The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability

625 Pages·2013·13.09 MB·English

by  Peter Kornbluh

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enablers, protectors and apologists in Washington.”
—Los Angeles Times
A Declassified Dossier on
“Weaves together thirty years of declassified documents
with a gripping narrative of America’s involvement [in Atrocity and Accountability
Chile]. . . . The evidence Kornbluh has gathered is
overwhelming.” —The New Yorker P
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“msTiehstess i vooanulatur eyt ooz fec aa‘ltT ahaleno dgP imtnehotech hoeedvtii cdFaeilnl cede’e volofit eiUso. nS. . w .ig tu.hi liwtnh— ittcohh e d Kiozrznybilnugh, ter K A nAtionAl security
devastating effect.” —The Washington Post o Archive booK
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updated for the fortieth anniversary of the coup in chile
history / latin american studies $26.95 u.s.
www.thenewpress.com
cover photograph courtesy of ap images
THE NEW PRESS THE NEW PRESS
gabriela vega
Peter Kornbluh directs the Chile Documentation Project at the
National Security Archive. His books include The Bay of Pigs Declas-
sifi ed, The Iran-C ontra Scandal (with Malcolm Byrne), and The Cuban
Missile Crisis, 1962 (with Laurence Chang). He lives in Washington,
D.C.
Also by Peter Kornbluh
books
Talking to Castro: The Hidden History of U.S.- Cuban Diplomacy
(with William LeoGrande, forthcoming in 2014)
Pinochet: El Archivo Secreto
Los EEUU y El Derrocamiento De Allende
Bay of Pigs Declassifi ed: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba
The Iran-C ontra Scandal: The Declassifi ed History (with Malcolm Byrne)
The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 (with Lawrence Chang)
Low Intensity Warfare: Counterinsurgency, Proinsurgency,
and Antiterrorism in the Eighties (with Michael Klare)
Nicaragua: The Price of Intervention
document collections
Chile and the United States: U.S. Policy Toward Democracy, Dictatorship,
and Human Rights, 1970–1 990
The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited: An International Collection of Documents,
from the Bay of Pigs to the Brink of Nuclear War
The Iran-C ontra Affair: The Making of a Scandal, 1983–1 988
(with Malcolm Byrne)
Nicaragua: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1978– 1990
The Pinochet File
A Declassified Dossier
on Atrocity and Accountability
◆
P E T E R K O R N B L U H
© 2003, 2004, 2013 by the National Security Archive
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without
written permission from the publisher.
Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to:
Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013
First published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2003
This paperback edition published by The New Press, 2013
Distributed by Perseus Distribution
ISBN 978-1 - 59558- 912- 5 (pbk.)
library of congress cataloging- in- publication data
Kornbluh, Peter.
The Pinochet fi le: a declassifi ed dossier on atrocity and accountability / Peter Kornbluh.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-5 6584- 586- 2 (hc.)
1. Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto. 2. Chile—History—1970– 973—Sources.
3. Chile—History—1973–1 988—Sources. 4. Chile— History—1988—Sources. 5. Human
rights— Chile—History—20th century— Sources. 6. State-s ponsored terrorism— Chile—
History—20th century— Sources. 7. Subversive activities— Chile—History—20th century—
Sources. 8. United States. Central Intelligence Agency—S ources. 9. Chile—R elations—
United States— Sources. 10. United States—R elations—Chile—Sources. I. Title.
F3101.P56K67 2003
983.06'5—dc21
2003050956
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2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Contents
introduction
ix
chapter 1:
Project FUBELT: “Formula for Chaos” ............1
chapter 2:
Destabilizing Democracy: The United States
and the Allende Government ................. 79
chapter 3:
Pinochet in Power: Building a Regime
of eRpression .......................................... 161
chapter 4:
Consolidating Dictatorship: The United States
and the Pinochet Regime ...................... 209
chapter 5:
American Casualties ..................................... 275
chapter 6:
Operation Condor: State- Sponsored
International Terrorism ........................ 331
chapter 7:
Denouement of the Dictator:
From Terrorism to Transition ............... 403
epilogue:
Atrocity and Accountability: The Long
Epilogue of the Pinochet Case .............. 465
afterword:
Kissinger’s Response ..................................... 529
ac know ledg ments ............................................. 541
notes .................................................................... 547
index .................................................................... 585

IN MY MEMORY
To my father, Hy Kornbluh, this book is dedicated. He taught me, through
parental patience as well as his social and political commitment, the simple
meaning of human decency in a world of many ills and evils that could not
be ignored—as he made sure I understood. To him I owe the construct of
conscience and the sense of common community that has enabled this work
from the first page to the last.

Introduction:
History and Accountability
It is not a part of American history that we are proud of.
—Secretary of State Colin Powell, responding to a question on
the morality of the U.S. role in Chile, February 20, 2003
J
ust before midnight on October 16, 1998, two Scotland Yard offi cials
slipped through the halls of an elite private clinic in London and secured
the room in which former Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, was
recovering from back surgery. With En glish effi ciency, they disarmed his
private bodyguards, disconnected the phones, posted eight policemen outside
the door, and then proceeded to serve Pinochet with a warrant from IN-
TERPOL. Within minutes, British authorities accomplished what the Chilean
courts had refused to do since the end of his military regime in 1990— they
placed Pinochet under arrest for crimes against humanity.
General Pinochet, whose name became synonymous with gross violations
of human rights during his seventeen-y ear dictatorship, spent 504 days under
house arrest in London. Only aggressive diplomatic intervention by Chile’s
civilian government, pressured by the Pinochetistas in the Chilean military, and
an adroit propaganda campaign waged by his lawyers, kept him from being
extradited to Spain to stand trial for offenses ranging from torture to terror-
ism. After sixteen months in detention, the British government released the
eighty- four- year- old general on what it termed “humanitarian grounds.”
When he returned to his homeland, however, he was stripped of his immu-
nity from prosecution, indicted, and interrogated. At one point Pinochet even
faced the ignominious prospect of being fi ngerprinted and posing for a mug
shot. Initially, the Chilean courts ruled that due to age- related dementia Pino-
chet could not be put on trial for the abuses committed under his military
reign; at the time of his death, however, Pinochet faced multiple indictments.