Surprise witness exonerated Arancibia Clavel and blamed Víctor Hugo Barría Barría. Another indicated that "the key" lies in a mysterious white Chevy that stopped after the explosion. Oral Tribunal No. 6 announced yesterday morning (Wednesday) that it had requested the opening of an investigation to determine whether Argentine dancer Hugo Zambelli committed perjury during his testimony last Tuesday.

This means that the Federal Chamber will draw lots for a judge, who will be tasked with determining the possible commission of the aforementioned crime. If it is proven that Zambelli lied, the position of the defense for Enrique Arancibia Clavel—the Chilean citizen accused of participating in the assassination of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert, which occurred 26 years ago—will be weakened.

The dancer is an important witness for determining whether or not Arancibia was living in Buenos Aires before October 1974. In his testimony, he stated that he met him in 1975, contradicting previous statements where he referred to the meeting as having occurred in 1974.

During yesterday's session, the accused suffered a setback when calligrapher Miguel Moreno asserted that the signature on a Chilean identity card—which was physically present in the court—"was made by Enrique Lautaro Arancibia Clavel," even though the signature reads "Luis Felipe Alemparte," a false identity that Arancibia allegedly used as a DINA agent.

The expert stated that he had no doubts in this regard, nor that the handwritten texts and signatures in two folders seized from his home (containing political reports and dispatches to the intelligence agency) "belong to the hand and pen" of Arancibia.

Also summoned were two explosives experts from the Argentine Federal Police (Ricardo Pezzoni and Guillermo Mongiardino), who produced reports on the event at the time. Both agreed that they did not believe the bomb was activated by remote control and that, had it been, no concrete material evidence remained, and the mechanism would have had to be brought from abroad.

In a subsequent conversation with "El Mercurio," both asserted that there was no search for debris from the explosion in an adjacent vacant lot; furthermore, they did not recall the existence of such a place.

Pezzoni also recalled that upon arriving at the scene—seven hours after the event—neighbors had washed the adjacent sidewalks. Mongiardino, for his part, finished burying the version that Prats had police protection, indicating that he was completely unaware of the existence of Sub-commissioner Gattei, whom numerous previous testimonies credit with presenting himself as being in charge of his security.

Finally, working against the depth of the experts' conclusions is their admission of not having investigated a similar event before, although at that time—they stated—there were about 20 explosive attacks daily.

Unexpected Witnesses During the afternoon, two spontaneous witnesses appeared. The first identified himself as Juan José Soto Vargas. He said he was born in 1954 in Palena and had changed his citizenship from Chilean to Argentine.

He claimed that since '74 he "went frequently to the DINA, to the Citizen Intelligence Brigade," which operated in offices of the former National Congress, and the mission of its "200 to 300 members" was to infiltrate organizations and civilian groups.

There, he said, Carabineros Major Víctor Tórres Pinto and Colonel Andrés Cardolier Sanhueza worked. He said he worked as a junior clerk. There he established a relationship—as he claimed—with Víctor Hugo Barría Barría, "who was deputy director of Army Intelligence and lived at Camino de la Fuente 8346." Later he began working in Argentina.

Here he had contacts with Sergeant Major Jaime Ortiz Jorquera "El Indio" (sic), who sent him to drop off documentation to Argentine Inspector Roberto Gutiérrez of the Federal Police. He also said he had contact with military attaché Colonel Osvaldo Hernández Pedrera and with Sergeant Carlos Losarbo.

He linked Barría and other uniformed officers to the disappearance of a Chilean student in the Argentine city of La Plata. And also to a subsequent trip and work in Brasilia, from where he was expelled.

He described Barría as "sinister" and said that regarding the Prats crime, "the person responsible is Víctor Hugo Barría Barría (...) he came to murder people (...) and just as he used me (...) he could have used this man" (referring to Arancibia), of whom he said he had never heard his name or pseudonyms in DINA, Chilean embassy, or consulate circles.

Regarding the latter, he declared himself a "friend" of Consul Eugenio Droguett, "El fierro" (sic). The judges were harsh with this witness and indicated that if his statements were accusations, he should make them elsewhere.

Soto Vargas claimed he had been exiled in Germany, and his testimony was strange in that he mentioned at different times the former Brazilian dictator Carlos Figueiredo and the current Argentine Minister of the Interior, Federico Storani.

He declared himself single, but later said he had a wife and several children in Chubut. Argentine journalists told "El Mercurio" that Soto Vargas had said he suffered persecution by the Chubut provincial police, which prevented him from seeing his children.

Cymric Bridges testified with much greater composure. An Argentine, he introduced himself as a merchant and former neighbor of General Prats. He asserted that in 1974 he was a manager at the Perkins company and that even before the attack, he noticed that a green Falcon automobile was always parked about 50 meters from the entrance to the Prats' building, with one or two people inside.

Also, a flower stand was set up a few meters away "and it seemed the florists were not florists." Both disappeared after the crime. The White Chevy The most novel testimony he provided was the fact that as soon as the explosion occurred, he went out to the balcony of his apartment and from there was able to see a station wagon ("I estimate it was a consular vehicle") coming down Seguí Street (perpendicular to the street where the crime occurred, Malabia) and stopping at the intersection: "Two people got out (...) both were similar, oval face, dark-haired (black hair) and olive complexion (...) they stayed looking at the fire for 10 or 15 seconds and continued on." In a separate conversation with this newspaper, Bridges said the van was a white Chevy and that "the key is there." Regarding the people, he indicated that "my conclusion is that they were Chileans; people from further north in Latin America are different, they are shorter." He added that they were "30 to 35 years old" and "one looked quite a bit like this one (Arancibia) here, the accused, that's why I came," but that he could not affirm it in court, as he did not want to take responsibility for someone going to prison for 25 years for what seemed to him to be the case. The lawyers for the plaintiff downplayed these two testimonies, saying they did not contribute anything substantially new or investigable. In particular regarding the statements of Juan José Soto Vargas, they did not rule out that he was involved in an old internal struggle within the DINA, given the evident desire for revenge he showed toward Víctor Hugo Barría Barría.

Source: El Mercurio, October 19, 2000

Former DINA Agent Murdered in Buenos Aires: The Untold Story of Arancibia Clavel, by Mónica Gonzalez

Enrique Arancibia Clavel received thirty-four stab wounds on April 29. The news shocked Argentina, where he spent 11 years in prison for the crime against General Prats and his wife. In Chile, his footprint in the most brutal repressive operations of the dictatorship marked thousands of survivors and relatives of the forcibly disappeared.

A story hidden by the same cloak of impunity that covered the Prats crime for more than 30 years and which was captured in the incredible archive kept by the head of the DINA network in Buenos Aires, discovered in 1986.

This is his story. Argentine hairdresser and dancer Humberto Zambelli got into a Renault 12 and headed quickly toward Ezeiza airport. That November 4, 1978, he was going to meet his partner, Enrique Arancibia Clavel, whose business card indicated he was an agent of the Banco del Estado in Buenos Aires.

A very well-paid cover for the head of the clandestine network of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) in Argentina, who was returning shaken from Santiago. The dancer from Susana Jiménez's ballet did not suspect that all his steps were being observed and photographed.

Zambelli was nervous. The farewell had been marked by tension. He would later say that "a complicated emotional state" was affecting his intimate friend. Arancibia had reasons. An earthquake was being experienced at that moment in the regime's secret services after General Manuel Contreras was sent into retirement and later detained at the Military Hospital upon the opening of a case pressured by the United States for his responsibility in the assassination of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington (1976).

The transformation of the DINA into the CNI and the arrival of General Odlanier Mena as chief accounted for his uncertain professional future. Hence, Zambelli made special preparations for the reception.

The meeting, the men who were observing his movements would say, was very effusive. Arancibia was also returning from a Chile loaded with signs of war. In Buenos Aires and other large Argentine cities, war drills and blackouts were being carried out in those days to prevent air attacks.

Both countries were preparing for a confrontation that seemed inevitable. Just two days earlier, on November 2, the talks that were taking place in the Chilean-Argentine Joint Commission were declared closed.

War was imminent. Chile's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hernán Cubillos, announced that his country would appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, while feverish activity was unleashed in the Vatican with calls to Chile and Argentina in a desperate and final effort to avoid catastrophe.

The effusive embrace of Zambelli and Arancibia was observed from close by by the men scattered throughout the airport terminal. Some barely managed to stifle a smile. The couple noticed nothing. In the same car, they began the return to the elegant apartment they inhabited.

They had met in the summer of 1974, and since then they had not separated. They barely had time to enjoy it, because suddenly the car was intercepted by the Argentine police who were watching them. Arancibia was arrested and accused of espionage.

Shortly after, his apartment was raided by the same police, who did not take long to find what they were looking for. In the double bottom of the dining room sideboard, they found voluminous documentation whose content caused the first surprise.

Because what jumped before the eyes of the Trans-Andean Federal Police group was a document with confidential information about the Foreign Minister of Chile, Hernán Cubillos, and his relationship with the CIA and the newspaper El Mercurio during the government of Salvador Allende.

In the days when war with Argentina was about to break out, the head of Chile's secret agent network in the neighboring country was dedicated to investigating the Foreign Minister who was leading the negotiations.

That would be the last report sent by Enrique Arancibia to Santiago under the name of "Luis Felipe Alemparte Díaz," his identity as a DINA agent. What followed the report on Cubillos in the documents carefully organized in black plastic folders were the copies and responses to the orders he received from the DINA central headquarters in Santiago since 1974, including private letters with high-ranking officers of the secret service command.

Among them, Michael Townley, who had just been expelled (April 1978) by the Pinochet regime to the United States to be tried and convicted as the material author of the crime of Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronnie Moffitt (Washington, 1976).

Pinochet and Contreras insisted that Townley was never a DINA agent. And there were the proofs of his participation in the most secret operations of the repressive agency. The folders contained four years of the history of the repression unleashed outside Chilean territory by the main secret security service, with a network of agents deployed across several countries and close collaboration with the other services of the Southern Cone dictatorships.

A part of the history of "Operation Condor" that inexplicably Arancibia kept in his sideboard. To the Argentines, already involved in their own massive and brutal repression, the content did not surprise them.

How they used it is, until now, a secret. The reality is that after a few months, a large part of the papers was abandoned, only to be practically stuffed by force into five boxes where the espionage case was condensed.

From there, they passed to a dark and lonely room in the Judicial Archive. To oblivion. Eight years later, the author of this report would go to Buenos Aires to investigate the assassination of General Carlos Prats and his wife.

In a hallway, a man would tell her almost in her ear to look for that file. They were intense days of knocking on many doors, which culminated when, with the help of Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky, an impassive official finally took the five boxes of the case out and left me behind closed doors in that freezing room of the Judicial Archive.

What would open before my eyes caused a cold greater than that which prevailed in Buenos Aires in that winter of 1986.

A TERRORIST FOR HIRE

Two months after the coup d'état, in November 1973, Arancibia Clavel appeared at the headquarters of the newly created DINA Commission. "I did it to greet the then-Colonel Manuel Contreras and offer myself at his disposal to bring him any type of information," declared Arancibia himself before an Argentine court on November 28, 1978. "A few days later I was interviewed by a DINA officer who, because of his position, was called 'Don Elías' (Raúl Iturriaga Neumann) and who was one of the heads of the Foreign Department.

He gave me instructions on how I should send the information through the channel I considered most suitable, explaining to me that I should not use my real name nor disclose my status as a member of the DINA Foreign Service," he elaborated.

That was how Enrique Arancibia Clavel became a DINA agent in Argentina. His cover was the representation of the Banco del Estado in the neighboring country, a position for which he was recommended by its vice president, Valentín Robles.

To hire him, they had to overlook an important obstacle: Arancibia at that time was a fugitive from justice, accused of terrorist acts as a member of the group that assassinated the commander-in-chief of the Army, René Schneider, in October 1970.

His footprint as "The Dynamiter"—as they called him—remained in the bombs that were placed at the Stock Exchange, at the Law School of the University of Chile, at the then-Channel 9 of TV, and at the Santiago airport.

Only chance meant that the most powerful device he placed at the airport facility did not explode. He confessed this before the Chilean courts in the trial for the Schneider crime (page 1,877), where he acknowledged his participation.

He also accused General Roberto Viaux of being the intellectual author of the chain of terrorist acts that he himself executed with other members of the far-right group. The goal, he said, was to prepare the climate for the kidnapping of Schneider, whose final objective was to prevent Allende from assuming the presidency of Chile.

That is why, after each attack, pamphlets were thrown from a hitherto unknown Worker-Peasant Brigade (BOC): "to make people believe that the authors were from an ultra-left group and create an adverse climate." Arancibia was arrested.

He was 26 years old and was in his fourth year of Engineering at the University of Chile after a brief stint at the Naval School. His father was a retired Navy officer and one of his brothers was an officer in the same branch.

Another was an Army officer. Despite his own confession, the explosives found in his home on October 8, 1970, and the numerous proofs against him, he was released on bail. That same night he fled to the south of Chile.

Everything was organized by someone who was never wanted to be identified. Because they hid him at the Hostería del Lago Ranco, and in February 1971, the owner of that inn (surnamed Provoste) transported him across the border through the Tromen (Mamuil Malal) pass, leaving the country with a false ID.

There, he was awaited by the former aide-de-camp of General Juan Carlos Onganía, when he exercised command of Argentina as dictator in the 60s. In 1966, at the Conference of American Armies held in Buenos Aires, Onganía proposed institutionalizing a permanent inter-American defense force for regional intervention against the subversive enemy.

His main detractor was precisely General René Schneider, who had not yet assumed the position of head of the Chilean Army. Three years later, the terrorist fugitive for his role in the conspiracy that culminated in the assassination of the commander-in-chief of the Army was hired as a public official by the regime headed by another general. "I began to carry out the instructions given to me by Captain Luis Gutiérrez," he declared in 1978.

And this is proven by the documents that Arancibia kept in his possession.

ELIMINATING PRATS

On the last day of September 1974, the intellectual authors of the crime against General Carlos Prats believed they had eliminated a key obstacle for Pinochet to take total power in the Army and the Military Junta.

By removing from the scene the general who, up until 18 days before the coup, vindicated military honor to prevent the dictatorship and repression, they thought they had also made the ever-present ghost of General René Schneider—his predecessor in the Army command-in-chief, assassinated in October 1970—disappear.

And the principles that both defended. It would take almost thirty years before justice was served. And it was precisely the Supreme Court's rejection of the stripping of General Augusto Pinochet's immunity for his participation in the assassination of Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert, requested by Argentine judge María Servini, that provoked the historic opening in Chile in 2003 of the trial for the crime against the former Army chief (See Note 1).

Very soon, the minister in charge of the case, Alejandro Solís, would find the most important piece of evidence that was missing: the report with the tracking of all of Prats' steps and the floor plans of his house, delivered by DINA officer Juan Morales Salgado to Manuel Contreras.

A report that had been kept in complete secrecy and that allowed for the irrefutable proof of DINA's authorship. And also the significant participation of Enrique Arancibia Clavel. Because the last piece of the puzzle discovered by Solís also caused others to confess: the crime was ordered from Santiago in June 1974, and the data collected by Morales Salgado, which allowed for the placement of the bomb that tore apart the bodies of Prats and his wife at the precise place and at the precise time, were provided by Enrique Arancibia Clavel.

The picture was finished being assembled in Chile. Arancibia Clavel was already convicted in Buenos Aires. And in the process, it was proven that Michael Townley, the man who planted the bomb, never lied.

His first confession was made before Chilean police—Nelson Jofré and Rafael Castillo, accompanied by Sub-commissioner Eduardo Riquelme González of O.C.W. Interpol Chile—on September 2 and 3, 1992, in the United States.

An interrogation ordered by Minister Adolfo Bañados: –In mid-1974, Manuel Contreras gave the order to Pedro Espinoza to eliminate Prats in Buenos Aires. 20 thousand dollars were offered to an Argentine extremist group—Triple A—to execute the mission.

But the Argentines, after receiving the money, did not have enough courage to kill him. Given that circumstance and under pressure from General Contreras and Brigadier Espinoza, the mission was assigned to the head of the DINA exterior, at that time, Commander Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, who used the false name 'Diego Castro Castañeda'; and to officer Armando Fernández Larios.

I remember that three days before the attack, I met with Commander Iturriaga in Buenos Aires. This was done with the cooperation of Argentine citizens of the Triple A. The head of the DINA Exterior was Commander Iturriaga and as second in command was Captain José Zara—confessed Townley (See Note 2).

But in 1992, Pinochet maintained his political power and his influence in the Supreme Court. The seal of impunity was unbreakable. Even more so for the crime against an Army chief. Townley's confession was archived.

For many, Arancibia would be the only one convicted. Enrique Arancibia Clavel's contract at the representation of the Banco del Estado de Chile in Argentina has an start date of October 1, 1974, hours after the attack that ended the life of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert on a street in Palermo in Buenos Aires.

Almost a reward. But during the trial for his death in Argentina, no one paid attention to the date. Nor that the dancer Humberto Zambelli, his partner, declared in the espionage trial that they met in the summer of 1974, in Argentina. Days when Arancibia claimed he was in Chile.

MIRTHA LEGRAND AND SUSANA JIMENEZ

Had it not been for the famous Mirtha Legrand and Susana Jiménez, Arancibia and Zambelli would not have met. Because it was when the latter was working as a hairdresser at the Miguelito Romano house in Mar del Plata that he had to attend to Legrand and also her husband, Daniel Tinayre, who hired him to be a dancer in the musical comedy "Hair." A total success.

It was 1973 and the performances lasted for eight months. When "Hair" lowered the curtain, Zambelli returned to Mar del Plata but no longer as a hairdresser: he would perform at a nightclub called "Hidrógeno," where he met Susana Jiménez.

The Argentine diva would hire him to dance at the Teatro Astros. It was the summer of 1974 and on one of those nights when he was leaving the performance, his life would take another turn. At least that was what he related to his interrogators in 1978: –A young male person was waiting for me.

He invited me several times to have coffee and chat. As the days went by, I accepted the invitation and even took him to my parents' house in Lanús. That was how we entered fully into a friendly relationship with who turned out to be Enrique Arancibia Clavel—he declared in the espionage trial against Arancibia.

Four years later, the story would take another leap. Arancibia would fall, and with him, the archive he kept in the double bottom. There, where the proofs that implicate him in the repression against Chileans are.

FAMILY OF WRITER ISABEL ALLENDE IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Although Arancibia Clavel's archive shows that the main focus of his task was the exiles, there is also proof that he maintained permanent surveillance on other Chileans who, like him, participated in the conspiracy to assassinate Schneider and took refuge in Argentina.

Regarding Mario Igualt, brother-in-law of Roberto Viaux, he reported on October 21, 1974: "He is working for the Argentine security services from which he receives a fairly high remuneration. His contact is an officer Schiaffino (of the SIE)." Four days later, he reported that Ramón Huidobro, ambassador of Chile in Argentina until September 11, 1973, stepfather of the writer Isabel Allende and the last person—along with his wife, Francisca Llona—who saw General Carlos Prats alive, managed to leave Argentina.

He was threatened with death and they were looking for him to assassinate him. He was not the only one. In a peremptory order sent by "Luis Gutiérrez," a cover name used by the head of the DINA Foreign Department and which in those days hid the identity of General Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, he is asked for "the work location and private address of the most notorious of the past regime in Buenos Aires and Mendoza." The first list of Chileans sympathetic to the Popular Unity living in Argentina was deposited personally by Arancibia on the desk of "Luis Gutiérrez" in Santiago.

Mario Igualt continued to worry him: "I have learned that Igualt uses a false identity card in Chile under the name of Pino for shady business. In Argentina, he also has double documentation. The false one bears the name of Horacio Pizarro." As repression intensified in Argentina, Arancibia extended his ties with the military and civilians of the repression.

The Salesian priest Luis Gallo became his target at the end of 1974. He wrote: "He is in Santiago, he is a contact for the Argentine guerrilla of Córdoba with the Chilean extremists. They must surround him.

He is very skillful and dangerous." One of the initial points that demanded the most work was finding the safest ways to send documents from and to Chile. For a time, it was done through Sonia Montecinos, secretary to the chargé d'affaires of the Chilean embassy in Buenos Aires, Carlos Osorio (See Note 3).

In Chile, the envelopes were received at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Miguel Poklepovic Klamce, who had to call "Don Elías" (another cover name used by Iturriaga). The above was confirmed to me by Poklepovic himself, in a notarial declaration, who even informed me that the request to help in this task was received in Santiago, at a dinner at the home of a relative of Arancibia.

DINA surveillance in Buenos Aires focused on Chileans working at ECLAC and the Ebert Foundation, of the then-West Germany. In one of the documents, it reads: "The representative of the Ebert is Klauss Dressel, domiciled at Florida 716, eighth floor, apartment C.

He acts together with Walter Nocker, labor delegate of the German embassy in Chile. Walter acts as a courier and liaison for the two countries. Obtain the maximum amount of background information on the foundation as well as the mentioned subjects." The response was delivered by Arancibia in person at the DINA headquarters on Belgrado Street in Santiago.

And he also added data on his other object of surveillance, the Mario Igualt group, which he saw as competition: "Father Ernesto Rojas, who made the accusations in November 1974, is going to Chile at the end of December; I will notify you so you can have an interview.

He has more information on the network that Igualt has tried to form, in which Enrique Rojas, Julio Fontecilla, Jorge Arce, and Carlos Labarca (brother-in-law of Admiral Martínez Bush and all fugitives for the crime against General Schneider) would be.

The latter would be a contact for a Commander Carrasco of the DINA with offices in the Ministry of Justice." Arancibia was wrong. Igualt was already working for the DINA. Labarca too. This coincided with the arrival of the official head of the DINA network in Buenos Aires: Colonel Víctor Barría Barría.

In a document dispatched from Santiago, it reads: "Colonel Barría is our official representative and you are a clandestine information chief. Your relations with him must be totally covert. You must not burn yourself. You must continue working in the same way you have done until now."

THE ARGENTINE CONNECTION

The announcement of the arrival of Colonel Barría prompted Enrique Arancibia to deploy greater activity. In December 1974, the former engineering student reported on a key partner for the repressive activity of the DINA abroad and "Operation Condor." Martín Ciga Correa, head of security at the University of Buenos Aires, offered him information on all Chileans, teachers and students, at that university (See Note 4).

But Ciga was an old acquaintance of the DINA. A leader of the Nationalist Militia group, he participated in the assassination of Prats. He was not chosen at random. His terrorist history speaks for itself.

He was a militant in the shock groups of Argentine nationalism where he received the nickname "Christ" and in "Los Panzer," an armed group of the so-called Nationalist Socialist Youth. Upon Perón's death, the group of López Rega, founder of the Triple A, convinced President Estela Martínez to appoint Oscar Ivanisevich as Minister of Education, who appointed Alberto Ottalagano as rector of the University of Buenos Aires.

It was not a scandal. The brutal repression prevented it. Because Ottalagano exhibits in his academic profile being the author of a book whose title is I am a fascist, so what? The new rector and author of the book immediately hired Ciga Correa as head of security at the university.

Very soon he would be identified as the author of the assassination of Daniel Winier, an engineering student kidnapped on November 29, 1978. But he did not spend a day in prison. It is Ciga who, at the end of 1974, gives Arancibia new information that he transmits to Santiago: "The group that eliminated Prats would have a list of 8 other Chileans." Ciga also informs him that Ramón Huidobro and his wife Panchita are already in the United States.

The couple never knew that by leaving Argentina in a hurry, they escaped certain death. The same would have happened—according to these archives—with María Isabel Camus, a former executive of Codelco in the times of the UP and one of the 8 people indicated as "targets to be eliminated." "Her address is the same as that of our naval attaché.

All the background on her movements is held by the SIDE," reported Arancibia. All that cost a lot of money. Because just as Arancibia received a monthly envelope with dollars from the DINA, a supplement to his salary at the Banco del Estado, the services that Ciga provided were not free.

Neither was the information he provided. In an official letter sent by Arancibia to Santiago, it reads: "I am sending a photocopy of a check paid by Ciga to María José Riesco Bezanilla, a Chilean, for information that she provided to Ciga about Chileans at the University (of Buenos Aires, UBA)." The heat of February (1975) did not prevent Arancibia from following the steps of other priests "connected to the subversive movement," whom he identifies in relation to the "American Jesuit priest based in Salta, Father Haas, rector of the Catholic University of that city and a personal friend of Allende. This priest is visited assiduously by Chilean and Bolivian exiles." The arms business, on behalf of his bosses, kept him busy in March 1975. His interlocutor was Luis Sanies, the "contact was initiated by Jorge Ramírez of the Bank of America." Sanies is a "retired major, from the Joint Staff, Intelligence Headquarters Two, subordinate to General Della Croce and who will serve as a direct liaison with Admiral Peyronnel, current head of the SIDE." On Friday, March 14, at 3:00 PM, the meeting took place. From the report he dispatched, it is clear that the SIDE is not responding to the collaboration with the DINA. "Sanies agrees that the collaboration should be done unofficially, without the embassy." And he adds, "all the background on the 'toys' he has for sale, including a quote for projectiles." A salary increase is the reward for this business with Sanies and his second-in-command (Horacio Sturlla), which is finalized in Santiago. Arancibia changes focus.

and requests an investigation into the deputy manager of foreign trade at the Banco del Estado, Alfonso Ubilla, while reporting on the increase in the number of forcibly disappeared persons due to repression in Argentina: “As of April 13, 160 people have fallen, which averages one death every 15 hours. In recent days, 8 Chileans have fallen. They are presumed R.I.P.”

“OPERATION COLOMBO” STEP BY STEP

April would be a month in which Arancibia would show his superiors the efficiency of his contacts. The supposed corpse of the Chilean engineer David Silbermann, former manager of Chuquicamata, who was kidnapped in October 1974 from the prison in Santiago and has been missing ever since, was found in a parking lot in Buenos Aires (See Note 5).

In Arancibia’s archive are the handwritten pages with Silberman’s data, sent from Santiago for that setup.

It would be the beginning of one of the most brutal operations of the Chilean regime: “Operation Colombo,” which would attempt to make 119 forcibly disappeared Chileans appear as if they had been murdered by their own comrades abroad. Arancibia would play a key role in that setup.

“Attached is material related to the operations executives that appeared in different press outlets. Included is a photo of Ubal Tahl, possibly R.I.P. due to federal coordination. The invoices accompanying Colombo will be paid in the course of the week along with 15 Argentine invoices,” says the encrypted cable he sent to “Luis Gutiérrez,” head of the DINA’s Foreign Department.

The invoices are detainees.

But not everything worked as planned. On April 22, Arancibia sent a report to General Raúl Iturriaga: “Unfortunately, until now, the publicity for the ‘Colombo’ case has been almost nil. Tomorrow I will meet with Martín Ciga to know exactly what happened.

For this week, the remaining two are promised, who will appear with 15 ‘locals.’ I hope the publicity is greater. Martín requested photographic attention for approximately seven people. I hope to take them with me. He also offered me a business deal with Isabel Camus.”

Isabel Camus was in danger once again. Like thousands of Chileans and Argentines upon whom an unprecedented hunt had been unleashed. Arancibia traveled to Chile on April 25 to coordinate the details of the “Operation Colombo” already underway.

The names of 7 prisoners already executed, for whom Martín Ciga requested photographic attention (passports or identity cards), were discussed at the DINA’s central headquarters.

As operational arms of the DINA, coordinated personally by Arancibia Clavel, the group Falange de Fe (Phalanx of Faith) was integrated, based in Córdoba and headed by Jorge E. Flores Allende. Sanies also constituted another paid operational arm. Two armed branches to act and repress in Buenos Aires and Córdoba as decided by the DINA leadership in Santiago.

THE HANDWRITTEN PAGES

The reality is that neither Sanies nor Flores could compete with Ciga Correa’s group, the main operational arm the DINA had in Argentina. In the black plastic folders that Arancibia kept, the macabre trace of that partnership remained.

Dated May 8, the handwritten lists appear with the names of more than 100 Chilean detainees who were to be made to appear as executed in Argentina. They are simple notebook pages, with blue edges and spelling errors. Names appear there that have never had an explanation because they do not appear in any register of prisoners or disappeared persons:

Samuel Ovando Abarca Molina, Gabriela Arredondo Andrade, and Soledad Sepúlveda.

Ciga was doing his job. This is evident from the report that Arancibia dispatched on May 16 regarding the first phase of Operation Colombo, “carried out by Martín Ciga’s group in a perfect manner,” he writes.

A report that is chilling, as he also detailed there the effectiveness of the paramilitary groups that were sowing terror in those days in the neighboring country. Those whom Arancibia simply calls “execution commandos.”

“Their direct executor is Commissioner Ramírez (a.k.a.) ‘The Butcher,’ a specialist in burnings and drownings. With the latest political events, this group has decided to join Martín (Ciga)’s group,” Arancibia related to his superiors when informing them of his latest acquisition: the Arens group.

The home address of Ricardo Lagos and five other researchers from FLACSO in Buenos Aires is the last note Arancibia added to his detailed report on the Argentine paramilitary groups.

But something happened. On May 23, he dispatched an urgent report: “The silence regarding the ‘publicity’ of the ‘COLOMBO’ case has caught my attention. For a week now, there has been no information from you regarding this.

I would like to know what determination was reached in order to know how to handle myself with the journalist Carlos Manuel Acuña, who calls me almost every day. Tomorrow I will obtain all the background information that was sent to Santiago through Interpol. Vicente (Colonel Víctor Barría) obtained the copies.”

Colombo had problems. Even so, the DINA’s connection with its Argentine counterpart (SIDE) was established once again. Sanies was the link to Colonel Spinetto, “second in command of the SIDE interior, that is, of subversive work,” Arancibia wrote. And he added: “What interests them is the contact in case an unofficial operation needs to be carried out.”

THE DISCOLOURED AMBASSADOR

The final phase of Operation Colombo was imminent. And in those precise days, the Chilean ambassador to Argentina, René Rojas Galdames, fired a missile at Manuel Contreras that was never made public: he cut off the diplomatic pouch for the DINA men.

Arancibia was furious and sought an alternative. It would be Michael Townley who would find it in LAN Chile pilots who, for a few dollars, accepted the job. But Rojas remained on a blacklist with scores to settle.

Later, as recorded in his archives, Arancibia would resort to a high-ranking Argentine intelligence chief to monitor and spy on Ambassador Rojas and his family. The private life of his daughters was described with obscenity in the DINA reports, while the tension between Rojas and Colonel Barría grew.

Arancibia writes: “It is fundamental that this gentleman understands who he works for. The ambassador is now traveling to Santiago. He will surely go to move his radical mafia against the loyal officials. I ask the company to take the corresponding drastic measures.”

Years later, on the night of November 10, 1981, the CNI would blow up a car in front of the ambassador’s residence in Santiago (Las Vizcachas), with four occupants inside. The official version stated that the four young people, who died burned, were preparing an attack on the former ambassador’s house when the bombs exploded by mistake.

What Judge Joaquín Billard proved years later was that the four occupants of the car had been previously detained by the CNI. One of them has not been able to be identified to this day, as he was missing his head, feet, and hands. Many believe it was a revenge by the former DINA against Rojas.

TOWNLEY’S TRACE

In those days of 1975, Michael Townley appears in Buenos Aires in Arancibia’s papers. Both know each other. And very well. Since they coincided in the operation in which General Carlos Prats and his wife were murdered on a street in Palermo in Buenos Aires (1974).

This time, Townley bursts in with a relevant role in Operation Colombo. Manuel Contreras himself has sent him with a card signed by him and addressed to the Undersecretary of Internal Security, Héctor García Rey, to finalize Colombo.

In it, Contreras offers him “the unconditional support you will have from us in all your activities” and asks him to “dedicate a few minutes to someone who is already an old acquaintance of yours.” Indeed, Arancibia and García Rey know each other. The card is the seal that the mission the former carries is official. And at the highest level.

The meeting between Arancibia Clavel and García Rey takes place on Friday, August 1. “Regarding the lists of Chileans who entered Argentina through different crossings, delivered in due course by Mr. Diego Castro (false identity of Raúl Iturriaga Neumann), he will deliver them to me with stamps and signatures just as it was proposed in the original delivery.

He replied that these lists will be ready on August 5 and his own brother, present at the interview, will prepare them. I asked him for blank Argentine passports, to which he committed to delivering five to me on that same Tuesday the 5th” (See Note 6).

What is demanded of García Rey are the official papers that will certify that the 119 Chileans whom they want to make appear as murdered by their own comrades abroad, effectively crossed from Chile into Argentine territory through different mountain passes. They are the same ones that appear on the handwritten list with more than 100 names of detainees that was in his archive.

After one inconvenience or another, and the timely intervention of another important DINA partner and protagonist of the Argentine dirty war, Jorge Osvaldo Riveiro (alias “Rawson,” second in command of the SIE), the operation is ready for its final execution.

García Rey will be mentioned from now on as “Tito.” Months later, when García is threatened with death, he is offered rest and recuperation in Chile for him and his family. Riveiro does the same, traveling to Santiago with his wife with all expenses paid by the DINA on September 2, 1975.

He embarks in Paraguay. A route that will be recurrent among the men committed to Operation Condor, of which Riveiro will be a key piece.

This is proven by a report dated August 27 of that year, in which Arancibia writes to Iturriaga: “Lieutenant Colonel Osvaldo Rawson has the idea of forming an intelligence center coordinated between Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.”

The story that follows has already been written several times. After the appearance of the Argentine magazine Lea (60 names) and the newspaper Novo O’Día of Curitiba, Brazil (59 names), with the list of the 119 Chileans supposedly murdered in Salta by their own comrades, the headlines of the Chilean press arrived.

On July 23, thousands of Chileans read with horror: “Exterminated like rats” (La Segunda), “The MIR murders 60 of its men abroad” (La Tercera), “60 MIR members identified, executed by their own comrades” (El Mercurio), “Bloody struggle of the MIR abroad” (Las Últimas Noticias).

For several days, it was highlighted that habeas corpus petitions had been filed for all of them, “which demonstrates the lie that the Marxists have fabricated about the action of the security services.” That setup, one of the most chilling experienced during the dictatorship and which put the word “disappeared” on the table for the first time, was directed from the DINA’s central headquarters and bears the key fingerprint of Enrique Arancibia Clavel.

The Pinochet regime insisted through all its diplomatic and political channels that it had no connection to the Operation Colombo setup. Even when the survivors of the prisons began a hunger strike, insisting that most of them had been seen in one of the secret prisons where they were held.

Even when it was proven that the magazine Lea had that single edition in Buenos Aires, and it came from a printing press owned by López Rega, the founder of the Triple A of Argentina and a partner of the DINA. And despite the fact that the same thing happened with the Curitiba newspaper, but orchestrated by the Chilean consul in Rio de Janeiro, Gerardo Roa.

“OPERATION EUROPE”

The execution operations did not end with the repercussions of Colombo. On the contrary. In Arancibia Clavel’s archives is the proof. Ciga Correa asked for more “jobs” to be carried out in Buenos Aires or any other city in the world; and “a Sterling submachine gun or similar, plus silencers.” And he put a high price on his role.

A note from Arancibia catches the attention: “Martín asks if ‘Operation Europe’ will need collaboration from them.” On August 15, Ciga receives an affirmative response: he will work on the “German leg” of “Operation Europe.” And only that.

Today we know that at that moment, only days remained until the attack against Bernardo Leighton and his wife, carried out on October 5 in Rome. Both survived, but with serious consequences. And also, the failed attempt to assassinate the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos “The Jackal” (Ilich Ramírez Sánchez), in exchange for a large reward that Manuel Contreras asks the Shah of Iran for.

What were the other attacks? How many were successful? There is no answer yet.

But Arancibia’s archives provide other answers. Like what happened when the MIR leader Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón (“El Trosko”) was detained in Asunción and handed over by the Paraguayan secret police to the DINA.

When Lieutenant Colonel Riveiro (“Rawson”) finds out in Buenos Aires, he is furious. He is convinced that Fuentes has key information on the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta and wants him for themselves. The services would dispute the prey of the human hunt, causing the nascent cooperation to stumble.

It is not the only problem that the DINA and Arancibia face in those days. Because Riveiro (“Rawson”) is informed that Manuel Contreras has organized a coordination meeting of the secret services of the Southern Cone dictatorships in Santiago.

What he considered his original idea would debut in November, and he was not invited. The Argentine officer explodes. Arancibia would move his pieces in the days when Manuel Contreras was preparing to officially inaugurate Operation Condor in Chile on November 26. Officially, because in reality, the coordination to assassinate opponents had been underway for some time.

THE CAPTURE OF EDGARDO ENRIQUEZ

The repressive activity does not stop. Days before the premiere of Condor, on November 17, 1975, Arancibia dispatches the following report to Santiago: “According to information from Commander Jorge Osvaldo (Riveiro), ‘Pollo Enríquez’ is located in Baires.

News is expected. The so-called Claudet (Jean Ives Claudet, forcibly disappeared) could be Humberto Sotomayor, send photo. Claudet is R.I.P. In the latest instructions of the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta, Renán Fuentealba and Bernardo Leighton appear involved.”

The head of the MIR, Edgardo Enríquez, would be detained in Buenos Aires. His detention and elimination would mark a milestone for the DINA. The participation of the SIE apparatus in his capture was not free.

The DINA offered to connect the two services directly and permanently through a special telex that the DINA itself financed and provided. Manuel Contreras complied. In March, the coordination of the secret repressive services of Chile and Argentina moved to a higher level.

One detail is surprising. Reviewing the archive of Enrique Arancibia Clavel, it is noted that in those days of November 1978, with war imminent between both countries, that telex never stopped working. The dirty war had no respite.

NEW PARTNERS FOR TERRORISM

The documents contained in the Arancibia Clavel archive, the only one of the DINA that has finally been found, are a shocking record of the horror. There are the identity cards of some of the disappeared persons who were always denied to have been detained.

Photos of bodies torn apart, mutilated, or charred. What were they doing in Argentina? A mystery. Because Arancibia always refused to talk about it.

Nor is more known than what is in those papers regarding the tracking, detention, and assassination of Alexei Jaccard Siegler, who landed in Buenos Aires on May 16, 1977. He came from Europe and brought money to take to his comrades in the Communist Party in Chile.

The day after his arrival, he was captured. His trail was lost, but the reports contain some clues about the torture he suffered and his execution, as well as the hunt that was unleashed and ended with 15 other Chileans disappeared.

An episode that reveals the other side of the repression: the permanent theft of money and valuables from which the prisoners were stripped. To the point that the men of Ciga Correa, the Italian fascist Stephano Delle Chiaie, and the Cubans Virgilio Paz and the Novo brothers, plus Arancibia and other Chileans, end up forming a partnership whose objective will be to kidnap businessmen to collect ransoms and traffic arms.

A chapter that no tribunal, neither Argentine nor Chilean, has investigated until now.

In Arancibia’s archives, there are several documents that prove the new incursion of the agents of repression. Like the one that accounts for the meeting that Ciga Correa, Virgilio Paz, and others have in June 1976 at the barracks-house inhabited by Michael Townley in Lo Curro, to “plan a series of kidnappings to be carried out in Argentina given the need to obtain our own funds.”

IN THE FBI’S SIGHTS

Towards the end of 1976, the need for money revealed by the men of international terrorism becomes more evident. So do the luxuries they allow themselves. Enrique Arancibia Clavel does not stay on the sidelines.

With his partner Humberto Zambelli, they have become partners as owners of the apartment in which they live together in Buenos Aires. For the weekends, they have bought a plot of land in the residential sector of Tortuguitas and there they have a quinche built, a type of stilt house with a straw roof, and a swimming pool.

A perfect refuge for rest. All of that requires money. Arancibia will explore new commercial veins for his group. He will also coordinate more complex purchases.

Like the one he reports in a mysterious envelope he dispatches from Buenos Aires addressed to Alejandro Bontempi of LAN Chile Operations in Santiago. Inside is another smaller envelope addressed to “Luis Gutiérrez” and his phone number at the DINA headquarters: 31402. Arancibia waits impatiently for the response. As it does not arrive, he becomes alarmed. And he sends a telex.

In the small envelope was the report of the purchases of supplies made by “Javier” (the Cuban Virgilio Paz, who participated in the assassination of Orlando Letelier, was convicted by the U.S. justice system, and took refuge for a time in Chile), on behalf of the DINA: radio equipment and other elements for the manufacture of bombs of the same type as the one used to assassinate Carlos Prats and his wife in 1974.

And they were manufactured. And they were used. This was demonstrated by the U.S. justice system in a testing ground: the same bomb that assassinated Prats in September 1974 was used in September 1976 to blow up the car in which Orlando Letelier and his assistant were traveling in Washington.

The elements were purchased by Virgilio Paz, who used an identity card of Alejandro Bontempi, making him reside in Argentina. In Arancibia’s archives is the trace.

Operations that ended with Enrique Arancibia in the FBI’s sights. On October 12, 1977, his appointment with Arancibia is recorded in the agenda of the FBI attaché in Buenos Aires, Robert Scherrer. Arancibia introduces himself as a “friend” of Colonel Víctor Barría, the official head of the DINA in Buenos Aires.

He asks for a visa to travel to California. These are days when, according to the archives, several business deals are underway to obtain funds. And they all end in the United States.

The visa will cost him dearly. Because later, Scherrer will say that without being asked, Arancibia tells him that his job at the Banco del Estado is only a cover for his real work as head of the DINA’s clandestine network in the neighboring country.

The end of these archives coincides with the loss of the total power that Manuel Contreras and his men enjoyed. The decomposition is evident in every report. Much more so in the letters that officers write to Arancibia from Chile (See Note 8).

A chapter that leads to the hidden framework of the gestation, financing, and development in Chile of “Operation Condor,” which served to deploy, in the 70s and 80s, an enormous apparatus of international state terrorism in conjunction with the security services of the other Southern Cone dictatorships. And all this under the logistical and financial umbrella of the DINA.

Hundreds of agents deployed around the world, sophisticated communication networks, manufacture of chemical and biological weapons, trips, payments to agents from other countries, and many other items required a millionaire financing structure that came from the coffers of the State of Chile and a complex network of companies based in tax havens.

Even today, those networks maintain contacts and ties of protection. This was revealed by the assassination of the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos, in Uruguay in 1993, who worked precisely for that secret Foreign Department manufacturing chemical weapons.

Arancibia knew him very well. In his archive, there are several references to “Hermes,” his battle name in the DINA, and the repercussions caused by his imprudence in having mentioned him by name and surname in one of his telexes. And also, one of his business cards.

The proof of that network of impunity is the freedom that Arancibia Clavel himself enjoyed since 2007 in Buenos Aires due to an incomprehensible legal interpretation of his sentences. Even more serious is the total impunity that Martín Ciga Correa enjoys to this day.

Not only because he provided the main help that allowed the bomb to be placed in General Prats’ car, a double crime for which he has never been interrogated. Ciga holds the key that leads to the secrets of the final destination of many forcibly disappeared persons from Chile and Argentina. And also what was done with large amounts of money that fueled the repression.

NOTES

Note 1 In July 2002, when the Santiago Court of Appeals had to rule on the request for the stripping of immunity requested by the Argentine justice system against him for his role in the crime of Carlos Prats and his wife, Pinochet was on vacation in Iquique.

In a publicized journey, the general demonstrated that there was little of his touted irreversible cortical dementia, the cause for the end of his trial for the crimes of the Caravan of Death. But that new request for the stripping of immunity sounded the alarm. The vacation ended and Pinochet returned abruptly to Santiago to await the ruling of the Supreme Court (December 2002).

In 2003, and for the first time, the Chilean justice system acted through the judge with special jurisdiction Alejandro Solís when he prosecuted the DINA’s top leadership for the crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert: Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza (both, in their capacity as chiefs); and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Jorge Iturriaga Neumann, and José Octavio Zara Holger, as members of the criminal organization.

A group that planned “the physical elimination of General (ret.) Carlos Prats González for being considered dangerous to the permanence of the military government of Chile,” the ruling says. All of them would be convicted.

Note 2 Judge Alejandro Solís incorporated into his ruling the exits and entries into the country registered by General Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, convicted for his direct participation in the crime of General Prats and his wife under the false identity of “Diego Castro Castañeda” between July 16 and 30, 1974.

In addition, he appears with twelve exits to and from Uruguay to Chile from April ‘74 to September ‘77. His brother Jorge, also convicted for the same double crime, registers as many entries from Argentina between July 5 and September 3, 1974, immediately after the assassination.

As for Michael Townley, he used for that criminal operation a passport that the Pinochet regime negotiated with the United States in April 1978 and that would never be investigated: Kenneth Enyart entered Chile on August 30, 1974, coming from Argentina, left on September 10 of that same year bound for Buenos Aires, and his entry into Chile this time occurs from Uruguay on October 1, 1974, hours after the attack was perpetrated.

General Raúl Iturriaga registers other movements, but under another false identity: “Eduardo José Rodríguez Pérez,” with a diplomatic passport. Movements that include April 1975 and January 1976 between Chile, Argentina, and Brazil.

The same person, but without a diplomatic passport and ten years younger, registers exits by land to Peru (January 1973), entries from Ecuador by air (February 1973), and an exit bound for Argentina in February 1974. Another unexplored thread of the secret operations of the coup-plotting military.

Note 3 Carlos Osorio Mardones was a direct witness to the DINA’s activities in Buenos Aires. In 1976, for the assassination of Orlando Letelier, he was Director of Protocol of the Foreign Ministry in Santiago and had control of the delivery of false passports in the operation with which they attempted to hide the DINA’s authorship.

Osorio knew too much. In October 1977, he died under strange circumstances that were never investigated. Judge Alejandro Solís makes mention of the fact in his final ruling for the crime of General Prats. At least one witness has said that he was eliminated with Sarin gas.

Note 4 The Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky investigated Martín Ciga Correa in depth: In March 1976, veterans of the Tacuara movement, of the Triple A, such as Juan Martín Ciga Correa and José Luis Resio, were assimilated into the repressive forces of the dictatorship as qualified military personnel.

They then reappear in the task forces that kidnap, torture, and murder. He receives the name of “Major Mariano Santa María.” He was assigned by the Army to missions outside the country, as an instructor of counter-revolutionaries in Central America.

Missions in which they worked under the orders of officers such as Colonels Santiago Villegas, Osvaldo Riveiro, Julio Cesar Durand, and Major Hugo Miori Pereyra. Ciga Correa carried the money to pay the salaries of the Argentine soldiers in Tegucigalpa.

He was detained for stealing a car in Mar del Plata, but his former comrade in Tacuara, the then-judge Eduardo Pettigiani, set him free. His defense attorney was Roberto Falcone, who is a member of the Federal Oral Tribunal of Mar del Plata and who also defended Commissioner Rozsicki, head of Intelligence of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police and, at the time, right-hand man of the repressor Ramón Camps when he was chief of that police in 1977 and the kidnappings, disappearances, and murders of lawyers occurred in Mar del Plata.

Note 5 The trail of David Silberman, who was convicted by a War Council in Calama for crimes that were never proven, was lost in the Santiago Prison in October 1974. He was made to appear as kidnapped by a MIR commando.

Subsequently, it was proven in court that it was all a farce, as he was taken from there by a DINA group led by Armando Fernández Larios, and then brutally tortured and murdered. The justice system even managed to identify the officer who operated at the Telephone Company to intercept phones and create numbers for the DINA to use according to needs, which happened the day they kidnapped Silberman.

That officer is Marcos Derpich. The Buenos Aires incident was a crude attempt to make his body appear as the first of the Chileans who were reported as executed or detained by the Pinochet regime and who had actually been murdered by their own comrades. The identity of the body that they attempted to pass off as Silberman’s was never investigated.

Note 6 Under the identity of Diego Castro Castañeda, General Iturriaga acquires the house in Lo Curro that served as a barracks for the manufacture of chemical weapons and the residence of Michael Townley and Mariana Callejas. Carmelo Soria was also murdered there, as was proven in court.

Note 7 From the investigation collected in the book Laberinto, by Eugen M. Propper and Taylor Branch, Page 478.

Note 8 An example that illustrates that climate is the handwritten letter written to him by Christopher Willike Floe, an Army officer of the DINA high command, which Arancibia kept in his archives. It is written on May 9, 1978, when the expulsion of Townley from Chile, the forced retirement of General Manuel Contreras from the Army, and the abrupt departure of Commander Eduardo Iturriaga from the old DINA transformed into the CNI, causes panic among the agents:

“For your peace of mind, I am serving as Luis Gutiérrez second (second chief of the DINA’s Foreign Department). Regarding Wilson (Townley), he is well in the USA, but I cannot tell you more for security reasons. It was a dirty trick what they did to him, both by Pinocho, and by Mena and IMA Ividben (in the original). It has no name.”

“Elías (Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann) was kicked out of the service due to problems with Wilson and with Mena (Odlanier Mena). The situation is calmer, but there is still a long way to go and it will cost a high price for certain people, especially in political terms.

You have to have faith, this downpour will have to pass soon. I beg you to speed up as much as possible, everything is being done to save Wilson (Townley).”

“I cannot tell you much about work. Here, no one works anymore since the person who makes an arrest has to go and testify in court. No one does anything. They forced Commander Prado into retirement for not complying with the order to go and arrest ‘Mamo.’ The war is between lead.

It seems that Brady (General Hermán Brady, then Minister of Defense) will soon replace Covarrubias (General Sergio Covarrubias, Chief of the Presidential Staff).”

The last letter, and the most compromising one, is dated June 27, 1978. In it, Willike says:

“Here the mess continues and every day it gets worse. I think we are in a tight spot. Mariana (Callejas) continues with her stupid statements. Unfortunately, the only one paying the price is my compadre Wilson (Townley).

Because of this woman’s statements, I came to the fore in the Grand Jury, along with our compadre Joselo (Zara), for having talked to her during the ‘party of the airs’ (DINA’s name for the Letelier operation), but happily Orozco (General Héctor Orozco, military judge) and Pantoja (Colonel Jerónimo Pantoja, deputy director of the DINA and later of the CNI) supported me and I am not in the summary.

The good thing: starting this week I will begin activities at the Motorized Regiment No. 1 of Buin - Long live Chile, damn it! Happy to return to freedom and not work with these idiots anymore.”

Note 9 The archives of Enrique Arancibia Clavel were systematized by the National Security Archive and donated to the Uniacc and Alberto Hurtado universities, where copies of the documents are kept.

Source: www.ciperchile.cl

Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0001339233

The first years of the military regime were marked by serious human rights violations, and at least 3000 persons died or disappeared. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, many detained persons were brought to the National Stadium, where many died.

Two U.S. citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, were among the regime's early victims. Among those allegedly connected to the disappearance of Charles Horman were General Augusto Lutz and Victor Hugo Barria Barria. The so-called "Caravan of Death," allegedly directed by General Sergio Arrellano Stark, resulted in the death and disappearance of at least 70 victims in northern Chile.

Source: cia.gov, August 7, 2000