ANOTHER DICTATOR TEETERING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500140020-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 1, 2000
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: August 3, 1986
• Content Type: NSPR

proved For Release 2006/01/12 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500140020-9
~St^r~ APPEARED GTON POST
QN PAG WAS 3 August
1986
COLMAN McCARTHY
Another Dictator Teetering?
s another political exorcism
under way-this time the
satanic Pinochet of Chile, to
follow the riddance of Duvalier of
Haiti and Marcos of the Philippines?
The July 6 death of Rodrigo Rojas,
the Washington resident who
witnesses say was beaten and set
on fire by government security
forces in Santiago, appears to have
focused the world on the raw
hatefulness of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet for his people.
That, and his defiance. Pinochet
states that not only are the current
strikes and protests against his
dictatorship not going to drive him
from office but that he will survive
the mess because the Chilean
constitution says so. In 1989, he
plans to run for another eight-year
term, with a 1980 constitutional
provision saying that the junta's
candidate can seek reelection
unopposed. Pinochet is fanatically
anticommunist, except that his
technique of guaranteed electoral
victory is Kremlinesque.
Marcos and Duvalier also hated
the Soviet's ideology but liked their
style of elections. If 1986 is the
year of the fallen dictators,
Pinochet could well be next. Many
of the seeming strengths of power
and longevity that Marcos and
Duvalier believed would keep them
entrenched are now being used by
Pinochet: rampant human-rights
violations, the silencing of political
opponents, killing citizens involved
in street demonstrations and a
reliance on U.S. support.
In Pinochet's case, the support
has been fulsome. In August 1981,
Jeane Kirkpatrick, then the Reagan
administration's ambassador to the
United Nations, visited the dictator
in Santiago and found him to her
liking. Why not? The pair thought
alike. In 1980, in the Commentary
magazine article that caught the
eye of fellow intellectual Ronald
Reagan, Kirkpatrick argued in
favor of backing "positively
friendly" authoritarians.
"Right-wing autocracies," she
insisted, "do sometimes evolve into
democracies."
Two years before, in a New York
Times interview, Pinochet said the
same: "I think that many times hard
and strong authority is necessary
because that strong and hard
authority allows democracy later."
Sixteen years and thousands of high
crimes after, this "later" has yet to
evolve.
The state terror and repression
were ignored by Kirkpatrick on her
1981 trip. She said in Santiago that
the Reagan administration intended
to "normalize completely its
relations with Chile in order to
work together in a pleasant way."
Two days after Kirkpatrick's
bouquet of pleasantries fell into
Pinochet's lap, Chilean security
forces expelled four opposition
politicians, including the president
of the country's commission on
human rights.
The Kirkpatrick legacy is worth
remembering because one of its
most shameless heirs is Sen.. Jesse
Helms (R-N.C.). Last month he was
in Santiago and, like Kirkpatrick
before him, was untroubled by the
government's policies of murder
and torture as long as communism
was being fought. Helms, all but
celebrating the Pinochet policies,
criticized the State Department for
pressuring Chile to investigate the
death of Rodrigo Rojas. Helms was
asking for no more than
consistency. In five years, the
administration has remained
unalarmed by the reign of Pinochet
brutalities. Why a raised eyebrow
now? Let's stick by our man in
Santiago.
Unwittingly, Helms raised the
question that is repeatedly thrown
in the face of the United States:
Once you support a monster, how
large must the monstrosities of
death and torture become before
the support is withdrawn? The
South African crisis is that. George
Shultz told the Senate last week
that under the regime in Pretoria "a
sharp turn for the worse" has
occurred. What did he expect, a
sharp turn for the better?
Repressive turns are always for the
worse, in South Africa, the
Philippines, Haiti and now Chile.
Our complicity in the crimes of
Pinochet is greater than with the
others. In the early 1970s, Richard
Nixon and Henry Kissinger ruled
that the Chileans' choice of the
Allende government was not
acceptable. Instead of sendin in
the Marines, they sent in the CIA.
Pinoc a resulted.
In 1977, Richard Helms, the CIA
director at the time his a ents o
democracy were destroying
democracy in LWle, was convicted
of-not es ying y and accurately
t Hate committee. a lu ge
in the case told Helms at the time
of his conviction: "You dishonored
your oath and you now stand before
this court in disgrace and shame."
After his sentencing, Helms said, "I
don't feel disgraced at all."
That might well be the motto of
American policy toward Pinochet.
From Richard Helms to Jesse
Helms, and with Kirkpatrick and
Reagan in between, no brutality has
been too great. In 1976, the
Pinochet regime killed a former
Chilean diplomat and an American
woman on a Washington street. In
1986, it killed a Washington youth
on a Santiago street. Relations
between Pinochet and Reagan
continue "in a pleasant way."
Approved For Release 2006/01/12 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500140020-9