-Caveat Lector-
> WSWS : News & Analysis : South & Central America
>
> Clinton's selective declassification
>
> Chile documents expose criminal role of US foreign policy
>
> By Bill Vann
> 13 July 1999
>
> Back to screen version
>
> The Clinton administration's release of some 5,800 documents
> relating to the 1973 military coup in Chile has provided a
> glimpse of the murderous role of US foreign policy in Latin
> America and internationally.
>
> No major US newspaper or broadcast media outlet has conducted any
> serious examination of the documents. Outside of a few cursory
> news reports on the day of their release, the declassification
> has been treated by the American media as a non-event having to
> do with the distant history of a foreign land.
>
> The White House has itself asserted that its principal aim in
> declassifying the formerly secret material is to further the
> process of “truth and reconciliation in Chile," as if the bloody
> events there 25 years ago had nothing to do with the activities
> of the US government outside of its innocent collection and
> storing of reams of cables, memoranda and secret intelligence
> reports on the carnage that took place there.
>
> In reality, the documents—though clearly the most incriminating
> material remains locked in the secret archives of the CIA and the
> Pentagon—shed significant light on Washington's crimes against
> the Chilean people. They further illuminate US complicity in the
> murder, torture and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of
> workers, peasants, students and others seen as real or potential
> opponents of the military dictatorship and American interests.
>
> The Clinton administration initiated the release of the documents
> at the end of May largely as a damage-control operation. Mounting
> international attention has been focused on the Chilean events by
> the ongoing legal wrangling over Spain's demand for the
> extradition of the former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, who
> is in British custody. Legal arguments over General Pinochet's
> crimes have inevitably touched upon Washington's involvement in
> the military coup that brought him to power in 1973 as well as in
> his subsequent reign of terror.
>
> With Pinochet's detention the White House also faced renewed
> demands from the families of Americans killed in the repression,
> including Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, who were among those
> rounded up and executed in the National Stadium in Santiago.
>
> Whatever the motives of the White House, the thousands of
> documents chronicling Washington's role in organizing and
> supporting one of the most horrific bloodbaths of the twentieth
> century comprise an incontestable refutation of the democratic
> pretensions of US foreign policy. Coming at a time when the
> Clinton administration portrays its military intervention in the
> Balkans as a matter of the US standing up to the repression of a
> ruthless dictator, these papers confirm once again that US
> imperialism has not only defended its interests precisely through
> such regimes, but has served as their principal sponsor in Latin
> America and internationally.
>
> Significantly, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),
> which had the most intimate involvement in the 1973 coup and the
> closest working relations with the Pinochet dictatorship's
> security apparatus, supplied only a fraction of the declassified
> material, just 490 documents between them.
>
> The lion's share came from the State Department and the rest from
> the Justice Department, the FBI and the presidential libraries of
> Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
>
> Notwithstanding the extreme selectivity of the CIA in determining
> which of the massive number of documents on Chile were fit for
> release and its blacking out of incriminating material in even
> these files, this material still provides a glimpse of the
> intimate relations that existed between the agency and the
> butchers of the Chilean military.
>
> One declassified cable sent September 8, 1973 from the CIA's
> Santiago station to the Directorate of Operations in Washington
> spelled out in detail the plans for the coming coup. The name of
> the agency's informant was blacked out. According to this
> document, the Chilean Navy had decided “to begin an action in
> Valparaiso ... to overthrow the Government of Salvador Allende”
> and that “the Air Force will support this initiative.” It goes on
> to state that General Gustavo Leigh, the commander-in-chief of
> the Air Force, “has made contact with Gen. Pinochet,
> commander-in-chief of the Army, who has told him that the Army
> will not oppose the Navy's action.”
>
> The cable from the CIA's operatives in Chile said that their
> informant “believes that the Army will join the coup after the
> Air Force supports the Navy.” The cable concludes that the coup
> will take place on September 10 “or at least during the week of
> Sept. 10.” On that day, the CIA mission sent a new cable to
> Washington providing more specific information: “The coup attempt
> will begin on Sept. 11. The three Armed Forces and the
> Carabineros are implicated in the action. A declaration will be
> read on Agriculture Radio at 7:00 a.m. on Sept. 11.”
>
> Significantly, the documents released by the CIA only deal with
> the intelligence reports coming from Chile to the agency's
> Langley, Virginia headquarters. They show that US officials had
> the closest working relations with the coup plotters. What the
> CIA failed to release was the cable traffic going the other way,
> those providing instructions to its operatives in Chile. For good
> reason these documents remain classified. They would incriminate
> US officials, active and retired, from Henry Kissinger on down,
> potentially exposing them to the same fate of detention and
> extradition now confronting the aging Chilean dictator in London.
>
> The documents also make clear the full US knowledge of and
> backing for the orgy of killing and torture that followed the
> military coup.
>
> One September 1973 message sent by the US Embassy in Santiago to
> Washington relays a request from the Pinochet dictatorship for
> help in setting up concentration camps for tens of thousands of
> political prisoners, and US "advisers" to assist in operating
> them.
>
> While acknowledging "obvious political problems" in openly
> offering such aid, the memo suggests that Washington could pursue
> a back channel approach and "may wish to consider feasibility of
> material assistance in form of tents, blankets, etc. which need
> not be publicly and specifically earmarked for prisoners."
>
> That there was no confusion as to what Washington was supporting
> in its aid to Pinochet was made clear by a CIA cable sent in
> October 1973. It described the Chilean dictator as the leader of
> the “hard-line generals,” continuing, “The hard-liners believe
> that the extremists or the Marxist activists should be summarily
> executed, while the moderates think that they should be tried,
> sentenced and that they should attempt to rehabilitate them.”
>
> A declassified letter addressed to Kissinger in early 1974 from
> the then US Ambassador to Chile, David Popper, also spelled out
> the real relations between Washington and the Chilean regime. “I
> have invariably taken the line that the US Government is in
> sympathy with, and supports, the Government of Chile, but our
> ability to be helpful ... is hampered by US Congressional and
> media concerns ... with respect to alleged violations of human
> rights here."
>
> A secret cable sent in 1974 gives a precise estimate of the
> number of political prisoners held by the regime, supplied to the
> CIA in a briefing by Chile's interior minister and the head of
> the Directorate of National Intelligence, or DINA, the regime's
> secret police. It said that 30,568 people had been detained for
> political reasons, including thousands held secretly because
> "they are part of sensitive, ongoing security investigations."
> These secret detainees were Chile's "disappeared," abducted by
> the military, tortured and then dumped, some alive and some dead,
> from aircraft into the sea or over the isolated snowy peaks of
> the Andes.
>
> The declassified documents are significant as well for both what
> was included and excluded relating to the most notorious crime
> carried out by the Chilean dictatorship on US soil.
>
> On September 21, 1976 a bomb ripped through a car in which
> Orlando Letelier, a former cabinet member in the Allende
> government, was riding in the center of Washington. The powerful
> explosive device killed both Letelier and an American colleague,
> Ronni Moffitt.
>
> Samuel Buffone is an attorney for the Letelier family who has
> worked on the case since shortly after the assassination. He
> called upon the Clinton administration to release documents
> relating to the killing that have been reportedly declassified
> but are still being held back on the grounds that they are the
> subject of an ongoing Justice Department investigation. This
> rationale for withholding the sensitive material was the first
> announcement that such a probe was taking place.
>
> Buffone said the Letelier family wants the documents turned over
> to Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who is pursuing the prosecution
> of the former Chilean dictator.
>
> The attorney charged the US with withholding any serious
> assistance from the Spanish prosecutors. “If it had been the
> reverse, if the treatment that the US has given Spain in the case
> of Chile had been given by Spain to the US, there would have been
> a scandal here,” he said. “Documents requested more than two
> years ago haven't even been sent, nor have they yet been able to
> take a statement from one of the principals in the case, the DINA
> [Chilean intelligence] agent Michael Townley,” he said.
>
> Townley, an American expatriate, was extradited from Chile in
> 1978 in an attempt to deflect charges concerning Pinochet's own
> role in the killing. He confessed to having organized the
> Letelier assassination on orders from DINA chief Manuel
> Contreras. After being tried and convicted in connection with the
> assassination, Townley plea bargained for a reduced sentence and
> protection from prosecution for crimes committed outside the US.
> He confessed to participating in the other assassinations and
> attempted assassinations in Argentina, Italy and Mexico. After
> serving just five years of his sentence, Townley was released
> into the US witness protection program, and given a new identity
> and protection by the US government.
>
> There are also undoubtedly good reasons for Washington
> withholding the most significant files about the Letelier-Moffitt
> case. What limited documents have been made public point to the
> US government having been forewarned of the assassination plans
> and providing at least its tacit approval.
>
> Among previously declassified documents were the minutes of then
> Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's trip to Santiago in June
> 1976. While the ostensible reason for visiting the Chilean
> capital was to attend the annual meeting of the Organization of
> American States, Kissinger used it to hold private talks with the
> General Pinochet.
>
> The State Department memorandum on the meeting reported that
> Pinochet expressed his concern to Kissinger about an
> international campaign being waged by opponents of his
> government, and in particular by Chilean exiles residing in
> Washington. Twice the dictator mentioned Orlando Letelier as a
> man who had to be stopped.
>
> Kissinger voiced his agreement that Chile was the victim of an
> international leftist campaign. “The United States sympathizes
> with what you are trying to do here,” he said.
>
> While privately expressing support for the savage repression
> unleashed by the Chilean regime, the Secretary of State was
> publicly affirming that the human rights situation in Chile had
> improved dramatically.
>
> Another of the recently declassified document, dated August 16,
> 1976, originated from State Department operatives in Latin
> America. It gave detailed information on “Operation Condor,”
> which involved the security forces of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay,
> Paraguay and Bolivia in a joint campaign to violently suppress
> “subversives” operating both within their territories and abroad.
>
> The document explicitly warned “that the governments are planning
> and directing assassinations within and outside the member
> countries of Operation Condor has very serious implications that
> we most confront directly and rapidly.”
>
> At the same time the memorandum expressed US support for
> “coordination between the various countries of the Latin American
> Southern Cone in relation to subversive actions in the region.”
>
> Within barely a month of this document being sent, Letelier and
> Moffitt were dead. While the US government was well aware that
> Letelier was a principal target of Chile's Murder Inc., it made
> no attempt to either protect or even warn him.
>
> The assassination in Washington followed the killing of Gen.
> Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires in 1974 and the assassination of the
> Christian Democratic leader Bernardo Leighton in Rome in 1975.
>
> After the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, then-CIA Director
> George Bush gave assurances that the Chilean regime was not
> involved in the killing. Government officials leaked stories to
> loyal media hacks attributing the killings to a dissident leftist
> faction.
>
> Both the documents that the Clinton administration has chosen to
> release, as well as those that it determined must still be kept
> secret, demonstrate the continuity of a US foreign policy founded
> on violence and oppression. In Chile 25 years ago, just as today
> from Latin America to the Balkans, Washington is prepared to
> employ both military barbarism and police-state brutality to
> ensure the profit interests of the US banks and multinationals.
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
>
> Copyright 1998-99
> World Socialist Web Site
> All rights reserved
>
>
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