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"I feel vindicated," said Horman at her Upper East Side apartment in New York. "We were right."

For over a quarter of a century, Horman has been trying to obtain classified government documents about her husband's death. Charles Horman, then a 31-year-old freelance journalist, was detained in Santiago, the capital, days after the 1973 coup. His body was found later, buried in a cement wall. The Horman story was the subject of the 1982 Academy-Award winning movie "Missing," which claimed Charles was murdered because he uncovered sensitive information about American involvement in the bloody coup that left thousands of people dead. The Horman family never stopped believing that American officials in Chile took part in the plot to kill him.

After years of fruitless petitions and endless lawsuits, Joyce Horman was finally handed a government document that corroborated her until-now unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.

The document, dated Aug. 25, 1976 and issued the by the Department of State, was retrieved through a Freedom of Information Act request that Horman filed through the National Security Archives, a non-profit organization based in Washington. The document's release comes after the Clinton administration's directive to uncover intelligence material relating to the coup. The document states that "there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest U.S. intelligence may have played an unfortunate part in Horman's death.

"At best," the document continues, "it was limited to providing or confirming information that helped motivate his murder by the (government of Chile). At worst, U.S. intelligence was aware the (government of Chile) saw Horman in a rather serious light and U.S. officials did nothing to discourage the logical outcome of (government of Chile) paranoia."

The document is a major breakthrough "I felt enormous joy and relief," Horman said of its release. "What a wonderful feeling. It's been such a long time."

But much critical evidence in the case remains hidden, and Horman's struggle is not over."What this document will do is put pressure on intelligence agencies to release more information about the Horman case," said Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archives.

According to Kornbluh, there are more than a hundred documents still withheld in government vaults that are crucial to the Horman case. "The pathology of secrecy still reigns," he said. He is still waiting to see whether the CIA will comply with the presidential order to release more information.

Anya Guilsher, spokesperson for the CIA, insisted the agency is doing everything in its power to declassify as much information as possible. "We have to keep in mind here that we have not finished releasing documents," said Guilsher. "It's an ongoing process." Guilsher says the CIA maintains that it had no prior knowledge of and played no role in Horman's death.

She also said the State Department document released last Friday was open to interpretation. "It does not say we were complicit in his death, it says there is circumstantial evidence." Horman disagrees. "This was the conclusion the State Department came up with -- that the intelligence agencies were responsible. This is a very strong statement," The State Department refused to comment on the matter.

After so many years in the public eye, Joyce Horman still struggles with her wish for privacy and the need to get her message across. At 54, she remains striking. She is elegant, tall and gracious. There are no wrinkles on her face, no bitterness in her eyes. Her blond hair is fashionably cut at shoulder length and her voice is youthful. Horman never remarried. ("I didn't quite find the right guy," she said almost apologetically.) She still lives in the same building as Elizabeth Horman, Charles' mother.

When Joyce and Charles first moved to Chile in the early 1970s, it seemed to them a kind of paradise. Joyce was from a small town in Minnesota, while Charles was a native New Yorker, the child of an artist mother and businessman father. "He was the most delightful guy you've ever met," said his mother Elizabeth Horman, now 94. "He had an extraordinary sense of humor."

Charles and Joyce married in 1968, Three years later, they decided to travel to Central and South America. They arrived in Chile in July of 1972 and fell in love with the pastoral country along the Pacific Ocean. "It was a beautiful place," Horman recalled. They were fascinated by President Salvador Allende's socialist experiment. "People were taking a hold of their future. Everybody was talking about politics 100 percent of the time," Horman said enthusiastically. "It was vibrant, electric."

They decided to stay in Chile. Charles made a living as a freelance journalist, writing a few articles for a small leftist newspaper, while Joyce pursued art studies. Joyce describes her husband's leftist political views as mild, nothing that either of them would have anticipated as dangerous. But the political climate changed rapidly. Allende's reforms started going sour in 1973. Inflation rose to new heights. Copper, Chile's main export at the time, lost half its value in world markets and labor strikes were crippling the nation's economy.

Next page | Chile awakens to a terrifying reality