CHILE IN THEIR HEARTS

During his time in Chile, Frank Teruggi wrote dozens of letters to his sister Janice; she provided transcribed copies to author John Dinges for his book, Chile in Their Hearts. After just four months in the country, Teruggi described in this letter how being in Chile had changed his thinking: “Being down here is the best thing that could have happened to me as far as my political formation. I’m with revolutionaries from all over the continent and learning theory and practice in a way that is probably not available anywhere in the States. … In retrospect, I didn’t know as much about the U.S. as I thought I did. At first, when people asked me about the panthers, or the weathermen, or Angela Davis I was proud to have a chance to give my rap. But now I’m shutting up a bit, reading like crazy and trying to find out what’s really happening.”

In 1972, the FBI opened a “Security Matter Subversive” file on Frank Teruggi because of intercepted correspondence between him and anti-Vietnam War activists in Germany who were aiding Resisters In the Armed Forces (RITA) and what the FBI called other “deserter organizations.” Those organizations supported U.S. soldiers who went AWOL from their bases in Europe in protest against the war. As John Dinges reports in Chile in Their Hearts, “U.S. Amy Intelligence was closely monitoring RITA activities with the assistance of German intelligence.” Letters to Teruggi intercepted by this spying operation recorded his address in Chile on Hernan Cortes street in Santiago, Chile; that address was included in this FBI summary, raising the troubling question of whether the FBI or any other U.S. agency passed this information on to Chilean authorities before or after the coup.

On the day of the military coup, Charles Horman was in Valparaiso with Terry Simon, a friend from New York City; she was present for all the conversations with the U.S. Milgroup officers they met with that day and over the next four days. Simon kept meticulous notes on the conversations, and after Horman’s death, she dictated the notes to Stephen Volk, an American academic who typed them on sheets of onion skin paper. Volk smuggled the notes out of Chile in an empty Chapstick tube. The notes recorded names and addresses of various U.S. officers and the various statements they made. All of them enthusiastically backed the military coup; one Navy contractor named Arthur Creter repeatedly suggested “it had gone smoothly.” But the notes contained nothing that could be construed as secret or that could indicate Horman and Simon had learned “too much” about a U.S. role in the coup.

This unclassified U.S. Embassy cable—number 4565—was cited by Chilean Judge Jorge Zepeda as evidence that U.S. Embassy officials were aware of Charles Horman’s detention but did nothing to save him from being executed. Judge Zepeda’s indictment of the U.S. Military Group (MilGroup) commander, Navy Captain Ray Davis, stated that before Horman’s murder, “the United States Embassy informed the Department of State about the disappearance [of Horman]—according to declassified document 04565252528Z—at the very moment when the victim was still alive, in custody and being interrogated in the upper floors of the Ministry of Defense.” But the cable is dated September 25, 1973, a full week after Horman’s body had been delivered to the morgue; nothing in it indicates Embassy knowledge of his whereabouts at any time. According to the book, Chile in Their Hearts, “The court, it must be concluded, misread or misinterpreted the cable and used it incorrectly in an attempt to demonstrate foreknowledge of Horman’s death.”

In this 30-page typewritten statement, Charles’ wife, Joyce, provided a day-by-day chronology of events as she experienced them from September 10-October 18, 1973. The document is the earliest and most complete accounting of her search for her husband after she learned he had been kidnapped by the military. In an entry for October 5, 1973, the day that her father-in-law, Ed Horman, arrived in Santiago, she recounted their meeting with the ambassador and the consul. Despite ample evidence, including eyewitnesses, that Charles had been seized at his home by a military unit, “Amb Davis said that the Embassy feeling was that Charles probably was in hiding,” she recalled. “My father-in-law replied that this seemed implausible, that even if Charles had been afraid to call me directly, he easily could have passed a message through one of our friends. Edmund Horman went on to ask what had been done to follow up on the probability that Charles had been seized by the Chilean Military Intelligence as had been indicated by the evidence of neighbors who witnessed his arrest, and of friends who subsequently had been called by the Chilean Military Intelligence Service. A reference was then made by Edmund Horman to the two calls received at the US Consulate reporting Charles' arrest. Amb. Davis looked at Mr. Purdy and asked if he knew anything about the telephone calls. Purdy said: ‘No sir.’ I then reminded Mr. Purdy that both calls were recorded on the Consulate note cards being kept on Charles' case.”

In a short memorandum of conversation, U.S. Embassy officer Robert Steven reports on a conversation with Chilean foreign ministry official, Enrique Guzman, about the deaths of two U.S. citizens. To obfuscate the facts, Guzman tells Steven that “we may never know” how Horman and Teruggi died. Nevertheless, Guzman insists that “both Horman and Teruggi had not only been deeply involved in leftist activities in the ‘Communist Industrial areas,’” but “perhaps had been shot by their own comrades of the left for some unexplained reason”—which was the military’s cover story to absolve themselves for the summary executions. The reference appeared to be to the worker controlled “Cordones Industriales,” which included the Vicuña MacKenna industrial area to where Horman had moved just days before the coup.

In February 1974, Frank Teruggi Sr. traveled to Santiago, Chile, to press both U.S. and Chilean officials for judicial accountability for his murdered son. In a meeting with members of the U.S. Consulate, including Vice Consul James Anderson—a CIA officer operating under diplomatic cover—Teruggi Sr. expressed strongly that “he was not happy with Embassy action to protect his son” and requested to see “all the files that you have on the case involving my son.” During the lengthy meeting summarized in this memorandum of conversation, Teruggi Sr. told U.S. officials that he had met with Chilean Interior Minister, General Oscar Bonilla, the previous day; Bonilla had given him the military’s fabricated account about what had happened to Frank Jr. In response, Teruggi Sr. had provided Bonilla with a letter from David Hathaway, Frank’s housemate, who had been detained with Frank in the National Stadium and who had witnessed Frank being taken away for interrogation. Bonilla professed not to have known about these details and promised to re-open the investigation into Teruggi’s execution. “Mr. Teruggi, if your son died in the hands of the Chilean military,” Bonilla stated, “I am terribly sorry.”

News coverage of the allegations made by Rafael Gonzalez—including a Washington Post article by Lewis Diuguid titled “The Man Who Knew Too Much”—generated inquiries to the State Department from various U.S. legislators, among them Senator Edward Kennedy. This cover memo to a draft response to Sen. Kennedy addresses how deceptive and inadequate the U.S. response to the murders of Horman and Teruggi has been. “We ‘withheld’ for almost two years any reference to a Chilean memorandum which accused Teruggi, and Horman, of leftist activities,” according to this memo written by State Department officer Rudy Fimbres to Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman. “We failed to pursue the basis for the GOC’s allegations” and “we have done nothing about it,” reads the memo from Fimbres. The fact that the vice-consul, James Anderson, was an undercover CIA official, would eventually be exposed, Fimbres warned. The State Department was deceiving the media and the families by stating “we are diligently pursuing every lead, doing everything to develop the circumstances surrounding the deaths of these Americans,” he reported. “This is overdrawn.” Fimbres pressed Shlaudeman to assign a veteran official, Fred Smith, to conduct a full inquiry of State Department files, although he warned that CIA cooperation would be needed to fully investigate the circumstances of Horman and Teruggi’s murders by the Chilean military.

The publicity from Rafael Gonzalez’s claims that Charles Horman had been killed because “he knew too much” and that there was an American in the room when he was interrogated generated two internal State Department investigations and assessments. The first was a review of the case by three officials in ARA, the Bureau of American Republic Affairs: Rudy Fimbres, Robert Driscoll and William Robertson. In this report to Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman, they advised that “this case remains bothersome.” There were “intimations” in the press, Congress and from the Horman and Teruggi families of “negligence on our part, or worse, complicity in Horman’s death.” Despite the public U.S. posture that the circumstances of Horman’s death remained unknown, the files showed that “the GOC sought Horman—and felt threatened enough to order his immediate execution. The GOC might have believed this American could be killed without negative fall-out from the USG.” These State Department officials recommended a “further thorough investigation” of the case and noted that the CIA’s “lack of candor with us on other matters only heightens our suspicions.” The strong but speculative language in the memo was intended to force Secretary of State Kissinger and his deputies to conduct a full inquiry, as Fimbres told author John Dinges. “I was trying to smoke something out,” he said. “We were trying to make the case for an investigation.”

At the urging of Rudy Fimbres, and the Fimbres-Driscoll-Robertson memorandum (Document 9), Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman assigned Frederick Smith Jr. to conduct a full investigation of internal State Department and Embassy files. Smith’s report, the result of a five-month investigation, remains the most complete internal probe of the Horman-Teruggi killings. His report concluded that the Chilean military “deliberately killed” the two Americans and that their denials to the Embassy are “dubious” and “difficult to credit.” He found “no evidence” of any role by U.S. government officials “apart from Gonzalez’s statements.” Smith’s report directly contradicted the Embassy and State Department public statements, which gave credence to Chilean military denials. Smith recommended that the Embassy re-interview Gonzalez who, with his family, was still receiving asylum in the Italian Embassy. He also recommended that “high level inquiries” be made of CIA and other intelligence agencies to determine if they had taken any action “that may have led the Junta to believe it could, without serious repercussions, kill Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.” Chile in Their Hearts lists a series of CIA documents specifically denying any actions of that kind had taken place.

In late 1976, in the wake of publicity surrounding the claims by Rafael Gonzalez, Edmund C. Horman typed a lengthy report, summarizing his personal investigation and the basis for his suspicion that U.S. officials may have targeted his son for execution. The document was found in the files of CBS reporter Frank Manitzas, who was one of the journalists who interviewed Rafael Gonzalez and did an early investigation of the case. In a section titled, “Scenario,” Horman extrapolates from facts he uncovered to connect the dots of what might have happened. He concludes that Charles “knew too much” about U.S. participation in the coup and asserts that the U.S. officer who gave him a ride from Valparaiso to Santiago asked the CIA to arrange for his arrest by the Chilean military.

Acting on recommendations in the Smith report to re-interview Rafael Gonzalez, U.S. Embassy officers tape record two interviews with him in late January 1977 and transmit their conclusion “that Gonzalez is not reliable.” They describe him as “intelligent, well informed, and well balanced on some matters,” but also willing to say anything that would get him out of Chile. “Thus, he told us in these conversations that he had talked about Horman with American journalists in June 1976 in order to catch outside attention for his family’s case.”

Almost 14 years after the execution of Charles Horman, Raul Meneses, one of the Chilean military officers who was tasked to investigate his disappearance and located his body , approached the U.S. Embassy to leave Chile and seek protection in the United States. Over the course of four meetings in March and April 1987, Meneses passed on information he had obtained in October 1973 about the circumstances surrounding Horman’s detention and execution. Although the dates are inaccurately presented in this cable—Horman was detained early evening of September 17, 1973; he was executed the next morning and his body was delivered to the morgue later on September 18—Meneses provided important information about the military unit that seized him, and where he was taken. Meneses also criticized the U.S. Embassy for failing to assist the family in locating Horman after he was disappeared, but stated that “to his knowledge, no U.S. official played any role in the death of Charles Horman since he was dead before anyone in the Embassy would have known of his detention.”

In the various U.S. Embassy reports on meetings with Raul Meneses, his name was redacted. But in this cable, which addresses a visit to the Embassy by Mariana Callejas, the wife of the DINA assassin of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, Meneses’s name was left uncensored—but is misspelled Menesas. This enabled investigative reporter John Dinges to identify Meneses as the former military investigator in the Horman case who had approached the Embassy in March and April 1987. In this cable, the U.S. embassy expresses some concerns that Meneses and Callejas are “plants” by the Pinochet regime to try and embarrass the United States. Rather than pursue the information on the Horman case and work out an arrangement with Meneses to help him leave the country, the U.S. Embassy turned him away and then professed to be unable to locate him when the State Department decided he might have valuable information on who killed Horman and why.

In a signed statement drafted in November 2001 and submitted as sworn evidence in the Chilean court case on Horman in 2003, Gonzalez stated that his June 1976 statements to U.S. journalists implicating the CIA in the death of Charles Horman was “an absolute falsehood” given under duress in an attempt to arrange safe exit from Chile for him and his family. Gonzelez wrote that he saw Horman in custody but that no American officer was present and “neither the State Department, nor the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, nor Mr. Kissinger had any participation whatsoever” in the murders. In his affidavit, Gonzalez recounted that Italian embassy officials had discovered that he had been involved in retrieving Horman’s remains in October 1973; they had given him a London Times article, written by William Shawcross, from which he took the description of Horman as “the man who knew too much.” According to Chile In Their Hearts, in his final ruling, Judge Zepeda ignored the Gonzalez recantation affidavit and convicted him as an accomplice in the death of Charles Horman.