40 Years are Nothing:

History and memory

of the 1973 coups d’état
in Uruguay and Chile

Edited by

Pablo Leighton and Fernando López

40 Years are Nothing:
History and memory of the 1973 coups d’état in Uruguay and Chile

Edited by Pablo Leighton and Fernando López

This book first published 2015

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2015 by Pablo Leighton, Fernando López and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-7642-9

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7642-1
 CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................ ix
Pablo Leighton and Fernando López

Preface ...................................................................................................... xiii

J Patrice McSherry

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1

Regional Cooperation and State Terrorism in South America
Fernando López

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 17

On History and Memory: Some Reflections on the Process of Transitional
Justice from the Experience of Uruguay (1985-2005)
Pedro Teixeirense

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 33

The Gelman Case and the Legacy of Impunity in Uruguay
Debbie Sharnak

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 57

The Celebration: Violence and Consent in the First Anniversary
of the Chilean Coup
Pablo Leighton

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 77

ASIS and ASIO in Chile: Transparency and Double Standards Four
Decades after the Coup
Florencia Melgar and Pablo Leighton

Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 93

Politics of Memory and Human Rights in Chile: The Struggle
for Memorials in the 21st Century
Nicolás del Valle
vi Contents

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 111

Moving Memories: Marches Remembering and Embodying the Chilean
and Uruguayan Dictatorships
Yael Zaliasnik

Contributors ............................................................................................. 125

 CHAPTER FIVE

ASIS AND ASIO IN CHILE:

TRANSPARENCY AND DOUBLE STANDARDS
FOUR DECADES AFTER THE COUP

FLORENCIA MELGAR AND PABLO LEIGHTON

On 4 June 2014, the Opposition Shadow Attorney-General, Labor

Senator Mark Dreyfus, presented a petition to the Federal Parliament on
behalf of the Chilean community in Australia. Around 600 Chilean
expatriates, most of them Australian citizens, demanded the government
approve the extradition request of former intelligence agent Adriana Rivas,
who escaped from trial in Chile where she is accused of seven cases of
torture and aggravated kidnapping and disappearance (Dreyfus 2014:5619-
5621).
This petition followed what started a year earlier when Adriana Rivas
was found by investigative reporter Florencia Melgar living in one of
Sydney’s housing commission buildings. The Special Broadcasting
Services’ report of her declarations (see Melgar 2013a,c,d, 2014) triggered
the reaction of human rights movements and political activists in Chile and
Australia and the extradition request. These groups are manifestly against
the presence of Chilean violators of human rights living in the same land
where they, as refugees, were welcomed after Augusto Pinochet’s coup
d’état in 1973.
The fact that Adriana Rivas has been living for decades in Australia
might not be a mere coincidence or plain misfortune. According to author
Mark Aarons, there have been hundreds of war criminals hidden in
Australia since 1945 (see 2001, ABC 2009). Aarons has said that the war
criminals living in the country come from many places and organisations,
including Chile’s DINA, the Directorate of National Intelligence, the
dictatorship’s secret police between 1973 and 1977. These security
officers who found “sanctuary” in Australia, Aarons added, are guilty of
“torture and summary executions”. More tellingly, Aarons argued that a
number of those people were brought to Australia “as intelligence assets
78 Chapter Five

by our intelligence services and resettled here for purposes of ongoing

intelligence operations by our own services” (in ABC 2003).
The current presence of a former intelligence agent in Sydney might
show another aspect of the practices of support of the Australian secret
services to the same Chilean forces that unleashed the coup d’état and
sustained a violent dictatorship. As ambiguously revealed in Australia
during the years after the coup, the secret services of Australia worked in
Chilean territory to undermine the democratic government of Salvador
Allende (1970-1973). This chapter looks into how Australia’s involvement
in Chile’s coup four decades ago remains under a cloak of secrecy,
encouraged by the same secret services that seemed to have worked above
government and parliament powers. Together with the contentious issue of
transparency in today’s world, this four-decade old history is still
prominent and continues to haunt thousands of Chilean-former refugees
living in Australia and many others in Chile that were victims of DINA
and other secret services.

ASIS and ASIO in Chile

Four decades ago, Chile’s democratic government headed by Allende
was overthrown in a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. His
regime executed some 2,300 people, imprisoned and tortured more than
38,000, and more than 1,000 victims are still missing (Comisión Rettig
1991, Comisión Valech 2004, 2011). The Chilean coup was not an
isolated episode in Latin America. It was part of a series of military
dictatorships that claimed to fight “the threat of communism”. At the same
time, while many other military dictatorships were previously installed in
the region, the year 1973 marks the beginning of particularly bloody
governments, acting against broad sections of their own populations. This
was also the beginning of a period called “the Condor years”, referring to
secret alliances and cooperation between governments of South America,
including Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia
and Peru (Dinges, 2005). Through “Operation Condor”, these South
American states shared intelligence and seized, exchanged, tortured and
executed political opponents in one another’s territory (McSherry, 2005).
The international outlooks of these military and fanatically anticommunist
political forces—which seemed to overcome their traditional nationalism
(see López, Chapter One)—went beyond South America.
It is no secret today that in setting the stage for the 1973 coup, the
United States (US) government, through the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), played a crucial role. More than 23,000 declassified documents
 ASIS and ASIO in Chile 79

from the White House, the CIA, the National Security Council and the
Defense Intelligence Agency, among others, clearly reveal an instigation
of the Chilean coup (see US Department of State 2000, Kornbluh, 2003).
What is much less known is that the CIA had help from its counterpart in
Australia, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), followed by
an Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) mission in
Santiago. Officially, ASIS’s “primary goal is to obtain and distribute
secret intelligence…outside Australia”, while undertaking “counter-
intelligence” and engaging “other intelligence and security services
overseas” (ASIS 2014). On the other hand, ASIO’s role is presented as
internal, concerning “serious threats to Australia’s territorial and border
integrity, sabotage, politically motivated violence, the promotion of
communal violence, attacks on Australia’s defence system, and acts of
foreign interference” (ASIO 2014).
Significantly, both services played a role in the Chilean case. More
than one source has alleged that Australia was involved in the Chilean
coup, helping the CIA to destabilise Allende’s government (see Blum
2004, 245-246; Coxsedge, Coldicutt and Harant 1982, 82-85). In May
1977, former Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam confirmed the
existence of this operation in the Australian Federal Parliament: “It has
been written―and I cannot deny it―that when my Government took
office Australian intelligence personnel were working as proxies of the
CIA in destabilising the government of Chile” (in Toohey and Pinwill
1990, 141).1
In November 1970, the CIA asked ASIS for support and Australia
agreed to send two operatives to Chile (Toohey and Pinwill 1990, 136).

1 Brian Toohey and William Pinwill’s book The story of The Australian Secret
Intelligence Service was published in 1990 after the Australian government agreed
on the version that was to be published. The book has a reliable record of Robert
Hope’s report on Chile’s case, which summarises the findings of the Royal
Commission on Security and Intelligence (1974-77). Nevertheless, the relevant
information about the operation in Chile (Fifth report, volumes 1 and 2) is blacked-
out. The book contains an authors’ note: “This book has been subject to censorship
by the government of the Commonwealth of Australia. After part of the unfinished
manuscript fell into the government´s hands in November 1988, the Minister for
Foreign Affairs and Trade took action in the Federal Court which effectively
prevented the publication by us of any material about ASIS which had not been
vetted by the government. While the concept of prior restraint is repugnant and
contrary to the democratic right of freedom of expression, we had no choice but to
accept the court´s decision and submit every word of the completed manuscript to
Canberra. We then negotiated the final text with officials of ASIS and the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade” (Toohey and Pinwill 1990, xiii).
80 Chapter Five

According to former ASIS director, Bill Robertson, the Australian

intelligence station “in question”, referring to Chile, was opened in July
1971 during the Liberal government of William McMahon (Robertson
1975, 8).
When the Chilean coup took place on 11 September 1973, Australian
the station had been active for longer than a year. And by that time, Gough
Whitlam and the Labor party were in power. American investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh has described the involvement of Australia in
the US operation in Chile after the CIA’s men and activities were closely
monitored by Allende’s government. Hersh explained that the CIA then
“turned to its allies […] By 1972 the Australians had agreed to monitor
and control three agents on behalf of the CIA and to relay their
information to Washington” (Hersh 1983, 295-296). According to Toohey
and Pinwill, ASIS helped the CIA in Chile until 1973 and one of its senior
officers left Santiago in July of that year “for cover reasons”, while an
operational assistant stayed until October, a month after the coup (1990,
141). In parallel, ASIO intelligence agents remained behind according to
multiple statements by the Labor and Immigration minister under
Whitlam, Clyde Cameron, who openly recognised it in 1983. While it is
still not perfectly clear what the ASIO mission was doing in Santiago,
Cameron’s feelings about the operations in Chile have always been
certain:

I was appalled to think that my own department was involved in this sort of
work and that our intelligence agents in Chile were acting as the hyphen, if
you like, between the CIA, which weren’t able to operate in Chile at that
time…and the Pinochet junta (in Wilkinson 1983).

The uncertain nature of the work of the Australian spying agencies in

Chile also has something to do with the elusive role of Labor Prime
Minister Gough Whitlam at the time. The decision of the Liberal
government of McMahon to approve the Australian operation in Chile and
support the CIA was inherited by Whitlam. Even though it seems evident
that the Prime Minister attempted to stop the ASIS operation in Chile, the
timing and how the political decisions were made are not so. Robertson’s
1975 memorandum dealing with the termination of his appointment as
Director of ASIS by Whitlam shows that one of the topics that caused
frictions between him and the Prime Minister (see The Australian 2010)
was ASIS’s operation in Chile. According to Robertson, Whitlam was
informed of this operation in February 1973, but he did not want to stop it
immediately as he worried about how the US might react. Because it
seems Robertson foresaw that Whitlam was going to disagree with the
 ASIS and ASIO in Chile 81

ASIS operation in Chile, he prepared a document ordering the closure of

the station and withdrawal of the staff, as he recalled in 2009 about his
own dismissal by Whitlam:

Mr Whitlam took the submission but declined to sign it at the time

expressing a concern that our intelligence allies might react adversely.
After a delay of several weeks the signed submission was returned […] the
Prime Minister had “agonised over it” for some time. The order to cease
operational activity… was sent to the ASIS station on 1st May [1973]. As
there were a number of hostile intelligence services active in the area at
that time…there was some delay in withdrawing the ASIS staff (Robertson
1975, 8).

Whitlam has a different recollection. In his memoirs, he stated that he

was notified in early 1973 and that the ASIS officials left in the first half
of that year. The former Prime Minister has affirmed that in early 1973
Robertson informed him that there were two spies in Chile assisting the
CIA and Whitlam thought they had no business there:

A month later I asked him what had been done about them and he told me
that they were still there. I…instructed him to tell the Americans to make
alternative arrangements as soon as possible. This time he was able to tell
me within a week that our men were no longer working for the Americans
and would be returning home (Whitlam 1985:172–173).

However, according to the official Royal Commission on Intelligence,

the last ASIS agent did not leave Chile until October 1973 (in Toohey and
Pinwill 1990, 141). And in that period, Allende’s government was
destabilised and the coup took place. The intelligence services of Australia
were present and active before and after the coup, when the new military
government assumed power illegitimately. In sum, contrary to Whitlam´s
instructions and memoirs, there were ASIS spies operating out of the
Australian embassy in Chile, under the direct orders of the CIA, during the
1973 removal of a democratic government (Coxsedge, Coldicutt and
Harant 1982, 24).
Whitlam remembers that after Allende was overthrown he asked about
the exact duties of the two ASIS operatives that he had previously
discharged in Chile. He was told they had been collecting or buying
information on the country’s economic situation from public servants and
congressmen, whom they would meet in the suburbs of Santiago
(Whitlam, 1985: 172–173). This might give another clue about the actions
of Australian agents in Chile. Still, most of the available evidence until
today shows that Australian secret intelligence was operating in Chile for
82 Chapter Five

much longer after the coup through ASIO, a service that in principle
operates within Australia. In this case, the role of Whitlam is even more
ambiguous.
Many official Prime Ministerial documents testify how Clyde Cameron
put forward various requests to Whitlam to get rid of ASIO officers
operating in Chile. In a letter to Whitlam of 27 November 1974, Cameron
wrote that the assurances he had received from ASIO about one officer
being in Chile for “only one occasion” since November 1972 and only
during “three days” in July 1973, “does not convince me one iota. I would
not expect ASIO to do other than deny any involvement with the CIA in
the affair”. Thus, Cameron demanded of Whitlam that the two agents be
“withdrawn forthwith”. He added:

the present checking of migrant applicants rests heavily on links which

ASIO establishes with foreign intelligence through the exchange of
intelligence information. I believe that this activity is quite
unacceptable…and probably a breach of the Crimes Act [...] I am certainly
not going to allow the Department of Labor and Immigration to be used as
cover for this sort of activity (in Department of the Prime Minister 1975).

Cameron also wrote to the Attorney General, Senator Lionel Murphy,

on 2 December 1974: “I am particularly disturbed to learn that ASIO
agents have been posing as migration officers in South America and I am
now convinced―though firm denials are to be expected―that the reports
of ASIO collaboration with the CIA in bringing about the overthrow of the
Allende Government, is very close to the mark”. The response by Whitlam
was brief and vague: he decided there would be “no changes” until Justice
Robert Hope’s general report on Australian secret intelligence services
was finished. Cameron, in a follow-up letter to Whitlam of 5 February
1975, insisted that all ASIO officers from overseas should be withdrawn,
not agreeing with the need to wait for Hope’s report. He specifically
denounced that the making by ASIO of “political investigation[s]”,
“dossiers” and “screening” on migrants and overseas born “would be not
be tolerated in respect of persons born in Australia”. He vehemently
concluded:

The continued use of ASIO is, in my firm view, incompatible with the
whole philosophy of the Australian Labor Party. Moreover, it violates
every decent concept which is dear to a truly democratic society. It smacks
too much of the Police State for the liking of decent Australians” (in
Department of the Prime Minister 1975).
 ASIS and ASIO in Chile 83

In the end, his complaints with the Attorney General were fruitful. In
same letter, Cameron informed he was pleased that Senator Murphy had
finally given “an immediate recall of the two ASIO agents…posing as
migration officers” in Chile, although 15 agents remained in other
overseas posts (in Department of the Prime Minister 1975). In 1983,
Cameron recalled the events:

Imagine my amazement when…I received a letter from the Prime Minister

saying that I was to take no further action in the matter, that I was not to
withdraw ASIO agents even from Santiago in Chile and that nothing was
to be done about it at all (in Wilkinson 1983).

Equally determinant, Hope’s report, which was the excuse given in

1974 by Whitlam, would not be finished until 1977. The Chilean case
became only a small part of that report and until today is heavily censored
(see Hope 1977). From the scarce evidence available, it can be said that
when ASIO agents were finally being recalled from Santiago in 1975,
ASIO Director Peter Barbour sent a letter to Cameron, reminding him it
was his own Immigration Department which in October 1970―the same
month that Allende became president of Chile―asked for an intelligence
officer for South America, who started operating in 1972. In February
1974, five months after the coup, ASIO informed that there were 19,000
migrant applications from Santiago (Department of the Prime Minister
1975), many of them presumably in danger of their lives. It follows that
the most probable hypothesis for the actions of ASIS and ASIO in Chile
under Allende was first the promotion of ‘brain drain’, the flight of human
capital; in this case, the emigration of professionals and technicians to
undermine the leftist government, as contended by Mártin-Montenegro
(1994:63–66). Mártin-Montenegro also points to the fact that ASIO
officials posed as migration agents in the embassy after the coup and the
notably different numbers of Chilean migrants to Australia per era. The
total number of migrants during Allende (around 4,800) surpassed the
entire number (around 3,000) following the coup and until the end of the
Whitlam administration in 1975 (Mártin-Montenegro 1994, 77-78),
precisely when asylum was most needed.
In July 2012, the director of ASIS, Nick Warner, said in a public
speech:

There have been a few times over the past 60 years when…ASIS and its
operations have received widespread publicity in the Australian media.
And mostly this has been when things have gone wrong [...] sometimes the
fault of ASIS and sometimes not [...] there was publicity in 1977 about
operations in Chile undertaken on behalf of our allies (Warner 2012).
84 Chapter Five

This publicity has not been substantial enough to resolve the historical,
political and moral consequences of the Australian intervention in Chilean
affairs. John Pilger argues that in the beginning of the 1970s, ASIS and
ASIO’s power derived from the strong alliance with the US, exemplified
with The Australia, New Zealand and United States Security Treaty of
1951 (ANZUS), which is still current (see US Department of State 2014).
Pilger suggests that Australia’s secret pact of loyalty to foreign
intelligence organisations was far reaching: “to many in the ASIO
bureaucracy, ‘headquarters’ was not in Canberra but in Langley, Virginia,
home of the CIA” (1992, 191). In the US, Victor Marchetti, former
executive assistant of Deputy Director of the CIA, explained in 1983 that
Australia should have evaluated better its participation in Chile if they
were going to be so politically sensitive about being part of CIA’s mission
to overthrow Allende. For that “kind of activity”, he said, there was “a
miscalculation on the part of the Australian officers” (in Wilkinson 1983).
Already in 1974, Whitlam spoke unmistakably to the United Nations
General Assembly against these operations that use “unconstitutional,
clandestine, corrupt methods, by assassination or terrorism” as a way to
achieve economic or political change (in Coxsedge, Coldicutt and Harant
1982, 26). More directly, the official 1977 Royal Commission on
Intelligence Activities Overseas might serve as the foundation of what the
Australian intervention in Chile implied: “to conduct espionage against
foreign countries [agents] must probably infringe the laws of those
countries [...] espionage is illegal…deceptive, covert, underhand” (Hope
1977).

Transparency and accountability four decades later

On 9 October 1974, Ian Frykberg published for the first time the link
between the Chilean coup and Australia, while reporting on Whitlam’s
official visit to the US. In his article “Australia Spied In Chile”, he wrote

Two former intelligence operatives…said…they had no doubt that the

Australian mission in Chile assisted the Central Intelligence Agency in its
operations against the Allende government [...] the Australian agents in
Chile probably would have included acting as the conduct for money
passing from the CIA to newspapers and individuals and leaking
propaganda information to newspapermen and other influential people
(Frykberg 1974).

The then editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Brian Johns, assigned
young journalist Hamish McDonald to investigate the details of this
 ASIS and ASIO in Chile 85

operation in Chile. McDonald remembers that by that time he had already

identified the Australian chief officer operating in Chile:

I was told by our managing editor, Graham Wilkinson, that the deputy head
of ASIS had rang out and said ‘Please, call it off, this is not in the national
interest’ [...] I did call the ambassador who had been in Santiago at that
time…Deschamps, and asked him if he had any comment on the allegations
and his reply was simply ‘What on earth do you expect me to say’ (in
Melgar, personal interviews, 2013).

The Sydney Morning Herald agreed to cease the investigations. Today,

Professor Barry Carr from the Australian National University believes
there is no hope that Australia will disclose any information about what
happened in Chile in 1973 due to a culture of secrecy, which would be
much more restrictive here than in the US: “I'm not really holding my
breath over any Australian government whether it be Labor Party or the
Coalition, ever telling us exactly what those ASIS agents were doing” (in
Melgar 2013b). Even though the intervention started under Liberal Prime
Minister McMahon, Labor leaders “have been painfully anxious” to not
diminish the powers and secrecy of Australian intelligence services
(Coxsedge, Coldicutt and Harant 1982, 235). Very recently, for example,
it was under the Labor government of Kevin Rudd that one of the
intelligence agencies, the Australian Signals Directorate, spied on the
leaders of Indonesia (Brissenden 2013).
In Australia, intelligence documents dated as far back as 40 years ago
are excluded from the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). There are nine
categories of exemptions under the FOI Act, including “documents
affecting national security, defence or international relations” (OAIC
2014). Melgar’s recent investigation through various sources, including
Chile’s Foreign Affairs official records, identified two of the ASIS officers
working in Chile around the time of the coup (Ministerio RREE 1970-73).
Nevertheless, due to strict laws controlling information relating to
intelligence staff and operations, these names cannot be made public.
According to the Intelligence Services Act (Commonwealth Consolidated
Acts 2001) it is illegal in Australia to identify any current or former
intelligence officer unless the heads of those services give explicit
permission. At the time of writing this chapter, the Australian Senate with
the support of both Labor and Liberal parties, extended the penalty for this
offence from 1 to 10 years of imprisonment, together with other
restrictions on reporting on intelligence matters, within a new law that
gives more powers to these agencies (Woodley 2014). In the Chilean case,
ASIS Director, Nick Warner, rejected Melgar’s formal request to
86 Chapter Five

investigate these matters. Tim Begbie, Senior General Counsel of Dispute

Resolution of the Australian Government Solicitor (Melgar, personal
communications, 25 July 2013) warned Melgar that she risked legal
prosecution if some of the information was published. Whereas the
Australian Royal Commission on Intelligence concluded in 1977 that
“espionage is illegal and the clandestine service’s job is to break those
laws without being caught” (in Toohey and Pinwill 1990, 198), the
Australian government protects the officials who are in charge of carrying
out that illegal espionage, even after they have concluded their job, and
after their deaths.
The evident lack of transparency around this four-decade old Australian
intervention in Chile is not only an issue when compared to the relative
openness of the same country that has admitted its main role in the coup:
the US. The exemption of Australia’s intelligence agencies from the FOI
Act blocks the public knowledge of history and denies access to decisions
made in Australians’ names. Likewise, this lack of transparency and
accountability has had a real impact on the lives of thousands of Chilean
victims of the dictatorship, the largest Latin American community in the
country, who in their great majority have become Australian citizens.

Chilean-Australians
For several Chilean-Australians one of the most meaningful aspects of
the revelations around Australia’s secret agencies’ intervention in Chile is
the fact that it happened at least for a year under the Labor government of
Gough Whitlam. For Chilean refugee Vladimir Barcelli, for example, “it
sounds very strange that a country that helps you get out of the
dictatorship has cooperated with the dictatorship. It is illogical”. Mariana
Minguez, a former political prisoner in Chile, has expressed “shock” that
this happened under Labor’s administration, which would be more
surprising than Australia’s involvement in the coup. Victor Marillanca, a
Chilean refugee who arrived in Australia in 1975, has expressed the same
perplexity, given that he met during those years many Labor members of
parliament and authorities, including Whitlam himself. Tellingly, Hermiña
Vázquez, another Chilean refugee in Australia and a human rights activist,
has expressed anger and even second thoughts about a country reputed for
hosting Chilean exiles: “If I knew this, I never would have come to this
country. But on the other hand I realise that despite that, I was received
here very well [...] I feel a lot of conflict in my head” (in Melgar 2013c).
Although Whitlam reacted just a few days after the 11 September 1973
coup recalling his ambassador in Chile, Noel Deschamps, Australia was
 ASIS and ASIO in Chile 87

among many Western countries that ended up recognising the new military
government less than a month after the coup (Mártin-Montenegro 1994,
60-69), increasing its international legitimacy. As indicated earlier, the
migration numbers that Australia offered to Chilean refugees during those
years are another contradictory issue that remains obscure. Other evidence
makes the relationship of the Australian government with the
internationally isolated and widely condemned Chilean dictatorship more
doubtful and duplicitous. While thousands of refugees and exiles were
arriving and settling in the country, ASIO spied on the Chilean
community. A surveillance video made by this agency shows a
demonstration in Melbourne against Augusto Pinochet marking the first
anniversary of the coup on 11 September 1974 (ASIO 1974). It is not clear
why Chilean exiles who were generously welcomed as refugees were also
considered “persons of interest” because of their political activities against
the dictatorship, a government openly condemned by the Australian
authorities.
The case of Adriana Rivas is also shrouded in secrecy. Already in the
1990s, many organisations reported to the Australian government that
people of Pinochet’s regime, some of whom were identified as torturers
and murderers, resided in the country. In September and November 1990,
the Australian-Chile Friendship Society of Canberra and the Pablo Neruda
Cultural Centre wrote letters to the Minister for Immigration, Local
Government and Ethnic Affairs, Gerry Hand, asking about this issue (see
ABC 2009, Hand 1990, Santana 1990). Only in 2013 has it been
confirmed that an agent of DINA accused of crimes against humanity has
lived in Australia for decades. Rivas was the secretary of DINA’s chief
Manuel Contreras’ assistant, Alejandro Burgos, during the early years of
the dictatorship (Ministerio del Interior 2007). Contreras has already
accumulated close to 400 years in imprisonment sentences for violations
of human rights, including kidnapping, forced disappearance and
assassinations (La Nación 2014a). Rivas is accused of being the co-author
of aggravated kidnapping in seven cases. She was imprisoned in 2007 but
was released on bail although not allowed to leave Chile. However, she
managed to escape in 2010 through Argentina and has been living in
Australia since then. She also pleads innocence to the accusations and
denies any involvement in the crimes committed by Contreras and his
men. More tellingly, she has justified torture: “They had to break the
people—it has happened all over the world, not only in Chile” (Melgar
2013e). Following this interview, a Chilean lawyer requested the
extradition of Adriana Rivas. The Chilean Supreme Court accepted two
88 Chapter Five

extradition requests in January and March 2014 (Corte Suprema 2014) and
now the case is being decided by the Australian government.
In practice, Adriana Rivas’ case amounts to the impunity of a
prosecuted human rights violator welcomed by Australia to start a new
life, instead of being sent back expeditiously to face justice. On 27 August
2014, federal Senator Kate Lundy repeated the call to the current
Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, who had received the
extradition request but not responded, after two months (La Nación
2014b). The resolution on the extradition request of Adriana Rivas to
Chile might clarify Australia’s commitment to the universal principals of
protection of human rights, which seemed evident during the years of
Pinochet’s dictatorship. The prosecution against Rivas in Chile could also
help to explain how a Chilean intelligence agent came to Australia in the
first place and dispel the doubts of secret agreements of cooperation
between the two governments or the respective defence departments and
national intelligence services in the 1970s. Australia is undoubtedly
responsible for participating in activities that supported and led to the
Chilean coup and the crimes that followed. Four decades later, time is up.

References
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). 2003. “30 years since
Chilean coup ousted President Allende”. ABC Radio. The world today,
September 12. Presented by Nick Mckenzie.
www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2003/s944849.htm.
—. 2009. “War criminals in Australia”. ABC Radio National. Background
briefing, October 18. Presented by Hagar Cohen.
www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/war-
criminals-in-australia/3099724.
Aarons, Mark. 2001. War criminals welcome: Australia, a sanctuary for
fugitive war criminals since 1944. Melbourne: Black Inc.
ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service). 2014. “About us—
Overview”. Accessed August 2014.
www.asis.gov.au/About-Us/Overview.html.
ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation). 1974. “Demonstration
against alleged repression in Chile” [surveillance footage]. 11
September, Melbourne. National Archives of Australia. Item C5429,
32/1/597, 60046884.
—. 2014. “About ASI—Overview”. Accessed August 2014.
www.asio.gov.au/About-ASIO/Overview.html.
 ASIS and ASIO in Chile 89

Blum, William. 2004. Killing Hope. US military and CIA interventions

since World War II. Maine: Common Courage Press.
Brissenden, Michael. 2013. “Australia spied on Indonesian president
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, leaked Edward Snowden documents
reveal”, ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), November
18. www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-18/australia-spied-on-indonesian-
president-leaked-documents-reveal/5098860.
Collins, Lance, and Warren Reed. 2005. Plunging Point, Intelligence
Failures, Cover-Ups and Consequences. Australia: Fourth Estate.
Comisión Rettig. 1991. “Informe de la Comisión Nacional de Verdad y
Reconciliación (Informe Rettig)”. Santiago de Chile: Ministerio del
Interior de Chile, Programa de Derechos Humanos.
www.ddhh.gov.cl/ddhh_rettig.html.
Comisión Valech. 2004. “Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión
Política y Tortura (Informe Valech)”. Santiago de Chile: Gobierno de
Chile. Accessed March 2010.
www.comisionvalech.gov.cl/InformeValech.html.
—. 2011. “Informe de la Comisión Asesora para la Calificación de
Detenidos Desaparecidos, Ejecutados Políticos y Víctimas de Prisión
Política y Tortura (Informe Valech II)”. Santiago de Chile: Gobierno
de Chile. Accessed August 2011.
www.comisionvalech.gov.cl/InformeComision.html.
Corte Suprema. 2014. “Extradición Adriana Rivas Australia”. Corte
Suprema de Justicia de la República de Chile, January 15. Accessed
June 2014.
www.pjud.cl/documents/10179/11834/EXTRADICION+ADRIANA+
+RIVAS+AUSTRALIA.pdf
Coxsedge, Joan, Ken Coldicutt and Gerry Harant. 1982. Rooted in
Secrecy. The clandestine element in Australian politics. Melbourne:
Committee for the Abolition of Political Police.
Commonwealth Consolidated Acts. 2001. “Intelligence Services Act.
Section 41”. Australasian Legal Information Institute Online. Accessed
September 2014.
www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/isa2001216/s41.html.
Department of the Prime Minister. 1975. “Alleged Australian security
Intelligent Organisation Involvement in Chile, 1974–1975”.
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. National Archives of
Australia. Item A1209, 1984/111, Part 1.
Dinges, John. 2005. The Condor Years. New York: The New Press.
90 Chapter Five

Dreyfus, Mark. 2014. “Petitions: Adriana Rivas. Official Hansard Number

8”. Commonwealth of Australia, House of Representatives, June 4.
Accessed September 2014.
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=I
d%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2Faf682406-aa83-4bc9-9c73-
65d22c87cca9%2F0178%22.
Frykberg, Ian. 1974. “Aust spies helped CIA plan to topple Allende”.
Sydney Morning Herald, October 7.
Hand, Gerry. 1990. “Letter to Victor Marillanca, President of the
Australia–Chile Friendship Society of ACT”. Minister for Immigration,
Local Government and Ethnic Affairs, Australia. December 3
Hersh, Seymour. 1983. The Price of Power, Kissinger in the Nixon White
House. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Hope, Robert. 1977. “Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security. 5th
Report”. National Archives of Australia. Accessed September 2014.
www.naa.gov.au/collection/explore/security/royal-commisson.
Kornbluh, Peter. 2003. The Pinochet File. A Declassified Dossier on
Atrocity and Accountability. New York: The New Press.
La Nación. 2014a. “Operación Colombo: nueva condena a Manuel
Contreras de 20 años de cárcel”. La Nación, Santiago de Chile, May 8.
www.lanacion.cl/noticias/pais/ddhh/operacion-colombo-nueva-
condena-a-manuel-contreras-de-20-anos-de-carcel/2014-08-
05/151058.html.
—. 2014b. “Reclaman a la Fiscalía australiana extradición de ex secretaria
del ‘Mamo’”. La Nación, Santiago de Chile, September 4.
www.lanacion.cl/noticias/pais/ddhh/reclaman-a-la-fiscalia-australiana-
extradicion-de-ex-secretaria-del-mamo/2014-09-04/074921.html.
Mártin-Montenegro, Gustavo. 1994. “La campaña de solidaridad con
Chile en Australia (1973–1990)”. Master of Arts dissertation,
University of New South Wales, Australia.
McSherry, J Patrice. 2005. Predatory States, Operation Condor and
Covert War in Latin America. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield
Publishers Inc.
Melgar, Florencia. 2013a. “The other 9/11”. Special Broadcasting
Corporation (SBS). www.sbs.com.au/theother911.
—. 2013b. “Australia’s involvement in Chilean military coup 40 years
ago”. SBS Radio (Special Broadcasting Corporation), September 10.
Accessed October 2013.
www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/spanish/highlight/page/id/330114/t/Au
stralia-s-involvement-in-Chilean-military-coup-40-years-
ago/in/english.
 ASIS and ASIO in Chile 91

—. 2013c. “Chilean refugees seek answers from Australian Government

on 40th anniversary of coup”. SBS Radio (Special Broadcasting
Corporation), September 11. Accessed October 2013.
www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/spanish/highlight/page/id/330120/t/Chi
lean-refugees-seek-answers-from-Australian-Government-on-40th-
anniversary-of-coup/in/english.
—. 2013d. “Coexistence of victims and perpetrators of the coup d’état of
Chile, in Australia”. SBS Radio (Special Broadcasting Corporation),
September 12. Accessed October 2013.
www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/spanish/highlight/page/id/330116/t/Co
existence-of-victims-and-perpetrators-of-the-coup-d-tat-of-Chile-in-
Australia/in/english.
—. 2013e. “Interview with Adriana Rivas, former agent of Pinochet’s
secret police”. SBS Radio (Special Broadcasting Corporation),
September 13. Accessed October 2013.
www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/spanish/highlight/page/id/330118/t/Int
erview-with-Adriana-Rivas-former-agent-of-Pinochet-s-secret-
police/in/english.
—. 2014. “Aparte de entrevista de Adriana Rivas a SBS”. SBS Radio
(Special Broadcasting Corporation), January 21. Accessed January
2014. www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/spanish/article/2010/Aparte-de-
entrevista-de-Adriana-Rivas-a-SBS/in/english.
Ministerio del Interior. 2007. “Police statement by Adriana Elcira RIVAS
GONZALEZ. Police Report No 169. Respuesta a oficio N 36–2007.
Fjs 361”. Ministerio del Interior de Chile.
Ministerio de RREE. 1971–73. “Lista de diplomáticos en Chile. Archivos
históricos”. Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile.
OAIC (Office of the Australian Information Commissioner). 2014. “FOI
fact sheet 8: Freedom of information, Exemptions”. Accessed
September 2014. www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-information/foi-resources/
freedom-of-information-fact-sheets/foi-fact-sheet-8-exemptions.
Pilger, John. 1992. A secret country. London: Vintage.
Santana, Mario. 1990. “Letter to Minister Gerry L Hand”. November 27.
Pablo Neruda Cultural Centre.
Robertson, William. 1975. “Memorandum dealing with the Termination of
the Appointment of WT Robertson as Director ASIS by EG Whitlam
on 21 October 1975”. National Archives of Australia. Item M4948,1.
The Australian. 2010. “Former ASIS boss who came in from the cold”.
The Australian, March 20.
92 Chapter Five

www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/former-asis-boss-who-came-
in-from-the-cold/story-e6frg6z6-
1225842682898?nk=acdbabfbf1e788115f7339115d62863d.
Toohey, Brian and Pinwill, William. 1990. Oyster. The Story of The
Australian Secret Intelligence Service. Melbourne: Octopus Publishing
Group.
US Department of State. 2000. “Chile Declassification Project”. United
States Department of State. Accessed August 2007.
http://foia.state.gov/Search/Collections.aspx.
—. 2014. “Milestones: 1945–1952. The Australia, New Zealand and
United States Security Treaty (ANZUS Treaty), 1951”. Office of the
Historian, United States Department of State. Accessed August 2014.
www.history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/anzus.
Warner, Nick. 2012, “ASIS at 60”. Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
Accessed June 2014 www.asis.gov.au/media/Images/ASIS-at-60-
speech.pdf.
Wilkinson, Marian. 1983. Allies. Documentary, Australia. Produced by
Sylvie Le Clezio.
Whitlam, Gough. 1985. The Whitlam Government, 1972–1975. Melbourne:
Penguin Books.
Woodley, Naomi. 2014. “Senate passes new counter-terrorism laws giving
stronger powers to intelligence agency ASIO”, ABC News (Australian
Broadcasting Corporation), September 25.
www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-25/new-counter-terrorism-laws-pass-
the-senate/5770256.
 CONTRIBUTORS

Nicolás del Valle (nicolasdelvalle.o@gmail.com) is a PhD candidate in

Philosophy at Leiden University (Netherlands) and Universidad Diego
Portales (Chile), and has a Master of Arts in Contemporary Thought and a
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. He is a visiting researcher at the
Ibero-American Institute of Berlin, Germany, and a researcher at the
Centre for Political Analysis and Research (CAIP) in Chile. He is also a
visiting fellow at the School of Humanities and Languages, University of
New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His current research areas are in
philosophy, the social sciences, media under democracy, the politics of
human rights, critical theory and biopolitics. The chapter in the present
book was written as part of his research activities in the doctoral program
in Philosophy at the Institute of Humanities, Universidad Diego Portales,
Chile.

Pablo Leighton (pabloleighton@gmail.com) researches the notion and

practices of propaganda in XX century and current media, and specifically
on the history of audio-visual culture in Chile and Latin America since the
1970s until today. He has taught at universities in Australia, United States,
Chile and Honduras, and has worked as film director, screenwriter and
editor in various fiction and documentary productions. He holds a PhD in
Latin American studies from Universidad de Santiago de Chile, and in
Media and Cultural Studies from Macquarie University, Sydney. He also
has a Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from Massachusetts College of
Art (Boston, US). He is co-director of the Latin American Research Group
Australia (www.latitudesgroup.info) with Fernando López.

Fernando López (f.lopez@unswalumni.com) holds a PhD in History

from the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor of Arts with
Honours in History from the same institution. Together with Dr Pablo
Leighton, he co-directs Latitudes: Latin American Research Group
Australia. His areas of research focus on contemporary Latin American
History, the Cold War in Latin America and, especially, on how the
military regimes of Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia
agreed to formally launch Operation Condor in November 1975.
126 Contributors

J Patrice McSherry (pmcsherr@liu.edu) is a professor of political

science at Long Island University and author of numerous books and
articles on Latin America. Her works include: “Cross-border terrorism:
Operation Condor”, NACLA Report on the Americas 32(6): 34-35 (1999);
“Operation Condor: Clandestine Inter-American System”, Social Justice
26(4): 144-174 (1999); “Operation Condor: New pieces of the puzzle”,
NACLA Report on the Americas 34(6): 26 (2001); “Tracking the origins of
a State Terror network: Operation Condor”, Latin American Perspectives
29(1): 38-60 (2002); “Predatory states: Operation Condor and covert war
in Latin America”, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
(2005); “Death squads as parallel forces: Uruguay, Operation Condor and
the United States”, Journal of Third World Studies 24(1): 13 (2007); and
“Introduction to 'Shadows of State Terrorism: Impunity in Latin America”
(with Raúl Molina Mejía), Social Justice 26(4): 1-12 (2007). Her most
recent book is “Chilean New Song: The Political Power of Music, 1960s-
1973”, Philadelphia: Temple University Press (2015). She has been
currently teaching at Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago, Chile.

Florencia Melgar (florenciamelgar@gmail.com) is an investigative

journalist and independent researcher. She produced “No Toquen Nada”,
once the highest rating current affairs radio show in Uruguay. She co-
authored the books “Las palabras que llegaron’ in 2009 and “Sabotaje a la
verdad” in 2006. She has worked for SBS Radio and Online, the ABC,
Instituto Cervantes and the website Latinhub.com.au that she directs and
was finalist as Best Use of Online in New South Wales (NSW) Premier’s
multicultural Media Awards 2014. Melgar was awarded the best
investigative story of the year in NSW multicultural media for the
multimedia report “The Other 9/11”. In 2011, she was nominated Latin
Woman of the Year in Australia for the contribution of Latinhub.com.au to
the Latin American community in Australia. She is a PhD candidate at
RMIT University in Melbourne and the title of her thesis is: “The
exemption of Australia´s intelligence agencies from the FOI Act and its
impact in journalism and democracy”.

Debbie Sharnak (sharnak@wisc.edu) is a PhD candidate at the University

of Wisconsin-Madison (US) studying the history of human rights,
transnational networks, and international relations. Her dissertation,
"Uruguay and the Contested International History of Human
Rights", examines the origins and evolution of human rights discourse in
Uruguay, particularly during its transition back to democratic rule. The
work addresses issues of transitional justice, the rise of the transnational
 40 Years are Nothing 127

human rights movement, and the shifting terrain of human rights in the
1970s and 1980s. Her publications include: "Uruguay and the Re-
conceptualization of Transitional Justice," in Transitional Justice and
Legacies of State Violence in Latin America, Marcia Esparza and Nina
Schneider, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. (2015) (forthcoming);
"Sovereignty and human rights: re-examining Carter’s foreign policy
Towards the Third World," Diplomacy & Statecraft, 25(2): 303-330
(2014); “Moral Responsibility and the ICC: Child Soldiers in the
DRC,” Eyes on the International Criminal Court, 4(1) (2007).

Pedro Teixeirense (pedroteixeirense@gmail.com) is at PhD candidate at

the University of Río de Janeiro. In 2014, Pedro worked as a researcher for
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), serving as a
Research Analyst with the Brazilian National Truth Commission (CNV)
that investigated the human rights violations committed during the last
dictatorship (1964-1985). His works include: “Justiça de transição e
processos de transição: alguns aspectos históricos a partir da experiência
uruguaia”, Revista Ars Historica, 8ª Edição: 23-40 (2014); “O que resta da
ditadura, o que havia de nós: história e memória nos mecanismos de
justiça de transição no Brasil”, Revista Cantareira (Dossiê Os legados das
ditaduras Civis-militares), 20ª Edição (Jan-Jun): 6-15 (2014).

Yael Zaliasnik (yzaliasnik@gmail.com) is a journalist and Master in

Literature from Universidad Católica de Chile, and has a PhD in Latin
American Studies from Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Some of her
areas of academic interest are Cultural Studies, Theatricality, Art and
Politics, and Memory. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the
Universidad de Santiago de Chile. She has published, among others, the
articles “40 años de performances e intervenciones urbanas de Clemente
Padín” (2010) and “Memoria en construcción: el debate sobre la Esma”
(2011), e-misférica issues 7.2 and 8.1, The Hemispheric Institute of
Performance and Politics, New York University.