Two weeks ago, Labbe published a book called "Pinochet in Person," a flattering portrait of the former dictator. He said the scandal involving Washington's Riggs Bank had been especially damaging to Pinochet's reputation in Chile, where many of his supporters excused the human rights violations as necessary measures to combat a war against communist terrorists in the 1970s.
Because his supporters always championed Pinochet's fiscal and moral discipline, the banking allegations are "maybe the most difficult to answer," Labbe said.
Pinochet in December was declared mentally fit to undergo investigation into the murder of one person and the disappearances of nine others related to Operation Condor, in which South American military governments sought to assassinate prominent leftist dissidents in the 1970s. He was indicted and placed under house arrest in January.
In a separate investigation, he lost immunity from prosecution in a case involving the assassination of Gen. Carlos Prats, who commanded the Chilean army before Pinochet overthrew the government of Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973. Prats and his wife were killed by a car bomb in 1974 in Buenos Aires.
Pinochet also is being investigated for possible tax evasion for secretly depositing up to $8 million in Riggs Bank. This month, Banco de Chile said it would close Pinochet's accounts in Miami and New York after U.S. officials said the bank had concealed accounts that had been controlled by Pinochet.
Pinochet's defense so far has centered on arguments that he is too frail and mentally feeble to stand trial. Labbe, who visits Pinochet often, said the former general rises at about 9 a.m., takes daily walks and spends a lot of time at his desk looking at books.
Often, he said, they sit in silence, each flipping through a different book. Labbe said Pinochet has accepted that he will likely die an outcast in his own country.
"He knows very well that these things happen to great men," Labbe said. "The great men need to wait for history's judgment, not [current] justice."
That position infuriates those who have monitored human rights atrocities during the Pinochet dictatorship.
"It's an unbelievable dynamic. . . . The military is managing to project itself as victimized rather than victimizers," said Peter Kornbluh, director of the Chile project at the private National Security Archive in Washington.
Kornbluh said that despite recent efforts to resuscitate Pinochet's image, evidence being gathered in many legal cases has tied a noose around his legacy. He said the demise of the Eternal Flame of Liberty, and official statements that a funeral with state honors is now "unthinkable" for Pinochet, have given the former dictator a glimpse of how history will judge him.
