THE GHOST WHO HAUNTS OUR CHILE POLICY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000403680019-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: March 28, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000403680019-2
A T
? : ~. C : ~ 12FEARED
ON PAGE C- 1
Pinochet does hoL are extradite en.
Manuel Contreras, former chief of the Chil-
ean secret police (DIVA), and two high-rank-
ing confederates who were indicted by a fed-
eral grand jury in the murder. He obviously
has-no intention of bringing any of them to.!
trial.
The current showing of "Missing," a Costa-
Gavras docu-drama which charges U.S. em-
bassy complicity in the murder of an Amer-
ican during the Pinochet coup, has not as-
sisted greatly in creating a climate for certi-
fication. What is going to make it.immeasur-
ably worse is a book called "Labyrinth," by
Taylor Branch and Eugene Propper, the
young U.S. attorney who stalked Letelier's
killers and who, with the help of the FBI, ran
them to earth.
But the chief resistance to State's plans to
-wash away Chile's sins comes from within the
administration. The Justice Department is
enormously proud of its role in bringing in
the terrorists. Never mind that the guilty
convictions of three of the thugs were over-
turned. The successful manhunt was one of
Justice's finest hours. Against all left-wing ex-
pectation, the FBI and the 29-year-old prose-
cutor moved against a conspiracy of the right.
When the deputy chief of the major crimes
division, E. Lawrence Barcella, who was
deeply involved in the chase, was asked re-
cently how well Chile had cooperated in the
Letelier investigation, he said succinctly,
"Chile hasn't done spit."
This kind of talk sent a shudder through
Foggy Bottom where, for all sorts of reason, t
many would like to think the best about I
Pinochet. The Justice Department, on being I
asked for information, sent over a long letter
in which the noncooperation of the Pinochet
government was crushingly detailed. The.
-State Department then requested a meeting
with Justice to iron out their differences. It
occurred in mid-March.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, associate attorney
general, was the senior man present - State,
was represented at the deputy assistant sec-
retary level - and he was adamant. The facts
were the facts. He told the disappointed State
people that their quarrel was not with the
Justice Department but with Congress, which
had passed a law requiring Pinochet to come
`
across on Letelier.
"Justice has passed the word that it cannot
control its professionals in the Letelier matter
=--they'll be up the Hill like a shot to testify
about noncooperation," reports Tom Harkin,
a human rights leader in the House.
So the bureaucrats, of all people, are stav-
ing off another foreign policy disaster. Some
.people in State would have liked to fight it
out on human rights 'grounds. They think
they could have won...
"It is the greatest human, rlghts.tinctory of
this administration." said one State Devart- a
ilie.. ghost
-11 -Ir
VY flu -"aunts UUT
Chile Policy
YOU WOULD THINK that the administration which
certified human rights progress in El Salvador would
have no trouble at all doing the same for Chile.
But there is an excellent prospect that they will not~be `
able to give Gen. Auogusto Pinochet the good conduct
medal - not because there is a sharp difference of opin
ion, even within the State Department, over the general's
,.behavior toward his fellow Chileans, but because of the
ghost of Orlando Letelier_
Alas, for those- who favor fascists, the bill which author
izes resumption of military aid to Chile depends not only
on certifiable human rights advances but on evidence that
Pinochet is exhausting "all legal means" to help solve the
murder of Letelier, the Chilean exile who, with Ronnie
Moffitt, was killed in a car-bombing in Washington in.
Reagan is apparently ready to let other Latin American
governments know that anything goes as long as they ?are
not red. With the certification of Chile, Reagan would be;.
telling the new dictators in Guatemala, for instance, that
we can forgive anything -even murder in our streets by
their hired thugs 7 so long as it is done in the name of anti-communism.
But Letelier, from the grave, can do what no witness Of:
.steady. human rights deterioration in Santiago can accom-
plish - and that is stop certification in its tracks.':
.The publication of new letters by Michael Townley" the'
chief. of the Letelier-Moffitt assassination team, sent:a:
wave of panic through the State Department. Gen. Pinoa
chet is the man who is regarded so warmly by U.N. Am-
bassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Assistant Secretary for Inter=
American Affairs Thomas 0. Enders and other officials bf
a government which has taken its stand against interna-r
tional terrorism. Townley is the American button man who
revealed that Pinochet may actually have met
to congratulate the assailants of Bernardo
Leigh, another Chilean exile leader who, with
his wife, was gunned down in the streets of
Rome.
Enders made an emergency trip to San-_
tiago earlier this month to plead for some
show of cooperation in the Letelier murder. As usual, it was no dice. _. ,,,_;; .. _. .. .
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000403680019-2
THE WASHINGTON POST
28 March 1982