THE ONE THING KISSINGER CAN BE PROUD OF:

Kissinger Accused of Blocking Scholar: An expert at the Council on Foreign Relations says the policy club is bowing to pressure from Henry A. Kissinger
to stifle a debate on Chile. (DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, 6/05/04, NY Times)

The roots of the current dispute date back to last winter, after Mr. Hoge invited Mr. Maxwell to write an extended review of "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability" by Peter Kornbluh (New Press), a book that re-examines the American role in helping to unseat Salvador Allende, the socialist president who died during the military coup that brought the brutal regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power. The book is based on 25,000 United States government documents that were declassified in recent years.

Mr. Maxwell's essay largely summarized the unresolved questions surrounding American actions in Chile, mentioning three issues in particular: the 1970 assassination of a Chilean general, René Schneider; the September 1973 coup against Allende; and the assassination of Orlando Letelier, Allende's former foreign minister, in September 1976.

The review, though critical of Mr. Kornbluh's book in some respects, said that it confirmed "the deep involvement of the U.S. intelligence services in Chile prior to and after the coup."

The review outraged William Rogers, the former assistant secretary of state for Latin American Affairs under Mr. Kissinger and a vice president of his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, who wrote a lengthy response in the following issue of Foreign Affairs.

"There is, in short, no smoking gun," Mr. Rogers wrote. "Yet the myth persists. It is lovingly nurtured by the Latin American left and refreshed from time to time by contributions to the literature and Mr. Maxwell's review of that book."

Mr. Maxwell fired back, "William Rogers overreaches." He added, "To claim that the United States was not actively involved in promoting Allende's downfall in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary verges on incredulity."

After the exchange, Mr. Hoge said, Mr. Rogers approached him once again, saying that Mr. Maxwell's response to his letter had raised new charges that he felt entitled to address. Specifically, Mr. Rogers felt he and Mr. Kissinger were being accused of complicity in the Letelier assassination, Mr. Hoge recalled.

Mr. Maxwell said that he was not accusing the men of complicity but rather of failing to stop the campaign to assassinate opposition figures abroad. He cited an August 1976 order from Mr. Kissinger to ambassadors in South America, to warn governments there that the United States would not countenance political assassinations on its territory. At least in Chile, that order appears not to have been delivered, nor was it insisted upon. The next month, Letelier's car was blown up by Chilean secret service agents on a Washington street.

The Chilean coup is very nearly the only American foreign policy success of the 70s.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 5, 2004 8:53 AM