For some odd reason, the CIA steadfastly refuses to disclose all of its records relating to the 1973 Chilean coup, which the CIA ardently supported. The CIA says that “national security” will be jeopardized if its records are disclosed to the American people.
That’s ridiculous. What do they think will happen — that the United States will fall into the ocean or be taken over by the communists, the terrorists, the Muslims, or some other scary boogeyman?
The disclosure issue is more relevant than ever, given that September 21 was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffitt on the streets of Washington, D.C.
Letelier had served in the administration of Salvador Allende, a socialist who was democratically elected president of Chile in 1970. U.S. officials, especially those in the U.S. national-security establishment, concluded that Allende posed a grave threat to U.S. “national security.” Therefore they set into motion the events that would ultimately lead to the violent 1973 coup, which resulted in one of the most brutal military tyrannies in history — one supported by the U.S. government.
Letelier and Moffitt were driving to work that September 21 morning when a car bomb exploded and killed them both. Moffitt’s husband, who was also in the car, survived. It was a knowing, deliberate, intentional act of murder and terrorism here in the United States.
It was ultimately determined that the person in charge of planting the bomb was a man named Michael Townley. He confessed to traveling from Chile to the United States and organizing a team of Cuban exiles that assisted him in planting the car bomb.
It has always been assumed that Pinochet ordered the bombing, in large part because the CIA conducted an investigation that concluded that Pinochet did, in fact, order the bombing. That conclusion has become an important part of the historical case against Pinochet. In fact, some people are demanding the release of the CIA’s long-secret Chile records to help establish that Pinochet did, in fact, order the bombing.
That’s, of course, a distinct possibility. Letelier was living here in the United States and working for a think tank that was actively working in opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship, including trying to convince Congress to cut off aid to the Pinochet regime. Thus, it stands to reason that Pinochet certainly had a motive to kill Letelier.
However, there is something else to consider. Pinochet was not a dumb man. He had to realize that if a major terrorist attack on American soil could be traced to his regime, his good, solid relationship with the U.S. government, including foreign aid to Chile, would be finished. It is very difficult to believe that he would have been willing to take that chance just to silence a prominent critic of his regime.
There is another possibility, one that the U.S. officials and the U.S. mainstream press are loathe to consider. That possibility is that it was the CIA, rather than Pinochet, that ordered the hit on Letelier.
Yes, I know what U.S. supporters of the CIA will respond. They’ll point to that CIA investigation that concluded that it was Pinochet who ordered the hit. But isn’t that sort of like saying that the Gestapo investigated one of its murders and concluded that someone else did it? If the hypothesis being investigated is CIA involvement in the assassination, how can the CIA’s own official conclusions be treated as dispositive, especially given the CIA’s longtime expertise in covering up its assassinations?
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