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Human-rights groups hoped the revelations would spur more officers to speak out. But many Argentines see Scilingo's story as another setback in the struggle to put a terrible period behind them. President Carlos Saul Menem, who in 1990 issued a final pardon for all those convicted of "dirty war" crimes, called Scilingo a "crook" and revealed that in February the former officer was stripped of his rank as a retired commander because of a 1991 conviction for fraud. Revenge for this dismissal, Menem suggested, prompted the accusations. Verbitsky says the reverse is true; Scilingo was punished just as his charges were going to press.
The high-level attempts to discredit Scilingo personally underscore the fact that no one has claimed his story is false. Says Congressman Alfredo Bravo, who was imprisoned and tortured during the dictatorship: "The armed forces have denied nothing."
To the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who will hold their annual "day of remembering'' this week in Buenos Aires, demanding, as they have for 18 years, information about their missing children, Scilingo's account is a bittersweet vindication. "Many people just didn't want to know; they closed their eyes and ears," says Maria Adela Antokoletz, 83. "But after this confession, they can no longer say that this is only the cry of a suffering mother."
Their cries are for truth and, however unlikely, justice. A petition has been sent to Menem demanding a list of all those executed between March 24, 1976, and Dec. 10, 1983--the dates that bracket the military dictatorship. Argentina has plenty of concerns: high unemployment, low wages, corruption and presidential elections in May. But, says Ana Maria Careaga, who was taken prisoner in 1977 at age 16 and whose mother later disappeared, "like the sea, this is a story that always returns."
--Reported by Carl Honore and Ian McCluskey/Buenos Aires