The last dictator, Gen. Reynaldo Bignone, had most documents related to the Dirty War burned in 1983.

This is also why no one knows with any degree of certainly how many 'disappeared' there were exactly.

The closest we have to a credible, official figure is a July 1978 cable to Chilean intelligence in which the Videla regime admitted to 22,000 such murders in Argentina alone.

The date is significant, as there's consensus among historians that the Dirty War had largely wrapped by then (thanks in no small part to pressure from the Carter administration).

Nor has the recent round of declassified CIA and U.S. Embassy document handovers answered many of the big questions related to that era.

Some questions will no doubt never be answered - not with any exactitude (beyond what is already common knowledge).

Thanks as always for keeping up with these news, Judi.

Have wondered for years why it is the government has never acknowledged murdering tens of thousands of human beings.

Just went to look for a photo of him so I could more properly revile him mentally, and was startled to see I recognized his face instantly, as I looked for it before, when he was on trial for war crimes, belatedly, of course, during Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's Presidency, as no one prior to The Kirchners would have considered allowing this dictator to go to trial. Isn't it creepy fascists always arrange things before resigning so no one can find them responsible for their crimes, in most places? Horrible.





So glad to see your comment about the pressure President Jimmy Carter applied to the dictatorship, especially with the knowledge that Henry Kissinger had been a constant supporter when Republicans were in power here.

Thank you for the info.

(I did see Gen. Bignone went ahead and died, which I had forgotten if I ever knew at all. He did enough damage for more than one lifetime, clearly.)