A long read, but an important one. . .
Re Allbritton: Can we really be shocked that a member of the Bush family was fawning all over a brutal dictator and war criminal in order to line his own pocketbooks?
In the fall of 1997, 24 years after he took control of Chile in a brutal military coup, Augusto Pinochet's reputation was on the mend, at least in some quarters. In 1990, he had surrendered power to civilian, democratic rule, and Chile's economy had undergone sweeping changes that made it the darling of American financial institutions.
Including Riggs Bank.
"You have rid Chile from the threat of totalitarian government and an archaic economic system based on state-owned property and centralized planning," Riggs chairman Joe L. Allbritton wrote Pinochet on Nov. 14, 1997. "We in the United states and the rest of the Western hemisphere owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude and I am confident your legacy will have been to provide a more prosperous and safer world for your children and grandchildren."
The letter released last week by the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations was one of several admiring notes Allbritton, his wife and another Riggs official sent to Pinochet from 1996 to 2000. The letter, in which Allbritton thanks Pinochet for their "thriving personal friendship," was part of the bank's aggressive effort to cultivate international clients. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52084-2005Mar20.html
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