A Clarification and qualification to a Kansas state intelligence agent.

YOU THOUGHT CAMP GITMO AND ABU GHARIB WAS SOMETHING NEW TO OUR HISTORY?

MORE "SPECULATIVE" NEWS TO CONSIDER AFTER TWENTY YEARS, KISSINGER, NIXON & THE OVERTHROW OF A DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED PRESIDENT (1975).

Edited excerpts from an interrogation conducted in June 1985. Citations of location and appearence of record listed below in the discussion of "speculative journalism" versus "embedded journalism."

BEGINNING OF INTERROGATION EXCERPT

How old are you?

I am twenty eight.

That means you were only nineteen when you were assigned to work for DINA (the former name of Chile's national intelligence agency).

No, I never worked for DINA. I belonged to SIFA, the intelligence service of the air force. At that time we had problems with DINA; we thought that they were not good enough. That's what my bosses said. Although we were fewer in number, we worked more effectively. For example, it was our group that arrested the heads of the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left).

Where did you take the people who were arrested?

In the early days we took them to the Academia de Guerra. But we were not in charge of the prisoners. We had no idea if they were released or tried. I do know that there was plenty of torture. The first time I witnessed it, the victim was a girl. I was shocked. She was from the MIR.

Describe her.

She was very young, middle - class; she was blond.

Why did it shock you?

I had never seen anything like that before. I was among the strong guards, but ... they took her to a bathroom and they beat the hell out of her. I saw them.

How did Contreras Maluje's death really happen? (Maluje, a high - ranking official in Chile's Communist Party, was abducted in 1975. - ed. note.)

He was handed over to us by a man who had been arrested. I don't remember what position this man held. We called him "Jose." He was important among the Juventud Comunista (Communist Youth).

What happened to Maluje?

I remember this mission quite well, because I participated in it. We arrested him along with a relative or friend of his in San Bernardo. We brought along "Jose," who was still under arrest. By then we had arrested practically all the members of the Juventud Comunista, except Maluje.

When we interrogated "Jose," he told us that Contreras Maluje was in a house in San Bernardo. He said, "If you let me go, I'll make contact with him and you can arrest him."

It was very difficult to arrest Maluje. He was a strong guy. We took him blindfolded to our headquarters and interrogated him about the other men we had arrested. He refused to talk about them and said he had not seen them in a long time. We took off his blindfold and he saw all the men. I think he realized right away that "Jose" had given him away. Then he told us he could lead us to a high - ranking communist in Calle Nataniel. We all discussed this - knowing Maluje's importance in the Communist Party, we were afraid that he might be plotting something.

We decided to let him go and to follow him. He started walking toward Avenida Matta and we trailed him at a distance in a car. Then we heard on the radio that someone had jumped in front of a bus. We rushed to the scene and found that a big crowd had already gathered around him.

What happened next?

His wrists had been broken the night before when we had tortured him. When he saw us he started yelling that we were from DINA and that we wanted to kill him. He kept shouting his name and asking people to tell the Maluje Pharmacy in Concepcion [his family business] what was happening to him. The police didn't know what to do. One of the policemen took the bus driver behind the bus and told him to get the hell out of there. Maluje was almost unconscious, but when we tried to get him into one of the cars he started yelling again that he had been tortured, holding out his broken wrists to the people. He even asked the police to help him. We got him inside a light blue car, a Fiat 125, which was registered under the name of the director of intelligence of the air force, who had no idea we had his car. We should never have used it; that was a mistake.

Where did you take Maluje?

To our headquarters n Calle 18. He had a broken arm and his head was bleeding. He was taken from the car like a sack of potatoes. He was kicked badly.

When was he killed?

That same night. He spent the whole day in jail. He was constantly beaten up, just for the hell of it, because at that point it was useless trying to interrogate him. A policeman kicked him in the face and broke his nose. When I arrived the next morning I learned that he was going to be buried, a group of policemen left very early to dig a grave.

You told me you knew of an operation in which the disappeared were thrown from a helicopter?

I am familiar with one operation, but I know there were many more. It was in 1975, when we were goiing after the Juventad Comunista.

About ten or fifteen people were taken up in an air force helicopter. Among them was a former councilman of Renca; he was lame, pretty old. The rest were probably those who had been arrested with him.

Were they alive?

Yes, but they were drugged. The had been given some drugs, but not very strong ones. A colleague of mine who participated in the operation told me later that one of the prisoners had woken up in the helicopter and then been hit on the head with an iron pipe. They were all thrown into the ocean.

Was something done to them before they were thrown into the ocean?

They were opened.

What do you mean by that?

Their stomachs were slit open so they wouldn't float. There were army commanders aboard the helicopter, and I was told that they did this with their knives.

Have you had any emotional problems?

Yes, I was under treatment once. Many of us have been hospitalized.

END OF INTERROGATION EXCERPT

(From an interview with Andres Antonio Valenzuela Morales, the first defector from the Chilean secret services to describe publicly his activities under the Pinochet regime. Valenzuela was interviewed in August 1984 by Monica Gonzalez, a reporter for Cauce, one of the main opposition publications in Chile. Pinochet banned Cauce and several other publications before the interview could be published. The interview subsequently appeared in Diario de Caracas, a Venezuelan newspaper, and in Mensaje, a magazine published in Chile by the Catholic Church.)