Image by Planet Volumes.
As they often did, the headlines in the New York Times brought more bad news the morning of September 12, 1973: “Allende Out, Reported Suicide. Marxist Regime in Chile Falls in Armed Forces Violent Coup.” I read the article while waiting for my professor to appear in the Fordham University classroom where my Political Science class was held. The coup leader and new president of Chile was a military officer named Augusto Pinochet. As one would expect from the Times in 1973, the article mostly repeated the media releases filtered through Washington. In other words, no mention was made of Washington’s role in fomenting the right wing unrest leading to the coup nor was any suggestion made that Washington had foreknowledge of the incident. Most people who had been following the situation in Chile assumed differently; of course the US knew about the impending coup. In the days to follow, supporters of the Allende Popular Unity government began to talk on WBAI radio and at rallies and forums about what they knew. I made it to a rally at Union Square later that week where speakers condemned the coup and the US involvement. A couple of weeks later a bomb placed by the Weather Underground blew out an office or two in a building occupied by the International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) corporation because of the company’s intimate involvement with the Chilean groups and individuals involved in the coup.
Meanwhile reports were coming over the wire describing mass arrests, torture and murder. Embassies friendly to the overthrown government were providing space for those seeking asylum and fearing for their lives. The US Embassy was not among them. In fact, as individuals left the country and began to tell their stories, questions regarding how much of a role the US played in the coup and the counterrevolutionary actions that came before it began to be raised even in the mainstream press. Unknown to virtually everyone was the fact that the coup regime had killed two US citizens living in Chile because of their leftist politics and support for the Popular Unity movement.
Those two individuals were named Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. Horman’s name would become quite well known after the film Missing starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek was released in 1982, almost ten years after the coup. The film was based on a 1978 book by Thomas Hauser titled The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice. Both told the story of the search for the truth by Horman’s father and spouse regarding the murder of Charles Horman. They also intimated that at least one US military officer, who was conveniently taking part in some kind of naval exercise off the coast of Chile when the coup occurred, had identified Horman to the Chilean authorities. The US officer died in 2013 as the post-fascist government in Chile investigated the criminality of the Pinochet regime in the days after September 11, 1973. 
The role of that officer in Harmon’s death has never been clarified. A new book titled Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing after the Coup raises this question once again. Although the author John Dinges—an investigative journalist who spent the years 1972 through 1978 in Chile—does not come up with a conclusive answer to the question, his access to previously hidden information does raise doubt as to how much of a role that particular US military member played in Harmon’s murder. Dinges, whose investigative work includes helping establish three Chilean journalism organizations devoted to exposing the activities of the Pinochet regime, including a magazine called APSI that operated as an opposition magazine during the most violent years of the dictatorship. Dinges was also the co-author (with Saul Landau) of the fascinating and hard-hitting book Assassination on Embassy Row looking into the 1976 Washington DC car bomb murder of exiled Chilean Orlando Letelier and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) staffer Ronni Karpen Moffit. In other words, his credentials are sound.
Chile in Their Hearts is about much more than the murder of these two men, however. Inges’ narrative tells the story of a solidarity movement made up of leftists, mostly young, from around the world who went to Chile to lend a hand to a revolutionary government despised by the imperial regime headquartered in DC. While Harmon was more of a moderate socialist when he and his partner moved to Chile, Frank Teruggi was already a committed leftist; a Bolshevik to Harmon’s more Menshevik approach. However, it does appear over the course of Dinges’ telling that what Harmon saw and experienced in Chile was moving him closer to Teruggi’s politics. According to the text, Teruggi was familiar with and probably worked with the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), a Marxist organization to the left of Allende’s party which included an armed element. Of course, their politics should not have excluded them from being assisted by the US Embassy, but that certainly seems to be the case, much as it is today when the Israeli regime kills US members of international solidarity organizations in Palestine.
While it raises serious doubt regarding the theory that a US Navy or CIA officer was directly involved in the murder of Horman, the text more deeply implicates the US government in creating the conditions for the coup, actively doing what it could to destroy the Chilean economy, and ultimately insuring that the coup would occur. Furthermore, although Dinges never says it straight up, Washington maintained the cover-up of the murders for decades. In addition, it makes it quite clear to this reviewer that Pinochet was Washington’s man, despite the denials from various individuals in the US government that continued for decades; denials that are perhaps true about minor specifics while they ignore the broader and deeper involvement of the US government in the movement to get rid of Allende and his elected government. Indeed, it was an involvement that began in the Oval Office and included top officials and bureaucrats like Henry Kissinger conspiring with CEOs of US corporations and right-wing Chileans.
Chile in Their Hearts reads like a nuanced crime novel that tells the story of soulless bureaucrats, hopeful revolutionaries and bloodthirsty fascists. It does not end the continuing investigation into the 1973 coup in Chile, but it does illuminate the lives of a few of those who believed in the revolution that coup overthrew. This in itself makes the text an important addition to the history of Chile and the history of socialism and its enemies.
