Accusations of war crimes and legal difficulties
The policies that Kissinger promoted in Vietnam, and moreover his central role in orchestrating the bombing of Cambodia, have led to accusations of war crimes.
[edit] Involvement in Operation Condor
Main articles: Operation Condor and United States intervention in Chile
On May 31, 2001, French judge Roger Le Loire requested a summons served on Kissinger while he was staying at the Ritz Hotel in Paris.[52] Loire wanted to question Kissinger for alleged U.S. involvement in Operation Condor—a mid-1970s campaign of kidnapping and murder coordinated among the intelligence and security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay—as well as the death of five French nationals under the Chilean junta.[52] Kissinger fled Paris that evening, and Loire's inquiries were directed to the U.S. State Department.
In August 2001, Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba sent a letter rogatory to the U.S. State Department, in accordance with the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), requesting a deposition by Kissinger to aid the judge's investigation of Operation Condor.[53]
On September 10, 2001, a civil suit was filed in a Washington, DC, federal court by the family of Gen. René Schneider, former Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, asserting that Kissinger gave the order for the elimination of Schneider because he had refused to endorse plans for a military coup.[52][54][55] Schneider was killed by coup-plotters loyal to General Roberto Viaux in a botched kidnapping attempt,[55] As a part of the suit, Schneider’s two sons are attempting to sue Kissinger and then-CIA director Richard Helms for US$3 million.[55]
On September 11, 2001, the 28th commemorations of the Pinochet coup, Chilean human rights lawyers filed a criminal case against Kissinger along with Augusto Pinochet, former Bolivian general and president Hugo Banzer, former Argentine general and dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, and former Paraguayan president Alfredo Stroessner for alleged involvement in Operation Condor.[56] The case was brought on behalf of some fifteen victims of Operation Condor, ten of whom were Chilean.
In late 2001, the Brazilian government cancelled an invitation for Kissinger to speak in São Paulo because it could no longer guarantee his immunity from judicial action.[52][54]
Kenneth Maxwell's review, in Foreign Affairs November/December 2003, of Peter Kornbluh's book The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, discussed Kissinger's relationship with Augusto Pinochet's regime, in particular concerning operation Condor and Orlando Letelier's assassination, in Washington, DC, in 1976. A 1978 cable released in 2000 shows that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "[kept] in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which [covered] all of Latin America". Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was concerned that the U.S. connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the 1976 assassination of Letelier.[57]
[edit] Asia
In 2002, during a brief visit to the UK, a petition for Kissinger's arrest was filed in the High Court in London based on Indochinese civilian casualties and environmental damage resulting from U.S. bombing campaigns in North Vietnam and Cambodia in the period between 1969 and 1975.[52]
Simultaneously, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who had engaged in a failed attempt to get Pinochet extradited from the United Kingdom for questioning, requested that Interpol detain Kissinger for questioning.[52] British authorities refused his request.
East Timor Action Network (ETAN) activists have repeatedly sought to question Kissinger during his book tours for his role in the Ford administration in supporting Suharto and the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. Transcripts of Ford and Kissinger's endorsement of the invasion are available on the National Security Archive
