Argentina: Undeclared weapons and drugs found on US military plane
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[Translation of an article from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for February 13. See original article here and related article here.]
By Horacio Verbitsky
The federal government has blocked the entry of secret “sensitive cargo” that arrived at the Ezeiza international airport aboard a United States air force flight with no satisfactory explanation of what it would be used for.
The expression “sensitive cargo” was used last Monday by [United States] embassy management counselor Dorothy Sarro when she requested authorization to have a truck with an attached trailer enter the operations area. The enormous C17, a Boeing Globemaster III cargo plane, larger than the well known Hercules, arrived on Thursday afternoon with an arsenal of powerful weapons aboard for a course on management of crisis and hostage taking offered by the United States government to the federal police Grupo de Operaciones Especiales Federal (GEOF – Federal Special Operations Group), which was to be held through the entire months of February and March. The government estimates that the total cost for transportation and for conducting the course approaches two million dollars. The course was authorized by the Argentine govnernment, but when personnel checked the content of the cargo against a list submitted beforehand, machine gun and rifle barrels and a strange suitcase were discovered which had not been included on the manifest.
Although the course was intended for Argentine police forces, the cargo arrived aboard a military transport plane and when it arrived at Ezeiza it was met by the [US embassy] military and defense attachés, Colonels Edwin Passmore and Mark Alcott. All the crates bore the seal of the army Seventh Airborne Brigade, with headquarters in North Carolina. After stops in Panama and Lima, they had attempted to pass 1,000 cubic feet of material, the equivalent of one third of the cargo on the plane, in a clandestine manner.
Twelve military experts
The note that Ambassador Vilma Martínez sent in November to Justice Minister Julio Alak, who at that time was also in charge of security, pointed out that the first phase of training for GEOF on hostage rescue had taken place in April, “after which we were asked to conduct another more advanced one.” In another note, sent on December 21 to Security Minister Nilda Garré, who had assumed the position five months earlier, Vilma Martínez informed her that Alak had approved the course and that twelve “United States military experts” would arrive to conduct it.
Similar courses were held in 1997 and 1999, during the administration of Carlos Menem, and in 2002, during the months in which former senator Eduardo Duhalde occupied the presidency as an interim position. There were none during the administration of Néstor Kirchner but they were resumed in 2009, under the current government. The new course, to last five weeks, was planned for August, 2010, but had to be delayed because of an episode similar to this one. At that time, it was Ambassador Vilma Martínez who refused to accept the shipment because the numbers on the weapons did not coincide with those on the manifest, which shows the conflicts this practice generates within the United States government itself. “This is a shame,” Martínez said at the time, before returning the shipment to North Carolina. By order of President CFK [Cristina Fernández de Kirchner], officials of the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministries of Planning and Security, the AFIP [Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos – Federal Public Revenue Administration] and Customs supervised the procedure. Technicians from the Ministries of Health and the Interior were added later.
The boys on the suitcase
In her book, now a classic, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military, published in 2003, Washington Post journalist Dana Priest described the dramatic domination of the Pentagon in forming and executing United States foreign policy. The more than one thousand personnel of the Southern Command is more than the combined total of Latin American specialists in the departments of State, Defense, Agriculture, Commerce and the Treasury. This imbalance has never stopped growing and the United States tries to export it to the countries under its influence, which includes almost all of them.
Since it was already nightfall on Thursday, [President] Cristina [Fernández de Kirchner] ordered the suitcase sealed and took up the effort again the next day, for which she arranged for the Foreign Office and the Ministry of the Interior to send in technical personnel trained to understand the matter. For six hours on Friday, several United States soldiers took turns sitting on the suitcase, which suggests the importance attributed to the contents. The United States officials said it contained software and sensitive security material. A colonel said it should not be opened outdoors because secrets could be exposed to the satelites flying overhead at that time. The plane also held a box of assorted merchandise to give to the Argentine police officers, including caps, jackets and other trinkets.
Foreign minister Héctor Timerman, together with Secretary of Transportation Juan Pablo Achiavi spent almost the whole day at the airport in response to presidential instructions, as did personnel from the Airport Security Police, Customs and the AFIP and the heads of the bureaus of Information, Technology and Security and Systems of the Ministry of the Interior…
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The embassy withdrew its ranking personnel from the airport and denied permission to open the suitcase. After a full day of give and take, Timerman said he would use his legal authority to open it. He was accompanied by Patricia Adrianna Rodríguez Muiños, a high official in the receiving section of the federal police to whom the shipment was addressed. After confirming the official decision to proceed, and after the final period of one hour set by Timerman had lapsed, the ambassador asked for a ten-minute delay to wait for the arrival at Ezeiza of press secretary Shannon Bell Farrell. She and attaché Stephen Knute Kleppe said they did not have a key for the lock, whereupon Timerman instructed customs to force it open with pliers. When that was done on Friday afternoon, they found transmitting equipment, military backpacks, medications, which, according to officials, were past their expiration dates, pen drives, the content of which experts would determine, and nervous system stupefacient and narcotic drugs. Among the equipment were three communications encrypting devices.
Inside the secret suitcase there was also a top secret green fabric pouch. Since the embassy personnel said they did not have a key for the pouch, it was also opened by force. Inside it were found two pen drives labeled “secret,” an I2 software key and a hard drive, also labelled “secret.” Encrypted communications codes and an amusing pamphlet translated into 15 languages, with the text, “I am a United States soldier. Please inform my embassy that I have been arrested in your country.” None of these materials coincided with the list the embassy sent to the foreign office for use in the course on rescuing hostages. After witnessing these discoveries, embassy officials decided to leave, despite the official request to stay, and they did not sign a statement.
On Thursday, Colonel Alcott said he did not know of anyting similar having happened anywhere else in the world. The weapons and the undeclared suitcase were confiscated and tomorrow, February 14, inspection of its contents will continue. The antibiotics, antihistamines, vitamin complexes, sun screen and hormones found will be checked against the information on their labels. The government wants to verify whether the medications are those identified on the labels and whether they have in fact expired. The rest of the material, which matches the manifest, was transported to the mounted police station on Cavia Street.
At press time, sources in the embassy say that a document is being prepared in Washington with the official position and that they expect that the training will be cancelled. The State Department met with Argentine ambassador Alfredo Chiaradía and expressed “surprise” at the events, since “the United States wishes to maintain friendly relations with Argentina.” A funny way of doing it. Any Argentine, civilian or military, who tried to introduce undeclared weapons and drugs into the United States would be taken prisoner immediately.
Tags: Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Hector Timerman, military plane, police training, undeclared cargo, United States, US embassy