CHILE: Mercy Flight

Treasury Secretary William Simon announced his unusual mission casually enough. During an early-morning appearance on NBC's Today show, he noted that he was about to take off for a visit to South America and hoped, by the way. to secure the release of "quite a few" of the political prisoners still languishing in the jails of Chile's right-wing military regime. He succeeded. By the time Simon's Air Force jet landed in Santiago for his ten-hour visit there, the Chileans had quietly agreed to free some 300 detainees, among them two former ministers in the ill-fated Marxist government of...

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