While summarizing its relationship with Chile's military dictatorship, the CIA in 2000 refused to release documents from a quarter century earlier on the grounds that the disclosures might jeopardize the CIA's "sources and methods." The refusal came despite President Bill Clinton's specific order to release as much information as possible.
The CIA may have been playing for time. With CIA headquarters renamed the George Bush Center for Intelligence and with veterans of the Reagan-Bush years still dominating the CIA's hierarchy, the spy agency might have expected that the election of Bush's son, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, would free it from more demands to open up its records.
Immediately after taking office on Jan. 20, 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive order sparing presidential records from his father's administration and Ronald Reagan's from being cleared for public release.
Later, after the 9/11 attacks, Bush expanded his order to allow ex-presidents and their descendants the power to withhold records forever. That executive order remained in place until Barack Obama took office in 2009 and rescinded Bush's plan for dynastic control of White House documents.
The Bush Family's reputation also benefited from years of foot-dragging regarding the prosecution of Contreras and his boss, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, for a variety of crimes, including torture of dissidents, drug trafficking, money-laundering, illicit arms shipments and international terrorism such as the Letelier bombing in Washington.
When Pinochet faced perhaps his greatest risk of prosecution -- in 1998 when he was detained in London pending extradition to Spain on charges of murdering Spanish citizens -- former President George H.W. Bush protested Pinochet's arrest, calling it "a travesty of justice" and joining Kissinger in a successful appeal to the British courts to let Pinochet go home to Chile.
Once Pinochet was returned to Chile, the wily ex-dictator employed a legal strategy of political obstruction and assertions of ill health to avert prosecution. Until his death on Dec. 10, 2006, he retained influential friends both inside the Chilean power structure and in key foreign capitals, especially Washington.
A Long History
Pinochet's years in the service of U.S. foreign policy dated back to the early 1970s when Richard Nixon's administration -- with Kissinger as national security adviser -- wanted to destroy Chile's democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende.
The CIA launched a covert operation to "destabilize" Allende's government, with the CIA-sponsored chaos ending in a bloody coup on Sept. 11, 1973. Gen. Pinochet seized power and Allende died from a gunshot wound (reportedly self-inflicted) as Pinochet's forces stormed the Presidential Palace.
Thousands of Allende's supporters -- including Americans and other foreigners -- were rounded up and executed. Many also were tortured.
With Pinochet in control, the CIA turned its attention to helping him overcome the negative publicity that his violent coup had engendered around the world. One "secret" CIA memo, written in early 1974 and later declassified, described the success of "the Santiago Station's propaganda project." The memo said:
"Prior to the coup the project's media outlets maintained a steady barrage of anti-government criticism, exploiting every possible point of friction between the government and the democratic opposition, and emphasizing the problems and conflicts that were developing between the government and the armed forces.
"Since the coup, these media outlets have supported the new military government. They have tried to present the Junta in the most positive light." [See Peter Kornbluh's The Pinochet File]
Despite the CIA's P.R. advice, Pinochet and his military subordinates insisted on dressing up and acting like a casting agent's idea of Fascist bullies. The dour Pinochet was known for his fondness for wearing a military cloak that made him resemble a well-dressed Nazi SS officer.
Pinochet and the other right-wing military dictators who dominated South America in the mid-1970s also had their own priorities, one of which was the elimination of political opponents who were living in exile in other countries.
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