Kenneth Maxwell - "The Case of The Missing Letter"

"The Case of The Missing Letter"

Maxwell wrote a review in Foreign Affairs' November/December 2003 of Peter Kornbluh's book The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. The review was written in his capacity as a scholar, independently of his role as an employee of the Council. Maxwell's review was, in part, critical of Henry Kissinger's relationship with the regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Maxwell claims that key Council on Foreign Relations acting at Kissinger's behest put pressure on Foreign Affairs editor, James Hoge, to give the last word in a subsequent exchange about the review to William D. Rogers, a close associate of Kissinger's, rather than to Maxwell; this went against established Foreign Affairs policy.

The core subject matter of the abruptly terminated exchange was Operation Condor: the campaign of assassination and intelligence-gathering conducted jointly by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the mid-1970s. Discussion turned particularly on the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, DC.

Maxwell had long been something of a public figure before what he refers to as "The Case of the Missing Letter... a Nixonian drama in four acts: preemption, suppression, and cover-up followed by denial", brought him to far wider attention. Maxwell's review in Foreign Affairs' November/December 2003 of Kornbluh's The Pinochet File occasioned a letter to Foreign Affairs from Rogers; that letter and Maxwell's reply were published in the January/February 2004 issue. Maxwell characterizes Rogers' letter as a "counter review", and claims to have evidence that much of it had circulated previously to Maxwell's own review in Foreign Affairs, and that allusions to Maxwell's review were simply pasted in so that it would appear more relevant.

Rogers wrote again, accusing Maxwell of "bias". This letter was published in the March/April 2004 issue. Contrary to all precedent a Foreign Affairs, Maxwell was not given the right to reply. He claims that "serious misrepresentations of historical fact and ad hominem accusations of bias" were thus allowed "to stand unchallenged" and that "This converted a controversy over the historical record into a suppression of free debate."

The matter has had little further discussion in Foreign Affairs; the September/October 2004 issue contains a letter of protest signed by Harvard Professor John Coatsworth and ten other scholars of Latin America, all members of the Council on Foreign Relations; it also contains a reply from James Hoge. Characterizing Maxwell's original review as "balanced and thoughtful", they describe themselves as "dismayed by the tone and the content" of Rogers' letters and "appalled by the journal’s decision not to publish a response by Maxwell". Their original letter ended with the sentence, "We urge you to find an appropriate way to repair this lapse before it becomes a permanent stain on the reputation of Foreign Affairs". The magazine did not see fit to include this sentence and, in what Maxwell claims was another unprecedented decision, the "Letters to the Editor" section of the September/October 2004 issue has not been posted in the magazine’s online edition.

Hoge has publicly denied that any of this was due to direct or indirect pressure from Kissinger, Rogers, or their associates. Maxwell's paper "The Case of the Missing Letter..." lays out extensive evidence to that it was, indeed, due to such pressure. He cites Peter G. Peterson, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, as confirming in an interview for Chronicle of Higher Education that he communicated Kissinger's anger to Hoge. Further pressure may have been put by Maurice ("Hank") Greenberg, vice chairman emeritus of the Council's board. Maxwell sent emails in December 2004 mentioning pressure from Greenberg; this was before he was aware of Hoge's intent to give Rogers the last word. Peterson and Greenberg were both major donors to the Council; between them they were directly or indirectly responsible for $34 million in donations. Both had helped endow Hoge's chair.

All parties agree that Kissinger did not express his displeasure directly to Hoge; in fact, Maxwell quotes Hoge as saying in January 2004, "Henry will not speak to me or shake my hand," but that he was "called and 'sworn at for half an hour' by Greenberg".

After the Rogers letter was published without Maxwell being given the right of reply, Maxwell stayed several months in his job working for the Council, continuing a lengthy exchange with Hoge, hoping to be allowed a belated reply in Foreign Affairs, and arranging a new job at Harvard. His letter of resignation read, in part, "I have no personal ax to grind in this matter, but I do have a historian's obligation to the accuracy of the historical record. The Council's current relationship with Mr. Kissinger evidently comes at the cost of suppressing debate about his actions as a public figure. This I want no part of."