RIGHTS-CHILE: US Opens Secret Files

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jul 1 1999 (IPS) - The US administration has declassified some 5,800 hitherto secret documents on human rights abuses in Chile from 1973 to 1978, the first in a series of releases ordered by President Bill Clinton after last year’s arrest in Britain of Chile’s former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Human-rights groups here immediately hailed the release but complained that it did not include key documents from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon whose existence had previously been disclosed in Congressional hearings.

“We welcome the release, but it does not go far enough,” said Carlos Salinas, a Latin American analyst at Amnesty International USA.

“This situation is all too typical of previous releases concerning human rights issues – a relatively forthcoming State Department and a badly lagging CIA and Department of Defense,” he added.

Of the documents declassified, 490 came from the CIA’s files and 60, from the Pentagon’s.

In releasing the documents, however, the administration confirmed for the first time that the Justice Department is conducting an investigation of Pinochet’s possible role in a notorious 1976 murder here.

It said that the Department had withheld “a limited number of documents” relating to “an ongoing Justice Department investigation of the murder of Ronni Moffitt and Orlando Letelier.”

Letelier, a former Chilean defence minister, and Moffitt, his research assistant, were killed in a car-bombing about one mile from the White House. A subsequent investigation and trial found that Pinochet’s secret police (DINA) had ordered the killings.

Human-rights activists have urged the administration to re-open the case to determine whether Pinochet should be extradited and prosecuted for his role in the case. Until now, however, the Justice Department has said only that it is reviewing the case.

Clinton first ordered the release of all relevant documents on human rights abuses and political violence under the Pinochet regime last December, just as British Home Secretary Jack Straw approved extradition proceedings against Pinochet at the request of a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, who has been investigating killings committed by Latin American dictatorships during the 1970’s.

The White House said that additional documents from the 1973-78 period – Chile’s most repressive years – will be released in coming months, along with papers from the 1968-73 period.

Much is already known about the latter period, which was the subject of Congressional investigations in the mid-1970’s.

During that period, the CIA was especially active; first, in trying to prevent the election of Salvador Allende Gossens to the presidency of Chile, and then in destabilising his government between 1970 and the military coup which brought Pinochet to power in September, 1973.

Precise details of the CIA’s and Pentagon’s role in promoting and supporting the coup and in aiding the junta once it took power have been scant, however. Activists and historians hoped that documents yet to be released will shed new light on Washington’s secret role.

The vast majority of documents were from the State Department, much of which was kept in the dark about US covert operations against Allende in the pre- coup period. Indeed, the US ambassador to Chile at the time has long insisted that he was never informed about the CIA’s destabilisation efforts until after the coup.

The CIA documents released Wednesday consist mainly of analyses and cables about key events and interviews with officials. They largely confirm what was already known: that the CIA knew about the abuses committed by the junta’s forces. “Severe repression is planned,” according to one cable sent ten days after the coup.

One month later, another report noted that “the line between people killed during attacks on security forces and those captured and executed immediately has become increasingly blurred.”

“None of the documents addresses the CIA’s operational presence in Chile (from 1973 to 1978), which, we know from (Congressional inquiries), included such things as logistical and intelligence support and technical advice and equipment,” said Peter Kornbluh, a Chile expert at the independent National Security Archive here.

“The CIA has the most to offer, but also the most to hide,” he added. “The big question is whether that stuff can be pried loose.”

Kornbluh nevertheless saw the administration’s withholding of documents on the Letelier-Moffitt murders as “the first concrete evidence of a serious investigation” against Pinochet.

Sam Buffone, the surviving families’ attorney, echoed that judgment.

Buffone quoted a letter sent this week by the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Harold Koh, to Isabel Letelier, Orlando’s widow, in which the US official said releasing those documents could be “detrimental to the ongoing investigation and criminal case in connection with the car bombing.”

Buffone said he understood that the Justice Department had reviewed every document before its release Wednesday for its possible relevance to the case.

“That is truly remarkable,” he said. “It tells me that somebody is under investigation, and I can’t think of anyone but Pinochet.”

Last month, the Justice Department quietly sent two of its lawyers to Spain to meet with Garzon as part of a pledge by Clinton to co-operate in the judge’s efforts to extradite Pinochet to Spain.

In addition, the Justice Department has agreed to arrange for Garzon to depose Michael Townley, the main DINA operative in the Letelier-Moffitt killings, according to a knowledgeable source.

After serving time in prison for the killings, Townley was released but given a new identity for his own protection, and only the Justice Department knows where he can be found.

However incomplete, Wednesday’s release was “an acknowledgment that the United States must support human rights through the declassification of secret records,” said Kate Martin, director of the Centre for National Security Studies.

Reed Brody, advocacy director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, called it a “significant step in the search for truth and accountability for both Chilean and US actions.”