The AMIA/Nisman case and controversies

The New York Times last week ran an English-language piece by Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky Reining In Argentina’s Spymasters 01/28/2015, discussing the current high-level political drama in Argentina over the AMIA terrorist case investigation and the suicide of prosecutor Alberto Nisman. Verbitsky is also the head of the human-rights Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS). The Spanish version appears in Rienda corta para los espías argentinos Página/12 29.01.2015.

He writes:

The key to the story is not likely to be found in the present government, but rather in former president Carlos Menem’s administration. Mr. Menem is of Syrian descent, and before Argentina’s 1989 presidential election, he met in Damascus with the Syrian leader, Hafez al-Assad, who had backed him financially. Argentina’s participation in Operation Desert Storm against Syria’s ally, Iraq, in 1991, spoiled this romance. Then, in 1992, the Israeli embassy in Argentina was attacked and in 1994 the Jewish community center was bombed.

Secret documents that were declassified in 2003 revealed that Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, sent a personal envoy to Argentina just hours after the 1994 attack to agree on a common interpretation of events to present to the press. At the time, Mr. Rabin was facing political pressure at home from opponents of the Oslo peace talks with the Palestinians, which were for the first time occurring with Syrian approval.

After his meeting with Mr. Menem, Mr. Rabin’s envoy accused Iran of the attack. The same week, a spokesman from the State Department in Washington went further and excluded Syria from the list of suspects.

Mr. Menem also found it politically convenient to look away from Syria, and he did all he could to prevent the Syrian angle from being investigated, due to his previous relationship with the Assad government and his unfulfilled promises to Syria of diplomatic support and cooperation on nuclear and missile technology.

Today, Mr. Menem is on trial alongside some of his cabinet members from that era, as well as a judge and two prosecutors accused of obstructing justice and covering up evidence about the 1994 attack.

Whether or not Iranian agents were involved in the 1994 AMIA attack, it' abundantly clear that the security services and Menem officials tried to obstruct the investigation for whatever reason.

So far, Nisman's death looks like a suicide. That doesn't exclude deliberate external pressure that drove him to it, intentionally or unintentionally. But the murder that President Cristina Fernández and her government have suggested has not been established. Verbitsky cautions them: "Mrs. Kirchner has flip-flopped between assuming it was a suicide and, later, suggesting it was not. It is an election year and although she cannot run for another term, her vacillating has not helped her party."

Here is a recent program from TV Pública argentina 678 - Los interrogantes del Caso Nisman - 29-01-15 (1 de 3):

678 - Los interrogantes del Caso Nisman - 29-01-15 (2 de 3):

678 - Los interrogantes del Caso Nisman - 29-01-15 (3 de 3):

Verbitsky does a close reading of Nisman's already-discredited report accusing Cristina and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman in Nismanismos Página/12 01.02.2015, focusing on passage that provide "ayuda a comprender la situación general de la que el fiscal fue voluntario o involuntario protagonista." ("support to comprehend the general situation of which the prosecutor was voluntarily or involuntarily the protagonist").

He focuses first on pp. 280-282 of Nisman's report, which the Argentine Centro de Información Judicial (CIJ) has made available here, the section headed, "VIII.- Breves consideraciones normativas." This section claims that part of the alleged "criminal plot" involved provisions in the Argentina-Iran agreement of 2013 on the investigation of the AMIA case. The larger accusation of the opposition, which Nisman's charges were intended to support is that the deal with Iran was a bad idea and motivated by more-or-less venal considerations. In the real world, the agreement was a effort to follow up on prosecutor Nisman's theory of the AMIA case, which is that it the bombing was planned and executed on orders from Iran.

But Section VIII also contains a reference to the agreement placing restrictions on the use of information from "terceros estados" ("third states," i.e., third countries) in the judicial investigation. Verbitsky plausibly suggests that this provides an indication "que lo que Nisman intenta preservar es la confidencialidad de las informaciones recibidas de los servicios de Inteligencia de Estados Unidos e Israel" ("that what Nisman intended to preserve is the confidentiality of pieces of information received from the intelligence services of the United States and Israel").

Israel and three successive US Administrations have found it useful to blame Iran for the AMIA attack. And that may be true. But, given the misconduct of Argentine officials and the intelligence services on the investigation of the case, it is always possible that actually solving the case would diminish the plausibility of blaming Iran. Whether or not Iran was behind it, both Washington and Tel Aviv have shown that they like that narrative and don't want to risk seeing it diluted. Verbitsky cites Wikileaks revelations and the work of Santiago O’Donnell, which establish that Nisman was working closely with the US Embassy, which was providing information bolstering the Iranian case and pressuring Nisman - unsuccessfully - to not bring charges against former President Carlos Menem and other officials of his government over obstruction of justice in the AMIA case, charges on which a trial is still pending.

Secondly, Verbitsky focuses on passages in Nisman's formal complaint from pages 5, 7, 97-98, 150, 154, 156, 160, 184, 185 and 206 in which Nisman appears to be defending himself against criticism, "cosa que no es en absolute usual" ("something that is absolutely not usual") in such a complaint. In other words, Nisman was presenting criticism against his handling of the case by officials of Cristina's Administration as supporting the accusation that she and Timerman were trying to protect Iranian persons of interest in the case. Verbitsky suggests that Nisman included those aspects because he failed to produce anything resembling plausible "smoking gun" against CFK (Cristina Fernández) or Timerman.

Something to keep in mind in discussions of Nisman's complaint. There may be some reason to doubt his authorship of the complaint that he signed and filed in his name. Part of the reason to doubt that was based on his supposedly having cut short a Spanish vacation with his daughter to return to Buenos Aires to file his report. But the prosecutor investigating Nisman's death says that he purchased the return ticket in December, which seems to remove the idea that he hastily returned to Argentina. I cite the report as Nisman's report and cite it as though it were his work, because in the most formal and official sense, it is.

Verbitsky also discusses Ronald Kenneth Noble, the American who headed Interpol as Secretary General from 2000–2014, which covers the period in which the key accusation against CFK and Timerman would have occurred, their alleged attempts to have Interpol remove the red alert status on several Iranian persons of interest in the AMIA case. Verbitsky quotes Noble on that accusation in the Times article: "In an interview on Jan. 18, Mr. Noble declared: 'Nisman’s claims are false.' The same day, Mr. Nisman was found dead." One likely factor in Nisman's suicide was that he surely must have realized he would be professionally discredited and possibly face charges on abuse of office himself because his case against CFK and Timerman was disintegrating so fast, a process in which Noble's denial was a major factor.

Verbitsky relates that early in 2006, Noble and Interpol were hesitant to establish the red alerts on those Iranians, because they regardede the evidence that Nisman had presented Interpol as insufficient justification. Both the Argentine government of Néstor Kirchner (CFK's late husband and predecessor as President) and the Cheney-Bush Administration pressed Interpol to issue the red alerts, which they did. He cites a cable from the American Ambassador to Argentina of that time, Earl Anthony Wayne, claiming that Noble was aligning himself with Iran on the matter. Though Verbitsky is not crediting Wayne's specific evaluation, he cites all this as a background to Nisman's charge on the red alerts, which establishes that Argentina's position had always been to press Interpol to establish and keep the alerts in force. And also that if CFK's government had pressured Interpol to drop them as Nisman alleged, Noble would have presumably been receptive to the request. But there is no evidence in the public record that I've seen to support that charge - including Nisman's report itself. The background only reinforces the implausibility of the unsubstantiated accusation. (The whole section on Noble doesn't cite specific references in Noble's response and is more supplementary commentary than a close reading of the report.)

In a further close reading of the report, Verbitsky cites charges from pages 59, 61 and 205 that try to present the signing of the agreement with Iran and its approval by the Argentine Congress as a cover for the alleged criminal plan of CFK and Timerman. This is a difficult needle that Nisman's report fails to thread. Making an agreement with Iran to facilitate the AMIA investigation was a perfectly Constitutional and legal act, even if it was arguably a poor agreement. (Which I don't think it was, BTW.) For that matter, it would have been a legitimate and legal act of state if the Argentine government had requested the red alerts to be dropped. But that is entirely hypothetical at this point unless actual evidence emerges that (1) CFK and Timerman actually requested that, and (2) that it was done with the intent of obstructing justice in the case. Poor judgment in foreign affairs isn't a criminal offense in Argentina or in any other country of which I'm aware. If that were the case, most heads of government and foreign ministers would routinely wind up in prison.

His final set of close reading analysis cites pages 102, 135, 141, 200, 230, 246, 250, 251, 253, 265 in which Nisman does try to establish CFK's criminal intent in the matter. Again, to say there is no smoking gun in that series of claims puts it mildly. It would take a tremendous imagination to take it into even circumstantial evidence, considering that the central claim against CFK and Timerman that they tried to have Interpol remove those red alerts is not only not established in any way but is contradicted by the evidence that is in the public record.

If you were a defense lawyer, you would want to have a client facing claims like those in Nisman's report.

Argentina's Catholic Church and the dictatorship of 1976-83

Horacio Verbitsky's careful work on the role of the Catholic Church during the 1976-83 military dictatorship in Argentina became of wide interest recently with the selection of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis I. La mano izquierda de Dios, Tomo 4: La última dictadura (1976-1983) (2010) is the fourth volume of his Historia política de la Iglesia Católica (Political History of the Catholic Church), which despite the broad title focuses on the Catholic Church in Argentina.

But in La mano izquierda de Dios he also looks at the role of the Vatican, which became an important player in a network of relationships involving the Argentine dictatorship when Ronald Reagan became President. St. Reagan partnered with Pope John Paul II not only in opposing the Communist regimes in Poland and eastern Europe but also in the Central American counterinsurgency movement his Administration conducted in Central America, with El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras being particularly affected.

The cover shows Papal Nuncio in Argentina Pío Laghi (2nd from r.) with members of the junta (l. to r.) Orlando Ramón Agosti, Joreg Rafael Videla and Emilio Eduardo Massera

Bergoglio comes in for criticism in this book, though he was by no means the worst among senior officials in their collaboration with the dictatorship. There have been three main concerns about Bergoglio's role during this period that have been publicly discussed this year: his role in the arrest and torture of Jesuit priests Franz Jalics and Orlando Yorio who worked in a project in a very poor neigborhood and who Bergoglio very likely fingered for arrest, though there wasn't the slightest evidence they were involved with guerrillas or any criminal activity; his promotion of the career of Massera, pictured on the cover above; and, his membership prior to the coup in the Peronist paramilitary group Guardias de Hierro (Iron Guard) some of whose members played an important role in supporting the coup and with which Massera was closely associated.

One of Bergoglio's/Pope Francis I's more visible and attractive defenders on criticism of his role during the Argentinian dictatorship of 1976-83 is Nobel Peace Prize winner Pérez Esquivel, who himself was imprisoned by the junta for his public defense of human rights. But Horacio Verbitsky, who has been one of Bergoglio's most prominent critics on the issue, has recalled this year that in 2005, Esquivel was saying that Bergoglio had believed that people who did social work with the very poor were "comunistas, subversivos, terroristas" ("Communists, subversives, terrorists")

Esquivel said it on a national TV program when Bergoglio was being considered for Pope in the conclave of 2005. This relates in particular to the case of Jalics and Yorio, who worked in a project in a very poor neigborhood and who Bergoglio very likely fingered for arrest, though there wasn't the slightest evidence they were involved with guerrillas or any criminal activity. The video of Esquivel is on YouTube:

Verbitsky gives an account in the book of the Jalics/Yorio case, in which Bergoglio looks guilty of essentially ratting the two of them out to dictatorship for no good reason.

His account of the participation of the Vatican and its financial network in providing payments for leading members of the dictatorship - don't dictatorships always feature that, if not always with the Vatican's help - and in providing funding for the Nicaraguan contras and their terrorist campaign against the leftwing Sandinista government in Nicaragua, is also particularly interesting. The Contras' cocaine business was probably more important to its leaders than their counterrevolution. The Argentine dictatorship trained Central American death squads with the approval of the Reagan Administration. One of the main players in the financing of the Contras was construction magnate Franco Macri. His son, Maurizio Macri, is now governor of the City Buenos Aires and the leading opposition figure to Cristina Fernández' government. Verbitsky in the book compares Marurizio Macri to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. Macri's police are currently under heavy criticism for a recent incident in which they attacked demonstrators in a manner that would have made the military dictatorship proud.

Verbitsky's chronological account shows us a picture of a Catholic hierarchy actively collaborating with a brutal dictatorship whose Catholic-national ideology required the Church's cooperation to be credible. The key human rights issues of the desaparacedos, those kidnapped, tortured and often murdered by the dictatorship, and of the babies kidnapped by the military from pregnant female political prisoners, who they kept alive until they gave birth and then routinely murdered them, the Church's record is downright shameful. On the whole, the Church hierarchy covered for the military, repeated their propaganda justifying the disappearances and torture, and mostly refused to even recognize the appeals from parents and grandparents of the missing, much less doing anything of substance to help the victims. An important part of Verbitsky's story is the Church's special ministry to the military, in which priests were frequently taking confessions from torturers, meaning that the Church was extensively informed about the ugliest aspects of the regime the hierarchy so firmly supported. Some priests and Church officials participated in the torture, telling the victims they were getting what they deserve and telling them to cooperate with the torturers.

Verbitsky contrasts this behavior with that of the Church in Chile, which took a notably more active role in addressing human rights violations by the Pinochet regime, showing a clear example than an alternative position by the Church in Argentina was entirely feasible.

As always in such situations, there were active collaborators, which included the main hierarchy and the military priests. Others, including Bergoglio, took as less public and active but nevertheless supportive and often collaborationist attitudes toward the regime. Some priests, seminarians and lay activists defended human rights and continued to work with those in need in defiance of the regime's preferences. Verbitsky relates a number of cases of them being threatened, kidnapped and murdered. The Church hierarchy was typically passive even in those cases.

But as it started to become clear that a transition to an elected, civilian government was coming closer, the Church hierarchy began to careful create alibis for themselves, making more explicit statements of concern about human rights issues while continuing their collaboration.

The Vatican did play an important and constructive role in this period in facilitating diplomatic negotiations in a territorial dispute between Argentina and Chile over the Beagle Islands, which very nearly led to war between the two dictatorships. And the Church also helped facilitate the transition to democracy in 1983. However, it's sickening to read how the Church for years echoed the regime's hate propaganda against "subversives," and then as the transition to democracy approach, started talking up the virtues of forgiveness and Christian charity to the victims of the regime's cruelty, backing the dictatorship to the end and after in their efforts to secure amnesty from any legal accountability for their crimes.

It's also striking to see spelled out the extent to which pre-modern theological ideas and explicit rejection of democracy were so deeply influential in the Church hierachy in Argentina.

Tags: argentina, jorge mario bergoglio, horacio verbitsky, pope francis i