Did US Intelligence Help Pinochet's Junta Murder My Brother?
Did US Intelligence Help Pinochet's Junta Murder My Brother?
Forty years ago, Frank was abducted, tortured, and killed. How did the Chilean military know his address?
—By Janis Teruggi Page
| Sat Sep. 21, 2013 3:36 AM PDT
On September 21, 1973, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen named Frank Teruggi Jr. was executed in the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, one of the first of thousands of victims of General Augusto Pinochet’s murderous 17-year military dictatorship. In the wake of the U.S.-backed coup that cost Frank, and so many others, their lives, I lost my older brother. Forty years after his death, my family is still seeking a modicum of truth and justice for his murder.
The story of Frank’s experience in Chile is not well-known. He was an anti-Vietnam war activist from Chicago—as a student at CalTech, he started an SDS chapter there—who enrolled in the University of Chile in early 1972, drawn by the promise of Salvador Allende’s “peaceful road to socialism.” Along with a group of North American expats that included Charles Horman, the other U.S. citizen killed in the stadium, Frank worked at a small newsletter called FIN (Fuente de Informacion Norteamericano) translating and distributing articles on the activities of the U.S. government and corporations in Chile.
During the last 20 months of his life, he sent letters home every two weeks keeping us up-to-date on his activities, as well as the increasingly dangerous political situation. When some of his letters didn’t arrive, he wrote, presciently: “Perhaps the FBI is intercepting my mail.” In another letter he cautioned, “When you get calls from people wanting my address, tell them you don’t have it. This is just a reasonable precaution in case some agency starts checking up on people in Chile. From what we read in papers down here about Watergate, Nixon’s not above doing anything or spying on anyone.”
Frank actually planned on returning home in the early summer of 1973. But a failed coup attempt in late June set off public demonstrations in support of Allende. During one march, Frank suffered a bullet wound to his ankle that required time for healing. He then decided to stay in Santiago a little longer to help establish an anti-imperialism research center at the University of Chile.
More:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/us-intelligence-pinochet-junta-murder
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