Washington Knew Pinochet Ordered an Act of Terrorism on US Soil—but Did Nothing About It
Obama now has an opportunity to commemorate his victims by releasing the still-secret documents that hold the Chilean dictator accountable.
By Peter KornbluhTwitter
Yesterday 7:00 am
On the evening of January 21, 1987, the CIA’s deputy director for covert operations, Clair George, sent a secure pouch to the State Department filled with “top secret” intelligence cables from the agency’s station in Chile. The reports contained details from “extremely sensitive informants” on “the cover up directed by General Pinochet” of the September 21, 1976, assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 25-year-old colleague, Ronni Moffitt, in Washington, DC.
The documents were intended to help the State Department prepare a debriefing of Armando Fernández Larios, one of the officers of the Chilean secret police, or DINA, who had been sent to Washington to conduct surveillance on Letelier before his assassination, and who now wanted to confess and come to the United States. The CIA cables were so sensitive, according to Francis McNeil, the State Department official who received them, that “the CIA asked that they be summarized” rather than forwarded to Brazil, where the debriefing was scheduled to take place.
Eight months later, when the CIA prepared an intelligence review on the Letelier-Moffitt case—at the request of Secretary of State George Shultz, McNeil believes—the agency reviewed the same documents and others. Quoting the CIA review, Shultz reported to President Reagan that the CIA had “convincing evidence that President Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murders,” and that “Pinochet decided to stonewall on the US investigation to hide his involvement.” As Shultz concluded, “the CIA has never before drawn and presented its conclusions that such strong evidence exists of his leadership role in this act of terrorism.”
Shultz’s dramatic memo to Reagan was among the more than 280 documents declassified by the Obama administration last October as a special diplomatic gesture to the Chilean government of President Michelle Bachelet. Forty years after this act of state-sponsored terrorism in the streets of Washington, the historiography had finally, if not fully, arrived at Pinochet’s doorstep.
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