The Pinochet File - 2nd Edition by Peter Kornbluh (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

Revised and updated: the definitive primary-source history of US involvement in General Pinochet's Chilean coup-"the evidence is overwhelming" (The New Yorker).

Published to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet's infamous September 11, 1973, military coup in Chile, this updated edition of The Pinochet File reveals the shocking, formerly secret record of the US government's complicity with atrocity in a foreign country. The book now completes the file on Pinochet's story, detailing his multiple indictments between 2004 and his death on December 10, 2006, including the Riggs Bank scandal that revealed how the dictator had illegally squirreled away over $26 million in ill-begotten wealth in secret American bank accounts.

When it was first released in hardcover, The Pinochet File contributed to the international campaign to hold Pinochet accountable for murder, torture, and terrorism. A new afterword tells the extraordinary story of Henry Kissinger's attempt to undercut the book's reception-efforts that generated a major scandal that led to a high-level resignation at the Council on Foreign Relations, illustrating the continued ability of the book to speak truth to power.

"The Pinochet File should be considered the long awaited book of record on U.S. intervention in Chile . . . A crisp compelling narrative, almost a political thriller." -Los Angeles Times

Review Quotes

"Weaves together thirty years of declassified documents with a gripping narrative."
-The New Yorker

"The long-awaited book of rec-ord on the U.S. intervention in Chile... A crisp, compelling narrative, almost a political thriller."
-Los Angeles Times

"A remarkable reconstruction of the secret foreign policy that transformed Chile into a dictatorship."
-Newsweek

"The smoking guns are all here."
-Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning A Problem from Hell

About the Author

Peter Kornbluh directs the Chile Documentation Project and the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. He is a co-author of The Iran-Contra Scandal (The New Press) and the editor of The Bay of Pigs Declassified (The New Press) and The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. He lives in Maryland.