Kissinger rescinded warning against Condor assassinations

Five days before the assassination in downtown Washington of former Chilean Defense Minister Orlando Letelier, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger rescinded instructions to U.S. ambassadors in Latin America's Southern Cone to warn the region's military regimes against carrying out "a series of international murders", according to documents released by the National Security Archive. Kissinger "has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter", reads a declassified Sept. 16, 1976 cable sent by Kissinger's office from Zambia, where he was traveling at the time, to his assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, Harry Shlaudeman. The "matter" in question concerned instructions sent under Kissinger's name to U.S. ambassadors to Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay Aug. 23, 1976, to make a formal demarche to the leaders of their host governments regarding Washington's "deep concern" about reports it had received of "plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad". The Aug. 23 cable ordered the ambassadors to warn to the highest possible officials that such plans - part of a secret, Chilean-led intelligence collaboration among the Southern Cone's military regimes known as Operation Condor - would "create a most serious moral and political problem". When Washington's ambassador in Montevideo, Ernest Siracusa, balked at the directive, Shlaudeman explained to Kissinger in a memo one week later that the instructions were designed "to head off ...a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved".