DID THE U.S. GIVE ARGENTINA A 'WINK AND A NOD'? - 1982/05/31

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: Argentina Declassification Project - The "Dirty War" (1976-83)
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05899318
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: April 3, 2019
• Document Release Date: April 12, 2019
• Publication Date: May 31, 1982

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THE WASHINGTON POST
31 May 1982
Did the U.S. Give Argentina a
'Wink and a Nod'?
Sources Indicate Complicity a Myth
�By John M. Goshko
Washington Post Staff Writer
As the Falkland Islands crisis enters its
third month, questions persist about wheth-
er the United States knew that Argentina
planned to seize the islands and gave a tacit
go-ahead to ensure the Argentine military
junta's cooperation with U.S. campaigns
against guerrillas in Central America.
They are questions that; if not resolved,
are likely to add a major new dimension to '
the intense controversy over President Rea-
gan's efforts to cultivate the friendship of
military regimes as the cornerstone of an
inter-American front against communist
penetration of the Western Hemisphere.
So far, the Reagan administration has
not responded in any detailed public man-
ner to speculation about its role in the ma-
neuvering that went on prior to Argentina's
April 2 seizure of the islands from Britain.
But, from what can be learned from well-
informed sources here, the idea of advance
U.S. knowledge or complicity appears to be
largely a myth.A case can be made that the
administration, through intelligence failures
andiiioudgments about Argentine prior-
ities, missed several opportunities to make
its views so unmistakably clear to the junta
that the bloodshed taking place in the
South Atlantic might have been averted.
However, the sources unanimously
agreed that the United States did not know
Argentine intentions because the invasion,
conceived during the early months of this
year, was a well-guarded secret, known only
to President Leopoldo Galtieri and the
inner circle of the ruling junta, plus one
civilian cabinet minister, Foreign Minister
Nicanor Costa Mendez, and a few lower-
ranking pfficers needed to plan its mechan-
ics.
According to the sources, even the great
majority of top commanders in the Argen-
tine armed forces were kept in the dark
until the time that the operation was ready.
Given that emphasis on secrecy, the sources
insisted, the junta had no intention of corn-
promising its plans by revealing them to
the United States or other foreign govern-
ments.
Instead, the sources added, the junta,
relying on the advice of Costa Mendez,
made several assumptions about how Brit-
ain, the United States and the Soviet Union
would react. Essentially, it assumed that
Britain would not resort to military action,
that the United States would talk the Brit-
ish into accepting some face-saving conces-
sions and that the Soviet Union, sensing a
chance to strengthen its ties with Argen-
tina, would veto any British attempts to
obtain redress through the U.N. Security
Council.
' However, the sources said, these assump-
tions, all erroneous, were based on a com-
bination of deduction and wishful thinking
timt some characterize as "totally divorced
tom reality!'
,What's more, the sources continued, the
junta's unwillingness to accept that it had
miscalculated and to seek to cut its losses,
through negotiation has remained the prin-
cipal impediment to a halt in the fighting.
Secretary Of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.'s
shuttle mediation failed because the junta,
despite repeated warnings from Haig, sim-
ply refused to believe that the United
States would openly support Britain.
Even now, when most military observers
believe that the fighting has tipped deci-,
sively in Britain's favor and that the Argen-
tines are about to be forced off the islands,
the sources contend that the junta is par-
alyzed by its mistakes and pressures on it
by angry factions of the armed forces ex-
cluded from the original invasion plan. As a
result, the sources believe the junta is in-
capable of any action other than standing
back and fatalistically awaiting what is like-
ly to be a humiliating defeat on the islands
that will topple it from power.
Still, the speculation about whether the
junta originally acted in the belief that it
could count on the Reagan administratibn's
rsupport has continued. To a large extent, it
has been fueled by Argentine officials who
'have told reporters and diplomats in back-
ground briefmgs that the junta had made
clear to the U.S. administration the high pri-
ority it placed on reclaiming the Malvinas, as
-Argentina calls the islands, and had predi-
cated its strategy on the belief that Wash-
'ington would intercede on its behalf against
In this country, the idea that Washington
had at least some advance inkling of Argen-
line's intentions and reacted with "a wink
and a nod" has been the subject of discussion
'among many liberal academicians and hu-
man-rights activists.
However, that charge is disputed by a va-
riety of sources familiar with the course of
:U.S.-Argentine relations in the Reagan ad-
:ministration. Although these sources insist
on anonymity, their accounts, obtained in',
separate interviews dovetail closely. Collec-
tively, they sketch this picture:
- When President Reagan took -office, one
of his first major foreign policy moves was to
begin reversing the activist human-rights
stance associated with President Carter.
That policy had made Argentina a virtual
pariah because the Argentine military, dur-
ing the 1970s, had moved against leftist ter-
rorists with its infamous "dirty war" that saw�
.'thousands of people literally disappear as the
:result of arrests- and kidnapings.
^, Instead, the Reagan administration put
top priority on countering leftist guerrilla
movements in El Salvador and elsewhere in
Central America. As it searched for allies, it
intmediately began mending fences with
Latin American military regimes in accor-
dance with the theory, put forward by U.N.
Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and other
policy makers, that "authoritarian" govern-
ments, unlike "totalitarian" communist states
such as Cuba, could be weaned gradually
-toward democracy.
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Kirkpatrick, in. particular, is understood to
be very upset at the rupture that the Falk-
lands situation has caused in attempts to
build a special relationship with Argentina.
According to the current issue of Newsweek
magazine, she and Haig had a bitter, 45-
minute telephone exchange last week in
which she reportedly accused the secretary
of being too slanted toward Britain and in-
sensitive to U.S. interests in Latin America.
Initially, Washington saw Argentina as
ideally suited to playing a leadership role in
U.S.-sponsored strategic ventures ranging
from naval vigilance over the South Atantic
to the support and training of anti-commu-
nist forces throughout Central America.
Galtieri was viewed as a particularly valu-
able ally. He was regarded as a moderate
seeking to curb the excesses of the armed
forces, had Strong anti-communist creden-
tials and openly advertised his eagerness to
align Argentina more closely with the United
States.
He also had specific ideas about consol-
idating his domestic power and popularity to
the point that he would be able to smash the
opposition of the Peronists that are the
country's major political force, force Argen-
tina to hold still for a long and painful pe-
riod of surgery on its ailing economy and
eventually return the nation to civilian gov-
ernment, with himself the favored candidate
to be elected president.
� What wasn't known was that he decided
to redeem Argentina's 149-year claim to sov-
ereignty over the Falklands. Shortly after
becoming head of the junta, he and his co-
horts began planning to make that dream a
reality.
Parallel to the military planning was the
political strategy based on the advice of
Costa Mendez, an experienced and worldly
diplomat who was regarded by the junta
leaders as having a good understanding of
the United States and Britain. He is under-
stood .to have advised the junta leaders that
if the Falklands could be captured without
death or injury to the 1,800 residents, Brit-
ain would not retaliate militarily and, that
the United States, seeking to keep Argentine
favor, would block Britain from seeking po-
litical or economic sanctions.
Despite the secrecy, hints of what was
being planned did surface. For example, on
Jan. 24, the influential Buenos Aires news-
paper, La Prensa, which has close ties to
Costa Mendez, published a lengthy commen-
tary predicting a high-priority effort to re-
cover the Falklands. It said Argentina
wanted "something beyond the mere recov-
ery of a portion of its sovereignty" and
added:
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"As far as we know, Washington under-
stands it so, this being the reason why it re-
portedly has expressed its support for 'all of
the actions' leading to the recovery, without
excluding military actions."
According to the sources here, such hints
of U.S. acquiesence, while apparently
planted by the junta, do not square with the
facts. These sources insisted that, while a
number of key administration officials vis-
ited Argentina in the past year, at no time
was any sign given to them that Argentina
would resort to military action.
The sources conceded that, during these
visits, the Falklands were mentioned fre-
quently by the Argentines, but the U.S. of-
ficials tended to view it as no more than re-,
� statements of long-held Argentine positions.
In fact, some of the visiting Americans are
known to have received the impression that
if there were any danger of precipitous ac-
tion over a territorial dispute, it would have
been directed not against the Falldands but
at the dispute with neighboring Chile over
the Beagle Channel.
In early March, Thomas 0. Enders, assist-
' ant secretary of state for inter-American af-
fairs, visited Buenos Aires, and Argentine
officials say an effort was made to impress
upon him their insistence that the Falklands
issue be resolved. Again, the sources here
contended that the facts are different.
They say that Enders, before making his
trip, was contacted by the British Foreign
Office and asked to urge the Argentines to
resume negotiations over the Falldands that
had taken place in New York in February.
Enders did raise the subject with Costa Men-
dez, who was described by the sources as
having given a noncommittal but not nega-
tive reply.
While there, Enders also was briefed on
the Argentine position on the Falklands by
foreign ministry officials. But that was de-
scribed as containing no hint that the situ-
ation was approaching the stage where Ar-
gentina would take military action less than
a month later.
When the Argentines started moving at
the end of February, the sources said, it sur-
prised not only the United States but also
the intelligence services of Britain, Chile and
BraziL,
At Britain's urgent request, Washington
tried to head off the invasion, first through
representations at the embassy level and
then by Reagan's now-famous phone call to
Galtieri. On each of these occasions, the
sources said, the United States made unmis-
takably clear that an invasion would mean
the end of the developing U.S.-Argentine
friendship, but the Argentines reacted each
time as ',though they did not believe Wash-
ington would carry though on the threat, an
attitude they would maintain through all the
subsequent. negotiations with Haig right up
'until April 30 when Reagan stunned them by
publicly siding with Britain. �
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