The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

68 MAY 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL applauded the junta for the anticommunist stability it pur- ported to represent, but the embassy soon learned of wide- spread, systematic efforts to stifle dissent through kidnappings, torture and killings. In October 1977, shortly after Tex arrived in Buenos Aires, the political counselor asked him to pursue what was then a brand- new facet of diplomatic tradecraft: human rights reporting. Tex readily agreed—on the condition that the embassy relax its long-standing restrictions on entry by private Argentines, so that he could interview anyone who wanted to discuss the disappear- ance (and presumed death) of a relative, friend or colleague. Tex then printed up business cards and went to Buenos Aires’ central square to hand them out. He worked closely with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the renowned advocates for “los desaparecidos,” and invited its members to visit him at the embassy. “What I did in Argentina was to open the doors and, for the first time, to talk to the people,” Tex told Bill Moyers in a 1984 “Frontline” interview on PBS. As he explained, “This was not an ad hoc, spur-of-the-moment vigilante group, but a concerted program of the military government to eliminate entire groups of people that they deemed to be subversives in their society. There were thousands of people who disappeared without a trace, without a murmur, just a picture on their mother’s dresser.” Within a few weeks, scores of Argentines were flooding into the embassy daily to report missing loved ones. Tex singlehandedly docu- mented the disappearances of 15,000 people, even as the United States was still character- izing the phenomenon as a mysterious by- product of the right-wing militias’ struggle with left-wing terrorists. In truth, as the stacks of notecards Tex compiled would prove, Argenti- na’s military leaders had what he called “a clear intention to exterminate” anyone who opposed them. Even children and babies were seized from parents deemed to be dissidents. At first, U.S. Ambassador Raul Castro and the entire embassy staff applauded Tex’s detailed reporting. And President Jimmy Carter’s admin- istration began signaling its growing disapproval of the junta—one of the first cases of a U.S. presi- dent basing critical diplomatic decisions on how a foreign government treated its own citizens. But as bilateral relations chilled, Tex came under increasing pressure, both from the front office and the Argentine government, to stop dwelling on the thousands of victims and put a positive spin on developments. Instead, he went public, regularly appearing with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo at their demonstrations against the regime. When the embassy stopped transmitting his cables, Tex used airgrams, memoranda of conversation and formal-informal let- ters—none of which required front office clearance—to convey his findings and recommendations to State via classified pouch. One of his reports resulted in the cancellation of a U.S. government loan guarantee worth hundreds of millions of dollars to an American corporation that was to supply turbine manufacturing technology to a front corporation owned by the Argentine Navy—which was carrying out much of the torture and killing. (Embassy Buenos Aires had not previously reported that affiliation to Washington.) His courageous role during that period has been profiled on TV, in print, online and in AFSA’s 2003 edition of Inside a U.S. Embassy , and has been cited by AFSA and others as a prime example of what professional diplomacy can accomplish in the face of internal opposition. Tex knew that his performance evaluations would suffer as AFSA President Eric Rubin (left) presents F. Allen “Tex” Harris with the AFSA Achievement and Contributions to the Association Award at the AFSA Awards Ceremony on Oct. 16, 2019. AFSA/JOAQUINSOSA