Robert C. Hill

Robert Charles Hill (September 30, 1917 – November 28, 1978) was a United States diplomat.

Life

He was born in Littleton, New Hampshire. He attended Dartmouth College in the class of 1942. In 1947, he was staff on the Senate Banking Committee.

He served as U.S. ambassador to several Latin American countries—El Salvador, Costa Rica and Mexico—and Spain throughout his career. In 1961-1962, he was elected to the New Hampshire General Court. His last posting was in Argentina in the late 1970s, a period of great unrest in that country. He was also Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations under President Eisenhower and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs under President Nixon.

In Argentina, the five-time conservative Republican ambassadorial appointee became, after this death, best known for his strenuous efforts to keep the Argentina military junta that took power in March 1976 from engaging in massive human rights violations, as had Captain General Augusto Pinochet in neighboring Chile following the September 1973 coup in that trans-Andean republic. Upon finding out that Kissinger had given the Argentine generals a "green light" for their own so-called "dirty war" in June 1976 while at an Organization of American States meeting in Santiago (at the Hotel Carrera, a place later made famous in the chilling movie Missing), Hill immediately engaged in behind the scenes efforts to rollback the Kissinger decision. Hill did this despite the fact Kissinger aides told him that, if he continued, the Secretary of State would likely have him fired, and even as left-wing Argentine guerrillas attempted to assassinate both the U.S. envoy and members of his family living in Buenos Aires. Hill's role as ambassador to Argentina again became prominent in 2016, when President Barack Obama traveled to that country as it marked the 40th anniversary of the dirty "war" generals' supposedly bloodless coup. See Is Obama serious about declassifying 'dirty war' docs?

As an article published in The Nation in October 1987 noted: "'Hill was shaken, he became very disturbed, by the case of the son of a thirty-year embassy employee, a student who was arrested, never to be seen again,' recalled former New York Times reporter Juan de Onis. 'Hill took a personal interest.' He went to the Interior Minister, an army general with whom he had worked on drug cases, saying, 'Hey, what about this? We're interested in this case.' He buttonholed (Foreign Minister Cesar) Guzzetti and, finally, President Jorge R. Videla himself. 'All he got was stonewalling; he got nowhere.' de Onis said. 'His last year was marked by increasing disillusionment and dismay, and he backed his staff on human rights right to the hilt."

In a letter to The Nation editor Victor Navasky, protesting publication of the article, Kissinger claimed that: "At any rate, the notion of Hill as a passionate human rights advocate is news to all his former associates." In 1978, former Secretary Kissinger was feted by the "dirty war" generals as a much-touted guest of honor at the World Cup soccer matches held that year in Argentina.

Ironically, Kissinger's posthumous lampooning of Hill as human rights advocate was later shown to be false by none other than once and future Kissinger aide Henry Shlaudeman, later ambassador to Buenos Aires, who told William E. Knight, an oral historian working for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project: "It really came to a head when I was Assistant Secretary, or it began to come to a head, in the case of Argentina where the dirty war was in full flower. Bob Hill, who was Ambassador then in Buenos Aires, a very conservative Republican politician -- by no means liberal or anything of the kind, began to report quite effectively about what was going on, this slaughter of innocent civilians, supposedly innocent civilians -- this vicious war that they were conducting, underground war.

"He, at one time in fact, sent me a back-channel telegram saying that the Foreign Minister, who had just come for a visit to Washington and had returned to Buenos Aires, had gloated to him that Kissinger had said nothing to him about human rights. I don't know -- I wasn't present at the interview."

Navasky later wrote (on p. 298) in his book, A Matter of Opinion about being confronted by Kissinger, "'Tell me, Mr. Navasky,' [Kissinger] said in his famous guttural tones, 'how is it that a short article in a obscure journal such as yours about a conversation that was supposed to have taken place years ago about something that did or didn't happen in Argentina resulted in sixty people holding placards denouncing me a few months ago at the airport when I got off the plane in Copenhagen?'"

On December 1, 1945 Hill married Cecelia Gordon Bowdoin, who later became known as an accomplished mid-Atlantic tennis champion, duplicate bridge player, and an excellent horse woman. She died on Palm Sunday, April 1, 2012.

Hill's papers are held at Dartmouth College.^[1]

References

External links

• 2004 Story in The Guardian regarding Hill's disgust with human rights abuses by Argentinian generals, published by Uki Goñi but without appropriate credit 17 years after an article by Martin Edwin Andersen, "Kissinger and the 'Dirty War,'" appeared in The Nation on October 31, 1987 that broke the story about Hill fighting behind closed doors against Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's "green light" to the neo-Nazi junta for their "dirty war."
• How Much Did the US Know About the Kidnapping, Torture, and Murder of Over 20,000 People in Argentina? Now, President Obama has the chance to apologize for American complicity in the dirty war. Martin Edwin Andersen, The Nation, March 4, 2016.
• Kissinger-responds February 19, 1988 letter from Kissinger to Victor Navasky, Editor of The Nation, protesting publication of a Memorandum of Conversation between Ambassador Hill and Patricia "Patt" Derian, the senior State Department official who spearheaded President Jimmy Carter's human rights revolution in U.S. foreign policy.
• 2004 Christopher Hitchens, " Kissinger Declassified," Vanity Fair, December 2004
• David Corn, "New Memo: Kissinger Gave the 'Green Light' for Argentina's Dirty War," Mother Jones, Jan. 14, 2014
• The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project: Ambassador Harry W. Shlaudeman
• The Political Graveyard: Robert Charles Hill

United States Ambassadors to Argentina
Minister Resident	Caesar Augustus Rodney John M. Forbes Francis Baylies William Brent Jr. William Alexander Harris John Pendleton William Henry Bissell James A. Peden Mirabeau B. Lamar Benjamin C. Yancey John F. Cushman Robert M. Palmer Robert C. Kirk Alexander Asboth Henry G. Worthington Robert C. Kirk Julius White Thomas O. Osborn Bayless W. Hanna
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary	Bayless W. Hanna John R. G. Pitkin William Insco Buchanan William Paine Lord John Barrett Arthur M. Beaupre Spencer F. Eddy Charles Hitchcock Sherrill Huntington Wilson Charles Hitchcock Sherrill John Ridgely Carter John W. Garrett
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary	Frederick Jesup Stimson John W. Riddle Peter A. Jay Robert Woods Bliss Alexander W. Weddell Norman Armour Spruille Braden George S. Messersmith James Bruce Stanton Griffis Ellsworth Bunker Albert F. Nufer Willard L. Beaulac Roy R. Rubottom Jr. Robert M. McClintock Edwin M. Martin Carter L. Burgess John Davis Lodge Robert C. Hill Raúl Héctor Castro Harry W. Shlaudeman Frank V. Ortiz Jr. Theodore E. Gildred Terence Todman James Richard Cheek Ronald D. Godard Manuel Rocha Hassan Nemazee James Donald Walsh Lino Gutierrez Earl Anthony Wayne Vilma Socorro Martínez Noah Mamet