Secretary Haig predicted Galtieri's fall as CIA tracked coup plotters
By Desmond Okafor ·
Kept under "Secret; Eyes Only" markings, these records show US officials betting on the collapse of the Argentine junta while managing Margaret Thatcher's aggression.
Soldiers died in the freezing marshes of the South Atlantic while the men in Washington calculated how many days the Argentine junta had left to live. In San Salvador, guerrillas gained ground against a state army backed by the same men who spent their breakfast discussing the inevitable fall of General Leopoldo Galtieri.
A memorandum for the record from June 15, 1982, captures a breakfast meeting between Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Deputy Secretary Eagleburger, and the Director and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. The document, sourced from the Foreign Relations of the United States (State Dept) and marked "Secret; Eyes Only," reads less like a diplomatic strategy session and more like a betting parlor. While the public record of the Falklands Crisis recalls a territorial war between Great Britain and Argentina, the private record reveals a US intelligence community focused on the internal rot of the Argentine regime.
"No more than a week"
The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) opened the conversation with a report on a CIA cable. The intelligence was blunt: "coup plotting is underway against Galtieri." The US was not merely observing the conflict in the South Atlantic; it was monitoring the countdown to a regime change in Buenos Aires.
Secretary Haig’s assessment was a clinical exercise in timing. According to the memo, Haig believed Galtieri "will last no more than a week." There is a profound coldness in that estimation. It treats the leadership of a nation—however brutal that leadership had been—as a temporary obstacle with an expiration date. The US wasn't concerned with the restoration of democracy or the cessation of the junta's human rights abuses; it was tracking the viability of a puppet or a partner.
The Salvadoran setback
While the map of the South Atlantic dominated the headlines, the breakfast table in Washington was preoccupied with the stability of US-backed violence elsewhere. The memo records a pivot from the Falklands to Central America. Eagleburger noted that the Salvadoran Ambassador and other South American officials believed the US "will not be damaged very much by the Falklands crisis." The consensus among these officials was that Latin American countries would "continue to look to the U.S. for leadership and economic support."
This "leadership" was the currency of the era: a transactional relationship where economic aid was exchanged for the willingness to endure military dictatorships. The record shows that Haig was less concerned about the diplomatic fallout of the war and more distressed by a specific military failure in Central America. He voiced concern regarding the "Salvadoran Army setback yesterday in their operation against the guerrillas."
To the men in the room, the "setback" was the real crisis. The guerrillas—fighting against a government known for death squads and systemic disappearance—were the problem to be solved. The human cost of the Salvadoran civil war was reduced to a tactical inefficiency discussed over coffee and eggs. The US concern was not for the people of El Salvador, but for the efficacy of the hardware and the soldiers the US was paying to keep the left in the mountains.
"More moderate"
The memorandum also illuminates the friction within the "Special Relationship." While the US officially supported the UK's claim to the islands, the record shows a distinct irritation with the British Prime Minister. The participants shared a "general belief" that Margaret Thatcher "has been the one to push hard."
The American solution was not to question the morality of the recapture or the escalation of violence, but to "encourage her to be more moderate." In the lexicon of the State Department, "moderate" does not mean peaceful; it means controlled. The US wanted the conflict resolved on a timeline that didn't disrupt their broader regional calculations or embarrass their allies, regardless of how many Argentine conscripts were left in the cold.
The document is a study in the periphery. It omits discussions on issues unrelated to the South Atlantic, leaving gaps in the morning's dialogue. We do not know what was said in those redactions, only that the primary focus was the management of volatile leaders and the maintenance of hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.
Other archives, including the UK National Archives (BSR/6/4/4 and PREM 19/660), hold further records on the crisis, but this specific memorandum captures the US in its most honest state: calculating, impatient, and deeply invested in the success of its paramilitary proxies in El Salvador.
The record leaves one question hanging: who were the coup plotters the CIA was tracking? The memo confirms they existed and that the DDCI knew of them, but it does not name the men who were waiting in the wings to replace Galtieri once his week had run out.