Sheridan Circle
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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. An equestrian statue of Sheridan designed by Gutzon Borglum stands on a low platform in the grassy center of the circle.
A number of embassies ring Sheridan Circle, including the former Turkish chancery and the Romanian embassy on the southern side, and the Embassy of Pakistan to the northwest.
Dupont Circle is visible down Massachusetts Avenue; in the other direction, the avenue rises toward a bridge over Rock Creek Park.
On September 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt were killed by a car bomb in the circle. Letelier had been foreign minister in the ousted Allende government of Chile. The bombing was blamed on Chilean DINA agents. Michael Townley, a DINA U.S. expatriate among those convicted for the crime, confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cubans exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard, after consultations with the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations leadership (including Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch), those selected 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 the meeting that decided on Letelier's death and also about the Cubana bombing two weeks later.
Letelier and Moffitt are commemorated with a small plaque embedded in the grass along the curb where they died, near the Irish and Romanian embassies.
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- Sheridan Circle is at coordinates Coordinates:
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