THE LETELIER-MOFFITT MYSTERY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91B00134R000400130033-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 4, 2009
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: November 1, 1977
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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UTh YKULjKt.JS1Vt. - . '
Q November 197.7
Mounting evidence suggests that Cuban exiles
. did the Chilean junta's dirty work
STAT
The le$elier-Mof #it,t Mystery ;
She sold the house in Bethesda and moved into the
smaller one in Washington, she said, because she just
didn't need the rooms any more. Her sons, starting out on
their own adult lives, had moved away. Then she laughed,
her Latin eyes dancing, as she wondered where they
would all sleep when her sons came back to the city in
September.
The conversation paused as Isabel Letelier. poured a
glass of wine and offered crackers and cheese to her visi-
tor. While they sat on the porch, taking in the summer
evening, thoughts of her dead husband, Orlando, silently
drifted between them.
Then, brightly: "I remember a cocktail party we went
to, in 1972, . the usual diplomatic kind of. social event.
Henry Kissinger was there, and at one= point he pulled
Orlando aside, and said, you know, in the way he would
do it," she smiled, about to imitate the German accent,
":'Ambassador Letelier, I must tell you that those reports
about the. CIA in Chile are absolutely-false. There is no
truth . to them. We are not, trying to overthrow your
government. You must tell your president that those re-
ports are false.'
"And so Orlando turned to him," she said, batting her
eyelashes and recreating the moment, "and said, 'Why,
Mr. Kissinger, I don't know of any reports about the CIA
in Chile. But of course, we would be very interested to
know what you've heard. I hope you will give. us a report
on that.
She smiled widely at the story,. and so did her visitor,
Jegrey Stein, who-served as a U.S. Army intelligence
ri//lcer in Vietnam, is a member of the Letelier-Mglitt
Memorial Fu ndfor Human Rights. He writesfron
Washington for the Boston Phoenix.
but it was not a happy smile. For on thaymuggy.eyening in
late August, eleven months had passed' since her husband
and a young American woman colleague, Ronni Karpen
Moffitt, twenty-five, had been blown up in their car as
they drove to work at the Institute for Policy Studies in
Washington. Ronni's husband of almost six months..
Michael,: who had.-been riding in the back seat of the car,
survived the blast, only to watch his wife stagger to the
sidewalk and die as blood filled her lungs from an artery in
her neck torn by shrapnel. Orlando Letelier lived another
agonizing twenty minutes, his legs ripped from his body,'
pinned in the wreckage of the car. -
Justice Department officials have believed for several
months that the generals who now rule Chile marked
Letelier for assassination and hired anti-Castro Cuban ex-
iles to carry it out. Several of the exiles, remnants of the
clandestine army created by the CIA for its war on Cuba
and Fidel Castro, have been interviewed by a grand jury
which has been investigating the murders for the past
year. One. of them, Jose Dionisio Suarez, was jailed in the
spring for refusing' to testify after having been granted im--.
munity from prosecution.
From the beginning, the investigation has been marked
by ineptitude and political intrigue. For weeks after the as-
sassination, investigators tried to track down personal mo-
tives for the murder, although the strongest, most im-
mediate circumstantial evidence led directly to the
doorstep of the Chilean junta and its chief, General
Augusto Pinochet.
Letelier was the junta's number one enemy. As the
former ambassador to the United States from Chile while
Salvador Allende's socialist coalition governed the coun-
try, Letelier was the preeminent leader of the North
American exile community. As troubles mounted for the
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Popular Unity coalition in 1973, Letelier had been
recalled to Santiago to become Allende's foreign minister,
and later, defense minister. On the day of the coup. Sep-
tember 11, 1973, he was led from the Defense Ministry in
handcuffs by the machine gun-toting troops of the vic-
torious generals. After a year of torture and interrogation
at the hands of the junta's notorious secret police, the
DINA, in a concentration camp in Chile's antarctic south,
Letelier was released and deported.to Venezuela. In 1975,
he returned with his family to Washington. In 1976, he
was appointed director of the Transnational Institute, the
foreign affairs arm of the Institute for Policy Studies, a
left-leaning Washington-based research organization.
International outrage had forced the junta to release
him; he was well known and respected in Washington's
diplomatic community. In 1976, Letelier began to draw
on that respect as he lobbied against the junta in Washing
ton and abroad. U.S. foreign aid and credits to the junta
were reduced; dock workers in London refused to handle
Chilean-bound cargos; and in June 1976, the Dutch
government, as a result of Letelier's persistent urging,
canceled a S62.5 million credit planned for the junta. He
was becoming increasingly effective. In August 1976,
Letelier emerged as the leader of the exile factions in a
New York City gathering, and the death threats, which
had begun months earlier, began to intensify. In Septem-
ber, Augusto Pinochet decreed the end of Letelier's
Chilean citizenship. On September 21 he was murdered.
Grief and outrage, expressed by members of Congress,
foreign heads of state, and other leading public figures,
were immediately reflected in the newspapers, which
printed diabolical portraits of the junta and its dread
DINA agents on their editorial pages. Not long after..
however, it became apparent that the Justice Department
was trying to explore every possible lead and motive ex-
cept the most obvious one.
In the immediate wake of the assassinations, the FBI
failed to interview the janitor at the Institute for Policy
Studies, who makes frequent trips into the alley and thus
might have provided information on who might have at-
tached the bomb to Letelier's car. It failed to show pic-
tures of suspects to Letelier s maid, who told IPS associ-
ates that she had noticed four Latino men loitering near
the house on the morning of the murders. FBI agents also-
took four days to retrieve evidence from the bombing site
which had been gathered by a private citizen walking
through Sheridan Circle the day after the murders.
Further, the U.S. attorney in charge of the case, Eugene
Propper, failed to arrange an interview with Orlando
Bosch, the supreme leader of the Cuban anti-Castro exile
terrorist groups, who was jailed in Venezuela last Novem-
ber. Meanwhile, a free-lance writer was able to waltz into
Bosch's jail cell in Caracas last April and obtain the admis-
sion from him that he had organized a meeting of all the.
Cuban exile factions' leaders in the Dominican Republic
in June 1976, where Letelier's assassination was dis-
cussed. Letelier's campaign to discredit the junta abroad
"was bothering some of our friends in Chile," Bosch told
the interviewer. "Chilean officials told me many times
when I lived there that they wanted him dead." Bosch
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denied further knowledge of the assassination in the inter-
view, but reportedly told Venezuelan authorities that two
other Cuban exiles carried out the hit.
.While the Justice Department's investigation puttered
along through the winter. Letelier's associates at the In-
stitute for Policy Studies became alarmed over the han-
dling of evidence by FBI officials, the D.C. Metropolitan
Police, and U.S. Attorney Propper.
Among Letelier's personal effects recovered from the
bombing site was a briefcase full of the normal mix of per-
sonal correspondence and working papers. Mrs. Letelier
was unable to have the briefcase returned to her on the
day of the assassinations. Soon afterward, however, docu-
ments from the dead man's briefcase began appearing in
the press, most often in : the columns of Jeremiah
O'Leary, a conservative reporter for The Washington Star
known to have a close association with the FBI and CIA,'
and in the nationally syndicated columns of Rowland
Evans and Robert Novak. The overall effect of the stories, -
which twisted and distorted Letelier's papers, was to
brand him falsely as a Soviet or Cuban agent, a smear'
campaign whose object no doubt was to distract attention
from the suspects and somehow justify the murders.
Eight months after Letelier's death, an Institute for Policy
Studies staff member called U.S. Attorney Propper and
notified him she would be down to his office that day to
retrieve an inventory sheet of the briefcase's contents. She
was startled to learn, however, that the Justice Depart-
ment official had never received or demanded one from
the District of Columbia police.
Mrs. Letelier immediately called Propper and de-
manded an explanation. "You have to understand,"
Propper told her, "that most of the documents were in
Spanish. Therefore the police could not classify them. You
know how the police department is." It turned out that
the briefcase's contents had all been photocopied, but no.
lists of the items had been prepared.
"And the contents were efficiently distributed among
right-wing writers," Mrs. Letelier noted to the official. "I
had nothing to do,with that," Propper replied. it is im-
possible to control the press. The Department is very
upset about it." ,
. "I don't want to receive more surprises," she replied,
and hung up. But more surprises were on the way. On
May 23, Mrs. Letelier's assistant, Rhonda Johnson, ar-
rived at Propper's office in. the Justice Department to
compare lists of the briefcase's contents. She found some
materials from the investigation mixed in with photo-
copies,of the briefcase materials and other items missing.
And although all of Orlando Letelier's belongings
retrieved from the car by the police had supposedly been
returned to his widow by that time, Propper reached into
his filing cabinet and handed Johnson Letelier's appoint-
ments book. Johnson was further disturbed to find that
when she compared her inventory of the briefcase with
copies of the items held by the D.C. Police Department
homicide squad, nine pieces of material were missing. The
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police had no explanation for how the items had been lost. activities in various countries. In December 1974, he es
Under pressure from the Institute for Policy Studies, tablished a base of operations in Chile. "I passed several
Propper issued a statement that none of the contents of times from Chile to Argentina. . .we tried to shoot some
the briefcase had any relevance to the Letelier case, or any. Cuban diplomats in the middle of 1975...because of the
other case pending before the Department. By early sum- contacts we made down there, we set up the murder of
mer however, details of Letelier's personal life, as culled two Cuban diplomats," he has admitted. Bosch also re-
from ..lcorrespondence in the briefcase, were circulating portedly received training from the DINA while he was in
throughout, the press and right-wing groups close to the Chile. "The purpose behind the training," according to at
CIA dnd FBI. In an interview last June, Edwin Wilson, a former Cuban exile leader who has recanted his past and
former` CIA officer. whose primary duty was to .set up returned to Havana, "was to have Bosch assassinate
fronts for the agency for the Bay of Pigs invasion,andother Andres Pascal Allende, nephew of the slain Chilean presi-
CIA wars in the Congo and the Far East, admitted to me dent."
'that-h. ehadaearned details of Letelier'spersonal life from,. In-the summer of 1975, while Bosch traveled through
friends inside the agency. Wilson, who was interviewed by Latin America and the Caribbean on a Chilean passport,
the FBI in- connection with the Letelier assassination, now setting up some of the 150 bombings and fifty murders his.
runs a Washington consulting firm whose business in- group has taken credit for, DINA chief Manuel Contreras
.. cludes1shippirig.explosive timing devices to foreign clients, arrived in the United States to inspect DINA operations'
More recently, an aide to Senator Richard Stone of here. The visit included a. meeting with then-CIA Deputy
Florida said.'he had heard from "Judiciary Committee Director Vernon Walters in Washington. Shortly before
sources ;chat Letelier was a "Cuban agent," and "that s the Contreras visit, DINA agent Frederico Willoughby
..'why lie'was.killed." Jack Anderson associate Les Whitten also came to the United States for medical tests at Johns
,airedj;the same. charge in a December 1976 column. Still Hopkins University hospital. Before returning toSantiago,
another rumor was that,Letelierwas murdered by leftists, Willoughby visited the CIA, State Department, and
rather than the right, to make a martyr of him. The New several members of Congress. On September .16, 1975,
-Yorkl'`Times failed to assign a reporter to the case; The according to published. reports, DINA chief Contreras
Washington Post remained largely silent during the late asked Pinochet for an extra S600,000 to "neutralize"
summer. Chilean dissidents in seven countries, including the
In March>;Isabel Letelier and Michael Moffitt had met United States.
with AttorneyGeneral Griffin Bell and requested the ap- In October, the former vice. president of the Christian
polntment of a special prosecutor, based on their Democratic Party, Bernardo Leighton, was gunned down
knowledge 'of mishandled evidence and the questionable with his wife in Rome. During that fall and later,,there was
ability-;:of: the Justice Department to obtain cooperation a noticeable increase in DINA operations throughout
: from the' CIA, which. played a prominent role in the Latin America, Western Europe, and the United States.
"destabilization of the .Allende government and sup- The international movements of DINA agents began to
plied the junta's secret police with-arms and training after be more closely monitored by the police. In some cases,
the. coup:': Be11 refused, explaining that he 'didn't want DINA agents were deported when assassination plans
another Watergate." came to light.
.:His; choice. of words was apt. Justice Department in- For Chilean exiles, it was a frightening period. Letelier,
vestigators_now believe that the Cubans connected to the for one, learned that the junta,had been debating whether
Letelier hit were;trained,by';the agency,_and that=the CIA- or,>.not to kill him. Shortly before he was murdered, it has
supported junta sponsored the murders. been learned, a Chilean official in Miami, Consul General
with well-known exile terrorists
Gaspar Jiminez'Escobedo and Ramiroae la re and other
members of the Miami-based exile group, Brigade 2506.
haIIPVP PYnIn6uPQ
All
de
e
ThelAmericandecision..to.,interveneCag4uw- the
government was recommendedby::the so-called 40'Com .usedfor`the Letelier hit arrived aboard a Chilean airlines
mttiee under the. direction of Secretary of State' Henry` flight to Miami, and were shipped north into the hands of
Kissinger, and approved by President. Richard Nixon. Cuban exiles who would carry out the execution.
'CIA'Director.Richard Helms put the. plan into action. At A prime suspect for that assignment is Guillermo'..
the lsame- time the CIA was; waging-a- clandestine- war Novo,a close associate of Orlando Bosch and a member
against the=socialist; government ,of 11 Chile, however; the of the. Cuban Nationalist Movement, which.is .based in
--agency: had.retreated, from its secret wariagainst the com- Union City, New. Jersey.-Novo was jailed in 1973 in con-
'mumst'government of Cuba. By 'late .1974, the disillu- section with conspiracy charges in the bombing of a
sior edanti-Castro Cuban armies, largely, cut off from the Cuban ship. When he was paroled in 1974, Novo joined
`CIA's welfare rolls,=turned to the.generals 'in Chile, and,: Bosch for assignments in Chile and Venezuela. Foreign
?especially to.Augusto Pinochet, who. had. assumed .leader- travel was a violation of his parole terms; and so a hearing
->shio of the : hemisphere' s-anticommunist crusade. was scheduled, in New Jersey last June. Novo, however.
Atfter, the Bay of?Pigs, the Cuban right-wing leader, failed to-appear; and awarrant has been issued for his ar
Orlando Bosch, had retired to medical practice in Miami's rest
next% twn..veart_', from 1974 through 1976,
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'If. President Carter can welcome Pinochet and shake his hand,
why can't he welcome me and shake my hand?'
various gangs of Cubans, operating -mostly out of friendly
territory in Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the
Dominican Republic, and the murky underworld of
Miami's "Little Havana," carried out scores of bomb-
ings, kidnappings, and murders. But in June 1976, Bosch
decided to try and pull them all together. At a summit
meeting of some twenty Cuban terrorist leaders in the
Dominican Republic, Bosch formed an umbrella group,
CORU (Coordination of the United Revolutionary
Organizations), for which he would be the only publicly
identified spokesman. Since CORU's formation, the
organization has claimed credit for fifty bombings outside
the United States.
However, no one has stepped forward to take credit for
the Letelier assassination, and the exiles are thought to be
increasingly worried about the FBI. The Chilean junta, of
course, has steadfastly denied any involvement in the
murders, and the exiles, according to a Miami source
close to Brigade 2506, have become increasingly ap-
prehensive over the prospect of the welcome mat being
withdrawn by Pinochet, who is anxious to gain the ap-
proval of President Carter.
Just before Pinochet left Santiago for Washington and
the Panama Canal treaty ceremonies, the president of Bri-
gade 2506, Roberto Carballo, sent Pinochet a letter out-
lining conditions for a proposed meeting with exile leaders
in Miami. Pinochet had been mulling over the idea of a
show-the-flag stopover in Miami on the way back to San-
tiago, and reports that he would meet with exile leaders
leaked into a Spanish-language newspaper in Miami early
in September. But Carballo's letter, hand-carried to
Pinochet, outlined conditions for a meeting that were ap-
parently stiffer than Pinochet had expected. Claiming to.
represent all the anti-Castro, anticommunist Cuban war-
riors in Miami, Carballo demanded:
?A proclamation byPinochet Pinochwillingness of the,
government of Chile to support the fight against the tyran-
ny of Fidel Castro...."
?An explanation of the "ways and means of the sup-
port of Chile in the fight" against Castro.
?"Consideration of the necessary means to implement
this fight...."
? "A joint statement... giving details of the talks and
taking international responsibility" for the arrangements
between them.
Carballo had wanted to negotiate a treaty between what
he evidently saw as two sovereign entities -'the junta and
the exiles - but for whatever reason, he was rebuffed.
Pinochet flew straight home to Santiago.
During that same week, Representative Ronald
Dellums, California Democrat, sponsored 'a press con-
ference with Isabel Letelier and Michael Moffitt to de-
nounce President Carter's welcome of General Pinochet
in the White House. They also announced they had re-
quested a personal meeting with Carter to press for the ap-
pointment of a special prosecutor. "If President Carter
can welcome Pinochet in the White House and shake his
hand, why can't he welcome me and shake my hand?"
Moffitt asked. "I'm an American citizen, and my wife
was murdered by people who Justice Department officials
believe were agents of the junta. This meeting will be used
by Pinochet to bolster his support back home. If Carter is
serious. about human rights, why doesn't he welcome
Isabel and me, just like he's welcoming Pinochet?"
The Washington Post, The Washington Star, and The
New York Times did not think the views of Isabel Letelier
and Michael Moffitt would be important enough to send a
reporter to listen to them. The Times did report on Sep-
.tember. 10, however, that Pinochet had returned to a
"triumphal welcome" in Santiago after his meeting with
Carter, which "enhanced his political prestige here, ac-
cording to a wide range of political observers."
Relations between the new government in Washington
under Carter'and the four-year-old Chilean junta had
been cemented. Pinochet's public relations ploy in August
(changing the name of the secret police) had apparently
worked. Upon his return to Santiago on September 9,
Pinochet announced that a new U.S. ambassador would
soon arrive. The announcement was not made in Wash-
ington. The post had been vacant since Carter's election.
The most chilling aspect of this new phase of relations be-
tween Washington and Santiago is that Pinochet may now
feel that he has a free hand to provide the terrorists
with base camps in Chile for operations throughout the
hemisphere. If so, President Carter, to whom the Ameri-
can people had looked for a fresh start after the treacheries
of Vietnam and Watergate, has chosen to pick up the bur-
dens of the past..
"The thing I worry about," Michael Moffitt said one
night early in August, "is that Chile will go the way of
Brazil. The Brazilian generals have shot or jailed the op-
position or sent- it into exile, and the resistance has been
largely crushed. *The unions have been busted, and politi-
cal parties outlawed. And yet, what do people here know
about it? It's been years now, and the U.S. Government
has hardly made a peep. That's why we have to do some-
thing. Ina couple more years, it maybe too late." 0
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