Free The Condor Years by John Dinges

was quickly raised and dismissed. Almost as quickly it was agreed that “deference” to Chile’s democracy would be the cornerstone of U.S. policy on the Pinochet issue.
    The discussion turned to an action that would please both the Chilean government and those who favored vigorous prosecution of Pinochet. Spain had asked for the release of U.S. classified documents. Chile also favored the full disclosure of U.S. actions in Chile during the Allende and Pinochet periods. It was an elegant middle position. A document release would avoid the pitfalls of taking a position for or against Pinochet’s extradition, yet it was an unequivocal step in the direction of historical disclosure and would provide evidence thatcould be used against Pinochet and others accused in any legal proceedings, whether in Spain, London, or elsewhere.
    In a low-key announcement on December 1 in answer to a reporter’s question, a State Department spokesman said, “Due to the interest in this case the Administration is conducting a review of documents in its possession that may shed light on human rights abuses during the Pinochet era. We will declassify and make public as much information as possible consistent with U.S. laws and the national security and law enforcement interests of the United States.” The action neatly bypassed the hitherto stubborn opposition by all U.S. government agencies to declassifying new documents in response to Spain’s request under the mutual legal assistance treaty.
    It was a momentous decision, whose importance was belied by the nonchalance of the announcement. President Clinton, on the recommendation of Secretary of State Albright and National Security Adviser Samuel “Sandy” Berger, issued an executive order requiring an unprecedented release of the most secret documents on Chile, including files about CIA operations to prevent Allende from taking power in 1970 and to support the successful rightist campaign to orchestrate his military overthrow in 1973.
    The first 5,800 documents were released in June 1999. In all, some 60,000 pages of secret U.S. files on Chile were made public. In September 2002, a smaller collection of State Department documents on Argentina was released. There were still to be arguments about documents withheld or partially blacked out. But the majority of the documents were released without excisions.
    When Joan Garcés began his legal pursuit of Pinochet, he didn’t dare dream of arrest and trial, but he thought he had a good chance of getting at the truth. The veil of impunity would be removed and replaced by the clear pane of public disclosure. It would be a measure of justice, he reasoned, to find out what had happened to so many victims of the Condor Years. His expectations were far too modest. Garcés’s pursuit and that of dozens of other lawyers, judges, and human rights investigators succeeded far beyond the realism of legal action.
    Even as Pinochet arrived back in Chile to the euphoria of his die-hard supporters, he had ceased to wield any real power. Politically, he was damaged goods, his impunity in tatters. Indeed, within months, the international legal dragnet widened against Pinochet and other former dictators. New prosecutions based on the Pinochet precedent were opened naming Pinochet andother dictators in Rome, France, Switzerland, and Belgium. Judges in Chile and Argentina, bypassing the amnesty laws, opened new cases, forcing a parade of hundreds of military officers to appear as witnesses or as accused. Pinochet was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and resigned as senator. The trickle of truth, once released, produced a flood of new information. Documents became available from the bowels of the secret police organizations and were open to the arduous but rewarding detective work of those willing to put together the pieces of the puzzle. It is that new information that has finally allowed the full story of those years to be told.
    These momentous events in