Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume II, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs

180. Memorandum From the Global Issues Cluster of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski)¹

Washington, January 29, 1979

SUBJECT

• Evening Report

[Omitted here is information unrelated to human rights.]

Human Rights Country Reports. Over the weekend and this morning, we finished up all 115 country reports. On the whole I’d say (recognizing the inherent difficulties of this public, sensitive kind of reporting) that the quality is very good.² Certainly much better than the two previous years. There are striking inconsistencies between reports which derive from three main sources: very different amounts of access and knowledge; political importance of the country to the U.S.; and personal interest in a particular country (positive or negative) by a powerful individual somewhere in the process. In the most difficult cases, the problems between competing interests were solved by balancing every negative statement with a positive statement, resulting, particularly in the East Asian reports (Korea, Philippines and Indonesia) in extraordinary length. In the Korean case for example, the report goes into ridiculous detail about Korean educational, welfare and health programs (down to numbers of people covered), blowing the ROK’s horn, in order to balance everything HA wanted in. Some of the Latin American reports are also unbalanced—reflecting greater personal interest than exists say for African countries. Nevertheless, the process is clearly maturing, and we can be satisfied that a balanced serious effort was made to produce honest reports without trodding on sensitive toes in other capitals.

[Omitted here is information unrelated to human rights.]

1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, Global Issues—Oplinger/Bloomfield Subject File, Box 37, Evening Reports: 1–3/79. Secret.
2. In the NSC Global Issues Cluster’s January 24 evening report, Tuchman Mathews commented, “NSC staff have now reviewed about 70 of the 114 country reports. They are much improved over last year’s.” (Ibid.)