The Man Who `Knew Too Much

By Lewis H. Diuguid

HEN A free-spirited American The father, Edmund Harman, 70, a W filmmaker disappeared and later businessman who started his search turned up dead In the aftermath of the more content than most with his gov- 1973 Chilean coup, no one could — or ernment, now declares: would — answer why. But the New York family of Charles "Considering the information I have Herman refused to take "We don't been gathering and what I have seen know" for an answer. Their dogged and heard, the only conclusion I can search, along with recent related devel- drawls that the fingered opments, have brought the case to a cli- him." max. What has grown into Horman's ad- At the least, it is now clear that the versary proceeding against the State U.S. and Chilean governments knew a Department is gathering supporters. great deal about Herman's fate at the When a 'former Chilean intelligence time they were telling the family they agent declared recently that he was' knew nothing. That was during the full present when a Chilean general or- month when he was "missing," when dered Charles killed "because he knew the father, full of hope, went to the too much," several U.S. congressmen soccer stadium where demanded a new investigation. hundreds of prisoners were herded and called for his son to come forward. An Enforced Vacation "This is your father," he shouted over N SEPT. 11, 1973, the day of thi the bullhorn. ''You have nothing to O coup that toppled President Salva- fear." dor Allende's experiment in , But Charles had been dead since the Charles Harman was showing an Amer- day after he was taken off by a uni- ican visitor Chile's seaside resort of formed patrol. There is ample evidence Vita del Mar. that Chilean authorities knew this. The coup began in the neighboring Now, evidence is accumulating that the port of Valparaiso, where admirals U.S. government did, too, and that per- later conceded they had been plotting haps It played a role in his death. for months, Down the long shank of Chile, military control was so complete Diuguid is an assistant foreign ed- that, as one officer put it, the takeover itor and former Latin America corre- "was a cup of milk." spondent of The Washington Post. See CHILE, Page CS .4 United Pr.e lalArntilong Santiago's National Stadium was used to hold thousands after the 1973 coup in Chile. A Man Who 'Knew Too Much'

CHILE, From Page Cl elusion that Creter was exaggerating One witness said she followed the his importance. The Navy said the job truck to the soccer stadium. Mrs. Hor- As part of that control, internal be did related to repair of fire extin- man says that she was caught down- travel was halted. Horman, 91, and guishers on U.S. surplus ships sold to town by the curfew that evening, re- Terry Simon of New York took up an Chile and his presence at the time of turning the next morning to find the obligatory four-day vacation at the Mir- the coup was coincidence. house empty, ransacked and robbed. amar Hotel, where the Pacific crashes No direct U.S. role in the coup has She reported to the U.S. consulate and onto rocks below a sunny deck and peli- ever been proven, despite later revela- turned to friends for help. Two friends cans flap by in lazy vees. tions of American efforts against Al- said they received calls that day from Horman's wife Joyce had passed up lende. Chilean military intelligence asking the trip and was at home in Santiago, Return and Arrest them to explain why Horman had their normally 90 minutes away. She would names. N SEPT. 15, Horman and Simon not venture out beyond the corner gro- These calls alone were clear indica- 1.._/ rode back to Santiago with Capt. cer's in the curfew of the next four tion that Horman was in the hands of Davis. bead of the U.S. military advi- days- • the military and not, as Chile consist- sory group in Chile. The naval mission At the Miramar, Horman and Simon ently contended, outside the reach of had already helped them by radioing met several other stranded Americans. "the law." Mrs. Horman states that she parents of both, via Panama, that they They received most of their news of the informed the consulate of the calls. were alive and well. coup from Marine Lt. Col. P. J. Ryan, One recipient of the calls did also; the Davis dropped them at the embassy head of the five-man U. S. Naval Group consul later denied this call was re- in Santiago, where the streets were in Valparaiso. Simon quotes Ryan as de- ceived, the Hormans' records show. coming back to life, with a promise to scribing mass arrests then going on in Then came a series of increasingly help if he could in the next days. the capital as "search-and-destroy" mis- tense and rancorous meetings between Simon and Horman returned to the sions a la Vietnam. U.S. officials and , joined Hormans' rented house on the edge of The general glee of the other Ameri- on Oct. 5 by , who cans with the coup dismayed Horman downtown, burned some Marxist litera- ture by then known to- be a target of flew down from New York. and Simon, who were enthusiastic sup- The Hormans found most of the offi- porters of Allende. They were further the search squads, and decided that they should leave Chile as soon as possi- cials uncooperative, ill-disposed to act, disconcerted when a friend of Ryan's. evasive and, on occasion, untruthful ble. Arthur P. Creter, who described him- and rude. self as a retired naval engineer based in Joyce Horman remembers destroy- ing all the notes she could find to a Looking back, the Hormans say they Panama, told them: "We came down to are convinced that they were witness- study by her husband that she now do a job, and it's done." ing a coverup. "Why go to elaborate ef- Simon recallS Creter's bearing as feels may have led someone to con- clude that he "knew too much." Or sim- forts to conceal unless there was some- thoroughly conspiratorial and in retro- thing to conceal?" asks the father. spect feels be probably was posturing ply to decide that in the polarization be- tween "them" and "us" that led up to Whatever the cause, there was a for effect. The incident is important for clear failure to communicate. From two reasons: the coup, he was clearly one of "them." Horman had studied the assassina- Ambassador to Consul First, Horman and Simon took the re- Frederick D. Purdy, there seemed to be tion of Chile's army chief, Gen. Rene mark, along with others, to indicate a a disbelief that the generals who threw Schneider, by extreme rightists in a fu- U.S. role in the coup. On return to San- out Allende could also harm an Ameri- tiago they passed It to American jour- tile attempt to prevent Allende from coming to power in 1970. can citizen. nalists who reported it in the same Or, alternatively, that if he was According to Joyce Horman, her hus- vein. harmed, he must have provoked it. For band's study showed a CIA role in the Second, U.S. embassy officials, deny- some in the embassy, to have supported attempted kidnaping that ended in ing the implication absolutely, later Allende was a provocation. A favored Schneider's death. A Senate report sub- used the allegedly false report to ques- conjecture was that Harman was in hid- sequently has shown that the CIA was tion the reliability and motives of Hor- ing. man and Simon. involved, although it was not found to However, U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. be directly responsible. Exeter and Harvard Davis eventually verified — in a docu- On Monday, Sept. 17, a uniformed pa- ET HOMAN, despite his beard, ment the Horman family obtained un- trol that the neighbors took to be army Y was no far-out revolutionary. His der the Freedom of Information Act - troops stopped near Horman's house, decidedly upper-class education began that Creter did indeed make the quoted asked a merchant some unrelated ques- at the Allen-Stevenson School for boys, statement to the two men. tions, entered the Horman house and two blocks from the family's East 76th The document also supports the con- was seen taking him away. Street apartment. The school has re- cently established an annual award in his honor. "I followed up his career and was tre- mendously impressed with his charac- ter," said the headmaster, Desmond Cole. "We give the award for the most original thinker at Allen-stevenson. public relations implications of any The citation is `for independence of continuance of the present situation spirit."• where circumstances of the disap- Charles went on to Exeter and was peared remain unexplained." magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa Since a witness had said Korman was in English at Harvard. He filled his taken to the stadium, and since thou- service obligation with six years of sands of other prisoners had been, his weekend duty in the Air National wife pleaded with the embassy to Guard while he worked as a writer, edi- check there. Consul Purdy said there tor and filmmaker. One of his films was was no use as the name was not on the on napalm. He participated in anti-Viet- computer printout of prisoners. nam and civil rights demonstrations. At a meeting with the ambassador, For a time he was what his mother de- Joyce Horman asked to be accompa- scribes as "the pet liberal" for the man- nied there. She says that Davis asked agement magazine Innovation. what she would do, "look under the In 1971, Joyce and benches?" When he told her to be pa- decided to travel to Latin America. tient, she cried and said she had been. They learned some Spanish at the Cuer- The consulate's performance in the navaca linguistics center in Mexico. In case later resulted in a General Ac- traveling, Joyce recalls, they were counting Office investigation that shocked by the poverty they encoun• found other legations notably more tered. They settled in Chile the follow- effective in protecting their nationals. ing year after being attracted by Al- At least one diplomat, from a country lende's programs to abate that poverty. far less influential than the United In the Hormans' sessions at the em- States, personally found a countryman bassy, officials insisted they had no in the stadium and some Americans prior record on Charles. He had not found help only from other embassies. On at least four occasions during the registered at the consulate, as Ameri- cans abroad are asked to do. torment of the month when Horman was missing, the father turned up As for CIA surveillance, the father promising leads through pressures quotes Ambassador Davis as assuring brought to bear on the Chilean mili- him there was no such activity in Chile. tary. But an official close to the case re- A banker friend in New York knew cently has acknowledged that the CIA an officer disposed to help, for inst- had considerable information on him ance. Two such episodes raised false With the perspective afforded by hopes with reports that Horman was State Department documents released seen alive. Capt. Davis, who had been to Edmund Norman — often illegible assigned to the case, followed these and or insubstantial Xeroxes at first, but, at other leads less easily dismissed. Two his insistence, some important records sets of influential Chilean officers who later — It is obvious that the embassy had promised that Horman's status could be quickly determined returned with no news after meeting with Capt. Davis. knew far more than it was telling the family. A Report Withheld By Oct. 1, IS days after the arrest, em- SCENT INTERVIEWS, however, bassy officers had interviewed wit- R make clear that no later than the nesses and submitted a report fully first week in October, a well-known, re- agreeing with the family's account of spected Chilean informed a ranking the seizure of Horman. embassy official that Horman was But no evidence appears of any de- killed "on or before Sept. 20" — infor- termined effort to have Chile square its mation from a credible source that denial that troops were involved with would prove to be correct. this clear indication that they were. The embassy official has acknowl- The basic human rights questions did edged receipt and reporting of the in- not seem to be an issue. By this time a second American, Frank R. Teruggi, had disappeared. formation, which included the allega- Ambassador Davis cabled to Washing- tion that those taking the decision bad ton: "At lunch today with ambassador a dossier on Horman including infor- designate [to the United States Gen. mation about his anti-Vietnam and civil Walter] Heitman, I raised the Teruggi rights activity in the United States. and Horman cases, pointing out the Although by early October the Nor- man family was desperate for leads to his fate, the embassy gave no word on receipt of the Chilean's report. The chi- lean thereupon gave the information to another embassy. A diplomat of that tiago stories from U.S. newspapers that embassy told a member of the Ford they felt were favorable to their point Foundation office in Santiago, as well of view. as the U.S. embassy. The Ford em- "We were the sources, here in New ployee passed the report to the embas- York," says Elizabeth Horman, Charles' sy, too, as well as to the father. It thus mother. "We would clip the New York reached him approximately two weeks Times and the Christian Science Moni- atter the embassy was first informed. tor and mail a packet to Charlie." Late that same day, Oct. 18, Consul Mrs. Norman is convinced that her Purdy informed the Hormans that the mailings in early 1973 were being inter- Chileans had found a body with finger- cepted by the CIA and that the infor- prints matching those of Charles. The mation was later passed on to the coup- Chilean military confirmed the report makers. She said her son had reported to the father. receiving the mail resealed. A curious discrepancy attended the final word of death. "Two Roads Diverged" Norman insists that Purdy and the HE PARENTS, the widow and the Chilean officers both said records until T friend, Terry Simon, gather ofters then mislaid showed Charles was shot at the apartment on 76th Street to go in the stadium Sept. 18 and buried uni- over the record they can recite in by- dentified in the wall of the national the-hour detail. It took six months and cemetery on Oct. 3. $900, they note, to have the body Purdy insists that he repeated only brought back. what he was told, that Charles' bullet- Edmund Horman is less active in his riddled body was found on the streets heavy-machinery business. Mostly he is on Sept. 18. The official Chilean version No evidence was offered, none has interested now in human rights — the is the same. Horman sticks to his ver- appeared in the public record, nor is last of many subjects his only child had sion. The account of the Chilean who there indication in the documents re- brought home to him. reported to an embassy officer early in leased that the embassy followed up Sen. Jacob Javits (11-N.Y.), to whom October also had said death came at the the allegations with the Chileans. Norman turned early in the ordeal, is stadium. The Horman family is convinced that calling for the case to be reopened and The question, like so many, remains the Chilean memo is referring ob- resolved. "If it were not for Edmund open. liquely to a venture in which bath men Norman we would not have found out had collaborated, along with other. anything," said the senator. "Leftist Movements" young Americans. It was called . the Like Sen. Edward M. Kennedy ID- DMUND NORMAN returned to North American News Sources, aimed Mass.) and Rep. Dante B. Fascell ID- E New York. By then, civil liberties at translating and distributing in San- Fla.), Javits has called for the State De- groups throughtout the world were partment to assure safe passage to this outraged by reports of brutalities in country of the former Chilean intellig- Chile. ence agent who spoke up recently on Later cables from Ambassador Davis the case. The Chilean's most explosive show other representations were made charge: that a man he took to be an as complaints from U.S. congressmen American intelligence agent was pre- multiplied. The ambassador's state- sent when the decision on Horman al- ments did not focus on the humanitar- legedly was taken. ian questions but suggested that Chile's "This does not surprise me," said the access to military assistance might be father. "I am only surprised it was al- affected in Congress if the Norman and lowed to come out." Teruggi cases were not cleared up. Charles Norman's widow brought back from Chile a memento of her hus- Perhaps In response to such nudg- ings, the Chilean government pre- band, a volume' they had carried of sented the embassy a memo oa Oct. 30, Robert Frost's poems, presented to him 1973. at Exeter in 19,33 "for excellence in so- cial studies." Although Chile had disclaimed any Among the poems is one that reads: knowledge of the two men, beyond the bare facts of an overnight arrest in Ter- Two roads diverged in a yellow uggi's case, it now declared: wood, and sorry I could "Available information on both per- not travel sons leads to the conclusion that they both ... the one less travelled were involved in extreme leftist move- I took by, and that has made ments in our country, which they sup- all the dif- ference. ported both materially and Ideological- From "The Rose Bat Taken," from THE PO. ly." The memo said they had links to a ETRY OF ROBERT FROST, copyright 1916, u 1969 by Halt. Rinehart h Winston, copyright 1944, group in the United States "to help by Robert Frost. extremists and political leaders of the former government" leave Chile. The odyssey of Charles Horman: from Harvard, left, to Chile, a few days before his death. HE ONLY other American with a submachine gun in the soccer 1 killed in the wake of the 1973 stadium. A Belgian who was in the coup in Chile was Frank R. Teruggi stadium at the same time recently Jr., 24, a student in economics at the gave this account in an affidavit at University of Chile. Like Charles the U. S. consulate in Brussels, citing Horman, Teruggi was an enthusias- fellow prisoners as his source. tic backer of Chile's socialist experi- A State Department official said ment, but his friends say he was not the Chilean government has been an activist. asked to respond to the new infor- A Chilean friend put It this way: mation. "When the rest of us were marching The elder Teruggi, a printer; said and shouting at the rallies, 1 knew I that from what he has learned of the would find Frank back at the edge CIA's activities in Chile, he cannot of the crowd, observing." accept that it was not at least aware According to the Chilean govern- of what happened. He said that the ment, Teruggi was detained Sept. 20, CIA responded to a request under 1979 (nine days after the coup}, on a the Freedom of Information Act by curfew violation, taken to the San- acknowledging the existence of a tiago soccer stadium with other pris- June, 1972, document relating to his oners and released the next day. His son. But the document was not perti- machine-gunned body was found on nent to his death, the CIA said the streets the following day, the junta says, a victim of anonymous The father went to Santiago in vigilantes. 1974 with a large group of civil liber- No release was signed at the stad- ties activists from the Chicago area ium, and the body was not Identified who later issued a blistering report at the morgue until Oct. 2. Teruggi's on rights violations in Chile. In seek- roommate was arrested with him • ing reasons for his son's death, Ter- but released later to the U. S. consu- uggi recalls asking Ambassador Na- late on condition that he leave Chile. thaniel Davis and Consul Frederick Teruggi's father, Frank IL-Teruggi D. Purdy if the embassy was not Sr. of Des Plaines, Ill., is convinced aware that several American stu- that a Chilean officer tortured his dents were at the university. He son brutally and then killed him quotes Purdy as saying, "We knew THE WASHINGTON POST Sundir, ime 20, 1976 , CS

they were out there but the CIA did not investigate Americans." "I served 40 months in the Infan- try," Teruggl, 61, told the recently. "I used to have a lot of respect for our men in Wash- ington, but now..." His son was a graduate of the Uni- versity of California at Berkeley A Student's who had taken part In anti-Vietnam demonstrations. He came to Chile in January, 1972. As far as the record shows, he violated no norms, let alone laws. He was one of perhaps 6,- 000 foreigners in Chile at the time of the coup, most of them supporters of the Allende government. Although the exact manner of his . death is still uncertain, the govern- Disputed ment's frequently used explanation — street vengeance — is regarded in numerous international reports as a euphemism for summary military executions. After Teruggra death, I visited the modest house where he lived, not far from the university. In the rub- ble left by the ransacking arrest Death squad was Teruggl's backpack and a well-thumbed copy of "How To See South America on $5 and $10 a Day." — LEWIS H. DIUGUID