| Washington, D.C., September, 2011– In March 1975, a top aide to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger drafted a secret/nodis report titled “Normalizing Relations with Cuba” that recommended moving quickly to restore diplomatic ties with Havana. “Our interest is in getting the Cuba issue behind us, not in prolonging it indefinitely,” states the memorandum, which was written as the Ford administration engaged in secret diplomacy with Castro officials to lessen hostilities. “If there is a benefit to us in an end to the state of ‘perpetual antagonism,'” the report to Kissinger noted, “it lies in getting Cuba off the domestic and inter-American agendas—in extracting the symbolism from an intrinsically trivial issue.”The Kissinger document is one of several declassified records posted today and cited in a new article, “Talking to Fidel,” published in the February issue of Cigar Aficionado now available in newsstands. Written by Archive Cuba analyst Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande, Dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University, the article traces the secret, back-channel efforts by Kennedy, Kissinger, Carter and Clinton to improve and even attempt to normalize relations with the Castro regime. “The historical record,” the authors write, “contains important lessons [for President Obama] on how an effective effort at direct diplomacy might end, once and for all, the perpetual hostility in U.S.-Cuban relations.”
The article also quotes former President Jimmy Carter as stating that he should have followed through on his initial efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. “I think in retrospect, knowing what I know since I left the White House,” Carter told the authors in an interview, “I should have gone ahead and been more flexible in dealing with Cuba and establishing full diplomatic relations.” The Kissinger documents, posted for the first time on the Web, along with other documentation from the Kennedy and Carter administrations, were obtained by the Archive’s Cuba documentation project as part of a major research project on secret dialogue and negotiations between Havana and Washington over the past fifty years. The article in Cigar Aficionado is adapted from a forthcoming book by Kornbluh and LeoGrande, Talking with Fidel: The Untold History of Dialogue between the United States and Cuba. “History shows that presidents from Kennedy to Clinton considered dialogue both possible and preferable to continued hostility and aggression in U.S. policy toward Cuba,” Kornbluh noted. “This rich declassified record of the past provides a road map for the new administration to follow in the future.” Read the Dialogue Documents Document l: White House memorandum, Secret, “Conversation with Commandante Ernesto Guevara of Cuba”, August 22, 1961. In a secret memo to President Kennedy, Richard Goodwin recounts his impromptu meeting with Ernesto “Che” Guevara that took place on August 17, 1961 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Their conversation covered several key points: First, Guevara expressed Cuba’s hope to establish a “modus vivendi” with the United States. Second, although Castro was willing\ to make a number of concessions toward that goal, the nature of Cuba’s political system was nonnegotiable. “He said they could discuss no formula that would mean giving up the type of society to which they were dedicated,” Goodwin reported. Finally Guevara raised the issue of how the two countries would find “a practical formula” to advance toward accommodation. He made a pragmatic suggestion, according to Goodwin: “He knew it was difficult to negotiate these things but we could open up some of these issues by beginning to discuss secondary issues … as a cover for more serious conversation.” The meeting marked the first high-level talks between officials from the United States and Cuba since the break in diplomatic relations on January 3, 1961. Document 2: White House memorandum, Top Secret, “Mr. Donovan’s Trip to Cuba,” March 4, 1963. This document records President Kennedy’s interest in negotiations with Castro and his instructions to his staff to “start thinking along more flexible lines” about negotiations with Cuba toward better relations. At issue were talks between James Donovan, who had negotiated the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners, and Fidel Castro, who had expressed an interest in using the prisoner negotiations as a springboard to discuss more normal relations. The memo recording Kennedy’s views makes clear he expressed a concrete interest in exploring and pursuing an effective dialogue with Castro. Document 3: Central Intelligence Agency memorandum, Secret, “Interview of the U.S. Newswoman with Fidel Castro Indicating Possible Interest in Rapprochement with the United States”, May 1, 1963. After ABC News correspondent Lisa Howard returned from interviewing Castro in April 1963, she provided a debriefing to CIA deputy director Richard Helms. Helms’s memorandum of conversation notes her opinion that Castro is “ready to discuss rapprochement.” Howard also offered to become an intermediary between Havana and Washington. The document contains a notation, “Psaw,” meaning President Kennedy read the report on Howard and Castro. Document 4: Oval Office audio tape, Kennedy and Bundy, November 5, 1963. (.mp3 audio clip – 6 MB) This audio document, recorded by a secret taping system in President Kennedy’s office, records a discussion between the President and his National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, regarding Castro’s invitation to William Attwood, a deputy to U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, to come to Cuba for secret talks. “How can Attwood get in and out of there very privately,” Kennedy is heard to ask. The President suggests that Attwood should be taken off the U.S. payroll prior to such a meeting so that the White House could plausibly deny that any official talks had taken place if the meeting leaks to the press. Document 5: National Security Council, memorandum for Secretary Kissinger, Confidential, “Cuba Policy,” August 30, 1974. This memorandum for Kissinger lays out the growing multinational pressures on the U.S. to change its sanctions policy toward Cuba. A number of Latin countries are pushing for licenses for U.S. subsidiaries to export goods to Cuba, and the OAS nations are threatening to lift the ban on trade and diplomatic ties with Havana that the U.S. imposed in 1964. Stephen Low, an NSC staffer on Latin America, recommends an options paper for changing U.S. policy and negotiating with the Cubans that “should be held very closely.” Kissinger authorizes the project. Unbeknownst to all but his two top aides, he also initiates contact with the Cubans through intermediaries to begin exploring talks. (Newly posted) Document 6: Kissinger Aide-Memoire to Cuba, January 11, 1975 In an effort to renew a dialogue between Cuba and the United States, Kissinger’s aides and Cuban representatives meet for the first time in a public cafeteria in La Guardia airport in New York on January 11, 1975. During this secret meeting, the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, William Rogers, provides an aide-mémoire, approved by Kissinger, to Castro’s representative, Ramon Sanchez-Parodi. “We are meeting here to explore the possibilities for a more normal relationship between our two countries,” the untitled and unsigned U.S. document reads. The message takes a very positive tone in suggesting that the “U.S. is able and willing to make progress on such issues even with socialist nations with whom we are in fundamental ideological disagreement.” (Newly posted) Document 7: Department of State, Secret, “Normalizing relations with Cuba”, March 27, 1975. As the OAS prepared to lift multilateral sanctions against Cuba, and the U.S. Congress pushed for lifting the embargo, deputy assistant secretary for Latin America Harry Shlaudeman drafted a secret/nodis memo for Kissinger on “Normalizing Relations with Cuba.” His report suggests that the U.S. should move quickly to negotiate with Cuba through a scenario that will result in normal diplomatic relations. “Our interest is in getting the Cuba issue behind us, not in prolonging it indefinitely,” the memo states. Shlaudeman warns that the conventional scenario of talks will become mired in disagreements over compensation for expropriated property and suggests setting that issue aside. The document lays out a series of steps that would be taken to normalize relations and finally get the “intrinsically trivial issue” of Cuba “off the domestic and inter-American agendas.” (Newly posted) Document 8: Presidential Directive / NSC-6, Secret, “Cuba”, March 15, 1977. This directive, issued shortly after Carter took office, represents the only time a President has ordered normalization of U.S. relations with Castro’s Cuba. “I have concluded that we should attempt to achieve normalization of our relations with Cuba,” the directive states. Carter instructed his foreign policy team to “set in motion a process which will lead to the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba.” Although negotiations led quickly to re-opening diplomatic ties through the establishment of interest sections in Havana and Washington, secret talks, including with Fidel Castro, broke down over the U.S. insistence that Cuba withdraw its troops from Africa before the Carter Administration would consider lifting the embargo.
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Tag: president jimmy carter
“Learn from History”, 31st Anniversary of the Assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
Archbishop Romero minutes after he was shot celebrating mass at a small chapel located in a hospital called “La Divina Providencia” at around 6:30pm on March 24, 1980.
Washington, D.C., August 27, 2011 – Thirty one years ago tomorrow, El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was shot and killed by right-wing assassins seeking to silence his message of solidarity with the country’s poor and oppressed. The assassination shocked Salvadorans already reeling in early 1980 from attacks by security forces and government-backed death squads on a growing opposition movement. Romero’s murder further polarized the country and set the stage for the civil war that would rage for the next twelve years. In commemoration of the anniversary, the National Security Archive is posting a selection from our digital archive of 12 declassified U.S. documents that describe the months before his death, his assassination and funeral, as well as later revelations about those involved in his murder.
The documents are being posted as President Barack Obama leaves El Salvador, his final stop on a five-day trip to Latin America. Obama spent part of his time in the country with a visit to Monsignor Romero’s tomb last night. Although the United States funneled billions of dollars to the tiny country in support of the brutal army and security forces during a counterinsurgency war that left 75,000 civilians dead, the president made no reference to the U.S. role, seeking in his speeches instead to focus on immigration and security concerns. The day before his visit to Romero’s gravesite, Obama had told an audience in Chile that it was important that the United States and Latin America “learn from history, that we understand history, but that we not be trapped by history, because many challenges lie ahead.”
Just weeks before his murder, Archbishop Romero published an open letter to President Jimmy Carter in the Salvadoran press, asking the United States not to intervene in El Salvador’s fate by arming brutal security forces against a popular opposition movement. Romero warned that U.S. support would only “sharpen the injustice and repression against the organizations of the people which repeatedly have been struggling to gain respect for their fundamental human rights.” Despite his plea, President Carter moved to approve $5 million in military aid less than one year after the archbishop’s murder, as Carter was leaving office in January 1981.
Included in the posting are documents reporting on a secret, behind-the-scene effort by the United States to enlist the Vatican in pressuring Romero over his perceived support for the Salvadoran left; an account of the archbishop’s powerful March 23, 1980, homily, given the day before his assassination; a description of the murder by the U.S. defense attaché in El Salvador; and an extraordinary embassy cable describing a meeting organized by rightist leader Roberto D’Aubuisson in which participants draw lots to determine who would be the triggerman to kill Romero.
Although the declassified documents do not reveal the extent of the plot to kill Romero or the names of those who murdered him, details in them support the findings of the 1993 report by the U.N.-mandated Truth Commission for El Salvador. Released shortly after the signing of the peace accords that ended the war in El Salvador, the report identified D’Aubuisson, Captains Alvaro Rafael Saravia and Eduardo Avila, and Fernando (“El Negro”) Sagrera as among those responsible for the assassination. On March 25 of last year, Carlos Dada of El Salvador’s on-line news site El Faro published an extraordinary interview with Alvaro Saravia, one of the masterminds of Romero’s killing. In the interview, Saravia revealed chilling details of the plot to murder Romero; see a transcript of the interview, “How We Killed the Archbishop”, here and here en español.
The documents posted below are from the National Security Archive’s Digital National Security Archive’s two El Salvador collections, El Salvador: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1977–1984 and El Salvador: War, Peace, and Human Rights, 1980–1994. These two full collections, among others, are available through a subscription with the ProQuest research database.
Read the Documents
Document 1
October 11, 1979
Confidential, Cable, “The Archbishop and the Military”, 2 pp.
United States Embassy. El SalvadorIn his homily, Archbishop Romero decries repression by the Salvadoran military and criticizes the army for abandoning its role as the nation’s defender to become “guardian of the interests of the oligarchy.”
Document 2
December 17, 1979
Unclassified, Cable, “Archbishop Strongly Urges Agrarian Reform”, 3 pp.
United States Embassy. El SalvadorArchbishop Oscar A. Romero speaks in support of agrarian reform, criticizing the oligarchy for arming those who seek to preserve the status quo and citing the Catholic Church’s Medellin Council recognition of “right of oppressed to exert pressure, but not through armed violence.”
Document 3
January 31, 1980
Secret, Memorandum, [Draft Letter Attached], “Letter from Dr. Brzezinski to the Pope”, 5 pp.
United States. Department of State, Office of the SecretaryPresents draft of letter to Pope John Paul II outlining areas of concern in Central America and requesting assistance in persuading Archbishop Romero not to “abandon” Revolutionary Governing Junta in favor of more radical leftists in El Salvador.
Document 4
February 19, 1980
Unclassified, Cable, “Text of Archbishop’s Letter to President Carter“, 1 pp.
United States Embassy. El SalvadorArchbishop Romero addresses President Jimmy Carter, imploring him not to provide military aid or any other form of assistance that could exacerbate state violence targeting Salvadoran citizens. “I am very worried by the news that the government of the United States is studying a form of abetting the arming of El Salvador,” Romero writes. “The contribution of your government instead of promoting greater justice and peace in El Salvador will without doubt sharpen the injustice and repression against the organizations of the people which repeatedly have been struggling to gain respect for their fundamental human rights.”
Document 5
March 1, 1980
Confidential, Cable, “Reply to Archbishop’s Letter to President Carter“,1 pp.
United States Embassy. El SalvadorSecretary of State Cyrus R. Vance responds to Archbishop Romero’s letter regarding criticisms of U.S. security assistance to El Salvador, assuring him that President Carter shares his concerns about the human rights of Salvadoran citizens. “Any equipment and training which we might provide would be designed to overcome the most serious deficiencies of the Armed Forces, enhancing their professionalism so that they can fulfill their essential role of maintaining order with a minimum of lethal force.”
Document 6
March 23, 1980
Confidential, Cable “Archbishop’s Homily, March 23”, 4 pp.
United States Embassy. El SalvadorThis cable reports on Archbishop Romero’s homily, the day before he was assassinated. He speaks of the increasing tension with Salvadoran security forces and condemns rampant killings: “In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression!”
Document 7
March 25, 1980
Confidential, Cable, “Archbishop Romero Assassinated”, 2 pp.
United States Defense Intelligence Agency. Office of the Defense Attaché, El SalvadorThis document reports the assassination of Archbishop Romero and includes brief description of events.
Document 8
March 26, 1980
Confidential, Cable, “Archbishop’s Assassination: Peaceful Procession”, 2 pp.
United States Embassy. El SalvadorThis cable reports on the procession of thousands of people accompanying Archbishop Romero’s coffin from the basilica to the National Cathedral.
Document 9
March 26, 1980,
Unclassified, Cable, “White House Statement on Archbishop Romero’s Assassination”, 2 pp.
United States. Department of StateThe United States government issues statement condemning the assassination of Archbishop Romero.
Document 10
November 19, 1980,
Secret, Cable “Conversation with National Guard Officer”, 3 pp.
United States Embassy. El SalvadorA source from the National Guard tells a U.S. embassy political officer that National Republican Alliance (Alianza Republicana Nacional—ARENA) founder Roberto D’Aubuisson organized a meeting a day or two before the assassination of Archbishop Romero in which “participants drew lots for the task of killing the archbishop.”
Document 11
February 25, 1981
Unclassified, Cable, “El Salvador: Army Officers Implicated in Romero Killing”, 1 pp.
United States. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, PanamaRadio Venceremos clandestinely broadcasts an interview with “disillusioned army officer” Lt. Col. Ricardo Bruno Navarrete implicating Roberto D’Aubuisson, and members of the Salvadoran armed forces in the assassination of Archbishop Romero.
Document 12
December 21, 1981
Secret, Cable, “Assassination of Archbishop Romero”, 2 pp.
United States Embassy. El SalvadorThis document is a follow-up to the November 19 embassy cable concerning a meeting to plan the assassination of Archbishop Romero. In it, a U.S. political officer reports additional information from the same National Guard source indicating that Romero’s killer was Walter “Musa” Antonio Alvarez. [The UN Truth Commission Report on El Salvador would later identify Alvarez as involved in conveying money supplied by Roberto D’Aubuisson as payment to Romero’s assassin, see pp. 130-1.]
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