ in a speech to the UN General Assembly and demanded steps be made to stop ‘cyberspace from being used as a weapon of war’.

Brazilian and German diplomats met in New York yesterday to thrash out a draft resolution demanding the strengthening of privacy rights in the International Covenant Civil and Political Rights.

While the UN has no real power to reign in the NSA, there are fears among security experts that the effort alone could signal a growing consensus to freeze the US out of future international security dialogues.

By Nabila Ramdani

PUBLISHED: 16:32 GMT, 25 October 2013 | UPDATED: 20:46 GMT, 25 October 2013

Find this story at 25 October 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

AFP – France believed the United States attempted to hack into its president’s communications network, a leaked US intelligence document published on Friday suggests.

US agents denied having anything to do with a May 2012 cyber attack on the Elysee Palace, the official residence of French presidents, and appeared to hint at the possible involvement of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, a classified internal note from the US National Security Agency suggests.

Extracts from the document, the latest to emerge from the NSA via former contractor Edward Snowden, were published by Le Monde newspaper alongside an article jointly authored by Glenn Greenwald, the US journalist who has been principally responsible for a still-unravelling scandal over large-scale US snooping on individuals and political leaders all over the world.

The document is a briefing note prepared in April this year for NSA officials who were due to meet two senior figures from France’s external intelligence agency, the DGSE. The French agents had travelled to Washington to demand explanations over their discovery in May 2012 of attempts to compromise the Elysee’s communications systems.

The note says that the branch of the NSA which handles cyber attacks, Tailored Access Operations (TAO), had confirmed that it had not carried out the attack and says that most of its closest allies (Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand) had also denied involvement.

It goes on to note: “TAO intentionally did not ask either Mossad or (Israel’s cyber intelligence unit) ISNU whether they were involved as France is not an approved target for joint discussions.”

Le Monde interpreted this sentence as being an ironic reference to a strong likelihood that Mossad had been behind the attack.

The cyber attacks on the Elysee took place in the final weeks of Nicolas Sarkozy’s term, between the two rounds of the presidential election which he ended up losing to Francois Hollande.

The attacks had been previously reported by French media, who have described them as an attempt to insert monitoring devices into the system but it remains unclear whether the presidential networks were compromised for any time.

There was no immediate response from the Elysee on Friday when asked for comment by AFP.

Sarkozy enjoyed warmer relations with the United States than any French president of recent times, to the extent that the media sometimes referred to him as “Sarko the American.”

The revelations about the Elysee attacks followed damaging revelations that the US had tapped the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and spied on other allies.

“Spying between friends, that’s just not done,” Merkel said Thursday at the start of a summit of European Union leaders which has been overshadowed by the issue.

On a lighter note, the leaked document published by Le Monde on Friday underlines that NSA officials were anxious not to cause any further offence to their angry French counterparts.

Along with the technical details, the briefing note contains a phonetic guide to the pronunciation of the names of the French visitors.

They included DGSE technical director Bernard Barbier, who was to be addressed as bear-NAR bur-BYAY, and Patrick Pailloux, or pah-TREEK pie-YOO.

25 OCTOBER 2013 – 12H58

Find this story at 25 October 2013

© 2006 – 2013 Copyright FRANCE 24. All rights reserved

Espionage by the US on France has already strained relations between the two countries, threatening a trans-Atlantic trade agreement. Now a document seen by SPIEGEL reveals that the NSA also spied on the French Foreign Ministry.

America’s National Security Agency (NSA) targeted France’s Foreign Ministry for surveillance, according to an internal document seen by SPIEGEL.

Dated June 2010, the “top secret” NSA document reveals that the intelligence agency was particularly interested in the diplomats’ computer network. All of the country’s embassies and consulates are connected with the Paris headquarters via a virtual private network (VPN), technology that is generally considered to be secure.

Accessing the Foreign Ministry’s network was considered a “success story,” and there were a number of incidents of “sensitive access,” the document states.

An overview lists different web addresses tapped into by the NSA, among them “diplomatie.gouv.fr,” which was run from the Foreign Ministry’s server. A list from September 2010 says that French diplomatic offices in Washington and at the United Nations in New York were also targeted, and given the codenames “Wabash” and “Blackfoot,” respectively. NSA technicians installed bugs in both locations and conducted a “collection of computer screens” at the one at the UN.

A priority list also names France as an official target for the intelligence agency. In particular, the NSA was interested in the country’s foreign policy objectives, especially the weapons trade, and economic stability.

US-French relations are being strained by such espionage activities. In early July, French President François Hollande threatened to suspend negotiations for a trans-Atlantic free trade agreement, demanding a guarantee from the US that it would cease spying after it was revealed that the French embassy in Washington had been targeted by the NSA.

“There can be no negotiations or transactions in all areas until we have obtained these guarantees, for France but also for all of the European Union, for all partners of the United States,” he said at the time.

The NSA declined to comment to SPIEGEL on the matter. As details about the scope of the agency’s international spying operations continue to emerge, Washington has come under increasing pressure from its trans-Atlantic partners. Officials in Europe have expressed concern that negotiations for the trade agreement would be poisoned by a lack of trust.

09/01/2013 09:32 AM

Find this story at 1 September 2013

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

Americans want to know what Netanyahu is thinking about Iran, Palestinian issues, says Danny Yatom; follows reports NSA listened in to 35 world leaders
A day after it was revealed that the US National Security Agency monitored the private conversations of some 35 world leaders, former head of the Mossad Danny Yatom said Friday that the US listens in on its ally Israel as well.

“I can tell you with certain knowledge that [America] has been listening in on its allies, including Israel,” Yatom said, and “not necessarily in [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s tenure” as prime minister.

“The US doesn’t really care about anyone [but itself] and the Americans are vehemently denying the incidents,” Yatom told the Israeli daily Maariv on Friday. ”It could very well be that these things [monitoring calls] are happening here [in Israel] too. When the Americans think they need to listen in on someone, they’ll do just that.”

Yatom explained that there are two issues around which the Americans are likely spying on Israel — negotiations with Palestinians and the Iranian nuclear program.

“It is important for them to know what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really thinks… They have interests here because they want to be able to contend with Israeli claims that arise when talking about these issues,” the ex-Mossad chief said.

Yatom also stressed that the US seeks to obtain information on Israel’s “real” position vis-a-vis-negotiations and what obstacles stand in the way of advancing peace talks.

He also criticized the US for misusing its power as a world leader.

“The Americans rightly see themselves as a superpower, but wrongly feel that they can do whatever they want, including the eavesdropping,” he said.

Yatom served from 1996-1998 as head of the Mossad. The Israeli intelligence agency is smarting from recent reports that Turkey deliberately exposed a ring of Israeli agents in Iran, and further reports that US did not sanction or protest to Turkey over this alleged betrayal. Yatom has been particularly outspoken over the matter.

Yatom’s statements came a day after the the British newspaper The Guardian said it had obtained a confidential memo suggesting the NSA was able to monitor 35 world leaders’ communications in 2006.

The memo said the NSA encouraged senior officials at the White House, Pentagon and other agencies to share their contacts so the spy agency could add foreign leaders’ phone numbers to its surveillance systems, the report said.

The report drew furious reactions in Germany, Spain — both of whom summoned the US ambassador in their countries for talks over the report — and France.

European Union leaders, meeting Friday at a summit in Brussels, vowed to maintain a strong trans-Atlantic partnership despite their anger over allegations of widespread US spying on allies. Still, France and Germany are insisting the United States agree upon new surveillance rules with them this year to stop US eavesdropping on their leaders, innocent civilians and companies.

“We are seeking a basis for cooperation between our (intelligence) services, which we all need and from which we have all received a great deal of information … that is transparent, that is clear and is in keeping with the character of being partners,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters.

“The United States and Europe are partners, but this partnership must be built on trust and respect,” Merkel said early Friday. “That of course also includes the work of the respective intelligence services.”

Several European leaders noted Friday that the continent’s close political and commercial ties to the US must be protected as EU nations demand more assurances from the Obama administration.

“What is at stake is preserving our relations with the United States,” said French President Francois Hollande. “Trust has to be restored and reinforced.”

“The main thing is that we look to the future. The trans-Atlantic partnership was and is important,” said Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, whose nation holds the rotating presidency of the 28-country bloc.

Merkel complained to President Barack Obama on Wednesday after her government received information that her cellphone may have been monitored. Merkel and Hollande insisted that, beyond being fully briefed on what happened in the past, the European allies and Washington need to set up common rules for US surveillance that does not impede the fundamental rights of its allies.

Lazar Berman and AP contributed to this report.

By Times of Israel staff October 25, 2013, 7:50 pm 13

Find this story at 25 October 2013

© 2013 The Times of Israel, All rights reserved

When Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, sat down with President Obama at the White House in April to discuss Syrian chemical weapons, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and climate change, it was a cordial, routine exchange.

The National Security Agency nonetheless went to work in advance and intercepted Mr. Ban’s talking points for the meeting, a feat the agency later reported as an “operational highlight” in a weekly internal brag sheet. It is hard to imagine what edge this could have given Mr. Obama in a friendly chat, if he even saw the N.S.A.’s modest scoop. (The White House won’t say.)

But it was emblematic of an agency that for decades has operated on the principle that any eavesdropping that can be done on a foreign target of any conceivable interest — now or in the future — should be done. After all, American intelligence officials reasoned, who’s going to find out?

From thousands of classified documents, the National Security Agency emerges as an electronic omnivore of staggering capabilities, eavesdropping and hacking its way around the world to strip governments and other targets of their secrets, all the while enforcing the utmost secrecy about its own operations. It spies routinely on friends as well as foes, as has become obvious in recent weeks; the agency’s official mission list includes using its surveillance powers to achieve “diplomatic advantage” over such allies as France and Germany and “economic advantage” over Japan and Brazil, among other countries.

Mr. Obama found himself in September standing uncomfortably beside the president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, who was furious at being named as a target of N.S.A. eavesdropping. Since then, there has been a parade of such protests, from the European Union, Mexico, France, Germany and Spain. Chagrined American officials joke that soon there will be complaints from foreign leaders feeling slighted because the agency had not targeted them.

James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has repeatedly dismissed such objections as brazen hypocrisy from countries that do their own share of spying. But in a recent interview, he acknowledged that the scale of eavesdropping by the N.S.A., with 35,000 workers and $10.8 billion a year, sets it apart. “There’s no question that from a capability standpoint we probably dwarf everybody on the planet, just about, with perhaps the exception of Russia and China,” he said.

Since Edward J. Snowden began releasing the agency’s documents in June, the unrelenting stream of disclosures has opened the most extended debate on the agency’s mission since its creation in 1952. The scrutiny has ignited a crisis of purpose and legitimacy for the N.S.A., the nation’s largest intelligence agency, and the White House has ordered a review of both its domestic and its foreign intelligence collection. While much of the focus has been on whether the agency violates Americans’ privacy, an issue under examination by Congress and two review panels, the anger expressed around the world about American surveillance has prompted far broader questions.

If secrecy can no longer be taken for granted, when does the political risk of eavesdropping overseas outweigh its intelligence benefits? Should foreign citizens, many of whom now rely on American companies for email and Internet services, have any privacy protections from the N.S.A.? Will the American Internet giants’ collaboration with the agency, voluntary or otherwise, damage them in international markets? And are the agency’s clandestine efforts to weaken encryption making the Internet less secure for everyone?

Matthew M. Aid, an intelligence historian and author of a 2009 book on the N.S.A., said there is no precedent for the hostile questions coming at the agency from all directions.

“From N.S.A.’s point of view, it’s a disaster,” Mr. Aid said. “Every new disclosure reinforces the notion that the agency needs to be reined in. There are political consequences, and there will be operational consequences.”

A review of classified agency documents obtained by Mr. Snowden and shared with The New York Times by The Guardian, offers a rich sampling of the agency’s global operations and culture. (At the agency’s request, The Times is withholding some details that officials said could compromise intelligence operations.) The N.S.A. seems to be listening everywhere in the world, gathering every stray electron that might add, however minutely, to the United States government’s knowledge of the world. To some Americans, that may be a comfort. To others, and to people overseas, that may suggest an agency out of control.

The C.I.A. dispatches undercover officers overseas to gather intelligence today roughly the same way spies operated in biblical times. But the N.S.A., born when the long-distance call was a bit exotic, has seen its potential targets explode in number with the advent of personal computers, the Internet and cellphones. Today’s N.S.A. is the Amazon of intelligence agencies, as different from the 1950s agency as that online behemoth is from a mom-and-pop bookstore. It sucks the contents from fiber-optic cables, sits on telephone switches and Internet hubs, digitally burglarizes laptops and plants bugs on smartphones around the globe.

Mr. Obama and top intelligence officials have defended the agency’s role in preventing terrorist attacks. But as the documents make clear, the focus on counterterrorism is a misleadingly narrow sales pitch for an agency with an almost unlimited agenda. Its scale and aggressiveness are breathtaking.

The agency’s Dishfire database — nothing happens without a code word at the N.S.A. — stores years of text messages from around the world, just in case. Its Tracfin collection accumulates gigabytes of credit card purchases. The fellow pretending to send a text message at an Internet cafe in Jordan may be using an N.S.A. technique code-named Polarbreeze to tap into nearby computers. The Russian businessman who is socially active on the web might just become food for Snacks, the acronym-mad agency’s Social Network Analysis Collaboration Knowledge Services, which figures out the personnel hierarchies of organizations from texts.

The spy agency’s station in Texas intercepted 478 emails while helping to foil a jihadist plot to kill a Swedish artist who had drawn pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. N.S.A. analysts delivered to authorities at Kennedy International Airport the names and flight numbers of workers dispatched by a Chinese human smuggling ring.

The agency’s eavesdropping gear, aboard a Defense Department plane flying 60,000 feet over Colombia, fed the location and plans of FARC rebels to the Colombian Army. In the Orlandocard operation, N.S.A. technicians set up what they called a “honeypot” computer on the web that attracted visits from 77,413 foreign computers and planted spyware on more than 1,000 that the agency deemed of potential future interest.

The Global Phone Book

No investment seems too great if it adds to the agency’s global phone book. After mounting a major eavesdropping effort focused on a climate change conference in Bali in 2007, agency analysts stationed in Australia’s outback were especially thrilled by one catch: the cellphone number of Bali’s police chief.

“Our mission,” says the agency’s current five-year plan, which has not been officially scheduled for declassification until 2032, “is to answer questions about threatening activities that others mean to keep hidden.”

The aspirations are grandiose: to “utterly master” foreign intelligence carried on communications networks. The language is corporate: “Our business processes need to promote data-driven decision-making.” But the tone is also strikingly moralistic for a government bureaucracy. Perhaps to counter any notion that eavesdropping is a shady enterprise, signals intelligence, or Sigint, the term of art for electronic intercepts, is presented as the noblest of callings.

“Sigint professionals must hold the moral high ground, even as terrorists or dictators seek to exploit our freedoms,” the plan declares. “Some of our adversaries will say or do anything to advance their cause; we will not.”

The N.S.A. documents taken by Mr. Snowden and shared with The Times, numbering in the thousands and mostly dating from 2007 to 2012, are part of a collection of about 50,000 items that focus mainly on its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters or G.C.H.Q.

While far from comprehensive, the documents give a sense of the agency’s reach and abilities, from the Navy ships snapping up radio transmissions as they cruise off the coast of China, to the satellite dishes at Fort Meade in Maryland ingesting worldwide banking transactions, to the rooftops of 80 American embassies and consulates around the world from which the agency’s Special Collection Service aims its antennas.

The agency and its many defenders among senior government officials who have relied on its top secret reports say it is crucial to American security and status in the world, pointing to terrorist plots disrupted, nuclear proliferation tracked and diplomats kept informed.

But the documents released by Mr. Snowden sometimes also seem to underscore the limits of what even the most intensive intelligence collection can achieve by itself. Blanket N.S.A. eavesdropping in Afghanistan, described in the documents as covering government offices and the hide-outs of second-tier Taliban militants alike, has failed to produce a clear victory against a low-tech enemy. The agency kept track as Syria amassed its arsenal of chemical weapons — but that knowledge did nothing to prevent the gruesome slaughter outside Damascus in August.

The documents are skewed toward celebration of the agency’s self-described successes, as underlings brag in PowerPoints to their bosses about their triumphs and the managers lay out grand plans. But they do not entirely omit the agency’s flubs and foibles: flood tides of intelligence gathered at huge cost that goes unexamined; intercepts that cannot be read for lack of language skills; and computers that — even at the N.S.A. — go haywire in all the usual ways.

Mapping Message Trails

In May 2009, analysts at the agency learned that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was to make a rare trip to Kurdistan Province in the country’s mountainous northwest. The agency immediately organized a high-tech espionage mission, part of a continuing project focused on Ayatollah Khamenei called Operation Dreadnought.

Working closely with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which handles satellite photography, as well as G.C.H.Q., the N.S.A. team studied the Iranian leader’s entourage, its vehicles and its weaponry from satellites, and intercepted air traffic messages as planes and helicopters took off and landed.

They heard Ayatollah Khamenei’s aides fretting about finding a crane to load an ambulance and fire truck onto trucks for the journey. They listened as he addressed a crowd, segregated by gender, in a soccer field.

They studied Iranian air defense radar stations and recorded the travelers’ rich communications trail, including Iranian satellite coordinates collected by an N.S.A. program called Ghosthunter. The point was not so much to catch the Iranian leader’s words, but to gather the data for blanket eavesdropping on Iran in the event of a crisis.

This “communications fingerprinting,” as a document called it, is the key to what the N.S.A. does. It allows the agency’s computers to scan the stream of international communications and pluck out messages tied to the supreme leader. In a crisis — say, a showdown over Iran’s nuclear program — the ability to tap into the communications of leaders, generals and scientists might give a crucial advantage.

On a more modest scale, the same kind of effort, what N.S.A. calls “Sigint development,” was captured in a document the agency obtained in 2009 from Somalia — whether from a human source or an electronic break-in was not noted. It contained email addresses and other contact details for 117 selected customers of a Mogadishu Internet service, Globalsom.

While most on the list were Somali officials or citizens, presumably including some suspected of militancy, the document also included emails for a United Nations political officer in Mogadishu and a local representative for the charity World Vision, among other international institutions. All, it appeared, were considered fair game for monitoring.

This huge investment in collection is driven by pressure from the agency’s “customers,” in government jargon, not only at the White House, Pentagon, F.B.I. and C.I.A., but also spread across the Departments of State and Energy, Homeland Security and Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative.

By many accounts, the agency provides more than half of the intelligence nuggets delivered to the White House early each morning in the President’s Daily Brief — a measure of success for American spies. (One document boasts that listening in on Nigerian State Security had provided items for the briefing “nearly two dozen” times.) In every international crisis, American policy makers look to the N.S.A. for inside information.

Pressure to Get Everything

That creates intense pressure not to miss anything. When that is combined with an ample budget and near-invisibility to the public, the result is aggressive surveillance of the kind that has sometimes gotten the agency in trouble with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a United States federal court that polices its programs for breaches of Americans’ privacy.

In the funding boom that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency expanded and decentralized far beyond its Fort Meade headquarters in Maryland, building or expanding major facilities in Georgia, Texas, Colorado, Hawaii, Alaska, Washington State and Utah. Its officers also operate out of major overseas stations in England, Australia, South Korea and Japan, at overseas military bases, and from locked rooms housing the Special Collection Service inside American missions abroad.

The agency, using a combination of jawboning, stealth and legal force, has turned the nation’s Internet and telecommunications companies into collection partners, installing filters in their facilities, serving them with court orders, building back doors into their software and acquiring keys to break their encryption.

But even that vast American-run web is only part of the story. For decades, the N.S.A. has shared eavesdropping duties with the rest of the so-called Five Eyes, the Sigint agencies of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. More limited cooperation occurs with many more countries, including formal arrangements called Nine Eyes and 14 Eyes and Nacsi, an alliance of the agencies of 26 NATO countries.

The extent of Sigint sharing can be surprising: “N.S.A. may pursue a relationship with Vietnam,” one 2009 G.C.H.Q. document reported. But a recent G.C.H.Q. training document suggests that not everything is shared, even between the United States and Britain. “Economic well-being reporting,” it says, referring to intelligence gathered to aid the British economy, “cannot be shared with any foreign partner.”

As at the school lunch table, decisions on who gets left out can cause hurt feelings: “Germans were a little grumpy at not being invited to join the 9-Eyes group,” one 2009 document remarks. And in a delicate spy-versus-spy dance, sharing takes place even with governments that are themselves important N.S.A. targets, notably Israel.

The documents describe collaboration with the Israel Sigint National Unit, which gets raw N.S.A. eavesdropping material and provides it in return, but they also mention the agency’s tracking of “high priority Israeli military targets,” including drone aircraft and the Black Sparrow missile system.

The alliances, and the need for stealth, can get complicated. At one highly valued overseas listening post, the very presence of American N.S.A. personnel violates a treaty agreed to by the agency’s foreign host. Even though much of the eavesdropping is run remotely from N.S.A.’s base at Fort Gordon, Ga., Americans who visit the site must pose as contractors, carry fake business cards and are warned: “Don’t dress as typical Americans.”

“Know your cover legend,” a PowerPoint security briefing admonishes the N.S.A. staff members headed to the overseas station, directing them to “sanitize personal effects,” send no postcards home and buy no identifiably local souvenirs. (“An option might be jewelry. Most jewelry does not have any markings” showing its place of origin.)

Bypassing Security

In the agency’s early years, its brainy staff members — it remains the largest employer of mathematicians in the country — played an important role in the development of the first computers, then largely a tool for code breaking.

Today, with personal computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones in most homes and government offices in the developed world, hacking has become the agency’s growth area.

Some of Mr. Snowden’s documents describe the exploits of Tailored Access Operations, the prim name for the N.S.A. division that breaks into computers around the world to steal the data inside, and sometimes to leave spy software behind. T.A.O. is increasingly important in part because it allows the agency to bypass encryption by capturing messages as they are written or read, when they are not encoded.

In Baghdad, T.A.O. collected messages left in draft form in email accounts maintained by leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant group. Under a program called Spinaltap, the division’s hackers identified 24 unique Internet Protocol addresses identifying computers used by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, making it possible to snatch Hezbollah messages from the flood of global communications sifted by the agency.

The N.S.A.’s elite Transgression Branch, created in 2009 to “discover, understand, evaluate and exploit” foreign hackers’ work, quietly piggybacks on others’ incursions into computers of interest, like thieves who follow other housebreakers around and go through the windows they have left ajar.

In one 2010 hacking operation code-named Ironavenger, for instance, the N.S.A. spied simultaneously on an ally and an adversary. Analysts spotted suspicious emails being sent to a government office of great intelligence interest in a hostile country and realized that an American ally was “spear-phishing” — sending official-looking emails that, when opened, planted malware that let hackers inside.

The Americans silently followed the foreign hackers, collecting documents and passwords from computers in the hostile country, an elusive target. They got a look inside that government and simultaneously got a close-up look at the ally’s cyberskills, the kind of intelligence twofer that is the unit’s specialty.

In many other ways, advances in computer and communications technology have been a boon for the agency. N.S.A. analysts tracked the electronic trail left by a top leader of Al Qaeda in Africa each time he stopped to use a computer on his travels. They correctly predicted his next stop, and the police were there to arrest him.

And at the big N.S.A. station at Fort Gordon, technicians developed an automated service called “Where’s My Node?” that sent an email to an analyst every time a target overseas moved from one cell tower to another. Without lifting a finger, an analyst could follow his quarry’s every move.

The Limits of Spying

The techniques described in the Snowden documents can make the N.S.A. seem omniscient, and nowhere in the world is that impression stronger than in Afghanistan. But the agency’s capabilities at the tactical level have not been nearly enough to produce clear-cut strategic success there, in the United States’ longest war.

A single daily report from June 2011 from the N.S.A.’s station in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the heart of Taliban country, illustrates the intensity of eavesdropping coverage, requiring 15 pages to describe a day’s work.

The agency listened while insurgents from the Haqqani network mounted an attack on the Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul, overhearing the attackers talking to their bosses in Pakistan’s tribal area and recording events minute by minute. “Ruhullah claimed he was on the third floor and had already inflicted one casualty,” the report said in a typical entry. “He also indicated that Hafiz was located on a different floor.”

N.S.A. officers listened as two Afghan Foreign Ministry officials prepared for a meeting between President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Iranian officials, assuring them that relations with the United States “would in no way threaten the interests of Iran,” which they decided Mr. Karzai should describe as a “brotherly country.”

The N.S.A. eavesdropped as the top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, consulted his European Union counterpart, Vygaudas Usackas, about how to respond to an Afghan court’s decision to overturn the election of 62 members of Parliament.

And the agency was a fly on the wall for a long-running land dispute between the mayor of Kandahar and a prominent local man known as the Keeper of the Cloak of the Prophet Muhammad, with President Karzai’s late brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, as a mediator.

The agency discovered a Taliban claim to have killed five police officers at a checkpoint by giving them poisoned yogurt, and heard a provincial governor tell an aide that a district police chief was verbally abusing women and clergymen.

A Taliban figure, Mullah Rahimullah Akhund, known on the United States military’s kill-or-capture list by the code name Objective Squiz Incinerator, was overheard instructing an associate to buy suicide vests and a Japanese motorbike, according to the documents.

And N.S.A. listened in as a Saudi extremist, Abu Mughira, called his mother to report that he and his fellow fighters had entered Afghanistan and “done victorious operations.”

Such reports flowed from the agency’s Kandahar station day after day, year after year, and surely strengthened the American campaign against the Taliban. But they also suggest the limits of intelligence against a complex political and military challenge. The N.S.A. recorded the hotel attack, but it had not prevented it. It tracked Mr. Karzai’s government, but he remained a difficult and volatile partner. Its surveillance was crucial in the capture or killing of many enemy fighters, but not nearly enough to remove the Taliban’s ominous shadow from Afghanistan’s future.

Mining All the Tidbits

In the Afghan reports and many others, a striking paradox is the odd intimacy of a sprawling, technology-driven agency with its targets. It is the one-way intimacy of the eavesdropper, as N.S.A. employees virtually enter the office cubicles of obscure government officials and the Spartan hide-outs of drug traffickers and militants around the world.

Venezuela, for instance, was one of six “enduring targets” in N.S.A.’s official mission list from 2007, along with China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Russia. The United States viewed itself in a contest for influence in Latin America with Venezuela’s leader then, the leftist firebrand Hugo Chávez, who allied himself with Cuba, and one agency goal was “preventing Venezuela from achieving its regional leadership objectives and pursuing policies that negatively impact U.S. global interests.”

A glimpse of what this meant in practice comes in a brief PowerPoint presentation from August 2010 on “Development of the Venezuelan Economic Mission.” The N.S.A. was tracking billions of dollars flowing to Caracas in loans from China (radar systems and oil drilling), Russia (MIG fighter planes and shoulder-fired missiles) and Iran (a factory to manufacture drone aircraft).

But it was also getting up-close and personal with Venezuela’s Ministry of Planning and Finance, monitoring the government and personal emails of the top 10 Venezuelan economic officials. An N.S.A. officer in Texas, in other words, was paid each day to peruse the private messages of obscure Venezuelan bureaucrats, hunting for tidbits that might offer some tiny policy edge.

In a counterdrug operation in late 2011, the agency’s officers seemed to know more about relations within a sprawling narcotics network than the drug dealers themselves. They listened to “Ricketts,” a Jamaican drug supplier based in Ecuador, struggling to keep his cocaine and marijuana smuggling business going after an associate, “Gordo,” claimed he had paid $250,000 and received nothing in return.

The N.S.A., a report said, was on top of not just their cellphones, but also those of the whole network of “buyers, transporters, suppliers, and middlemen” stretching from the Netherlands and Nova Scotia to Panama City and Bogotá, Colombia. The documents do not say whether arrests resulted from all that eavesdropping.

Even with terrorists, N.S.A. units can form a strangely personal relationship. The N.S.A.-G.C.H.Q. wiki, a top secret group blog that Mr. Snowden downloaded, lists 14 specialists scattered in various stations assigned to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group that carried out the bloody attack on Mumbai in 2008, with titles including “Pakistan Access Pursuit Team” and “Techniques Discovery Branch.” Under the code name Treaclebeta, N.S.A.’s hackers at Tailored Access Operations also played a role.

In the wiki’s casual atmosphere, American and British eavesdroppers exchange the peculiar shoptalk of the secret world. “I don’t normally use Heretic to scan the fax traffic, I use Nucleon,” one user writes, describing technical tools for searching intercepted documents.

But most striking are the one-on-one pairings of spies and militants; Bryan is assigned to listen in on a man named Haroon, and Paul keeps an ear on Fazl.

A Flood of Details

One N.S.A. officer on the Lashkar-e-Taiba beat let slip that some of his eavesdropping turned out to be largely pointless, perhaps because of the agency’s chronic shortage of skilled linguists. He “ran some queries” to read intercepted communications of certain Lashkar-e-Taiba members, he wrote in the wiki, but added: “Most of it is in Arabic or Farsi, so I can’t make much of it.”

It is a glimpse of the unsurprising fact that sometimes the agency’s expensive and expansive efforts accomplish little. Despite the agency’s embrace of corporate jargon on goal-setting and evaluation, it operates without public oversight in an arena in which achievements are hard to measure.

In a world of ballooning communications, the agency is sometimes simply overwhelmed. In 2008, the N.S.A.’s Middle East and North Africa group set about updating its Sigint collection capabilities. The “ambitious scrub” of selectors — essentially search terms — cut the number of terms automatically searched from 21,177 to 7,795 and the number of messages added to the agency’s Pinwale database from 850,000 a day to 450,000 a day.

The reduction in volume was treated as a major achievement, opening the way for new collection on Iranian leadership and Saudi and Syrian diplomats, the report said.

And in a note that may comfort computer novices, the N.S.A. Middle East analysts discovered major glitches in their search software: The computer was searching for the names of targets but not their email addresses, a rather fundamental flaw. “Over 500 messages in one week did not come in,” the report said about one target.

Those are daily course corrections. Whether the Snowden disclosures will result in deeper change is uncertain. Joel F. Brenner, the agency’s former inspector general, says much of the criticism is unfair, reflecting a naïveté about the realpolitik of spying. “The agency is being browbeaten for doing too well the things it’s supposed to do,” he said.

But Mr. Brenner added that he believes “technology has outrun policy” at the N.S.A., and that in an era in which spying may well be exposed, “routine targeting of close allies is bad politics and is foolish.”

Another former insider worries less about foreign leaders’ sensitivities than the potential danger the sprawling agency poses at home. William E. Binney, a former senior N.S.A. official who has become an outspoken critic, says he has no problem with spying on foreign targets like Brazil’s president or the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. “That’s pretty much what every government does,” he said. “It’s the foundation of diplomacy.” But Mr. Binney said that without new leadership, new laws and top-to-bottom reform, the agency will represent a threat of “turnkey totalitarianism” — the capability to turn its awesome power, now directed mainly against other countries, on the American public.

“I think it’s already starting to happen,” he said. “That’s what we have to stop.”

Whatever reforms may come, Bobby R. Inman, who weathered his own turbulent period as N.S.A. director from 1977 to 1981, offers his hyper-secret former agency a radical suggestion for right now. “My advice would be to take everything you think Snowden has and get it out yourself,” he said. “It would certainly be a shock to the agency. But bad news doesn’t get better with age. The sooner they get it out and put it behind them, the faster they can begin to rebuild.”

November 2, 2013
By SCOTT SHANE

Find this story at 2 November 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

• Secret deal places no legal limits on use of data by Israelis
• Only official US government communications protected
• Agency insists it complies with rules governing privacy
• Read the NSA and Israel’s ‘memorandum of understanding’

The agreement for the US to provide raw intelligence data to Israel was reached in principle in March 2009, the document shows. Photograph: James Emery

The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process “minimization”, but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.

The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.

The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies “pertaining to the protection of US persons”, repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.

But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive “raw Sigint” – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: “Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content.”

According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. “NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection”, it says.

Although the memorandum is explicit in saying the material had to be handled in accordance with US law, and that the Israelis agreed not to deliberately target Americans identified in the data, these rules are not backed up by legal obligations.

“This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law,” the document says.

In a statement to the Guardian, an NSA spokesperson did not deny that personal data about Americans was included in raw intelligence data shared with the Israelis. But the agency insisted that the shared intelligence complied with all rules governing privacy.

“Any US person information that is acquired as a result of NSA’s surveillance activities is handled under procedures that are designed to protect privacy rights,” the spokesperson said.

The NSA declined to answer specific questions about the agreement, including whether permission had been sought from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court for handing over such material.

The memorandum of understanding, which the Guardian is publishing in full, allows Israel to retain “any files containing the identities of US persons” for up to a year. The agreement requests only that the Israelis should consult the NSA’s special liaison adviser when such data is found.

Notably, a much stricter rule was set for US government communications found in the raw intelligence. The Israelis were required to “destroy upon recognition” any communication “that is either to or from an official of the US government”. Such communications included those of “officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)”.

It is not clear whether any communications involving members of US Congress or the federal courts have been included in the raw data provided by the NSA, nor is it clear how or why the NSA would be in possession of such communications. In 2009, however, the New York Times reported on “the agency’s attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip”.

The NSA is required by law to target only non-US persons without an individual warrant, but it can collect the content and metadata of Americans’ emails and calls without a warrant when such communication is with a foreign target. US persons are defined in surveillance legislation as US citizens, permanent residents and anyone located on US soil at the time of the interception, unless it has been positively established that they are not a citizen or permanent resident.

Moreover, with much of the world’s internet traffic passing through US networks, large numbers of purely domestic communications also get scooped up incidentally by the agency’s surveillance programs.

The document mentions only one check carried out by the NSA on the raw intelligence, saying the agency will “regularly review a sample of files transferred to ISNU to validate the absence of US persons’ identities”. It also requests that the Israelis limit access only to personnel with a “strict need to know”.

Israeli intelligence is allowed “to disseminate foreign intelligence information concerning US persons derived from raw Sigint by NSA” on condition that it does so “in a manner that does not identify the US person”. The agreement also allows Israel to release US person identities to “outside parties, including all INSU customers” with the NSA’s written permission.

Although Israel is one of America’s closest allies, it is not one of the inner core of countries involved in surveillance sharing with the US – Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This group is collectively known as Five Eyes.

The relationship between the US and Israel has been strained at times, both diplomatically and in terms of intelligence. In the top-secret 2013 intelligence community budget request, details of which were disclosed by the Washington Post, Israel is identified alongside Iran and China as a target for US cyberattacks.

While NSA documents tout the mutually beneficial relationship of Sigint sharing, another report, marked top secret and dated September 2007, states that the relationship, while central to US strategy, has become overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of Israel.

“Balancing the Sigint exchange equally between US and Israeli needs has been a constant challenge,” states the report, titled ‘History of the US – Israel Sigint Relationship, Post-1992′. “In the last decade, it arguably tilted heavily in favor of Israeli security concerns. 9/11 came, and went, with NSA’s only true Third Party [counter-terrorism] relationship being driven almost totally by the needs of the partner.”

In another top-secret document seen by the Guardian, dated 2008, a senior NSA official points out that Israel aggressively spies on the US. “On the one hand, the Israelis are extraordinarily good Sigint partners for us, but on the other, they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems,” the official says. “A NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US.”

Later in the document, the official is quoted as saying: “One of NSA’s biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel. There are parameters on what NSA shares with them, but the exchange is so robust, we sometimes share more than we intended.”

The memorandum of understanding also contains hints that there had been tensions in the intelligence-sharing relationship with Israel. At a meeting in March 2009 between the two agencies, according to the document, it was agreed that the sharing of raw data required a new framework and further training for Israeli personnel to protect US person information.

It is not clear whether or not this was because there had been problems up to that point in the handling of intelligence that was found to contain Americans’ data.

However, an earlier US document obtained by Snowden, which discusses co-operating on a military intelligence program, bluntly lists under the cons: “Trust issues which revolve around previous ISR [Israel] operations.”

The Guardian asked the Obama administration how many times US data had been found in the raw intelligence, either by the Israelis or when the NSA reviewed a sample of the files, but officials declined to provide this information. Nor would they disclose how many other countries the NSA shared raw data with, or whether the Fisa court, which is meant to oversee NSA surveillance programs and the procedures to handle US information, had signed off the agreement with Israel.

In its statement, the NSA said: “We are not going to comment on any specific information sharing arrangements, or the authority under which any such information is collected. The fact that intelligence services work together under specific and regulated conditions mutually strengthens the security of both nations.

“NSA cannot, however, use these relationships to circumvent US legal restrictions. Whenever we share intelligence information, we comply with all applicable rules, including the rules to protect US person information.”

Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian, Wednesday 11 September 2013 15.40 BST

Find this story at 11 September 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

We continue our coverage of the 40th anniversary of the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende with a look at the critical U.S. role under President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. Peter Kornbluh, who spearheaded the effort to declassify more than 20,000 secret documents that revealed the role of the CIA and the White House in the Chilean coup, discusses how Nixon and Kissinger backed the Chilean military’s ouster of Allende and then offered critical support as it committed atrocities to cement its newfound rule. Kornbluh is author of the newly updated book, “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability,” and director of the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. In 1970, the CIA’s deputy director of plans wrote in a secret memo: “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. … It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [the U.S. government] and American hand be well hidden.” That same year President Nixon ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream” in Chile to “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.” We’re also joined by Juan Garcés, a former personal adviser to Allende who later led the successful legal effort to arrest and prosecute coup leader Augusto Pinochet. See Part 2 of this interview here.
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MATÉ: I wanted to ask about the U.S. role in all of this, and let’s turn to a recording of President Richard Nixon speaking in a March 1972 phone call, acknowledging he’d given instructions, quote, to “do anything short of a Dominican-type action” to keep the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, from assuming office. The phone conversation was captured by his secret Oval Office taping system. In this clip, you hear President Nixon telling his press secretary, Ron Ziegler, he had given orders to undermine Chilean democracy to the U.S. ambassador, but, quote, “he just failed. … He should have kept Allende from getting in.” Listen closely.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Yeah.

OPERATOR: Mr. Ziegler.

RON ZIEGLER: Yes, sir.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: What did you—have you said anything, Ron, with regard to the ITT in Chile? How did you handle—

RON ZIEGLER: The State Department dealt with that today.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Oh, they did?

RON ZIEGLER: Yes, sir.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: What did they do? Deny it?

RON ZIEGLER: They denied it, but they were cautious on how they dealt with the Korry statement, because they were afraid that might backfire.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Why? What did Korry say?

RON ZIEGLER: Well, Korry said that he had received instructions to do anything short of a Dominican-type—alleged to have said that.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Korry did?

RON ZIEGLER: Right.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: So how did—how did that go? He put that out?

RON ZIEGLER: Well, Anderson received that from some source. Al Haig is sitting with me now.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Oh, yeah.

RON ZIEGLER: It was a report contained in an IT&T—

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Oh, yeah.

RON ZIEGLER: —thing, but—

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Well, he was. He was instructed to.

RON ZIEGLER: Well, but—

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: I hoped—but he just failed, the son of a [bleep]. That’s his main problem. He should have kept Allende from getting in. Well—

RON ZIEGLER: In any event, State has denied—

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Has State Department handled it?

RON ZIEGLER: —it today, and they referred to—to your comments about Latin America and Chile and—

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Yeah, fine.

RON ZIEGLER: —and so, you just refer to that on that one.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Fine, OK.

RON ZIEGLER: Yes, sir.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Right.

AARON MATÉ: That’s President Nixon speaking in 1972. Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive, can explain to us what Nixon is talking about here, and put it in context of the U.S. role in destabilizing Chile?

PETER KORNBLUH: Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger launched a preemptive strike against Salvador Allende. They decided to stop him from being inaugurated as president of Chile. He hadn’t even set foot in the Moneda Palace, when Nixon and Kissinger just simply decided to change the fate of Chile. Nixon instructed the CIA to make the Chilean economy scream, to use as many men as possible. The first plan was to actually keep Allende from being inaugurated as president. And then, when that plan failed, after the assassination of the Chilean commander-in-chief that the United States was behind, General René Schneider, Kissinger then went to Nixon and said, “Allende is now president. The State Department thinks we can coexist with him, but I want you to make sure you tell everybody in the U.S. government that we cannot, that we cannot let him succeed, because he has legitimacy. He is democratically elected. And suppose other governments decide to follow in his footstep, like a government like Italy? What are we going to do then? What are we going to say when other countries start to democratically elect other Salvador Allendes? We will—the world balance of power will change,” he wrote to Nixon in a secret document, “and our interests in it will be changed fundamentally.”

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Kissinger’s role. Most recently, people may have seen Stephen Colbert dancing around him, the—Henry Kissinger, of course, still alive, considered an elder statesmen by most of the press in the United States. Give us a thumbnail sketch of his role.

PETER KORNBLUH: I just got back from Chile, and I did a number of TV shows there, and everybody said, “We’re trying to hold our own people accountable here for the atrocities that took place during the Pinochet regime, but why isn’t Henry Kissinger being held accountable? Why isn’t the United States held accountable for the role that they played in the atrocities that were committed in Chile, starting with the coup itself and then going on with the repression that followed?” And Kissinger really is the—not only the key survivor of the policy-making team of that era, but truly when you go through the declassified documents that are laid out in the book, The Pinochet File, you see that he is the singular most important figure in engineering a policy to overthrow Allende and then, even more, to embrace Pinochet and the human rights violations that followed.

He had aides who were saying to him, “It’s unbecoming for the United States to intervene in a country where we are not—our national security interests are not threatened.” And he pushed them away. “Nope, we can’t—we can’t let this imitative phenomena—we have to stop Allende from being successful.” He had aides that came to him the day after the coup and said, “I’m getting reports that there’s 10,000 bodies in the streets. People are being slaughtered.” And he said, “Go tell Congress that this new military regime is better for our interests than the old government in Chile.” And we have this fabulous document of him talking to Pinochet, a meeting in 1976, in which his aides have told him, “You should tell Pinochet to stop violating human rights.” And instead he says to Pinochet, “You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende. We want to support you, not hurt you.”

AMY GOODMAN: In The Pinochet File, you quote an assessment by the CIA’s directorate of operations, who advised President Nixon and Henry Kissinger on covert action in Chile. He argued that far from being a pawn of the communists, Allende would, quote, “be hard for the Communist Party and for Moscow to control.” He also said covert operations to stop Allende from becoming president would be, quote, “worse than useless. Any indication that we are behind a legal mickey mouse or some hardnosed play exacerbate relations even further. … I am afraid we will be repeating the errors we made in 1959 and 1960 when we drove Fidel Castro into the Soviet camp.” You also quote Kissinger’s top aide on Latin America, Viron Vaky, who wrote in a top-secret cable, “it is far from given that wisdom would call for covert action programs; the consequences could be disastrous. The cost-benefit-risk ratio is not favorable.” Peter Kornbluh?

PETER KORNBLUH: That’s my point. There were people inside the U.S. government pressing Kissinger not to take this course, and he completely shunted them aside, pushed Nixon forward to as aggressive but covert a policy as possible to make Allende fail, to destabilize Allende’s ability to govern, to create what Kissinger called a coup climate.

In the new edition of The Pinochet File, we have the actual transcript of Nixon and Kissinger’s conversation, their first phone conversation after the coup took place, in which Nixon says to Kissinger, “Well, our hand doesn’t show in this one, does it?” And Kissinger said, “We didn’t do it,” referring to direct participation in the coup. “We helped them.” He says, “I mean, we helped them. [Blank],” which I am sure is a reference to the CIA, “created the conditions as best as possible.” And this is the first conversation between Nixon and Kissinger after the coup. They’re basically laying out the role of the United States and setting—creating a coup climate in Chile, facilitating the coup.

What’s even worse—this was long before your program existed, but Richard Nixon is already complaining about the liberal crap in the media, and Kissinger says, “Yeah, the liberal—the media is bleeding because a communist government was overthrown,” you know, like as if the media is on the side of Allende. They’re focusing on the atrocities that are taking place. And Kissinger says, “In the Eisenhower period, we would be heroes.”

AMY GOODMAN: In this last minute, Juan Garcés, it is interesting, though you experienced the intensity of what happened 40 years ago with Salvador Allende ultimately killing himself in the palace as the bombs rained down, you are focused on today and what is happening today—you brought Pinochet to justice. You had Baltasar Garzón, through the famous Spanish judge, issue an arrest warrant for him when he took a visit to London, and he was held there, although ultimately sent back to Chile. What lesson can we learn, in these last 25 seconds? And we’ll continue the conversation after the show.

JUAN GARCÉS: A matter of how do you understand the world. Should you go through peaceful means or using bombs and invasions? The law is very clear. Since ’40, ’45, 1945, the United Nations Charter, after a big World War—World War—decided that the sovereignty and independence of the countries should be respected and that all the nations should fight to avoid genocidal policies.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there, but part two we’ll post at democracynow.org. Juan Garcés, Spanish lawyer, ex-aide to Salvador Allende, and Peter Kornbluh. The latest book, The Pinochet File.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

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Washington, D.C. – September 11, 1998 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. The violent overthrow of the democratically-elected Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende changed the course of the country that Chilean poet Pablo Neruda described as “a long petal of sea, wine and snow”; because of CIA covert intervention in Chile, and the repressive character of General Pinochet’s rule, the coup became the most notorious military takeover in the annals of Latin American history.

Revelations that President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream” in Chile to “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him,” prompted a major scandal in the mid-1970s, and a major investigation by the U.S. Senate. Since the coup, however, few U.S. documents relating to Chile have been actually declassified- -until recently. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, and other avenues of declassification, the National Security Archive has been able to compile a collection of declassified records that shed light on events in Chile between 1970 and 1976.

These documents include:
Cables written by U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry after Allende’s election, detailing conversations with President Eduardo Frei on how to block the president-elect from being inaugurated. The cables contain detailed descriptions and opinions on the various political forces in Chile, including the Chilean military, the Christian Democrat Party, and the U.S. business community.
CIA memoranda and reports on “Project FUBELT”–the codename for covert operations to promote a military coup and undermine Allende’s government. The documents, including minutes of meetings between Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of covert action in 1970, provide a clear paper trail to the decisions and operations against Allende’s government
National Security Council strategy papers which record efforts to “destabilize” Chile economically, and isolate Allende’s government diplomatically, between 1970 and 1973.
State Department and NSC memoranda and cables after the coup, providing evidence of human rights atrocities under the new military regime led by General Pinochet.
FBI documents on Operation Condor–the state-sponsored terrorism of the Chilean secret police, DINA. The documents, including summaries of prison letters written by DINA agent Michael Townley, provide evidence on the carbombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., and the murder of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires, among other operations.

These documents, and many thousands of other CIA, NSC, and Defense Department records that are still classified secret, remain relevant to ongoing human rights investigations in Chile, Spain and other countries, and unresolved acts of international terrorism conducted by the Chilean secret police. Eventually, international pressure, and concerted use of the U.S. laws on declassification will force more of the still-buried record into the public domain–providing evidence for future judicial, and historical accountability.

THE DOCUMENTS

Click on the to view each document.

FBI, Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), January 21, 1982

This report provides a summary of information taken from prison letters written by Michael Townley, the DINA agent responsible for the assassination of Orlando Letelier. This report includes information not directly provided to the FBI by Townley, but drawn from analysis of his correspondence with his DINA handler: details about meetings between Chilean President Pinochet and Italian terrorists and spies, codenames and activities of DINA personnel, collaboration between DINA and anti-Castro Cubans; the creation of a fake terrorist organization to take the blame for a DINA kidnapping in Argentina; DINA involvement in relations between Great Britain and Northern Ireland; and Townley’s fear that information about kidnappings and assassinations of prominent critics of Pinochet would somehow be traced back to him.

FBI, Operation Condor Cable, September 28, 1976

This cable, written by the FBI’s attache in Buenos Aires, Robert Scherrer, summarizes intelligence information provided by a “confidential source abroad” about Operation Condor, a South American joint intelligence operation designed to “eliminate Marxist terrorist activities in the area.” The cable reports that Chile is the center of Operation Condor, and provides information about “special teams” which travel “anywhere in the world… to carry out sanctions up to assassination against terrorists or supporters of terrorist organizations.” Several sections relating to these special teams have been excised. The cable suggests that the assassination of the Chilean Ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, may have been carried out as an action of Operation Condor.

National Security Council, Chilean President’s visit to U.S., August 8, 1975

This memorandum, written by Stephen Low of the National Security Council, calls Scowcroft’s attention to Pinochet’s plans to visit the United States, and his requested meeting with U.S. President Ford. The memo states that the NSC asked the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, David Popper, to discourage the meeting by telling the Chileans that President Ford’s schedule is full. Fearing that such a visit would “stimulate criticism” and foster embarrassment, Low suggests an “informal talk” with Chile’s Ambassador Trucco.

National Security Council, Disarray in Chile Policy, July 1, 1975

This memorandum, from Stephen Low to President Ford’s National Security Advisor, General Brent Scowcroft, conveys concern about wavering U.S. policy toward Chile in light of reports of human rights violations. The memo reveals a division within the U.S. embassy over dealing with Chile, with a number of officials now believing that all U.S. military and economic assistance should be terminated until the regime’s human rights record improves. According to Low, by reducing aid and sending “mixed signals” to the Chileans, the United States risks precipitating a crisis situation in Chile. Low concludes his memo by recommending that Scowcroft schedule a special meeting in which U.S. agencies can “clarify guidelines for future policy.”

FBI Report to Chilean Military on Detainee, June 6, 1975

This letter, one of a number sent by FBI attache Robert Scherrer to Chilean General Ernesto Baeza, provides intelligence obtained through the interrogation of a captured Chilean leftist, Jorge Isaac Fuentes. The document records U.S. collaboration with Chile’s security forces, including the promise of surveillance of subjects inside the United States. Fuentes was detained through Operation Condor–a network of Chilean, Argentinian and Paraguayan secret police agencies which coordinated tracking, capturing and killing opponents. According to the Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, he was tortured in Paraguay, turned over to the Chilean secret police, and disappeared.

Department of Defense, Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA) Expands Operations and Facilities, April 15, 1975

This heavily excised Intelligence Report from the Defense Attache in Santiago Chile, describes the growth of DINA, the national intelligence arm of the Chilean government and “the sole responsible agency for internal subversive matters.” Many of the excised portions provide details about the strained relations between DINA and the Chilean Armed Forces because of DINA’s exclusive power. The report states that the head of DINA, Colonel Manuel Contreras, “has reported exclusively to, and received orders only from, President Pinochet.”

Department of State, Kubisch-Huerta Meeting: Request for Specific Replies to Previous Questions on Horman and Teruggi Cases, February 11, 1974

This telegram, written by Ambassador Popper and directed to the U.S. Secretary of State, reports on a meeting between Assistant Secretary of State Jack Kubisch, and Chile’s foreign minister General Huerta on the controversy over two U.S. citizens–Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi–executed by the military after the coup. Kubisch notes that he is raising this issue “in the context of the need to be careful to keep relatively small issues in our relationship from making our cooperation more difficult.”

Department of State, Chilean Executions, November 16, 1973

This memo, sent to the Secretary of State by Jack Kubisch, states that summary executions in the nineteen days following the coup totaled 320–more than three times the publicly acknowledged figure. At the same time, Kubisch reports on new economic assistance just authorized by the Nixon administration. The memo provides information about the Chilean military’s justification for the continued executions. It also includes a situation report and human rights fact sheet on Chile.

Department of Defense, U.S. Milgroup, Situation Report #2, October 1, 1973

In a situation report, U.S. Naval attache Patrick Ryan, reports positively on events in Chile during the coup. He characterizes September 11 as “our D-Day,” and states that “Chile’s coup de etat [sic] was close to perfect.” His report provides details on Chilean military operations during and after the coup, as well as glowing commentary on the character of the new regime.

Defense Intelligence Agency, Biographic Data on General Augusto Pinochet, August/September 1973

This DIA biographic summary covers the military career of the leader of Chile’s military coup, General Augusto Pinochet. The DIA, an intelligence branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, routinely collects “Biographic Data” on all high military officials around the world. The heavy deletions are likely to conceal Chilean sources providing information on Pinochet, his own contacts with U.S. officials, and commentary on his character, reputation, political orientation and actions during his career.

Department of State, Memorandum for Henry Kissinger on Chile, December 4, 1970

In response to a November 27 directive from Kissinger, an inter-agency Ad Hoc Working Group on Chile prepared this set of strategy papers covering a range of possible sanctions and pressures against the new Allende government. These included a possible diplomatic effort to force Chile to withdraw–or be expelled–from the Organization of American States as well as consultations with other Latin American countries “to promote their sharing of our concern over Chile.” The documents show that the Nixon administration did engage in an invisible economic blockade against Allende, intervening at the World Bank, IDB, and Export-Import bank to curtail or terminate credits and loans to Chile before Allende had been in office for a month.

CIA, Report of CIA Chilean Task Force Activities, 15 September to 3 November 1970, November 18, 1970

The CIA prepared a summary of its efforts to prevent Allende’s ratification as president and to foment a coup in Chile– track I and track II covert operations. The summary details the composition of the Task Force, headed by David Atlee Phillips, the team of covert operatives “inserted individually into Chile,” and their contacts with Col. Paul Winert, the U.S. Army Attache detailed to the CIA for this operation. It reviews the propaganda operations designed to push Chilean president Eduardo Frei to support “a military coup which would prevent Allende from taking office on 3 November.”

National Security Council, National Security Decision Memorandum 93, Policy Towards Chile, November 9, 1970

This memorandum summarizes the presidential decisions regarding changes in U.S. policy toward Chile following Allende’s election. Written by Henry Kissinger and sent to the Secretaries of State, Defense, the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness and the Director of Central Intelligence, this memo directs U.S. agencies to adopt a “cool” posture toward Allende’s government, in order to prevent his consolidation of power and “limit [his] ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemisphere interests.” The memo states that existing U.S. assistance and investments in Chile should be reduced, and no new commitments undertaken. Furthermore, according to Kissinger’s memo, “close relations” should be established and maintained with military leaders throughout Latin America to facilitate coordination of pressure and other opposition efforts.

CIA, Briefing by Richard Helms for the National Security Council, Chile, November 6, 1970

This paper provides the talking points for CIA director Richard Helms to brief the NSC on the situation in Chile. The briefing contains details on the failed coup attempt on October 22–but does not acknowledge a CIA role in the assassination of General Rene Schneider. Helms also assesses Allende’s “tenacious” character and Soviet policy toward Chile. Intelligence suggests that Chile’s socialists, he informs council members, “will exercise restraint in promoting closer ties with Russia.”

National Security Council, Options Paper on Chile (NSSM 97), November 3, 1970

A comprehensive secret/sensitive options paper, prepared for Henry Kissinger and the National Security Council on the day of Allende’s inauguration, laid out U.S. objectives, interests and potential policy toward Chile. U.S. interests were defined as preventing Chile from falling under Communist control and preventing the rest of Latin America from following Chile “as a model.” Option C–maintaining an “outwardly cool posture” while working behind the scenes to undermine the Allende government through economic pressures and diplomatic isolation–was chosen by Nixon. CIA operations and options are not included in this document.

CIA, Cable Transmissions on Coup Plotting, October 18, 1970

These three cables between CIA headquarters in Langley, VA., and the CIA Station in Santiago address the secret shipment of weapons and ammunition for use in a plot to kidnap the Chilean military commander, General Rene Schneider. “Neutralizing” Schneider was a key prerequisite for a military coup; he opposed any intervention by the armed forces to block Allende’s constitutional election. The CIA supplied a group of Chilean officers led by General Camilo Valenzuela with “sterile” weapons for the operation which was to be blamed on Allende supporters and prompt a military takeover. Instead, on October 22, General Schneider was killed by another group of plotters the CIA had been collaborating with, led by retired General Roberto Viaux. Instead of a coup, the military and the country rallied behind Allende’s ratification by Chile’s Congress on October 24.

CIA, Operating Guidance Cable on Coup Plotting, October 16, 1970

In a secret cable, CIA deputy director of plans, Thomas Karamessines, conveys Kissinger’s orders to CIA station chief in Santiago, Henry Hecksher: “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup.” The “operating guidance” makes it clear that these operations are to be conducted so as to hide the “American hand,” and that the CIA is to ignore any orders to the contrary from Ambassador Korry who has not been informed of Track II operations.

CIA, Memorandum of Conversation of Meeting with Henry Kissinger, Thomas Karamessines, and Alexander Haig, October 15, 1970

This memcon records a discussion of promoting a coup in Chile, known as “Track II” of covert operations to block Allende. The three officials discuss the possibility that the plot of one Chilean military official, Roberto Viaux, might fail with “unfortunate repercussions” for U.S. objectives. Kissinger orders the CIA to “continue keeping the pressure on every Allende weak spot in sight.”

CIA, Genesis of Project FUBELT, September 16, 1970

These minutes record the first meeting between CIA director Helms and high agency officials on covert operations–codenamed “FUBELT”–against Allende. A special task force under the supervision of CIA deputy director of plans, Thomas Karamessines, is established, headed by veteran agent David Atlee Phillips. The memorandum notes that the CIA must prepare an action plan for National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger within 48 hours.

CIA, Notes on Meeting with the President on Chile, September 15, 1970

These handwritten notes, taken by CIA director Richard Helms, record the orders of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, to foster a coup in Chile. Helms’ notes reflect Nixon’s orders: l in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!; worth spending; not concerned; no involvement of embassy; $10,000,00 available, more if necessary; full-time job–best men we have; game plan; make the economy scream; 48 hours for plan of action. This presidential directive initiates major covert operations to block Allende’s ascension to office, and promote a coup in Chile.

Department of State, U.S. Embassy Cables on the Election of Salvador Allende and Efforts to Block his Assumption of the Presidency, September 5-22, 1970

This series of eight cables, written by U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, record the reaction and activities of the U.S. Embassy after the election of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity coalition. Known as “Korrygrams,” his reports contain some of the most candid, and at times undiplomatic, opinions and observations ever offered by a U.S. Ambassador. With titles such as “No Hope for Chile,” and “Some Hope for Chile,” Korry provides extensive details about political efforts to block Allende’s ratification by the Chilean Congress. The cables report on the activities of Chile’s political institutions in response to Allende’s election and provide Korry’s explicit assessments of the character of key Chilean leaders, particularly the outgoing president, Eduardo Frei.

By Peter Kornbluh
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 8

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Copyright 1995-2011

Part 2 of our conversation on the 40th anniversary of the Chilean coup with Spanish lawyer Juan Garcés, a former personal adviser to ousted Chilean President Salvador Allende, and Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.

Related segments:
40 Years After Chilean Coup, Allende Aide Juan Garcés on How He Brought Pinochet to Justice

‘Make the Economy Scream’: Secret Documents Show Nixon, Kissinger Role Backing 1973 Chile Coup

See all of Democracy Now!’s coverage of the 1973 Chilean Coup.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Our guests are Juan Garcés, who also has written a book, simply called Allende, about the president who he advised, his closest adviser until September 11th, 40 years ago, 1973, when the palace was being bombed by the Pinochet forces and Salvador Allende took his own life. He was surrounded by his other advisers, but he walked Juan Garcés to the door and said, “Tell the world.” Juan Garcés went on as a Spanish lawyer to work to hold Pinochet responsible, and ultimately, through Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge, had him—had him call for Augusto Pinochet’s extradition to Spain to be tried. Augusto Pinochet was in London, and Augusto Pinochet was held for about a year there before ultimately he was allowed to return home to Chile.

We’re also joined by Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.

I was just speaking about Joyce Horman, the widow of the freelance journalist Charlie Horman. Peter Kornbluh, tell us what Charlie discovered in those days leading up to the coup, why he was so dangerous, and what you learned in declassification of documents of Kissinger.

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, Charles Horman and his wife Joyce were part of a large group of Americans who went to Chile during the Allende years. Chile was, as Juan Garcés will tell us, was a dynamic, exciting place. The whole world was watching what was happening there. It was something new and vibrant. And—

AMY GOODMAN: What was it? What was happening? I mean, so a new president was elected.

PETER KORNBLUH: The via—the famous via pacifica of—toward social change—not armed revolution to bring fundamental change to a Third World country, but democratic revolution, in which the people would vote, and institutions would gradually be changed to spread the wealth equally, to nationalize resources so that U.S. copper companies and corporations like IT&T then suck the money right out of the country. This was an exciting, new model of change for Latin America and the world. That’s what made it so dangerous for the Nixon and Kissingers of the world.

So, Charlie and his wife Joyce were there. Charles Horman was actually, as part of his journalistic approach, he was actually investigating the murder of the Chilean commander-in-chief, General René Schneider, that took place in October of 1970 and was part of a CIA operation to foment a coup, to create a coup climate in Chile that might stop Allende from actually being inaugurated the first week of November. This was an atrocity, a bald assassination of the commander-in-chief of Chilean armed forces right in broad daylight on the streets. There was a trial that had taken place in Chile. There were documents, that really did focus on the contacts with the United States and the coup plotters. In my book, The Pinochet File, I have one still-secret CIA document, which reveals that the agency paid the people that killed René Schneider $35,000 to close their mouths about the U.S. role and to help them escape from Chile to get beyond the grasp of justice. But some people were arrested, tried. Charlie Horman was investigating that, looking at the trial file. He also happened to be in Valparaíso on the day of the coup and met a number of U.S. officials—

AMY GOODMAN: Where is Valparaíso?

PETER KORNBLUH: Valparaíso is a coastal—very famous coastal town. He went to Viña del Mar. He went to Valparaíso. It was where the U.S. Navy group that was advising the Chilean military was based.

AMY GOODMAN: Known as the U.S. MILGROUP.

PETER KORNBLUH: The U.S. MILGROUP was there. He met the head of the U.S. MILGROUP, Captain Ray Davis, who actually drove him and a companion back to Santiago because there was a curfew. And so the implication was, is that he had talked to these Americans, that he might actually know something about the coup. It is still—the details of his death and why he was killed are still murky, and the case is going forward. And actually, almost 40 years later, a Chilean judge actually indicted Captain Ray Davis, the head of the U.S. MILGROUP, for his death. So, we are hoping in the months to come that we learn more about the circumstances under which he died.

AARON MATÉ: Peter, the role of the ITT Corporation, this huge U.S. firm that had a lot of interest in Chile?

PETER KORNBLUH: ITT owned the telephone companies in Chile, owned the Sheraton Hotel. They were a very aggressive company in Latin America. And they decided they should have their own foreign policy, and they started pushing for meetings with the—with the CIA. It helped that they had on their board of directors a former CIA director, John McCone. And he was able to gain access to the CIA rather easily. There was more than 40 meetings between CIA officials and ITT officials. ITT wanted to start funneling secret funds to Allende’s opponent in the 1970 election. One of the—for students of this history, the first real documents that came out on U.S. intervention in Chile were ITT internal memos that recorded their meetings with the CIA and the U.S. ambassador, as your audience heard in the tape that was played on your program. So, this was the first kind of real inkling of what was happening. The scandal arose—Juan Garcés can remember what happened, because Allende was president at the time, and he simply declared, “Well, we were negotiating to nationalize and compensate ITT, but now that we see that they’re a completely criminal enterprise intervening with the CIA in our internal state of affairs, we’re going to expropriate their holdings in Chile.”

AMY GOODMAN: And how, Juan Garcés, was Allende dealing with ITT? Kissinger, Nixon—what did he understand was their role in supporting Pinochet? Did he?

JUAN GARCÉS: Well, Allende wanted always a good agreement with the United States. And certainly, he said that he should govern in conformity with the willingness of the Chilean people, of the Chilean Congress, but looking for a way to preserve the good relations with the United States. And, in fact, several months before the coup, a high delegation from Chile came to Washington to open formal negotiations to try to solve the differences that—in terms of investments or in terms of economic differences that were present in this period. And the doors of the U.S. government in Washington were practically closed—no dialogue, no negotiation, coup d’état.

So, what is—40 years later, what is interesting is that you see this coup d’état against a very active democratic society articulated by an operation where one of the legs is a mass media group, El Mercurio, asking the intervention of the U.S. government through Secret Services, in relation with some corporations that have private investments in Chile. And with those three leaks—excuse me, legs, the coup and the destabilization of the society was done. Now, with the technological means that currently are at our disposal, at the disposal of the governments, you realize that the three legs are still working—corporations that are linked—have links with Secret Services and the articulation with the government, the government, to prepare interventions in other countries, invasions. And that has been the case particularly after the tragedy of the attack to New York in 2001. But the violence that we can do, and many countries do, and the United States citizens are doing also, is what is the cost of those options, to follow this path, for the economy of other countries and for the health of our democratic system.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask about something remarkable that you did in your efforts to bring justice to the people of Chile and to hold Pinochet accountable. And that was to get at his money, which was the people’s money of Chile, the millions of dollars he had stashed away. Peter, first—Peter Kornbluh, sort of lay this out for an American audience. Talk about the story of Riggs Bank.

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, let me just say it’s such a pleasure to be on this show with Juan Garcés, for what he did during the Allende period and what he did to bring Pinochet to justice, and then what he did to really try and recover the money that Pinochet had clearly stolen and hidden away in secret bank accounts. The CIA documents on Pinochet described him as “hard-working” and “honest.” But it turns out that he was completely corrupt, as—in addition to be murderous. And he secretly took more than $26 million of Chilean money, hid it in 120 bank accounts, some—many of them offshore accounts, using false passports, the images of which are in the new edition of The Pinochet File, and using kind of variants of his name, but without the name Pinochet, to try and hide the fact that these were his assets.

AMY GOODMAN: Like?

PETER KORNBLUH: He used the name Augusto Ugarte P., or simply Augusto Ugarte, or Ramón Ugarte, because his full name was Augusto Ramón Ugarte Pinochet, no? Or Pinochet Ugarte.

JUAN GARCÉS: Yeah.

PETER KORNBLUH: Right. And some other false names. And he had some of his aides’ names, and he had some of his—variants of his children’s names on these accounts. And Riggs Bank, the famous bank of Washington, D.C., owned by Joseph Allbritton, had approached Pinochet for years. And at some—one point, they actually held the secret—the accounts of the Chilean secret police, DINA, in their—in their bank in Washington. But eventually, U.S. Senate—this was the most amazing thing. U.S.—the Senate investigation kind of looking at whether banks had tight enough regulations on money laundering by terrorists after 9/11 stumbled across the fact that Riggs Bank was hiding all of these funds from Pinochet and then recovered the—almost the entire file that—

AMY GOODMAN: How did they discover it?

PETER KORNBLUH: They were investigating banks and whether they were—their regulations were so loose that terrorists, in the post-9/11 world, could launder money for terrorist activities. They were looking for—at the financial side of terrorism in the post-9/11 world. And so they were looking for accounts that were suspicious, and they started an investigation. And immediately, they were told that in Riggs Bank, there were a series of people that knew that there was this very suspicious account that belonged to Augusto Pinochet. And they asked for the file on it, and eventually they got the entire file, which was so incredible, because it included all the correspondence between Joseph Allbritton, the chairman of the board of the bank, and Pinochet himself, and the memorandum on the visits by bank officials to Pinochet and other Chilean officials in Santiago, including going to horse clubs and equestrian shows and exchanging gifts and cufflinks and—

AMY GOODMAN: And who was Joseph Allbritton? I mean—

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, Joseph Allbritton was one of the big banking corporate moguls of Washington, D.C. He owned the sports team. I forget whether it was the basketball team or the Redskins. At one point he owned a bunch of newspapers and radio stations. He owned Riggs Bank. But fundamentally, he participated in a conspiracy to hide Augusto Pinochet’s money. And he—they evaded the assets—Juan Garcés managed to get Pinochet’s assets frozen, but Riggs Bank violated that court order to freeze his assets by secretly starting to funnel back to him all of his money in $50,000 cashier’s checks. They had a courrier that would bring literally bundles of these checks to Pinochet’s house in Santiago. And the story returns to Juan Garcés, because more than $8 million of this $20-plus million stash of money was given back to Pinochet illegally by Riggs, and Juan Garcés stepped in and said, “That money belongs to the Chilean people and to the victims of Pinochet.” And he recovered it.

AMY GOODMAN: Allbritton’s son now runs Politico.

PETER KORNBLUH: Allbritton owned—started Politico, created Politico. And then, when he passed away, his son—

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Allbritton.

PETER KORNBLUH: —took over. So there’s still a presence of the family, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you got, Juan Garcés, millions of dollars of Chile’s money frozen, and then how was it distributed back to the people of Chile?

JUAN GARCÉS: Thanks to an investigation in the U.S. Senate, as Peter was explaining—

PETER KORNBLUH: Which was led by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a terrific senator.

JUAN GARCÉS: Yeah, their committee on investigations. And they accepted to cooperate with a court of justice that was prosecuting Pinochet. And thanks to this cooperation between the U.S. Senate and the Spanish court, we reached to indict the owners of Riggs Bank. That is something that is without precedent, from their own pocket—

PETER KORNBLUH: Right.

JUAN GARCÉS: —paid the totality of the money that went through the bank channels hiding the Pinochet money. And we distributed that to the victims of Pinochet that were considered such with the institution of the court. It is the only money that related directly to Pinochet has never been distributed to the victims.

AMY GOODMAN: But that money, the millions of dollars, how did you identify the victims, the survivors, and have it distributed?

JUAN GARCÉS: That was—the victims were recognized as such in the court, because thousands of them have been the object of an inquiry inside Chile by an official commission, committee Riggs, that established the list of thousands of people that were murdered, also forcibly disappeared. And we in Spain, with the cooperation of Chileans inside Chile, created a new commission for victims of torture, victims that survived the torture. And we found, through this commission, identified more than 20,000 persons. And then they have their right to receive a part of the indemnities.

AMY GOODMAN: Taking this forward, how you got Pinochet, how you got him arrested in England? We just went all to a big event last night where you, Juan Garcés, you, Peter Kornbluh, Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge, and others were honored in this 40th anniversary of this other 9/11, September 11, 1973, when Pinochet rose to power in Chile. You left the palace, taking the word of what happened there, September 11, 1973, as President Allende asked you to do, and you went forth. You were actually born in Spain. You ultimately went to Spain. You are a lawyer. How did you get Pinochet arrested in England?

JUAN GARCÉS: It’s a matter of conviction. This man was a criminal, of course, and deserves to make—to be made accountable for those crimes. So, someone essayed to kill him. There was an attempt against his life. My way of thinking is different. It’s to work to collect, to gather evidences about his crimes, to look for a court of justice, and wait for the moment in which the political conditions could make him accountable. And that happened after the end of the Cold War. And we applied international treaties—European Convention on Extradition and the international Convention Against Torture—and we found a court in Europe and applied the principles of universal jurisdiction. And we got Pinochet.

And the difference between a killing, a murder, and a legal proceeding, you can see here the consequences. Had he been killed in the attempted assassination in 1960—1986, things in Chile will be very different of what came after legal proceedings, where the crimes were openly explained in front of an independent court. And the Chilean society since then, as Pinochet was arrested in 1999, and since then until now, the big majority of Chileans agree that the transition to democracy in Chile begins the day in which Pinochet was put in front of a court of justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Kornbluh, if you can talk about this remarkable event from a U.S. perspective, what actually took place? So, ’73, Pinochet rises to power. He rules for 17 years. In 1989, he goes to the doctor in London. He’s also, what, meeting with the former prime minister, Thatcher, and he is certainly treated as a dignitary. Where were you when he was arrested?

PETER KORNBLUH: No, in 1998, October 16th, it was a day that everybody in the Chile community remembers. General Pinochet—because of the work of Juan Garcés and Baltasar Garzón and some key people in London, take advantage of the fact that Pinochet is having a kind of minor surgery at a place called the Clinic in London, and they file a request for his arrest under the European counterterrorism convention, because Pinochet committed major acts of international terrorism. He spearheaded Operation Condor, which was a rendition, kidnapping and assassination program around the world, murdered Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C.

AMY GOODMAN: The former Chilean ambassador to the United States.

PETER KORNBLUH: The former Chilean ambassador, a friend of Juan Garcés’s.

AMY GOODMAN: In 1976—

PETER KORNBLUH: In 19—

AMY GOODMAN: —on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C.

PETER KORNBLUH: That’s exactly right. So, these new laws that have come into place facilitated a request for his interrogation and arrest. And this was a transformational moment. It was a transformational moment for Chileans. It was a transformational moment for people in the United States. It was a transformational moment for the human rights movement, which became inspired. And what we call the Pinochet precedent or the Pinochet effect now has led to prosecutions of people like Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Ríos Montt in Guatemala and cases in Spain against the murderers of the Jesuits in El Salvador, just a cascade of efforts—

AMY GOODMAN: Hissène Habré now in Senegal, the former dictator of Chad.

PETER KORNBLUH: A cascade of efforts to hold the Pinochets of the world accountable for their atrocities. So, it couldn’t have been a more important, fundamental event in our recent history. And, you know, I just want to take the opportunity to be on your show and say that Juan Garcés is a hero, and what happened in Spain was a heroic, heroic effort. And the fact that there’s this straight line from 40 years ago, to being at La Moneda to then being in Spain and being able to hold Pinochet accountable and create a very different set of circumstances for the dictators of the futures is just a tremendous achievement.

AARON MATÉ: Peter, what has been the U.S. government response to this concept of universal jurisdiction?

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, there’s a bunch of issues. In the aftermath of Pinochet’s arrest, we in Washington took advantage of pressing the Clinton administration to declassify the deep—the deep, dark holdings of the U.S. government on Chile, on the Pinochet era, and eventually the CIA operations in Chile itself. And the Clinton administration actually deserves a lot of credit. People inside that administration despised Pinochet. Some of them had been Allende supporters in their youth. And the president was convinced to order a special declassification of 24,000 documents, including, in the end, 2,000 operational CIA documents, which we never would have seen otherwise, that recorded the U.S. role in Chile, Nixon and Kissinger’s role in undermining democracy and supporting dictatorship. So this was the initial response of the United States.

Overall, the United States doesn’t like the concept of universal jurisdiction, because they don’t want other countries to prosecute U.S. officials for atrocities committed around the world. And, of course, we now have a whole team from the Bush administration who could easily be prosecuted just as Pinochet was prosecuted.

AMY GOODMAN: So how are they affected when they go abroad, including President Bush, former President Bush?

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, I mean, certainly there have been efforts made in Europe to question George Bush, to question Donald Rumsfeld. There have been—we were with people last night, Juan and I, from the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner and others, who have tried to bring cases against former Bush administration officials for torture, for rendition, for death, in the name of fighting terrorism.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you see could happen to Henry Kissinger?

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, Henry Kissinger is 91 years old. And let me just take the opportunity to say that as Chileans are pushing their—their society to atone for what happened 40 years ago, the issue is whether Kissinger will step up and acknowledge and apologize for the crimes that he supported and helped to perpetrate in Chile. He’s the last surviving member of that team.

There’s—Kissinger and, to some degree, Bush have been what we call Pinocheted. This is a new verb in the lexicon of the human rights movement since Juan Garcés’s accomplishment in getting Pinochet arrested. They have faced the issue of, when they travel abroad, will they be subpoenaed and questioned for crimes that they supported or participated in or instigated? And so, you have a different situation for people like Henry Kissinger. He doesn’t freely travel abroad. He now—particularly after Pinochet was arrested in 1998, he would send emissaries to make sure there wasn’t going to be a problem. He went to France at one point, in 1999, I think, or 2000, and was served with a subpoena and promptly left. He was going to go to Brazil to receive a huge prize, and a judge in Brazil said, “I’m going to question him on Operation Condor,” and Kissinger cancelled his trip. So—and Bush himself, George Bush, has also faced, to some degree, this issue. I think the question is—you know, as Juan Garcés will say, Pinochet seemed untouchable for years and years and years, and then, suddenly, he wasn’t, because of the hard work.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan Garcés, what do you think should happen with Henry Kissinger? By the way, I should also just say, for folks who are called Juan in this country, it is spelled Juan Garcés, but the Catalonian form of Juan is Juan. So, Juan Garcés, what should happen with Henry Kissinger?

JUAN GARCÉS: Well, some of the victims of those crimes that we are talking about filed in the district court of Washington, D.C., a claim against Kissinger. Unfortunately, the date was not positive. That was the day before 9/11/2001. So—

PETER KORNBLUH: Thirteen years ago today.

JUAN GARCÉS: Yes, exactly. And so, this claim didn’t—was not successful, because the district court said that the U.S. court of justice cannot review the decisions taken by the State Department high officers, even if those decisions are related to crimes against humanity and genocidal acts. This decision was confirmed by the appeal court. The Supreme Court of justice didn’t accept to review those decisions. I hope—I think that this is very unfortunate. The leaders of the United States have extraordinary powers. If they are accomplices or commit crimes against humanity, they should—abroad, using the power of the United States to commit big crimes abroad, they should be made accountable. They couldn’t—they cannot be tried abroad, because no country, no court in the world dares to open a serious criminal case against a higher—a high officer of the United States. And if the U.S. courts say that because of the separation of power they can no more investigate those crimes, the outcome is absolute impunity. And I think that is unacceptable, and that is a danger for we all.

And, in fact, you are talking about this Pinochet case—let me tell you that I am just following the path that was opened by the U.S. government in 1945. When the World War II was ending, there was a discussion among the leaders of the United Nations: What to do with those big criminals that used the power of the Third Reich and for committing massive crimes? And then there was a discussion. For the prime minister of Britain, Churchill, the answer was very clear: You put them against the wall, ta-ta-ta-ta, finish, you kill them. That is all. Stalin agreed with that. But not Roosevelt nor the administration, the American administration. They said, “No, no. These people should face a tribunal, where their crimes should be exposed.” And then there was the Nuremberg trial. That is the beginning of the current international criminal law. So the roots of the international law presently are in the United States’ strategical thinking for the world after World War II.

AMY GOODMAN: As you talk about international law, can I digress for one minute, before we talk about the current election in Chile, and ask you about your thoughts on Syria? Because what’s often raised right now is that it’s a violation of a hundred-year-old law about the use of chemical weapons. And President Obama drew this red line. He says the international community drew it in the ban against the use of chemical weapons. What are your thoughts on what should happen in Syria? Do you think the U.S. should respond to this, though it’s not completely—the facts are not in on exactly who did this in Syria, but should strike Syria militarily?

JUAN GARCÉS: Well, in my view, the United States, Syria and the world is facing now the consequences of a bad strategical options two years ago in Libya. According to the international legal norms, the United Nations Charter, the legitimacy for using force against a sovereign government in an independent country is in the Security Council of the United Nations. It’s the only organ that can take those decisions. And the United States asked the permission from the United Nations Security Council to protect the civilians in the eastern side of Libya against bombing by the Gaddafi government. And the Security Council agree on that—great. And then an exclusion zone was created for protecting the civilians.

What was a mistake, in my point of view, that they turned this authorization from the Security Council in a regime change, accepting to use this authorization from the Security Council to bomb other areas of Chile—of Libya and permitting the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. Then the Russians and the Chinese, they were looking: What has been done with the authorization?

AMY GOODMAN: That they agreed to.

JUAN GARCÉS: Use of force—that they—Libya. They [inaudible] it. “That is the last time. We will not accept that once again that we give the authorization for that, and that is a pretext for something that we didn’t authorize.” And that is the tragedy for the Syrian people since two years ago, when the Security Council is blocked. Now, what I realize that is a proposal for solving the situation in Syria, you have here the position that has been taken by the U.S. executive, and a great [inaudible] in other countries about the use of force outside authorization of the Security Council, legitimate force. And I realize that some governments—for example, the German government—is saying that the people that is responsible for these chemical attacks should be made responsible in the International Criminal Court of justice. The—

AMY GOODMAN: Which the U.S. has not signed onto.

JUAN GARCÉS: But the Security Council can order that these people in Syria that has committed these crimes be sent to the International Criminal Court. This is a legal solution. And certainly, the diplomatic possibilities are not exhausted. And I consider that after the experiences, the fiascos in Iraq invasion, and the answer to the attack to New York, invading another country—well, look at what happened here in New York 10 years ago. There was a terrorist attack. To answer to this terrorist attack, there were several ways. The option was to invade a country, make the violence. What is 10 years later the number of terrorists, of jihadists, that are today in the world there? I think that this attack has multiplied the number of people that are ready to commit new crimes. So, I think that the use of force should be done, but through legitimate means. And the use of force outside the legitimacy of international law, the side effects are—in this case, it’s evident—more negative than positive. That is my balance.

AARON MATÉ: Peter Kornbluh, turning back to ’73, can you talk about the role of the CIA in supplying lists of dissidents to the Chilean military?

PETER KORNBLUH: There’s some evidence, although it doesn’t really show up in the documents that we have. It was discovered by the Senate committee led by Senator Frank Church, the so-called Church Committee, that investigated U.S. intervention in Chile in the mid-1970s, that the CIA funded a particular institute that was preparing for a coup, that did compile lists of both civilians and people inside the Allende government that would need to be taken care of, if you will, in the event of a coup. The CIA eventually came in, sent a team to help create the Chilean secret police, DINA. I was just in Chile, and there are very few DINA documents available. DINA disappeared their archives, just like they disappeared so many victims.

AMY GOODMAN: The head of DINA was arrested and imprisoned?

PETER KORNBLUH: Manuel Contreras was first prosecuted for the assassination of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean ambassador to Washington, and his colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt. And then he was prosecuted again and again and again, and he now is in a prison, has been in a prison, and has an overall sentence of more than 200 years to serve.

But I was saying that the CIA actually sent a team to help advise DINA on infrastructure, on human resources, on kind of the—how you do intelligence operations. And one of the things I found when I was in Chile two weeks ago is that there was actually a manual that the DINA had on how to conduct intelligence that appears to be completely translated from an old U.S. manual from the 1950s. And obviously somebody gave the DINA that manual to use. So there’s a history here of the CIA being involved with Chilean impression, up to the point when Pinochet sends his assassins to Washington, D.C., to commit an act of international terrorism. We’re approaching 9/11 tomorrow. The Letelier assassination car bombing in downtown Washington, D.C., was the first act of state-sponsored international terrorism in the capital city of Washington.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly—we just have a minute to go—the current election that’s going on right now in Chile is remarkable. You have two women, one the former president, Michelle Bachelet, right? Two daughters of generals. One may have been responsible for the torture and death of the other, Michelle Bachelet’s father killed. And they were childhood best friends, now running against each other.

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, it’s a historic election, because you have two women contending for the presidency. It’s the first in Latin America. It may be the first in the world, where two women are the leading contenders for—to be president. And because of their backgrounds, of course, and because of the confluence of the 40th anniversary arriving tomorrow in the middle of this election, the history of the coup is kind of front and center in the debate over the issues and the issue of atoning, apologizing for, taking responsibility for those who supported Pinochet. It has suddenly become politically expedient to apologize from the right-wingers, and people even pushing Evelyn Matthei to apologize for her father, to apologize for her family, for their participation in the repression. And this is a sea change politically in Chile, where the country has been divided. But now, really, there’s just very little space for anybody to have supported the coup anymore and feel like they can ever advance politically in Chile. The population has changed. The commemorations around the 40th anniversary, which is tomorrow, have been overwhelming in the press, in the media, cultural events. A beautiful concert called Víctor sin Víctor, on Víctor Jara’s music, just took place last week. It was wonderful and inspirational to see. And it’s a large part due to the effort of Chileans and the effort of the world community to make sure that the coup and its atrocities were repudiated.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, Peter Kornbluh and Juan Garcés. Juan Garcés, by the way, is also winner of the Right Livelihood Award and was at a gathering in Bonn a few years ago, when we also interviewed him, a gathering of about 75 Right Livelihood Award winners who won that award. It was awarded in the Swedish Parliament. Juan Garcés, again, the closest adviser to President Allende. President Allende died in the palace September 11, 1973, 40 years ago. Juan Garcés left the palace, and from that point to today has been not only telling the world about what happened, but holding the forces that deposed Salvador Allende accountable. Thank you so much, both, for being with us.

PETER KORNBLUH: Pleasure.
GUESTS

Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, just updated in a newly released edition for the 40th anniversary of the Chilean Coup. He is also director of the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. He just returned from Chile, and his latest article for The Nation magazine is “Chileans Confront Their Own 9/11.”

Juan Garces, former personal adviser to Chilean President Salvador Allende. Juan Garcés later led the successful legal effort to arrest General Augusto Pinochet and prosecute him for crimes against humanity in the Spanish courts. Garcés received the Right Livelihood Award in 1999.
Filed under Web Exclusive, 1973 Chilean Coup, Chile, Peter Kornbluh, Juan Garces

September 10, 2013

Find this story at 10 september 2013

WASHINGTON D.C. – President Richard Nixon acknowledged that he had given instructions to “do anything short of a Dominican-type action” to keep the democratically elected president of Chile from assuming office, according to a White House audio tape posted by the National Security Archive today. A phone conversation captured by his secret Oval Office taping system reveals Nixon telling his press secretary, Ron Zeigler, that he had given such instructions to then U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry, “but he just failed, the son of a bitch…. He should have kept Allende from getting in.”

A transcript of the president’s comments on March 23, 1972, made after the leak of corporate papers revealing collaboration between ITT and the CIA to rollback the election of socialist leader Salvador Allende, was recently published in the National Security Archive book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability by Peter Kornbluh; the tape marks the first time Nixon can be heard discussing his orders to undermine Chilean democracy. The conversation took place as Zeigler briefed the President on a State Department press conference to contain the growing ITT/CIA scandal which included one ITT document stating that Korry had been “given the green light to move in the name of President Nixon…to do all possible short of a Dominican Republic-type action to keep Allende from taking power.” Other declassified records show that Nixon secretly ordered maximum CIA covert operations to “prevent Allende from coming to power or unseat him” in the fall of 1970 but that Ambassador Korry was deliberately not informed of covert efforts to instigate a military coup.

When the White House-ordered covert operations failed to prevent Allende’s November 3, 1970, inauguration, Nixon’s national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, lobbied vigorously for a hard-line U.S. policy “to prevent [Allende] from consolidating himself now when we know he is weaker than he will ever be and when he obviously fears our pressure and hostility,” according to a previously unknown eight-page briefing paper prepared for the President on November 5, 1970. In the secret/sensitive “memorandum for the president” Kissinger claimed that Allende’s election posed “one of the most serious challenges ever faced in the hemisphere” and that Nixon’s “decision as to what to do about it may be the most historic and difficult foreign affairs decision you will have to make this year.” The memorandum reveals that Kissinger forcefully pressed the President to overrule the State Department’s position that there was little Washington could do to oppose the legitimately elected president of Chile and that the risks for U.S. interests of intervening to oppose him were greater than coexisting with him. “If all concerned do not understand that you want Allende opposed as strongly as we can, the result will be a steady drift toward the modus vivendi approach,” Kissinger informed Nixon.

Kissinger personally requested an hour to brief Nixon on November 5 in preparation for a National Security Council meeting to discuss Chile strategy the next day. The briefing paper records his threat perception of an Allende government as a model for other countries. As Kissinger informed the president: “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on-an even precedent value for-other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.” According to a transcript of the NSC meeting published in The Pinochet File, Nixon told his aides the next day that “our main concern is the prospect that [Allende] can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his success.”

“This document is the Rosetta stone for deciphering the motivations of Kissinger and Nixon in undermining Chilean democracy,” according to Peter Kornbluh who directs the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project. “It reinforces the judgement of history on Kissinger’s role as the primary advocate of overthrowing the Allende government.”

The Archive also posted today a series of declassified transcripts of Kissinger’s staff meetings after he became Secretary of State. The transcripts, dated from the days following the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power through the first several years of his regime’s repression in Chile, record Kissinger’s attitude toward human rights atrocities and mounting Congressional pressure to curtail U.S. economic and military assistance the military regime. They are quoted at length in Kornbluh’s book, The Pinochet File, and recently cited in the New York Times Week in Review section (December 28, 2003).

According to the first transcript dated October 1, 1973, when Kissinger was informed by his assistant secretary of inter-American affairs of initial reports of massacres following the coup he told his staff that the U.S. should not defend what the regime was doing. However, he emphasized: “But I think we should understand our policy–that however unpleasant they act, the [military] government is better for us than Allende was.”

As pressure from human rights advocates mounted for Washington to distance itself from the Pinochet regime, according to the transcripts, Kissinger argued that the Chilean military government was no worse than other Latin American nations and repeatedly voiced concern that the junta would collapse without U.S. support. “I think the consequences could be very serious, if we cut them off from military aid,” Kissinger told his staff during a December 3, 1974, meeting.

The transcripts also capture Kissinger disparaging his own State Department staff for being soft on the human rights issue. In an exchange with Assistant Secretary for Latin America, William Rogers, on December 3, 1974, for example, Kissinger accuses his staff of “egging on” Senator Edward Kennedy who was the leading advocate of cutting assistance to the Pinochet regime on human rights grounds. “How many of our people are really egging Kennedy on,” Kissinger demands to know. At the beginning of a September 1975 meeting with Pinochet’ foreign minister, Adm. Patricio Carvajal, according to another transcript, Kissinger told him:

Well, I read the briefing paper for this meeting and it was nothing but Human Rights. The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there were no enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State.
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l) White House Audio Tape, President Richard M. Nixon and White House press secretary Ron Zeigler, March 23, 1972

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In this White House tape, President Nixon is recorded on March 23, 1972, speaking by phone to his White House press secretary, Ron Zeigler about damage control efforts on the first major covert operations scandal of the 1970s-the ITT papers on Chile. Zeigler reports on a State Department press conference held earlier in the afternoon. He tells the president that the key issue was an ITT memo that stated that in the fall of 1970, U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry had received a “green light” from the White House to “do everything short of a Dominican Republic-type action” to stop Allende. Nixon demands to know how that leaked out, and then emphatically states that Korry “was instructed” to do that. The President then scapegoats the Ambassador for failing to carry out those instructions. Numerous declassified records make it clear that Nixon and Kissinger explicitly ordered the CIA not to inform Ambassador Korry of their efforts to instigate a military coup to keep Allende from assuming office.

2) White House, SECRET/SENSITIVE Memorandum for the President, “Subject: NSC Meeting, November 6-Chile,” November 5, 1970

This briefing paper, found among thousands of NSC papers recently declassified by the Nixon Presidential Materials Project at NARA, reveals Kissinger’s forceful attempts to influence Nixon’s policy toward an Allende government prior to a pivotal National Security Council meeting on Chile. Written two days after Allende’s inauguration, Kissinger emphasizes to Nixon that his election “poses for us one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere.” Nixon’s decisions on what to do about it, he informs the President, “may be the most historic and difficult foreign affairs decision you will have to make this year.” Kissinger lists the “serious threats” he perceives Allende to pose to U.S. interests in the region and the world, among them $1 billion in investments that could be lost, and the precedent-setting “example of a successful elected Marxist government.” The memo notes that Allende will seek to be: “internationally respectable; move cautiously and pragmatically; avoid immediate confrontations with us.” But Kissinger attributes this to Allende’s “gameplan” to “neutralize” his political opponents in Chile. Nixon’s national security advisor urges him to overrule the State Department position that the U.S. does “not have the capability of preventing Allende from consolidating himself or forcing his failure” and that U.S. influence was best gained by “maintain[ing] our relationship and our presence in Chile.” Instead Kissinger forcefully recommends a hostile policy of pressure and opposition, but implemented “quietly and covertly” for maximum effectiveness. “Contrary to your usual practice of not making a decision at NSC meetings,” the memo concludes, “it is essential that you make it crystal clear where you stand on this issue….If all concerned do not understand that you want Allende opposed as strongly as we can, the result will be a steady drift toward the modus vivendi approach.”

3) Department of State, SECRET/NODIS, “Secretary’s Staff Meeting, October 1, 1973”

At the first staff meeting following Henry Kissinger’s confirmation as Secretary of State, Chile is a key topic. In this transcript, Assistant Secretary for Latin America, Jack Kubisch, comes to the meeting from Capitol Hill and reports that legislators are peppering him with questions about massive atrocities by the new military regime in Chile. He tells Kissinger that Newsweek magazine has reported 2700 bodies piled up in the central morgue in Santiago. “I’ve been asked: ‘How many people have been killed? Is it true, the rumors we hear,'” Kubisch states. Kissinger responds by making his policy toward the new Pinochet regime clear. He tells his staff: “I agree that we should not knock down stories that later prove to be true, nor should we be in the position of defending what they’re doing in Santiago. But I think we should understand our policy-that however unpleasant they act, the government is better for us than Allende was.”

4) Department of State, SECRET/NODIS, “Secretary’s Staff Meeting, October 2, 1973”

In staff meeting the next day, Assistant Secretary Jack Kubisch asks Secretary Kissinger if Pinochet’s new foreign minister should be invited to an upcoming diplomatic luncheon in New York City with other Latin American ministers. “Your behavior with him will be watched very close by the others to see whether or not you are blessing the new regime in Chile, or whether it is just protocol,” Kubisch advises Kissinger. “What will be the test? How will they judge?,” Kissinger asks. “I suppose if you give him warm abrazzos, sitting next to you, and huddling in the corner, that will all be reported back to their governments. [Laughter.],” Kubisch responds.

5) Department of State, SECRET, “The Secretary’s 8:00 a.m. Regional Staff Meeting,” December 3, 1974

At this staff meeting, Secretary Kissinger spends considerable time discussing Congressional efforts, led by Senator Edward Kennedy, to restrict U.S. military assistance to the Pinochet regime. The transcript records Kissinger’s vehement opposition to such legislative initiatives, on the grounds that they are unfair to the Chilean military government, could lead to its collapse, and set a dangerous precedent for cutting assistance to other unsavory governments the Ford Administration is supporting. “Well, am I wrong that this sort of thing is likely to finish off that government?” he demands to know. Later he asks: “Is this government worse than the Allende government? Is human rights more severely threatened by this government than Allende?” According to Kissinger, “the worse crime of this government is that it is pro-American.” In response, Assistant Secretary for Latin America, William Rogers informs the Secretary, “in terms of freedom of association, Allende didn’t close down the opposition party. In terms of freedom of the press, Allende didn’t close down all the newspapers.”

6) Department of State, SECRET, “The Secretary’s Principals and Regionals Staff Meeting,” December 20, 1974

At this staff meeting, the discussion of the State Department’s response to Senator Kennedy’s efforts to curtail assistance continues. Kissinger tells his staff that he won’t tolerate concessions to Congress on human rights and again expresses concern that the Pinochet regime will collapse. “We can’t acquiesce on that, and I have to talk to the President,” he states. “We cannot get into that business while I’m here, of behaving that way, of making a deal with a Senator that we know is against the national interest. You know the only possible outcome of this can be an extreme left wing government in Chile or driving the Chilean Government sort of toward the Arabs.”

7) Department of State, SECRET, “The Secretary’s Regionals and Principals’ Staff Meeting,” December 23, 1974

During this meeting, Kissinger again presses his staff to resist efforts by Congress to encroach on executive branch prerogatives and curtail assistance to the Pinochet regime. He calls cutting military aid to Chile “insane.” His Assistant Secretary, William Rogers, is left to explain the political realities of the human rights movement to him. “It is insane. But, Mr. Secretary, it does reflect an extraordinary strong feeling amongst the Congress, as you well know.” The human rights issue, Rogers reiterates later in the meeting “has caught the imagination up on the Hill, as you well know, Mr. Secretary, and amongst the American people.” Kissinger protests that if Congress is able to curtail assistance to Chile, it will move to cut aid to other countries like South Korea and Turkey. “There isn’t going to be any end to it,” he states, and “we are going to wind up in an unbelievable precarious position, in which no country can afford to tie up with us….” He continues: “It is a problem of the whole foreign policy that is being pulled apart, pulling out thread by thread, under one pretext or another.”

8) Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, Secretary’s Meeting with Foreign Minister Carvajal, September 29, 1975

This transcript records a meeting between Secretary Kissinger and Pinochet’s foreign minister, Patricio Carvajal, following Chile’s decision to cancel a visit by the United Nations Human Rights Commission investigating human rights crimes. Kissinger begins the meeting by disparaging his staff “who have a vocation for the ministry” for focusing on human rights in the briefing papers prepared for the meeting. He tells Carvajal that condemnation of the Pinochet regime’s human rights record is “a total injustice,” but that “somewhat visible” efforts by the regime to alleviate the situation would be useful in changing Congressional attitudes. “Our point of view is if you do something, let us know so we can use it with Congress.” Kissinger, Carvajal, and Assistant Secretary Rogers then discuss U.S. efforts to expedite Ex-Im Bank credits and multilateral loans to Chile as well as cash sales of military equipment. At the end of the meeting, Kissinger voices support for the regime’s idea to host the June 1976 OAS meeting in Santiago as a way of increasing Pinochet’s prestige and improving Chile’s negative image.

KISSINGER SECRETLY LOBBIED PRESIDENT
AGAINST “DRIFT TOWARD MODUS VIVENDI”
WITH ELECTED SOCIALIST PRESIDENT

DECLASSIFIED KISSINGER TRANSCRIPTS REVEAL
STRONG SUPPORT FOR PINOCHET FOLLOWING CHILEAN COUP

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 110

February 3 , 2004

For further information Contact
Peter Kornbluh 202 994 7116
pkorn@gwu.edu

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Copyright 1995-2004

In this never-before-published photograph, General Augusto Pinochet (second from left) and President Salvador Allende (in white jacket) are seen on a trip in northern Chile in the months before the 1973 coup that left Allende dead and Pinochet in command of the government. Photograph: Fundacion Salvador Allende
September 11 1973 was a day of terror and bloodshed in Chile. After months of rising tension, army troops stormed the presidential palace, leaving President Salvador Allende dead and thousands prisoners throughout this previously democratic nation.

Now, on the 30th anniversary of the coup, professors, journalists and citizen activists around the world are continuing to expose the full role of the US government in financing and promoting this bloody coup, which ushered in the 17-year military dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet.

Thousands of top secret documents which were declassified over the past five years have now been synthesized in a new book, The Pinochet File, by investigative reporter Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archives, a Washington-based investigative centre. “The US created a climate of a coup in Chile, a situation of chaos and agitation,” said Kornbluh. “The CIA and state department were worried that the [Chilean] military … were not ready for a coup.”

The top secret documents accumulatively detail the crude workings of Washington during the Cold War. “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup,” reads a CIA document from October 1970. “It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [US government] and American hand be well hidden.”

Two days after this document was written, top CIA officials proposed a terrorist campaign to stun the Chilean people into accepting a military regime.

“Concur giving tear gas cannisters and gas masks … working on obtaining machine guns,” reads a CIA memo dated October 18 1970.

“Use good officers … Some low-level overflights of Santiago and bomb drops in areas not likely to cause casualties could have great psychological effect and might swing balance as they have so many times in past in similar circumstances.”

While conservative Chileans argue that the coup was a home-grown affair, the current Chilean minister of education, Sergio Bitar, says: “That internal crisis was activated by the North American policies against it. We see how they energetically obstructed all types of credit from the World Bank and the InterAmerican Bank … these were decisive actions. This were political and financial pressures that were very relevant [to the ensuing coup.]”

The US effort to destabilise Chile was led by a policy of massively funding and bribing non-leftwing Chilean politicians.

Throughout the 1960s, the US secretly spent millions funding political parties of their choosing – usually the moderate Christian Democrats led by Eduardo Frei Montalva. By the early 1970s, Chilean society had become so leftwing that Washington decided to change tactics. First, President Nixon authorised $10m to be spent “to make the economy scream”.

He also authorised pro-coup initiatives designed to destroy the traditional reluctance of Chilean military men to take over civilian government.

“Pinochet will not be a stumbling block to coup plans”, reads one memo written six months before the coup, in which the American government looks to build a veritable Dream Team of coup plotters. “The navy and air force are ready … the military is getting ready to move.”

As part of a particularly crude effort to remove army officers who supported democratic rule, the CIA organised to kidnap Rene Schneider, a Chilean army general.

That plot was botched; Schneider died, and today his family is suing the US government and Henry Kissinger in particular for playing a role in his murder.

Citing documents declassified in the past few years, the lawsuit alleges that the US government paid $35,000 to the men who plotted the actions against Schneider.

“I don’t want revenge, I want the truth to be established,” said a son of the murdered general, also named Rene, who now lives in Santiago and works for a television station.

Immediately after the coup, US officials worked hard to ease international criticism of the human rights record of the Pinochet regime. Rather than fear Washington¿s reproach, the military regime repeatedly sought help and advice.

Just weeks after the coup, the US ambassador in Chile sent a memo to Henry Kissinger noting that “the military government of Chile requires adviser assistance of a person qualified in establishing a detention centre for the detainees … adviser must have knowledge in the establishment and operation of a detention centre”.

Even when the full extent of the torture and executions in Chile were well known, the US government sought to integrate the Pinochet regime into international business circles.

Probably no figure more personalised the cruelty of the Pinochet regime than the head of its secret DINA police force, Manuel Contreras.

Previously classified documents now confirm that, not only was Contreras on the CIA payroll, but that when he came to Washington during the height of human rights abuses, the US state department had specific tasks for him.

“Contreras was also asked to check in with Anaconda [Copper] and General Motors to encourage them to resume operations in Chile.”

Jonathan Franklin
theguardian.com, Wednesday 10 September 2003 14.07 BST

Find this story at 10 September 2003

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Forty years ago, during Chile’s bloody coup of 11 September 1973, my husband, Charles Horman, stepped into a car driven by “Captain” Ray Davis, the head of the US military group in Chile, for a ride from the coastal resort town of Viña del Mar to the capital of Santiago. That one journey forever changed our family, and placed me on a quest for justice that persists to this day.

Charlie was a journalist, and we both were enthusiastic supporters of the democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. When General Augusto Pinochet launched his coup against Allende from the same coastal town Charles was visiting, my husband was surprised to see not only many Chilean tanks and helicopters moving out, but US warships cruising just off the coast, and US military personnel on the ground. He overheard some of those personnel enthusiastically and eagerly taking credit for the success of the coup, implying US military involvement. Charlie dutifully took his notes.

Before he, and our visiting friend from New York, Terry, began their journey with Davis, Charles knew he had come upon dangerous information. The drive past heavy military roadblocks into the heart of Santiago where Pinochet’s forces were on a search-and-destroy mission for Allende supporters, provided the perfect opportunity for Davis to evaluate Charles and his loyalties. This reality did not escape my husband, and he began to fear Captain Davis.

Charles returned to our home in Santiago, and as he recounted his journey and discoveries to me, we resolved to leave the country. On 17 September, we separately embarked on our errands for the day, and kissed each other goodbye. I did not realize at the time that I would never see my husband alive again.

Later that day, Charles was abducted from our home by more than a dozen Chilean soldiers. He was brought to the national stadium, where some of the most brutal of the regime’s crimes were carried out against presumed Allende “sympathizers”. When I returned to find our home in disarray, and Charles missing, I feared the worst.

In the days and weeks that followed, Charles’ father, Ed Horman, and I sought the help of American officials. Rather than aiding our search, however, they inquired about our social circles, and asked if we had been “annoying” the Chileans. Gradually, it dawned on us that our worst fears were well-founded. If it had been made public, the information that Charles had acquired would have risked derailing the recognition of Chile’s junta by the US government. In that context, Charles was transformed from an American citizen who was entitled to protection, to a vulnerable and disposable threat to powerful forces.

A month would pass before it was revealed, through help from the Ford Foundation, that Charles had been executed – his bullet-ridden body buried in a wall in the national stadium. Yet, it was not until after Pinochet’s 1998 arrest in London, that an era of renewed pressure for accountability regarding the regime’s crimes would drive the Clinton administration to declassify many previously-redacted texts about that terrible time. According to one document:

US intelligence may have played an unfortunate part in Horman’s death. At best, it was limited to providing or confirming information that helped motivate his murder by the GOC [government of Chile]. At worst, US intelligence was aware the GOC saw Horman in a rather serious light and US officials did nothing to discourage the logical outcome of GOC paranoia.

Throughout these 40 years, our family has never relented in our search for truth and accountability around Charles’ death. We filed a case against Henry Kissinger in 1976. In 1981, it was dismissed “without prejudice” – free to re-open when more evidence became available. I personally testified in the House of Commons during Pinochet’s arrest in London. Our December 2000 case in Chile against Pinochet forces is still under investigation.

A year ago, Chile’s supreme court approved investigative Judge Zepeda’s request for extradition of Ray Davis to Chile concerning the deaths of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, another American journalist who was killed during the coup. The US has not yet been served with the extradition request; if and when that happens, it would set an important precedent for a US military officer to be charged by another country for the death of American citizens.

In the 40 intervening years, some wrongs have been revealed and some cases have been tried in Chile, which is, again, a democracy. Pinochet’s arrest certainly served as a lightning rod to broaden the global mechanisms to hold human rights violators accountable. But there is still a long way to go: the United States military continues to lie to the public, and take every opportunity available to cover up their abuses of power. We all have an interest in uncovering the truth about whether Captain Ray Davis played a role in the death of my husband.

In that sense, Charles’ story is just as relevant today as it was 40 years ago, and makes the cases against those responsible just as pressing. Charles’ mother, Elizabeth, often used the refrain, “we will leave no stone unturned.” That, too, is my mission, and should be the goal of all those dedicated to a just world in which no individual is too big, or too powerful, to answer for their crimes

Joyce Horman
theguardian.com, Wednesday 11 September 2013 12.30 BST

Find this story at 11 September 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

As we continue our look at the 40th anniversary of the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile and the ongoing efforts by the loved ones of its victims to seek justice, we turn to the case of Charles Horman. A 31-year-old American journalist and filmmaker, Horman was in Chile during the coup and wrote about U.S. involvement in overthrowing the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Shortly after, he was abducted by Chilean soldiers and later killed. Horman’s story was told in the 1982 Oscar-nominated film, “Missing,” which follows his father, Edmund Horman, going to Chile to search for his son. We’re joined by Charles Horman’s widow, Joyce Horman, who filed a criminal suit against Pinochet for his role in her husband’s death, and established the Charles Horman Truth Project to support ongoing investigations into human rights violations during Pinochet’s regime. We’re also joined by Peter Weiss, vice president of the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who represented the Horman family in their case against Kissinger and others for Charles Horman’s death.
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: As we continue to mark this 40th anniversary this week of the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile—it was September 11th, 1973—today, the loved ones of thousands who were killed under General Pinochet’s dictatorship continue to seek justice. We turn now to the case of Charles Horman, 31-year-old American freelance journalist and filmmaker who was in Chile during the coup and wrote about the U.S. involvement in overthrowing Allende. Soon afterward, he was abducted by Chilean soldiers, later killed.

The story of what happened next is told in the 1982 Oscar-nominated film, Missing, which follows his father, Ed Horman, when he goes to Chile amidst the bloodshed of the coup to join his daughter-in-law, who in the film is played by Sissy Spacek, in the search for the son. This is a clip from the film when we see Ed Horman, played by Jack Lemmon, meeting with U.S. officials in Chile as a photo of then-President Richard Nixon hangs on the wall behind them. Horman went to Chile knowing that soldiers had seized Charles, but unaware that he had been shot to death at that point.

U.S. AMBASSADOR: [played by Richard Venture] I hear you’d like to discuss some political questions.

ED HORMAN: [played by Jack Lemmon] What?

U.S. AMBASSADOR: [played by Richard Venture] You suggested that there might be some kind of American police assistance program down here? I’d like you to know that nothing of that sort exists in this country.

ED HORMAN: [played by Jack Lemmon] Mr. Ambassador, I’m not interested in the politics of it, and I brought it up only because I want you to use every resource at your command.

U.S. AMBASSADOR: [played by Richard Venture] I repeat, Mr. Horman, no such operation exists.

CONSUL PHIL PUTNAM: [played by David Clennon] I got the clearance for those hospitals you wanted to visit.

ED HORMAN: [played by Jack Lemmon] What about the National Stadium?

CONSUL PHIL PUTNAM: [played by David Clennon] I’m trying, but it’s kinda touchy.

U.S. AMBASSADOR: [played by Richard Venture] Handle it.

ED HORMAN: [played by Jack Lemmon] What do you mean it’s touchy? Look, gentlemen, I know these are bad times. It’s not fun for you people. It’s certainly not fun for Beth or me—or Charles. I know you’re doing your best. I have to believe that; that’s our only hope. But you have all the machinery on your side. Don’t you see? You have all the connections. I’m a middle-aged businessman from New York City. I don’t speak one word of Spanish. Here I am. My son may have been shot. Maybe he was tortured. Maybe he was—oh, Lord, beaten so badly that they’re keeping him until he’s well enough to be released. I don’t know. I don’t care. Oh, really, I don’t care, because what is done is done. I just want you to reach those people and tell them I will take Charles back in any condition. I’m not going to make a stink. I’m not going to go to the newspapers. You make out any kind of a release form; I will sign it. I will absolve anyone, everyone, of everything. I just want my boy back. He’s the only child I have, sir.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s a clip from the 1982 film Missing, about the struggle to discover what happened to journalist Charlie Horman during the 1973 Chilean coup. Jack Lemmon plays Horman’s father, Ed Horman.

Well, today we’re joined by Charlie Horman’s widow, Joyce Horman. She filed a criminal suit against Pinochet for his role in her husband’s death, and established the Charles Horman Truth Project to support ongoing investigations into the human rights violations during Pinochet’s regime. And it’s her foundation that has gathered people from around the world involved in trying to bring Augusto Pinochet to justice, from Chile to London, where he was arrested, to finding the killers of the many people. Thousands of Chileans died under the 17-year reign of Augusto Pinochet. And some of those who have been fighting for justice are gathering tonight for an event to remember what took place 40 years ago.

Joyce Horman, welcome to Democracy Now!

JOYCE HORMAN: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Missing certainly made your husband famous throughout the United States, that film by Costa-Gavras, but also showed that Charlie, though, was an American. It was thousands of Chileans who were killed in those years under Pinochet. Talk about the day that your husband was taken. You both were living in Santiago?

JOYCE HORMAN: We were living in Santiago. And he had just managed to get back from Viña del Mar, where he had taken a friend of ours from New York right before the coup and was trapped there for five days. So, he returned on Sunday, and then, Monday, he was going to go and find out about airplane tickets downtown. The curfew had been lifted during the day. So he and our friend, Terry, went down to the center of Santiago to look for tickets or a way out.

AMY GOODMAN: What did he see, where he was?

JOYCE HORMAN: Where he was, well, he saw American battleships off the shore. He saw the launch of the coup in Viña del Mar. They experienced that all the roads had been blocked and the trains had been stopped that night, Monday night before the coup, which is why he knew that was happening. But he also—he also met, in the hotel that they stayed, military—U.S. military people who were taking quite a large credit for the coup and were very excited about the success. And my husband, the journalist, knew that that was not something that anybody in the United States knew about. So, he was aware that it was incredible information at that point.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, he comes back to Santiago, to the capital of Chile. You see each other on the morning of the coup.

JOYCE HORMAN: Yes, I guess I have to start back. He was brought back to Santiago, to the search-and-destroy mission that was Santiago at that time, by the head of the U.S. MILGROUP, Military Group, who had come through blockades to get to Viña del Mar to see his military people in Viña, and then, because they had asked him if he would give a lift to Charles and Terry back to Santiago. His name is Ray, Captain Ray Davis, and he is an extraordinary figure in our story, and the extradition request for him was issued—well, was approved by the Chilean Supreme Court recently. But let me go back. So, he’s the one who went—again, drove through all the roadblocks, because he had all of the connections with the Pinochet forces, and brought them back to Santiago, dropped them in Santiago on Saturday. They came home on Sunday. I’m sorry, I think I lost the line of your original question.

AMY GOODMAN: What you were doing that day, when you last saw him, and then how he was taken—

JOYCE HORMAN: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —how you learned he was taken.

JOYCE HORMAN: OK. We said goodbye as I was leaving to check on some other friends to be sure that they were OK, because there was very little communication for a week, and he was taking our friend Terry downtown to try and get a passage out. I did not get back that night because of the curfew. The buses stopped running. And as the movie Missing portrays, I was in a stairwell for the night.

When I got back to the house the next morning, I found the house completely ransacked. And my neighbors told me to go elsewhere, because the police—or the military people that had taken my husband would probably come back. Only they didn’t say they had taken my husband. They just said they had been there and ransacked the place, so I wasn’t sure that my husband had gotten back that night.

I guess it was the next day, neighbors from our old neighborhood got a call from the military intelligence saying, “Do you know—do you know an extremist gringo with a beard?” And it terrified our neighbors, but it told us that the military actually had Charles. And the next opportunity I had, I went to the consulate and the—the embassy, actually, to announce that he had been taken and that I wanted their help to find him and get him out. They were more interested in what had been taken from the house, the ransacked house. But that was the first contact I had with the U.S. officials at that point.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to jump forward a little bit and go back to the film Missing, and this is where we see, well, your character is called Beth in the film—that’s what you chose; you weren’t sure if this was going to be a film you wanted to be any part of.

JOYCE HORMAN: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: And you are played by Sissy Spacek, to this day who’s very—you are tied to and is very close to this story.

JOYCE HORMAN: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: She and Jack Lemmon, who plays your father-in-law, Charlie’s father Ed, go to the stadium, where they’re allowed to get on the loudspeaker and ask if Charlie is there. Thousands of sympathizers of the ousted Socialist President Salvador Allende were rounded up and taken to the stadium in the days following September 11, 1973, the coup.

BETH HORMAN: [played by Sissy Spacek] Charlie? This is Beth. I’m here with your dad, Charlie, and the American consul. So if you can hear me, please come out so we can take you home.

ED HORMAN: [played by Jack Lemmon] Charles Horman, this is your father, Edmund. I’m here in the hope that you can hear me. Charles? Charles? Do you remember when we took that trip together across country from L.A. to New York? Just the two of us.

AMY GOODMAN: A clip from the 1982 Costa-Gavras film, Missing, about Charlie Horman, one of thousands of people, as Augusto Pinochet came to power and over the 17 years of his reign, who went missing and were killed. This is Democracy Now! We’ll continue this discussion after we listen to more of Víctor Jara.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Plegaria [a] un Labrador (Prayer to a Worker)” by Víctor Jara, the Chilean singer-songwriter, folk singer, tortured and executed during the Chilean coup of Salvador Allende 40 years ago this week, September 11, 1973, as we honor this 40th anniversary of all those lost. We go—you can go to our website at democracynow.org to see the timeline of all of our coverage over these years.

We continue our coverage of the 40th anniversary as we’re joined by Joyce Horman, Charles Horman’s widow. She established the Charles Horman Truth Project to support ongoing investigations into the human rights violations during Pinochet’s regime.

We’re also joined by Peter Weiss, vice president of the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He represented the Horman family in their case against Henry Kissinger and others for the death of Charles Horman. This afternoon and this evening, there will be a major gathering at—in New York City as people gather from around the world to honor those who died during these days 40 years ago. At 583 Park Avenue, there will be a forum and discussion and panels—that is, run by the Charles Horman Truth Foundation.

I want to read part of a declassified transcript of a conversation just one day before Charles Horman was seized between then-President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. When discussing the U.S. role in the Chilean coup, Kissinger said, quote, “The Chilean thing is getting consolidated.” Nixon responded, “Well, we didn’t—as you know—our hand doesn’t show on this one, though.” Kissinger replied, “We didn’t do it. … I mean we helped them. [Omitted word] created the conditions as great as possible.” And Nixon responded, “That is right.” The two then discussed, quote, “this crap from the liberals” in the media about the overthrow of a democratically elected government, and Kissinger noted, “In the Eisenhower period … we would be heroes.” Now, that is taken from a declassified memo that was declassified for the National Security Archive. It appears in the new edition of a new book that has come out by Peter Kornbluh on Pinochet and these years and is also cited in the—in Peter Kornbluh’s latest piece in The Nation magazine.

Peter Weiss, their role of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon in Allende coup?

PETER WEISS: Well, they were responsible for the coup, because they decided as soon as Salvador Allende, who was a Socialist, became president of Chile, that he had to go. And Chile was not the only country where the United States then was deciding that people had to go. And Kissinger was eventually put in charge of the 40 Committee, which was given such a nondescript name because one couldn’t say what it was actually about. But it was about preparing the coup. And the coup had two tracks, essentially. It had track one, which was managed by the State Department, more or less overtly. And then it had track two, managed by the CIA, entirely covertly. And Nixon allocated $10 million to the CIA to prepare for the coup, to mobilize, to have a relationship between the corporations that were interested in getting rid of Allende, and it was also supposed to activate the media. And it worked, as you said when you quoted Nixon and Kissinger saying, “We did it, but we didn’t do it.”

AMY GOODMAN: I want to read from a declassified U.S. State Department memo on the Charles Horman case dated August 25th, 1973. It says, quote, “There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest US intelligence may have played an unfortunate part in Horman’s death. At best, it was limited to providing or confirming information that helped motivate his murder by the [government of Chile, or] GOC. At worst, US intelligence was aware that GOC saw Horman in a rather serious light and US officials did nothing to discourage the logical outcome of GOC [government of Chile] paranoia.”

PETER WEISS: Well, there were actually two ways in which Charles Horman was failed by his government. One was that they helped to orchestrate the coup, and the other was that they didn’t lift a finger to get him out of Chile when they had every reason to believe that he was in great danger. And there is an international law, an obligation, for governments to keep their citizens from being killed in foreign countries. The United States completely failed to do anything about that.

AMY GOODMAN: Kissinger is still alive. President Nixon of course has died. The case was dismissed, Joyce and Peter, against Kissinger. Why? And are there cases now that involve him?

PETER WEISS: I’m not aware of any pending cases now. Maybe Almudena knows of some, but I’m not aware of any pending cases. Our case was dismissed because we couldn’t conduct discovery. When you bring any kind of case, civil or criminal, you have to look for the evidence and produce the evidence to the judge or the jury. And everything that we wanted, we were told, was classified and would not be made available to us. So, eventually, the case had to be dismissed, because we couldn’t establish the causal relationship between Charles’s death and what people like Ray Davis, whom Joyce mentioned, who was the head of the—

JOYCE HORMAN: Military Group.

AMY GOODMAN: MILGROUP.

PETER WEISS: —of the Military Group at the embassy—

AMY GOODMAN: In this last minute, as you mention international law, it’s being invoked a lot these days as we look at the possible strike against Syria. Peter Weiss, you are legendary in your defense of international law. What are the parallels you see?

PETER WEISS: I see two parallels. One is that the Assad regime engaged in multitudinous violations of international law for two-and-a-half years. Right? I mean, they bombed. They sent artillery rockets into civilian areas, which is a cardinal violation of international law. And nobody really mentioned the fact that these were international law violations. And then come the chemical weapons, and everybody is saying, “Oh, my god, you know, now they’ve violated international law.” What were they doing before? Complying with international law? Surely not. So, that’s one thing.

The other thing is that if—

AMY GOODMAN: We have 15 seconds.

PETER WEISS: —Obama decides to go in there without approval from the international community, he will be guilty of a tremendous violation of international law. And you can’t uphold international law by violating international law.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to continue the discussion both on Syria as well as on this 40th anniversary of the coup in Chile tomorrow on Democracy Now!

Monday, September 9, 2013

Find this story at 9 September 2013

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