Nazi gold to South America. Historians have shown there was little gold and probably only a few Nazis, but the myths lived on and helped to sour relations with the United States. When Juan Perón ran for president in 1945 and 1946, US Ambassador Spruille Braden attacked him with a "Blue Book on Argentina," but public opinion rallied behind Perón. Relations remained tense throughout the Perón years, as he held fascist sympathies, tried to remain neutral in the Cold War and continued to harbor Nazi war criminals. Washington blocked funds from international agencies and restricted trade and investment opportunities. Meanwhile Peron championed Anti-Americanism across Latin America, and financed radical elements in other countries. He did not, however, support the USSR in the Cold War. 1955-1980s After Perón was ousted in 1955, relations improved dramatically. President Arturo Frondizi became the first Argentine president to visit the United States in 1959. Argentina provided support for the American Alliance for Progress, the American invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, and the isolation of Cuba after 1960. By 1976, US human rights groups were denouncing the "Dirty War" waged against leftist dissidents by the repressive military regime in Argentina. They demanded congressional control over foreign aid funding to regimes violating human rights. The US State Department saw Argentina as a bulwark of anticommunism in South America, and in early April 1976, the US Congress approved a request by the Ford administration, written and supported by Henry Kissinger, to grant $50,000,000 in security assistance to the junta. In 1977 and 1978, the United States sold more than $120,000,000 in spare military parts to Argentina, and in 1977, the Department of Defense granted $700,000 to train 217 Argentine military officers. By the mid-1970s, when détente with the Soviets softened anti-communism and President Jimmy Carter highlighted issues of human rights, US activists escalated their attacks and in 1978 secured a congressional cutoff of all US arms transfers to Argentina. Argentina then turned largely to Israel for weapons sales. Relations were strained after the US supported the United Kingdom on the Falklands Wars. American-Argentine relations improved dramatically under the Reagan administration, which asserted that the Carter administration had weakened US diplomatic relationships with Cold War allies in Argentina, and it reversed the previous administration's official condemnation of the junta's human rights practices. The re-establishment of diplomatic ties allowed for the CIA collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service