LETTERS SAY CHILE AIDED LETELIER MURDER FIGURE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000403680020-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: February 23, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000403680020-0
STAT
THE WASHINGTON POST
23 February 1982
Letters Say Chile Aided Leteii
ev
Uri]
we
By Patrick.E.' Tyler
Washington Pmt Starr Wrlur'
The Chilean government paid
legal fees and family support during
1978 and 1979_ for Michael V. Town-
ley, the man who was convicted of
plotting and helping to carry out the
car bombing assassination in-
Wash-ington of exiled former Chilean.dip
lomat Orlando. Letelier,-according to
private letters s-Townley wrote-from
prison to officials in Chile.
Copies of 52 letters;'coverin the
period from June 1978, two'-months-.
after Townley was turned over to the
United! States by the: Chilean-gov
ernment, to October.1979. were ob-
tained by The Washington Post and
authenticated by federal officials.
The letters - portray the still.
imprisoned . Townley as frustrated
and despondent `over efforts by the
Chilean government publicly' - to '
disassociate itself from hini, and by
the slow payment of his bills: At the-
'same time, the letters contain assur-
ances that Townley would ' conceal
additional information concerning
Chilean. intelligence - activities
including contacts with rightist Eu-
ropean terrorists-from U.S;;'pros= ti
ecutors_ _
During the Letelier -assassination
trials, federal"prosecutors presented
extensive evidence that Townley, an
American citizen, was- a senior agent
in Chile's intelligence service,: then
'known as DINA, and had carried out
the September 1976 assassination of
Letelier and an associate, Ronni K.
Moffitt, under direct DINA orders.
The Chilean government, which re-
fused to extradite three senior DINA.
officials who were.. indicted . in - the
case based on Townley's testimony,
at the time characterized Townley as
a low-level functionary in -the secret .
police who never was authorized
assassinate anyone..
Since then, Chile consistently has
denied any: connection with Town-
ley, including payment of his legal
and personal expenses. In September
of 1978, for ,'example, Gen. Cesar
Mendoza Duran, a member of the
Chilean junta, ~ denounced Townley
as "an agent of the CIA, the KGB
and at the same time im agent of
Cuba." - Asked yesterday about the
information contained in the Town-
ley letters, Juan Prado, a-spokesman
..at the Chilean Embassy, said: "This
is another lie. Every statement Mr.
Townley makes about Chile is false."
The letters originally ? were ob-
tained from. an. unidentified source
'by. Taylor Branch and Eugene 1MI.
.Propper, a former assistant U.S. at-
torney who headed. the prosecution
team, against Townley and.. two
Cuban: exiles, who later were ac
.quitted. Branch and Propper have
written a book about the Letelier
assassination due to be published in
_April. Last September,'the authors
turned over copies of the letters to
the FBI, which has reviewed their
contents and discussed them with
Townley,.who remains at an undis-
`closed prison serving the remainder
of his plea-bargained sentence for
;.conspiring to murder Letelier..
"The one thing you get from the
letters is that he [Townley] was any-
thing-but low-level," said Lawrence
Barcella, the assistant U.S. attorney
now 'in charge of the Letelier inves-
tigation.. "His .'knowledge of events
and other intelligence operations be-
'Les' his being a low-level function-
Based in part on leads taken from .
the letters, Branch and Propper as-
-sect in their book, titled "Labyrinth"
that DINA and Townley were in
volved with other terrorist activities
outside Chile,' including an assassi-
nation. attempt. by Italian terrorists
against . former; .. Chilean vice presi
~-dent Bernardo Leighton,. who. along
with his wife, was criticalIy,wounded
Asked about these and related in'-
formation contained in the book,
Barcella said, "Townley has acknowl-
edged enough of those things that I
believe them to be true.". -
To date,'the only publicly released
information taken from the letters
emerged last December, when fed-,
eral officials confirmed a DINA plot'
in which Townley in '1976 smuggled
a small quantity of deadly nerve gas
into the United States for possible
use on Letelier. The vial of nerve
gas, disguised as a bottle of Chanel
No. a perfume, was shipped. back to
Chile before the Sept.' 2t'attack on
Letelier.
This week, the FBI is expected to
turn over copies of the letters, or at
least a summary of their contents, to
members of Congress who have re-
quested them: as part of an investi-
gation into Chile's human rights
record. The Reagan administration
last year persuaded' Congress to lift a
.ban on U.S. arms sales to Chile, pro-,
posed by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy'
`(D-Mass.) and adopted by Congress
in 1976.. But licensing for all such
arms exports was conditioned on ad--
ministration certification to Congress
that the government' of Chilean
President Gen. Augusto Pinochet
has improved' its , human rights:
record and has made progress in its.
own- investigation of ,the Letelier- kil
ling.
So farthe administration has
made no such certification. But the
matter has taken On increased ur
gency this month to several ;U.S.-
arms and aircraft.. manufacturers -
that are seeking government licenses
to export their. wares for display in
r Chile during an international air,
show there next month.
David Kemp, the Chilean desk of
ficer at the -State-Department, said
that some' firms.'have -made--'over-
tures" to department officials. "Some
ccompanies have-made it clear they,
i would like- to participate but -they,
are ? being told that noapplications
can be' approved'untilthe &r
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000403680020-0~,