‘Tex’ Harris U S Envoy Who Exposed Argentina’s ‘Dirty War ’ Dies By Ryan Dube February 28 2020 F Allen “Tex” Harris the U S diplomat who exposed hundreds of killings and kidnappings by Argentina’s military dictatorship during the “Dirty War” in the 1970s has died at 81 years old On Thursday the American Foreign Service Association where Mr Harris was a past president confirmed his Sunday death but didn’t provide a cause The group of current and retired diplomats called him “one of the most consequential individuals in the history of the association ” Mr Harris a garrulous Texan who stood 6 foot 7 inches was stationed at the U S Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1977 a year after a right-wing military junta overthrew President Isabel Perón and began “disappearing” civilian activists and left-wing guerrillas The National Security Archive 2130 H Street NW Suite 701 Washington DC 20037 www nsarchive org 1 4 The junta tortured people its secret police had detained and tossed the drugged prisoners into the South Atlantic from aircraft or killed and buried them in unmarked graves At least 14 000 people were killed during military rule from 1976 to 1983 according to human-rights groups and the democratic governments that later ruled Argentina Though President Ford’s administration showed openness to the regime seeing the junta as a Cold War ally his successor President Carter made human rights a foreign-policy priority The Carter administration sent Mr Harris—an all-state basketball player and Princeton graduate—on only his second overseas mission and put him in charge of the U S Embassy’s human rights office in Buenos Aires Mr Harris has said he took the job on the condition that the embassy would open its doors to Argentines for a couple of hours every day so he could conduct interviews with the family members of victims Hundreds lined up at the embassy after Mr Harris gave his business card to activists protesting at the Plaza de Mayo by the presidential palace where Gen Jorge Rafael Videla headed the military junta Mr Harris and his assistant documented cases on index cards They created bar charts on the number of weekly disappearances that contradicted the Argentine military’s assertions that the abuses had stopped following U S pressure Mr Harris’s work helped pressure Argentina’s military dictatorship to halt its murders Photo Joaquin Sosa AFSA 2 4 The work was the first to record the scale of the crimes said Carlos Osorio an Argentine expert at the National Security Archives a group at George Washington University that works to declassify secret U S documents Mr Harris created a database of some 9 000 disappeared people while producing reports on the atrocities that were later used to convict dozens of high-ranking Argentine military officials “His legacy is incredible ” said Mr Osorio “He helped guide the U S policy and diplomatic machine to force the dictatorship to stop the massacres ” Reports he sent to Washington were central to changing the U S ’s perception that the military wasn’t just targeting leftist guerrillas but carrying out a well-orchestrated plan to kill thousands of civilian activists say rights activists He also helped some Argentines pressure the regime to release imprisoned civilians “We began to develop a very clear picture of who was being targeted and they were not terrorists ” Mr Harris told The Wall Street Journal in a 2016 interview from his home in Virginia He said most were simply leftist activists “who if you sent them a postcard telling them to come to the police station they would have come ” Mr Harris said his hunch about the killing of civilians became apparent when 17 members of a Catholic church including a leftist Spanish priest disappeared after conducting community outreach “That was the big eye opener ” he said in the 2016 interview “The military’s vision was that in order to kill a cancer which was terrorism you had to cut out the surrounding tissue and that surrounding tissue was all of these left-wing groups It was a model against ideology and politics and that was really frightening ” Mr Harris’s work came with risks to him and his family There were threats to kidnap his family according to a former colleague at the State Department His son Clark Harris recounted how his father was pulled over by security personnel driving green Ford Falcons the vehicle used by death squads Mr Harris kept his hands up as they approached with guns drawn “The guys said something like ‘You’re going too fast you need to be careful ’ Clearly it wasn’t about his driving it was a threat ” the younger Mr Harris said Mr Harris’s work proved costly for Argentina’s military as the Carter administration cut economic ties It also provoked a pushback from some U S officials amid concerns that the focus on human rights was undermining U S exports and jobs 3 4 Mr Harris and his wife Jeanie in Buenos Aires in 1977 Photo Family of Tex Harris In 1978 Mr Harris was sitting in his windowless office eating a sandwich when he realized that a multimillion-dollar U S government loan to be used to build a turbine factory in Argentina would benefit a company owned by the Argentine navy which tortured and killed activists He wrote a letter to Washington advising them of the navy’s ownership of the company but embassy superiors removed it from a diplomatic pouch bound for the U S he wrote in a 2003 article on U S and Argentine relations published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington He convinced a clerk to reinsert the letter into the pouch and it was mailed The deal was scuttled after congressional hearings “Not only was he a point of contact at the U S Embassy during some of the darkest times but also had to make such extraordinary efforts to circumvent the bureaucracy to get information about human rights up to Washington ” said Cynthia Arnson director of the Latin American Program for the Woodrow Wilson Center Mr Harris who left Argentina in 1979 and transferred to South Africa where he helped fight the AIDS epidemic later received the State Department’s highest award Argentina’s government gave him the Order of San Martin the country’s highest civilian honor “Argentina was very tough ” he said “We just processed people for information and at the end of the day we would say what did we learn ” 4 4