In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here....We want to help, not undermine you.—Henry Kissinger speaking confidentially to General Augusto Pinochet
The 1998 arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in Britain brought renewed attention to the dark days of his dictatorship and raised questions about America's role in bringing the General and his henchmen to power.
As a result of the efforts of Peter Kornbluh and the National Security Archive, thousands of the government records that spell out US government support of Pinochet have recently been declassified. The Pinochet File makes public many of the key and formerly secret records of the atrocity and complicity that are at the heart of the international campaign to hold this Chilean general legally accountable for murder, torture, and terrorism.
Peter Kornbluh's investigative narrative puts the documents in their historical context—exposing the efforts of Henry Kissinger, the White House and the CIA to conceal this history—and fills in the gaps of one of the most infamous chapters in the history of American foreign policy.
Among the formerly top-secret records in The Pinochet File are:
• Top-secret transcripts of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and other cabinet members discussing how to "bring Allende down."
• Minutes of top secret meetings, chaired by Kissinger, to determine covert operations in Chile.
• CIA Chile Task Force organizational and strategy documents.
• White House Situation Room cables welcoming General Pinochet to power.
• Defense Intelligence Agency organizational diagrams of Chile's repressive secret police, DINA.
• Chilean secret police records on Operation Condor.
• Intelligence reporting to Henry Kissinger on Condor.
• Comprehensive CIA, NSC and State Department reports on the September 1976 car bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt.
