Documents: Chilean accused of torture taught for Pentagon

SANTIAGO, Chile – A member of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s brutal secret police who’s been accused of murder taught for more than a decade at the Pentagon’s premier university, despite repeated complaints by his colleagues about his past.

Jaime Garcia Covarrubias is charged in criminal court in Santiago with being the mastermind in the execution-style slayings of seven people in 1973, according to court documents. McClatchy also interviewed an accuser who identified Garcia Covarrubias as the person who sexually tortured him.

Despite knowing of the allegations, State and Defense department officials allowed Garcia Covarrubias to retain his visa and continue working at a school affiliated with the National Defense University until last year.

Human rights groups also question the school’s selection of a second professor, Colombia’s former top military commander.

Some Latin America experts said the hirings by the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies reflected a continuing inclination by the U.S. government to overlook human rights violations in Latin America, especially in countries where it funded efforts to quash leftists.

But those experts were especially troubled by Garcia Covarrubias’ long tenure at one of the nation’s most renowned defense institutions.

“His hiring undermines our moral authority on both human rights and in the war on terror,” said Chris Simmons, a former Defense Intelligence Agency and Army intelligence officer from 1982 to 2010 who specializes in Latin America. “If he is in fact guilty of what he is accused of, he is a terrorist. Then who are we to tell other countries how they should be fighting terrorism?”

To his supporters, Garcia Covarrubias is a brilliant thinker with a Ph.D. and a purveyor of leadership skills. To his alleged victims, he’s a sadistic torturer with a penchant for horsewhips and perversity.

A 2008 Chilean military document reviewed by McClatchy identified Garcia Covarrubias as a member of the Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional, the feared spy agency known by its acronym DINA.

“DINA was simply the most sinister agency in Latin America,” said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst with the National Security Archive, which secured the release of U.S. government classified documents underscoring the complicit relationship between the U.S. and Pinochet. “Anyone associated with that agency should never have been allowed into this country, let alone given this job.”

Officials with the Pentagon, the State Department and the school refused to comment.

Garcia Covarrubias is now back in Chile, ordered by an investigative judge in January 2014 to remain in the country while an inquiry continues into his alleged role in the deaths of seven people in Temuco weeks after the U.S.-backed Pinochet coup on Sept. 11, 1973.

His case is one of 108 involving tortured, disappeared or murdered supporters of the deposed elected president, Salvador Allende. More than 3,000 people died at the hands of the regime, and in 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell offered regrets for U.S. involvement in the coup, calling it “not a part of American history that we’re proud of.”

Garcia Covarrubias’ attorney, Jose Luis Lopez, declined to make his client available for an interview. He also refused to respond to a list of questions or to provide a description of the jobs Garcia Covarrubias held under Pinochet.

The center’s officials who hired and renewed Garcia Covarrubias’ contracts say he was a highly qualified professor and minimize the allegations against him.

McClatchy located one of his alleged victims, who described being brutalized by him.

“They submitted us to torture, twice a day. We were submerged in feces,” Herman Carrasco, who’s now a real estate agent, told McClatchy in Chile. “They stuck rifle barrels in our anuses.”

According to Carrasco, the torture unfolded in October and November 1973 – lorded over by the horsewhip-wielding Garcia Covarrubias – and included electric shock administered to eyelids, genitals and other sensitive areas of the body.

As early as 2008, some of Garcia Covarrubias’ colleagues at the center were questioning his past. Martin Edwin Andersen, the center’s former communications director, tried to talk to the school’s top officials about the charismatic Chilean. Emails show he was repeatedly scolded for raising the matter.

LaPlante said Homeland Security officials “provisionally revoked” Garcia Covarrubias’ visa in or around 2011. But Homeland Security also granted him “parole” to remain in the country while seeking permanent residency.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes applications for permanent residency, did not respond to a reporter’s questions.

McClatchy, however, also learned that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigative office authorized to pursue criminal charges or expel foreign human rights violators was notified of the Garcia Covarrubias case in 2011. An ICE spokeswoman declined to say what action was taken, if any.