By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 1998 (IPS)

“(S)ince the promulgation of Decree Law No. 521, officially establishing DINA as the national intelligence arm of the government, Colonel CONTRERAS has reported exclusively to, and received orders only from President PINOCHET.”

That snippet came from a report written by the U.S. military attache in Santiago, Chile, in April 1975. It is just the tip of a very large evidentiary iceberg to be found in Washington’s secret archives about former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s responsibility for state-sponsored terrorism and gross human rights abuses during the 1970s.

And it is a major reason why Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon wants to see classified U.S. documents which have been denied him so far.

For two years now, Garzon has been investigating ‘Operation Condor’, the Chilean-headed cross-border scheme by which scores of Spanish and other suspected leftists were “disappeared” or killed by DINA and other South American intelligence forces.

Whether and to what extent his request will be granted remains uncertain. Most of the sensitive information is held by agencies, like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which have long resisted turning over anything that might prove embarrassing to it or its clients.

In any case, nothing is likely to be handed over before British Home Secretary Jack Straw rules whether Pinochet, who has been held in Britain since Oct. 16 pending the outcome of Garzon’s extradition request, will be permitted to return home for “compassionate” or other reasons. Straw is expected to announce his decision sometime this week.

The administration of President Bill Clinton announced last week that it would “review” the government’s files for documents about human rights abuses under Pinochet with an eye to de- classifying and releasing them. At the same time, Attorney-General Janet Reno, who heads the agency which works with the Spanish Justice Ministry, said she had ordered her own review to determine what could be turned over to Garzon.

“This is going to be a major test,” says Peter Kornbluh, a senior researcher at the independent National Security Archive (NSA) and author of a major article on the case in the current issue of the ‘Nation’ weekly. Kornbluh, who has filed scores of “Freedom of Information Act” requests for key documents on Chile over the the past decade, obtained the one on Pinochet’s command over DINA just before the 25th anniversary of the bloody coup d’etat which brought him to power in Sep 1973.

The administration’s announcement followed last week’s historic decision by Britain’s highest court to uphold Garzon’s extradition request. Three of the five judges who heard the case rejected Pinochet’s contention that he enjoyed sovereign immunity as head of state for crimes, including torture, genocide, and terrorism, for which his extradition is being sought.

The administration’s decision reportedly was made at the cabinet level by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, both of whom, however, have on other occasions hinted that they would be very relieved if Pinochet were permitted to return to Chile.

Those hints, most recently expressed last week when Albright said “significant respect” should be given to the Chilean government’s desire to let Pinochet go home, reflect deep splits within the government and ambivalence about cooperating with the Spanish judge.

After Pinochet’s arrest, reporters were told privately by officials that, were Pinochet not allowed to return, the democratic transition in Chile could be threatened by a military and right-wing backlash. “There are legitimate concerns about the impact of all this on Chile’s stability if he is extradited,” one senior official told IPS at the end of October.

But that argument has fallen flat as the weeks have passed with no sign of growing unrest in Chile. It now appears that U.S. reticence derives from two major factors – the precedent that could be set if Pinochet is extradited and faces prosecution outside Chile, and concerns about revelations on Washington’s own knowledge and possible support of the kinds of abuses, including terrorism, carried out by Pinochet.

“We haven’t had the opportunity to fully weigh the impact of Pinochet’s prosecution in terms of international law and what it means for the possible vulnerability of U.S. officials,” said one senior official this week. “I don’t think any of the other states involved in this fully understand it either.”

But the second reason may be more compelling. As a “former senior intelligence officer who served in Chile in the 1970’s” told the ‘New York Times’ recently, the disclosure of what U.S. intelligence agencies knew about Pinochet and Operation Condor, “could open up a can of worms.”

It was the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a long-time CIA rival, which first disclosed Condor’s existence. Shortly after Pinochet foe Orlando Letelier and his research associate, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, were blown up by a car bomb less than a mile from the White House in Sep 1976, an Argentine general told an FBI agent that DINA, Pinochet’s secret police, was the likely perpetrator. The tip led to the prosecution and conviction of several DINA agents here and eventually to a prison term in Chile for DINA chief Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, who called himself ‘Condor One.’

Rights groups and the Letelier and Moffitt families have urged the administration to indict and extradite Pinochet here to stand trial for the assassinations, which were part of Condor. The administration so far has ignored these appeals.

Secret Senate hearings in the 1970s – which remain classified – confirmed that the CIA knew a great deal about Condor. While the agency foiled two assassination plots in France and Portugal, it never blew the whistle on the operation, according to Kornbluh, who has seen some of the transcripts. There is also some evidence that it may have provided information to Condor’s Argentine and Uruguayan operatives.

DINA felt so comfortable with the CIA, according to the transcripts, that it asked to open a Condor office in Miami. The request reached all the way to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who, despite rushing aid to Pinochet after the 1973 coup, turned it down.

The CIA station chief in Santiago maintained a “close relationship” with Contreras, one former embassy official told Lucy Komisar in ‘The Nation’. The two men “used to go on Sunday picnics together with their families.”

“The real, untold story is the extent to which the CIA was involved in supporting or training Chile’s secret police,” according to Kornbluh. Virtually nothing is known about that now.

But the cable obtained by him bolsters the view, which is fervently held by the prosecutors who tried the Letelier case, that Contreras was unlikely to act without Pinochet’s approval. Earlier this year, Contreras himself insisted in a sworn statement that all major missions undertaken by DINA or Condor under his command were approved by Pinochet in advance.

“There is a major paper trail on this,” according to Kornbluh, who notes that the three-page document, which was mostly blacked out by government censors before its release, includes references to related cables which have not been declassified.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 1998 (IPS)

“(S)ince the promulgation of Decree Law No. 521, officially establishing DINA as the national intelligence arm of the government, Colonel CONTRERAS has reported exclusively to, and received orders only from President PINOCHET.”

That snippet came from a report written by the U.S. military attache in Santiago, Chile, in April 1975. It is just the tip of a very large evidentiary iceberg to be found in Washington’s secret archives about former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s responsibility for state-sponsored terrorism and gross human rights abuses during the 1970s.

And it is a major reason why Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon wants to see classified U.S. documents which have been denied him so far.

For two years now, Garzon has been investigating ‘Operation Condor’, the Chilean-headed cross-border scheme by which scores of Spanish and other suspected leftists were “disappeared” or killed by DINA and other South American intelligence forces.

Whether and to what extent his request will be granted remains uncertain. Most of the sensitive information is held by agencies, like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which have long resisted turning over anything that might prove embarrassing to it or its clients.

In any case, nothing is likely to be handed over before British Home Secretary Jack Straw rules whether Pinochet, who has been held in Britain since Oct. 16 pending the outcome of Garzon’s extradition request, will be permitted to return home for “compassionate” or other reasons. Straw is expected to announce his decision sometime this week.

The administration of President Bill Clinton announced last week that it would “review” the government’s files for documents about human rights abuses under Pinochet with an eye to de- classifying and releasing them. At the same time, Attorney-General Janet Reno, who heads the agency which works with the Spanish Justice Ministry, said she had ordered her own review to determine what could be turned over to Garzon.

“This is going to be a major test,” says Peter Kornbluh, a senior researcher at the independent National Security Archive (NSA) and author of a major article on the case in the current issue of the ‘Nation’ weekly. Kornbluh, who has filed scores of “Freedom of Information Act” requests for key documents on Chile over the the past decade, obtained the one on Pinochet’s command over DINA just before the 25th anniversary of the bloody coup d’etat which brought him to power in Sep 1973.

The administration’s announcement followed last week’s historic decision by Britain’s highest court to uphold Garzon’s extradition request. Three of the five judges who heard the case rejected Pinochet’s contention that he enjoyed sovereign immunity as head of state for crimes, including torture, genocide, and terrorism, for which his extradition is being sought.

The administration’s decision reportedly was made at the cabinet level by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, both of whom, however, have on other occasions hinted that they would be very relieved if Pinochet were permitted to return to Chile.

Those hints, most recently expressed last week when Albright said “significant respect” should be given to the Chilean government’s desire to let Pinochet go home, reflect deep splits within the government and ambivalence about cooperating with the Spanish judge.

After Pinochet’s arrest, reporters were told privately by officials that, were Pinochet not allowed to return, the democratic transition in Chile could be threatened by a military and right-wing backlash. “There are legitimate concerns about the impact of all this on Chile’s stability if he is extradited,” one senior official told IPS at the end of October.

But that argument has fallen flat as the weeks have passed with no sign of growing unrest in Chile. It now appears that U.S. reticence derives from two major factors – the precedent that could be set if Pinochet is extradited and faces prosecution outside Chile, and concerns about revelations on Washington’s own knowledge and possible support of the kinds of abuses, including terrorism, carried out by Pinochet.

“We haven’t had the opportunity to fully weigh the impact of Pinochet’s prosecution in terms of international law and what it means for the possible vulnerability of U.S. officials,” said one senior official this week. “I don’t think any of the other states involved in this fully understand it either.”

But the second reason may be more compelling. As a “former senior intelligence officer who served in Chile in the 1970’s” told the ‘New York Times’ recently, the disclosure of what U.S. intelligence agencies knew about Pinochet and Operation Condor, “could open up a can of worms.”

It was the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a long-time CIA rival, which first disclosed Condor’s existence. Shortly after Pinochet foe Orlando Letelier and his research associate, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, were blown up by a car bomb less than a mile from the White House in Sep 1976, an Argentine general told an FBI agent that DINA, Pinochet’s secret police, was the likely perpetrator. The tip led to the prosecution and conviction of several DINA agents here and eventually to a prison term in Chile for DINA chief Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, who called himself ‘Condor One.’

Rights groups and the Letelier and Moffitt families have urged the administration to indict and extradite Pinochet here to stand trial for the assassinations, which were part of Condor. The administration so far has ignored these appeals.

Secret Senate hearings in the 1970s – which remain classified – confirmed that the CIA knew a great deal about Condor. While the agency foiled two assassination plots in France and Portugal, it never blew the whistle on the operation, according to Kornbluh, who has seen some of the transcripts. There is also some evidence that it may have provided information to Condor’s Argentine and Uruguayan operatives.

DINA felt so comfortable with the CIA, according to the transcripts, that it asked to open a Condor office in Miami. The request reached all the way to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who, despite rushing aid to Pinochet after the 1973 coup, turned it down.

The CIA station chief in Santiago maintained a “close relationship” with Contreras, one former embassy official told Lucy Komisar in ‘The Nation’. The two men “used to go on Sunday picnics together with their families.”

“The real, untold story is the extent to which the CIA was involved in supporting or training Chile’s secret police,” according to Kornbluh. Virtually nothing is known about that now.

But the cable obtained by him bolsters the view, which is fervently held by the prosecutors who tried the Letelier case, that Contreras was unlikely to act without Pinochet’s approval. Earlier this year, Contreras himself insisted in a sworn statement that all major missions undertaken by DINA or Condor under his command were approved by Pinochet in advance.

“There is a major paper trail on this,” according to Kornbluh, who notes that the three-page document, which was mostly blacked out by government censors before its release, includes references to related cables which have not been declassified.

Excerpt: