Informant38

Kissinger knew that Pinochet had set up an infamous international terrorist network, Operation Condor, to assassinate his enemies. In 1974, when the CIA discovered that Chile and its allies wanted to set up a covert office in Miami as part of Operation Condor, Kissinger rejected his own State Department officials' advice to publicly protest the plan.

That would have been a warning to prospective victims who had sought safety in exile, but Kissinger opted instead to let the CIA quietly pass on the word to Chile's secret police, the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), and the office wasn't opened.

But Operation Condor continued to target and murder Pinochet's enemies. In September 1974, agents assassinated General Carlos Prats, Pinochet's constitutionalist predecessor who had been forced out and had fled to Buenos Aires. The following September, Operation Condor organized the Rome attack that disabled Christian Democratic oppositionist Bernardo Leighton and his wife. Then in September 1976, the operation returned to the United States with a vengeance, planting the car bomb that killed Letelier and his Institute for Policy Studies colleague Ronni Moffitt in Washington.
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On human rights, Kissinger writes in his book: "Our strategy offered the occasion and enabled us to raise the human rights issue bilaterally with the Chilean authorities as a test of good relations with the United States."

Kissinger emphasizes in his book that he told Pinochet that Chile's human rights violations cited in an OAS report had impaired the relationship between the two countries. He says he encouraged the general to ease up: "All friends of Chile hope that obstacles raised by conditions alleged in the report will soon be removed." Kissinger writes: "Inevitably, a considerable amount of time in my dialogue with Pinochet was devoted to human rights."

However, the memo reveals that Kissinger actually went to great lengths to reassure Pinochet that the discussion of human rights was strictly pro forma, designed to derail Pinochet's opponents in the U.S. Congress. "We have a practical problem we have to take into account," Kissinger told him. "My statement and our position are designed to allow us to say to the Congress that we are talking to the Chilean government and therefore Congress need not act."

Kissinger also omits in his book the fact that he told Pinochet that "you are a victim of all leftwing groups around the world." He also omitted this comment: "You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende."