From: "Al Giordano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.narconews.com
Subject: new documents on Letelier assassination
File under shame:
In tomorrow's NY Times, there is a story on newly declassified documents on
the
1973 Chile coup and the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffit
in DC.
Then-US Ambassador David Popper comes through as complicit.
But Popper pleads "I'm an old man" -- he's 88, to escape judgement. Kind of
like Pinochet did in Spain.
Not mentioned in the NY Times story -- of course not -- is the current US
Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow, Popper's political counsel during
the coup years in Santiago.
Here is the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/14/world/14CHIL.html
November 14, 2000, NEW YORK TIMES
Documents Shed Light on Assassination of Chilean in U.S.
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS and DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
ASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — A month before the assassination of a Chilean diplomat and an American colleague in
downtown Washington in 1976, the United States government ordered its envoys
in Latin America to try to avert a plot to murder leftist opponents of the
region's governments, documents released today show.
But the American ambassador in Chile, David Popper, refused to convey what
Washington had learned of the plot or even the government's concerns to the
leader of Chile's military junta, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, saying he did not
want to offend the general by associating him with the plot, known as
Operation Condor, the documents show. "He might well take as an insult any
inference that he was connected with such assassination plots," Mr. Popper
said in a cable to Washington.
General Pinochet's secret police chief, Gen. Manuel Contreras, was later
convicted in Chile of ordering what was, up to that time, the worst act of
foreign-sponsored terrorism on American soil: the bombing on Sept. 21, 1976,
of the car in which Orlando Letelier, a former confidant of the deposed
Chilean president, Salvador Allende, was traveling to his job at a Washington
research institute along with two colleagues. He and Ronni K. Moffitt were
killed; her husband, Michael Moffitt, survived the blast.
While there is no evidence that an American warning to General Pinochet or
General Contreras would have thwarted the attack on Embassy Row here, critics
of the American government's role in Chile during the 1970's said today that
it represented, at a minimum, a lost opportunity.
"An extraordinary tragedy," said Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the
National Security Archive, a private clearinghouse for declassified
documents. "Such a meeting might well have prevented that act of
assassination from taking place."
The information came to light today as the Clinton administration released
more than 16,000 documents on America's relationship with Chile from the
years before the 1973 military coup in which the junta deposed President
Allende to 1991, after the country's transition to democracy. It was the
final release in a declassification project ordered in February 1999 by
President Clinton.
The documents, including more than 450 on covert operations that the Central
Intelligence Agency earlier sought to withhold, support those who argue that
General Pinochet was complicit in the assassination conspiracy, Mr. Kornbluh
said.
While critics of United States policy in the region have long said that the
Letelier murder could not have been carried out without General Pinochet's
knowledge, the documents released today include a State Department cable
showing that he called President Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay asking him
for "an urgent favor." The favor was that Paraguay issue passports to two
agents of the Chilean secret police, according to the State Department
document, which was marked "secret" and apparently written in the summer of
1976.
The government of Paraguay complied, but the American Embassy there barred
the agents from traveling to the United States, asserting that they had lied
about their plans and their reason for going to the United States. The two
later entered using Chilean passports.
Those two men, Michael Townley and Armando Fern?ndez, were convicted years
later for their role in arranging the car bombing.
General Pinochet returned to Chile this year after being held under house
arrest in Britain at the request of a Spanish judge who wanted him tried
under an international torture treaty. But the general was released after he
was ruled to be too ill to stand trial.
The newly declassified documents also show that General Pinochet's
intelligence chief, General Contreras, tried to fend off demands for his
extradition to the United States after he was indicted here for the Letelier
murder with threats that he could implicate American officials in the
killings. The documents provide no proof that General Contreras could produce
such evidence.
In 1991, the documents show, the C.I.A. destroyed its file on General
Contreras, who had been a paid informant for the agency.
Mark Mansfield, the agency's spokesman, said the documents "speak for
themselves." But he urged people to "view them and the events they describe
within their proper historical context."
"C.I.A. activities were conducted within the framework of U.S. foreign policy
at the time," he said, "and covert actions were undertaken at the direction
of the White House and interagency policy coordinating committees."
The outlines of Washington's role in Chile are known, including the Nixon
administration's support of groups plotting to prevent Mr. Allende from
assuming the presidency after his election in 1970, and its subsequent
efforts to destabilize his socialist government.
In 1975 the Senate Intelligence Committee reported that from 1963 to 1973,
the C.I.A. spent more than $8 million on disinformation campaigns, propaganda
and financial aid to groups plotting a coup.
And this September, a C.I.A. report to Congress acknowledged that the agency
had a relationship with General Contreras from 1974 to 1977, and that he
received a one-time payment of an undisclosed sum in 1975.
A senior administration official said the new documents "reveal the evolution
of U.S. policy quite well."
The documents released today show American officials moving from open
enthusiasm for the coup that toppled the Allende government and brought
General Pinochet to power, to reservations about his junta's human rights
abuses, to support for the democratic opposition that unseated the general.
Minutes of high-level meetings released today show that President Nixon
feared that the election of Mr. Allende could set off a drift toward
Communism in South America. And he appeared determined to undermine the
Allende government.
"We are going to cold turkey them on the economy," Mr. Nixon said, suggesting
that the United States would flood world markets with copper to force down
the price of Chile's main resource. His advisers warned that such dumping
would be illegal.
After General Pinochet's coup, the junta arrested vast numbers of people they
suspected of being leftists — Chileans and foreigners living in Chile.
Imprisoned in soccer stadiums, they were interrogated. Many were tortured and
some 3,000 were killed, according to a investigation in 1990 by the Chilean
National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation.
The documents reveal that one of the Americans killed at a stadium in
Santiago, Frank Teruggi, had been labeled a subversive by the C.I.A.
Mr. Mansfield said the agency had "no prior knowledge" of the circumstances
leading to Mr. Teruggi's death.
Documents declassified by the Clinton administration have shown that American
officials were aware of plans for assassinations in foreign capitals nearly
two months before Mr. Letelier's killing. In late August 1976, Philip Habib,
then under secretary of state for political affairs, ordered United States
ambassadors throughout Latin America to voice American disapproval.
But more than a week after the Letelier assassination, Mr. Popper, the
American ambassador in Chile, cabled the State Department to reject
approaching General Pinochet. Instead, he suggested that an intelligence
official convey Washington's concerns to General Contreras.
Mr. Popper declined to comment on his actions then. "It was a long time ago,"
said Mr. Popper, who is 88. "I'm a very old man."
v
