Will Kissinger be Brought to Trial?
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Will Kissinger be Brought to Trial?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1536000/1536547.stm
A lawsuit has been filed against the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger over his alleged role in the death of the former Chilean army commander, General Rene Schneider, in 1970. The suit was filed in Washington by members of the general's family. They accuse Mr Kissinger of being involved in what they say was a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plot to kill him.General Schneider died after resisting a kidnapping attempt which, the family says, was part of a wider plot to prevent the Chilean Marxist leader, Salvador Allende, from becoming president.Mr Kissinger has repeatedly denied any involvement in General Schneider's death. The court action follows several requests by judges in Chile and Argentina judges to question Mr Kissinger over human rights abuses committed during the military regimes of the 1970s.The BBC correspondent in Washington says the lawsuit stems from an investigation by a US television network, which claims that CIA communications contradict Mr Kissinger's version of events. Conspiracy
General Schneider's family say the botched kidnapping attempt took place as part of a covert White House campaign to prevent Socialist Salvador Allende from becoming president.
Both Mr Kissinger and his boss, the then-president Richard Nixon, were heavily involved in backing anti-Allende factions in Chile, the indictment alleges. The general was a key player in Chile at the time as he had provided crucial backing to Mr Allende after his narrow presidential election victory on 4 September 1970. In an apparent attempt to remove Mr Allende's military support, coup plotters attempted to kidnap General Schneider, but shot him when he reached for his gun in self-defence. He died two days after the attempt on 24 October 1970 in Santiago's Military Hospital. 'No connection'
Mr Kissinger, President Nixon's national security adviser at the time, and later secretary of state for both Mr Nixon and his successor, Gerald Ford, has always denied his involvement.
In 1975, a US Senate investigation established that America had indeed backed a coup which eventually brought down Mr Allende three years later, and set up the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.However, Mr Kissinger testified before the Senate hearing that he cut off all support for the coup plotters the week before General Schneider was murdered.A high-ranking State Department official referred to previously declassified documents about the situation in Chile during the 1960s and '70s, saying "the documents speak for themselves".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1536000/1536547.stm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7048-2001Sep10.html
The family of Chilean military commander Rene Schneider, who was killed 31 years ago during a botched kidnapping, filed a federal lawsuit in Washington yesterday accusing Henry A. Kissinger, Richard M. Helms and other officials in the Nixon administration of orchestrating a series of covert activities that led to his assassination.
The lawsuit, which attorneys said is based heavily upon recently declassified CIA documents, seeks more than $3 million in damages from Kissinger, Helms and the U.S. government for "summary execution," assault and other civil rights violations. It alleges that Schneider was targeted because he stood in the way of a military coup designed to keep leftist Salvador Allende from taking power as Chile's president. At the time, Kissinger was Nixon's national security adviser, and Helms headed the CIA.
The suit revisits one of Chile's most notorious crimes and marks the first time that high-level U.S. officials have been sued in connection with the shooting. Schneider was the left-leaning head of the Chilean Armed Forces, and his murder was long considered to have been carried out by right-wing extremists within the military. The suit focuses on U.S. government ties to the assailants that were described in the declassified papers.
"The United States did not want Allende to assume the presidency, and my father was the only political obstacle for a military coup," said Schneider's eldest son, also named Rene Schneider, who resides in Chile. He and his brother, Raul, an artist living in Paris, are the named plaintiffs. "Obviously, he had to be taken out of the way."
The family chose to sue after carefully reviewing the materials that became public in the past two years, Schneider said. The documents, he said, "made me realize that my father's death is perhaps the one crime perpetrated outside the U.S. that most clearly links back to the U.S. government, the CIA, and Kissinger in particular.
"I don't want revenge," he said. "I want the truth to be established."
Kissinger did not return a telephone message left at his New York office. Helms denied wrongdoing but would not discuss details, saying that he hadn't seen the suit and that "it's a long and complicated case."
In his 1979 autobiography, Kissinger denied involvement in Schneider's death. He wrote that the group that tried to kidnap Schneider "proceeded on its own in defiance of CIA instructions and without our knowledge."
The role of the United States in Schneider's death has been studied for years. A Senate committee in 1975 found evidence that U.S. officials hoped to instigate a coup to stop Allende and provided arms and encouragement to those plotting the general's kidnapping. But the committee said its evidence showed the CIA had withdrawn support of the kidnapping before it was carried out and never envisioned that he would be killed.
Thousands of additional documents were declassified in recent years and provided a more comprehensive account of what happened. In addition, the CIA provided a report to Congress last year that detailed the agency's activities in Chile in the early 1970s.
According to the Schneider family, the materials showed that the CIA continued to encourage a coup in the days leading to the kidnapping. The CIA also provided $35,000 to some of those jailed for Schneider's death, the suit said.
"Every single factual assertion in this complaint is based on a document that has been furnished by the U.S. government," said Michael E. Tigar, the family's attorney.
The chain of events began Sept. 15, 1970, when Nixon met with Kissinger and Helms and ordered that action be taken to prevent Allende from assuming office after an election in which he had won the most votes. According to the lawsuit, Nixon said he was not concerned about risks and authorized $10 million to be spent on a military coup.
But military officials in Chile made clear that Chile's commander in chief, Schneider, would not go along with a coup, the suit said. The lawsuit said Kissinger and the CIA supported a secret plan to kidnap Schneider so that the military could take over before Allende's election could be approved by Chile's Congress.
On the morning of Oct. 22, 1972, after two aborted kidnapping attempts, Schneider was ambushed en route to work. The general's car was surrounded by about six cars, and struck from behind by one of them. The kidnappers smashed the back-seat windows on both sides. As Schneider was getting out his gun to defend himself, the assailants shot him. He died three days later at a military hospital, one day after Allende's victory was ratified.
Allende remained in power until a 1973 military coup that was indirectly supported by the CIA; he killed himself while under siege. Gen. Augusto Pinochet then began a 17-year reign in which thousands of people were killed or tortured. Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998 and indicted in Chile last year. But an appellate court recently suspended the legal proceedings because of concerns about his mental fitness for trial.
Military courts in Chile found that Schneider's death was caused by two military groups, one led by Roberto Viaux and the other by Camilo Valenzuela. Viaux and Valenzuela, both generals, were convicted of charges of conspiring to cause a coup, and Viaux also was convicted of kidnapping. The CIA aided both groups, the lawsuit said.
In a section of his autobiography entitled "The Coup That Never Was," Kissinger recounted the September 1970 meeting with Nixon and the plans to move forward with a secret coup agenda. He said there was less to the plan "than met the eye" because Nixon had a history of backing off plans as their implications became clearer.
Kissinger wrote that he ended the plan Oct. 15 and that Viaux's group acted on its own. He also wrote that no one, not even Viaux, ever intended to assassinate Schneider.
Peter Kornbluh, a Chile expert at the nonprofit National Security Archive, who lobbied for full declassification of Chile documents, said the lawsuit could force Kissinger, Helms and others to provide more information about what took place.
"This crime was Chile's equivalent of the Kennedy assassination at the time," Kornbluh said. "It was an unparalleled, unprecedented act of political terrorism."
Kissinger has faced other recent scrutiny. In May, he declined to appear before a French judge who wanted to question him about allegations of human rights violations in Latin America during the 1970s. He referred the request to the State Department.
Staff writer Anthony Faiola, staff researcher Robert Thomason and special correspondent Pascale Bonnefoy contributed to this report. Bonnefoy reported from Santiago, Chile.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7048-2001Sep10.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,309983-412,00.shtml
60 Minutes has learned that the family of a murdered Chilean general plans to file a lawsuit seeking damages against Henry Kissinger for his alleged role in the death of Gen. Rene Schneider, the commander of the Chilean Army who was killed by kidnappers in 1970. Citing recently declassified government documents, the civil suit is expected to claim that the CIA supported a kidnapping plot which led to the death of the Chilean general. The CIA’s support for the kidnapping was part of a larger effort by the Agency to instigate a coup in Chile – an objective ordered by President Nixon and overseen by Kissinger. Bob Simon reports.
Rene Schneider Jr., son of the late general, tells Simon, “I always wanted to put all this behind me, but we have a duty to humanity to speak about this. It would be irresponsible to remain silent.” Accounts of the former U.S. ambassador to Chile and the embassy’s former military attaché - both of whom appear in the report - and the documents tell the Cold War story of the Nixon administration’s desire to thwart leftist politician Salvadore Allende’s successful election to Chile’s presidency. The Nixon White House sought a military coup in Chile before Allende’s inauguration, but Schneider, a constitutional defender, stood in the way. Schneider was shot by the would-be kidnappers when he reached for his revolver.
Kissinger declined to speak to 60 Minutes, but when questioned about Chile in the past, he has responded that he personally cut off support for the coup conspirators during a meeting with the CIA on Oct. 15, 1970, a few days before Schneider’s murder. CIA officials, however, differed with Kissinger on this point in subsequent investigations. The Senate committee that investigated the matter could not determine who was telling the truth.
http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,309983-412,00.shtml