Congressional Record: July 1, 1999 (Extensions)
Page E1472-E1473
NEW REVELATIONS ON GENERAL PINOCHET AND THE UNITED STATES
______
HON. GEORGE MILLER
of california
in the house of representatives
Thursday, July 1, 1999
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues will
recall, I have worked for several years now, along with Mr. Conyers of
Michigan and others here, to have the United States declassify
documents concerning Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 1973 military coup in
Chile and its aftermath and what the United States knew about
Pinochet's connection to human rights violations and acts of terrorism
both in Chile and abroad.
A Spanish court is trying to extradite General Pinochet to stand
trial in Spain for international human rights violations. The documents
held by the United States are expected to shed important light on
Pinochet's activities that will help clarify his personal role in this
bloody period of history.
Yesterday, the first significant release of documents took place. I
commend to my colleagues the articles below, from the New York Times
and the Washington Post concerning the 5,800 documents released at the
National Archives. As you will note from the articles below, it is
suspected that there are still many more relevant documents that have
not been released, particularly from the Central Intelligence Agency,
which only contributed 490 documents to yesterday's release. I applaud
the Administration for releasing yesterday's documents but I strongly
urge them to continue to release documents on a timely basis from all
branches of the Administration, including the CIA.
The search for the truth is important not only for the historic case
against General Pinochet, but for Americans too who wish to know what
role their government may have played in a violent period of history
and how we may avoid playing such a role in the future.
The New York Times notes also that not only will the documents help
Spain, but that Spain has already helped provide information to the
United States that might help the Justice Department complete its still
open case against those responsible for the assassination of Chilean
exile Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronnie Karpen Moffitt
in Washington, D.C. in 1976. It is widely believed, but has not yet
been proven, that General Pinochet personally ordered Letelier's
execution.
The documents released yesterday further demonstrate that the United
States was well aware of atrocities taking place during and after the
coup and that despite this knowledge the Nixon Administration sought to
maintain close ties to General Pinochet.
"U.S. Releases Files on Abuses in Pinochet Era," The New York
Times, July 1, 1999, Page A11.
"Documents Show U.S. Knew Pinochet Planned Crackdown in '73," The
Washington Post, July 1, 1999, Page A23.
[From the New York Times, July 1, 1999]
U.S. Releases Files on Abuses in Pinochet Era
(By Philip Shenon)
Washington, June 30--The C.I.A. and other Government
agencies had detailed reports of widespread human rights
abuses by the Chilean military, including the killings and
torture of leftist dissidents, almost immediately after a
1973 right-wing coup that the United States supported,
according to once-secret Government documents released today.
The 5,800 documents which the Clinton Administration
decided last year to declassify and make public could provide
evidence to support the prosecution of Gen. Augusto Pinochet,
who seized power in the coup and was arrested in Britain last
October. Spain is seeking his extradition, charging that his
junta had kidnapped, tortured and killed Spanish citizens.
The documents were released as Clinton Administration
officials confirmed that the Justice Department has been
conferring with Spanish authorities, in part to exchange
information about General Pinochet, including his possible
involvement in the 1976 car-bomb assassination in Washington
of the Chilean Ambassador to the United States, Orlando
Letelier, and a colleague, Ronni Moffitt, of the Institute
for Policy Studies. Because the Justice Department considers
the Letelier investigation to be ongoing, the Government
withheld documents related to the murders, officials said
today.
Historians and human rights advocates, who were busily
trying to sort through the nearly 20,000 pages released today
by the National Archives, agreed that the documents did not
offer startling revelations about American ties to the
Chilean junta under General Pinochet.
Instead, they said, the documents provide rich new detail
to support the long-held view that the United States knew
during and after the coup about the Chilean military's
murderous crackdown on leftists.
On Sept. 21, 1973, 10 days after the coup, one C.I.A.
report said: "The prevailing mood among the Chilean military
is to use the current opportunity to stamp out all vestiges
of Communism in Chile for good. Severe repression is planned.
The military is rounding up large numbers of people,
including students and leftists of all descriptions, and
interning them."
The report noted that "300 students were killed in the
technical university when they refused to surrender" in
Santiago, the capital, and that the military was considering
a plan to kill "50 leftists" for every leftist sniper still
operating.
In a summary of the situation in Chile a month after the
coup, a C.I.A. report dated Oct. 12 found that "security
considerations still have first priority with the junta."
"The line between people killed during attacks on security
forces and those captured and executed immediately has become
increasingly blurred," the report continued. It said the
junta "has launched a campaign to improve its international
image; the regime shows no sign of relenting in its
determination to deal swiftly and decisively with dissidents,
however, and the bloodshed goes on."
However, a C.I.A. report dated March 21, 1974, insisted
that "the junta has not been bloodthirsty."
"The Government has been the target of numerous charges
related to alleged violations of human rights," it said.
"Many of the accusations are merely politically inspired
falsehoods or gross exaggerations."
An estimated 5,000 people were killed in the coup,
including Chile's democratically elected President, Salvador
Allende, whose body was recovered from the bombed remains of
the Presidential Palace, which had been attacked by military
jets.
Thousands more died or were tortured at the hands of the
military during General Pinochet's 17-year rule. Last week,
the Chilean College of Medicine reported that at least
200,000 people had been tortured by Government forces at the
time.
Under the Nixon Administration, the Central Intelligence
Agency mounted a full-tilt covert operation to keep Dr.
Allende from taking office and, when that failed, undertook
subtler efforts to undermine him. The C.I.A.'s director of
operations at the time, Thomas Karamessines, later told
Senate investigators that those efforts "never really
ended."
The C.I.A. has never provided a full explanation of what it
knew about human rights abuses carried out by the Chilean
military during and after the coup. But internal Government
documents released since have shown that the agency's
knowledge of the violence was extensive.
The Clinton Administration announced last December that, as
a result of the arrest of General Pinochet, it would
declassify some of the documents.
The Administration described the move as an attempt at
Government accountability, and it was the first sign that the
United States intended to cooperate in the criminal case
being built against General Pinochet.
The vast majority of the documents released today--5,000 of
the 5,800--came from the files of the State Department. The
C.I.A. released 490 documents, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, 100, and the Pentagon, 60.
Human rights groups said they were surprised by the paucity
of documents declassified by the C.I.A.
"The C.I.A. has the most to offer but also the most to
hide," said Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive,
a public-interest clearing-house for declassified documents.
The documents that were released
[[Page E1473]]
today, he said, "show that the C.I.A. was well-apprised of
the vicious nature of the Chilean regime."
The public affairs office at the C.I.A. did not respond to
phone calls early this evening.
The documents released today date from 1973 to 1978, "the
period of the most flagrant human rights abuses in Chile,"
said James Foley, a State Department spokesman.
The White House said in a statement that "a limited number
of documents have not been released at this time, primarily
because they relate to an ongoing Justice Department
investigation" of the murder of Mr. Letelier and Ms.
Moffitt.
Administration officials, speaking on condition that they
not be identified, said that the inquiry was active, in part
as a result of information available to the United States
from Spanish prosecutors seeking to try General Pinochet.
In April, they said, a senior criminal prosecutor from the
Justice Department, Mark Richard, traveled to Spain to meet
with Spanish authorities to discuss whether Washington and
Madrid could swap information in their investigations.
Prosecutors here have long been interested in whether there
is evidence that General Pinochet or his deputies ordered the
murders in Washington because Mr. Letelier was an opponent of
the Pinochet regime.
The killings here are believed to have been part of an
orchestrated campaign of violence known within the Pinochet
Government as Operation Condor, in which opponents of the
junta were targeted for assassination in and out of Chile.
A State Department document dated Aug. 18, 1976, only a
month before Mr. Letelier's murder, shows that Secretary of
State Henry A. Kissinger and other senior department
officials were warned of "rumors" that Operation Condor
might "include plans for the assassination of subversives,
politicians and prominent figures both within the national
borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad."
Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch, who unearthed the
document, said it "shows the United States was very aware of
the terrorist activities that General Pinochet and his
colleagues were engaging in there, as well as abroad."
____
[From the Washington Post, July 1, 1999]
Documents Show U.S. Knew Pinochet Planned Crackdown in '73
(By Karen DeYoung and Vernon Loeb)
Days after the bloody 1973 coup that overthrew Chilean
President Salvador Allende, the CIA mission in Chile reported
to Washington that the new government of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet planned "severe repression" against its opponents.
A month later, the agency noted that "the line between
people killed during attacks on security forces and those
captured and executed immediately has become increasingly
blurred."
The CIA cables are among nearly 6,000 newly declassified
government documents released yesterday related to human
rights and political violence in Chile during the first five
years of Pinochet's rule.
In addition to indications that the CIA and the U.S.
Embassy in Santiago had detailed information on the extent of
repression and rights abuses there soon after the coup, the
documents provide new insights into disagreements within
President Richard M. Nixon's administration over policy
toward Pinochet's Chile.
The Clinton administration agreed to review and release
selected documents from the State and Defense departments,
the CIA and the FBI after Pinochet was arrested last October
in London in response to a Spanish extradition request on
charges of alleged human rights violations committed during
his 17-year rule. The extradition trial is scheduled for
September.
The redacted documents made public yesterday cover the
years of the worst excesses of the Chilean military
government, from 1973 to 1978, when at least 3,000 people
were killed or "disappeared" at the hands of government
forces. Additional documents--including some from 1968 to
1973 covering the election of Allende, a Marxist, as
president and the events leading up to the coup and his
death--are scheduled for later release.
The documents are primarily status overviews and
intelligence reports on the situation inside Chile, and add
little of substance to scholarly and congressional reviews of
the period, as well as investigations conducted by the
democratically elected Chilean governments that followed
Pinochet. Nor are the documents likely to be useful in the
Pinochet extradition case.
For example, information concerning the 1976 car bomb
assassination in Washington of former Chilean diplomat and
Pinochet opponent Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronni
Karpen Moffitt were left out, the State Department said,
because aspects of the case are still being investigated by
the Justice Department.
Human rights organizations commended the Clinton
administration for the release but expressed disappointment
at its selective nature. Peter Kornbluh of the National
Security Archives, who is compiling information for a book
about Pinochet, said of the released documents: "The CIA has
much to offer here, and much to hide. They clearly are
continuing to hide this history."
Embassy reporting from Santiago reflected the Nixon
administration's support of the 1973 coup, although the
administration consistently denied helping to plan or carry
it out. In late September that year, the embassy reported,
the new Pinochet government appealed for American advisers to
help to set up detention camps for the thousands of Chileans
it had arrested.
Worried about the "obvious political problems" such
assistance might cause, the embassy suggested in a cable to
the State Department that it instead "may wish to consider
feasibility of material assistance in form of tents,
blankets, etc. which need not be publicly and specifically
earmarked for prisoners."
Ambassador David H. Popper wrote the State Department in
early 1974 that in conversations with the new government "I
have invariably taken the line that the U.S. government is in
sympathy with, and supports, the Government of Chile, but
that our ability to be helpful . . . is hampered by [U.S]
Congressional and media concerns . . . with respect to
alleged violations of human rights here."
In a December 1974 secret cable, the agency reported on
information it had received concerning a briefing in which
Chile's interior minister and the head of the Directorate of
National Intelligence noted that the junta had detained
30,568 people, of whom more than 8,000 still were being held.
The two also agreed that an unspecified number of people were
being secretly held because "they are part of sensitive,
ongoing security investigations."
The Pinochet government never publicly acknowledged secret
detentions. According to Chilean government reports in 1991
and 1996, a total of 2,095 extrajudicial executions and death
under torture took place during the military regime, and
1,102 people disappeared at the hands of government forces
and are presumed dead.
By July 1977, U.S. policy under the new Carter
administration had turned sharply against Pinochet. Yet the
embassy expressed irritation over being asked to write
"still another human rights report" on Chile and noted the
"strong and varied views" inside the mission.
In its own report, the embassy military group complained:
"We [the United States] do not appear to be visionary enough
to see the total picture; we focus only upon the relatively
few violation cases which occur and continue to hound the
government about past events while shrugging off demonstrated
improvements."