On September 23, the State Department's Deputy Secretary Higginbottom will join with President Bachelot of Chile in a special ceremony in Washington D.C. to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1976 murder of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffit and the public release of newly declassified documents.
Background information from WHA Press Guidance September 14, 2016:
In 1999, President Bill Clinton tasked certain Executive branch agencies with searching their archives for documents related to the coup in Chile in 1973 that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power and documents related to human rights abuses committed by his government. Thousands of these documents were declassified and released in 1999 and 2000; some were withheld for reasons of national security, personal privacy, and for law enforcement purposes.
More recently, the Government of Chile requested the United States declassify those documents that were withheld in 1999 and 2000. The State Department and its agency partners worked quickly to identify, review, declassify, and release many of these documents, which took place in coordination with the Secretary's visit to Chile in October 2015. Families of the deceased were notified that the documents would be made public. Since that visit, the State Department has coordinated with other agency partners, and completed the review of the remaining documents for delivery to President Bachelet on September 23, 2016.
State Department documents will be made available to the public on their website. To visit click here.
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