Chile's Public Prosecutor's Office has opened a review into whether members of the country's intelligence apparatus illegally passed classified material to the United States, after U.S. Ambassador Brandon Judd suggested Washington held its own analysis blaming left-wing groups for the violent unrest that shook Chile in October 2019. The Metropolitan Centro Norte prosecutor's office took on the case this week, opening a path that could reach current members of Chile's protected intelligence system, according to BioBioChile.
A U.S. Envoy's Visit Set Off the Dispute
The controversy did not start with Judd. It began on September 3, when Sarah B. Rogers, the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, addressed a regional Madrid Forum summit in Santiago and blamed left-wing radicals for the Metro station fires that marked the 2019 revolt, according to the U.S. Embassy in Santiago. Five days later, in a CNN Chile interview, Judd was pressed on Rogers's remarks and went further, telling the network that "the evidence points to the fact that it was, in fact, left-wing activists" behind the unrest, framing the assessment as the product of American intelligence analysis, per Emol.
Why Lawmakers Smelled a Leak
Judd's phrasing set off alarm inside Congress because it implied Washington had reached a specific conclusion about a domestic Chilean event, raising the question of whether U.S. agencies had run their own inquiry inside Chile, or instead drawn on material funneled out of Chile's own security services.
Three opposition lawmakers — Luis Cuello, Juan Santana and Daniela Serrano — took the matter to the National Prosecutor's Office, invoking Articles 38 and 44 of Law 19.974, Chile's intelligence statute, which shield the confidentiality of intelligence files and punish officials who leak or grant unauthorized access to them, according to Puranoticia. Cuello argued that Judd's own account of events suggested "the illegal transfer of information by Chilean intelligence officials to the embassy," per El Reporte Diario.
Acting National Prosecutor Carmen Gloria Wittwer signed off on a September 22 memo forwarding the complaint to the Centro Norte regional office, concluding that Judd's account pointed unmistakably to intelligence-system officials passing secret material to a foreign government's representatives, per reporting from BioBioChile and El Mostrador. Prosecutor Francisco Jacir now has to determine whether the episode amounts to a crime and, if it does, which officials might be responsible.
The Foreign Ministry Steps In
Word of the claim reached Chile's Foreign Ministry almost immediately. Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna called Judd in for a meeting to explain his sourcing, particularly since the Kast government had never requested any such report from Washington, according to La Tercera.
The ambassador emerged from that meeting with a considerably narrower version of events. He told reporters the U.S. Embassy has no investigation of its own and holds no documents on the 2019 unrest, according to The Clinic. Judd said his original comments reflected an informal reading of open material — police statements, congressional records and commentary from Chilean analysts — rather than classified intelligence or an independent U.S. probe.
The Prosecutor's Office Won't Rule Either Way
National Prosecutor Ángel Valencia said he had not personally seen whatever material Judd initially referenced. Pressed on whether ongoing investigations backed the ambassador's theory linking left-wing organizations to the unrest, Valencia said "I would not want to make a statement of that nature," adding that consolidating the remaining 18-O cases under one prosecutor was meant to eventually answer that kind of question, per CNN Chile. He noted that closed cases can always be reopened if new evidence surfaces.
The timing is notable: Chile's Chamber of Deputies had already closed its own investigative commission into the 2019 unrest without identifying any coordinated funding or a specific group behind it, according to hora12.cl. Judd's remarks, and the criminal complaint that followed, have reopened a long-running fight over who, if anyone, organized the uprising, while adding a question the original commission never had to face: whether Chilean officials broke the law to help a foreign government reach its own conclusions about it.
