Letelier case

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Letelier case
Location Washington, D.C.
Date September 21, 1976
09:30 am (UTC-4)
Attack type car bombing
Deaths 2
Injured 1
Perpetrator(s) DINA

The Letelier case (September 21, 1976) refers to the murder of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean political figure and, later, United States-based activist, who was assassinated in Washington, D.C. along with his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt, by Chilean agents of the DINA, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (National Intelligence Directorate), which was the Chilean secret police during the government of Augusto Pinochet.

Contents

[edit] Background

In 1971, Letelier was appointed ambassador to the United States by Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile. 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 was arrested by the Chilean government and sent to a political prison in Tierra del Fuego. After his release in 1974, he moved to Washington where he was working with the Institute for Policy Studies. 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.

Letelier and Moffitt were colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies. Moffitt was a 25-year-old fundraiser who ran a "Music Carryout" program that produced musical instruments for the poor, and who also campaigned for democracy in Chile.

[edit] Assassination

On September 21, 1976, in Washington D.C., Orlando Letelier, was traveling to work, together with Ronni Karpen Moffitt and her husband of four months, Michael. Orlando Letelier was driving, while Ronni Moffitt was in the front passenger seat, and Michael Moffitt was in the rear behind his wife. As they rounded Sheridan Circle, an explosion erupted under the car, lifting it off the ground. When the car came to a halt, after colliding with a VW illegally parked in front of the Irish embassy, Michael Moffitt was able to escape from the rear end of the car by crawling out the back window.

He then saw his wife stumbling away from the car and, assuming that she was all right, went to assist Letelier. He found Letelier still in the driver’s seat. He appeared barely conscious and in great pain. Letelier’s head was rolling back and forth, his eyes were moving slightly, and he attempted to mutter several things, which were unintelligible. Michael Moffitt 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 Moffitt 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 hospital shortly thereafter. At the hospital it was discovered that Ronni's carotid artery had been severed by a piece of flying shrapnel. She drowned in her own blood 47 minutes after Letelier's death while her husband Michael miraculously suffered only a minor head wound. Michael Moffitt estimated that the bomb was detonated at approximately 9:30 a.m., and the reports of the Medical Examiner’s office set the time of death of Orlando Letelier at 9:50 a.m. and the time of death of Ronni Moffitt at 10:37 a.m. The cause of death for both was listed as explosion-incurred injuries due to a car bomb placed under the car on the driver's side.

[edit] Assassination preparation

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[edit] Prosecution

Memorial on Sheridan Circle, Washington DC
Memorial on Sheridan Circle, Washington DC

The FBI eventually were convinced that Michael Townley, a DINA U.S. 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 "Bloodbath" Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll [1][2]. 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 to seven and six years of prison respectively. Pinochet, who died on December 10, 2006, was never brought to trial for the murders, although Townley implicated him as being responsible for them.

[edit] 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.[1] 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.[1][2] 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.

American commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote on October 25, 1976: "U.S. investigators think it unlikely that Chile would risk with an action of this kind the respect it has won with great difficulty during the past year in many Western countries, which before were hostile to its policies." According to Donald Freed, Buckley had been providing disinformation for the Pinochet government since October 1974. He also unearthed information that suggest William Buckley's brother, James Buckley, met with Townley and Guillermo Novo in New York City just a week before Letelier was assassinated.[citation needed]

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 Uruguayan attempt to kill U.S. Congressman Edward Koch, which then-CIA director George H.W. Bush warned him about only after Orlando Letelier's murder [3].

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].

[edit] 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 Evans 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. [3] 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 Cuban DGI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona. [4]

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.[5] 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 East Block 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. [6][7]

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. [8]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b U.S State Department (1976-09-01). Issuance of Visas (PDF).
  2. ^ U.S State Department (1976-09-01). Visas to Enter United States under False Pretenses (PDF).
  3. ^ Robert Moss, The Letelier Papers. Foreign Report; March 22, 1977
  4. ^ Roland Evans and Robert Novak, Letelier Political Fund. Washington Post; February 16, 1977
  5. ^ Roland Evans and Robert Novak, Letelier Political Fund. Washington Post; February 16, 1977
  6. ^ Robert Moss, The Letelier Papers. Foreign Report; March 22, 1977
  7. ^ Roland Evans and Robert Novak, Behind the Murder of Letelier. Indianapolis News; March 1, 1977
  8. ^ Isabel, The Revival of Old Lies about Orlando Letelier. New York Times; November 8, 1980

[edit] Additional information

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

  1. Dinges, John, and Landau, Saul. Assassination on Embassy Row (London, 1981) ISBN 0-07-016998-5, (McGraw-Hill, 1981)
  2. Dinges, John. The Condor Years (The New Press: 2004) ISBN 1-56584-764-4
  3. Hitchens, Christopher, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, (Verso: 2001) ISBN 1-85984-631-9
  4. Branch, Taylor and Propper, Eugene Labyrinth (Viking Press 1983, Penguin Books1983 ISBN 0-14-006683-7)

[edit] External links

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1973 Chilean coup d'état
Background
Events
Participants
Post-Events
Controversies