[News] Alarcon Points at Blood on US Hands - Letelier-Moffitt Assassination

[Anti-Imperialist News]

TWO STORIES FOLLOW

Alarcon Points at Blood on US Hands
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={A3A2307C-58E5-4D9C-81A7-2E503713EDAA})&language=EN

Havana, Sep 21 (Prensa Latina) Cuban National Peoples Power Assembly 
(Congress) President Ricardo Alarcon denounced that US official 
declassified documents show the White House complicity in the death 
of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier.

Alarcon summed up Wednesday at an act in Havana on occasion of the 
30th anniversary of the death in Washington of Letelier, close 
collaborator of former President Salvador Allende, victim of the 
explosion of a bomb in his car.

The legislative leader stated that 15 documents published Thursday in 
the US confirm that country's government knew of those plans to kill 
Letelier and abstained from any action to prevent them.

This concerns exchanges among the Department of State, other 
governmental offices and US embassies, while the application of the 
Condor Plan included crimes against Latin American leaders opposed to 
dictatorships.

Alarcon's evidence confirms how US authorities knew of the agreement 
adopted by Chilean secret services and terrorists Luis Posada 
Carriles and Orlando Bosch to kill Letelier, as well as blow up a 
Cuban airplane.

Despite that, said Alarcon, they allowed the attack and the criminal 
action against the Cubana de Aviacion plane off the Barbados coasts, 
which killed 73 people on October 6, 1976.

One of the documents is the confession of a former US assistant 
secretary for Latin American affairs, shortly before dying, who 
attended the meeting held in Santiago de Chile where he was informed 
on those crimes.

In spite of those documents and others previously published, nobody 
has asked inquired about, for instance, Orlando Bosch, who lives 
calmly in Miami, said the legislator.

Alarcon mentioned how eight years ago, five Cuban anti-terrorist 
fighters were locked up with harsh sentences in US jails for 
gathering information about terrorist plots by anti-Cuban 
organizations in Miami, Florida, in an effort to prevent the deaths 
of Cuban and even United States citizens.

"Letelier and all terrorism victims will live whenever we are capable 
of make them live, demanding punishment for those murderers and their 
accomplices,"

concluded the parliamentary leader.

The act was attended by Jose Arbesu, vice chief of the International 
Relations department at the Cuban Communist Party, Chilean ambassador 
to Cuba Jaime Toha, and Tato Ayress, director of the Salvador Allende 
Memorial House.

sus/iff/jrr/mf


LETELIER-MOFFITT ASSASSINATION
30 YEARS LATER
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/index.htm

National Security Archive calls for Release of Withheld Documents 
Relating to Pinochet's Role in Infamous Act of Terrorism in 
Washington, D.C. on September 21, 1976

Archive releases new document on CIA approach to Manuel Contreras on 
Operation Condor

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 199

Posted - September 20, 2006



Washington, DC, September 20, 2006 - On the thirtieth anniversary of 
the assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and 
his American colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, the National Security 
Archive today called on the U.S. government to release all documents 
relating to the role of General Augusto Pinochet in the car bombing 
that brought terrorism to the capital city of the United States on 
September 21, 1976.

Hundreds of documents implicating Pinochet in authorizing and 
covering up the crime were due to be declassified under the Clinton 
administration but were withheld in the spring of 2000 as evidence 
for a Justice Department investigation into the retired dictator's 
role. After more than six years, according to Peter Kornbluh, who 
directs the Archive's Chile Documentation Project, it is time to 
release them. "If there is not going to be a legal indictment," 
Kornbluh said, "the documents can and will provide an indictment of history."

The Archive today released a 
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19761008.pdf>declassified 
memo to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reporting on a CIA 
approach in early October 1976 to the head of the Chilean secret 
police, Manuel Contreras, regarding U.S. concerns about Operation 
Condor assassination plots. The secret memo, written by Kissinger's 
deputy for Latin America, Harry Schlaudeman, noted that Contreras had 
denied that "Operation Condor has any other purpose than the exchange 
of intelligence." While the car bombing in downtown Washington, D.C. 
that killed Letelier and Moffitt took place on September 21, 1976, 
the memo contains no reference to any discussion with Contreras about 
the assassinations--even though DINA was widely considered to be the 
most likely perpetrator of the crime. In 1978, Contreras was indicted 
by a U.S. Grand Jury for directing the terrorist attack.

The document was obtained by Kornbluh under the Freedom of Information Act.

The memorandum to Kissinger adds to a 
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/../NSAEBB125/index.htm>series 
of documents that have been obtained by the National Security Archive 
that shed light on what the U.S. government knew about Operation 
Condor--a collaboration of Southern Cone secret police services to 
track down, abduct, torture, and assassinate opponents in the mid and 
late 1970s--and what actions it took or failed to take prior to the 
Letelier-Moffitt assassination. On August 23, 1976, Kissinger's 
office sent a 
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/../NSAEBB125/condor06.pdf>carefully-worded 
demarche for U.S. ambassadors in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, 
and Paraguay to deliver to their host governments to halt 
assassination missions. But the next day, 
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/../NSAEBB125/condor07.pdf>U.S. 
Ambassador to Chile David Popper balked at approaching Pinochet 
because "he might take as an insult any inference that he was 
connected with such assassination plots." Instead Popper requested 
permission to send the CIA station chief to talk to Contreras. For 
reasons that remain hidden in still-classified documents, Schlaudeman 
did not authorize that approach until October 4, two weeks after the 
car bombing in Washington.

Indeed, on September 20, 1976, the day before the Letelier-Moffitt 
assassination, 
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/../NSAEBB125/condor09.pdf>Schlaudeman 
ordered his own deputy to tell the Southern Cone ambassadors "to take 
no further action" on pressuring the Condor nations to halt 
assassination plotting, because "there have been no reports in some 
weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme." In his 
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19761008.pdf>October 8 
memo to Kissinger transmitting the CIA memorandum of conversation 
with Col. Contreras, Schlaudeman argued that "the approach to 
Contreras seems to me to be sufficient action for the time being" 
because "the Chileans are the prime movers in Operation Condor."

The Archive also released a 
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19760830.pdf>second 
memo from Schlaudeman to Kissinger reporting on a cable from U.S. 
Ambassador to Uruguay Ernest Siracusa voicing his concerns on 
presenting the Condor demarche. Siracusa, the memo suggests, feared 
that he would become a target of Operation Condor if he followed his 
diplomatic instructions, and recommended that Schlaudeman approach 
Uruguay's ambassador to Washington instead. In his 
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19760830.pdf>memo to 
Kissinger dated August 30, 1976, Schlaudeman spelled out the U.S. 
position on Condor assassination plots: "What we are trying to head 
off is a series of international murders that could do serious damage 
to the international status and reputation of the countries involved."

Kornbluh noted that neither the CIA memorandum of conversation with 
Contreras nor the Sircusa cable has been declassified and urged the 
Bush administration to release all records relating to Operation 
Condor and the Letelier-Moffitt case. "Amidst today's ongoing effort 
against international terrorism," he noted, "it is important to know 
the full history of the failure of U.S. efforts to detect and deter a 
terrorist plot in the heart of Washington, D.C."





The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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