THE C.I.A.'S LINK TO CHILE'S PLOT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201280001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 1, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 12, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/01 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000201280001-9 STAT
AR T I C L [a A_FP .!1.EED
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THE NATION
12 June 1982
L-.T'_ FOLLOW-UP ON THE LETELIER CASE
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?JOAa'.' DINGES AND SAUA_ LANDAU
a Imost six years after the assassination of Chilean
exile leader Orlando Letelier in Washington,
1}.C., information conti,rr:cs to surface in-
_._:._dicating that the Central Intelligence Agency
concealed fa, ! , about its relations v,?'h DINA, the C'hil?an
secret police, that might have helped solve the murder
quickly.
In our earlier report [see "The Chilean Connection,"
The Nation, November 28, 1981], we showed that DINA's
head, then-ail. Manuel Contreras, visited Washington
secretly only days after he gave his agents or~lwrs to begin the
assassination operation. C.-itreras made the trip to pur-
chase weapons illegally from a company roil by former
C.I.A. officers Edwin Wilson and Frank "J erpil,
New information from a year-old Congressional hear-
ing-unnoticed at.the tinge----reveals that Contreras had
another riau ling, this one with the second--ranking officer of
the C.I.A., L}puty Director Vernon Walters. Walters told a
March 10, 1981, hearing of the Douse Foreign Affairs Sub-
committee on Inter-Amz , i; en Affairs that he had two
meetings with Contreras i;,. )AWashington: one, previously
publicized, in August 1975, the second "a year" later. An
aide to Walters says that "every meeting" with Contreras
involved "agency-to-agency business" and none took place
after Walters's retirement from the C.I.A. on July 2, 1976.
We don't know the nature of the business, nor is there
any evidence that Contreras told Walters of the Letelier
assassination plot. But it is noteworthy that, according to
F.B.I. vestigators, Walters never told them about the sec-
ond misting with Contreras, even though its proximity to
the assassination on September 21, 1976, made it particular-
ly relevant to the investigation.
Walters's name has arisen several times in connection
with Contreras and the DINN-t. agents plotting the murder,
according to the evidence compiled by the F.B.I. That
evidence shows that Walters traveled to Asuncion,
Paraguay, in June 1976 on agency >,usira:ss. A month later,
two DINA agents assigned to kill Letelier arrived in
Paraguay to obtain false passports, u.--tog Walters's name
and alleging that Walters and the C.I.A. knew about the
DINA mission to Washington. Walters liar denied he hacl
anything to do with the DINA agents or the false passports.
Contreras'
tance to hither
head of the Pa
Guanes was the
the two DINA
agents were tra
Int-'igence A.genm.;? ai,w
sm;e'1 awns." (Interestingly, Contreras's deal with Wilson
and Terpil was for 1,059 Colt Cobra revolvers, a small
handgun widely used by plainclothes police.) Guanes also
said the two agents "had the cooperatic3 of the C.I.A./
U.S.A.," which "suggested that they travel with documents
with another nationality since, as Chileans, it would be dif-
ficult to take such material out of the U.S.A." (Congress
had prohibited arms sales to Chile earlier in 1976 because of
human rights violations.)
Guanes portrayed Walters, wh ,rr, lie had met in
Paraguay, as helping arrange the DINA agents' trip. lie
said he met U.S. Ambassador George Landau on August 6,
1976, at a Chinese Embassy reception: "[IIc) took us aside
and said, `I received a call from General Walters stating that
problem= had arisen with the passports given to.the Chileans
and that the State Department had cancelled the visas. It is
possible for the same two to enter [the United States] direct-
ly using Chilean passports, for which they would make
direct contact.' This information should be sent to my
friend Colonel Contreras...."
Because this account differs from Walters's denial' and
Landau's testimony about the reception, F.B.I. agents at
first discounted it. They also assumed that because Guanes
was a friend of Contreras he might have concocted the
C.I.A. story to embarrass the United States. But in light of
Walters's admission of a second meeting with Contreras,
Guanes's testimony takes on new weight.
The Chilean government of Gen. Augusto IP'inoclret has
stonewalled on the Letelier case, denying the U.S. request
for Contreras 's extradition, terminating th twilit ry and
judicial investigations it had begun, and cx; ir:g from the
country the attorney for the Le liar family, former Justice
Minister Jaime Castillo.
Our new information indicates that the C.I.A., which had
pledged to cooperate with F'.B.I. investigators, has joined in
that stonewalling. The C.I.A. an'. x:" rieral Walters had full
information about the incidents in Paraguay, including
photographs of the two DINA agents, within days of their
occurrence. The information was never turned over to the
F.B.I. Its importance is indicated by the fact that when the
photogr,,phss and cable traffic about the ins icaents were
unearthed by Federal investigators more than a year later,
thr'y led to the arrest of DINA tiger it 1~frchec-l I ovmley, who
confessed to having been involved in the plot, arad to the in-
dictments of Contreras and two other 1)INA o i f icials.
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