Robert C. Hill

Robert Charles Hill
United States Ambassador to Costa Rica
In office November 4, 1953 – September 10, 1954
President	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Preceded by	Philip B. Fleming
Succeeded by	Robert F. Woodward
United States Ambassador to El Salvador
In office 4 November 1954 – 21 September 1955
President	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Preceded by	Michael J. McDermott
Succeeded by	Thomas C. Mann
United States Ambassador to Mexico
In office 25 July 1957 – 1 December 1960
President	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Preceded by	Francis White
Succeeded by	Thomas C. Mann
United States Ambassador to Spain
In office 12 June 1969 – 12 January 1972
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Robert F. Wagner, Jr.
Succeeded by	Horacio Rivero
United States Ambassador to Argentina
In office 15 February 1974 – 10 May 1977
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	John Davis Lodge
Succeeded by	Raúl H. Castro
Personal details
Born	(1917-09-30)September 30, 1917 Littleton, New Hampshire
Died	Littleton, New Hampshire
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Taft School 1938; Dartmouth College; Boston University

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.

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.

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 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."
• 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

Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Philip B. Fleming	United States Ambassador to Costa Rica November 4, 1953–September 10, 1954	Succeeded by Robert F. Woodward
Preceded by Michael J. McDermott	United States Ambassador to El Salvador 4 November 1954–21 September 1955	Succeeded by Thomas C. Mann
Preceded by Francis White	United States Ambassador to Mexico 1957–1960	Succeeded by Thomas C. Mann
Preceded by Robert F. Wagner, Jr.	United States Ambassador to Spain 1969–1972	Succeeded by Horacio Rivero
Preceded by John Davis Lodge	United States Ambassador to Argentina 15 February 1974–10 May 1977	Succeeded by Raúl H. Castro
Government offices
Preceded by Thruston Ballard Morton	Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs March 9, 1956 – June 6, 1957	Succeeded by William B. Macomber, Jr.