Missing: Horman v. United States of America

Reel Whirled Peas



Re: Horman v. United States of America, et.al

As attorney for the Defendants, I want to address the primary accusations presented by Mrs. Horman and her attorneys.
First, the United States government, through its agents in Chile, Ambassador Nathaniel Davis, Chief Military Liaison Ray Davis, and Consul Fred Purdy, was complicit in the arrest and execution of her husband, Charles Horman, on or around September 18, 1973. Mrs. Horman asserts that the Chilean police arrested her husband shortly after the successful coup by General Pinochet on September 11, and that Charles Horman’s subsequent execution at the National Stadium in Santiago could not have happened without the consent of the U.S. government.

We agree with Mrs. Horman that Charles Horman was arrested in the days following the coup, and that he was subsequently executed at the direction of the Chilean Nation Police at the National Stadium on September 18. Charles Horman’s father, Ed Horman, received that information from a staffer at the Ford Foundation, and Embassy personnel confirmed it through the Chilean government. This admission by General Pinochet’s government was not initially forthcoming to our Embassy. They admitted executing Charles Horman only after our Embassy presented them with the information Ed Horman had ascertained. In this regard, the Chilean government misled us.

Mrs. Horman contends that her husband was arrested because he “knew too much”, a reference to his alleged observation of U.S. military assets in the area during a brief trip to Vina Del Mar in the days preceding the coup. It has been documented that the U.S. put economic pressure on the Allende government, and provided some funding to alternative parties, for the purpose of providing a level playing field in anticipation of the 1976 Chilean general elections. Our efforts were not designed to overthrow Allende’s government, but rather to allow alternative politics to develop. America was not directly involved in the coup, but there is evidence that our efforts to balance the political debate in Chile inadvertently empowered General Pinochet.

The attorneys for Mrs. Horman point to a 1976 Washington Post interview with Rafael Gonzalez, a Chilean security official who was later indicted for Mr. Horman’s murder. Gonzalez indicated that Horman was executed because he “knew too much”, and that an American official was present when the decision was made to kill him. According to Ambassador Davis, the basis of Gonzalez’s statement was that the alleged American was wearing American shoes. Mr. Gonzalez’s interview was conducted in the Italian Embassy, and there are indications that he was seeking asylum in a number of countries, ostensibly to distance himself from the act for which he is now indicted. There is not credible evidence supporting his assertion of U.S. involvement in Horman’s death.

Mrs. Horman’s attorneys also point to a recently de-classified 1976 memo written by staffers to Harry Schlaudeman, a high-ranking State Department official in the Latin American division. The memo describes the Horman killing as “bothersome”, and the staff indicated that Congress, the press, academia, and the Horman family all believed the State Department to be negligent or complicit in Horman’s death. The memo then goes on to say that the writers did not have an accurate accounting of the events surrounding Horman’s death. However, the writers were persuaded that the government of Chile were sufficiently threatened by Horman, and felt he could be killed with little negative reaction from the U.S. We believe the last statement indicates Chile’s naiveté, that because of Horman’s leftist ideology the U.S. would not pursue a full accounting of his death. It does not mean, as the plaintiff’s attorneys would have you believe, that there would be no reaction because of U.S. complicity. On the next point, however, we agree that a case can be made that our Embassy failed to protect Mr. Horman.

Mr. Horman, and Frank Teruggi, another American executed shortly after the coup, both worked for Fin, a left-leaning news clipping service, and their pro-Allende politics may have made them a natural target for the junta. Knowing that, the Embassy should have located them and extended protection. The Embassy should be criticized for failing to do so in a timely manner, but that failure does not constitute complicity in their murders. There is simply no hard evidence to indicate that State Department personnel had any hand in Mr. Horman’s death.