The case regarding the crime against MIR member Fernando Vergara is in the hands of the Supreme Court, which has already agreed upon the final sentence. During the proceedings, seven members of the CNI stated that the former minister participated in the operation following the assassination of the man in charge of intercepting the television signal to broadcast anti-Pinochet proclamations.

Cuadra denied this, and later, the majority of the agents did as well. Find out why. After a strong academic push, Francisco Javier Cuadra achieved what he had sought for so long. In June 2004, he took office as the new rector of the Universidad Diego Portales (UDP).

The breakdown of the resistance that the association of his image with the austere and severe Minister Secretary General of Government during the dictatorship produced in many lasted little more than a year.

In November 2005, he resigned after academics and the student body withdrew their support. They relied on the statements he himself had given to journalist Patricia Verdugo, one month earlier, in the "Diario Siete." Without gauging the caliber of his words, Cuadra pointed out, with hints of a feat, that the kidnapping of figures such as Ricardo Lagos during the period in which Operation Albania was carried out was ordered by the regime to save them from the clutches of the CNI.

How Cuadra knew about the crimes of the repressive agency is one of the questions that led to dark inferences that, ultimately, cost him his position. But just a year before his appointment, in 2003, while he was focused on showing his best cards for the candidacy for the UDP rectorship, no one knew that Cuadra was seriously questioned by the justice system.

In the middle of that year, the judge of the Ninth Criminal Court, Raquel Lermanda, summoned him to testify regarding the crime against the director of Radio Liberación, the MIR militant Fernando Vergara Vargas.

According to the statements of seven CNI agents, a few minutes after his death, one of the former architects of the dictatorship's communications arrived with Álvaro Corbalán at the victim's house to supervise the raid. "When he went to the court, he had already grown that semi-trimmed beard and his personality had changed.

He revealed himself as a rather seductive guy. But even so, when he found out what the case was about, his glasses almost fell off his face," recalls a source directly linked to the judicial investigation.

LIBERATION VERSUS DINACOS

Fernando Vergara had entered Chile clandestinely in 1982, after years of exile. He was in charge of the MIR's communications, and Radio Liberación was one of his star products. Intended to disseminate information against the dictatorship, the clandestine station interfered on several occasions with the signal of other radio stations and even that of TVN.

Subversive misdeeds that, above all, affected Francisco Javier Cuadra. The young minister had assumed command of communications with an iron fist in October 1984. Known as one of the most powerful ministers under Pinochet's wing, his judgment was decisive for the state of siege declared in November of that year.

Once again, the right to assembly was restricted, curfews were reinstated, all opposition publications were suspended, and transcendental information "on matters of political relevance or scope" passed under the sieve of the National Directorate of Social Communication (Dinacos).

The agency functioned as a journalistic and communications agency (see box) intended both to influence and censor all media, and it depended directly on Cuadra. Hence, the work carried out by Vergara directly affected the interests of his department.

THE CRIME

At first, the case for the death of Fernando Vergara was dismissed by the Second Military Prosecutor's Office, as was customary at the time. But in '99 it was reopened and Nelson Caucoto assumed the representation of the victim's relatives.

As the judge in charge of the case, Raquel Lermanda proved to be implacable. After several rounds of interrogations of the former CNI agents, she established that Fernando Vergara had been assassinated on Calle Santa Elvira at Santa Elena, a few blocks from his house on Calle Carmen.

He received fourteen bullet impacts. The agents who participated directly in the operation were identified as Army Major Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ros and non-commissioned officers Francisco Javier Orellana Seguel, Luis Gálvez Navarro, and Jorge Ramírez.

On July 2, 2003, Judge Lermanda issued the first indictment, which affected the four agents who participated in the operation and added the man who was in charge of all CNI brigades: Colonel (R) Aquiles González Cortés.

But by that time, the judge was strongly developing another investigative lead, since Aquiles González as well as Sanhueza Ros, Orellana, and Ramírez testified judicially that once Vergara was dead, they went to his house, located a short distance away (Carmen 1392).

Their 2003 judicial statements coincide that minutes later, Álvaro Corbalán arrived at the scene, accompanied by the Minister Secretary General of Government, Francisco Javier Cuadra.

AFTER CUADRA

Three agents who did not participate in the crime, but who were part of the surveillance team and arrived later at Vergara's house, also testified that, just after the crime occurred, the young minister was present.

This is the case of non-commissioned officer Heraldo Veloso, who pointed this out to the judge. Rafael Riveros Frost and Luis René Torres Méndez only declared this to the police in July 2003. In November of that year, Torres added to the civil police that on the night of the crime, he was on guard duty at Vergara's house. "Minister Francisco Javier Cuadra also arrived at the residence, and he was interviewed by television channels.

I remember being present when they interviewed him," he declared. But why would Cuadra have arrived at that place? "Inside Vergara's house were all the radio equipment and radio frequency interception equipment of Radio Liberación.

It was a triumph for Corbalán and the culmination of a surveillance job we had been carrying out for more than two months," says an agent who testified in the process and requested that his identity be kept confidential.

The morning after the crime against Fernando Vergara, Francisco Javier Cuadra appeared on the Canal 11 program "525 líneas." There, he provided detailed information on the material seized at Vergara's house, highlighting that it was one of the MIR's great defeats.

The next day, the newspaper "Las Últimas Noticias" repeated the information verbatim. "In the raid, we found 40 cartridges of dynamite, two Czechoslovakian C25 submachine guns, many elements intended to form or prepare bombs, such as clockwork devices, detonating cord, and others of lesser importance." With the testimonies of the CNI and the data from the time that he himself provided against himself, on July 25, 2003, he was summoned to testify.

In addition to flatly denying his presence at Vergara's house, when asked about his statements on TV, he stated that by speaking in the plural ("we raided"), he was referring to the Government in general. "That does not imply that I was present at the place when the raid was carried out.

It is a transcription of the expressions made on a television program that aired on Sunday mornings live," he indicated. In any case, his statements remain controversial, because when Cuadra provided the information to the press, he pointed out that Vergara's death occurred in circumstances where the CNI was carrying out "a routine review of a preventive nature for the control of persons," and that at that moment, a suspicious subject was identified on the street. "He was required to stop and identify himself.

He did not comply with that and, on the contrary, responded by opening fire." It would not have been a problem if it were not for the fact that the former members of the CNI confessed to the judge that they had been carrying out sporadic surveillance on him for a couple of months and that they had identified his house at least two days prior.

THE TV CHANNEL

Since Francisco Javier Cuadra flatly denied his stay at Fernando Vergara's house, Judge Lermanda asked him how he obtained the information. Cuadra indicated that it must have been provided to him through a document and denied that the news was communicated to him by the CNI via telephone.

The judge's question pointed to the fact that it was extremely suspicious that, if the crime occurred near ten at night and the raid lasted until dawn, Cuadra would then appear in the morning on TV with a paper, which he did not draft, full of information.

Since the regular procedure established that Dinacos draft the memos after receiving data from the CNI or other sources, the judge summoned the officials of that service to testify, many of them journalists (see box).

But none remembered having drafted such information that Cuadra claimed to have received in writing. The judge did not stop and continued until she found an obscure unit dependent on the CNI that was based at the Borgoño barracks.

This unit was in charge of filming and photographing different events, among which were crimes and confrontations, which were then delivered to the media for dissemination as packaged products. Since Cuadra never went on air from the scene of the raid on any television program and some CNI members present at the scene even mentioned that they had seen him giving interviews, Judge Lermanda summoned the cameramen and a man who functioned as a "television director" in practice, in charge of editing the images that his cameramen took together with the CNI, named Carlos Iván Mora Silva.

None of them remembered the event.

THE CIRCLE CLOSES

Without apparent explanation, during October 2003, the members of the CNI who had ratified Francisco Javier Cuadra's presence at Vergara's house began to retract their statements. In successive confrontations with the former minister, they denied that he had been there.

Some excused themselves by pointing out that they were not sure, that in truth someone had told them, or that they had seen him on TV. However, two CNI agents who were confronted with Cuadra maintained their statements.

One of them, Francisco Orellana, pointed out in the face-to-face: "I cannot provide further background information, such as the reason why Mr. Cuadra was at the scene of the raid, nor who might have notified him.

The only thing I can point out is that he was there, because I saw him." But it was no longer enough to determine Cuadra's responsibility. From that moment on, the investigation focused on resolving the final police details of the case.

LND spoke, with reservation of identity, with one of the agents who retracted his statements against Cuadra. "It was a very hard moment and Colonel Aquiles González [head of CNI brigades] organized this internal lobby to change the statements.

There was pressure not to acknowledge that Cuadra was there, since it could affect us more, because a big fish in the Government was involved. So he had to be taken out at any cost. When you are desperate and you analyze it, of course it is valid. Later I regretted it terribly," he points out.

SENTENCE

After a restructuring of the cases, in 2006 the Fernando Vergara case reached the hands of Court of Appeals judge Eduardo Fuentes Belmar. After expanding the indictment to Álvaro Corbalán, on March 23 he issued the sentence.

Ten years for him. The others received five. As a consequence of the appeal by both parties, in 2007 the Second Chamber of the Court of Appeals, inexplicably, released Corbalán and Aquiles González from responsibility and increased the sentence of the operational agents.

The plaintiff lawyer, Nelson Caucoto, still has not found a satisfactory answer. "I think they ruled thinking only of individual responsibilities. We understand that the CNI was a hierarchical institution, and this was not spontaneous.

If there is something important that the Nuremberg trial taught us, it is the distinction between chiefs and subordinates," he points out. The case finally ended up in the Supreme Court and a week ago the judges reached an agreement.

Now only the drafting remains. What will happen? Once again, nothing that affects the technocratic brains, presumably behind some of the most horrendous actions of the dictatorship.

Source: La Nación, June 15, 2008.

Today, once again, La Moneda and human rights lawyers pointed to the civilians who collaborated with the former de facto ruler Augusto Pinochet, to point out their political, and even criminal, responsibility in the crimes that occurred during the dictatorship.

This time, the triggers were the judicial statements of former agents of the dissolved CNI, Jorge Vargas Bories and Iván Quiroz, in which they acknowledge having riddled journalist José Carrasco Tapia with bullets on the night of September 7, 1986, and even having had President Ricardo Lagos on their extermination list.

The admission of the brutal crime against the man who was editor of the magazine Análisis, assassinated alongside opposition leaders Ignacio Vidaurrázaga, Abraham Muskatblit, and Hernán Rivera, brought up the explanations given that day by the then Minister Secretary General of Government, Francisco Javier Cuadra, to justify the deaths.

Cuadra, on guard at La Moneda throughout the night of September 7 to 8, 1986, stated that "the four deaths investigated were the consequence of an internal purge among Marxist sectors, related to the failure of the attack against General Pinochet." Hence, this morning Vice President Vidal stated that "following the assassination of José Carrasco and three other people, it is good for young people not to forget in order to learn, because in that era, under the dictatorship, those who were in La Moneda and some media outlets maintained that this had been an assassination between communists, and a year before José Carrasco, a member of the Government Junta maintained that those whose throats were slit had slit each other's throats, and the government spokespersons of the dictatorship era maintained the same thing." I –asserted Vidal– make a political criticism, because I hope they have realized that they collaborated with a dictatorship that committed crimes." And his summons was ratified by the La Moneda spokesperson, Osvaldo Puccio, who declared that "Chile knows perfectly well how things happened, what the dictatorship meant, who had what responsibilities, how these responsibilities have been pursued judicially, how those responsible for the crimes and the political leaders responsible for the atrocities they committed at that time have been called to assume them. The country knows who is who in Chile," he emphasized.

Criminal responsibility

But lawyer Eduardo Contreras went even further, and asserted that the civil authorities of the time hid the assassination of journalist José Carrasco in 1986 and must be prosecuted, as they participated in a "criminal association." The jurist stated that "those who officiated as authorities of the Ministry of the Interior at the time, as well as those who were spokespersons for the Government or Secretaries General of the Government, have clear criminal responsibility absolutely.

There is criminal responsibility, it is very clear, and in accordance with the law, the civil authorities who hid, collaborated, facilitated, or covered up the crime against José Carrasco must be prosecuted." "Enough of lies," said Contreras, "civilians cannot continue to hide behind the little story that the military did not tell them.

They knew perfectly well. Facilitating the purposes of the crime against Carrasco, the fact that the advertising montage of the civil authority's declaration was made is very clearly a criminal association."

Source: La Nación, October 22, 2005.

Rector Cuadra's pending exam regarding the revenge for the attack on Pinochet

The former spokesperson for the dictatorship and current rector of the Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), Francisco Javier Cuadra, will have to take an important exam before the visiting judge Hugo Dolmetsch, by answering more than ten questions contained in the document presented yesterday by the lawyer for Fasic, Nelson Caucoto.

The professional also requested that the judge summon the former Minister of the Interior of the military regime, Ricardo García Rodríguez; the former undersecretary of that portfolio, current former RN deputy Alberto Cardemil; the former foreign minister Jaime del Valle; and the former Secretary General of the Presidency, Sergio Valenzuela.

All of them, plus the director of the National Information Center (CNI), the late General Humberto Gordon, made up Pinochet's political committee. In addition, Caucoto requested to interrogate the then director of the National Directorate of Social Communication (Dinacos), Marcelo Venegas Palacios.

The summonses relate to the orders issued from La Moneda to assassinate opponents, in revenge for the attack suffered by the former dictator on Sunday, September 7, 1986, a motive that was established by Judge Dolmetsch in his investigation.

Caucoto is a plaintiff in the case of the four assassinated opponents - José Carrasco, Felipe Rivera, Gastón Vidaurrázaga, and Abraham Muskablit - representing the families of Carrasco and Rivera. On the other hand, lawyer Héctor Salazar, plaintiff representing Judge Yolanda Manríquez for her son Gastón Vidaurrázaga, told La Nación that, according to statements by former agents that Judge Dolmetsch holds in a reserved file, "it is established that it is Pinochet himself who ordered General Gordon to take revenge." Salazar stated that the agents declare that Pinochet arrived at La Moneda at night after the attack, and led a meeting of the political committee, in which at least Cuadra and Gordon were present. "Those who speak maintain that that night Pinochet used the phrases 'let the signal hurt,' 'let the response be hard,' and 'the reprisal to eliminate,'" said Salazar. The lawyer maintains that "now Mr. Francisco Javier Cuadra and the other members of Pinochet's political committee have the opportunity to tell the truth, because I believe that today they have very little space left to do so since the former agents are talking. It is the agents themselves who today could refute their denials," and added that "if today Mr. Cuadra is saying that hours after the attack, the arrest of the current President Lagos and several other opposition leaders was ordered to save their lives, he will have to tell the judge why, that same night, he already knew that they were in danger of dying. He will have to say how he knew it and from whom he learned it. He will have to name those people," Salazar affirmed. The former lawyer for the Vicariate of Solidarity said that "what Mr. Cuadra is claiming means that he had first-hand information about what was happening, because Lagos and the rest of the leaders were arrested almost in parallel to the kidnappings that the CNI was carrying out to assassinate."

The interrogation of Cuadra

• The rector of the UDP will have to tell the judge who was present at the political committee meeting at La Moneda on the night of the attack on Pinochet, and if he was present.
• If that meeting was presided over by General Augusto Pinochet, who arrived at La Moneda around 11 at night.
• If on that occasion the order given to the director of the CNI was resolved, to "eliminate" opponents as an act of "revenge," in the ratio of "two for one" regarding the five bodyguards killed in the attack.
• Why he knew, as he has stated, that the life of the current President Ricardo Lagos and other opposition leaders was in danger, and how and from whom he obtained that information.
• If he knows who ordered the Investigative Police to initiate the second operation to arrest several opposition leaders, in an action parallel to that of the CNI.
• That he say why both parallel operations were carried out with different results (those of the CNI die and those of the Investigative Police do not), who decided it, and why.
• That he explain how the events unfolded that night at La Moneda, including the moment after Pinochet's arrival.
• That he say what communicational instructions he was responsible for giving that dawn of September 8, starting from when the CNI killed the first three opponents.
• That he say why he subsequently declared to the press that the deaths of the four opponents were due to a "settling of scores between Marxists."
• That he say if the decision for the crimes of Operation Albania - in which a year later (in 1987) the CNI killed 12 members of the FPMR - was also made at a meeting at La Moneda of the ministers of the political committee with Pinochet.
• If at that meeting, had it taken place, it was decided to carry out Operation Albania.

In his document, lawyer Caucoto also asked Judge Dolmetsch to order the Investigative Police to collect all the press material from the time, in which the political statements of Cuadra, former minister García, and other members of Pinochet's political committee appear.

Source: La Nación, October 28, 2005.

The pain of Francisco Javier Cuadra

The Pain of Francisco Javier Cuadra

In his farewell speech upon stepping down as rector of a well-known private Chilean university, the former spokesperson for the military dictatorship, Francisco Javier Cuadra, framed his experience of resigning from his executive position within the context of a virtual Greek tragedy.

In this narrative, Cuadra casts himself as a misunderstood hero, a victim of circumstances, a Prometheus chained by the fury of those who do not measure up to him as an exceptional man—human, all too human.

Thus, in a few phrases diligently disseminated by the country’s main media outlets, the herald of the dictatorship transformed the legitimate demands of the academic body and students of the Universidad Diego Portales, who demanded his removal from office due to his confessed link to the cover-up of crimes against humanity, into a revanchist rite.

Through this rite, collective guilt is offloaded onto “an innocent man amidst clamors for vengeance and the search for purification through the sacrifice of one of its members.” Through newspapers and television, we were able to see a pained, understanding, and empathetic Francisco Javier Cuadra.

From the same mouth that, in the second half of the 1980s, uttered repeated words and messages that manipulated public opinion—confusing it regarding the true perpetrators of the crimes committed by armed agents of the Chilean State against defenseless fellow citizens—now flowed content calling for national reconciliation through the equalization of traumatic experiences: “I feel that perhaps the fear, the anguish, the helplessness, and the circle of discrimination and exclusion that I have felt in these days due to the treatment I have received, could be a distant but stinging mirror of the unjust suffering that many endured during the government for which I was an official. The names and circumstances change, but human abuse is the same.” It must be a great step forward for national reconciliation that such a prominent figure of the dictatorship declares himself so understanding of those who lived through the extermination that he himself fostered, helped implement, and protected. And those of us who were the object of his actions and omissions—children of political prisoners, those executed, and the forcibly disappeared—should feel united with Francisco Javier Cuadra by the bond granted by sharing the same “fear,” “anguish,” “helplessness,” and “unjust suffering.” His cause, he says, is our message, for there is “equivalence” and “equality of condition” in pain. At the end of 1984, when you were already serving as the dictatorship’s minister spokesperson, the Ministry of the Interior decreed a state of siege—do you remember, the cancellation of basic civil liberties, such as freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and a long etcetera?—and armed civilians arrived at my house at night looking for my dad. I was fourteen years old, and they showed me—I still have it, in case you want it for your archive of classical culture—the decree from the Ministry of the Interior signed by Sergio Onofre Jarpa, which states, without further preamble, that my father—a normal school teacher—was to be arrested, interrogated for as long as necessary, and then expelled from the country along with opposition leader Jaime Insunza. All of this, the letterhead says, in the name of the President of the Republic, for whom you were the spokesperson. My father was not home at that moment, and from that time on, I had to learn to lie about his whereabouts. That same night, Mom asked me to tear up and throw away all the letters Dad had ever written us, with poems and magical drawings, and to make the photos disappear, as this had already happened to them in 1976 when Dad was in the hands of the Comando Conjunto. So today, I do not have any letters from Dad, and I only have a few photos in which I appear next to him. Dad went into hiding; he had to stop teaching at his high school in Conchalí, and I did not see him again for many weeks, until New Year’s. On that occasion, he arrived unexpectedly inside the trunk of a car so he would not be identified on the street. He shared a couple of hours with the family and then left for a couple more months. There were no charges against him, there were no Courts of Justice to protect him, and he could not exercise his rights. In March 1985, you were still on the political team at La Moneda, and the Government lifted the state of siege. This allowed Dad to return to work, for I assume you do not believe that “Moscow gold” kept my sister and me fed, or that it was the “Cubans” who paid for the gas for the house’s water heater or my classical guitar lessons at the conservatory. For months, we ate beans, drank tea, and bathed many times with cold water. But, excuse me, all of that is very minor compared to what has happened to you, and very un-Hellenic. Do you remember General Mendoza? Yes, you worked for and with him. Well, it was Carabineros and civilian agents of the Dicomcar who did all this to us. But, Francisco Javier, I understand you; the academics and students of the Universidad Diego Portales are equivalent to my father’s killers. The treatment they have given you, writing a signed letter, must be very painful. Shall I teach you how to draft a recurso de amparo? Shall I put you in contact with a psychologist from the Latin American Institute of Mental Health and Human Rights to help you grieve? Now that you have more time, perhaps we can go to therapy together.

Source: La Nación, November 17, 2005.

Cuadra Now Implicates Himself in the Degollados Case

Upon testifying before Judge Hugo Dolmestch, the former spokesperson for the dictatorship, Francisco Javier Cuadra, implicated himself in the case of the three communists whose throats were slit (degollados) in 1985.

Cuadra also entangled former Minister of the Interior Ricardo García by admitting that on the night of the attack on Pinochet—September 7, 1986—the decision to declare a state of siege and compile a list to arrest opposition leaders “was resolved by President Pinochet with the Minister of the Interior, Ricardo García, and I had nothing to do with it.” In his testimony last Thursday, Cuadra explained that his version—that the four murders were a settling of scores between “Marxists”—was given to him by “General Humberto Gordon, the head of the CNI… but I see that he deceived me.” When the magistrate asked him why he believed him, Cuadra said Gordon seemed “credible” because in March 1985, he had informed him that the throat-slitting of three communists (José Manuel Parada, Manuel Guerrero, and Santiago Nattino) “had been the work of Carabineros.” For plaintiff lawyer Héctor Salazar, now “Cuadra has caught his fingers in the degollados case, because he said he had knowledge of those crimes, and he, as a public official, was obligated to report them and did not do so.” Salazar maintains that Cuadra admitted to knowing about the crime and the institution of the criminals before Judge José Cánovas determined the responsibility of Carabineros officials. For that reason, Salazar says that Cuadra must answer criminally “as an accessory” to those murders. According to the lawyer, Cuadra would have incurred the same crime of accessory at the very least in the CNI executions following the attack on Pinochet (José Carrasco, Felipe Rivera, Gastón Vidaurrázaga, and Abraham Muskablit) because “he knew something of what was happening, since he previously said that the detention of President Lagos and other leaders was to save their lives (…) in other words, he knew they were in danger and that people were being killed.”

Meetings at La Moneda

In another part of his statements to Judge Dolmestch, Cuadra admitted that on the night of the attack, he participated in meetings at La Moneda but denied having knowledge that the executions of Carrasco, Rivera, Vidaurrázaga, and Muskablit were decided that night at the Government Palace.

He acknowledged that “I spoke with General Pinochet by phone that night,” but “only to coordinate the General’s appearance on television after the attack.” In this regard, Cuadra confirmed to the judge that Ricardo García and the then-Secretary General of the Presidency, Sergio Valenzuela, as well as General Gordon and the Deputy Director of Carabineros, General Oscar Torres, “participated in the meetings” that took place that night at La Moneda.

Regarding other authorities, such as the then-Foreign Minister Jaime del Valle and the Undersecretary of the Interior and current deputy Alberto Cardemil, Cuadra reportedly said, “I do not remember if they were there.” In his statement, Cuadra insisted several times that “I knew nothing” of the decision made that night to seek revenge for the five dead bodyguards.

However, he recalled that “I saw General Gordon very desolate” because he assumed that the blame for the attack “had been his” for not having foreseen the attack, but he did not accuse Gordon of having made the macabre decision.

This week, Judge Dolmestch, who is investigating the case of the four opposition members, will continue taking statements from the rest of those who made up Pinochet’s political advisory committee.

Source: La Nación, November 22, 2005.

The Trial Where Francisco Javier Cuadra Was Saved by Inches

The case regarding the crime of MIR member Fernando Vergara is in the hands of the Supreme Court, which has already agreed on the final sentence. In the proceedings, seven members of the CNI stated that the former minister participated in the operation following the murder of the man in charge of intercepting the television signal to broadcast anti-Pinochet proclamations.

Cuadra denied it, and later, the majority of the agents did as well. Learn why. After a strong academic backlash, Francisco Javier Cuadra achieved what he had sought so much. In June 2004, he assumed the position of the new rector of the Universidad Diego Portales (UDP).

The breaking of the resistance that the association of his image with the austere and severe Minister Secretary General of Government during the dictatorship produced in many lasted little more than a year.

In November 2005, he resigned after academics and the student body withdrew their support. They relied on the statements he himself had given to journalist Patricia Verdugo a month earlier in "Diario Siete." Without gauging the caliber of his words, Cuadra pointed out, with hints of a feat, that the kidnapping of figures like Ricardo Lagos during the period in which Operation Albania was executed was ordered by the regime to save them from the clutches of the CNI.

How Cuadra knew about the crimes of the repressive agency is one of the questions that led to dark inferences that, finally, cost him his position. But just a year before his appointment, in 2003, while he was focused on showing his best cards for the candidacy for the UDP rectorship, no one knew that Cuadra was seriously questioned by the justice system.

In the middle of that year, the minister of the Ninth Criminal Court, Raquel Lermanda, summoned him to testify for the crime of the director of Radio Liberación, the MIR militant Fernando Vergara Vargas.

According to the statements of seven CNI agents, a few minutes after his death, one of the former architects of the dictatorship’s communications arrived with Álvaro Corbalán at the deceased’s house to supervise the raid. "When he went to the court, he had already grown that semi-trimmed beard, and his personality had changed.

He revealed himself as a rather seductive guy. But still, when he found out what the case was about, his glasses almost fell off his face," recalls a source directly linked to the judicial investigation.

Fernando Vergara had entered Chile clandestinely in 1982, after years of exile. He was in charge of the MIR’s communications, and Radio Liberación was one of his star products. Intended to disseminate information against the dictatorship, the clandestine station interfered several times with the signal of other radio stations and even that of TVN.

Subversive misdeeds that, above all, affected Francisco Javier Cuadra. The young minister had assumed command of communications with an iron fist in October 1984. Known as one of the most powerful ministers under Pinochet’s wing, his judgment was decisive for the state of siege dictated in November of that year.

Once again, the right to assembly was restricted, curfews were reinstated, all opposition publications were suspended, and transcendental information "in matters of political relevance or scope" passed through the sieve of the National Directorate of Social Communication (Dinacos).

The agency functioned as a journalistic and communications agency (see box) intended both to influence and censor all media, and it depended directly on Cuadra. Hence, the work carried out by Vergara directly affected the interests of his department.

At first, the case for the death of Fernando Vergara was dismissed by the Second Military Prosecutor’s Office, as was the custom at the time. But in ’99, it was reopened, and Nelson Caucoto assumed the representation of the victim’s relatives.

As the minister in charge of the case, Raquel Lermanda proved to be implacable. After several rounds of interrogations of the former CNI agents, she certified that Fernando Vergara had been murdered on Calle Santa Elvira at Santa Elena, a few blocks from his house on Calle Carmen.

He received fourteen bullet impacts. The agents who participated directly in the operation were identified as Army Major Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ros and non-commissioned officers Francisco Javier Orellana Seguel, Luis Gálvez Navarro, and Jorge Ramírez.

On July 2, 2003, Minister Lermanda issued the first indictment, which affected the four agents who participated in the operation and added the man in charge of all CNI brigades: Colonel (R) Aquiles González Cortés.

But by then, the minister was strongly developing another investigative lead, since Aquiles González, Sanhueza Ros, Orellana, and Ramírez all testified judicially that once Vergara was dead, they went to his house, located a short distance away (Carmen 1392).

Their 2003 judicial statements coincide that minutes later, Álvaro Corbalán arrived at the scene, accompanied by the Secretary General of Government, Francisco Javier Cuadra. Three agents who did not participate in the crime, but who were part of the surveillance team and arrived later at Vergara’s house, also testified that, just after the crime occurred, the young minister was present.

This is the case of non-commissioned officer Heraldo Veloso, who pointed this out to the minister. Rafael Riveros Frost and Luis René Torres Méndez only declared this to the police in July 2003. In November of that year, Torres added to the civil police that on the night of the crime, he was on guard duty at Vergara’s house. "Minister Francisco Javier Cuadra also arrived at the address and was interviewed by television channels.

I remember being present when they interviewed him," he declared. But why would Cuadra have arrived at that place? "Inside Vergara’s house were all the radio and frequency interception equipment of Radio Liberación.

It was a triumph for Corbalán and the culmination of surveillance work we had been carrying out for more than two months," says an agent who testified in the proceedings and requested anonymity. The morning after Fernando Vergara’s crime, Francisco Javier Cuadra appeared on the Canal 11 program "525 líneas." There, he provided detailed information on the material seized at Vergara’s house, highlighting that it was one of the MIR’s great defeats.

The following day, the newspaper "Las Últimas Noticias" repeated the information verbatim. "In the raid, we found 40 sticks of dynamite, two Czechoslovakian C25 submachine guns, many elements intended to form or prepare bombs, such as clockwork devices, detonating cord, and others of lesser importance." With the testimonies of the CNI and the data from the time that he himself provided against himself, he was summoned to testify on July 25, 2003.

In addition to flatly denying his presence at Vergara’s house, when asked about his statements on TV, he stated that by speaking in the plural ("we raided"), he was referring to the Government in general. "This does not imply that I was present at the scene when the raid was carried out.

It is a transcript of the expressions made on a television program that aired live on Sunday mornings," he indicated. In any case, his statements are still controversial, because when Cuadra provided the information to the press, he pointed out that Vergara’s death occurred in circumstances where the CNI was carrying out "a routine review of a preventive nature for person control," and that at that moment, a suspicious subject was identified on the street. "He was required to stop and identify himself.

He did not comply with that and, on the contrary, responded by opening fire." It would not have been a problem if it were not for the fact that the former members of the CNI confessed to the minister that they had been carrying out sporadic surveillance on him for a couple of months and that they had identified his house at least two days earlier.

Since Francisco Javier Cuadra flatly denied his stay at Fernando Vergara’s house, Minister Lermanda asked him how he obtained the information. Cuadra indicated that it must have been provided to him through a document and denied that the news was communicated to him by the CNI via telephone.

The minister’s question pointed to the fact that it was extremely suspicious that, if the crime occurred near ten o’clock at night and the raid lasted until dawn, Cuadra then appeared in the morning on TV with a paper—which he did not prepare—full of information.

Since the standard procedure established that Dinacos would prepare the memos after receiving data from the CNI or other sources, the minister summoned the officials of that service to testify, many of them journalists (see box).

But none remembered having written such information that Cuadra claimed to have received in writing. The minister did not stop and continued until she found an obscure unit dependent on the CNI that was based at the Borgoño barracks.

This unit was in charge of filming and photographing different events, among which were crimes and confrontations, which were then delivered to the media for dissemination as packaged products. Since Cuadra never went on air from the scene of the raid on any television program, and some CNI members present at the scene even mentioned that they had seen him giving interviews, Minister Lermanda summoned the cameramen and a man who functioned as a "television director"—in practice, he was in charge of editing the images that his cameramen took together with the CNI—named Carlos Iván Mora Silva (see box). None of them remembered the event. Without apparent explanation, during October 2003, the CNI members who had ratified Francisco Javier Cuadra’s presence at Vergara’s house began to retract their statements. In successive confrontations with the former minister, they denied that he had been there. Some excused themselves by pointing out that they were not sure, that in truth someone had told them, or that they had seen him on TV. However, two CNI agents who confronted Cuadra maintained their statements. One of them, Francisco Orellana, pointed out in the face-to-face: "I cannot provide further details, such as the reason why Mr. Cuadra was at the scene of the raid, nor who might have notified him. The only thing I can point out is that he was there, because I saw him." But it was no longer enough to determine Cuadra’s responsibility. From that moment on, the investigation focused on resolving the final police details of the case. LND spoke, with anonymity, to one of the agents who retracted his statements against Cuadra. "It was a very hard moment, and Colonel Aquiles González [head of the CNI brigades] organized this internal lobby to change the statements. There was pressure not to acknowledge that Cuadra was there, since it could affect us more, because a big fish of the Government was involved. So he had to be taken out however possible. When you are desperate and analyze it, of course it is valid. Later, I regretted it terribly," he points out. After a restructuring of the cases, in 2006, Fernando Vergara’s case reached the hands of Court of Appeals Minister Eduardo Fuentes. "Nuremberg is the distinction between leaders and subordinates," he points out. The case finally ended up in the Supreme Court, and a week ago, the ministers reached an agreement. Now only the drafting remains. What will happen? Again, nothing that affects the technocratic brains presumably behind some of the most horrendous actions of the dictatorship.

Source: La Nación, June 15, 2008.

Final Sentence of the Supreme Court in the Fernando Vergara Vargas Case

CNI executors of the young MIR member will not go to prison. The final instance ruling maintained the acquittal of former agents Álvaro Corbalán and Aquiles González, and favored four others with the appealed benefit of "supervised release." The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court resolved that none of the perpetrators of the homicide of MIR militant Fernando Vergara Vargas, committed on December 15, 1984, in Santiago by CNI agents, will have to serve an effective prison sentence.

Although this final sentence maintained the acquittal previously issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals for former agents Álvaro Corbalán and Aquiles González, in the case of the other four former agents, it reduced their sentences to five years in prison, thereby allowing them to qualify for the benefit of supervised release, which was granted to them.

Those favored by this measure are former agents Luis Sanhueza Ros, Luis Gálvez Navarro, Francisco Orellana Seguel, and Jorge Ramírez Romero. In any case, Corbalán is serving a simple life sentence (after 20 years, he can obtain benefits) for the crime of carpenter Juan Alegría, committed to try to cover up the murder of union leader Tucapel Jiménez.

Corbalán also accumulates another 20-year sentence for Operation Albania. Thus, the homicide committed against the person in charge of the MIR’s clandestine communications and director of Radio Liberación, who had returned to Chile in 1982 with a false identity after a period of exile, was left without those responsible serving an effective prison sentence.

The dictatorship then tried to present Vergara’s crime as a "confrontation," but the judicial investigation concluded that it was a homicide and a crime against humanity, which does not expire with time nor can it be amnestied.

In this case, the former minister and spokesperson for the oppressive regime, Francisco Javier Cuadra, was very close to being indicted. Seven former agents testified in the trial that Cuadra arrived at the scene of the crime together with Álvaro Corbalán, and that he later publicly justified the death with the false version of the confrontation.

Cuadra denied it, and Colonel (R) Aquiles González carried out "lobbying" in favor of the former minister so that the former agents would retract their statements. Nevertheless, Orellana Seguel maintained his incriminating statement against Cuadra.

The same former CNI officials recounted in the investigation the task carried out by Aquiles González in favor of the former minister. Radio Liberación managed to interfere several times with other radio stations and television channels to broadcast proclamations against the military regime.

Source: La Nación, Tuesday, September 9, 2008.