WASHINGTON (Court TV) — Prompted by a request from President Clinton, the U.S. government Wednesday released more than 5,000 previously classified documents about former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet.

Since his October arrest, the 83-year-old general has been held in London, awaiting extradition to Spain for trial. He is charged with leading a campaign of torture and other human rights abuses during his 17-year reign.

Many had hoped that the documents would aid the prosecution and also shed light on Pinochet's involvement in a 1976 Washington, D.C. car bombing that took the lives of former Chilean ambassador and Pinochet-critic, Orlando Letelier, and his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt. A U.S. investigation at the time concluded that the conspiracy to kill Letelier involved eight people, including the chief of Pinochet's secret police — but not Pinochet himself.

But, John Cavanagh, director of The Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C., says the latest round of declassified papers, most of which are from the state department, do not contain major revelations relevant to the Letelier-Moffitt case.

"We had expected much more to be released, in particularly from the CIA," he says. "Even though it is 5,000 documents, only 500 are from the CIA and we know that thousands would have been generated during that time period."

Perhaps the biggest revelation lay not in the documents at all, but in the news that the Justice Department was conducting an investigation into Pinochet's role in the bombing.

"Today we were told that they were withholding certain documents related to the case because of an ongoing investigation," Cavanagh says. "It was the first written acknowledgement that we've had that indicates the Justice Department is looking into reopening the case and bringing Pinochet in."

Because the terrorist act occurred on American soil, activists have expressed hope that enough evidence will be found to build a case for the extradition of Pinochet to the United States.

Peter Kornbluh, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a private group that advocates the release of government documents, says international pressures since Pinochet's arrest and petitions from the families of high-profile victims of the dictatorship prompted President Clinton to request further declassification.

"If the government didn't respond, they would be essentially covering up for an known practitioner of terrorism and torture," Kornbluh says. "To their credit, the administration did decide to ask all national security agencies to find documents that related to terrorism and human rights violations in Chile."

Kornbluh says the government plans to release several more rounds of documents.

There was speculation that the documents might embarrass some U.S. officials who considered Pinochet an ally. When Pinochet and his military officers overthrew elected president Salvador Allende, it was rumored that the Nixon administration had aided in the coup.

According to one of the released documents, Richard Helms, then-director of central intelligence, sent a report to Henry Kissinger's military aide after the 1970 Chilean elections, warning him that an Allende reign would mean the rise of "the first democratically elected Marxist head of state in the history of Latin America."

According to Kornbluh, the Nixon administration considered Pinochet the answer to the Allende problem. U.S. officials feared Allende would develop a communist foothold in the United States' southern backyard.

"Basically, Nixon and Kissinger saw Pinochet as someone who had defeated communism and brought back green market capitalism to Chile," Kornbluh says. "They were willing to support him on that basis alone, regardless of who was tortured or murdered."

Kornbluh points out that the relationship changed once it became clear that Pinochet's own regime was connected with the Letelier bombing.

Many hope that the latest round of documents, which were released at noon Wednesday and will be thoroughly disseminated over the next few days, will shed light on the exact role the U.S. played in Pinochet's rise to power.

"It's a tacit acknowledgment by the Clinton administration that the United States did play a role in this sad and sorry history in Chile and has a role to play in the redress of the crimes of the Pinochet administration," Kornbluh says.

—Kristin Savarese

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