Letters to the Editor: The Other 9/11

Twenty-five years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists brought down the World Trade Center and with it the Windows on the World restaurant in the North Tower where Charles Horman and I planned to get together in 1973.

Charlie and I met in Chile after Salvador Allende was elected president on Sept. 4, 1970.  We were both journalists inspired by Allende’s goal to move his country toward socialism by peaceful and democratic means and unaware at the time that, as the U.S. Senate detailed in its 1975 report titled Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, that “the C.I.A.  was instructed by President Nixon to play a direct role in organizing a military coup d’état in Chile to prevent Allende from assuming office and when that failed to overthrow the Popular Unity government he headed.”

As a result, our government participated in a three-year series of events that began less than two weeks after the election with Rene Schneider, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, being mortally wounded in an attempt to kidnap him, and culminated on Sept. 11, 1973 with the bombing of the presidential palace and death of Allende. Subsequently, General Augusto Pinochet took control of the country and under his dictatorship thousands of Chileans were imprisoned, tortured and killed.

For me, therefore, Sept. 11, 1973 along with Sept. 11, 2001 is a date that, as Franklin Roosevelt said about Dec. 7, 1941, “will live in infamy.”

Consequently, every year as their anniversary approaches, I think about Charlie and how he would address the most important issues facing our and other democracies. Hence this year, were we to meet up at the ONE Dine restaurant on the 101st floor of the rebuilt One World Trade Center Freedom Tower on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and the 53rd anniversary of 9/11/1973, I would ask him for his thoughts about Iran and ICE and the upcoming midterm elections and how we should commemorate the victims of both 9/11 dates.     

Regrettably, however, before we managed to get together at the Windows on the World restaurant, Charlie returned to Chile to continue an investigation he had initiated of the role the U.S. played in the attempt to kidnap General Schneider and six days after the coup, as the book by Thomas Hauser titled The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice and the riveting award-winning Costa Gavras movie based on it titled Missing and other sources make clear, he was arrested and killed.  

So how would my friend Charlie, a student of history who graduated from Harvard summa cum laude, answer my question if he was alive today? Since I cannot know precisely what he would say, I’ll answer it myself as if he had asked it of me.  

First, I’d reply: “Given Iran’s rulers’ support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Houthis in Yemen and, as the 911 commission pointed out, its documented facilitation of the travel of al-Qaida operatives—including at least eight future 9/11 hijackers—through Iran, it’s clear they share animosity for Western democracies. Hence, it is important to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons. But killing innocent civilians and their children by dropping bombs on the country is not the way to do it.” 

Second, I’d add: “Furthermore, given the well documented role the C.I.A. played in the overthrow of the democratically elected governments of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran on Aug. 19, 1953, Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala on June 27, 1954, and Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973 and given, furthermore, President Trump’s support for the rioters who attempted to overturn the election of Joseph Biden on Jan. 6, 2020, his efforts to undermine confidence in the integrity of our elections and his characterization of Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea, as “a terrific person and a friend of mine,” any claim that we went to war with Iran to support the effort of Iranians to restore their democracy lacks credibility.”  

Third, I’d point out that it is difficult to promote democracies in other countries if we don’t practice what we preach at home. That, however, is not what we are doing when we send ICE agents into our cities to terrorize immigrants who live there or when we pardon members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who assaulted law enforcement officers and others who along with them participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection.   

Finally, I’d conclude that the best way to commemorate the victims of both Sept. 11, 1973 and Sept. 11, 2001 is to use our knowledge of the events that led up to them, different as they may have been, to inspire us to join the effort to create the just and hence peaceful world those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after World War II were aiming for. And that is something I am sure Charlie would agree with.

At the time Charlie and I planned to meet up at the World Trade Center I was the director of Chile Update, a weekly one-hour news program on WBAI radio in NYC.  After the Sept. 11, 1973 coup d’état I returned to Chile to witness and report on its violent aftermath and spent part of my time there with Ed and Joyce Horman, Charlie’s father and wife, searching for him after he went missing.