Still Hidden: A Full Record Of What the U.S. Did in Chile 137 PETER Kosbnitcrir agencies were directed "on behalf of the presi- dent' to begin searching their archives "and re- s continues to fight ex- view for release - .. all documents that shed light tradition from England to face charges of on human rights abuses, terrorism, and other acts dimes against humanity, the historical of political violence during and prior to the Pi- Arecord of U.S. support for the former 'locket era in Chile.' Chilean dictator remains desaparecido—disap- What began as a precedent-setting exercise in peared—like so many victims of his violent re- offidal openness, however, has devolved into an gime. Unless President Clinton ensures that the example of government censors holding history record is brought to light, a singular opportunity hostage. The "securocrats" of the national securi- to find answers to unresolved cases of atrocities ty bureaucracy are blocking the release of virtually against Chileans and Americans, and to fully un- all documents that chronicle the full extent of the derstand the role U.S. government played in this U.S. role in Chile. The result, so far, is a public re- Coki War tragedy, will be lost. cord skewed by omission, open to charges of fraud In the wake of Gen. Pinochet's stunning arrest and a coverup. in London one year ago, the Clinton administra- tion has been conducting a special "Chile Dedassi- fication Project" On Feb. 1, U.S. national security Chile holds a special place in the annals of American foreign policy. During the mid-1970s, is a senior analyst at the the country that poet Pablo Nensia described as National Security Archive. His book The "a long petal of sea, wine, and snow" became : A Declassified Dossier on subject of international scandal. News reports re- Atrocity and Accountability"will be published next year by the New Press. See HISTORY, B5, Cot. 1

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Above: Excerpt from an Aug. 25,1876, State Department memo on the death of American Charles Herman that was heavily edited when released to his family In 1980; below, suspicions of the U.S. role emerge in the same document as made public earlier this month.

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HISTORY, Front 13 I almost nothing about their own govern- unsatisfactory Co mew II:armies, mac 'nese re- ment's actions. Among more than 25,000 cords are material to an "ongoing" in- vealed that the CIA had conducted massive pages released to date, there is not a single vestigation into Pinochet's possible role. clandestine operations to undermine the page of the thousands of CIA, National Secu- As coordinator of the Chile Declassifica- democratically elected socialist government rity Council (NSC) or National Security tion Project, the NSC bears responsibility of and help bring the mil- Agency (NSA) records on U.S. policy and for failure to comply with the president's di. itary to power in 1973. Secretary of State operations to bring down Allende and help rective. Under its watch, countless docu- 's embrace of the Pinochet Pinochet consolidate his rule. This docu- ments have been blocked from release. regime, despite its ongoing atrocities, mentation includes the files of the CIA's co- The CIA, which has the most to offer his- prompted Congress to pass the very first vert "Task Force on Chile," planning papers tory but also the most to hide, has refused to laws establishing human rights as a criterion from the Nixon White House, records of conduct a full file search of its covert action for U.S. policy abroad. U.S. material support for the DINA, and in- branch, the Directorate of Operations. After The CIA's covert operations and the de- I sent a comprehensive list of documents bate over U.S. policy toward Pinochet gener- missing from the first release to the CIA's ated a slew of secret documents. So, too, did telligence documents on the Horman and declassification center—the address of the 1973 murder in Chile of two U.S. citi- which is classified—an official informed me zens, freelance writers and Letelier-Moffitt cases. That such records exist is beyond dispute. that the agency was "not legally obliged" to , as well as the brazen 1976 As the subject of repeated controversy over search such files because it had never "offi- Gar bombing in Washington that killed for- the years, the U.S. role in Chile has generat- cially acknowledged" covert operations in mer Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier ed congressional inquiries, murder investi- Chile. (President Gerald Ford's public ad- and his American associate, Ronni Karpen gations, criminal prosecutions and civil law- mission in 1974 that the CIA had covertly in- Moffitt The Clinton administration's spe- suits—not to mention hundreds of requests tervened in Chile apparently doesn't count.) cial review carried the promise of finally de- under the Freedom of Information Act. Moreover, with the acquiescence of the clas.sifying these records and answering the These have yielded extensive information NSC, the intelligence community has taken outstanding questions that haunt this (which I have spent almost 20 years compil- the position that policy and planning docu- shameful era. ments are "not responsive" to the presi- Such questions include: ing and analyzing) about what still is hidden. ■ A close reading of two detailed Senate re- dent's directive. Under this narrow interpre- What role did the play in ports published in 1975, for example, shows the violent coup that brought Pinochet to power? that the CIA station in sent a num- ber of cables about its liaison relations" • Why was Harman, whose case was with the Chilean DINA after the coup. made famous in the Hollywood movie "Miss- Jus- tice Department files on the prosecution of ing." detained and executed? Did U.S. in- former CIA head Richard Helms for lying to telligence somehow finger him, as recently Congress about covert operations in Chile declassified documents suggest, for the Chilean military? reveal that the agency filed daily progress re- ports on "Track II"—the code name for U.S. • What support did the CIA provide to efforts to foment a coup against Allende. An Pinochet's notorious secret police, the DINA? aborted lawsuit filed by the Horman family against Kissinger produced references to • Could the United States have prevented classified records containing information the assassination of Letelier and Moffitt on American soil? about Charles Herman's death. But while President Clinton dearly intended these ca- Since the White House ordered declassifi- bles, files and records to be released, none of cation, the agencies' review has yielded al- most 7,000 documents—a major feat given them have been. the usual snail's pace of the national security The Horman case is a classic example of the cult of secrecy. As the movie "Missing" bureaucracy. On June 30, the administration suggests, his family has long suspected that released some 5,800 records, covering the the U.S. intelligence community knew far most repressive years of Pinochet's bloody more than it admitted about how and why rule, 1973 to 1978. Significantly, however, 5,000 of those were from the State Depart- he was singled out by the Chilean military af- ter the coup. But it took 26 years for the U.S. ment the CIA released only 500 docu- government to acknowledge that State De- ments----a fraction of its secret holdings on that period. partment officials shared the family's suspi- cion. "U.S. intelligence may have played a On Oct. 8, approximately 1,100 docu- part in Horman's death. At best, it was lim- ments were declassified in a second phase ited to providing or confirming information that was supposed to cover the years of Allende's presidency, 1970 to 1973. Based that helped motivate his murder ...." ac- on the accumulated evidence of U.S. involve- cording to a passage in an Aug. 25, 1976, State Department memorandum released ment in Chile during that period, that figure this month—a document that Horman's is a meager percentage of the true record. To be sure, some of the documents that widow, Joyce, calls "close to a smoking pis- were declassified contain extremely detailed tol." (When the same document was re- information on the Pinochet regime, and leased to the family in 1980, this critical paragraph was blacked out) And although they undoubtedly will prove useful to future Clinton's order explicitly directed agencies efforts within Chile to hold Pinochet's mil- to declassify documents on Harman, neither itary officers accountable for human rights violations. the CIA nor the NSA has released a single re- cord relating to his case. Hundreds of documents have also been B. ut while Chileans are learning about withheld on the Letelier and Moffitt assassi- their dark history from the U.S. docu- nations—albeit with the explanation, wholly ments, American citizens are learning tation, the deliberations of Nixon, Kissinger, but CIA and NSA officials objected to their to Guatemala, to acknowledge and redress Helms and others in plotting and financing release. Since the documents deal with the their mistakes of the past will be undeir political violence in Chile will not be consid- Allende era, they should have been made mined by this flagrant attempt to hide out ered for declassification—severely distort- public on Oct 8. They weren't own. ing the historical record. At home, the American public has the Consider one example: The CIA has re- t is unclear how many, if any, will be in- right to know the full story of U.S. policy to- leased one heavily blacked-out cable report- cluded in the third and final declassifica- ward Chile and Pinochet's brutal. regime. ing on the October 1970 kidnapping and Ition. now scheduled for April. Under the And his victims' families deserve to be able murder of Chilean Gen. Rene Schneider, media spotlight, the CIA recently said it will to lay this painful history to rest. Clinton's who opposed a military move against Allen- review some records related to covert ac- directive said the declassification project re- de. But the agency did not even submit for tion. But it is unlikely that the credibility of sponded, in part, "to the expressed wishes of review the dozens of secret "memeons" this important project can be salvaged un- the families of American victims." But an in- (memorandums of conversations), meeting less the president explicitly orders full coop- complete review, as wriate re- minutes and briefing papers showing that eration and maximum disclosure. cently, would be little more than an eXercise the White House and the CIA covertly or- There are compelling reasons to do so: in hypocrisy." chestrated this operation in an aborted at- Abroad. Washington's reputation as a At least rhetorically, Clinton appears to tempt to instigate a coup in Chile. standard-bearer on human rights is at stake. agree: "I think you're entitled to know what To the surprise of the intelligence conunu- It will prove far more difficult to encourage happened back then and how it happened," nity, the National Archives Records Admin- Chileans to undergo a process of truth and he recently told reporters. We are indeed. istration (NARA) found such documents reconciliation if Washington is unwilling to But only if he takes concrete action to sup- among Nixon's papers. In compliance with admit its own involvement in their history. port his words will Americans finally learn Clinton's order, these records were sub- Indeed, the credibility of U.S. diplomatic ef- what was done in Chile—in our name, but mitted to the Chile Declassification Project, forts to press other nations, from Germany without our knowledge.