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Related: About this forumChile Declassification Cooperation and Commemoration of Letelier and Moffitt Assassinations
Chile Declassification Cooperation and Commemoration of Letelier and Moffitt Assassinations
Media Note
Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
September 23, 2016
Secretary Kerry announced during his October 2015 visit to Chile that the United States had undertaken a comprehensive effort to identify additional records related to human rights abuses committed during the Pinochet era, specifically the assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and U.S. citizen Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Today, during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., to mark the 40th anniversary of the assassinations, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom will deliver the final tranche of records related to the assassinations. This concludes a multi-year interagency effort to identify and declassify these documents, in response to a request from the Government of Chile.
This effort complements the Chilean Declassification Project begun in 1999, and represents an historic effort by U.S. Government departments and agencies to search, identify, review for declassification, and make public records that shed light on human rights abuses in Chile. To date, the United States has declassified tens of thousands of pages of documents from the period of the Chilean military dictatorship. These records have helped support Chilean criminal investigations involving human rights violations under the dictatorship and shed light on the events of the period for the benefit of the dictatorships victims and the citizens of Chile and United States.
State Department documents will be available to the public on our website at foia.state.gov. Presidential Daily Briefs are available at www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/presidents-daily-brief and other documents will be available from the Reagan Presidential Library https://reaganlibrary.gov/.
Today, as we solemnly honor the lives that were taken 40 years ago, we remain committed to transparency in government, respect for human rights, the search for justice, and the enduring relationship between the people and governments of the United States and Chile.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/09/262336.htm
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141579517
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)US gives Chile papers showing ex-dictator ordered 1976 assassination
By AFP 4 hours ago .
The United States on Friday gave Chilean President Michelle Bachelet declassified CIA documents confirming that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet personally ordered the 1976 assassination of opposition leader Orlando Letelier.
US Deputy Secretary of State Heather Higginbottom presented the documents to Bachelet during a ceremony on the site of the killing in the American capital, two days after the 40th anniversary of the brazen attack.
Bachelet herself is a former opposition leader who was tortured under the military regime of General Pinochet, who ruled Chile with a dictatorial hand from 1974 to 1990.
The files include a 1987 CIA report in which the intelligence agency attests that Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to plan the fatal attack.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/us-gives-chile-papers-showing-ex-dictator-ordered-1976-assassination/article/475582#ixzz4L8oda9n3