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The National Security Archive |
Phone:
202/994-7000 |
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November
13, 2000 |
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For more information contact: |
More Declassified Documents on Chile:
Chile Documentation Project
PRESS RELEASE
CHILE: 16,000
SECRET U.S. DOCUMENTS DECLASSIFIED
CIA FORCED TO RELEASE HUNDREDS OF RECORDS ON COVERT OPERATIONS
National Security Archive calls Release a Victory for Openness;
Pushes for further Declassification
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Washington D.C.: The National Security Archive today
hailed the release of more than 16,000 secret U.S. records on the Pinochet
dictatorship in Chile, and Washington’s role in the violent overthrow of the
Allende government and the advent of the military regime to power. The
release, totaling over 50,000 pages of State Department, CIA, White House,
Defense and Justice Department records, represents the fourth and final
“tranche” of the Clinton Administration’s special Chile Declassification
Project.
The declassification includes 700 controversial
CIA documents that the Directorate of Operations had refused to release—records
of U.S. covert operations between 1968 and 1975 to destabilize the
democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and, after the violent
1973 coup, to bolster the military regime of Augusto Pinochet. The final
release, originally scheduled for September 14, was delayed two months while
the White House pressured the CIA to relinquish these documents. Some 800
other CIA intelligence records were also declassified.
Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National
Security Archive, the public interest research center that led the campaign to
declassify U.S. documents on Chile, called the release a “victory for openness
over the impunity of secrecy.” The documents, he said, “provide evidence
for a verdict of history on U.S. intervention in Chile, as well as for
potential courtroom verdicts against those who committed atrocities during the
Pinochet dictatorship.”
The National Security Archive credited
Clinton’s national security staff, particularly William Leary who coordinated
the declassification project, as well as State Department officials with a
strong commitment to using declassified U.S. documents to advance the cause of
human rights abroad and the American public’s right-to-know at home.
The release includes dozens of records on the
September 1976 assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and
his American associate, Ronni Karpen Moffitt that had been previously withheld
by the Justice Department as possible evidence in an ongoing investigation of
General Pinochet’s personal role in the most famous act of international
terrorism ever committed in Washington D.C. Intelligence records that could
directly implicate Pinochet remain classified. The majority of the 16,000
documents come from State Department files covering the years 1970 to 1990.
Among the key documents declassified
that shed considerable light on the history of U.S. involvement in Chile, and
the repression of the Pinochet regime are:
Detailed minutes of the “40 Committee” meetings—the high-level interagency
group chaired by national security advisor Henry Kissinger—which oversaw U.S.
efforts to undermine the election and government of Socialist leader Salvador
Allende. These meetings reveal strategies of “drastic action” planned to
“shock” Chileans into taking action to block Allende.
Files on National Security
Council and cabinet meetings chaired by Richard Nixon recording his
administration's commitment to “do everything we can to bring Allende down”
after covert efforts to foment a coup to prevent his inauguration failed.
(Dozens of other White House, CIA and NSC records, used by Frank Church’s
special committee reports on Chile in 1975, have been declassified for the
first time.)
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Memorandum for the President from Henry A. Kissinger, Subject: Chile,
September 17, 1970. |
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Memorandum of Conversation, NSC Meeting - Chile (NSSM 97), November 6,
1970. |
CIA memoranda and cables on the assassination of Chilean General Rene
Schneider, including a heavily censored review of the agency’s susceptibility
to charges of involvement in his murder by coup plotters in October 1970.
A CIA intelligence report, dated September 1972, on Augusto Pinochet’s belief
that Allende should be forced from office.
Heavily censored National Security Agency intercepts of
conversations and information on the September 11, 1973 coup.
U.S. government efforts to avoid pressuring the Pinochet regime
on human rights atrocities.
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Memorandum for Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, Subject: Chile,
July 25, 1975. |
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Department of State Cable, Subject: Operation Condor, August 24, 1976. |
FBI and DIA records showing
that U.S. intelligence had obtained the Chilean address of U.S. citizen Frank
Teruggi, who, like Charles Horman, was detained by Pinochet’s military after
the coup at his home, taken to the national stadium, and executed.
DINA requests for organizational support and training from the CIA.
CIA briefings to the State Department on Operation Condor and
planned assassinations abroad.
Documents that for the first time link General Pinochet to a pair
of Chilean intelligence agents later tied to the assassination of Orlando
Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C.
Reports
from CIA and other agencies on Manuel Contreras, his meetings with U.S.
officials, and his efforts to obstruct U.S. investigations into the
assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt.
“With these documents the history of the U.S.
role in Chile and the Pinochet dictatorship can be rewritten,” said Kornbluh,
who directs the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project. He noted,
however, that many CIA records remained heavily blacked out. “CIA censors
continue to dictate what Chileans and Americans alike can know about this
shameful history,” he said. National Security Archive officials pledged to
pursue all legal means to press the CIA to fully disclose still classified
documentation.
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