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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Charles Horman.md
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@ -44,11 +44,14 @@ Inside the department [[Rudy Fimbres]] wrote to Assistant Secretary [[Harry Shla
In March and April 1987 Meneses approached the embassy four times, offering what he knew in return for help leaving Chile. He said that "to his knowledge, no U.S. official played any role in the death of Charles Horman since he was dead before anyone in the Embassy would have known of his detention." The embassy suspected that he and [[Mariana Callejas]], who visited at the same period, were "plants," turned him away, and later reported that it could not find him.[^1]
On August 25, 1976, three State Department officers wrote to Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman: "This case remains bothersome. The connotations for the Executive are not good. In the Hill, academic community, the press, and the Horman family the intimations are of negligence on our part, or worse, complicity in Horman's death." They concluded that the Chilean government "sought Horman and felt threatened enough to order his immediate execution," and that "U.S. intelligence may have played an unfortunate part in Horman's death. At best, it was limited to providing or confirming information that helped motivate his murder." The passage was withheld from the family and released intact in October 1999. At the time of the coup Horman had been looking into the killing of General [[Rene Schneider|René Schneider]] in 1970. Assistant Secretary [[Jack Kubisch]] raised the case with Chile's foreign minister in February 1974 "in the context of the need to be careful to keep relatively small issues in our relationship from making our cooperation more difficult."[^2]
### The Chilean Case
Judge [[Jorge Zepeda]] indicted Navy Captain [[Ray Davis]], the former head of the Military Group, on November 29, 2011, as an accomplice who had known of the detentions and not prevented the deaths "although he was in a position to do so." The documentary evidence he cited for foreknowledge was cable 4565, which he placed "at the very moment when the victim was still alive." The cable is dated a week after the body reached the morgue. Davis died in a Santiago nursing home in 2013. In 2015 Zepeda convicted [[Pedro Espinoza]], who had been in charge of interrogations at the stadium, and González as an accomplice. González had filed an affidavit in 2003 calling his 1976 statement "an absolute falsehood" made to get his family out of Chile, and saying that he took the phrase about knowing too much from an article by [[William Shawcross]] that Italian diplomats had shown him. The ruling did not address it. The journalist [[John Dinges]], who read the 6,976-page court record, named as responsible for the arrest Colonel [[Fernando Grant Pimentel]], Lieutenant [[Enzo Cadenasso]], and Lieutenant Colonel [[Roberto Soto Mackenney]], and found no evidence in it of American involvement in the killings. In 2025 the [[National Security Archive]] added a note to its 2000 publication of the State Department documents stating that the theory of an American role was now in doubt.[^1][^2]
Judge [[Jorge Zepeda]] indicted Navy Captain [[Ray Davis]], the former head of the Military Group, on November 29, 2011, as an accomplice who had known of the detentions and not prevented the deaths "although he was in a position to do so." The documentary evidence he cited for foreknowledge was cable 4565, which he placed "at the very moment when the victim was still alive." The cable is dated a week after the body reached the morgue. Davis died in a Santiago nursing home in 2013. In 2015 Zepeda convicted [[Pedro Espinoza]], who had been in charge of interrogations at the stadium, and González as an accomplice. González had filed an affidavit in 2003 calling his 1976 statement "an absolute falsehood" made to get his family out of Chile, and saying that he took the phrase about knowing too much from an article by [[William Shawcross]] that Italian diplomats had shown him. The ruling did not address it. The journalist [[John Dinges]], who read the 6,976-page court record, named as responsible for the arrest Colonel [[Fernando Grant Pimentel]], Lieutenant [[Enzo Cadenasso]], and Lieutenant Colonel [[Roberto Soto Mackenney]], and found no evidence in it of American involvement in the killings. In 2025 the [[National Security Archive]] added a note to its 2000 publication of the State Department documents stating that the theory of an American role was now in doubt.[^1][^3]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "Chile in Their Hearts," National Security Archive, May 7, 2025, with Embassy cable 4565 of September 25, 1973, the statement of Joyce Horman of November 10, 1973, and the State Department memoranda of 1976; summarizing Dinges, John. *Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing After the Coup*. 2025. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2025-05-07/chile-their-hearts
[^2]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "New Information on the Murders of U.S. Citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi by the Chilean Military," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 33, June 30, 2000, with editor's note of 2025. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB33/index.html
[^2]: Kornbluh, Peter. *The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability*. New Press, 2003, pp. 269-272, 278.
[^3]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "New Information on the Murders of U.S. Citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi by the Chilean Military," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 33, June 30, 2000, with editor's note of 2025. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB33/index.html