Strongly Suggested Summer Reading
"Chile In Their Hearts" by John Dinges.
July 1, 2025
By Marc Cooper
If you are not smart enough to get through a gossamer piece of fiction as we move headlong into summer, I have a suggested book for you.
I was friends with both victims. And about 25 years ago I was honored to give live testimony in Santiago about Charlie’s case brought by his widow, charging Pinochet and Kissinger for murder. The investigative magistrate was the magnificent Juan Guzmán Tapia who had just recently charged Pinochet with crimes against humanity and who blew up the dictatorship’s “amnesty” blockade on crimes committed by the military. The case did not make it very far through the courts, but I tell you this to explain why it so deeply resonates with me.
Charlie’s case was centered in the Costa-Gavras film Missing some 40-odd years ago. A wonderful film and one that strongly suggested that the CIA, and/or the U.S. Embassy, were behind the killings. That never made much sense to me because neither victim was a strategic target and it never added up to me why the U.S., despite its support of the coup, would murder two young Americans and face the backlash. There was no credible motive other than very bad PR. But the film is still very much worth watching because it is a terrific movie. But Dinges has written The Book on the case. Two different animals.
Dinges, who was a colleague of mine in Chile but who stayed for 5 years after the coup and went on to co-found one of the first opposition magazines under the dictatorship, is a living monument to hard-hitting investigative journalism and I marvel at his tenacity and rigorous sticking to the facts.
Chile In Their Hearts is the first serious book to examine the killings and is magnificently reported — so it does make great mystery writing, as John is also a talented wordsmith. It also breaks with the conventional wisdom, bereft of hard facts, that the U.S. had somehow ordered or carried out the murders.
Dinges’ account is no apologia for Pinochet but rather reveals how Chilean military forces had their own agency and how these two Americans fell to the blood frenzy in the first weeks of the military dictatorship. It also details exactly what role U.S. officials played in obstructing the search for their whereabouts and did their best to cover Pinochet’s ass AFTER the murders. So if you are a dogmatist who believes only the CIA has agency in this world, you might be disappointed to some degree.
If, otoh, you are someone interested in how authoritarian regimes operate and find support from the gringos, you will love this book. I spoke to John several times over the last two years as he was reporting the book and he was quite open about his trepidations regarding how some sectors of the Left would prefer to cling to convenient myths rather than hard facts. But he never hesitated and carried out his mission to find the hard truths.
John’s previous books include Assassination on Embassy Row, his investigation of the 1976 car bombing murder of former Chilean defense and foreign relations minister Orlando Letelier; The Condor Years on the global network of terror concocted by a collection of dictatorships in Latin America, and Our Man in Panama on the tragi-comic circus of the U.S. invasion of Panama 27 years ago.
Chile In Their Hearts is a must-read, and an excellent read for anybody interested in Latin America, the era of dirty war dictatorships, and the grotesque contours of U.S. foreign policy in the region. I am proud to have been a friend of John’s for the last 50 years and when I grow up I want to be like him! +++
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Orlando Letelier's son Francisco is a Venice, CA muralist who I came to know when I was director of Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center, now a good friend. He's still seeking justice for his father. Assassination on Embassy Row is must reading, and I ordered a copy of Chile In Their Hearts after reading a National Security archives post about the book.