Pinochet Plotted to Kill Successor, CIA Reveals

by Gustavo Gonzalez

Aylwin, who governed Chile from 1990 to 1994, following the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), said the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and its successor, the National Central of Information (CNI), experimented with chemical weapons to eliminate the military regime's opposition.

He also mentioned DINA's 1976 assassination of Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, apparently committed using chemical substances, as well as suspicions that the death of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva in 1982 was caused by a virus covertly introduced into the clinic where he was recovering from surgery.

Army major Alvaro Corbalan, chief of CNI operations, planned in 1989 to assassinate Aylwin, who was a presidential candidate at the time for the center-left coalition that defeated Pinochet in 1988, according to a CIA document.

The report is among the 16,000 files of the CIA, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon that the Clinton administration made public in the third and final phase of the declassification of information on Chile.

"The attack against Aylwin could be conducted with firearms or chemicals. The idea behind the plan is to create chaos in order to justify president Pinochet's return to power," says one of the documents, copies of which were deposited in the National Library in Santiago.

The plot directed by Corbalan intended to create a situation of disorder that was to be attributed to leftist groups, enabling the government to annul the results of the 1988 plebiscite and prolong the dictatorial regime.

This revelation is verified to a certain extent by other documents confirming Pinochet's intentions to stage a self-coup on Oct. 5, 1988, though other military commanders prevented him from following through.

Gen. Fernando Matthei, then-commander of the air force, made the incident known a month ago in televised statements, which have been confirmed by the now declassified reports sent to the U.S. government in 1988.

Corbalan, considered one of Pinochet's most faithful followers in the CNI, is serving a life sentence in prison for the assassination of trade union leader Tucapel Jimenez in 1982 and of Juan Alegria, a carpenter, in 1983.

This final release of documents covers the longest period -- from 1968 to 1991 -- but like the previous sets of files, they are heavily censured with thick black lines to hide the names, numbers and other data that U.S. authorities claim must remain confidential.

The most recently released reports also discuss the actions of armed leftist groups, especially the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), which in 1986 staged a failed assassination attempt against Pinochet that left five of his bodyguards dead.

According to the declassified archives, the FPMR also planned to assassinate Gen. Manuel Contreras, former DINA chief, and Humberto Gordon, CNI director, as well as Ambrosio Rodr’guez, who served as National Attorney General during the final years of the dictatorship.

Then, in the first years of the Aylwin government, the leftist group killed right-wing senator Jaime Guzman, air force officer Roberto Fuentes and Luis Fontaine, a colonel in the militarized police known as Carabineros.

The CIA was apparently working under the theory that the autonomous FPMR commando that assassinated Guzman had been infiltrated by former DINA agents, who followed the orders of Contreras.

The former DINA director is currently in prison for the 1976 assassination of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier, killed along with his secretary, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in Washington DC.

The final phase of the declassification provides more evidence pointing to Pinochet's connections to Letelier's death. The aged former dictator was stripped in August of his legal protections as life senator, and is awaiting medical examinations that will determine if he is fit to face trial for human rights crimes in Chile.

But former U.S. ambassador in Chile, Walter Landau, denied that Pinochet had directly interceded through then-dictator of Paraguay, Alfredo Stroessner, in a request to obtain passports for the DINA agents who later travelled to Washington to organize the Letelier assassination.

Landau indicated that Pinochet intervened indirectly in favor of the request, which was presented by DINA chief Contreras to Paraguayan intelligence chief, a colonel with the surname Guanes.

The current Chilean government of Ricardo Lagos, meanwhile, has reacted with caution to the latest set of documents declassified in the United States.

Claudio Huepe, Secretary General of the Government, announced today that the texts are to be studied over the next two weeks by a special team from Chile's Foreign Relations Ministry.

Huepe said the U.S. archives must be submitted to "a credibility test" and that the Chilean government would decide on pursuing legal actions later, if it finds evidence that "imply or insinuate criminal characteristics."