‘New York Times’ Demands Obama’s Argentina Visit Declassifies U.S. Involvement In Dirty War That Killed 30,000

The New York Times published an editorial just days before President Barack Obama visits Argentina that call for him to declassify documents that would shed light on the Dirty War that claimed the lives of an estimated 30,000 Argentines in the 1970s and early 80s.

Such C.I.A. reports have been slowly opened to the public over the years, revealing the role of the United States government in providing training and support to right-wing military dictators in order to squash growing democratically elected socialist movements across Latin America — a campaign collectively called Operation Condor. Obama’s visit to Argentina will coincide with the 40th anniversary of Argentina’s coup d’état, which took place on March 24, 1976.

While Obama’s visit to Argentina has been extremely controversial in the country, the U.S. official paper of record calling out the Dirty War just days before his visit will be difficult for the White House to ignore. The New York Times presented it as a contingent part of his trip to Argentina.

“Declassifying a more extensive set of documents would also bring into sharper focus a shameful period of American foreign policy, during which Washington condoned and in some instances supported the brutal tactics of right-wing governments in the region. It is time for the American government to do what it still can to help bring the guilty to justice and give the victims’ families some of the answers they seek.”

Based on Joe Biden’s trip to Brazil during 2014’s World Cup, Obama’s visit to Argentina may indeed yield such documents. Then, Biden handed over a 1973 State Department cable which detailed the torture methods used by Brazilian military forces in graphic detail — a move that was praised by President Dilma Rousseff, who was herself tortured under that regime. Peter Kornbluh, director of the Brazil’s National Security Archive at George Washington University, told VICE News at the time that he thought the files were especially pertinent, considering the battle over the declassification of Middle Eastern torture techniques.

“The fact that the documents [about Brazil] contain harrowing details of sophisticated but no less barbaric forms of torture and state-sponsored murder in Brazil will certainly raise the historical comparison to the techniques that the CIA used that the US public are about to learn about. If we feel the horror of what Brazilian interrogators did in the 1970s, we presumably will feel the horror of what CIA interrogators did only a few years ago.”

The New York Times editorial board noted that beyond justice for victims of torture or families of the disappeared, information needed to be declassified in order to help find the children kidnapped by the dictatorship. In order to eliminate left-wing thinking, the sons and daughters of murdered opposition forces were stolen from their surviving family and raised in adoptive households. Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, a group which has fought for the declassification of such documents for several decades, has recovered more than 100 such children. Estela Carlotta, president of the association, had previously told Argentine paper Página 12 that if Obama wanted to meet with her during his visit, she would insist on seeing such reports released to the public.

“[Obama] is the president of a country that we have a ask for a few things from. We’re talking about the necessity of asking the declassification of archives. In a meeting we were told that there were already many such documents declassified, and we said there’s still a lot more. It’s an important topic for the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, we want justice from North America — that judges collaborate to identify grandchildren with assistance of [the United States].”

President Barack Obama’s visit to Argentina kicks off Tuesday in Buenos Aires, reported the New York Times. After protests over his presence in the capital on the anniversary of the coup, it was announced that he would be going to the country’s picturesque Patagonian town, Bariloche, with newly elected head-of-state Mauricio Macri.

[Photos by Mario Tama and Win McNamee/Getty Images]