State Department, CIA deny reports of infighting over Chile documents

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency are cooperating in the declassification of documents on military repression in Chile, the State Department said on Monday, implicitly denying the two agencies are at odds over which documents to release.

The need to protect intelligence sources and methods is a factor in the process, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told his daily briefing.

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Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who visited Chile last week, called CIA director George Tenet about the declassification programme on Monday morning, Boucher said.

"They're working together on this project to try to get the maximum possible release of documents consistent with the need to protect sources and methods," he added.

The New York Times, on the basis of public comments and written material, reported on Sunday that Albright and Tenet disagreed over which documents to release.

In Chile, Albright promised the United States would release as many as possible of the documents, which refer to human rights abuses in Chile and U.S. relations with the military regime of former President Augusto Pinochet.

Tenet recently told members of Congress that he had decided to withhold some documents because they would give too much information about how the CIA operates.

Boucher said the National Security Council was coordinating an inter-agency process to decide which documents to release. The aim is to release about 11,000 documents by the middle of September, Albright said last week in Santiago.

A U.S. official said on Monday the number of CIA documents about which a decision had not yet been made was "about 20" -- a tiny fraction of the total.

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Central Intelligence Agency
La Presidencia de la Nacion Argentina (Spanish)
Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Spanish)
Human Rights Watch, 1999 Report on Argentina
U.S. State Department
  •  1999 Argentina Human Rights Report

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