They are the terrorists! - Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism
“Every day it is clearer that Pinochet ordered my brother’s death,” human rights lawyer Fabiola Letelier told the New York Times. “But for a proper and complete investigation to take place we need access to the appropriate records and evidence.” [NYT, Sept. 21, 2006]
Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism
by ROBERT PARRY
Chilean investigators say the Bush administration is undercutting their case against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for his alleged role in the terrorist assassination of a political rival on the streets of Washington three decades ago, a crime that then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush appears to have tolerated and then helped cover-up.
Now, George W. Bush has picked up the mantle from his father for protecting the 90-year-old Pinochet from ever facing justice for the murder of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt, who were killed by a car bomb on Sept. 21, 1976, as Letelier drove down Massachusetts Avenue.
Six years ago, near the end of the Clinton administration, an FBI team reviewed new evidence that had become available in the case and recommended the indictment of Pinochet. But the final decision was left to the incoming Bush administration, which has failed to act while also withholding relevant documents from Chilean investigators.
“Every day it is clearer that Pinochet ordered my brother’s death,” human rights lawyer Fabiola Letelier told the New York Times. “But for a proper and complete investigation to take place we need access to the appropriate records and evidence.” [NYT, Sept. 21, 2006]
By frustrating the Chilean investigation, the Bush administration also is protecting former President George H.W. Bush against possibly being implicated in this act of terrorism, conceivably as an accessory after the fact for diverting suspicion away from Pinochet.
The Letelier-Moffitt murder is considered the worst act of state-sponsored terrorism in the history of Washington, D.C. At minimum, George H.W. Bush’s CIA operated with extraordinary incompetence and negligence in failing to act on explicit warnings about the assassination plot.
THIRTY-YEAR TALE
The case dates back to 1976 when the elder George Bush was running the CIA and right-wing military dictatorships – many with close CIA ties – were striking out at political adversaries through a cross-border assassination project known as Operation Condor.
At the time, one of the most eloquent voices making the case against Pinochet’s regime was Orlando Letelier, who was living in exile and operating out of a liberal think tank in Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies.
Earlier in their government careers, when Letelier was briefly defense minister in the leftist government of Salvador Allende, Pinochet had been Letelier’s subordinate. In 1973, after Pinochet took power in a military coup that killed Allende, Pinochet imprisoned Letelier at a desolate concentration camp on Dawson Island off Chile’s south Pacific coast.
INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE WON LETELIER RELEASE A YEAR LATER.
By 1976, however, Pinochet was chafing under Letelier’s criticism of the regime’s human rights record. Letelier was doubly infuriating to Pinochet because Letelier was regarded as a man of intellect and charm, even impressing CIA officers who observed him as “a personable, socially pleasant man” and “a reasonable, mature democrat,” according to CIA biographical sketches.
Pinochet fumed to U.S. officials, including to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, that Letelier was spreading lies and causing trouble with the U.S. Congress. Soon, Pinochet was plotting with Manuel Contreras, chief of Chile’s feared DINA secret service, on how to silence Letelier for good.
By summer 1976, Bush’s CIA was hearing a lot about Operation Condor from South American sources who had attended a second organizational conference of Southern Cone intelligence services.
These CIA sources reported that the military regimes were preparing “to engage in ‘executive action’ outside the territory of member countries.” In intelligence circles, “executive action” is a euphemism for assassination.
On July 30, 1976, a CIA official briefed State Department officials about these “disturbing developments in [Condor’s] operational attitudes.” The information was passed to Kissinger in a “secret” report on August 3, 1976.
The 14-page report from Assistant Secretary of State Harry Shlaudeman said the military regimes were “joining forces to eradicate ‘subversion,’ a word which increasingly translates into non-violent dissent from the left and center left.” [See Peter Kornbluh’s The Pinochet File.]
TARGETING LETELIER
While information about the larger Condor strategy was spreading through the upper levels of the Ford administration, Pinochet and Contreras were putting in motion an audacious plan to eliminate Orlando Letelier in his safe haven in Washington, D.C.
In July 1976, two DINA operatives – Michael Townley and Armando Fernandez Larios – went to Paraguay where DINA had arranged for them to get false passports and visas for a trip to the United States.
Townley and Larios were using the false names Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral and a cover story claiming they were investigating suspected leftists working for Chile’s state copper company in New York.
Townley and Fernandez said their project had been cleared with the CIA’s station chief in Santiago. A senior Paraguayan official, Conrado Pappalardo, urged U.S. Ambassador George Landau to cooperate, citing a direct appeal from Pinochet in support of the mission. Supposedly, the Paraguayan government claimed, the two Chileans were to meet with Bush’s CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters.
An alarmed Landau recognized that the visa request was highly unusual, since such operations were normally coordinated with the CIA station in the host country and were cleared with CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Though granting the visas, Landau took the precaution of sending an urgent cable to Walters and photostatic copies of the fake passports to the CIA. Landau said he received an urgent cable back signed by CIA Director Bush, reporting that Walters, who was in the process of retiring, was out of town.
When Walters returned a few days later, he cabled Landau that he had “nothing to do with this” mission. Landau immediately canceled the visas.
Landau also alerted senior State Department officials. In one cable, Landau said the “Paraguayan caper” had “troublesome aspects” and recommended that the two Chileans be barred from entering the United States.
“If there is still time, and if there is a possibility of turning off this harebrained scheme,” assistant secretary Shlaudeman wrote in reply, “you are authorized to go back [to Paraguayan officials] to urge that the Chileans be persuaded not – repeat not – to travel.”
But the Ford administration dithered over delivering a formal demarche demanding that Pinochet’s government cease and desist in its cross-border assassinations. Though a plan for warning Santiago was developed, the State Department could not agree how to carry it out without offending the prickly Pinochet.
BUSH’S CIA
It also remains unclear what – if anything – Bush’s CIA did after learning about the “Paraguayan caper.”
Normal protocol would have required senior CIA officials to ask their Chilean counterparts about the supposed trip to Langley. However, even with the declassification of more records in recent years, that question has never been fully answered.
The CIA also demonstrated little curiosity over the Aug. 22, 1976, arrival of two other Chilean operatives using Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral, the phony names that were intended to hide the identity of the two operatives in the earlier plot.
When these two different operatives arrived in Washington, they made a point of having the Chilean Embassy notify Walters’s office at CIA.
“It is quite beyond belief that the CIA is so lax in its counterespionage functions that it would simply have ignored a clandestine operation by a foreign intelligence service in Washington, D.C., or elsewhere in the United States,” wrote John Dinges and Saul Landau in their 1980 book, Assassination on Embassy Row. “It is equally implausible that Bush, Walters, Landau and other officials were unaware of the chain of international assassinations that had been attributed to DINA.”
Apparently, DINA dispatched the second pair of operatives, using the phony names, to show that the initial contacts for visas in Paraguay were not threatening. In other words, the Chilean government had the replacement team of Williams and Romeral go through the motions of a trip to Washington with the intent to visit Walters to dispel any American suspicions or to spread confusion among suspicious U.S. officials.
But it’s still unclear whether Bush’s CIA contacted Pinochet’s government about its mysterious behavior and, if not, why not.
THE BOMB PLOT
AS FOR THE LETELIER ASSASSINATION, DINA WAS SOON PLOTTING ANOTHER WAY TO CARRY OUT THE KILLING.
THIS IS THE END OF A QUOTE FROM THE ARTICLE, YOU CAN READ THE VERY WELL RESEARCHED REST AT URL.:
The Baltimore Chronicle - Url.: http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2006/092206PARRY.html
ROBERT PARRY broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.' This article is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.
STRONGLY RELATED: Could Kissinger Have Prevented Letelier's Assassination? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/haxaz
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* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html
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Editor Henk Ruyssenaars lived as an independent foreign correspondent in Chile from 1971 until an expected 'Persona non Grata' declaration in July 1974, by US/Kissinger/CIA 'coup general' Augusto Pinochet, who - for all his crimes against humanity - should have been in jail decades ago.
Having followed the news from Chile through the years, I do not think the present Bachelet government is giving the Chilean people a fair shake. I see too much Washington policy and too little Chilean independence. Bachelet and her 'advisers', from my point of view, have let down the Chilean people, and dance to the tune of the 'managers' - in Washington as well in the country itself. No wonder the people demonstrate against them.
http://tinyurl.com/jwgqa
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl
-0-
Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism
by ROBERT PARRY
Chilean investigators say the Bush administration is undercutting their case against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for his alleged role in the terrorist assassination of a political rival on the streets of Washington three decades ago, a crime that then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush appears to have tolerated and then helped cover-up.
Now, George W. Bush has picked up the mantle from his father for protecting the 90-year-old Pinochet from ever facing justice for the murder of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt, who were killed by a car bomb on Sept. 21, 1976, as Letelier drove down Massachusetts Avenue.
Six years ago, near the end of the Clinton administration, an FBI team reviewed new evidence that had become available in the case and recommended the indictment of Pinochet. But the final decision was left to the incoming Bush administration, which has failed to act while also withholding relevant documents from Chilean investigators.
“Every day it is clearer that Pinochet ordered my brother’s death,” human rights lawyer Fabiola Letelier told the New York Times. “But for a proper and complete investigation to take place we need access to the appropriate records and evidence.” [NYT, Sept. 21, 2006]
By frustrating the Chilean investigation, the Bush administration also is protecting former President George H.W. Bush against possibly being implicated in this act of terrorism, conceivably as an accessory after the fact for diverting suspicion away from Pinochet.
The Letelier-Moffitt murder is considered the worst act of state-sponsored terrorism in the history of Washington, D.C. At minimum, George H.W. Bush’s CIA operated with extraordinary incompetence and negligence in failing to act on explicit warnings about the assassination plot.
THIRTY-YEAR TALE
The case dates back to 1976 when the elder George Bush was running the CIA and right-wing military dictatorships – many with close CIA ties – were striking out at political adversaries through a cross-border assassination project known as Operation Condor.
At the time, one of the most eloquent voices making the case against Pinochet’s regime was Orlando Letelier, who was living in exile and operating out of a liberal think tank in Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies.
Earlier in their government careers, when Letelier was briefly defense minister in the leftist government of Salvador Allende, Pinochet had been Letelier’s subordinate. In 1973, after Pinochet took power in a military coup that killed Allende, Pinochet imprisoned Letelier at a desolate concentration camp on Dawson Island off Chile’s south Pacific coast.
INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE WON LETELIER RELEASE A YEAR LATER.
By 1976, however, Pinochet was chafing under Letelier’s criticism of the regime’s human rights record. Letelier was doubly infuriating to Pinochet because Letelier was regarded as a man of intellect and charm, even impressing CIA officers who observed him as “a personable, socially pleasant man” and “a reasonable, mature democrat,” according to CIA biographical sketches.
Pinochet fumed to U.S. officials, including to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, that Letelier was spreading lies and causing trouble with the U.S. Congress. Soon, Pinochet was plotting with Manuel Contreras, chief of Chile’s feared DINA secret service, on how to silence Letelier for good.
By summer 1976, Bush’s CIA was hearing a lot about Operation Condor from South American sources who had attended a second organizational conference of Southern Cone intelligence services.
These CIA sources reported that the military regimes were preparing “to engage in ‘executive action’ outside the territory of member countries.” In intelligence circles, “executive action” is a euphemism for assassination.
On July 30, 1976, a CIA official briefed State Department officials about these “disturbing developments in [Condor’s] operational attitudes.” The information was passed to Kissinger in a “secret” report on August 3, 1976.
The 14-page report from Assistant Secretary of State Harry Shlaudeman said the military regimes were “joining forces to eradicate ‘subversion,’ a word which increasingly translates into non-violent dissent from the left and center left.” [See Peter Kornbluh’s The Pinochet File.]
TARGETING LETELIER
While information about the larger Condor strategy was spreading through the upper levels of the Ford administration, Pinochet and Contreras were putting in motion an audacious plan to eliminate Orlando Letelier in his safe haven in Washington, D.C.
In July 1976, two DINA operatives – Michael Townley and Armando Fernandez Larios – went to Paraguay where DINA had arranged for them to get false passports and visas for a trip to the United States.
Townley and Larios were using the false names Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral and a cover story claiming they were investigating suspected leftists working for Chile’s state copper company in New York.
Townley and Fernandez said their project had been cleared with the CIA’s station chief in Santiago. A senior Paraguayan official, Conrado Pappalardo, urged U.S. Ambassador George Landau to cooperate, citing a direct appeal from Pinochet in support of the mission. Supposedly, the Paraguayan government claimed, the two Chileans were to meet with Bush’s CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters.
An alarmed Landau recognized that the visa request was highly unusual, since such operations were normally coordinated with the CIA station in the host country and were cleared with CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Though granting the visas, Landau took the precaution of sending an urgent cable to Walters and photostatic copies of the fake passports to the CIA. Landau said he received an urgent cable back signed by CIA Director Bush, reporting that Walters, who was in the process of retiring, was out of town.
When Walters returned a few days later, he cabled Landau that he had “nothing to do with this” mission. Landau immediately canceled the visas.
Landau also alerted senior State Department officials. In one cable, Landau said the “Paraguayan caper” had “troublesome aspects” and recommended that the two Chileans be barred from entering the United States.
“If there is still time, and if there is a possibility of turning off this harebrained scheme,” assistant secretary Shlaudeman wrote in reply, “you are authorized to go back [to Paraguayan officials] to urge that the Chileans be persuaded not – repeat not – to travel.”
But the Ford administration dithered over delivering a formal demarche demanding that Pinochet’s government cease and desist in its cross-border assassinations. Though a plan for warning Santiago was developed, the State Department could not agree how to carry it out without offending the prickly Pinochet.
BUSH’S CIA
It also remains unclear what – if anything – Bush’s CIA did after learning about the “Paraguayan caper.”
Normal protocol would have required senior CIA officials to ask their Chilean counterparts about the supposed trip to Langley. However, even with the declassification of more records in recent years, that question has never been fully answered.
The CIA also demonstrated little curiosity over the Aug. 22, 1976, arrival of two other Chilean operatives using Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral, the phony names that were intended to hide the identity of the two operatives in the earlier plot.
When these two different operatives arrived in Washington, they made a point of having the Chilean Embassy notify Walters’s office at CIA.
“It is quite beyond belief that the CIA is so lax in its counterespionage functions that it would simply have ignored a clandestine operation by a foreign intelligence service in Washington, D.C., or elsewhere in the United States,” wrote John Dinges and Saul Landau in their 1980 book, Assassination on Embassy Row. “It is equally implausible that Bush, Walters, Landau and other officials were unaware of the chain of international assassinations that had been attributed to DINA.”
Apparently, DINA dispatched the second pair of operatives, using the phony names, to show that the initial contacts for visas in Paraguay were not threatening. In other words, the Chilean government had the replacement team of Williams and Romeral go through the motions of a trip to Washington with the intent to visit Walters to dispel any American suspicions or to spread confusion among suspicious U.S. officials.
But it’s still unclear whether Bush’s CIA contacted Pinochet’s government about its mysterious behavior and, if not, why not.
THE BOMB PLOT
AS FOR THE LETELIER ASSASSINATION, DINA WAS SOON PLOTTING ANOTHER WAY TO CARRY OUT THE KILLING.
THIS IS THE END OF A QUOTE FROM THE ARTICLE, YOU CAN READ THE VERY WELL RESEARCHED REST AT URL.:
The Baltimore Chronicle - Url.: http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2006/092206PARRY.html
ROBERT PARRY broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.' This article is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.
STRONGLY RELATED: Could Kissinger Have Prevented Letelier's Assassination? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/haxaz
Fwd. by:
* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html
Fwd. by: FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor Henk Ruyssenaars lived as an independent foreign correspondent in Chile from 1971 until an expected 'Persona non Grata' declaration in July 1974, by US/Kissinger/CIA 'coup general' Augusto Pinochet, who - for all his crimes against humanity - should have been in jail decades ago.
Having followed the news from Chile through the years, I do not think the present Bachelet government is giving the Chilean people a fair shake. I see too much Washington policy and too little Chilean independence. Bachelet and her 'advisers', from my point of view, have let down the Chilean people, and dance to the tune of the 'managers' - in Washington as well in the country itself. No wonder the people demonstrate against them.
http://tinyurl.com/jwgqa
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl
-0-
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