Letelier case
Encyclopedia
The Letelier case refers to the killing in Washington, D.C. of Orlando Letelier
, a Chile
an political figure and later United States-based activist, along with his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt
. The assassination by agents of the Chilean secret police
DINA of the government of Augusto Pinochet
was one among many in Operation Condor
.
In 1971, Letelier was appointed ambassador to the United States by Salvador Allende
, the socialist president of Chile. Letelier had lived in Washington, D.C. during the 1960s and had supported Allende's campaign for the presidency. Allende believed Letelier's experience and connections in international banking would be highly beneficial to developing US–Chile diplomatic relations. During 1973, Letelier served successively as Minister of Foreign Affairs, then Interior Minister
, and, finally, Defense Minister
. After the Chilean coup of 1973
that brought Augusto Pinochet
to power, Letelier became the first member of the Allende administration to be arrested by the Chilean government and sent to a political prison in Tierra del Fuego
.
He was held for 12 months in different concentration camps suffering severe torture
: first at the Tacna Regiment, then at the Military Academy; later he was sent to a political prison for eight months in Dawson Island
and from there he was transferred to the basement of the Air Force War Academy, and finally to the concentration camp of Ritoque, until international diplomatic pressure especially from Diego Arria
, then Governor of the city of Caracas
, Venezuela, and United States Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger
resulted in the sudden release of Letelier on the condition that he immediately leave Chile. He was told by the officer in charge of his release that "the arm of DINA is long, General Pinochet will not and does not tolerate activities against his government", a clear warning to Letelier that living outside of Chile wouldn't guarantee his safety.
After his release in 1974, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he became a senior fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies
, an independent international policy studies
think tank
. He plunged into writing, speaking, and lobbying the US Congress
and European governments against Augusto Pinochet
's regime, and soon he became the leading voice of the Chilean resistance, in the process preventing several loans (especially from Europe) from being awarded to the military government. He was described by his colleagues as being "the most respected and effective spokesman in the international campaign to condemn and isolate" Pinochet's dictatorship. Letelier was assisted at the Institute for Policy Studies by Ronni Moffitt, a 25-year-old fundraiser who ran a "Music Carryout" program that produced musical instruments for the poor, and also campaigned for democracy in Chile.
Letelier soon became a person of interest for Operation Condor
, a campaign initiated by right-wing
dictatorships in South America to gather intelligence
on opposition movements and to assassinate the leaders of these movements. Former General and political figure Carlos Prats
, who had become a vocal opponent of the Pinochet government, was killed by a radio-controlled car bomb
on September 30, 1974, in an assassination planned and executed by members of DINA. Letelier's pro-democracy campaign and his vehement criticisms of Pinochet had been under watch by the Chilean government. Letelier became a target in DINA director Manuel Contreras
' efforts to eliminate resistance to the Pinochet government.
In October 1975, Letelier became the Director of Planning and Development for the International Political Economy Programme of the Transnational Institute
, an international think tank for progressive politics
affiliated with the Institute for Policy Studies. Through the institute's operations in the Netherlands
, Letelier convinced the Dutch government not to invest US$63 million in the Chilean mining industry. On September 10, 1976, the Chilean government revoked Letelier's Chilean citizenship. Pinochet signed a decree declaring that the former ambassador's citizenship be canceled for his interference "with normal financial support to Chile" and his efforts "to hinder or prevent the investment of Dutch capital in Chile". Later that day, in a speech he delivered at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden
, Letelier proclaimed:
in Embassy Row
at 9:35 am EDT
, an explosion erupted under the car, lifting it off the ground. When the car came to a halt after colliding with a Volkswagen
illegally parked in front of the Irish embassy, Michael was able to escape from the rear end of the car by crawling out of the back window. He then saw his wife stumbling away from the car and, assuming that she was alright, went to assist Letelier, who was still in the driver seat, barely conscious and appearing to be in great pain. Letelier's head was rolling back and forth, his eyes moved slightly, and he muttered unintelligibly. Michael tried to remove Letelier from the car but was unable to do so despite the fact that much of Letelier's lower torso was blown away and his legs had been severed.
At that point, Michael noticed that Ronni had disappeared from view and, as the police began to arrive, he left Letelier and went across the street, where he found her lying on the ground being attended to by a doctor who happened to be driving by at the time of the explosion. She was bleeding heavily from her mouth.
Both Ronni Moffitt and Orlando Letelier were taken to the George Washington University Medical Center shortly thereafter. At the hospital, it was discovered Ronni's larynx
and carotid artery
had been severed by a piece of flying shrapnel. She drowned in her own blood some 45 minutes after Letelier's death, while Michael suffered only a minor head wound. Michael estimated the bomb was detonated at approximately 9:30 am; the medical examiner report set the time of Letelier's death at 9:50 am and Moffitt's at 10:37 am, the cause of death for both listed as explosion-incurred injuries due to a car bomb
placed under the car on the driver's side.
Investigators initially determined that the explosion was caused by a plastic bomb, molded to concentrate the force of its blast into the driver seat. The bomb was attached by wires or magnets to the car's underside and blew a "circular hole, 2 to 2½ feet in diameter" in the driver's seat. The bomb was not believed to have been controlled by a timing device or a remote-controlled detonator.
In the days after the incident, spokespersons for the United States Department of State
said the department "expresses its gravest concern about Dr. Orlando Letelier's death". Due to the assassination of Prats and the attempted assassination
of Bernardo Leighton
, the incident was believed to have been the latest of a series of state-sponsored assassination attempts against Chilean political exiles. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) said that this was the first incident of violence against Chilean exiles on American soil, according to agency records.
The FBI eventually were convinced that Michael Townley
, a DINA US expatriate who had once worked for the CIA, had organized the assassination of Orlando Letelier. Townley and Armando Fernandez Larios, who was also implicated in the murder, had been given visas
by Robert White
, the United States ambassador to Paraguay
, at the urging of the Paraguayan government despite their having false Paraguayan passports.
In 1978, Chile agreed to extradite Townley to the United States. During his U.S. trial, Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cuban exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard
, after consultations with the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU)
leadership, including Luis Posada Carriles
and Orlando Bosch
, those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero
, Alvin Ross Díaz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampollhttp://www.counterpunch.org/landau08202005.htmlhttp://www.granma.cu/ingles/mar03/mier26/12posada.html . According to the Miami Herald, Luis Posada Carriles
was at this meeting, which formalized details that led to Letelier's death and also the Cubana
bombing two weeks later. Townley also agreed to provide evidence against these men in exchange for a deal that involved his pleading guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to commit murder and being given a ten year sentence. His wife, Mariana Callejas, also agreed to testify in exchange for not being prosecuted.
On January 9, 1979 the trial of the Novo Sampoll brothers and Díaz began in Washington. General Pinochet refused to allow Romero and Suárez, who were DINA officers, to be extradited. All three were found guilty of murder. Guillermo Novo and Díaz were sentenced to life imprisonment. Ignacio Novo received eighty years. Soon after the trial, Townley was freed under the Witness Protection Program.
In 1987 Larios fled Chile with the assistance of the FBI, claiming he feared that Pinochet was planning to kill him because he refused to co-operate in cover-up activities related to the Letelier murder. On February 4, 1987, Larios pled guilty to one count of acting as an accessory to the murder. In exchange for the plea and information about the plot, the authorities dropped the charges.
Several other people were also prosecuted and convicted for the murder. Among them were General Manuel Contreras
, former head of the DINA, and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, also formerly of the DINA. Contreras and Espinoza were convicted in Chile on November 12, 1993, and sentenced to seven and six years of prison respectively.
Pinochet, who died on December 10, 2006, was never charged in relation to this case. Orlando Letelier's son, representative Juan Pablo Letelier, gave this testimony: "What I have said once and again because I was taught to say the truth is that there is no evidence whatsoever from the thousands of pages of the process that may allow to affirm that there was participation of the Chilean Army nor of its Commander in Chief (general Pinochet) in the assassination of Orlando Letelier" (El Mercurio, June 4, 1995).
According to John Dinges
, co-author of Assassination on Embassy Row, documents released in 1999 and 2000 establish that "the CIA had inside intelligence about the assassination alliance at least two months before Letelier was killed but failed to act to stop the plans." It also knew about an Uruguay
an attempt to kill U.S. Congressman Edward Koch, which then-CIA director George H.W. Bush warned him about only after Orlando Letelier's murderhttp://www.johndinges.com/condor/revelations.htm .
Kenneth Maxwell
points out that U.S. policymakers were aware not only of Operation Condor in general, but in particular "that a Chilean assassination team had been planning to enter the United States." A month before the Letelier assassination, Kissinger
ordered "that the Latin American rulers involved be informed that the 'assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad ... would create a most serious moral and political problem." Maxwell wrote in his review of Peter Kornbluh
's book, "This demarche was apparently not delivered: the U.S. embassy in Santiago demurred on the ground that to deliver such a strong rebuke would upset the dictator", and that, on September 20, 1976, the day before Letelier and Moffitt were killed, the State Department instructed the ambassadors to take no further action with regard to the Condor scheme. [Maxwell, 2004, 18].
On April 10, 2010, the Associated Press
reported that a document discovered by the National Security Archive
indicated that the State Department communique that was supposed to have gone out to the Chilean government warning against the assassinations had been blocked by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
.
At least, influential US politicians welcomed the murder of Letelier for ideological or strategic reasons. In July 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, in a conversation with the journalist Brian Crozier, expressed the view, that "it was a good thing Letelier had been bumped off". Reagan's running mate George H. W. Bush was the director of CIA at the time Letelier was assassinated.
and TV-host Robert Novak
of the Washington Post before being returned to his widow. Allegedly the documents show that Letelier was in contact with the surviving political leadership of the various parties that made up the Popular Unity coalition exiled in East Berlin
, who had been given refuge and supported by the East German Government during their stay. Evans and Novak suspected that these individuals had been recruited by the Stasi
. Evans and Novak claim documents in the briefcase showed that Letelier had maintained contact with Salvador Allende’s daughter, Beatriz Allende
, who was married to Cuba
n DGI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona.
According to the Novak and Evans, Letelier was able to receive funding of $5,000 a month from the Cuban government and under the supervision of Beatriz Allende, he used his contacts within the Institute for Policy Studies
(IPS) and western human rights groups to organize a campaign within the United Nations as well as the US Congress to isolate the new Chilean government. This organized pressure on Pinochet’s government was thought to have been closely coordinated by the Cuban and Soviet governments, using individuals like Letelier to implement these efforts. Letelier's briefcase also allegedly contained his address book which contained the names of dozens of known and suspected Eastern Bloc
intelligence agents. All correspondence between Letelier and individuals in Cuba was supposedly handled via Julian Rizo, who used his diplomatic status to hide his activities.
Fellow IPS member and friend Saul Landau
described Evans and Novak as part of an “organized right wing attack”. In 1980, Letelier's widow, Isabel, wrote in the New York Times that the money sent to her late husband from Cuba was from western sources, and that Cuba had simply acted as an intermediary.
Orlando Letelier
Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...
, a Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an political figure and later United States-based activist, along with his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt
Ronni Moffitt
Ronni Moffitt , was a American political activist.-Early Life:She was born in Passaic, New Jersey as Ronni Susan Karpen on January 10, 1951 to Murray and Hilda Karpen. She was the oldest of three children including Harry Karpen and Michael Karpen. Her family owned a restaurant called "Karpen's" and...
. The assassination by agents of the Chilean secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
DINA of the government of Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
was one among many in Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
.
Background
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
, the socialist president of Chile. Letelier had lived in Washington, D.C. during the 1960s and had supported Allende's campaign for the presidency. Allende believed Letelier's experience and connections in international banking would be highly beneficial to developing US–Chile diplomatic relations. During 1973, Letelier served successively as Minister of Foreign Affairs, then Interior Minister
Ministry of the Interior (Chile)
The Ministry of the Interior and Public Security is the cabinet-level administrative office in charge of "maintaining public order, security and social peace" within Chile. It is also charged with planning, directing, coordinating, executing, controlling, and informing the domestic policies...
, and, finally, Defense Minister
Ministry of National Defense (Chile)
The Ministry of National Defense is the cabinet-level administrative office in charge of "maintaining the independence and sovereignty" of Chile. It is also charged with planning, directing, coordinating, executing, controlling and informing the defense policies formulated by the President of...
. After the Chilean coup of 1973
Chilean coup of 1973
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event of the Cold War and the history of Chile. Following an extended period of political unrest between the conservative-dominated Congress of Chile and the socialist-leaning President Salvador Allende, discontent culminated in the latter's downfall in...
that brought Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
to power, Letelier became the first member of the Allende administration to be arrested by the Chilean government and sent to a political prison in Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...
.
He was held for 12 months in different concentration camps suffering severe torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
: first at the Tacna Regiment, then at the Military Academy; later he was sent to a political prison for eight months in Dawson Island
Dawson Island
Dawson Island is an island in the Strait of Magellan that forms part of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, 100 km south of the city of Punta Arenas in Chile, and part of the Municipality of Punta Arenas. It is located southeast of Brunswick Peninsula and is an approximately 1290 km² tract...
and from there he was transferred to the basement of the Air Force War Academy, and finally to the concentration camp of Ritoque, until international diplomatic pressure especially from Diego Arria
Diego Arria
Diego Arria Salicetti is a Venezuelan politician, diplomat, former Venezuelan Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations and President of the Security Council . He was Governor of the Federal District of Caracas in the mid-1970s...
, then Governor of the city of Caracas
Caracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, Venezuela, and United States Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
resulted in the sudden release of Letelier on the condition that he immediately leave Chile. He was told by the officer in charge of his release that "the arm of DINA is long, General Pinochet will not and does not tolerate activities against his government", a clear warning to Letelier that living outside of Chile wouldn't guarantee his safety.
After his release in 1974, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he became a senior fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies
Institute for Policy Studies
Institute for Policy Studies is a left-wing think tank based in Washington, D.C..It has been directed by John Cavanagh since 1998- History :...
, an independent international policy studies
Policy studies
Policy Studies could be defined as the combination of policy analysis and program evaluation. It "involves systematically studying the nature, causes, and effects of alternative public policies, with particular emphasis on determining the policies that will achieve given goals."Policy Studies also...
think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
. He plunged into writing, speaking, and lobbying the US Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
and European governments against Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
's regime, and soon he became the leading voice of the Chilean resistance, in the process preventing several loans (especially from Europe) from being awarded to the military government. He was described by his colleagues as being "the most respected and effective spokesman in the international campaign to condemn and isolate" Pinochet's dictatorship. Letelier was assisted at the Institute for Policy Studies by Ronni Moffitt, a 25-year-old fundraiser who ran a "Music Carryout" program that produced musical instruments for the poor, and also campaigned for democracy in Chile.
Letelier soon became a person of interest for Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
, a campaign initiated by right-wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
dictatorships in South America to gather intelligence
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...
on opposition movements and to assassinate the leaders of these movements. Former General and political figure Carlos Prats
Carlos Prats
General Carlos Prats González was a Chilean Army officer, a political figure, minister and Vice President of Chile during President Salvador Allende's government, and General Augusto Pinochet's predecessor as commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army...
, who had become a vocal opponent of the Pinochet government, was killed by a radio-controlled car bomb
Car bomb
A car bomb, or truck bomb also known as a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device , is an improvised explosive device placed in a car or other vehicle and then detonated. It is commonly used as a weapon of assassination, terrorism, or guerrilla warfare, to kill the occupants of the vehicle,...
on September 30, 1974, in an assassination planned and executed by members of DINA. Letelier's pro-democracy campaign and his vehement criticisms of Pinochet had been under watch by the Chilean government. Letelier became a target in DINA director Manuel Contreras
Manuel Contreras
Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda is a Chilean military officer and the former head of DINA, Chile's secret police during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. As head of DINA he was the most powerful and feared man in the country, after Pinochet...
' efforts to eliminate resistance to the Pinochet government.
In October 1975, Letelier became the Director of Planning and Development for the International Political Economy Programme of the Transnational Institute
Transnational Institute
Transnational Institute is an international think tank for progressive politics. It was established in 1973 in Amsterdam and serves as a network for scholars and activists...
, an international think tank for progressive politics
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
affiliated with the Institute for Policy Studies. Through the institute's operations in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Letelier convinced the Dutch government not to invest US$63 million in the Chilean mining industry. On September 10, 1976, the Chilean government revoked Letelier's Chilean citizenship. Pinochet signed a decree declaring that the former ambassador's citizenship be canceled for his interference "with normal financial support to Chile" and his efforts "to hinder or prevent the investment of Dutch capital in Chile". Later that day, in a speech he delivered at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
, Letelier proclaimed:
Assassination
Letelier was traveling to work in Washington DC on September 21, 1976 with Moffitt and her husband of four months, Michael. Letelier was driving, while Moffitt was in the front passenger seat and Michael was in the rear behind his wife. As they rounded Sheridan CircleSheridan Circle
Sheridan Circle is a traffic circle in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Embassy Row. It is named for General Philip Sheridan, Union general of the American Civil War and later general of the United States Army...
in Embassy Row
Embassy Row
Embassy Row is the informal name for a street or area of a city in which embassies or other diplomatic installations are concentrated. Washington, D.C.'s Embassy Row lies along Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., and its cross streets between Thomas Circle and Ward Circle, although the vast majority of...
at 9:35 am EDT
Eastern Time Zone
The Eastern Time Zone of the United States and Canada is a time zone that falls mostly along the east coast of North America. Its UTC time offset is −5 hrs during standard time and −4 hrs during daylight saving time...
, an explosion erupted under the car, lifting it off the ground. When the car came to a halt after colliding with a Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...
illegally parked in front of the Irish embassy, Michael was able to escape from the rear end of the car by crawling out of the back window. He then saw his wife stumbling away from the car and, assuming that she was alright, went to assist Letelier, who was still in the driver seat, barely conscious and appearing to be in great pain. Letelier's head was rolling back and forth, his eyes moved slightly, and he muttered unintelligibly. Michael tried to remove Letelier from the car but was unable to do so despite the fact that much of Letelier's lower torso was blown away and his legs had been severed.
At that point, Michael noticed that Ronni had disappeared from view and, as the police began to arrive, he left Letelier and went across the street, where he found her lying on the ground being attended to by a doctor who happened to be driving by at the time of the explosion. She was bleeding heavily from her mouth.
Both Ronni Moffitt and Orlando Letelier were taken to the George Washington University Medical Center shortly thereafter. At the hospital, it was discovered Ronni's larynx
Larynx
The larynx , commonly called the voice box, is an organ in the neck of amphibians, reptiles and mammals involved in breathing, sound production, and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. It manipulates pitch and volume...
and carotid artery
Carotid artery
Carotid artery can refer to:* Common carotid artery* External carotid artery* Internal carotid artery...
had been severed by a piece of flying shrapnel. She drowned in her own blood some 45 minutes after Letelier's death, while Michael suffered only a minor head wound. Michael estimated the bomb was detonated at approximately 9:30 am; the medical examiner report set the time of Letelier's death at 9:50 am and Moffitt's at 10:37 am, the cause of death for both listed as explosion-incurred injuries due to a car bomb
Car bomb
A car bomb, or truck bomb also known as a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device , is an improvised explosive device placed in a car or other vehicle and then detonated. It is commonly used as a weapon of assassination, terrorism, or guerrilla warfare, to kill the occupants of the vehicle,...
placed under the car on the driver's side.
Investigation and prosecution
In the days after the incident, spokespersons for the United States Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
said the department "expresses its gravest concern about Dr. Orlando Letelier's death". Due to the assassination of Prats and the attempted assassination
Leighton case
On October 6, 1975, an assassination attempt in Rome, Italy, was carried out against Bernardo Leighton, a former Chilean Christian Democratic vice-president, then in exile...
of Bernardo Leighton
Bernardo Leighton
Bernardo Leighton Guzmán was a Chilean Christian Democrat who was targeted by Operation Condor.In 1937, President Arturo Alessandri Palma appointed him as Employment minister....
, the incident was believed to have been the latest of a series of state-sponsored assassination attempts against Chilean political exiles. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI) said that this was the first incident of violence against Chilean exiles on American soil, according to agency records.
The FBI eventually were convinced that Michael Townley
Michael Townley
Michael Vernon Townley is a US citizen currently living in the United States under terms of the federal witness protection program. A Central Intelligence Agency agent and operative of the Chilean secret police, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United...
, a DINA US expatriate who had once worked for the CIA, had organized the assassination of Orlando Letelier. Townley and Armando Fernandez Larios, who was also implicated in the murder, had been given visas
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
by Robert White
Robert White (ambassador)
Robert E. White served as U.S. ambassador under different administrations. He is currently president of the Center for International Policy....
, the United States ambassador to Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
, at the urging of the Paraguayan government despite their having false Paraguayan passports.
In 1978, Chile agreed to extradite Townley to the United States. During his U.S. trial, Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cuban exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard
Jean-Guy Allard
Jean-Guy Allard is a Canadian journalist who as editor and reporter worked for Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec from 1971 to 2000. He retired to Cuba, and now who writes for Granma...
, after consultations with the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU)
Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations
Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations is an anti-Castro group founded by Cuban exiles Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo Novo Sampoll and Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo....
leadership, including Luis Posada Carriles
Luis Posada Carriles
Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist and former Central Intelligence Agency agent....
and Orlando Bosch
Orlando Bosch
Orlando Bosch Ávila was a Cuban exile militant, former Central Intelligence Agency-backed operative, and head of Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, which the FBI has described as "an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization". Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called...
, those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero
Virgilio Paz Romero
Virgilio Paz Romero is an anti-Castro Cuban exile, involved in various anti-communist acts. He has been accused of taking part in Operation Condor, carrying out Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's murder in Washington, D.C...
, Alvin Ross Díaz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampollhttp://www.counterpunch.org/landau08202005.htmlhttp://www.granma.cu/ingles/mar03/mier26/12posada.html . According to the Miami Herald, Luis Posada Carriles
Luis Posada Carriles
Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist and former Central Intelligence Agency agent....
was at this meeting, which formalized details that led to Letelier's death and also the Cubana
Cubana Flight 455
Cubana Flight 455 was a Cuban flight from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down by a terrorist attack on October 6, 1976. All 78 people on board the Douglas DC-8 aircraft were killed in what was then the deadliest terrorist airline attack in the Western hemisphere...
bombing two weeks later. Townley also agreed to provide evidence against these men in exchange for a deal that involved his pleading guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to commit murder and being given a ten year sentence. His wife, Mariana Callejas, also agreed to testify in exchange for not being prosecuted.
On January 9, 1979 the trial of the Novo Sampoll brothers and Díaz began in Washington. General Pinochet refused to allow Romero and Suárez, who were DINA officers, to be extradited. All three were found guilty of murder. Guillermo Novo and Díaz were sentenced to life imprisonment. Ignacio Novo received eighty years. Soon after the trial, Townley was freed under the Witness Protection Program.
In 1987 Larios fled Chile with the assistance of the FBI, claiming he feared that Pinochet was planning to kill him because he refused to co-operate in cover-up activities related to the Letelier murder. On February 4, 1987, Larios pled guilty to one count of acting as an accessory to the murder. In exchange for the plea and information about the plot, the authorities dropped the charges.
Several other people were also prosecuted and convicted for the murder. Among them were General Manuel Contreras
Manuel Contreras
Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda is a Chilean military officer and the former head of DINA, Chile's secret police during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. As head of DINA he was the most powerful and feared man in the country, after Pinochet...
, former head of the DINA, and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, also formerly of the DINA. Contreras and Espinoza were convicted in Chile on November 12, 1993, and sentenced to seven and six years of prison respectively.
Pinochet, who died on December 10, 2006, was never charged in relation to this case. Orlando Letelier's son, representative Juan Pablo Letelier, gave this testimony: "What I have said once and again because I was taught to say the truth is that there is no evidence whatsoever from the thousands of pages of the process that may allow to affirm that there was participation of the Chilean Army nor of its Commander in Chief (general Pinochet) in the assassination of Orlando Letelier" (El Mercurio, June 4, 1995).
Allegations of U.S. knowledge
Allegations of U.S. early knowledge of the Letelier assassination hinge on the communiqués of U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, George Landau, with the State Department, and other U.S. government agencies. When Townley and his Chilean associate tried to obtain B-2 visas to the United States in Paraguay, Landau was told by Paraguayan intelligence that these Paraguayan subjects were to meet with General Walters in the United States, concerning CIA business. Landau was suspicious of this declaration, and cabled for more information. The B-2 visas were revoked by the State Department on August 9, 1976. However, under the same names, two DINA agents used fraudulent Chilean passports to travel to the U.S. on diplomatic A-2 visas, in order to shadow Letelier. Townley himself flew to the U.S. on a fraudulent Chilean passport and under another assumed name. Landau had made copies of the visa applications though, which later documented the relationship of Townley and DINA with the Paraguayan visa applications.According to John Dinges
John Dinges
John Dinges was special correspondent for Time, Washington Post and ABC Radio in Chile. With a group of Chilean journalists, he cofounded the Chilean magazine APSI...
, co-author of Assassination on Embassy Row, documents released in 1999 and 2000 establish that "the CIA had inside intelligence about the assassination alliance at least two months before Letelier was killed but failed to act to stop the plans." It also knew about an Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
an attempt to kill U.S. Congressman Edward Koch, which then-CIA director George H.W. Bush warned him about only after Orlando Letelier's murderhttp://www.johndinges.com/condor/revelations.htm .
Kenneth Maxwell
Kenneth Maxwell
Kenneth Robert Maxwell is a British historian who specializes in Iberia and Latin America. A longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, for fifteen years he headed its Latin America Studies Program...
points out that U.S. policymakers were aware not only of Operation Condor in general, but in particular "that a Chilean assassination team had been planning to enter the United States." A month before the Letelier assassination, Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
ordered "that the Latin American rulers involved be informed that the 'assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad ... would create a most serious moral and political problem." Maxwell wrote in his review of Peter Kornbluh
Peter Kornbluh
Peter Kornbluh is director of the National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project and of the Cuba Documentation Project.He played a large role in the campaign to declassify government documents, via the FOIA, relating to the history of the U.S. Government's support for the Pinochet...
's book, "This demarche was apparently not delivered: the U.S. embassy in Santiago demurred on the ground that to deliver such a strong rebuke would upset the dictator", and that, on September 20, 1976, the day before Letelier and Moffitt were killed, the State Department instructed the ambassadors to take no further action with regard to the Condor scheme. [Maxwell, 2004, 18].
On April 10, 2010, the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reported that a document discovered by the National Security Archive
National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
indicated that the State Department communique that was supposed to have gone out to the Chilean government warning against the assassinations had been blocked by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
.
At least, influential US politicians welcomed the murder of Letelier for ideological or strategic reasons. In July 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, in a conversation with the journalist Brian Crozier, expressed the view, that "it was a good thing Letelier had been bumped off". Reagan's running mate George H. W. Bush was the director of CIA at the time Letelier was assassinated.
The Briefcase Affair
Allegedly during the FBI investigation into Letelier's assassination, the contents of the briefcase he had with him were copied and leaked to op-ed columnists Rowland EvansRowland Evans
Rowland Evans, Jr. was an American journalist. He was known best for his decades-long syndicated column and television partnership with Robert Novak, a partnership that endured, if only by way of a joint subscription newsletter, until Evans's death.Born in Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania, Evans...
and TV-host Robert Novak
Robert Novak
Robert David Sanders "Bob" Novak was an American syndicated columnist, journalist, television personality, author, and conservative political commentator. After working for two newspapers before serving for the U.S. Army in the Korean War, he became a reporter for the Associated Press and then for...
of the Washington Post before being returned to his widow. Allegedly the documents show that Letelier was in contact with the surviving political leadership of the various parties that made up the Popular Unity coalition exiled in East Berlin
East Berlin
East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...
, who had been given refuge and supported by the East German Government during their stay. Evans and Novak suspected that these individuals had been recruited by the Stasi
Stasi
The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...
. Evans and Novak claim documents in the briefcase showed that Letelier had maintained contact with Salvador Allende’s daughter, Beatriz Allende
Beatriz Allende
Beatriz Allende Bussi was a Chilean Socialist politician and revolutionary. She was the daughter of former president of Chile Salvador Allende Gossens, and his wife, Hortensia Bussi. She was of Basque, Belgian and Italian descent.She married Cuban diplomat Luis Fernandez de Oña...
, who was married to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n DGI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona.
According to the Novak and Evans, Letelier was able to receive funding of $5,000 a month from the Cuban government and under the supervision of Beatriz Allende, he used his contacts within the Institute for Policy Studies
Institute for Policy Studies
Institute for Policy Studies is a left-wing think tank based in Washington, D.C..It has been directed by John Cavanagh since 1998- History :...
(IPS) and western human rights groups to organize a campaign within the United Nations as well as the US Congress to isolate the new Chilean government. This organized pressure on Pinochet’s government was thought to have been closely coordinated by the Cuban and Soviet governments, using individuals like Letelier to implement these efforts. Letelier's briefcase also allegedly contained his address book which contained the names of dozens of known and suspected Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
intelligence agents. All correspondence between Letelier and individuals in Cuba was supposedly handled via Julian Rizo, who used his diplomatic status to hide his activities.
Fellow IPS member and friend Saul Landau
Saul Landau
Saul Landau is journalist, filmmaker, and commentator. He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.-Career:...
described Evans and Novak as part of an “organized right wing attack”. In 1980, Letelier's widow, Isabel, wrote in the New York Times that the money sent to her late husband from Cuba was from western sources, and that Cuba had simply acted as an intermediary.
See also
- Chilean political scandalsChilean political scandalsA political scandal is a kind of political corruption that is exposed and becomes a scandal, in which politicians or government officials are accused of engaging in various illegal, corrupt, or unethical practices...
- Chile under PinochetChile under PinochetChile was ruled by a military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet from 1973 when Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'etat until 1990 when the Chilean transition to democracy began. The authoritarian military government was characterized by systematic suppression of political parties and...
- EspionageEspionageEspionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
- Eugenio BerriosEugenio BerríosEugenio Berríos Sagredo was a Chilean biochemist who worked for the DINA intelligence agency.Berríos was charged with carrying outProyecto Andrea in which Pinochet ordered the production of sarin gas, a chemical weapon used by the DINA. Sarin gas leaves no trace and victims' deaths closely mimic...
, DINA biochemist who allegedly produced the explosive used in the bombing - Terrorism
- State terrorismState terrorismState terrorism may refer to acts of terrorism conducted by a state against a foreign state or people. It can also refer to acts of violence by a state against its own people.-Definition:...
- National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
- The 2000 film 'Waking The DeadWaking the Dead (film)Waking the Dead is a 2000 American drama film directed by Keith Gordon. The screenplay by Robert Dillon is based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Scott Spencer.-Plot:...
' includes a car bomb placed by Chilean operatives.
External links
- Michael Townley and the Death of Orlando Letelier
- Orlando Letelier Archive held by the Transnational Institute.
- MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base Nine legal documents from the trials of Letelier's assassins. Includes trial transcripts.
- Institute for Policy Studies, where Letelier and Moffitt worked at the time, gives circumstances surrounding bombing.
- John Dinges John DingesJohn DingesJohn Dinges was special correspondent for Time, Washington Post and ABC Radio in Chile. With a group of Chilean journalists, he cofounded the Chilean magazine APSI...
was a correspondent for the "Washington Post" in South America from 1975 to 1983, author of The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press 2004) and (with Saul LandauSaul LandauSaul Landau is journalist, filmmaker, and commentator. He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.-Career:...
) Assassination on Embassy Row (Pantheon 1980), (Asesinato en Washington, Lasser 1980, Planeta 1990) - National Security Archive page with documents and information about Latin America
- New Docs Show Kissinger Rescinded Warning on Assassinations Days Before Letelier Bombing – video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...