The CPC’s action comes in the aftermath of the release of 16,000 secret U.S. records that document Washington’s role in the 1973 overthrow of socialist President Salvador Allende as well as in the military junta’s rise to power.

The Chile Declassification Project documents spurred not only the CPC’s consideration for a case in the United States, but also emboldened a Chilean judge to frame charges against General Augusto Pinochet, head of the dictatorial junta. (This week a judge dismissed kidnapping and murder charges against Pinochet.)

The 50,000 pages released last month from the U.S. State Department, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Departments are the third and final collection of documents (the Declassification Project released the first two sets of 8,000 documents in 1999). Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst of the non-profit National Security Archive, hailed the release as "a victory for openness over the impunity of secrecy." He said the documents "provide evidence for a verdict of history on U.S. intervention in Chile, as well as for potential courtroom verdicts against those who committed atrocities during the General Augusto Pinochet dictatorship."

The records provide the documentary evidence to support the findings of the 1975 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (also called the Church Committee). There is little here that is not known, except that now there is evidence for what was previously hearsay.

The papers show that Henry Kissinger convened a high-level intraagency group (the "40 Committee") to plot Allende’s overthrow. The group formed "drastic action" strategies to "shock" Chileans into action against their democratically-elected socialist leader, and that President Nixon authorized this course of action to "do everything we can to bring Allende down."

Among the notes is a censored, and therefore barely readable, set of accounts that show the CIA’s hand in the October 1970 assassination of General Rene Schneider. There is a September 1972 CIA report in which Pinochet says that Allende should be forced from office, and then, U.S. National Security intercepts of conversations and information on the Sept. 11, 1973 coup.

When the Chilean government asked for "advisers," Washington responded that it was "hampered by U.S. congressional and media concerns with respect to alleged violations of human rights," so that any U.S. assistance would come in "back channels."

From 1973 to 1990, Pinochet led a military junta at the behest of the CIA, significant multinational corporations and the Chilean bourgeoisie. The first order of business was to dismantle the structures of civil society. The military converted the National Stadium into a detention center where they interrogated and tortured 7,000 prisoners.

On Sept. 14, 1973, the military beat and killed the folk singer and theatre director Victor Jara, a premonition of the destruction of Chile’s active independent theatre. Two navy ships (Lebu and Esmeralda) became prisons as the military built concentration camps in towns throughout the country.

The military was particularly harsh in its attacks on young radicals, especially in the assassinations of two U.S. citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi (depicted in Costa Gavras’ 1982 film Missing). The documents now show that by 1972 the CIA perhaps shared information about Horman’s radicalism with the Chilean secret service, and it certainly was party to the murder of both Horman and Teruggi in the days after 1973.

Crucially, the newly declassified documents show that the U.S. may have colluded in the 1976 Washington, D.C. assassination of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean leader in exile. In 1978, Michael Townley, a U.S. national, confessed that he killed Letelier under orders from the Chilean secret police.

CIA Director George Bush gave an assurance that the CIA had nothing to do with the murder. It now appears that this was a lie, and we shall learn more of this in a pending court case around the murder. Incidentally, intelligence records that could implicate Pinochet in these matters remain classified.

A year after the Chilean people overthrew Pinochet, the government established a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission under the lawyer Raul Rettig. The Rettig Commission studied "the most serious human rights violations" and on March 4, 1991 it offered its report. The front pages of all Chilean papers carried news of the "disappeared," and many papers printed the entire report verbatim.

President Patricio Aylwin (Christian Democrat, right of center) went on television and wept, asking the people to forgive the government and to move forward. The new government denied nothing, even if they could not prosecute Pinochet because of a legal maneuver set-up by him before he left office.

The Rettig report showed that the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA) was "directly answerable to the office of the President of the Republic" and that (according to a CIA document) the president had issued a "secret decree" that gave DINA the sole power to detain political prisoners.

Since these are powerful grounds to prosecute Pinochet, the fight continues, but at least it does so with a certain measure of honesty from the new political apparatus in the country (except the army, which rejected every point in the Rettig report).

When Clinton asked that the reports on Chile be declassified, the CIA tried to block him. "I think you’re entitled to know what happened back then and how," said Clinton in response. Only after concerted struggle within the administration did the CIA release the documents. Of course, they are heavily censored and the National Security Archive pledges to continue to press for full disclosure.

Clinton’s Chile Declassification Project is unique within the administration, and it has been commended by liberals across the country. The administration has not, however, pledged to declassify documents on CIA dirty operations in Africa or in Central America. Why Chile?

Part of Clinton’s economic package for the U.S. is to create "free trade agreements" across the globe, first within North America (NAFTA in 1994), then with Africa, and simultaneously with South America. The neoliberal assault on South America will need to come plated in impeachable ideological armor. To say that one is a genuine champion of human rights (and therefore able to be open about one’s past with the much reviled dictators of the Southern Cone) is critical in that part of the world.

Since the Rettig Commission and the Church Commission already document U.S. activities with the Pinochet junta, little can be gained from denial.

In 1975 a U.S. State Department official said that secret evidence should be made available to the public because "in the mind of the world at large, we are closely associated with this junta, ergo with fascists and torturers." To disassociate itself from that past means the United States can reinvent itself as the leading force for human rights.

U.S. newspapers met the declassification with silence. No one seemed interested. As it released the documents, the State Department pledged that the "United States will continue to work closely with the people of Chile – as their friend and partner – to strengthen the cause of democracy in Latin America and around the world."

Chile is in the process of its national reconstruction, but the U.S., meanwhile, has met its own past without comment. The U.S. has not faced its dirty history of coups and repression, from Guatemala to Iran, from the Congo to Italy. Nor has the U.S. been open about its history of economic insurgency in the Southern Cone, what with the role of the Chicago Boys in the collapse of the Peruvian economy, the slow Vietnamization of the Colombian rebellion, the role of the CIA in the anti-Marxist Operation Condor exercise, and finally, in the fierce dollar war against most currencies in the region.

Besides there is little indication that the United States has rejected its policy to violate the human rights of those who will not accede to its power (such as the Yugoslavians, the Cubans, the Iraqis, and others). In February 2001, Peter Kornbluh and The New Press will release the complete documents in a volume called "The Pinochet Files: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability."

Pablo Neruda of Chile wrote of those who betray the people: "I’m going to leave their numbers and names nailed to the wall of dishonor." Kornbluh will do just that with his book, but it would not serve Neruda’s purpose well if the recent revelations allow the current atrocities to go by without accountability or anger.