ARGENTINA MUST WAIT TO TRY MIKE TOWNLEY - 1983/06/16

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: Argentina Declassification Project - The "Dirty War" (1976-83)
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05562014
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: April 3, 2019
• Document Release Date: April 12, 2019
• Publication Date: June 16, 1983

Approved for Release: 2018/10/01 C05562014
ARTICLE LYFWI-D...
WASHINGTON TIMES
ON FA.= . - � � 16 Tune 1983
� Argentina must wait
to try Mike Townley ,
By Jeremiah O'Leary
vospoNGTot, Tikes sTAF.
For the space of maybe two min-
utes last month, Michael V. lbwriley,
the convicted car-bombingassassin
of former Chilean Ambassador .
Orlando Letelier and Ronni K. Mof-
fitt, was a free man. - - -
But no sooner was he handed his
parole at an unnamed federal
prison than U.S. marshals arrested
him, this time for almost certain
extradition to Argentina. 'There,
the 41-year-old American expatri-
ate and former hit-man for the
- - � - -
Chilean military intelligence ser-
vice, will be tried for putting out the
contract for the 1974 murder of
Chilean Gen. Carlos Prats and his �
wife. �
The next act in the cloak-and-
dagger life of, Mike lbwnley was to
have taken place in Alexandria fed-
eral court tomorrow, but will be
delayed until July because the
death of Judge Oren Lewis has the
courthouse closed for the day.
Tbwnley, after five years and one
month in U.S. prisons, now faces a
life-sentence in Argentina for the
murder of the Prats family.
But . Townley, some officials
believe, might well be safer in an
Argentine jail than he would be
walking any street in the 'United
States where the anti-Castro
Omega 7 organization would kill
him on sight, or in Chile, where he
is hated by former members of the
DINA intelligence organization for
unveiling .so much about those vio-
lent organizations.
He is 'now more than a convicted
assassin. Mike Townley, the elec-
tronics wizard who became an
expert maker of bonflii, has
become a pawn in the foreign-policy
relationships of the United States
with Argentina and Chile.
Why is Argentina, where thou-
sands disappeared in the so-called
"dirty war" waged by the military
government against the leftist
Montoneros and perceived, oppo-
nents of any stripe, so interested in
trying a Chilean assassin for mur-
dering a Chilean general*?
;
U.S. officials believe there are
three reasons:
� There is bad blood and consid-
erable tension, between: the two
neighboring 'Southern Conerepub-
tics; Chile reaps a Sudden Arieritine
attack,as wasmade on theFalkland
Islands,aoinuch.so that thearzned
forces.ofibeah, countries wentan red
alert last ,week when an Argentine
!helicopter made a forced landing on
the Chilean .side of the. Andes.'
Argentiha,"..v,ould like to see Chile
oraiiiheamembarrassed...aa
ttighti:gromids.
- .
� The Argentine military, about
to give up power in October elec-
tions that will bring the Peronists
back into control, are well aware
that Prats and his wife were killed
when the Peronists were running
.things in Buenos Aires in 1974.. The
-present government wants no new
Peronist president in a position to
go seeking culprits for the
desaparecidos (disappeared ones)
now that the internal strife has
-ceased.
� Argentina places a high prior-
ity on receiving U.S. certification
...that-it-is-observing new and 'high"
standards of human nights,and the
public trial of a -Chileanized
Azneridaii- would help '&1sta:6-that
the Reagan administration issues
the certification after the October
elections.
lbwnley seems to have more
strikes- against him than anyone
He went to Chile as a,teenager
with his family and became an
ardent supporter of the, military
government which had taken over
in the revolution of 1973.
. He and his wife, Mariana,
became agents of DINA. His
assignments became Letelier,
killed in Washington in September
1976; Prats, slain in Buenos Aires;
the failed effort to kill exiled politi-
cians Volodia Teitelboim and Carlos
Altamirano in Mexico in,1975; and
a gunshot attack on politician Ber-
nardo Leighton in Italy the same
year.
When the Washington Star
printed Townley's photo, enabling
the FBI to discover his identity,
-;-,c-het ordered him handed over to the
United States.
Jbwnley, either feeling betrayed
- or acting on orders, made a deal
with the prosecutors that laid bare
much about the heinous work of
--DINA --now disbanded � and
'"about the CubanOmega 7. group
'which had helped him place and .
ignite the bomb under Letelier's car
here.
- .In return for his cooperation, the
prosecutors agreed to ask that he be
set free after serving 40 months,
but U.S. District Judge Barrington
Parker said this deal was not bind-
. ing. His release-came on May 6, in
the undisclosed prison where
Tbwnley was entering the sixth year
of his imprisonment. The new
arrest swiftly followed.
Tbwnley has lost the use of his
own name, because federal authori-
ties gave him a new identity under
the witness protection program to
� save him from assassination in jail.
He also has lost his wife in .what
sources describe as a separation.
She was last reported in Spain.
There is every reason to expect
U.S. Magistrate Ross Grimsley in
Alexandria to order his extradition
to Argentina, based on the evi-
dence. The finding will be reviewed
by a federal judge and if extradition
is upheld, Tbwnley's attorneys can
appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court
of Appeals. The last step is for Sec-
retary of State George P Shultz to
give his approval of the extradition.
No later than six months from
now Mike Townley will be on his
way back to a culture he long ago
found preferable to his own
American background.
Approved for Release: 2018/10/01 C05562014