811.113 Senate Investigation/52: Telegram
The Ambassador in Argentina (Weddell) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11 p.m.]
163. Department’s 112, September 19, 8 p.m. Local newspapers of September 18 carried text of a lengthy instruction addressed to [by?] the Minister for Foreign Affairs to the Argentine Ambassador [Page 442] in Washington directing him to present a diplomatic claim against our Government for moral damages to certain Argentine officials. (Full text by next air mail.) Presumably the newspaper reports of this publication inspired Department’s telegram under acknowledgment.
I called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs this afternoon and discussed with him the contents of the Department’s message. Doctor Lamas was markedly cordial, repeatedly expressing his admiration and friendship for the United States and for you. He said he felt that the general aims of the Senate investigation were based on the highest motives and would undoubtedly be productive of beneficial results, adding that his special complaint was against making public the names of Argentine officials.
Declared that his purpose in instructing his Ambassador as above was to lay a juridical base for use of, and for, the future with the United States or any other country adding that he thought Espil was presenting a note to the Department today. The Minister for Foreign Affairs told me further that he was publishing tomorrow morning the Department’s reply35 to Espil’s note concerning Admiral Galindez, that it was necessary to placate public opinion here, and that unless something cropped up in the way of a local press campaign, or a disagreeable attitude on the part of the Argentine Congress, and provided nothing disturbing came out in the subsequent sessions of the United States Senate Committee’s investigations that the matter would end.
On leaving the Minister he said “in short we will not give your Government any difficulty.”
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