Kissinger, Henry

(1923– )

   United States secretary of state and head of the National Security Council under Presidents Richard Nixon (1969–1974) and Gerald Ford (1974–1977). His open dislike for communism led him to devise a covert strategy to prevent the election of the Marxist presidential candidate Salvador Allende Gossens in Chile, or, if he was elected, to undermine his government. The operation was coordinated by the “Committee of Forty,” a secret group of officials from the Nixon administration, including the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (“Forty” referred not to the number of members but to the directive that established the committee.) The committee, which Kissinger chaired, was responsible for funding opposition parties and anti–Allende Gossens propaganda and for engaging in economic sabotage and other activities designed to destabilize the government. The CIA developed its own strategy, which included generating economic crises and encouraging civil unrest. Allende Gossens was overthrown in a military coup in 1973.

   Although there is no evidence that the United States supported the coup that toppled President Isabel Perón in Argentina in 1976, recently declassified U.S. State Department documents reveal that the military government was convinced it had U.S. approval for its “dirty war.” In October 1976, at the height of the government’s campaign against subversion, the U.S. Ambassador Robert Hill reported that Admiral César Guzzetti, the Argentine foreign minister, was in a state of euphoria after meeting in Washington with Kissinger, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and other high-ranking state department officials. According to Hill, Guzzetti came away with the understanding that the United States would refrain from criticizing Argentina for human-rights violations, though Guzzetti was urged to get the “dirty war” over quickly—by December or January. The conservative Hill, a human-rights advocate, complained about Kissinger’s handling of the issue, arguing that the secretary of state undermined his diplomatic efforts to stop the violations.