Priest May Have Seen Killing of Former S.D. Man in El Salvador

An American priest who worked in eastern El Salvador says he may have witnessed the execution of Michael Kline, a 21-year-old former San Diegan shot by Salvadoran troops in October, 1982.

Father David Fallon, currently a parish priest in Mentor, Ohio, said he made a “confidential statement” to the U.S. Embassy a few weeks after he witnessed an apparent roadside shooting in Morazan Province. Fallon said he believes he saw a man shot at close range by soldiers around the time and place of the Kline killing.

Salvadoran soldiers have admitted shooting Kline, but they have claimed he was shot at a distance of 30 feet as he tried to flee. If the incident Fallon reported seeing was in fact Kline’s execution, his story would corroborate autopsy evidence that Kline was shot at close range.

A Salvadoran judge has charged three soldiers with homicide in connection with Kline’s shooting. U.S. Embassy officials believe there will be a trial within two months, but an attorney for Kline’s family says he is skeptical the men will be tried.

The attorney, Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union, believes that Fallon’s account of the shooting may encourage prosecution of the case.

Fallon, who was living in El Salvador at the time of the shooting, said he told embassy officials he did not want to be identified unless he was certain there would be an investigation because “coming forward as a witness puts your life in danger.”

Michael Kline’s family and Rosenbaum, who learned of the possible eyewitness three weeks ago from a reporter, say the U.S. State Department should have informed them of the priest’s account.

Rosenbaum said officials could have turned over the information without identifying Fallon, or could have put them in touch with Fallon once he returned to the United States last October.

Rosenbaum charged that the U.S. government consistently has withheld information about the killing and provided the family with misinformation in order to protect U.S. foreign-policy interests in the area.

“Here is a case of an American citizen brutally and without provocation tortured and murdered by three members of the Salvadoran military, the same as has happened to other Americans and to 45,000 Salvadorans. That is not a story this Administration is interested in airing publicly,” Rosenbaum said.

Kline was a tourist on his way to Costa Rica when he was ordered off a public bus at a routine military checkpoint in El Salvador on Oct. 13, 1982. His mother, Renate, and a sister live in San Diego.

According to statements from the Salvadoran soldiers, Kline was taken off the bus because he looked “suspicious” and wore “dirty clothes.” They said Kline was shot after he seized a gun, or attempted to seize a gun, and tried to flee.

The soldiers have claimed Kline was 30 feet away when they shot him, but an autopsy conducted at the U.S. Embassy’s request in El Salvador revealed that two of the bullets left powder burns, indicating that he was shot at close range. A U.S. Embassy spokesman said Tuesday that the soldiers have since altered some elements of their account.

Renate Kline has traveled to Washington and El Salvador to gather information to reconstruct the events surrounding her son’s death. She wants to see his assassins stand trial and she wants to find out why the State Department allegedly has not cooperated in the investigation.

Donald Hamilton, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, denied the government has withheld information or misled the Kline family. He said embassy officials worked “nights and weekends” to identify Kline’s body, assist the family and get Fallon’s testimony to the Salvadoran judge handling the case.

“I cannot help but be annoyed at people who suggest we did less that we should have,” Hamilton said.

He said he was not certain when the embassy received Fallon’s statement or if it was passed along to the Klines.

“If he (Fallon) asked us to guard his identity, we would have done so, even to the family . . . But we absolutely told them no later than Dec. 12 (1982, when the Klines were in San Salvador) that we believed it was a homicide case and we were protesting and moving ahead and seeking prosecution,” he said.

Renate Kline said in an interview this week that officials never told her they believed her son was murdered.

In a telephone interview from Ohio, Fallon said he was driving through eastern El Salvador in the late afternoon when he saw a man lying face-down beside the two-lane highway amid soldiers in green fatigues.

From his vantage point on a rise in the road about 200 to 300 yards away, Fallon could see that the man’s hands were tied behind his back and that the soldiers had their guns trained on him.

“I came over the rise and thought I heard shots, and at the same time I thought I saw the body shudder,” Fallon said. “My first thought was that he’s just shot him, and now what is going to happen to me . . . was afraid at that point and I just kept moving . . . I wasn’t dumb enough to play hero. That just doesn’t work down there.”

Fallon, 41, reported what he saw to the U.S. Embassy the next time he visited San Salvador.

Fallon said he could not identify the soldiers or the victim of the shooting, but he said there was a truckload of Salvadoran civilians at the site of the shooting. According to the three soldiers’ account, they commandeered a pickup truck to take Kline to the provincial capital and he tried to flee from the back of the truck.

Two years after the incident, when Fallon was studying in Rome, he was asked by the U.S. government to return to El Salvador to testify before a judge. He said the U.S. embassies in Rome and San Salvador arranged for him to fly to San Salvador and to leave immediately after giving his testimony.

He said he does not agree with Rosenbaum that the embassy covered up his testimony.

“From my point of view, they honored the confidentiality and facilitated my giving testimony,” he said.

Michael Kline was the seventh U.S. citizen shot to death by government security forces. Five soldiers were convicted last May in the 1980 slaying of four U.S. churchwomen, but no one has been tried for the killings of two AFL-CIO labor advisers who assisted the agrarian reform program.

Hamilton said he believes the three soldiers in custody in connection with Kline’s death will go on trial within two months.

Meanwhile, Rosenbaum said, a federal judge last month dismissed a suit Rosenbaum filed against the government of El Salvador and several State Department and U.S. Embassy officials seeking $15 million in damages for the Kline family. He said U.S. District Judge Harold Greene ruled that the parties were immune from prosecution.

But Rosenbaum has amended the suit to ask that all documents pertaining to the slaying be made available to the family under the Freedom of Information Act. He said he also plans to ask Congress to investigate the State Department’s treatment of the case and the Kline family.