Books by John Dinges 2

Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing after the Coup (U. California Press 2025)

Set against the romance of revolution and the terror of a military coup, this arresting mystery is also a reckoning with the callousness of U.S. foreign policy. 

In 1972 two idealistic young Americans, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, arrived in Chile to participate in President Salvador Allende’s socialist and democratic revolution. A year later they were secretly executed as Chile’s military, with U.S. backing, deposed Allende. Following a sham investigation and cover-up, a Chilean defector leveled a stunning but ultimately false accusation: a CIA agent was in the room when one of the killings was ordered. 

The defector’s tale inspired the acclaimed 1982 film Missing and established U.S. involvement as the accepted narrative. But Chile in Their Hearts exposes the tale as a fabrication and leads us to a more intriguing reality. This book will force readers to rethink what they thought they knew about this infamous case. Renowned investigative journalist John Dinges scoured U.S. and Chilean archives and interviewed new witnesses to reveal the true story of the killings and the compelling adventure of the two Americans’ lives against the backdrop of U.S. intervention in Chile. 

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Chile en el Corazón: El enigma de dos norteamericanos asesinados por la dictadura–La historia jamás contada (Debate 2023).

Charles Horman y Frank Teruggi estuvieron entre los miles de extranjeros que confluyeron en Chile para participar de la “vía chilena al socialismo” de Salvador Allende. Después del golpe militar fueron recluidos en el Estadio Nacional, calificados de “extremistas,” y ejecutados. El gobierno de Estados Unidos encubrió los hechos que ya conocía y se sumó a la versión falsa del régimen de que “nadie sabe” quién los mató ni por qué. La película Missing hizo famoso el caso, pero distorsionó hechos relevantes. La verdadera historia se revela ahora en esta contundente investigación. El autor, John Dinges, arribó a nuestro país en 1972, siendo uno de los internacionalistas que, como sus compatriotas asesinados, llegó a tener a Chile en su corazón.

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Los Años del Cóndor:

Operaciones internacionales de asesinato en el cono sur (Debate 2021).

John Dinges’ book greatly expanding his original investigation into the Condor operation first published in 2004, with new chapters and findings based on information only recently available.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The original investigation of an era of mass repression in South America…and the story of the anti-Marxist assassination alliance that frightened even Henry Kissinger.

The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents, by John Dinges, The New Press 2004, 2005. Full description and reviews.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The United States helped to install Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet in power and was his prime defender. Pinochet repaid the favor by committing the first act of state-sponsored terrorism in the US. Capital –the car-bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier. Newlyweds Michael and Ronni Moffitt were riding in the car; Ronni died from flying shrapnel.

Assassination on Embassy Row, by John Dinges and Saul Landau, Forbidden Bookshelf 2014 (Updated with Afterword and new introduction), Hardback available used (Pantheon 1990).

 

 

 

 

Manuel Noriega was a second tier dictator and a third rate drug trafficker; he was also the CIA’s main asset in Panama. So when he turned against the U.S. and –worse–began to ridicule the president, George H.W. Bush unleashed the full force of the U.S. military to invade one of the smallest countries in the world. 

Our Man in Panama: The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega, (Times Books, a division of Random House (c) 1990, 1991.

 

 

 

 

 

When Dinges became Managing Editor of NPR News, the priority was to make NPR’s journalism the best in broadcast media, and to have their reporting compete with the New York Times. Sound Reporting was the guidebook.

Sound Reporting: The National Public Radio Guide to Radio Journalism and Production, Marcus D. Rosenbaum & John Dinges, Editors
Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company 1992.

 

 

 

 

Before becoming a journalist, Dinges was sent to study theology at the University of Austria at Innsbruck. His Gurus were Karl and Hugo Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Avery Dulles, Johannes Baptist Metz, and, remarkably, the future pope and erstwhile liberal thinker Josef Ratzinger. Dinges and three fellow seminarians compiled and translated articles that represented the best contemporary thinking on the phenomenon of religious faith. Dinges says “I have always been convinced it was this book that gave the Des Moines Tribune a good enough reason to hire a guy with zero journalism training for a tryout on the copy desk. It showed I was literate, had unconventional intellectual leanings and was probably trainable. That’s how I became a journalist. I was so happy I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

Toward a Theology of Christian Faith, Avery Dulles et al, Michael Mooney, Joseph Koechler, John Dinges and Michael Scheible, editors. P. J. Kenedy & Sons New York 1968.