 In December 1985, McCain visited Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and junta member Admiral José Toribio Merino.McCain told the U.S. Embassy in Santiago that both meetings were friendly and warm, but described Pinochet as obsessed with the dangers of communism and likened him to the John Birch Society.Merino's statement to McCain that the junta would not support a Pinochet bid to remain president was made publicly known (but McCain's meeting with Pinochet was not declassified until 2008, upon which it was widely reported in the Latin American mainstream press).