862.20210/1982
Memorandum by the Assistant Chief of the Division of the American Republics (Chapin) to the Chief of the Division (Bonsal)
Mr. Bonsal: I have discussed BA’s Airgram A–26 [276], October 15, 3:15 p.m. with Mr. Lyon58 of FC. As the situation stands, the Embassy in Buenos Aires has been authorized, as you recall, to prepare a memorandum for presentation to the Argentine Government, after first clearing the text with us. Not only are Santiago and Rio sending such supplementary data on subversive activities as may hook up with those in the Argentine, but a very comprehensive memorandum prepared by the F. B. I.59 was sent down by courier yesterday to the Embassy in Buenos Aires. This memorandum was produced at the last moment just in time to get the outgoing mail and at FC’s request I initialed the instruction without reading the enclosure, with the promise that they will make a photostat available to us later on.
The question of releasing the material to the Argentine Government seems primarily a political one, as the Germans undoubtedly know that we have a good deal of this material and they have probably already discounted it in advance. I fear the Embassy is over-sanguine in its belief that German espionage operations might be completely disrupted for six months. In any case, I have told him that any general publicity should of course be postponed until we see whether the Argentine Government is going to act on the information tendered to it.