Christopher Hitchens continues to describe why there should be a trial for crimes against humanity. He makes his case below regarding the murder of Chilean General René Schneider.
This repeats the old canard supposedly distinguishing a kidnap or abduction from a murder, and once again it raises the intriguing question: what was the CIA going to do with the general once it had kidnapped him? (Note, also, the studied passivity whereby the report "found no information that the plotters' or CIA's intention was for the general to be killed." What would satisfy this bizarre criterion?)
But then we learn, of the supposedly unruly gang that actually took its instructions seriously: In November 1970 a member of the Viaux group who avoided capture recontacted the Agency and requested financial assistance on behalf of the group.
Although the Agency had no obligation to the group because it acted on its own, in an effort to keep the prior contact secret, maintain the goodwill of the group, and for humanitarian reasons, $35,000 was passed.
"Humanitarian reasons."
One has to admire the sheer inventiveness of this explanation. At 1970 prices, the sum of $35,000 in Chile was a considerable sum to pay.
Not the sort of sum that a local station chief could have disbursed on his own.
One wants to know how the Forty Committee and its vigilant chairman, Henry Kissinger, decided that the best way to dissociate from a supposedly loose-cannon gang was to pay it a small fortune in cash after it had committed a cold- blooded murder.
The same question arises in an even more acute form with another disclosure made by the Agency in the course of the same report.
This is headed "Relationship With Contreras." Manuel Contreras was the head of Pinochet's secret military police, and in that capacity organized the death, torture, and disappearance of innumerable Chileans as well as the use of bombing and assassination techniques as far afield as Washington, DC.
The link is here.
The CIA admits early on in the document that it "had liaison relationships in Chile with the primary purpose of securing assistance in gathering intelligence on external targets. The CIA offered these services assistance in internal organization and training to combat subversion and terrorism from abroad, not in combating internal opponents of the government."
Such flat prose, based on a distinction between the “external threat" and the more messy business of internal dictatorial discipline, invites the question-what external threat?
Chile had no foreign enemy except Argentina, which disputed some sea lane rights in the Beagle Channel. (In consequence, Chile helped Mrs. Thatcher in the Falklands war of 1982.)
And in Argentina, as we know, the CIA was likewise engaged in helping the military regime to survive. No: while Chile had no external enemies to speak of, the Pinochet dictatorship had many, many external foes.
They were the numerous Chileans forced to abandon their country. One of the jobs of Manuel Contreras was to hunt them down.
As the report puts it: During a period between 1974 and 1977, CIA maintained contact with Manuel Contreras, who later became notorious for his human rights abuses.
The US Government policy community approved CIA's contact with Contreras, given his position as chief of the primary intelligence organization in Chile, as necessary to accomplish the CIA's mission, in spite of concerns that this relationship might lay the CIA open to charges of aiding internal political repression.
Contreras and Pinochet
After a few bits of back-and-forth about the distinction without a difference (between external and "internal" police tactics) the CIA report states candidly: By April 1975, intelligence reporting showed that Contreras was the principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the Junta, but an interagency committee directed the CIA to continue its relationship with Contreras.
The US Ambassador to Chile urged Deputy Director of Central Intelligence [General Vernon] Walters to receive Contreras in Washington in the interest of maintaining good relations with Pinochet.
In August 1975, with interagency approval, this meeting took place. In May and June 1975, elements within the CIA recommended establishing a paid relationship with Contreras to obtain intelligence based on his unique position and access to Pinochet.
This proposal was overruled, citing the US Government policy on clandestine relations with the head of an intelligence service notorious for human rights abuses.
However, given miscommunications in the timing of this exchange, a one-time payment was given to Contreras.
Manuel Contreras: “I never ordered one murder.”
This does not require too much parsing. Sometime after it had been concluded, and by the CIA at that, that Manuel Contreras was the "principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy," he is given American taxpayers' money and received at a high level in Washington.
Manuel Contreras: “I don’t regret anything.”
The CIA's memorandum is careful to state that, where doubts exist, they are stilled by “the US Government policy community" and by "an interagency committee."
It also tries to suggest, with unconscious humor, that the head of a murderous foreign secret service was given a large bribe by mistake.
One wonders who was reprimanded for this blunder, and how it got past the scrutiny of the Forty Committee.