THE CHILEAN CONNECTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09S00048R000100020088-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 16, 2011
• Sequence Number: 88
• Publication Date: November 28, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Approved For Release 2011/08/17 :CIA-RDP09S00048R000100020088-5
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SAUL LANUAU ANn .TORN DINGES
n the early surnmcr of 1976, Col. Manuel Contreras,
head of DINA, Chile's secret police, launched an
operation to assassinate exiled Chilean leader Orlando
Letelier. It has now been learn
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at withir, a
few days of setting that plot in motion, Contreras rnacce a
secret visit to ~~'ashington, D.C., where he met with officials
of the Central Intelligence Agency and also ne,otiated the
purchase of illegal ??eapons an?a electronic spying equipment
with a firm run by former C_1.A. officers Edwin ?'ilson. and
Frank Terpil.
Wilson and Terpil gained notoriety after a Federal grand
jury accused them of exporting terrorist goods and services
to Col. Ytuammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, whose regime is
high on the Reagan Administration's enemies list [see
>/lurray ~~'aas's article on page 568 8y 1978, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation had estahlished that DINA agents
killed Letelier on U.S. territory. That evidence, combined
with the newly revealed materials showing that t?onner
C.I.A. officials cooperated ~jith other DINA covert opera-
tions in the United States, ??ould seem tip compromise the
Administration's efforts to rehabilitate Chile's military
dictatorship as an anti-Communist alh~.
The information about DINA's dealings with the ~~'ilson-
Terpil firm is based on the accounts of one of those present
at the meeting with Contreras in early July 1976, and on
sales documents obtained by Federal investigators. This
report will examine DIN.A's purchase of weapons and so-
phisticated electronic equipment at that meeting in violation
of a Congressional ban on such sales to Chile.
The new. .information can be placed with startling results
into the complex framework of evidence already conrpilcd
by the F.B.I. in the five-year-old Letelier case, and it helps
explain many previously unresolved questions, especially
those regarding the C.I.A.'s behavior. Earlier rvidenc~ of
D1NA's operations, supplemented by this new inl?orrnatiun
about the three months preceding [.etelier's murder on
September 21, 1976, amount1 to a compelling case that the
C.I.A. w?as involved in arran~_ing Wilson and Terpil's arras
and equipment sales to DINA. Furthermore, involving the
agency in the violation of U.S. laws may have made it pussi_
the for DINA to "grtynrail" the C.I.A.. into H?ithholding
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