78-15-A1
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Letelier I[edit]
Transcript[edit]In Washington, on September 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier, who had been Chile's ambassador to the United States in the leftist Allende government, died in a bomb explosion in his automobile. A woman co-worker died with him. Letelier, living in exile in Washington, had been working out of a radical leftist think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies. More about that later. First, the question of who killed Letelier has not been answered, though an American living in Chile, one Michael Townley, has confessed to U.S. authorities that he placed the bomb under the car. Townley implicated five Cuban anti-Castro exiles (who have been indicted) and in exchange for a promise in advance of a light sentence, he has claimed that the parties responsible for Letelier's death are the former head of Chile's disbanded security agency called DINA and two of his subordinates. A Washington grand jury has indicted them and asked Chile to extradite them. There, a court will decide whether or not to go along with the request. General Contreras, that former head of DINA, is close to General Pincohet, head of the Chilean government, and, as a report just released by the Council on Inter-American Security points out, the real objective of Letelier's leftist comrades is to discredit Chile's government in order to make it fall. Virginia Prewett, a veteran award-winning journalist who has specialized in Latin American affairs, is the author of the new report and she raises some important points that have received very little attention in our news media, especially the media in Washington on which members of Congress depend for much foreign affairs information. She says, "Washington TV stations flashed bulletins on the (Letelier) assassination, and then groped in unfamiliar subject matter for follow-up news. Within hours, the IPS (Letelier's radical think-tank), taking advantage of this news vacuum, staged a daIDnstration at Washington's nearby DuPont Circle, to which 1V newsmen flocked. There, activists in pale-pink paper masks flourished placards accusing the DINA, Pinochet, U.S. imperialism and the fascist military-industrial complex." Miss Prewett says that over the next three days, Letelier's widow and two IPS directors filled the media with statements blaming Chile's government for the deaths. They were seen on Washington television 14 times, compared with four brief appearances by Chile's ambassador to deny the charges. This set the tone for most media coverage since, but Miss Prewett doubts that the Pincohet government had anything to gain by engineering the assassination of Letelier. On the contrary. The very day Letelier was killed, Chile's finance minister arrived in Washington to confer with then-Secretary of the Treasury William Sirron on financial aid Chile needed to pursue its economic recovery plan. In fact, the Chilean embassy had scheduled a press conference to kick-off the plan. The Letelier murder wiped it out. Virginia Prewett asks, "Why would Pinochet tell his right-hand man to kill Letelier on the very day when such a murder would torpedo the (finance minister's) conference, the key to Chile's hoped-for restoration to the good graces of international finance?" Why, indeed? This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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