Spain is seeking his extradition, charging that his junta had kidnapped, tortured and killed Spanish citizens. The documents were released as Clinton administration officials confirmed that the Justice Department has been conferring with Spanish authorities, in part to exchange information about Pinochet, including his possible involvement in the 1976 car-bomb assassination in Washington of a former Chilean ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, and a colleague, Ronni Moffitt, of the Institute for Policy Studies. Because the department considers the Letelier investigation to be ongoing, the government withheld documents related to the murders, officials said Wednesday. Historians and human rights advocates, who were busily trying to sort through the nearly 20,000 pages released Wednesday by the National Archives, agreed that the documents did not offer startling revelations about U.S. ties to the Chilean junta under Pinochet. Instead, they said, the documents provide rich new detail to support the long-held view that the United States knew during and after the coup about the Chilean military's murderous crackdown on leftists.
Severe repression is planned.
The military is rounding up large numbers of people, including students and leftists of all descriptions, and interning them. Many of the accusations are merely politically inspired falsehoods or gross exaggerations. An estimated 5,000 people were killed in the coup, including Chile's democratically elected president, Dr. Salvador Allende, whose body was recovered from the bombed remains of the Presidential Palace, which had been attacked by military jets. Thousands more died or were tortured at the hands of the military during Pinochet's 17-year rule. Last week, the Chilean College of Medicine reported that at least 200,000 people had been tortured by government forces at the time.