Despite Chilean Dictator's Death, Fight to Obtain U.S. Documents Related to 1976 Assassination Continues

Interview with Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the National Security Archive, conducted by Scott Harris

The death of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet on Dec. 10 ended any further attempts to bring to justice one Latin America's most brutal dictators. The Chilean military, led by Gen. Pinochet staged a bloody coup against the democratically elected Socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973. In the years which followed, Pinochet's regime killed nearly 3,200 suspected political opponents, tortured 28,000 and disappeared more than a thousand. During Pinochet's rein of terror, which ended in 1990, hundreds of thousands of Chileans fled their nation to seek refuge around the world.

Official U.S. government documents confirm that President Richard Nixon was complicit in supporting and planning the Chilean coup. In 1976, Pinochet's secret police ordered the car bomb assassination of former Chilean ambassador to the U.S. Orlando Letelier and his associate Ronni Moffett in downtown Washington, D.C. From October 1998 to March 2001, Pinochet was placed under house arrest in London while he awaited Britain's decision on a Spanish request to extradite the general to stand trial on murder and torture charges. Eventually, British authorities released Pinochet to return to Chile after determining that the aging despot was neither physically or mentally fit to stand trial. Pinochet was later discovered to have stolen some $27 million and concealing the money in U.S. and other overseas banks.

At the time of his death, Pinochet was under investigation in multiple human rights cases and under house arrest in Chile. Although he was never brought to trial, the dictator lived to see one of his torture victims, socialist Michelle Bachelet elected Chile's president. Between the Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the National Security Archive and author of the book, "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability." Kornbluh looks at the legacy of Augusto Pinochet and continuing demands for the release of U.S. documents related to the dictator's brutal repression.

Visit the National Security Archive website to read related documents at www.Nsarchive.org.

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