Чарльз Хорман: Американский журналист в Чили

American journalist and documentary filmmaker (1942 1973)

Charles Edmund Lazar Horman (May 15, 1942 – September 19, 1973) was an American journalist and documentary filmmaker. He was executed in Chile in the days following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet, which overthrew the socialist president Salvador Allende. Horman's death was the subject of the 1982 Costa Gavras film Missing, in which he was portrayed by actor John Shea. In January 2015, two former Chilean intelligence officials were sentenced in Chile for the murders of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.

Horman was born in New York City, the son of Elizabeth Horman and Edmund Horman. An only child, he attended the Allen Stevenson School, where he was a top student in English as well as an excellent cellist; he graduated in 1957. He then graduated cum laude (top 15%) from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1960 and summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1964, where he was President of Pendulum literary magazine. Working as filmmaker at King TV in Portland Oregon, Charles created the short documentary "Napalm", which won a Grand Prize at the Cracow Film Festival in 1967. Upon returning to New York City, Charles wrote articles as an investigative journalist for magazines in the United States such as Commentary and The Nation, and newspapers, including The Christian Science Monitor. In 1967–68, he worked as a reporter for INNOVATION magazine. Charles protested against the Vietnam War at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and was honorably discharged from the Air National Guard in 1969. In December 1971, Charles and his wife, Joyce, left New York on a journey that eventually led them to Chile. The pair studied Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico at the Ivan Illich school for a month, before proceeding southward through Central America. In Panama, they sold their camper and flew to Medellin, Colombia. They arrived in Santiago in the late spring of 1972 and settled temporarily in Santiago, where Charles worked as a freelance writer. Efforts to determine his fate were initially met with resistance and duplicity by US embassy officials in Santiago. The film was based on a book first published in 1978 under the title The Execution Of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice, and written by Thomas Hauser; this book was later republished under the title Missing in 1982. When the film was released by Universal Studios, Nathaniel Davis, the United States Ambassador to Chile from 1971 to 1973, filed a US$150 million libel suit against the director and the studio, despite not having been named directly in the movie (he had been named in the book). A court eventually dismissed Davis's suit. The State Department memo, dated 25 August 1976, was declassified on 8 October 1999, together with 1,100 other documents released by various US agencies, which dealt primarily with the years leading up to the military coup. Written by three State Department functionaries — Rudy Fimbres, R. S. Driscolle and W. V. Robertson — and addressed to Harry Schlaudeman, a high ranking official in the department's Latin American division, the August document described the Horman case as "bothersome," given reports in the press and Congressional investigations alleging that the affair had involved "negligence on our part, or worse, complicity in Horman's death." The State Department, the memo declared, had the responsibility to "categorically refute such innuendoes in defense of US officials." It went on, however, to acknowledge that these "innuendoes" were well founded.

In 2001, Chilean judge Juan Guzmán Tapia opened an investigation into Charles Horman's death. Among five Americans who gave evidence was Joyce Horman, who had filed a criminal suit against Augusto Pinochet the previous December. The investigation included a four hour re enactment of the scene in the National Stadium where Horman was killed, one of 10,000 who suffered there. The judge also considered extradition proceedings against former U. S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger after receiving no cooperation from him nor from Nathaniel Davis in the wake of requests from the Supreme Court of Chile. "At the time of his death, Horman was investigating the murder of René Schneider, the Commander in Chief in the Chilean army whose support for Allende and the constitution was seen as an obstacle to the coup." On 29 November 2011, a Chilean court indicted Pedro Espinoza, Rafael González Verdugo and Ray E. Davis. Espinoza was a general in the Chilean army and Verdugo, a Chilean intelligence officer. Davis was a retired U. S. military officer who headed the U. S. military group in Chile in September 1973. As of 11 September 2013, the U. S. had not yet been served with the request. It was later revealed that Davis had been living secretly in Chile and had died in a Santiago nursing home in 2013. In 2015, the court sentenced Espinoza and Verdugo to prison for 7 years and 2 years, respectively. However, Chile's Supreme Court reviewed the case in 2016 and increased the sentences to 15 years and 3 years, respectively. In addition, the two were ordered to pay $196,000 to Horman's widow and $151,000 to Teruggi's sister.

For 30 years, the predominant theory surrounding the execution of Horman and Teruggi was that the order was given by General Augusto Lutz during his period as head of the Directorate of Army Intelligence (Spanish: Dirección de Inteligencia del Ejército or DINE), also known as the Army Intelligence Service (Spanish: Servicio de Inteligencia Militar, or SIM). In 2003, judge Juan Guzmán was removed from the case after which it was assigned to judge Jorge Zepeda. Zepeda's opinion represented a break with the previous investigation. His view was that Department II (Intelligence) of the General Staff of the National Defense (Spanish: Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional, or EMDN) would have been the organization responsible for Horman's death. This theory has been questioned from various standpoints.

Since the 1970s, the Lutz Herrera family has insisted that Lutz could not have been involved in the murder of opponents of the Chilean dictatorship, given his opposition to the Pinochet regime. They claim that his death was precisely caused by his opposition to Pinochet and DINA. Researchers, including Patricia Verdugo (Interferencia secreta), Ignacio González Camus (El día que murió Allende), Mónica González (La conjura: los mil y un días del golpe), and Ascanio Cavallo, Manuel Salazar, and Óscar Sepúlveda (La historia oculta del régimen militar), who have examined the coup d'état conspiracy, argue that General Lutz was not assigned any role in it. After the coup, Lutz interceded on behalf of various detainees, as well as others he had helped to free. Lutz did not last more than a month as Director of Army Intelligence; by the following year, he was found dead in mysterious circumstances. Judge Zepeda's ruling noted that "the decision to execute Charles Horman, a foreign detainee, was made by Department II of the EMDN."

Judge Zepeda named Pedro Espinoza, DINA's Vice Director, as the individual responsible for ordering the execution of Charles Horman; however, critics said no evidence was provided to show that the murder had been committed at the National Stadium or that Espinoza was there at the time of the murder. None of the thousands of detainees held at the stadium gave testimony (in this or in other cases) stating that they had seen or heard about Espinoza being there; many said they had seen Jorge Espinoza, the Army colonel in charge of the stadium. Peter Kornbluh, a researcher linked to the Horman Foundation and the director of the National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project, has stated that "the details of his death and why he was killed are still murky" and that although the judge quoted several declassified documents in his ruling, “none of them tie Davis or Espinoza to the crimes”, adding that, "the judge will have to present concrete evidence". Even Punto Final, a newspaper linked to the Revolutionary Left Movement (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario, MIR), regretted that in his ruling, Zepeda did not reveal the exact role that Espinoza played in the murders of Horman and Frank Teruggi or what his functions had been at the time. The weekly newspaper El Siglo, the official organ of the Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party, called the judgment a disaster and implied that Pedro Espinoza's imputation was a smoke screen designed to cover up the search for the truth. “Judge Zepeda's ruling provides no justice to the victims, nor does it provide the truth to their relatives and to the community". On 30 December 2011, a Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, with the dissenting judge stating that no link had been shown to connect Espinoza to the crime. In January 2015, Espinoza was sentenced to serve seven years for Hormann's murder. Due to the accuracy of González's reports, the head of the EMDN's intelligence service scheduled an appointment with the Undersecretary of the Interior, Daniel Vergara, in December 1972, where he pointed out that if certain key changes were not made to improve the country's economic situation, such as removing Pedro Vuskovic from Corfo and replacing him with José Cademártori, there would be a coup d'état in September 1973”. On September 11, at Moneda Palace, Gen. Javier Palacios gave Rafael González a direct order to execute Allende's press secretary, journalist Carlos Jorquera. However, González refused. Jorquera has recounted that "a military man recognized me but didn't obey the order to kill me then and there. I owe him my life [ ] Years later, when Aylwin won, we met. We gave each other a big embrace and until today he remains one of my best friends: this man is the former member of the General Staff of the National Defence, Rafael González, who was later dismissed from his institution and had to go into exile". After the coup, Gen. Palacios was appointed Vice President of Corfo. In retaliation for having disobeyed the order to execute Jorquera, González was dismissed from his government posting in Corfo. In his memoirs, former senator Alberto Jerez Horta recounts that despite the dire human rights circumstances surrounding him, González continued to save the lives of people who were persecuted by the dictatorship: “Rafael himself made sure that files on Guillermo Sáez Pardo, Juan Ibáñez Elgueta, Héctor Ortega Fuentes and Carlos Morales Salazar were incinerated in the boiler at the Air Force Hospital, thereby saving them from danger". In April 1974, Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal dismissed Rafael González from the EMDN, accusing him of having informed the Interior Minister, Gen. Óscar Bonilla, about the serious human rights violations taking place in Regimiento Tejas Verdes, San Antonio, under commanding officer Col. Manuel Contreras, chief of the newly created DINA. In April 1974, González was reassigned to the Chilean Air Force (FACH) and remained inactive; he did not take part in any repressive activities. Pinochet assigned Gen. Herman Brady to Bonilla's posting in the Ministry of Defense. While investigating a complaint of embezzlement at the FACH, Rafael González was fired without explanation by FACH on September 2, 1975, marking an end to his career as an intelligence agent. Tipped off by the Vice Director of the Intelligence Service (SICAR), Col. Pablo Navarrete, that an order had been given by the newly created Air Force Directorate of Intelligence (DIFA) to eliminate him, González sought political asylum at the Italian Chancery with the help of Octavio Abarca, a former Regional Secretary of the Chilean Community Party. However, due to opposition from General Gustavo Leigh and Col Contreras, his application to leave Chile for Italy was not approved until three years later when DINA was dismantled and Leigh sacked as Commander in Chief of FACH. While at the Italian Chancery, González revealed to CBS and Washington Post journalists that he had seen Charles Horman inside the Ministry of Defense building one week after the coup. This became the starting point of the investigation into Horman's death, for American and Chilean authorities could no longer claim ignorance of the facts. Granted asylum in Spain in 1978, González was contacted by former socialist senator Erich Schnake on behalf of Charles Horman's father, Edmund, who invited him to the United States to provide testimony in a lawsuit against Henry Kissinger, the CIA and the U. S. State Department. Following the prosecutions in the Horman case, Rafael González created a blog ("Justicia para Horman, justicia para González") where he recounted his professional career as an intelligence agent (1954 1975) and commented on Judge Jorge Zepeda's rulings, calling them a judicial farce that denied justice to the Horman family, left the real culprits unpunished and impugned him in a crime in which he was not involved. Despite his, González was one of only two to be convicted for a crime related to Hormann's murder and was sentenced in January 2015 to two years of police supervision after it was determined that he was an accomplice.

During the trial, several high ranking officers of the Chilean Navy, whose names had been kept in the dark for decades, were mentioned in connection to the death of the American journalist. They were: Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal, Corvette Captain Raúl Monsalve and Navy Captain Ariel González. In their statements, the latter two (Carvajal committed suicide in 1994) claimed they were innocent and accused the Chilean Army of being involved. Prior to the coup, Carvajal had been the Chief of the EMDN. In that capacity, he had ordered an investigation of the “foreign radicals” working for Chile Films, Charles Horman's company, between May and June 1973. In all likelihood, that order was given to the Chief of Department II of EMDN, Ariel González. On March 21, 1974, Carvajal ordered Rafael González to assist the U. S. Vice consul in Chile, James Anderson, in the search for Charles Horman's remains for repatriation to the US. Gonzalez has stated that by ordering him to “look for them”, they could lay blame on him afterwards and cover up the American and Chilean personnel involved in the murder since Chilean and American authorities already knew the whereabouts of Horman's remains: they had lain in a corner of the General Cemetery (Cementerio General) since October 18, 1973, one month after Horman's death. This was the day the U. S. Consul General Frederick Purdy officially informed Horman's father (Edmund) and widow (Joyce) while they were declaring a "missing person report" with Police Inspector Mario Rojas Chávez at the headquarters of the Investigations Police (Policía de Investigaciones). In April 1977, Carvajal was decorated by dictator Francisco Franco. Following Spain's return to democracy, Carvajal served for two consecutive terms (1988 1989 and 1989–1993) as a member of the Supreme Tribunal of the right wing party Independent Democratic Union (Spanish: UDI).

James Anderson was a CIA agent who operated under cover as a U. S. Vice consul. Together with John S. Hall, another CIA agent who posed under cover as a Consular Associate, they pretended to assist the Horman family in their quest for the truth. Anderson pleaded complete ignorance about Horman when he told The Washington Post on September 17, 2000, that neither the U. S. Consulate nor the CIA were even aware that Horman and Teruggi were in Chile until they were reported missing.

A captain in the Chilean Navy, he played a key role in the coup conspiracy by falsely informing the Admiralty on September 9 that the army had confirmed its participation in the coup; accompanied by Admiral Sergio Huidobro, he convinced Pinochet to join the coup by threatening to lead the marine forces from Valparaíso to the capital himself if the former did not do so. After the coup and as chief of EMDN intelligence, he organized the enforcement of “new interrogation techniques” (torture) in cooperation with Brazilian intelligence agents. Researcher Jonathan Haslam notes that according to the son in law of Gen. William Westmoreland (commanding officer of American forces in Vietnam between 1964 and 1968), Vernon Walters (Deputy Director of CIA between 1972 and 1976) operated in Chile through Ariel González. In the thirteen years in which Zepeda presided over the judicial inquiry on Charles Horman's murder, González was never interrogated by the judge and assigned no responsibility for the crime.

On September 11, 1973, Corvette Captain Raúl Monsalve was posted at the General Staff of the Navy (Spanish: Estado Mayor General de la Armada, or EMGA) as a liaison officer with the U. S. Military Group (almost all of whom were U. S. Navy officers linked to the Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA). The head of the US group was Captain Ray Davis. Monsalve had been working for years as a liaison with the CIA, to the extent that the U. S. Embassy described him in a report as the "most pro American" officer of the Chilean Navy, as revealed by research carried out by Universidad Arcis and published in the journal Estudios Político Militares: Programa de Estudios Fuerzas Armadas y Sociedad. After the coup, Monsalve maintained contact with the CIA. His name appears in Colonia Dignidad's archive of files written and compiled by Gerd Seewald, a collaborator of the notorious sect leader and child sex offender Paul Schäfer; on some occasions, Monsalve visited Albert Schreiber (a leader in Schafer's sect); on others, as on November 31, 1975, he was accompanied by American intelligence agents. Monsalve also participated in the persecution and extermination of dissidents, according to Juan R. Muñoz Alarcón, the so called "hooded man of the National Stadium" who declared in testimony before the Vicariate of Solidarity (Vicaría de la Solidaridad) that he had worked for Monsalve and that Monsalve had taken him to the stadium. Monsalve has also been identified by subordinates in the Navy intelligence as the officer who gave the order to arrest and eliminate Arnoldo Camú, the security chief of the Unidad Popular party, an incident that took place around the time Horman was arrested and murdered. When Charles Horman asked Ray Davis if he would take him and his friend Terry Simon to Santiago on September 15, 1973, Davis reportedly contacted Monsalve to provide "safe passage"; he also briefed him on Horman's political background. Neither Raúl Monsalve nor Ariel González were questioned by Jorge Zepeda during the judge's investigation; subsequently, they were not charged as authors, accomplices or accessories after the fact. Critics have said this is a particularly striking omission in the case of Ariel González, since Zepeda himself ruled that Department II (Intelligence) of EMDN, of which Gonzalez was the head, was the unit responsible for planning and carrying out Charles Horman's death.

Shortly after the September 11 coup, Charles Horman and Terry Simon had asked Ray Davis to provide safe passage to Santiago. Davis subsequently contacted his cohort in the Chilean Navy, Raúl Monsalve, a move that served only to alert authorities to Horman's whereabouts. To the detriment of the case, Davis was never deposed before Judge Zepeda. Eight years after having prosecuted Rafael González, Zepeda sought an order for U. S. authorities to extradite Davis in 2011. The Chilean Supreme Court subsequently approved the extradition request in October 2012. However, a year later, a report in the Associated Press revealed that Davis had in fact been secretly living in Chile all along and had died there on April 30, 2013, aged 88. This prompted criticism from Joyce Horman, who called it an "extraordinarily frustrating" turn of events, while Peter Kornbluh pointed out how unbelievable it was that Zepeda was “working to get Davis extradited and he was literally less than a couple of miles down the road".