In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

• Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice by Alan McPherson
• Doug Cassel (bio)

Alan McPherson, Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice ( Univ. North Carolina Press 2019), ISBN 9781469653501, 298 pages.

I. INTRODUCTION

On 21 September 1976, in the first known terrorist assassination by a foreign government [End Page 205] on US soil in modern history, a car bomb exploded at Sheridan Circle on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C., killing Orlando Letelier, former Chilean Ambassador to the US, and Ronni Moffitt, a US citizen and colleague of Letelier at the Institute for Policy Studies.

There ensued criminal investigations and convictions of the direct perpetrators in the US, as well as a civil suit against Chile that led indirectly to compensation. Almost two decades after the assassinations, the Chilean Supreme Court in 1995 upheld the criminal convictions of former Chilean intelligence chief, General Manuel Contreras, and his former head of operations, Brigadier General Pedro Espinoza. They were sentenced to prison terms of seven and six years, respectively.

Charges against them for other murders and disappearances followed. By the time of his death in 2015, Contreras was serving fifty-eight sentences totaling over 526 years, with fifty-six more cases pending.¹ As of August 2020, Espinoza is apparently still alive, and on 8 August was reportedly sentenced to ten years in prison for other murders.²

General Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator who almost certainly ordered or authorized Contreras to have Letelier killed, was never tried. When he died in 2006, however, he was facing about 300 charges for human rights violations and corruption.³

In Ghosts of Sheridan Circle,⁴ Temple University history Professor Alan McPherson has given us the first detailed, book-length rendition of the entire saga of the Letelier-Moffitt murders and the subsequent pursuit of justice, from the bombing in 1976 to the ongoing Chilean investigation in 2018 of the killing of Ronni Moffitt. The book is an extensively footnoted academic work. Yet McPherson's narrative talent and dramatic material make his book as gripping a read as a good novelist's murder mystery.

McPherson's opus will be valuable reading for scholars and others interested in such topics as the development of the human rights movement since the days of Jimmy Carter, the interplay of state interests and human rights, the role and limits of domestic and international law in prosecuting crimes of state, US-Chilean relations, and Chilean history.

Unfortunately, contrary to the publisher's claim, the book is not and cannot be a "definitive" account of the story. Did Pinochet himself order or authorize the murder? Almost certainly, but the book does not provide definitive proof. Did the CIA know about the murder beforehand? And what evidence did the US government have, soon after the assassinations, of Pinochet's role?

Alas, through no fault of McPherson's, we don't know. As recently as 2019 and 2020, revelations of US government documents and CIA operations have shed further light on these questions. But even today, we still do not have the full story. Not all the documents are yet released, and many of those made public to date are heavily redacted.

Even full release of contemporaneous CIA documents will be less than definitive. [End Page 206] Pinochet did not likely give such an order in writing. He never admitted it, although on his deathbed he took "political responsibility for everything that was done."⁵ In 2005 Contreras claimed in a court document that Pinochet "personally arranged and directed the actions" of those who killed Letelier and Moffitt.⁶ That is almost certainly true. But what is the added value of this claim by a man who lied about his own involvement for decades, and who had a motive to lie again, and to insist he was only following orders, when facing further imprisonment in 2005?

II. PERSONAL SKETCHES

Most of McPherson's book undertakes a rendering of the story that is as chronological as possible in managing so many overlapping parts. The planning and execution of the assassinations are presented in dismaying detail...

中文翻译：

---

谢里登圆环的幽灵：艾伦·麦克弗森（Alan McPherson）华盛顿暗杀案如何将皮诺切特的恐怖状态绳之以法（评论）

代替摘要，这里是内容的简要摘录：

审核人：

• 谢里登圆环的幽灵：华盛顿暗杀案如何将皮诺切特的恐怖状态绳之以法作者：艾伦·麦克弗森（Alan McPherson）
• 道格·卡塞尔（生物）

艾伦·麦克弗森（Alan McPherson），《谢里登圈子的幽灵：华盛顿暗杀案如何将皮诺切特的恐怖状态绳之以法》（北卡罗莱纳大学出版社，2019年），ISBN 9781469653501，298页。

一，引言

1976年9月21日，外国政府在美国历史上首次暗杀[End Page 205]，一辆汽车炸弹在华盛顿特区大使馆街的Sheridan Circle爆炸，炸死了前智利大使奥兰多·莱特里尔（Orlando Letelier）。美国以及政策研究协会Letelier的美国公民和同事Ronni Moffitt。

随后对美国的直接肇事者进行了刑事调查和定罪，以及对智利的民事诉讼间接导致了赔偿。遇刺事件发生后近二十年，智利最高法院于1995年维持了智利前情报局长曼努埃尔·孔特雷拉斯将军及其前行动负责人佩德罗·埃斯皮诺萨准将的刑事定罪。他们分别被判处七年和六年徒刑。

随后针对他们的其他谋杀和失踪指控。截至2015年去世时，孔特雷拉斯共服刑58年，共526年，还有56宗案件待审。¹截至2020年8月，埃斯皮诺萨显然还活着，据报8月8日因其他谋杀罪被判处十年徒刑。^2个

智利前独裁者奥古斯托·皮诺切特将军几乎可以肯定地下令或授权孔特雷拉斯杀死莱特利尔，但他从未受到审判。但是，当他于2006年去世时，他因侵犯人权和腐败而面临约300项指控。³

在《谢里登圆环的幽灵》中，天普大学的历史⁴艾伦·麦克弗森（Alan McPherson）教授给了我们关于莱特里尔·莫菲特谋杀案整个故事的第一个详尽的书本化译本，包括从1976年的炸弹袭击到目前的智利人的正义追求。在2018年对罗尼·莫菲特（Ronni Moffitt）的杀害进行了调查。这本书是广泛注脚的学术著作。然而，麦克弗森的叙事才能和戏剧性的材料使他的书成为了一个很好的小说家的谋杀之谜。

麦克弗森的著作对于学者和其他对诸如吉米·卡特时代以来的人权运动的发展，国家利益与人权的相互作用，国内法和国际法在起诉犯罪中的作用和局限性等话题感兴趣的学者将是有价值的读物。国家，美中关系和智利历史。

不幸的是，与出版商的主张相反，这本书不是并且不能成为故事的“确定性”叙述。皮诺切特本人是否下令或授权进行谋杀？几乎可以肯定，但是这本书没有提供明确的证明。中情局事先知道这起谋杀案吗？暗杀事件发生后不久，美国政府有什么证据证明皮诺切特的作用？

las，麦弗森的错，我们不知道。就在2019年和2020年，美国政府文件和CIA行动的揭露进一步揭示了这些问题。但是即使到了今天，我们仍然没有完整的故事。并非所有文档都已发布，并且迄今为止已公开的许多文档都已被大量编辑。

即使是同时发布CIA的全部文件，也都无法确定。[完206页]皮诺切特（Pinochet）不太可能以书面形式下达此命令。他从来没有承认过，尽管在临终时他对“所做的一切负有政治责任”。⁵ 2005年，孔特雷拉斯（Contreras）在一份法院文件中声称，皮诺切特（Pinochet）“亲自安排并指挥了杀害莱特利尔和莫菲特的人的行动”。⁶几乎可以肯定的是。但是，一个人谎称自己参与了几十年，并且有动机再次撒谎，并坚持认为他只是在服从命令，而在2005年面临进一步的监禁时，这种主张的附加价值是什么？

二。个人素描

麦克弗森的大部分书籍都对故事进行了渲染，尽可能按时间顺序排列，以便处理许多重叠部分。暗杀的计划和执行细节令人沮丧。