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On June 24, 1994 I warned in the Washington Times that under President Carlos Menem--a Henry Kissinger client and State Department bridge to the heinous Syrian dictatorship that protected Nazi-era war criminals--Argentina had become "a way station for Middle East terrorists and arms merchants and a growing transit point for the shipment of narcotics to the United States and Europe."On July 18 the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) was blown up, killing at least 85 innocents and wounding hundreds more in the worst-ever terrorist attack against Jews outside of Israel since the Holocaust.Two days later an editorial in the Miami Herald took note of my warning, adding: "Once rooted in Argentine soil, some of them may have decided that it's easier to strike at Israel in Buenos Aires than in Tel Aviv."In the next few months, I went on to write three detailed follow-up Op-Eds in the Washington Times. They focused on the rampant lawlessness of a government that had been officially declared an "extra-NATO" ally of the United States. In "Argentina's terrorist connection" (8-1-94) I pointed out that "the loquacious Argentine's (Menem's) tight-lipped demeanor after the most recent bombing ... may be reflective of growing suspicion in Buenos Aires and abroad that someone protected by his government may have helped the Iranian (or Syrian, or Libyan) madmen.""A new security force rises from the ashes in Argentina" ( 8-22-94), I noted that Menem's ambassador "told a congressional subcommittee in Washington that Mr. Menem now proposes to jointly co-sponsor with President Clinton a forum on international terrorism at a December summit of presidents from around the hemisphere." This despite the fact the envoy himself "was a key contact between Mr. Menem--whose secret ties to fundamentalist army leaders date back more than a decade--and a Painted Faces chief known for rallying his troops with the cry, 'Remember boys, there are no such things as green horses or honorable Jews.'"The third, "Another strange twist in the Argentine bombing case" (9-9-94), noted that "a heavy dollop of the bizarre was added to the sense of helplessness and terror ... with the revelation that Rodolfo Galimberti, a former leader of the Montonero guerrilla organization with long-time ties to Arab terrorists, was working for the state intelligence agency (SIDE). ... Following a 1976 military coup, Mr. Galimberti ... trained with several anti-Israel terrorist groups in Lebanon."Finally, 25 years later, knowing of my longstanding interest in the AMIA bombing and that against the Israel embassy in Buenos Aires two years before, a Department of Defense official made a claim that seemed to make ripe Eric Bana returning to star in "Munich 2": "Those folks from the '92/'94 bombings -- they (at least the '92 group) were 'outfitted and passed thru' enroute to their targets and were passed back through on their E&E; pursued, trapped in and around Peru and 'disappeared' -- at least one group."It should be noted that, under Menem, the Argentine "dirty war" generals who had been given a "green light" by Kissinger and who later were convicted in the historic "mini-Nuremberg" 1985 trial in a civilian court, were amnestied, as was an ersatz leftwing Montonero guerrilla who actually worked for the Argentine army 601 intelligence battalion. (According to Robert Scherrer, the FBI legal attache, Mario Firmenich worked directly for General Alberto Valin, who went on to secretly organize the Nicaraguan Contras for the Reagan Administration.")Also under Menem, significant progress made under his predecessor Raul Alfonsin's government to reform what was a neo-Nazi and extortive kidnapping hotbed called the Federal Police was totally undone. Menem claimed that the late death-squad organizer and former Federal Police chief Alberto Villar was the law enforcement model the country should embrace.
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