The New York Times

Tuesday, February 15, 2000

The Truth About Chile

Thanks to a powerful nudge from President Clinton, the secrecy that has too long shrouded Washington's role in the 1973 political convulsions in Chile is lifting. The picture painted by newly disclosed passages from State Department papers is profoundly disturbing. It is now clear that the American government knew far more about the disappearance and murder of two American citizens in Chile than it acknowledged at the time. Indeed, American intelligence and military officials may have encouraged Gen. Augusto Pinochet's security forces to round them up even though it was clear that the two men, like thousands of Chileans arrested during the same period, were likely to be mistreated, if not killed.

The truth about clandestine American activities in the cold war has been difficult to unearth and painful to confront. In the name of opposing Communism, Washington sometimes ignored its own democratic principles and condoned the kind of brutal conduct it publicly deplored. The case of the two Americans murdered in Chile seems to belong in this category.

For 26 years, American officials have steadfastly denied any role in the unsolved murders of the two young men in September 1973. Charles Horman, 31, a filmmaker and writer, and his colleague, Frank Teruggi, 24, were arrested and killed as supporters of General Pinochet overthrew the Socialist government of Salvador Allende. Mr. Horman and Mr. Teruggi applauded Mr. Allende's Socialist experiments. They worked for a newsletter that reprinted articles from American newspapers critical of American policy toward Chile. Their deaths were dramatized -- and American complicity strongly implied -- in the 1982 movie "Missing," made by Constantin Costa-Gavras.

The recently declassified State Department documents show that its own investigators concluded almost immediately after the murders that General Pinochet's new government had killed the two men. The investigators inferred, moreover, that the Chileans would not have done so without some sign of assent from American intelligence officials.

This damning information was not made public when portions of the same documents were selectively declassified in 1980. The State Department cited national security and executive privilege considerations in exempting the passages from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The reasoning was deceptive, and an abuse of the law.

President Clinton, who has pressed for full disclosure of cold-war secrets, directed federal agencies to search their files for information on human rights abuses and terrorism in Chile, beginning with the period from 1968 to 1978. Mr. Clinton acted after the arrest of General Pinochet in London in 1998 on human rights charges filed by a Spanish Judge. It is now time for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon to follow Mr. Clinton's order, and the example of openness set by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.