How involved were US leaders in the plot to assassinate Ed Koch?

[stickdog]

We know the US supported Operation Condor. See: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010306/

We know that in 1976, "the then Director of Central Intelligence, George Herbert Walker Bush" informed Ed Koch "that his sponsorship of legislation to cut off U.S. military assistance to Uruguay on human rights grounds had provoked secret police officials to 'put a contract out'" on him.

Koch was supposedly only warned of this after the 1976 Letelier-Moffitt assassination in Washington, DC caused US intel officials to question "their assumption that other countries would not conduct assassinations in the US." See: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB112/

But notice logical disconnection that our cognitive dissonance naturally generates when it comes to assessing just WHO killed Letelier & Moffitt and "put a contract" on Koch with whose approval, guidance and support.

Note that we have little or no trouble believing that OTHER countries conspired to assassinate their political enemies, including US citizens. Further note that it's impossible to examine the evidence without concluding that Operation Condor was at least facilitated by US intelligence assets. Yet the idea that US leaders would kill US citizens in pursuit of larger geopolitical aims somehow remains completely incredible to every measure of "conventional wisdom" and relegated to the domain to wild-eyed, tinfoil wearing "conspiracy theorist" nutcases.

To be brief and blunt, the Letelier & Moffitt assassinations look like an obvious, even inarguable LIHOP to me. But why believe the historical record when it's so much wiser to put your faith in Henry Kissinger and his former assistants?

From: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/index.htm

The censored debate in Foreign Affairs centers on Operation Condor and what actions U.S. officials took in response to CIA intelligence that the Pinochet regime, along with other military governments in the region, had "plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians, and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad," according to agency sources. The progression of documentation shows that the CIA withheld information from the State Department on Condor plotting for weeks in the summer of 1976. In late August Henry Kissinger's office belatedly sent out a diplomatic warning to the Southern Cone military governments that was not, in the end, actually delivered. A September 20th cable from Kissinger's top deputy on Latin America, discovered by Archive analyst Carlos Osorio, instructed U.S. ambassadors in the region to "take no further action" on deterring Condor plots because "there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme."

[Norquist Nemesis]

1. This probably explains Koch's endorsement of BushII

more than anything else.

[AndyTiedye]

2. And Tom Daschle's rather token opposition to the regime...

...post-anthrax.

and, of course, Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan are no longer
opposing the regime.

[smirkymonkey]

3. Is that why Koch is such a Bush ass-kisser?

I always thought he was an ass, but now that I see what his alternative was, I have a little more compassion for him.