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FTR#1226 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR#1227 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
NB: This description contains material which was not contained in the original program.
Introduction: With the world demonstrating all-encompassing dispositional instability on numerous fronts, these programs highlight the career of the late–alleged “liberal”–Luis Kutner, as a microcosm of contemporary political and historical manifestation.
In addition to his work on behalf of the Dalai Lama and Ezra Pound, Kutner:
- Worked with the Chicago Mob.
- Networked with Jack Ruby.
- Was involved with attempts at recruiting elements of the mob to kill Fidel Castro.
- Networked with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and Yaroslav Stetsko.
- Networked with the Information Council of the Americas.
- Fronted for Moise Tshombe.
- Worked in tandem with elements of what appeared to have been CIA in an early manifestation of attempts at replacing Chiang Kai-shek with someone less embarrassing.
- Was involved in the betrayal of Fred Hampton.
- Was carrying water for Raoul Wallenberg–OSS agent and liaison agent for SS general Karl Wolff.
This description also contains material about Amnesty International’s work on behalf of the Pinochet regime in Chile and its role in reinforcing the canard about Iraqi troops disconnecting Iraqi babies from life-support systems during the run-up to the first Gulf War.
1a. The program opens with discussion of Taiwanese intervention in the “Hong Kong Op,
“US Backs Xenophobia, Mob Violence in Hong Kong” by Dan Cohen [The Gray Zone]; Consortium News, 8/19/2019.
. . . . While dumping money into the Hong Kong’s pro‑U.S. political camp in 2013, Lai traveled to Taiwan for a secret roundtable consultation with Shih Ming-teh, a key figure in Taiwan’s social movement that forced then-president Chen Shui-bian to resign in 2008. Shih reportedly instructed Lai on non-violent tactics to bring the government to heel, emphasizing the importance of a commitment to go to jail.
According to journalist Peter Lee, “Shih supposedly gave Lai advice on putting students, young girls, and mothers with children in the vanguard of the street protests, in order to attract the support of the international community and press, and to sustain the movement with continual activities to keep it dynamic and fresh.” Lai reportedly turned off his recording device during multiple sections of Shih’s tutorial.
One protester explained to The New York Times how the movement attempted to embrace a strategy called, “Marginal Violence Theory:” By using “mild force” to provoke security services into attacking the protesters, the protesters aimed to shift international sympathy away from the state. . . .
1b. “Luis Kutner; ” Wikipedia.org
. . . . He also helped free Hungarian Cardinal József Mindszenty, American fascist poet Ezra Pound, former Congo President Moise Tshombe and represented the Dalai Lama and Tibet. Kutner is widely known as one of the most prominent human-rights attorneys of the twentieth century. . . .
. . . . Declassified records show that Kutner had a history of collusion with the FBI and the CIA.[1] In 1969, he reported Fred Hampton to the FBI in the days leading to Hampton’s death at the hands of the Chicago Police.[13] In 1973, he petitioned the CIA for $250k to set up an NGO in Beijing, in return letting the agency “staff it completely with our own people.” . . .
Human rights icon, mob lawyer, and “co-founder of Amnesty International.” A “publicity hound,” a “vain, egotistical trouble maker,” and a wannabe CIA conspirator. A poet, an associate of Jack Ruby, and a “Friend” of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
Such was the complicated life of a famous cold war-era human rights lawyer, Luis Kutner. . . .
. . . . Kunter’s reputation began to grow—especially as he began to take on more international cases. These cases tended to (though not always) deal with prisoners held in the Eastern Bloc or in the newly independent countries of the non-aligned world. Such cases, for obvious reasons, were most attractive to the U.S. press.
Kutner worked on the case of József Cardinal Mindszenty, a Hungarian priest whose story became a centerpiece of anti-communist propaganda in the west. Mindszenty’s “glazed over” look at his trial would become the CIA’s excuse to embark on MK/ULTRA experimentation.6
In 1958, he helped free the fascist poet Ezra Pound. Kutner claimed that, upon release, Pound asked him if he was Jewish and then spat in his face.7
He is listed in several obituaries, including in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, as “co-founder of Amnesty International.”8 This is almost certainly an exaggeration. His papers from the period do show a close correspondence with Peter Benenson,9 Amnesty’s “other” co-founder. These letters date from the early days of the organization (then called “Appeal for Amnesty”). But they also seem to indicate that he and Benenson met only after its creation. Kutner did, though, serve on the National Advisory Council of the organization’s U.S. branch. . . .
. . . . An examination of declassified government documents only adds to the controversy. They reveal Luis Kutner’s many hidden interactions with the FBI, the CIA, and the mafia underworld.10 The record of his association with various far-right figures is also included. They even reveal the violent efforts of a terrorist group he defended under the guise of “human rights.”. . .
. . . . “On the Fringes of the Chicago Mob”
According to the Chicago Historical Society who keep part of his papers, Kutner was “on the fringes of the Chicago mob” in his youth.15 This brought Kutner into contact with one “Sparky” Rubenstein16 — more familiarly known to history as Jack Ruby. Rubenstein was just three years Kutner’s junior and also a hanger-on of Chicago’s West Side gangs.
Both remained tied to the mob in one way or another in the following years. Ruby moved to Dallas to help the Chicago mob expand its rackets in the city. Kutner stayed in Chicago to practice law, counting mob figures among his clients. And during this period, they apparently did not lose touch.
In the early 1950s, a Senate committee known as the Kefauver Committee was investigating the power of organized crime in the United States. Kutner made national news for his representation of two men in front of the committee: Harry Russell, a Chicago bookie who worked for the Capone gang, and William Drury, a former police officer. Drury was called to testify17 against a corrupt Republican candidate for Sheriff—but he was murdered before he could testify.
But one important event didn’t make the news at the time—it would rather become famous in the wake of the murder of President John F. Kennedy. Kutner had acted as an intermediary between his old acquaintance, Jack Ruby, and the Senate committee.
According to Kutner, he connected Ruby with the committee’s Chief Counsel, Rudolph Halley. Kutner described Ruby’s goal as becoming the mafia’s “pipeline” into the commission.18 Ruby’s apparent goal was to steer the committee away from taking its investigation to Dallas.19
Though there’s no evidence that Jack Ruby’s influence had any effect, Kefauver did not end up taking his investigatory road show to Dallas. Kefauver actually complimented20 a police representative for the Texas city “for catching [organized crime] before it got started down in Dallas.”
The facts in Dallas were a little bit different — the city had a steadily growing underworld and burgeoning drugs trade. Within a few years, another Senate investigation would put Dallas in the top tier21 of U.S. cities for narcotics trafficking.
It is perhaps important to note that Kutner wasn’t just representing others in front of the Kefauver Committee—he was also called upon to defend himself from serious accusations. Specifically, he was forced to deny reports that he had “obtained $60,000 from racketeers by falsely claiming he could ‘fix’ the Senate Committee.”22
At some point in the ensuing years, Kutner became an FBI informant. Listed by the Bureau as symbol informant CG 5973‑C,23 Kutner reported on the activities24 of Chicago mob “fixer” Gus Alex and his lawyer, Sidney Korshak. Korshak would later famously become a focus of a New York Times investigation lead by Seymour Hersh.25
CIA, The Mafia and the Plots to Kill Castro
Kutner first became involved in international intrigues26 in 1960 when he acted as an emissary for two major mafia figures to the FBI. Kutner carried an offer to eliminate Cuban leader Fidel Castro to the FBI.
The two mob bosses were Norman Rothman and Sam Mannarino. Mannarino ran the rackets in Pittsburg, and Rothman had run mafia casinos in Batista’s Cuba. Kutner was Rothman’s attorney while the two gangsters were out on bond, awaiting sentencing for a recent federal conviction. A jury had found them guilty on two important counts: a 1958 theft of weapons27 from an Ohio National Guard Armory, and neutrality act violations for attempting to get the stolen weapons to Cuba.
An FBI memo28 describes the events of May 9th, 1960. Seeking a lighter sentence for his client, Kutner walked into the office of the Assistant U.S. Attorney and advised officials there of the following:
[Rothman] has been a close personal friend of Fulgencio Batista, and and is one of the few persons trusted by Batista… in fact he, Rothman, during the time Batista was in power, was in charge of all gambling in Cuba. Having known Batista as well as he claims and being aware of his current activities and also revolutionary activities he is in a position to know what may happen in Cuba in the future. As a matter of fact, he claims to be able to “deliver Castro to the United States cause or cause Castro to be wiped out”. Rothman likewise claims an acquaintanceship with Castro. (Emphasis added)
The response of the FBI was to ask Kutner’s cooperation to “determine specifically what information Norman Rothman might have, which might be of interest to the Bureau or any other Government agency.” (Emphasis added)
In 1975, when the Church Committee made the first official exposures of combined CIA/mafia efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro,29 they pinpointed the first plotting as starting in August of 1960—just a few months following Rothman’s offer.
But while the Church Committee’s story begins with the relationship between the CIA, Howard Hughes, attorney Robert Maheu, and Las Vegas gangster Johnny Roselli, a 1975 New York News investigation30 starts somewhat earlier. It appears to fill in the intervening months and places Rothman at the center of the early plotting.
“Rothman was in touch with several CIA agents,” a former agent said. “They had many meetings concerning assassination plots against Castro.”
Rothman in turn discussed the matter with his peers… among those who took part in these parleys, reliable sources said, were Santo Trafficante of Tampa, and Sam Mannarino of Pittsburgh… the mob and CIA finally gave [the contract] to [Johnny] Roselli, reputed boss of Las Vegas, federal sources said. And Roselli agreed to recruit a death squad to hunt Castro.
From the timeline, it appears that the offer Kutner carried was accepted.
It is worth noting that Jack Ruby’s reported Cuban gun-running also coincides with the same period as Rothman and Mannarino’s. Further, Ruby’s friend, Lewis McWillie,31 managed one of Rothman’s Havana casinos.32
Rothman’s attempts to intervene in international politics didn’t end in 1960—and as we’ll soon see, neither did Kutner’s. FBI files implicate Rothman as a partner in a plan to overthrow the Guatemalan government in 1965.33 Weapons for the effort were provided by CIA agent and anti-Castro Cuban fighter Luis Posada Carriles. Posada would later become infamous for his role in the terror bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455, which killed all 73 people on board.
Through 1961, Kutner continued his role as an FBI criminal informant, but was dropped by the FBI for providing dubious information on the mafia’s pilferage along the New York waterfront. The FBI determined that Kutner’s information was substantiated “only by Kutner’s own opinion and belief.”34
Sometime in the early 1960s, Kutner became Guatemala’s Consul General for the city of Chicago. Why Guatemala would give him this honor is unclear, but the country did play an important role in the war against Cuba. Since before the Bay of Pigs operation, it was a key base35 for CIA, mafia, and Cuban exile attacks on Cuba. Additionally, a 1966 FBI memo36 indicated that Chicago mobster Sam Giancana had a home in Guatemala. While acting as a consular official for the Guatemalan military government in the United States, Kutner would have been able to provide important services for travelers between the countries.
Whether Kutner continued his mediation between his mafia clients and the CIA during the period is unknown. But by 1963, Kutner felt self-assured enough to approach the Central Intelligence Agency for clandestine funding.
A CIA Staffed Newspaper
In 1963, Kutner embarked on a publishing venture—a newspaper called the Yugoslav Herald. The paper would be aimed at the Midwest’s large Southern Slav population.
A memo between the CIA and their liaison with the FBI37 notes a remarkable fact: Kutner had requested CIA financial support for the paper. In return, Kutner offered the CIA a hand in choosing the newspaper’s managing editor. . . .
. . . . It was just a few months prior that Kutner had become publicly involved with a group called the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). The ABN was created during the Second World War by ultra-nationalist Ukrainians who had collaborated with the Nazis. There was a substantial crossover between the group which had started the ABN and groups that had committed war crimes and participated in the Nazi’s genocidal military campaign inside the USSR. The ABN became associated with U.S. intelligence in 1945 when General Reinhard Gehlen delivered the Nazi’s Eastern Front intelligence apparatus to the U.S. Army.
Kutner had met with the ABN’s President,38 Yaroslav Stetsko, in March of 1963. That summer, he was a prominent speaker39 at one of the ABN’s “Captive Nations Week” events.
Likely the ABN leadership felt that Kutner provided them with the liberal cover of a “Nobel Prize nominee” and the ability to deflect charges of anti-semitism. Kutner seemed to move with ease between groups founded by Nazi-aligned war criminals to groups that were dedicated, in part, to the extradition of Nazi war criminals.40 . . . .
. . . .Old Associates—Jack Ruby and Luis Kutner
After Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald in the presence of over 70 Dallas police officers, the U.S. press turned to Kutner for information on his old associate. Kutner’s statements appeared in several newspaper articles. For the most part, his statements centered around his interactions with Ruby and the Kefauver commission as discussed above, but he also filled in some blanks on Ruby’s ties with the Chicago mob. This included, according to Kutner, links to the lieutenants of Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa.
All of Kutner’s information would be largely ignored by the Warren Commission who told the country, without irony, that Jack Ruby was just a second “lone nut,” Kutner’s picture of Ruby would come much closer to the revisions that the House Select Committee on Assassinations made to the historical record in the late 1970s.
In a 1978 interview48 on a Canadian television show, Kutner pointed to a conspiracy by giving his opinion that Ruby would not have killed Oswald without being pressed into it:
I say it again and I say this with positive conviction that Jack Ruby, or Sparky Rubenstein, was totally incapable of that kind of an aggressive decision and doing it so openly and so deliberately.
Q: YOU KNEW JACK RUBY. WHY DID HE KILL OSWALD?
I would say enormous pressure, had to be enormous pressure. But if he did this job they would stand by him and get him out of this mess. That is a reasonable considered and informed conclusion, I could be in many schools of thought but he was not the man to do it on him own initiative.
Authors Peter Dale Scott and William W. Turner have both touched on the fact that Kutner made an appearance at an Information Council of the America’s (INCA) “National Citizen’s Congress” event in 1969. INCA was a far-right anti-communist group who could count among its supporters’ Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza49 and Guatemalan general and one of the plotters of the 1954 coup, General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes.50 INCA was founded by Ed Butler—the man who famously participated in a radio debate with the Lee Harvey Oswald just months before the assassination in Dallas.
These far-right activists billed Kutner as a “moderate” and put up to debate radical New Left lawyer William Kunstler. INCA’s National Producer at that time was one Lee Edwards, a far-right promoter who Kutner would work with closely within the coming years.
“The Worst African Ever Born”
In 1967, saving the life of an African leader, Moise Tshombe, became a cause among America’s far-right51—and Kutner was at the center of the efforts. Here, he would find himself in alliance with high-powered politicians, like Senators Strom Thurmond and Thomas Dodd, as well as with conservative activists like Marvin Liebman and William F. Buckley.
Tshombe came to international prominence in 1960 during the “Congo crisis.” Almost immediately following the country’s independence from Belgium, Tshombe—backed by Belgian paratroopers and millions of dollars from Belgian mining companies—split the Katanga province from the rest of the country. The area was, by far, the most resource-rich in the country and was the home to the mining companies which were backing the succession. Within six months, Congo’s independence leader Patrice Lumumba—a symbol of rising African nationalism—would be sent to Tshombe’s pseudo-statelet and murdered. . . .
. . . . A World-wide Human Rights Organization—Funded by CIA
As mentioned above, Kutner made another pass at Agency sponsorship in the middle of the Tshombe affair. He contacted two CIA officers about turning World Habeas Corpus into something considerably more solid than a legal concept. The two officials were a Domestic Contact Division officer named R.K. Oakley and the CIA’s General Counsel, Lawrence Houston.
CIA was interested enough in Kutner that the CIA’s top lawyer agreed to a lunch meeting. For some reason, before the lunch took place, Kutner called Oakley. According to CIA documents, Kutner asked the agency to fund his “World Habeas Corpus Centers,”66 which he hoped, with CIA backing, could be established around the world.
Kutner attempted to entice CIA with a proposal which celebrated the tough stand on human rights in communist countries taken by a “human rights” conference held in the capital of one of the most repressive cold war torture states—the U.S.-backed Shah’s Iran. It is an irony surpassed only by, perhaps, the idea of a worldwide archipelago of CIA-backed “human rights” centers.
The CIA saw the propaganda value in such an organization, but Oakley told Kutner that the organization would probably harm the project more than help it.
[Domestic Contact Division] Oakley did not absolutely rule out contact because it appears Kutner might have something worthwhile if he will somehow eliminate his conspiratorial urge…
Kutner, for his part, repeated that CIA-backing would be “very helpful.” . . . .
. . . . Human Rights, Terrorism, and Assassination
As Nixon planned to cement a relationship with the People’s Republic of China and the PRC moved closer to securing its seat at the United Nations, relations between the U.S.A and its old allies in Taiwan began to strain. It was a relationship that had appeared to have little to recommend it outside of the shared U.S./ROC opposition to revolutionary China. The CIA supported at least one coup plot77 against the country’s leader, Chiang Kai-shek.
The resentment of native Taiwanese was also growing. The island’s pre-1949 inhabitants made up the vast majority of the population and had now been living under twenty years of martial law imposed by mainland exiles. A necessarily secret opposition to one-party Kuomintang rule developed. Governments on both sides78 of the Taiwan strait suspected that the United States was encouraging such groups. It may well have been true—exchanging the elderly Chiang and his small group of mainlanders for a new government with broad support appealed to many in and out of the U.S. government. Just so long as the new government was staunchly anti-communist.
On the island itself, the Taiwan Independence Movement became the central organization for native Taiwanese activism.79 The FBI described the group as “dedicated to the overthrow of the present Chinat [Chinese Nationalist] government”80 on the island.
A global movement for Taiwanese (Formosan) independence also developed—especially in the United States. The main grouping in the U.S. was known as United Formosans in America for Independence (UFAI). By 1970, all of the Taiwanese independence groups around the world had formed an umbrella organization. That group called itself World United Formosans for Independence (WUF).
On April 24, 1970, a black limousine carrying the Vice Premiere of Taiwan pulled up to New York City’s luxurious Plaza Hotel. Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, had come to New York on the second stop of an official visit to the United States. His visit to the city was especially contentious because New York had become the heart of the overseas Formosan student movement.
In front of the hotel, the WUF demonstrated against the younger Chiang’s visit. As the Vice Premiere exited his car in front of the hotel, one of the demonstrators rushed towards him and fired a pistol. The assassin’s shot missed, and he was quickly wrestled to the ground by New York City police and Chiang’s bodyguards. In the scuffle that ensued, another member of the group leaped into the scuffle and both were arrested.
An FBI report confirmed both men’s membership in the WUF. The information came from a leader of the group, one Chen Lung Chu.81 A close correspondent with Kutner, he had gone into the FBI office in New Haven, Connecticut and identified both of the assassins as members of the WUF. He did so, though, in order to stress to the FBI that the assassination attempt “was in no way associated with the work of the organization.”
It seems that the group was enough associated with the assassination that their lawyer Kutner would be called on to defend the attackers82 in court.
Was this simply a case of Kutner, a lawyer for an otherwise peaceful group, taking on the defense of two out-of-control members who had engaged in a terrorist act? Two declassified documents, one withheld from release83 for decades by the Defense Intelligence Agency, add considerably more to the story.84
A Defense Intelligence Agency specialist, Richard Hennighausen, received a letter filled with violent rhetoric from an acquaintance of his, one Eric Lin. Importantly, Lin (in one of his numerous letters printed in the Chicago Tribune85) identified himself in 197386 as the Public Information officer of the WUF.
The admissions in the letter apparently spooked the DIA employee sufficiently that he went to his superiors to tell them what he knew, presumably to avoid getting implicated in any sort of crime himself.
The FBI saw Lin’s letter as an apparent attempt to recruit Hennighausen87 to the WUF and the Taiwan Independence Movement. In his letter, Lin stated that he had stalked Chiang Ching-Kuo in Washington D.C. alongside the assassins who later made their attempt in front of the Plaza Hotel.
Lin then invited Hennighausen to Chicago to “assist the Formosan group and that they might discuss the secret plans of the Formosan group.” Included in the letter were Xerox copies of news releases from World United Formosans on which Kutner’s name and Chicago address were printed.
A CIA memo from August 197088 makes clear Kutner’s involvement in clandestine plans in support of Taiwanese independence.
The memo contains a letter, which describes how Kutner approached one Robert Fleming. Fleming was the Vice President of a company called the Mid-America International Development Association (MIDA). It is important to note that the Chicago-based MIDA was undoubtedly associated with the Central Intelligence Agency. Founded by Thomas H. Miner, MIDA worked under U.S.AID contracts in Africa. U.S.AID is a government agency which has been well-known for its utility as a CIA front. Another of Miner’s companies was listed in Philip Agee’s explosive Inside the Company: CIA Diary as having been used for CIA cover, and Miner himself was called “The CIA’s Chicago Front Man”89 in a fascinating 1979 article by Thomas J. Dolan of the Chicago Reader.90
This was the milieu to whom Kutner approached with his remarkable offer: the overthrow of Taiwan’s Kuomintang government.
[Kutner] indicated he represented a group willing to [illegible] a handsome return to anyone investing $20,000,000 which they require to overthrow the Taiwan government.
Fleming “hastily declined” the offer, though he did engage Kutner for further information on another of Kutner’s “projects” in Africa. Though the memo is unfortunately partially illegible, Kutner’s other offer in some way involved the Ghanaian government of Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia. Busia (who would himself be overthrown) had been an official in the military coup government which had overthrown Ghana’s socialist leader, Kwame Nkrumah.
Though, in August, Kutner covertly approached a CIA-linked company for regime change cash, by October he was again the human rights crusader. Kutner once again made the papers, this time as the counsel for Peng Ming-min,91 the leader of the Taiwan Independence Movement.92
Clearly, Luis Kutner had no problems being associated with groups engaged in violence—whether that meant an assassination on the streets of New York or the CIA-sponsored overthrow of a government on the other side of the globe. . . .
. . . . Still at it—Kutner Invites the CIA to Beijing
A January 31st, 1973 CIA memo documents another astonishing offer.108
Kutner claimed a “close” relationship with the U.S.-toppled neutralist King of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk. Sihanouk was then in exile in the People’s Republic of China. Apparently, through the King, Kutner claimed that he was going to be allowed to open an office of World Habeas Corpus in the Chinese capital. Apparently, Kutner was still attempting to realize the scheme he had approached the CIA about in 1968.
Kutner’s offer, as stated by the CIA, was simple enough:
…the [Beijing] office could be set up for $250,000. If we wish to furnish that sum, [Kutner] would open the office for us and allow us to staff it completely with our own people (Emphasis added).
The CIA officer ends his memo by requesting advice from the Chiefs of both Vietnam and China Operations as to whether they have any interest in following up on the offer. Unfortunately the response, if any, isn’t in the available record. . . .
Amnesty International, the CIA, and Chile
Though Kutner may have been a pretty poor self-styled secret agent, his case does raise important questions about the conflicting covert and overt behavior those who have given the unimpugnable moniker of “human rights defender”.
The question becomes more important when considering large organizations with a worldwide presence like Amnesty International. There is no doubt that such groups can do vital, politically unbiased work on issues of human rights. But there is plenty of space for manipulation and misinformation to make its way into their narratives as well—whether it comes from inside or outside the group.
A shocking example of such disinformation came during the lead up to the 1991 Gulf War. In a story which belongs in the annals of infamy alongside “the huns are cutting off the hands of Belgian babies,” Amnesty International set off a firestorm of jingoistic anger when it “confirmed” the murder of hundreds of Kuwaiti incubator babies109 by Iraqi troops. But Amnesty soon had to drop its supposed verification:110 the “incubator babies” story was shown to be a complete fabrication—a public relations ploy to sell a war. Amnesty may have reversed course, but the U.S. military would not.
In the more recent case of 2011 Libya, Amnesty loudly demanded an investigation111 into the claims that Gaddafi’s troops had been given Viagra and condoms and urged to use rape as a weapon.112
Unfortunately for the people of Libya, NATO’s bombers would not pause for while the facts were pinned down. The results of the investigation would come out three months later—at a considerably lower volume than those of the salacious atrocities. There was no evidence113 for the reported mass rapes or specific other war crimes which Western media had turned into the bloody shirt of Libya intervention. All the stories about the rapes were found to have largely come from the testimony of a single Libya doctor.
Amnesty International may have found the testimony to be unreliable on several occasions, but that hasn’t slowed their efforts. During Syria’s destructive war, Amnesty found a new way of drawing attention to reports of abuse when testimony was the only evidence available: flashy 3D animations114 which claimed to recreate the insides of a “Syrian torture-prison.” These computer graphics were shown in major media across the United States and Europe. All just in time for Trump administration to take over—its devotion to his predecessor’s policies towards Damascus in question.
Though the examples above all fulfilled U.S. policy objectives, there’s no direct evidence of pressure being put on the human rights organization by governments or intelligence agencies. But declassified documents from 1974 do show a CIA attempt to involve Amnesty International in a scheme to make Chile’s fascist Pinochet regime more palatable to world opinion.
In late-1974,115 with criticism of the Pinochet Regime and the CIA at “dramatic proportions,” the CIA sought to exploit an offer made by General Pinochet for a Soviet-Chilean prisoner swap.
[The prisoner swap] is opportunity to blunt hostile propaganda. If the USSR and Chile can be lumped together in popular mind as each having political prisoners, the situation can be exploited to divert some of attention from junta’s supposed misdeeds…
It is worth noting here that the “supposed misdeeds”116 of the Pinochet regime have since been found to include, according to Chile’s truth and reconciliation commission, the imprisonment, and torture of some 40,000 people (including the rape of thousands of women), and the murder of more than 3,000 more. All this stemming from a coup—a coup the CIA had helped to launch.117
Suggest [redacted] approach DEFLOWER118 to see whether he can get his group interested in taking practical steps to get prisoners released from Chilean junta on exchange basis. Perhaps if he can picture himself as saving the prisoners (communist and socialist leaders in Chile and important intellectuals in the USSR) from a fascist regime on one hand and from a Stalinist country on the other he can become sufficiently interested in the exchange.119
As worthy as a release of prisoners might be to those with liberal sensibilities, the CIA had its own, less altruistic, motives for the plan. A later document,120 also marked “secret,” makes it clear that the real goal of the effort was to shield the CIA and the Pinochet regime from criticism.
Given perishability ref ideas, request your comment on feasibility of approaches to DEFLOWER and Amnesty International as outlined. Welcome any other suggestions on means limit further anti-BKHERALD propaganda in relation to Chile and anti-junta propaganda connected with treatment of political prisoners.
The identity of DE/FLOWER is unknown, but from the context, it appears to be a leader of Amnesty International. The fact that a cryptonym was given at all is in itself interesting. It generally indicates a higher level of interest in a person or group by the CIA—or even an asset. According to Dr. John Newman, an author and a former military intelligence officer who studies the CIA:
…it does not necessarily mean they were assets. In the majority of instances, they probably were assets. But, even then, that doesn’t tell us whether the “asset” was witting or unwitting. On many occasions, crypts were assigned to persons of interest simply because they were associated with assets or otherwise peripherally involved in Agency operations.121
Another heavily redacted document122 shows that the CIA was keeping a close watch on the composition of the leadership of Amnesty International. The CIA felt that a recent change in leadership might make the group more inclined to put “pressure on the Soviets.”
Though there are no documents showing anything more than CIA discussing such an approach, at least two such Chile-USSR prisoner swaps did occur123 in the following years. And Amnesty International negotiated the terms. . . .
. . . . After the mid-‘70s, Kutner appeared in the news and in the Congressional Record occasionally. He called Carter’s Panama Canal treaty a “potential diplomatic Pearl Harbor”125—another stand for which he would be praised by Senator Strom Thurmond. The year 1981 saw an apparent reversal of his commitment to habeas corpus when he advised the Swedish government to detain the crew of a Soviet submarine126 until the USSR released information on the 1945 disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg. . . .
Discussion
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