South America

Updated - October 28, 2009 Secrets and Lies: The U.S. Embassy and Col. Plazas Vega By Michael Evans [The following article was published today in Spanish at Semana.com.] The recent appearance of a declassified U.S. Embassy report blaming the Colombian Army and Col. Luis Alfonso Plazas Vega for deaths and disappearances during operations to retake the Palace of Justice building in November 1985 has stirred up heated debate on both sides of the issue. As it happens, both sides have it wrong, at least in part.

The United States harbored serious concerns about the potential involvement of Colombian security forces in the February 2000 massacre at El Salado, an attack that occurred while the two countries were hammering out the final details of the massive military aid package known as Plan Colombia, according to declassified documents posted today on the National Security Archive Web site.

Washington, D.C., August 16, 2009 - In December 1971, President Richard Nixon and Brazilian President Emilio Garrastazъ Mйdici discussed Brazil’s role in efforts to overthrow the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, formerly Top Secret records posted by the National Security Archive today reveal. According to a declassified memorandum of conversation, Nixon asked Mйdici whether the Chilean military was capable of overthrowing Allende.

Washington, DC, April 7, 2009 – As a special tribunal in Peru pronounced former president Alberto Fujimori guilty of human rights atrocities, the National Security Archive today posted key declassified U.S. documents that were submitted as evidence in the court proceedings. The declassified records contain intelligence gathered by U.S.

Washington, D.C., January 7, 2009 - The CIA and senior U.S. diplomats were aware as early as 1994 that U.S.-backed Colombian security forces engaged in "death squad tactics," cooperated with drug-running paramilitary groups, and encouraged a "body count syndrome," according to declassified documents published on the Web today by the National Security Archive.

Washington D.C., diciembre 21, 2008 – El National Security Archive publica hoy evidencias clave del Archivo del Terror de Paraguay que muestran que el Jefe de la Policía Secreta trató de encubrir la aplicación de la ley fuga y desaparición de cuatro detenidos la noche del 21 de Septiembre de 1976. Revelado hoy por primera vez, un reporte del Comisario Eliodoro Sánchez informaba que “NO SE REGISTRO NOVEDAD DIGNA DE MENCIONAR”, contradiciendo tajantemente al Jefe de Investigaciones Pastor Coronel quien informó que los cuatro desaparecidos se habían fugado esa noche.

Washington D.C., October 5, 2008 - As Colombian prosecutors begin to reopen investigations against individuals connected to one of the worst massacres in the country’s modern history, the National Security Archive today publishes on the Web a collection of declassified documents detailing U.S. concerns about the wall of impunity that has long surrounded the case. These documents are central to an article published this weekend in Spanish on the Web site of Semana magazine, Colombia’s largest newsweekly.

Washington D.C., September 10, 2008 - On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the National Security Archive today published for the first time formerly secret transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversations that set in motion a massive U.S. effort to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in one phone call. “I am with you,” the September 12, 1970 transcript records Helms responding.

Lima, Peru (September 8, 2008) – National Security Archive Senior Analyst Kate Doyle testified yesterday before Peru’s Special Tribunal of the Supreme Court of Justice in the case against former president Alberto Fujimori. Doyle provided expert testimony, explaining how 21 declassified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provide illuminating information on human rights abuses carried out under the Fujimori government (1990-2000) The 21 documents, produced by the U.S.

Washington, D.C., March 4, 2008 - A senior Colombian guerrilla leader killed in Ecuador last weekend in a cross-border raid by Colombian forces held secret talks with U.S. diplomats ten years ago in Costa Rica, according to a declassified memorandum of conversation published on the Web today by the National Security Archive and cited in today's New York Times. The slain insurgent, Raъl Reyes, met secretly in Costa Rica in December 1998 with a U.S. diplomatic mission led by Philip T. Chicola, then director of the State Department's Office of Andean Affairs.