Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–11, Part 2, Documents on South America, 1973–1976

203. Transcript of the Secretary of State’s Staff Meeting¹

Washington, October 6, 1975.

[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to Chile.]

Mr. Rogers: The second thing I want to mention to you is the action by the Chileans with respect to Mission Friends. Mission Friends is the head of the Lutherans in Chile. They got the UN—

Secretary Kissinger: They’re particularly trying. (Laughter.)

Mr. Rogers: They got the UN Medal last year for his work with respect to the Chilean refugees. He made the mistake of going to Europe, from which he is originally sending his wife and six children to Chile; and they told him he couldn’t come back. The Council of Churches is raising hell about this.

I would like to say quietly: This is really not helpful as far as the United States and our position is concerned.

Secretary Kissinger: But now can you explain one other thing to me, Bill? Why is it that our Ambassador in Chile should share the same impression that I do—that we’re dragging our feet on everything? I saw a cable from him this weekend.

Mr. Rogers: On the cash sales?

Secretary Kissinger: Yes.

Mr. Rogers: The basic problem is our friends over at the Pentagon.

Secretary Kissinger: Yes, but isn’t it also true that if you drag your feet much longer it will be cut off legally?

Mr. Rogers: No. Kennedy’s legislation won’t even go in—I mean, many weeks from now—and final action on the thing will be action—it will be part of the Foreign Assistance Act. You’re not going to have special legislation on that before the Act itself goes through. But the answer to the question—

Secretary Kissinger: But what is it that holds it up at the Pentagon? I can see people saying they’re against it, but what can the Pentagon be holding up?

Mr. Rogers: The definition of the package.

Secretary Kissinger: I mean, what’s the dispute between four TOWs and three half tracks? What is the dispute? Besides they’re paying for it, aren’t they?

Mr. Rogers: Right.

Secretary Kissinger: Why can’t they define their own package?

Mr. Rogers: I had lunch with Trucco last week and I said, “Give us your definition of the package.”

Secretary Kissinger: Then who’s holding it up—Trucco or the Pentagon or we?

Mr. Rogers: We are not. No—we really aren’t.

Secretary Kissinger: But if they apply to the Agriculture Department by mistake, we won’t correct it until we find out; right? (Laughter.)

Well, there must be something wrong if in four months they can’t produce orders for ten million dollars.

Mr. Rogers: No, no. It’s one week, really. The decision in principle was met last week to go ahead with the cash sales. That was the first time the decision was made.

Secretary Kissinger: It’s the first time that I didn’t understand. I thought the decision was made last July.

Mr. Rogers: On cash sales? No.

Secretary Kissinger: Well, what is it that Popper is complaining about—that if we drop them out of the OAS, Bill, they’ll consider that very seriously?

Mr. Rogers: Yes. But if we solace them—

Secretary Kissinger: But why do we have to solace them? They’d rather be defeated in Congress than be dropped out by us?

Mr. Rogers: That’s what Popper says, and I don’t believe it.

Secretary Kissinger: Well, that’s capable of objective determination; isn’t it? Why should we not put them in if they’d rather be defeated by the Congress?

Mr. Rogers: Well, because they are not the only ones that are going to be defeated by Congress, if you go to the mat of Congress on this issue.

Secretary Kissinger: You don’t have to go to the mat. They knocked it out last year without defeating anybody else.

Mr. Rogers: Well, Congress, quite frankly—a lot of people in Congress would like to have it in there just in order to have a target to shoot at.

Secretary Kissinger: That’s not true. The target they want to shoot at is the Chilean Government. And if you take this target away from them, they’ll go after PL–480 or something else.

Mr. Rogers: Well, they’ll try that anyway.

Secretary Kissinger: Well, in that case you’re not going to deflect the people that are anti-Chile by taking it out yourself.

Mr. Rogers: You’re not going to deflect anti-Chile. What you are going to deflect is the possibility that they attack you and this Department for abrasing these Chileans.

Secretary Kissinger: They’re going to attack me, and they’re going to attack me on Chile anyway. That’s part of the game now. And if the Department can’t take some heat, then I feel sorry for it. The Department is going to take hundreds of the heat that I’m going to take. So if that’s the consideration, then we’re not going to be attacked. We’re going to be attacked for PL–480, for anything else. That’s the name of the game now with Chile. That’s how you move your morality.

Mr. Rogers: We have a defensible proposition, the collapse of—

Secretary Kissinger: We have a defensible proposition with FMS by pointing out that it creates such an enormous equality in that area and that if things ever blow that area we’re going to wind up again with a radicalized military.

Mr. Rogers: Politically—with the Congress of the United States.

Secretary Kissinger: Let them vote against it. They voted against it last year, and we also knifed it.

Mr. Rogers: But my judgment certainly is: Very strongly, we’re going to have a lot more defensible position if we go for PL–480 and economic assistance.

Secretary Kissinger: Except you’ll never get military assistance started again because a lot of people are against it anyway—to any Latin American country, to any country. They’d like us to be in the position, even though it is clearly demonstrable, that military aid gives you five times the leverage that economic aid does—it’s incomparable more. The theory is that economic aid is good and military aid is bad.

Mr. Rogers: Well, that’s an argument for Hartman to make in this case of what have we got that military assistance has been providing?

Secretary Kissinger: We got rid of Allende, for one thing.

What we have gotten for economic aid would be provided.

Mr. Rogers: That’s right too.

Secretary Kissinger: It depends on what you get. What’s your definition of getting something?

Mr. Rogers: There’s been no action on the human rights thing.

That’s not the thing. The basic position posed by Chile is, even if you are in the Parradine case, in the perception of most Congressmen, are you going to relate or hinge human rights performance with military assistance?

Secretary Kissinger: That’s an interesting question, but I ought to be told that that’s what we’re operating under.

Mr. Rogers: Pardon me?

Secretary Kissinger: But that ought to be brought to my attention—that this is the operating principle of the Department—which it hasn’t been while I’ve been here.

Mr. Rogers: The question isn’t whether or not it’s the operating principle of the Department. The question that Congress is asking is: Are you ever, in any case, going to make the linkage? And the Chile case presents that issue in principle.

Secretary Kissinger: Together with 30 other countries in the world—Saudi Arabia—

Mr. Rogers: Right.

Secretary Kissinger:—Iran.

Mr. Rogers: Then the argument becomes, on the other side: If you give here, you’ve got to give—

Secretary Kissinger:—Gulf states, Kuwait—do they have such great human rights performances? If you once establish that principle, that’s an important question to decide; and you just can’t slide that through. I mean, if I read that cable by accident, I would have thought that the Chileans liked it that way. And if that’s the case, you’re not making any point.

Mr. Rogers: That’s the case that the Congress wants.

Secretary Kissinger: The Congress—our case is to do what’s best for the country. The Congress can then vote whatever it chooses. We’re not in the business of psychiatric second-guessing of what the Congress might want to do. We put up what we think is right. Let the Congress vote it down.

Mr. Rogers: Oh, I agree with that.

Secretary Kissinger: And we can determine the intensity. It’s not such a simple issue on whether you link human rights issues to military sales—not at all a simple issue.

Mr. Rogers: I agree with that.

Secretary Kissinger: And once you establish that principle—first of all, you have to determine what the human rights issue is in Chile that distinguishes it from 30 other human rights issues around the world. Is it significantly better or worse than Kenya, to which we’re starting a program now? Is it significantly worse than Zaire? Is it significantly worse than the Gulf states?

Mr. Rogers: I thought the answer to that question was the purpose of this elaborate exercise the Department has been going through in the last two or three months in terms of analyzing all the human rights practices.

Secretary Kissinger: I don’t know what the Department is going through. It hasn’t been discussed with me. It is not clear to me that we’re going to link military sales to human rights issues. Military sales are basically linked to the defense of those countries and whether the defense of those countries is in our interest.

Anyone who wants to join a missionary organization should wait for the next Secretary of State. That’s not what we’re doing foreign policy for—in the absence of some overriding case. It has to do with the defense of those countries, whether that defense is in the national interest of the United States. That’s what we’re selling arms for.

Mr. Maw: We have done—

Secretary Kissinger: If they have gas chambers, that’s another matter.

Mr. Maw: We have done the exercise called for by 502(b), and all of our conclusions are that military sales requirements are paramount and they say we’ve taken into account the human rights situation in arriving at the levels proposed. We increased in Korea—

Secretary Kissinger: But that just isn’t true.

Mr. Maw: We take it into account by saying—

Secretary Kissinger: It’s not a borderline case of whether a country should or should not be because it doesn’t have a defense problem—then I can understand it.

Mr. Maw: We don’t have that.

Secretary Kissinger: Churchill supported the Soviets when he thought it was in the British national interest, even though he fought them all his life. I just don’t agree. We’re going down a slope here that’s not going to be manageable. Even though we’ll get Congressional applause for one year, after a year or two we will have set a principle that is going to be impossible to maintain.

Mr. Habib: Also, you shouldn’t set it for one country and then not for another country.

Secretary Kissinger: If we once set it in one country that we’re cutting off foreign military sales for because we don’t like their human rights practices, how are we going to defend it in Korea?

Mr. Habib: In Korea they have a clearer issue than in Chile, by anyone’s definition.

Secretary Kissinger: Indonesia?

Mr. Maw: It’s very important in Indonesia.

Secretary Kissinger: It’s important in Chile, for overriding reasons. If you have a military government and you deprive them of arms, you’re getting them ready to be taken. And there’s no sense kidding anybody about that. How can a military government survive that can’t get arms? Do you have any ideas on who’s going to follow them?

Mr. Rogers: The military government—(a)—has been blowing arms on the market; (b), we’re proposing to sell them arms.

The question is whether or not to grant them military assistance in the form of credits or grants.

Mr. Maw: The strategy, I thought here, was we know we’re going to lose in Congress—

Secretary Kissinger: I do not understand the impact in Chile. I thought this had been worked out with the Chilean Government to save them from Congressional embarrassment. That I can understand. I did not know it was going to be presented as our protest on the human rights issue.

Mr. Rogers: Going back to Popper’s program, I had lunch with Trucco the next day. And I said, “I want to be sure that you and Carvajal understand exactly what the Secretary was saying, because I don’t want it a week or two or three from now to hear this. It’s a great sort of a problem for you.” He said, “I understand. I will talk to Carvajal.”

Carvajal is in New York. He talked on the telephone.

Popper hasn’t talked to anybody about this.

Now, if it’s a question of the Chileans, we can go back once more to be absolutely certain they understand, to be absolutely sure this is the better way to do it, rather than have them become the essential point of contention for a helluva political fight.

Secretary Kissinger: It won’t be such a huge fight because the fight will be about Chile. They’ll make a fight about Chile no matter what you put into this thing. I have just never experienced that with the Congress; it’s not my experience.

Mr. Maw: Mr. Secretary, the thought was if you go in for some FMS, you know you’re going to lose. And you lose at the same time the right to make sales.

Now, maybe we can salvage the sales rights. That’s the hope by this tactic.

Secretary Kissinger: Then you’re not making a human rights point—so, you know, you’ve got to make up your mind what the argument here is. If you want to save sales—if you go in to the Congress and tell them “We’re trying to make a human rights point” you’re asking for them to cut off the sales.

If you’ve once granted the principle that you’re cutting off foreign military sales on human rights grounds, then it’s just an oversight that we are permitting cash sales.

Mr. Maw: It’s a risk.

Secretary Kissinger: It’s not a risk; it’s a certainty. What is the principle under which you’re then going to defend the right to make cash sales, except that they’re going to miss it?

Mr. Maw: Well, we know we’re not going to get FMS on the votes.

Secretary Kissinger: Well, we nearly got it last year. It wasn’t that far away last year.

Mr. Maw: We slipped through on the sales.

Mr. Lord: I thought the plan was that you were going to make strategy on reports—has that changed? Not cut any country out.

Secretary Kissinger: Except Chile.

Mr. Maw: Until this came along.

Mr. Lord: The last I saw, Chile wasn’t cut out either.

Mr. Maw: It happened since the report.

Secretary Kissinger: Well, what is the real reason though? The reason is Defense is getting out of its cotton-picking mind. Defense is tough on SS–19s but on nothing else. (Laughter.) Isn’t that the real reason? I mean, when we cut out all the baloney, isn’t it a fact that we don’t want to testify and that Defense doesn’t want to testify? Is there any other reason?

Mr. Rogers: On Chile for assistance?

Secretary Kissinger: Yes.

Mr. Rogers: Yes. The basic reason is the essential question: Do you want to continue providing assistance—grant and credit assistance—to that country, given the present political circumstances in the United States? You can justify cash sales, because that’s cash and carry.

Chile, if it wants to spend its own money, can provide for its own defense. You’re not essentially boycotting or blockading—

Secretary Kissinger: Can you avoid having that applied to any other country?

Mr. Rogers: The opening wedge. In my judgment you can.

The reasons are two: (1), Chile, I believe—although you may argue that Zaire is just as bad, is just as bad on the human rights as you can find—

Secretary Kissinger: I doubt it.

Mr. Rogers: Well, bad in a lot of ways, because of the fact that we have been cooperating with them very hard—making clear to them—

Secretary Kissinger: I doubt it, seriously. I’m not even sure whether it’s, by orders of magnitude, worse than other Latin American countries. It just happens to be the focal point of left wing agitation.

Mr. Rogers: Look, you’ve got 4,000 political—

Mr. Habib: You’ve got 4,000.

Mr. Rogers: You’ve got a lot more political prisoners in Chile than you do—you’re talking essentially about a thousand political prisoners in the United States.

Secretary Kissinger: How many do you have in Brazil?

Mr. Rogers: Not anything like that per capita.

Secondly, security interest in the United States—that’s as marginal a case for security interest as you can find.

Secretary Kissinger: Except if the government is overthrown.

Mr. Rogers: Right. The possibility of a Portugalization of Chile is as close to zero as it is in any country.

Secretary Kissinger: Until the government gets overthrown.

Mr. Rogers: What?

Secretary Kissinger: Until the government gets overthrown.

Mr. Rogers: Who’s going to overthrow it? The terrorists are cleaned out. There are no serious terrorists in that country.

Mr. Maw: Those that aren’t driven out are in jail.

Secretary Kissinger: What?

Mr. Maw: Those that aren’t driven out are in jail.

Secretary Kissinger: You better let me think about this again. I just didn’t understand what we were doing. I think I’d rather have the Congress knock it out.

Mr. Rogers: O.K. Do you want to take another look at the paper we have?

Secretary Kissinger: Absolutely.

It’s one thing to say we’re not going to go on the barricades for it. I can see where we knock out grant aid, but I want to get a confirmation of whether Carvajal understands what we’re talking about.

Mr. Rogers: O.K.

Secretary Kissinger: We can never get it started again. Under these conditions they’d have to have a better human rights record than we before we can get it started again.

Mr. Rogers: Carvajal will be in Washington Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ll talk to him.

Do you trust me?

Secretary Kissinger: Not completely. (Laughter.)

1. Summary: Kissinger and his staff discussed human rights abuses in Chile and military assistance for the country.

   Source: National Archives, RG 59, Transcripts of Secretary of State Kissinger’s Staff Meetings, Lot 78D443, Box 8, Secretary’s Staff Meetings. Secret. Kissinger chaired the meeting, which was attended by all the principal officers of the Department or their designated alternates. The reference to “Mission Friends” in this document is an incorrect transcription of a reference to Lutheran Bishop Helmut Frenz, whose residency permit had just been revoked by the Chilean Government for “anti-patriotic activities and for gravely endangering the public security and peace.” (Telegram 6670 from Santiago, October 3; ibid., Central Foreign Policy File, D750344–0601) “Four toes” is an incorrect transcription of “four TOWs,” a reference to anti-tank weaponry. The time at which the meeting began is not recorded, but it ended at 9:06 a.m. In Section 502(b) of the amended Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, Congress instructed the President to reduce or terminate assistance to any government which engaged in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights. On October 7, Rogers informed Popper that in an October 2 lunch meeting with Trucco, Rogers had reinforced Kissinger’s comments to Carvajal during the September 29 Kissinger-Carvajal conversation, in particular that the administration would probably not request FMS credits for Chile from Congress. (Telegram 238245 to Santiago, October 7; ibid., D750346–1211)