US House would aid Argentine human rights trials by revealing dictatorship-era spy files

more images

more images

US House approves sharing spy files on Argentina

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina praised the U.S. House on Friday for passing a measure that would force American intelligence agencies to share their files on dictatorship-era human rights violations in this country.

If approved by the U.S. Senate and President Barack Obama, the measure could provide key evidence for human rights trials under way in Argentina and possibly help some 400 families find children who were stolen at birth from women who were kidnapped and killed by the dictatorship, according to Argentina’s ambassador to the U.S., Hector Timerman.

“The affirmative vote of the (House of) Representatives is an important gesture of solidarity with all victims of the dictatorship in Argentina and also a strong demonstration of a commitment to defend human rights by the American people and the institutions that represent them,” Timerman said in a statement.

The measure was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, whose similar effort involving U.S. files on Chile eventually revealed a trove of information that showed how deeply involved the Central Intelligence Agency was in destabilizing the government of socialist President Salvador Allende there before the 1973 coup.

The measure is supported by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit group in Washington seeking to sue the Freedom of Information Act to reveal government secrets. The archive has filed some 200 FOIA requests to intelligence agencies for information on Argentina, with less than a dozen positive responses, said Carlos Osorio, a researcher with the group.

“It was the duty of the CIA to keep on top of what this dictatorship was doing in the 1970s and 1980s,” Osorio said. “All this is relevant information, and it’s exactly what the Argentine judges want.”