AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!, The Exception to the Rulers. I’m Amy Goodman.

September 11th marks events in a number of countries. On Wednesday, Chileans marked the 29th anniversary of the bloody coup that was led by Augusto Pinochet. In that coup — following that coup, September 11th, 1973, thousands of Chileans lost their lives. Tomorrow, we’re going to talk about another September 11th, September 11th, 1990, the day Guatemalan anthropologist Myrna Mack was murdered by Guatemalan officers backed by the U.S. Three of them are currently on trial in Guatemala City, and we’re going to talk with Myrna Mack’s sister, Helen, and her lawyer, whose 16-year-old son was threatened with death yesterday.

But today, we’re going to Spain to speak with Joyce Horman. Joyce Horman was the wife of Charles Horman, an American journalist who was killed by Pinochet’s army. And Joyce Horman is currently suing the U.S. government, national security adviser and — former national security adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for its support of the Pinochet coup and its role in her husband’s death.

Joyce Horman, welcome to Democracy Now!

JOYCE HORMAN: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s very good of you to be with us as you take this trip through Spain. In fact, is your trip related to your lawsuit against the U.S. government?

JOYCE HORMAN: I have to actually correct that the lawsuit we have open right now is against Pinochet and his military subordinates, especially the ones who were in charge in the National Stadium detention center, where my husband was killed in Chile. And listed as witnesses are Henry Kissinger and Nathaniel Davis and Fred Purdy, who were American officials at that time and who, as we see from the declassified documents, not only knew very much about the coup in Chile, but were in support of it, and also in support of Pinochet after he took power, and in support of an operations sort of business-as-usual attitude in the face of enormous criminal acts against the victims of the coup by Pinochet forces.

We did have a case in the late ‘70s against Kissinger and other members of the Nixon State Department for information about the death of Charles. Also, questions of cover-up and collusion and negligence were also charged or brought to the court at that time. But that case came up against documents that were very much obliterated. And so, that case, we asked that it be closed with permission to reopen if we could find information. So, it was closed in the early ‘80s, just before the movie came out. And right now — 

AMY GOODMAN: The movie being Missing by Costa Gavras.

JOYCE HORMAN: The moving being Missing, yes. Thank you very much. And so, now, even though Pinochet has been excused, we are in — our case is still open in Chile, and it’s an investigation of what happened in the National Stadium with regard to my husband, and also examining — Judge Guzmán in Chile is examining the behavior of U.S. officials towards North American citizens. And last May, several North Americans went to Chile to testify about their experience as detainees in the National Stadium and also to be witnesses to what happened in the stadium. And Judge Guzmán recreated at that time sort of the position of these witnesses and how they were able to hear gunshots and executions and to see people marched in one direction or another.

AMY GOODMAN: And does Judge Guzmán have anything to do with why you’re in Spain now?

JOYCE HORMAN: Judge Guzmán is in Chile. And the reason I’m in Spain right now is I was invited for the remembrances of Chile in September, on September 11th, remembering the coup, but, more than that, remembering the heroes of the struggle for human rights and against the crimes that were committed there and elsewhere around the world, and also remembering that the terrorist state of Pinochet was supported by the U.S. government at that time. I say “terrorist state” because Pinochet forces went across borders. They went to Argentina to kill Carlos Prats and his wife. They went to Italy to attack Leighton and his wife, who survived. But they really — they went to the United States, the streets of Washington, to car bomb Orlando Letelier, who was an enormously important worker for human rights at that time, and especially making the world conscious of what was happening in Pinochet’s Chile. So, it’s an important day for remembering all sorts of things, and enormous sadness for what happened a year ago in the United States. But it seems very important, having worked for so many years for human rights in Chile, to also remember the history that surrounds some of these enormous human rights tragedies.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel, with the documents that have been declassified now around, for example, Henry Kissinger, that you would reopen the case and the lawsuit against him?

JOYCE HORMAN: It’s a matter of finding some very specific details. And yes, if those details were to become available to us, we certainly would reopen that case.

AMY GOODMAN: And what are the documents that so far have come out? What is — 

JOYCE HORMAN: Well — 

AMY GOODMAN: What is most significant about them?

JOYCE HORMAN: I think what’s most significant is that 20 years ago they covered up a paragraph that said the then-State Department thought our case should be investigated, because there was circumstantial evidence that led them to think that the U.S. intelligence agencies had played an unfortunate role in the death of Charles Horman. Now, this is something that U.S. citizens have to understand and have to know more about. And so, for that paragraph, for that opinion, to have been covered up for 20 years kept us from understanding that they, too, thought the case should be investigated. You know, it weakened our own case not to know this. So, that’s the most significant thing for us that has come out.

Of course, there has been recently two very significant findings about the Condor Operation that crossed borders and took people from one country to another to instances of torture and murder. It’s an incredible conspiracy of crimes against humanity that has been uncovered there. And, of course, Henry Kissinger was not only the head of the State Department then; he was the head of the 40 Committee or the — he was the head of all of the intelligence agencies for the United States. So, the buck stops there. And this man really should answer a lot of questions that have been raised because of these declassified documents.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, your connections between the September 11th that we certainly all know and mourn, last September 11th, where 3,000 people here in New York alone were incinerated in a moment, and the September 11th that you certainly know well in 1973 in Chile?

JOYCE HORMAN: I’m sorry. I didn’t quite hear.

AMY GOODMAN: Any connections that you draw — 

JOYCE HORMAN: Any connections.

AMY GOODMAN: — between these September — different September 11ths.

JOYCE HORMAN: I guess what occurs to me is that there were enormous human rights abuses in Chile that were not only overlooked by the U.S. government at that time, but deliberately obscured. And the Pinochet regime was really a terrorist state, and the U.S. attitude at that time towards this terrorist state was not appropriate. It was supportive. It was not attacking it. It was not trying to find out who was committing the murders and so forth. And the attitude now, the extraordinary attitude of going to war and bombing populations, it’s very bellicose, and so many steps are being taken, sort of beyond our constitutional laws, that are not good for us and not good for the world. This is the difference between the September 11ths that I see. It doesn’t mean that I’m not enormously sad with other New Yorkers about what happened and the losses that were incurred. They’re enormous and terrible. But the attitude of the U.S. government is inappropriate and inexcusably warlike at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: Joyce Horman, I want to thank you for being with us. Joyce Horman, widow of Charles Horman, U.S. journalist who was killed in Chile as the Pinochet regime rose to power. Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile, died on September 11th as Pinochet’s troops took over.