Kissinger’s Corpses: A Look at Pinochet's FBI File

By Ken Klippenstein, Reader Supported News

08 September 16

ith Henry Kissinger’s name back in the news, so are the facts of his ghoulish tenure as national security advisor and secretary of state under the Nixon and Ford administrations. Among the most infamous was the role Kissinger played in supporting the brutal military dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, whom Kissinger once told: “We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here.”

What Pinochet’s regime did was overthrow Chile’s democratically elected leader, kill at least 10,000 Chileans, torture 29,000, and drive into exile over 200,000. However, Pinochet’s crimes were not confined to Chile. In September of 1976, a car bomb went off in Washington DC’s Embassy Row, killing passengers Orlando Letelier, a former top official to the Chilean government, and Ronni Moffitt, his American assistant.

The deaths were gruesome, neither one instantaneous. (Letelier’s legs were blown off and Moffitt drowned in her own blood.) Pinochet personally ordered the murders, a fact that the CIA had known but would not declassify until just last year, in 2015. Letelier was a prominent official in the Chilean Socialist Party, which Pinochet overthrew in a military coup in 1973. Letelier had been speaking out against Pinochet’s regime and lobbying governments against doing business with it, which is why Pinochet sought to have him murdered.

I recently obtained Pinochet’s FBI file as a result of a Freedom of Information request I filed. The majority of records deemed responsive to my request were deleted in their entirety, many on “national security” grounds. The remaining pages – those actually provided to me – were heavily redacted.

Many FBI files pertaining to government officials contain little more than tedious procedural minutiae (e.g. background checks, security reports about locations for public appearances, and the like). In stark contrast, just a few pages into Pinochet’s file, there is a document covered in tape labeled “EVIDENCE.” It refers to photographs of Chilean officials travelling with Pinochet to the US. Though it is impossible to be certain, this suggests that the FBI regarded the Pinochet regime as a culprit very early on (considering when the document is dated).

The date on this document (above), 9/5/77, is significant: the car bomb that killed Letelier took place less than a year prior. Astonishingly, not only had the US permitted entry to Pinochet just months after a car bomb on US soil that was widely attributed to his regime, President Jimmy Carter met with him personally at the White House.

Another record in Pinochet’s file (above) mentions “DINA,” the abbreviation for Pinochet’s secret police. DINA agents were later found to have carried out Letelier’s assassination on behalf of Pinochet.

Pinochet’s file contains a number of photographs of other Chilean officials – presumably including DINA – accompanying him, though all are redacted.

So what does this all have to do with Kissinger? Before Letelier’s murder, the State Department received CIA intelligence suggesting that the Pinochet regime was considering international assassinations of his political opponents. As a result, the State Department drafted a forceful warning against such an operation to be sent to the Pinochet government. However, the warning never made it to Chile: just five days before Letelier’s assassination, Kissinger intervened and ordered the State Department to cancel its intended warning.

Then Letelier was, of course, murdered.

You can view Pinochet's FBI file here:

Ken Klippenstein is an American journalist who can be reached on twitter @kenklippenstein or via email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.