FBI aided Pinochet's murder network
By Andy
McInerney
Amid the joy and anticipation of workers around the world
after the arrest of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet, new evidence
of the crimes of Pinochet's U.S. backers is trickling out.
Pinochet headed a military dictatorship in Chile after the
1973 coup against Socialist President Salvador Allende. Tens of
thousands of labor unionists, students, communists and other
Allende supporters were murdered or "disappeared" in the years
following the coup.
In October 1998, Pinochet was arrested in London on the
basis of an extradition request from a Spanish judge. The judge
wants to try Pinochet for the murder of two Spanish supporters
of Allende. The elite Law Lords, Britain's equivalent of the
Supreme Court, are currently considering the extradition.
Hated as he was, Pinochet would have been dealt with by the
Chilean working class long ago had it not been for the backing
of the U.S. Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency. Evidence
of that backing began to leak out when the New York Times
obtained declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation documents
related to Pinochet.
A Feb. 9 report shows that the FBI tried to track down two
supporters of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) in
the United States. The MIR was one of the most militant of the
working-class parties that backed Allende. It advocated arming
the working class to defend against a coup.
The documents show that the FBI received a request for
assistance based on information gained by the interrogation of
Chilean Jorge Isaac Fuentes. Fuentes was interrogated--probably
tortured--in Paraguay as part of the infamous Operation
Condor.
Operation Condor was a counterrevolutionary network of the
secret police agencies of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay,
Uruguay and the United States. It was designed to hunt down
leftists across national borders.
In 1975, FBI legal attaché Robert Scherrer maintained
communication with Chilean Gen. Ernesto Baeza, who had been
trained at the U.S. School of the Americas and had been a key
organizer of the 1973 coup. "I will inform you of the results
of the investigation as soon as I have them in hand," Scherrer
wrote.
The documents are the tip of an iceberg of information
showing support for Pinochet's dictatorship--and undoubtedly
held under lock and key by the U.S. government. The CIA's role
in organizing the coup is widely recognized. So is the role of
U.S. corporate giants like ITT and Kennecott Copper.
Courts in the imperialist countries may try
Pinochet--although that is far from certain. If they do,
Washington will certainly try to squelch the truth of its own
crimes against the Chilean people.
Workers in the United States can extend a hand of solidarity
to their Chilean sisters and brothers by demanding an immediate
release of all secret records exposing the crimes of the
Pentagon, the CIA and the FBI. An independent investigation of
U.S. complicity in Pinochet's reign of terror can turn a legal
whitewashing into a people's trial of Pinochet's U.S.
backers.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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