Pioneering diplomat opened US Embassy to relatives of victims of Argentine dictatorship
Harris created the first centralized record of the thousands of disappearances in Argentina
As first human rights officer at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, he pushed Carter administration to pressure the dictatorship to stop the atrocities
Washington, D.C., March 10, 2020 - Franklin Allen “Tex” Harris , the former political officer who took charge of reporting on human rights at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina between 1977 and 1979 and was the first official to document the disappearance of thousands of Argentine citizens during the military dictatorship, passed away on February 23, 2020. He was 81 years old.
At the height of the military’s repression following the March 1976 coup, Harris assumed the role of the U.S. embassy’s human rights official, systematically recording names, dates and the nature of the atrocities that cost the lives of thousands of victims. He used the detailed information he accumulated on both the victims and the perpetrators of human rights crimes to convince his superiors at the embassy, and in the State Department to step up pressure on the junta to curtail their ongoing human rights violations.
“I have had three goals--to know what is going on, to be responsive; and to report accurately,” as Harris described his unique role as the first human rights desk officer. “The content and timing of the Embassy human rights reports are of immediate policy consequence. Therefore, my reporting has been forged with hammer and anvil,” he wrote in an “Officer Evaluation Report” posted today by the National Security Archive, along with other declassified records generated by Harris during his tenure in Argentina.
Indeed, during his service in Buenos Aires, Harris left a legacy of defending human rights, and holding human rights violators accountable for their actions. Among the tireless efforts for which Harris will be remembered:
“Tex’s work was the equivalent of a first truth commission in Argentina,” notes Carlos Osorio, who directs the Southern Cone Documentation Project at the Archive, and worked closely with Harris to push for the declassification of documents on the “dirty war” waged by the military regime. Osorio described Harris as “a hero in the cause of human rights. He was a great supporter of declassification to document human rights trials and investigations in Argentina and the region.”
“We met him right after he served as advisor to the Department of State Argentina Declassification Project that released 4,700 records in 2002,” Osorio recalls. “Over the years he worked with us to guide the National Security Archive’s Southern Cone Documentation Project with analysis on the declassified records and with ideas to file FOIA requests based on his readings of gaps in the information released.”
In 2015, Harris collaborated with the Archive to assist the Argentine government in drafting a request for U.S. intelligence records related to human rights violations during the military dictatorship. Four years later, at the formal declassification ceremony of more than 7000 detailed documents, Osorio recognized Harris’s pioneering contribution to the cause of justice and accountability for human rights violations in Argentina.
In his own evaluation of his duties as the first institutional advocate of human rights at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, Harris noted the resistance to such advocacy--not only from the Argentine military regime but also within a U.S. national security bureaucracy that had yet to accept human rights as a leading priority of U.S. foreign policy. “This job is the most difficult and most challenging I have held,” he reported. “It is a key position within an Embassy which has grave reservations about the implementation of the human rights policy that has become a central focus of our bilateral relations here.”
Despite what he characterized as “daily clashes” over addressing human rights violations in Argentina, Harris proudly noted that “the Country Team listed as a major achievement for last year that the Embassy has become a ‘beacon of hope’ of human rights in Argentina; and, for the guy who puts the oil in the beacon, that is progress.”
The National Security Archive mourns the passing of our friend and partner, Tex Harris, and celebrates his life and achievements. We express our condolences and our heartfelt appreciation to his wife, Jeanie Roeder Harris, and family.
Document 01
Patricia Derian Papers, Rubenstein Library, Duke University.
The Department of State issued a detailed evaluation of Harris's work in Argentina between 1977 and 1978. The document summarizes the importance of Harris's efforts, as well as allowed him to describe his own role on human rights and why it was important. "Mr. Harris is assigned responsibility for human rights reporting, case work and policy recommendations and interpretation. He receives all correspondence and visitors on human rights subject...[including] visits of many distraught Argentine families who have lost members to the government's counter-terrorism activity..." In a section describing the human rights challenges faced by Embassy personnel, Harris wrote: "Responsiveness is a major effort - each of the innumerable visitors to the Embassy are seen, often by shuttling back and forth between rooms like a busy dentist."
In his evaluation, Political Counselor William Haltman, stated that Harris's "performance was excellent." The evaluation describes Tex and his work as follows:
"The materials prepared on the subject of human rights violations in Argentina have had a direct and continuous bearing on the policy the United States adopts toward this country. Often a particular report was demanded on very short notice to provide data for a specific policy decision shortly to be made."
"Mr. Harris has taken on an enormous amount of 'casework' - the hearing out of innumerable tragic cases reported to the Embassy by the distraught family members of persons disappeared or otherwise caught up in tragic events. Mr Harris has counselled and consoled."
"Mr. Harris is a dynamic and persuasive talker, truly gifted in the kind of timed briefings often required in the Foreign Service."
"Mr. Harris handles people with extraordinary skill and without tiring. This is clearly his greatest ability, and it is one which has paid off handsomely. He meets people easily, impresses them indelibly, seeks them repeatedly - all the while expanding his circles of friendship and acquaintance to the point that his professional and personal contacts are enormous. He inspires confidence among most Argentines and Americans he meets, and he has great skill as a supervisor able to motivate people to work for him. He is fair and utterly without malice. He is genuinely warm and genuinely likes people, and this is reciprocated."
Document 02
U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification Project, April 2017 release.
This transcription of a taped message by a human rights officer at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina, Tex Harris, reveals his frustration that his superiors are blocking his detailed reporting on human rights violations from reaching the Department of State in Washington. "I have come to a point where I believe the Embassy ... has crossed the boundaries of professional responsibility and is now limiting and delaying information to Washington to affect policy decisions." The report reflects the degree to which Harris confronted not only the repression of the Argentine regime, but also the recalcitrance of his own colleagues to elevate human rights to a diplomatic priority in U.S. foreign policy.
In the taped message, Harris offers detailed information on horrific atrocities that he argues needs to be understood in Washington:
"I have done a number of cables which tied in reported events to targeting by the Argentine security forces of individuals for intellectual subversion. This has been taken out of all of messages going out. Just this week one of our military attaché had one of his reports turned back by the front office in which one of his military contacts in the Argentine Air Force described the government's efforts at weeding out Marxists and subversives..."
"The Chakareita [Chacarita] cemetery story which you heard from [unintelligible] has also been surfaced around in the French Embassy. The French are convinced that among that group were there [sic] nuns. One police sergeant who evidently stumbled across the truck bringing the cadavers to... [a] field outside of, on the outskirts of greater Buenos Aires. Local people did not know that they existed until an armed helicopter came down and finger printed them. Another story is between 36 and 40 women who were washed ashore Amandayaho [sic] which is near a beach resort area 200 miles from Buenos Aires down the river. "
"This later appearance with information that we developed, but again [were] unable to report, from the Argentine police official who bragged to one of our Embassy officers regarding the Argentine method for disposing of bodies. This is [sic] now according to the source been centralized in an operation in [sic] for all actions occurring within the first corp[s]. People after they have been interrogated or are deemed no longer of use and a decision has been made at a senior level they should be executed [sic]. The people are then being told that they are being transferred to Corrientes Province and must receive an injection before they go for health reasons. The people gracefully submit to the injection which contains curia which is a derivative of the poison used by Amazon natives in their blow guns. Evidently it has the effect of contracting the muscles. By receiving the dose the people very shortly there after [sic] die and one of the effects of the poison is to contract their lungs. They are then placed in planes which take off at the [Campo] de Mayo airfield and are dropped in the mouth of the river where they sink and are quickly devoured by the fish..."
Document 03
FBI Argentina Declassification Project, April 2019 release.
Two months after arriving in Buenos Aires in August 1977, Embassy political officer Franklyn Allen (Tex) Harris launches an aggressive research effort to inform the Department of State of the scale of human rights violations in Argentina. Over the next two years, Harris' human rights office would report on thousands of victims, as well as on the structure of the repressive apparatus and the perpetrators. In one of his first memos to the people knowledgeable about the military and secret police intelligence, Harris asks the Military Group, the Defense Attaché, the FBI Legal Attaché, the Political Officer in charge of intelligence and the Embassy's security officer SY for information on Argentine officials in charge of secret detention centers: "The following are among the officers of the First Army Corps located in Palermo with responsibilities for PEN detainees and missing persons: Lt. Col. Roarte, Lt. Col. Gatica, and Padre Monson, Chaplain of the First Army Corps. Does anyone know or have any information on these persons?"
Document 04
U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification Project, August 2002 release.
Reporting on several human rights issues to his colleagues at the Department of State, U.S. Embassy Human Rights officer Tex Harris writes that in addition to the PEN [legally acknowledged National Executive Power] prisoners, "One of the jargon breakthroughs we have made recently concerns the DAMs - Personas bajo disposicion autoridad militar. This is the argot for the disappeared but alive non recognized prisoners...." Harris identifies a new prison and suggests that intelligence reports estimate that it could hold up to 1000 "non recognized" prisoners. The problem, he writes, "is that very few people are released from the detention centers which are "outside the law."
Document 05
U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification Project, August 2002 release.
The U.S. Embassy officer in charge of human rights, F. Allen "Tex" Harris, writes a report on the number of disappeared in Argentina. The Argentine Ministry of the Interior statistics passed to the Embassy show the numbers of disappeared declining from 2500 in 1976 to 800 in 1978. The overall numbers of disappeared tallied by the Ministry is 4,780 for the period. In several other reports, Harris estimates that the official figures, including the more than 9,000 names of disappeared compiled by the human rights office at the Embassy, are but a fraction of the actual total of disappeared people. In this memo, Harris opens his report, stating, "Disappearance numbers... a senior army official had informed the [Catholic] Nuncio that the armed services had been forced to 'take care of' 15,000 persons in its anti-subversion campaign."
Document 06
NARA Argentina Declassification Project, April 2019 release.
Tex Harris writes a letter to an editor of the CIA Latin America Brief challenging the agency's view that head of the military junta General Rafael Videla is a "good guy." "What concerns me is that the article is reflective of the intelligence community's current assessment of Argentina," he argues.
"The characterization of Videla as a 'good guy' in comparison with the hardline nationalists in the military is a common theme in any discussions of current Argentine affairs. However, it is important to hold this theme under tight rein. There is no information in the record which shows that Videla is personally comfortable with our human rights policy, nor information that he has done anything more than try to find the minimal human rights concessions to buy off US concern. Videla's peace by Christmas promise made in the U.S. late last year resulted in the naming of the executive detainees and the removal from PEN status of 350 prisoners. Videla, himself, has not to our knowledge taken a personal initiative in the human rights area. He has in fact repeatedly said it was necessary to prosecute those guilty of putting forth 'bad ideas'."
"The fact that there are worse guys within the Argentine military who want a full-scale effort against all Marxists (e.g. the PCA) does not mean that Videla because he opposes this view is trying to improve the human rights situation. Videla is perhaps better described as a low-key political pragmatist, who despite a weak and a declining power base within the military government, is trying to work out acceptable compromises between the contending forces."
Document 07
U.S. Department of State Argentina Declassification Project, August 2002 release.
In June 1979, the Embassy transmitted a lengthy set of records on human rights atrocities in Argentina--Airgram 46 with a seven-part attachment "for the Department's permanent records and use." The attachments are copies of more than 9000 index cards recording the cases of human rights violations in Argentina compiled by F. Allen (Tex) Harris and his team. Each part contains about 400 pages of cards--three cards per page. The vast majority of cards read "Disappeared" or are marked with a handwritten "D" to designate the disappearance of the victim who is described on the card.