The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability

Revised and updated for the fortieth anniversary of Augusto Pinochet’s September 11, 1973, military coup in Chile, The Pinochet File reveals a formerly secret record of complicity with atrocity on the part of the U.S. government. Documents that were first made publicly available in the original hardcover edition formed the heart of the international campaign to hold Pinochet accountable for murder,­ torture, and ­terrorism—a campaign chronicled for the first time in this updated edition.

Peter Kornbluh spearheaded the effort to declassify some 24,000 secret CIA, White House, National Security Council, and Defense Department records on Chile, and when The Pinochet File was first published in 2003, Marc Cooper wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Thanks to Peter Kornbluh, we have the first complete, almost day–to–day and fully documented record of this sordid chapter in Cold War American history.” With the publication of this edition, that record becomes even more complete.

This book now includes the story of Pinochet’s 2004 indictment and trial, as well as new information about the famous cases of the American Charles Horman and Chilean folk singer Victor Jara—both executed by Pinochet’s military after the coup. The new afterword also tells the story of The Pinochet File itself: Henry Kissinger’s attempt to undercut the book’s reception generated a major scandal that led to high–level resignations at the Council on Foreign Relations, illustrating the continued ability of the book to speak truth to power.