WikiLeaks: Vatican Dismissed Pinochet Massacre Reports As 'Communist Propaganda'

Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship was responsible for the deaths of as many as 3,200 people in Chile in the 1970s, but the Vatican dismissed reports of bloodshed at the time as "communist propaganda," according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on Monday.

Pinochet came to power in 1973 as the head of a military coup against democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende. The right-wing junta that subsequently ruled the country from 1973 to 1990 was responsible for the murders of as many as 3,200 people, as well as the arrest of tens of thousands more, many of whom were tortured.

In a 1973 diplomatic cable addressed to Henry Kissinger, then serving as the United States' Secretary of State, high-ranking Vatican official Giovanni Benelli was quoted as relaying "his and the pope's grave concern over successful international leftisf campaign to misconstrue completely realities of Chilean situation." Benelli dismissed reports of massacre as "unfounded" and "possibly [the] greatest success of Communist propaganda," while explaining away whatever violence had occurred as "unfortunately natural following coup d'etat."

The cable was written five weeks after the coup, during the reign of Pope Paul VI, with reports already surfacing that political opponents of the regime were being arrested and killed.

"The cables also showed the Vatican later realized the full extent of the abuses being carried out," according to AFP, "but refused to criticize Pinochet's regime openly and continued with normal diplomatic relations."

The Catholic Church's activities in South America has been the subject of some scrutiny in the past. Opus Dei, made most famous by Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," but a real and influential order in the Church, has been dogged for years by allegations that it supported Pinochet's 1973 coup, and that its members were later active in the Pinochet regime.

Pinochet, who was ousted as president of Chile when the country returned to democracy in 1990, was arrested in London in 1998, though he never stood trial, and eventually returned to Chile. He died in 2006.

WikiLeaks reveals association with Aaron Swartz

In a series of tweets, WikiLeaks disclosed that deceased Internet activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz may have contributed to the organization and had even been in contact with Julian Assange.

WikiLeaks said it was divulging this information “due to the investigation into the Secret Service involvement with #AaronSwartz.”

Swartz, who committed a suicide on Jan. 11, was arrested two years ago for breaking and entering into an MIT storage closet and accessing an Acer laptop that he programmed to download millions of scholarly articles from the JSTOR database. The Secret Service took charge of the Swartz investigation two days before his arrest and provided the prosecution with information that led to its harsh pursuit of the 26-year-old. 

While it is unclear why WikiLeaks decided to disclose Swartz’s involvement with the document archive organization, some have suggested that the alliance may have prompted the US Attorney’s Office and the Secret Service to pursue Swartz more harshly.

WikiLeaks confirmed that Swartz was in contact with its founder, Julian Assange, and indicated that he might have been one of their sources.

“Aaron Swartz assisted WikiLeaks #aaronwartz,” read the first tweet.

“Aaron Swartz was in communication with Julian Assange, including during 2010 and 2011,” the second one said.

“We have strong reasons to believe, but cannot prove, that Aaron Swartz was a WikiLeaks source. #aaronswartz”

The Verge’s Tim Carmody published an article in which he suggested that Swartz may have killed himself while defending WikiLeaks, but the organization called that position “a little far-fetched.”

“The aim of these tweets could be to imply that the US Attorney’s Office and the Secret Service targeted Swartz in order to get at WikiLeaks, and that Swartz died still defending his contacts’ anonymity,” wrote Carmody.

But because WikiLeaks has an anonymous user base, the organization only suspects that Swartz was a source, but does not know for certain. The reasons behind WikiLeaks’ disclosure of a possible source are still unclear. The organization does not usually reveal any of its sources, but when questioned by a CNET reporter, WikiLeaks representative Kristinn Hrafnsson confirmed that the tweets were authentic.

The disclosure of Swartz’s potential involvement might have been the first time that the organization revealed one of its sources.

“We can not provide details about the security of our media organisation or its anonymous drop box for sources because to do so would help those who would like to compromise the security of our organisation and its sources,” the organization states on its website. “What we can say is that we operate a number of servers across multiple international jurisdictions and we we do not keep logs. Hence these logs can not be seized. Anonymization occurs early in the WikiLeaks network, long before information passes to our web servers. Without specialized global internet traffic analysis, multiple parts of our organisation must conspire with each other to strip submitters of their anonymity.”

Hrafnsson said he could not elaborate on the meaning of the tweets at the current time, but said CNET could contact him again later with further questions. 

Ecuador may consider political asylum for Syria’s Assad

After granting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange political asylum, Ecuador may consider doing the same for embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad and his inner circle, if he asks for it.

Speaking to Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said, “Any person who requests asylum in Ecuador, we will consider as a human being whose basic rights we must respect.”

“We would analyze such a request with all responsibility,” he added.

President Correa confirmed that Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad had visited Quito a few weeks ago, but denied reports from Israel's Haaretz newspaper that they had discussed the possibility of granting political asylum to Assad, his family and his associates.

“These talks did not take place,” Correa said, noting that al-Miqdad expressed gratitude to Ecuador over its “objective position.”

Haaretz reported that al-Miqdad had held meetings in Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador over the past week, bringing with him classified personal letters from Assad to local leaders.

Ecuador already made world headlines by granting political asylum to famous whistleblower Julian Assange in August. However the WikiLeaks founder remains confined inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London as British authorities say that if he leaves, he will be arrested and extradited to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning in connection with a sexual assault case.

The Syrian president, who has ruled the country since 2000, is facing a civil war with local and foreign opposition forces pushing for him to relinquish power.

Vatican emerges from WikiLeaks as a key player on global scene

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- If there's one clear conclusion that can be drawn from the Vatican-related WikiLeaks disclosures, it's that the United States takes the Vatican and its diplomatic activity very seriously.

In memo after memo in recent years, officials of the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See have reported back to Washington on the impact of papal trips, statements and documents; on the Vatican's behind-the-scenes efforts to head off conflicts; on church-state tensions in Latin America; on the evolution of Catholic teaching on bioethics; and even on the international repercussions of ecumenical affairs.

When a Vatican agency organized a conference on genetically modified foods, the U.S. embassy paid attention. When the Vatican condemned human trafficking, embassy officials met with Vatican counterparts to broaden areas of cooperation on that issue.

And when Pope Benedict XVI said in 2007 that "nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees," the embassy quickly objected, telling a high-level Vatican official that Iraq was experiencing positive developments and that the papal comments were not constructive.

Reading the cables, it's hard to imagine that before 1984, the United States did not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Today, the U.S. Embassy has five diplomatic officials and a support staff of 14, and is considered one of the busiest delegations accredited to the Vatican.

To anyone still wondering why so much attention is being paid to the world's smallest state, a U.S. Embassy cable of 2009 -- prepared for President Barack Obama ahead of his first meeting with Pope Benedict -- gave the answer:

"The Vatican is second only to the United States in the number of countries with which it enjoys diplomatic relations (188 and 177, respectively), and there are Catholic priests, nuns and laypeople in every country on the planet. As a result, the Holy See is interested and well-informed about developments all over the globe," it said.

Since that memo was written, the Vatican has established full diplomatic relations with Russia, bringing the total to 178 countries. That leaves only about 16 countries off the list, places such as China, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. The Vatican also maintains delegations to nearly 20 international institutions, including the United Nations.

The WikiLeaks cables have described Vatican diplomats as generally well-informed and as influential lobbyists behind the scenes. What's amazing is that the Vatican accomplishes all this with a relatively tiny diplomatic corps -- a few hundred bishops and priests who were hand-picked and trained at a little-known diplomatic academy in downtown Rome.

The academy has only 30 or so priest-students, who spend years studying papal diplomacy, diplomatic style, diplomatic history and international law. By the time they graduate, they are expected to be fluent in four languages.

Most of the graduates go on to serve at lower-level positions at a Vatican nunciature, or embassy, and are rotated to new posts after a few years. Some may be brought back for a turn at the "Second Section" of the Vatican Secretariat of State, a kind of international nerve-center where about 35 prelates keep tabs on the entire world.

Eventually, they may become papal nuncios, or ambassadors. The nuncio's job differs from that of a normal ambassador in several respects, however. For one thing, a nuncio acts not only as the pope's representative to a foreign government, but as the pope's liaison with the local Catholic population. Much of his time, therefore, is spent dealing with internal church affairs.

In a broader sense, unlike other ambassadors, the papal nuncio is promoting a moral agenda, not the commercial or political interests of his government. A primary focus of papal diplomats in recent decades has been human rights, peaceful resolution of conflicts and protection of core social values. Those concerns show up repeatedly in the WikiLeaks cables.

In Rome, the Vatican also communicates with U.S. diplomats through various agencies of the Roman Curia, in particular the pontifical councils that deal with justice and peace, migration, health care, charity work and the family. Embassy officials seek out experts who work at these councils for briefings on the Vatican's position and -- as one can now read in detail -- report it all back to the U.S. State Department.

Vatican officials, of course, also are reading the WikiLeaks cables with interest. So far they seem unsurprised at the content. Much of the U.S. Embassy's effort seems geared toward enlarging areas of U.S.-Vatican cooperation, which has never been a secret objective. The cables show the Vatican as open on some issues, such as human trafficking, but clearly wary of becoming too closely identified with the policies and initiatives of the world's biggest superpower.

Occasionally, there are frank assessments of differences, as in a U.S. Embassy memo from July 2001, which forecast continued problems with the Vatican over Israel, the death penalty and Iraq.

"The Vatican will continue to oppose U.S. efforts to isolate Saddam Hussein. We should recognize that the Vatican will not support our efforts in Iraq, and investigate ways to limit Vatican interference with our objectives," the cable said tersely.

The WikiLeaks cables often reveal U.S. diplomats as trying very hard to figure out the Vatican, as they deal with an institution that is both a sovereign state and the center of a global religion. One "confidential" cable boiled it down to the simplest terms: "The Vatican strives to translate its religious beliefs and its humanitarian concerns into concrete policies."

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