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Edited on Sat Mar-15-08 02:26 AM by Judi Lynn
might have wanted to see Orlando Letelier killed! We knew Pinochet hated him, but only a minute ago did I see a reason surfacing why the U.S. was o.k. with it, too! I believe George H. W. Bush was the head of the C.I.A. at the time he was assassinated in broad daylight by a car bomb planted for the Chilean D.I.N.A. by the two Cubans George W. Bush let out of prison as soon as he could arrange it, after they served, as your link to the Ann Louise Bardach interview said, SEVEN YEARS for assassinating a human being in cold blood in broad daylight in the nation's capital. First, here's his photo:  Wiki: Background He was born in the city of Temuco, the youngest child of Orlando Letelier Ruiz and Inés del Solar Rosenberg. He studied at the Instituto Nacional and, at the age of sixteen, he was accepted as a cadet of the Chilean Military Academy, where he completed his secondary studies. Later he abandoned the military life to attend the University of Chile, where he graduated as a lawyer in 1954. In 1955, he joined the recently formed Copper Office (Departamento del Cobre, now CODELCO), where he worked until 1959 as a research analyst in the copper industry. In that year, Orlando Letelier was fired for supporting Salvador Allende's unsuccessful second presidential campaign. The Letelier family had to retreat to Venezuela, where he became a copper consultant for the Finance Ministry. From there, Letelier made his way to then recently created Inter-American Development Bank, where he eventually became senior economist and director of the loan division. He was also one of the UN consultants responsible for the establishment of the Asian Development Bank. He married Isabel Margarita Morel Gumucio on December 17, 1955, with whom had four children: Christian, Jose, Francisco, and Juan Pablo. Political career
His first political participations were as a university student, when he became a student representative at the University of Chile's Student Union. In 1959 Letelier joined the Chilean Socialist Party (PS). In 1971 President Allende appointed him ambassador to the United States because he had some unique leadership qualities rare among Latin American revolutionaries of the time: chiefly among them a sophisticated grasp of the complexities of American politics and an in-depth knowledge of the copper industry. His specific mission was to try to explain to the US government the Chilean nationalization of copper.
During 1973, Letelier was recalled to Chile and served successively as Minister of Foreign Affairs, then Interior Minister and finally Defense Minister. In the coup d'etat of September 11, 1973, he was the first high-ranking member of the Allende administration seized and arrested, when he arrived to his office at the Ministry of Defense. He was held for twelve months in different concentration camps suffering severe torture: first at the Tacna Regiment, then at the Military Academy; later he was sent for 8 months to a political prison in Dawson Island and from there he was transferred to the basement of the Air Force War Academy, and finally to the concentration camp of Ritoque, until international diplomatic pressure especially from Diego Arria, then Governor of the city of Caracas in Venezuela resulted in the sudden release of Letelier on the condition that he immediately leave Chile.
After his release in September of 1974, he and his family resettled in Caracas, but then Orlando Letelier decided to head for Washington D.C., at the proposal of American writer Saul Landau. In 1975 Letelier moved to Washington where he became senior fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS is an independent research institute based in Washington, D.C., devoted to international policy studies), where Landau worked at the time. He also became director of the Transnational Institute (TNI is an independent research institute based in Amsterdam), and taught at the School of International Services of the American University, in Washington, D.C. He plunged into writing, speaking and lobbying the US Congress and European governments against Augusto Pinochet's regime, and soon became the leading voice of the Chilean resistance, preventing several loans (especially from Europe) from being awarded to the military government. On September 10, 1976, he was deprived of his Chilean nationality by decree.
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Letelier
 
His car, apres bomb.
Eigth Indicted in Letelier Slaying
Timothy S. Robinson with Lawrence Meyer and Christopher Dickey
The Washington Post, 2 August 1978
After a 22-month investigation, a federal grand jury here yesterday indicted the former head of Chile's secret police DINA) and seven others in the bombing death of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier on Washington's Embassy Row. The indictment of Gen. Juan Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, a close associate of Chilean President Augusto Pinochet, was believed to be the first ever returned in the United States against a high official of a foreign country's intelligence agency. Contreras, two DINA operatives in Chile and five Cuban exiles living in the United States were charged by the grand jury with plotting, carrying out and covering up the September 1976 murder of Letelier, a prominent and outspoken critic of the Chilean government at the time. The explosion that ripped through Letelier's 1975 Chevelle also killed an aide, Ronni K. Moffitt, and injured her husband.
The Chilean government last night announced the arrest of Contreras and two other Chileans named in the indictment, DINA operations director Pedro Espinoza Bravo and DINA agent Armando Fernandez Larios. In a statement issued by Interior Minister Sergio Fernandez, Chile said all three had been placed under military detention. The Chilean statement came hours after Assistent US Attorney Eugene M. Propper reported that the United States government would ask for the arrest and jailing for extradition of the three. But the request for extradition was expected to touch off a complicated legal proceedings. The indictment accuses Espinoza of ordering the assassination during a meeting in Chile and Fernandez of coming to the United States to spy on Letelier so that the assassins would know when to strike. The Cubans, members of the New Jersey-based Cuban Nationalist Movement, a militant anti-Castro group, are accused of helping to carry out the bombing.
The 15-page indictment was explicitly detailed because of the cooperation with US authorities of American-born DINA agent Michael Townley, who has agreed to plead guilty to planting the bomb. The indictment outlines with precision the alleged plot that resulted in the 9:30 a.m. blast on Sept. 21, 1976, on the placid Sheridan Circle area of the embassies, chanceries and diplomats' homes. Letelier was killed instantly when the bomb atop the A-frame of his car ripped up through the floorboards under his legs as he drove around the circle. He was on his way to work at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he had become internationally known for his outspoken criticism of the Chilean military regime. Ronni Moffitt was sitting on the passenger's side of the front seat. She died a few seconds after the blast as she staggered from the shattered, burning car. Her husband, and IPS co-worker, Michael Moffitt, suffered slight injuries. The Letelier car came to rest against a Volkswagen parked within 100 yards of the Chilean ambassador's residence, and set the stage for a massive worldwide FBI investigation into the first diplomatic assassination here.
Letelier's coworkers, and others in leftist circles, immediately accused DINA, at the time the focus of allegations of massive human rights violations and torture of political prisoners, of the bombing. They said DINA was concerned about the continuing attention that Letelier was able to focus on the Pinochet regime, and silenced him for that reason. The FBI, with help from the DC Police Department, began the intensive lab work and search of the bomb scene. Its agents began the first of thousands of interviews, weeding out the possibility of domestic plots and other suspects before focusing on political motivations. The Justice Department worked out careful alliances with the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency to allow their cooperation with the investigation. Within a month of the blast, the investigation was centered on the Cuban Nationalist Movement and the allegation by a jailed international terrorist that two CNM members - Ignacio Novo Sampol and Guillermo Novo Sampol - were involved in the plot. The Novos, known for their firing of a bazooka at the United Nations in 1964 when Che Guevara was speaking there, were brought before the grand jury and questioned. Yesterday's indictment accuses them of committing perjury when they told that grand jury that they did not know anything about Letelier, DINA, or the slaying. A few months later, another Cuban Nationalist Movement leader, Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel, was called before the same grand jury and granted immunity from prosecution if he would testify about his alleged involvement in the plot. He refused, and was jailed for contempt of court for 11 months until that particular grand jury's term expired this year.
More:
http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?page=letelier-docs_020878
 
 
Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel, Virgilio Paz RomeroIn November 2000, Posada was arrested again, along with three other anti-Castro militants for plotting to assassinate Castro during the Ibero-American summit in Panama. All of the arrested men had impressive rap sheets and had been charter members of the terrorist groups CORU or Omega 7. In April 2004, Panama's Supreme Court sentenced Posada and his associates to up to eight years in prison, but in August the quartet was sprung by a surprise pardon from departing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, who maintains good relations with Miami's political leadership. Her pardon outraged U.S and Latin American law enforcement officials.
Three of the men were flown to Miami and met by their jubilant supporters just days before the 2004 presidential election. But Posada disappeared -- until his emergence here last month.
The quartet are not the only unsavory characters to be given the red carpet in Miami. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen, with the backing of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, wrote letters on behalf of several exile militants held in U.S. prisons for acts of political violence. Some were released in 2001, including Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel and Virgilio Paz Romero, both convicted for the notorious 1976 car bomb-murder of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronnie Moffitt, in Washington. Once released, instead of being deported like other non-citizen criminals, they have been allowed to settle into the good life in Miami.
(snip) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58297-2005Apr16.html
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