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Chapter 6:
AN AFTERWORD ON CHILE
A RULE OF thumb in Washington holds that any late disclosure by offi-
cialdom will contain material that is worse than even the cynics
suspected.
One need not try and turn this maxim into an iron law. However, in
September 2000 the CIA disgorged the results of an internal inquiry on
Chile, which had been required of it by the Hinchey amendment to the
Intelligence Authorization Act for that fiscal year. And the most
hardened
critics and investigators were reduced to amazement. (The document was
handed to me after I had completed the chapter above, and I let it stand
so
as to preserve the actual order of disclosure.) I reproduce the chief
headings
below, so as to preserve, also, the Agency's own prose:
Support for Coup in 1970. Under "Track II" of the strategy, CIA sought
to
instigate a coup to prevent Al1ende from taking office after he won a
plural-
ity in the 4 September election and before, as Constitutionally required
because he did not win an absolute majority, the Chilean Congress reaf
firmed his victory. CIA was working with three different groups of
plotters.
All three groups made it clear that any coup would require the
kidnapping of
Army Commander Rene Schneider, who felt deeply that the Constitution
required that the Army allow Al1ende to assume power. CIA agreed with
that
assessment. Although CIA provided weapons to one of the groups, we have
found no information that the plotters' or CIA's intention was for the
general
to be killed. Contact with one group of plotters was dropped early on
because of its extremist tendencies. CIA provided tear gas, sub machine
guns
and ammunition to the second group, mortally wounding him in the attack.
CIA had previously encouraged this group to launch a coup but withdrew
support four days before the attack because, in CIA's assessment, the
group
could not carry it out successfully.
This repeats the old canard supposedly distinguishing a kidnap or abduc-
tion from a murder, and once again it raises the intriguing question:
what
was the CIA going to do with the general once it had kidnapped him?
(Note, also, the studied passivity whereby the report "found no
information
that the plotters' or CIA's intention was for the general to be killed."
What
would satisfy this bizarre criterion?) But then we learn, of the
supposedly
unruly gang that actually took its instructions seriously:
In November 1970 a member of the Viaux group who avoided capture
recontacted the Agency and requested financial assistance on behalf of
the
group. Although the Agency had no obligation to the group because it
acted
on its own, in an effort to keep the prior contact secret, maintain the
good
will of the group, and for humanitarian reasons, $35,000 was passed.
"Humanitarian reasons." One has to admire the sheer inventiveness of
this
explanation. At 1970 prices, the sum of $35,000 in Chile was a
considerable
sum to pay. Not the sort of sum that a local station chief could have
dis-
bursed on his own. One wants to know how the Forty Committee and its
vigilant chairman, Henry Kissinger, decided that the best way to
dissociate
from a supposedly loose-cannon gang was to pay it a small fortune in
cash
after it had committed a cold-blooded murder.
The same question arises in an even more acute form with another dis-
closure made by the Agency in the course of the same report. This is
headed
"Relationship With Contreras." Manuel Contreras was the head of
Pinochet's secret military police, and in that capacity organized the
death,
torture, and disappearance of innumerable Chileans as well as the use of
bombing and assassination techniques as far afield as Washington, DC.
The CIA admits early on in the document that it "had liaison
relationships
in Chile with the primary purpose of securing assistance in gathering
intel-
ligence on external targets. The CIA offered these service assistance in
internal organization and training to combat subversion and terrorism
abroad, not in combating internal opponents of the government."
Such flat prose, based on a distinction between the "external threat"
and
the more messy business of internal dictatorial discipline, invites the
ques-
tion -what external threat? Chile had no foreign enemy except Argentina,
which disputed some sea lane rights in the Beagle Channel. (In conse-
quence, Chile helped Mrs Thatcher in the Falklands war of 1982.) And in
Argentina, as we know, the CIA was likewise engaged in helping the mili-
tary regime to survive. No: while Chile had no external enemies to speak
of,
the Pinochet dictatorship had many, many external foes. They were the
numerous Chileans forced to abandon their country. One of the jobs of
Manuel Contreras was to hunt them down. As the report puts it:
During a period between 1974 and 1977, CIA maintained contact with
Manuel Contreras, who later became notorious for his human rights
abuses.
The US Government policy community approved CIA's contact with
Contreras, given his position as chief of the primary intelligence
organiza-
tion in Chile, as necessary to accomplish the CIA's mission, in spite
of
concerns that this relationship might lay the CIA open to charges of
aiding
internal political repression.
After a few bits of back-and-forth about the distinction without a
differ-
ence (between external and "internal" police tactics) the CIA report
states
candidly:
By April 1975, intelligence reporting showed that Contreras was the
princi-
pal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the Junta, but
an
interagency committee directed the CIA to continue its relationship with
Contreras. The US Ambassador to Chile urged Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence [General Vernon] Walters to receive Contreras in
Washington in
the interests of maintaining good relations with Pinochet. In August
1975,
with interagency approval, this meeting took place.
In May and June 1975, elements within the CIA recommended estab-
lishing a paid relationship with Contreras to obtain intelligence based
on his
unique position and access to Pinochet. This proposal was overruled,
citing
the US Government policy on clandestine relations with the head of an
intelligence service notorious for human rights abuses. However, given
mis-
communications in the timing of this exchange, a one-time payment was
given to Contreras.
This does not require too much parsing. Some time after it had been con-
cluded, and by the CIA at that, that Manuel Contreras was the "principal
obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy;" he is given American taxpay-
ers' money and received at a high level in Washington. The CIA's
memorandum is careful to state that, where doubts exist, they are
stilled by
"the US Government policy community" and by "an interagency commit-
tee." It also tries to suggest, with unconscious humor, that the head of
a
murderous foreign secret service was given a large bribe by mistake. One
wonders who was reprimanded for this blunder, and how it got past the
scrutiny of the Forty Committee.
The report also contradicts itself, stating at one point that
Contreras's
activities overseas were opaque, and at another that:
Within a year after the coup, the CIA and other US Government agencies
were aware of bilateral cooperation among regional intelligence services
to
track the activities of and, in at least a few cases, kill political
opponents. This
was the precursor to Operation Condor, an intelligence-sharing arrange-
ment among Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay established in
1975.
So now we know: the internationalization of the death squad principle
was
understood and approved by US intelligence and its political masters
across
two administrations. The senior person concerned in both administra-
tions was Henry Kissinger. Whichever "interagency committee" is meant,
and whether it is the Forty Committee or the Interagency Committee on
Chile, the traces lead back to the same source.
On leaving the State Department, Kissinger made an extraordinary bar-
gain whereby (having first hastily trucked them for safekeeping on the
Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills, New York) he gifted his papers to
the
Library of Congress, on the sole condition that they remained under seal
until after his demise. However, Kissinger's friend Manuel Contreras
made
a mistake when he killed a United States citizen, Ronni Karpen Moffitt,
in
the Washington car bomb which also murdered Orlando Letelier in 1976.
By late 2000, the FBI had finally sought and received subpoena power to
review the Library of Congress papers, a subpoena with which Kissinger
dealt only through his attorneys. It was a start, but it was pathetic
when
compared to the efforts of truth and justice commissions in "Chile,
Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay;' the nations named above, which
have now emerged from years of Kissinger-befriended dictatorship and
sought a full accounting. We await the moment when the United States
Congress will inaugurate a comparable process, and finally subpoena all
the
hidden documents that obscure the view of unpunished crimes committed
in our names.
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