[News] When the Terrorists Were 'Our Guys'
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon Feb 25 11:06:53 EST 2008
http://consortiumnews.com/Print/2008/022108a.html
When the Terrorists Were 'Our Guys'
By Robert Parry
February 22, 2008
In 1976, when George H.W. Bush was CIA director,
the U.S. government tolerated right-wing
terrorist cells inside the United States and
mostly looked the other way when these killers
topped even Palestinian terrorists in spilling
blood, including a lethal car bombing in
Washington, D.C., according to newly obtained internal government documents.
That car bombing on Sept. 21, 1976, on
Washingtons Embassy Row, killed Chiles former
Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American
co-worker Ronni Moffitt, while wounding Moffitts husband.
It soon became clear to the FBI and other federal
investigators that the attack likely was a joint
operation of DINA, the fearsome Chilean
intelligence agency of military dictator Augusto
Pinochet, and U.S.-based right-wing Cuban exiles.
But Bushs CIA steered attention away from the
real assassins toward leftists who supposedly
killed Letelier to create a martyr for their
cause. Eventually, the CIAs cover story
collapsed and during the Carter administration
at least some of the lower-level conspirators
were prosecuted, though the full story was never told.
Recently obtained
<http://www.consortiumnews.com/fbi-doc.pdf>internal
FBI records and notes of a U.S. prosecutor
involved in counter-terrorism cases make clear
that the connections among Bushs CIA, DINA and
the Cuban Nationalist Movement (CNM) which
supplied the trigger men for the Letelier bombing
were closer than was understood at the time.
DINA provided intelligence training for CNM
terrorists who acted like a sleeper cell inside
the United States; federal prosecutions of
right-wing Cuban terrorists were routinely
frustrated; and the CIA did all it could to cover
for its anticommunist allies who were part of a
broader international terror campaign called Operation Condor.
Beginning in late 1975, Operation Condor -- named
after Chile's national bird -- was a joint
operation of right-wing South American military
dictatorships, working closely with U.S.-based
Cuban and other anticommunist extremists on
cross-border assassinations of political dissidents as far away as Europe.
This meant that during George H.W. Bushs year at
the CIAs helm, the United States both harbored
domestic terrorist cells and served as a base for
international terrorism. Yet no U.S. official was
ever held accountable -- and in many cases, just the opposite.
George H.W. Bush rose to be Vice President four
years later and to be President eight years after
that, with his son now sitting in the Oval
Office. Former President Bill Clinton has said
<http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/123107.html>his
wife's first act as President would be to
dispatch him and George H.W. Bush on a worldwide fence-mending tour.
The Letelier Plot
Regarding the DINA-CNM alliance, Chiles star
assassin Michael Townley told FBI interrogators
after his arrest in 1978 that Cuban exiles
involved in the Letelier murder had received DINA
training, including CNM member Virgilio Paz, who
attended a one-month quickie intelligence
course sponsored by DINA,
<http://www.consortiumnews.com/fbi-doc.pdf>the internal FBI report said.
Townley, a fiercely anticommunist American
expatriate who had emerged as DINAs chief
overseas assassin, told the FBI that Pazs
training was personally approved by DINAs
director, Col. Manuel Contreras, who the CIA
later acknowledged was an asset of the U.S. spy agency.
Paz lived at Townleys residence during his
three-month stay in Chile and DINA paid for Pazs
frequent calls back home to the United States,
Townley said, recalling that Paz left Chile close
to his son Brians birthday on June 6, 1976.
About a month later, Colonel Pedro Espinoza,
DINAs director of operations, summoned Townley
to a meeting near St. Georges School in suburban
Santiago. Townley recalled driving his
DINA-supplied Fiat 125 sedan to the early-morning
meeting and taking a thermos of coffee.
Espinoza asked Townley if hed be available for a
special operation outside Chile. Townley
complained that he had spent a majority of 1975
in Europe on DINA missions and that he felt he
was neglecting his family with constant travel on
behalf of DINA, according to the FBI report.
(Only later would investigators learn that
Townley had been working with European
neo-fascists in hunting down Chilean dissidents
in Europe, including Christian Democratic leader
Bernard Leighton, who was severely wounded along
with his wife in an assassination attempt in Rome on Oct. 6, 1975.)
In late July 1976, Townley said he drove a stubby
metallic green MG 1300 to a second meeting and
spoke with Colonel Espinoza outside the car.
Espinoza informed Townley that his mission would
be the assassination of Orlando Letelier, who had
emerged as an articulate critic of Pinochets
dictatorship and was putting an unwanted
spotlight on Chiles central role in the
spreading human rights calamity across South America.
Espinoza said Paraguayan travel documents would
be used for the operation and the preferred
method of death was an arranged traffic accident while Letelier was alone.
Colonel Espinosa [sic] instructed him [Townley]
that Cuban exile terrorists were to be utilized
to carry out the actual assassination, and that
his and [his DINA accomplices] role would be to
plan the assassination and then withdraw leaving
its execution to the Cubans, the FBI report said.
Based on his [Townleys] recent favorable
association with Paz and the latters recent
training under DINA sponsorship, he [Townley]
told Colonel Espinosa [sic] that he believed the
assassination in the United States might be arranged, the FBI document said.
The CORU Umbrella
By June 1976, CNM also had joined in another
campaign of right-wing terrorism, this one
organized by Cuban exile Orlando Bosch under an
umbrella group called the Coordination of United
Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), which targeted Fidel Castros Cuba.
According to the federal prosecutors notes, the
CORU organizational meeting in the Dominican
Republic in June 1976 brought together CNM and
four other exile groups, including the Force
Fourteen (F-14, led by a CIA asset), meaning the
U.S. spy agency surely knew about CORUs plans from the start.
In early July 1976, after getting the assignment
to murder Letelier, Townley said he contacted Paz
and other CNM members to assist him.
First, however, Townley and his DINA accomplice,
Chilean Army Lieutenant Armando Fernandez Larios,
went to Paraguay to arrange visas for a trip to
the United States, using the false names, Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral.
Their cover story was that they were
investigating suspected leftists working for
Chiles state copper company in New York and that
while in the United States they would meet
with Bushs CIA deputy, Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters.
A senior Paraguayan official, Conrado Pappalardo,
urged U.S. Ambassador George Landau to cooperate,
citing a direct appeal from Pinochet. An alarmed
Landau recognized the visa request as 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,
but the U.S. government apparently never
delivered a specific warning to DINA to call off the operation.
To this day, it remains unclear what if
anything Bushs CIA did after learning about the Paraguayan caper.
Nevertheless, Townley said he and DINAs Col.
Espinoza worried about delays in getting the
original visas, which suggested that the
Paraguayan approach was compromised, Townley said in his FBI interrogation.
To allay any U.S. suspicions, DINA did dispatch
two other Chilean operatives using the phony
names Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral. After
they arrived in the United States on Aug. 22,
1976, they made a point of having the Chilean
Embassy notify Walterss office, but the CIA
again demonstrated little curiosity about the mission.
Beyond Belief
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.
As for the Letelier assassination, DINA was soon
plotting another way to carry out the killing. In
late August 1976, DINA dispatched a preliminary
team, consisting of Larios Fernandez and a female
agent, to do surveillance on Letelier as he moved around Washington.
Then, on Sept. 8, 1976, Townley followed, using
an official Chilean passport under the fictitious name of Hans Petersen Silva.
After arriving at New Yorks Kennedy
International Airport, Townley said he contacted
Virgilio Paz by telephone and then rented a car
to drive to Union City, New Jersey, to meet Paz
at a restaurant named Bottom of the Barrel, according to the FBI report.
The next night, Paz brought members of the Cuban
Nationalist Movement to Townleys motel room,
including Guillermo Novo Sampol and Jose Dionisio
Suarez Esquivel, Townley said.
Cuban exiles present at the meeting agreed that
the CNM would assist DINA in assassinating
Letelier, the FBI report said. Shortly
thereafter he [Townley] traveled to Washington,
D.C. in the automobile of Virgilio Paz in order
to conduct additional surveillance on Letelier
and to purchase additional materials necessary to
make the bomb which would be utilized to kill Letelier.
Basically, the bomb was made up of TNT and a
substance which he [Townley] believed to be C-3
plastic. Several months previously he modified a
CB Fanon Courier
receiver in Chile at the
request of the CNM to be utilized at a future date.
The crystal on the receiver was set at 31.040
megahurts [sic]. A major modification made by
Townley was to remove the speaker from the
receiver and put in a transformer. A standard
blasting cap was used in the construction of the
bomb. The bomb was contained in an aluminum baking tin.
Townleys remark about DINAs preparation of the
explosive device for the U.S.-based Cuban
extremists further indicates that the DINA-CNM
relationship represented an active penetration of
the United States by an international terrorist
cabal operating under the nose of U.S. intelligence.
Final Plans
After arriving in Washington and checking into a
downtown Holiday Inn, Townley and Paz spent
several days conducting surveillance of Letelier.
After another CNM operative Suarez Equivel
arrived, the assassination team took the next
step, heading to Leteliers house in suburban Maryland.
Late that Saturday night, Sept. 18, or early
Sunday morning, Sept. 19, Paz drove Townley to
Leteliers neighborhood. Townley was dropped off
at the top of a hill in a cul-de-sac street,
immediately adjacent to the Letelier home. [After
crawling under Leteliers Chevelle] he affixed
the bomb to the cross-member and recalled he had
some trepidation as to whether the bomb would
remain attached since he ran out of tape," the FBI report said.
The bomb contained a safety switch which he
placed in the on position after covering the
switch with tape.
While he was placing the bomb
he recalled that a police cruiser passed by
however, he was undetected. After placing the
bomb he walked down the hill and joined Virgilio
Paz in the latters automobile and they left the
area and returned to their hotel.
On Sunday morning, Townley flew from Washington
National Airport to Newark where he met CNM
leader Novo Sampol for breakfast. Then they drove
to New York City where Novo had a meeting with an
attorney apparently connected with the local New
York City government, the FBI report said.
After a family visit in Westchester County,
Townley flew to Miami where he saw his parents at
their Boca Raton home before meeting with Miami
CNM member Felipe Rivero Diaz, who pressed
Townley for more assistance from DINA, the FBI report said.
By Monday evening, Townley had become troubled
that no news had been received concerning
Letelier and he suspected that something had gone
wrong with the plan to assassinate him.
Early Tuesday morning, Sept. 21, Townley called
Virgilio Paz to find out what had happened. Paz
was extremely angry at the early hour of the call
and the use of the telephone from a security
standpoint. Paz furnished no information
concerning the Letelier bomb, the report said.
Later on during the morning he [Townley]
contacted Ignacio Novo Sampol in Miami and they
arranged to have lunch at a Miami restaurant.
During the telephone conversation, Novo informed
him that something had happened in Washington,
D.C. Subsequent news broadcast the death of
Letelier as a result of a bomb which detonated in the latters automobile.
Next, Townley said he eliminated the identity of
Hans Petersen Silva and returned to Chile
utilizing a United States passport under the name of Kenneth Enyart.
Slowly into Focus
Back in Washington, the facts of the
assassination slowly came into focus. The
explosion that ripped apart Leteliers Chevelle
had shattered a quiet morning in the stately
section of the capital where embassies line
Massachusetts Avenue, what is called Embassy Row.
The blast ripped off Leteliers legs and
punctured a hole in Ronni Moffitts jugular vein.
She drowned in her own blood at the scene;
Letelier died after being taken to George
Washington University Hospital. Ronnis husband, Michael Moffitt, survived.
At the time, the attack represented the worst act
of international terrorism on U.S. soil and
remains the most notorious terror attack
sponsored by a foreign government inside the United States.
Adding to the potential for scandal, the
terrorism had been carried out by a regime that
was an ostensible ally of the United States, one
that had gained power in 1973 with the help of
the Nixon administration and the CIA.
The scandal also jeopardized the reputation of
CIA Director George H.W. Bush and the political
future of his boss, President Gerald Ford, who
was in the midst of a heated presidential
campaign against Democrat Jimmy Carter.
Within hours of the bombing, Leteliers
associates accused the Pinochet regime, citing
its hatred of Letelier and its record for
brutality. The Chilean government, however, heatedly denied any responsibility.
That night, at a dinner at the Jordanian Embassy,
Sen. James Abourezk, a South Dakota Democrat,
spotted Bush and approached the CIA director.
Abourezk said he was a friend of Leteliers and
beseeched Bush to use the CIA to find the bastards who killed him.
Abourezk said Bush responded: Ill see what I
can do. We are not without assets in Chile. [See
Robert Parry's <http://www.neckdeepbook.com/>Secrecy & Privilege.]
A problem, however, was that one of the CIAs
best-placed assets DINA chief Manuel Contreras
would turn out to be a mastermind of the assassination.
Wiley Gilstrap, the CIAs Santiago station chief,
did approach Contreras with questions about the
Letelier bombing and wired back to Langley
Contrerass assurance that the Chilean government wasnt involved.
Following the strategy of public misdirection
that DINA already had used in hundreds of
disappearances of dissidents, Contreras pointed
the finger at the Chilean Left. Contreras
suggested that leftists had killed Letelier to turn him into a martyr.
Evidence of Lying
The Ford administration had plenty of reasons to disbelieve Contreras.
The CIA had substantive evidence to show that
Contreras was lying, researcher Peter Kornbluh
wrote in his 2004 book, The Pinochet File. The
Agency had concrete knowledge that DINA had
murdered other political opponents abroad, using
the same modus operandi as the Letelier case. The
Agency had substantive intelligence on Condor,
and Chiles involvement in planning murders of political opponents in Europe.
Rather than fulfilling his promise to Abourezk to
see what I can do, Bush ignored leads that
would have taken him into a confrontation with Pinochet.
As the Ford administration dawdled and Bushs CIA
kept its head down, right-wing Cuban terrorists
stepped up their war against leftists in general
and Fidel Castros communist government in particular.
On Oct. 6, 1976, a Cubana airliner, flying the
Cuban Olympic fencing team and other passengers
to Cuba, exploded after taking off in Barbados,
killing everyone onboard. At the time, this sort
of mid-air bombing was unprecedented, and the
evidence quickly pointed to Cuban extremists linked to CORU and the CIA.
But the U.S. government either resisted putting
the pieces together or chose to avoid the obvious conclusions.
On Oct. 6, the day of the Cubana Airline bombing,
a CIA informant in Chile went to the CIA station
in Santiago and relayed an account of Pinochet
denouncing Letelier, with the dictator calling
Leteliers criticism of the government unacceptable.
The source believes that the Chilean Government
is directly involved in Leteliers death and
feels that investigation into the incident will
so indicate, the CIA field report said.
But Bushs CIA chose to accept Contrerass
denials and even began leaking information that
pointed away from the real killers.
Newsweek reported in the magazines Oct. 11,
1976, issue that the Chilean secret police were
not involved.
. The [Central Intelligence]
agency reached its decision because the bomb was
too crude to be the work of experts and because
the murder, coming while Chiles rulers were
wooing U.S. support, could only damage the Santiago regime.
Similar stories ran in other newspapers. On Nov.
1, 1976, the day before the presidential
election, the Washington Post became another
vehicle for trumpeting Pinochets innocence.
Operatives of the present Chilean military Junta
did not take part in Leteliers killing, the
Post wrote, citing CIA officials. CIA Director
Bush expressed this view in a conversation late
last week with Secretary of State [Henry] Kissinger.
Despite Bushs success in keeping the truth about
the Letelier assassination under wraps, Democrat
Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated Ford on Nov. 2, 1976.
Cracking the Case
Over the next two years, federal investigators
would crack the case, successfully bringing
charges against Townley and several
Cuban-American conspirators. But prosecutor
Eugene Propper told me that the CIA didnt
volunteer the crucial information about the
Paraguayan gambit or hand over the photo of the chief assassin, Townley.
Nothing the agency gave us helped us break this case, Propper said.
According to the recently obtained prosecutors
notes, one of the breaks in the Letelier case
came from Rolando Otero, a Cuban exile who was
believed to be the youngest member of the
CIA-trained Bay of Pigs invasion force in 1961
and who was implicated in a string of 1975-76
bombings in Miami (though ultimately acquitted).
Otero had worked with Chiles DINA, but
according to John Dingess 2005 book, The Condor
Years was a double agent for Venezuelas
intelligence service, DISIP, causing his Chilean
controllers to jail and torture him before expelling him to the United States.
According to the prosecutors notes, Otero
became the witness who gave a Washington, D.C.
AUSA [assistant U.S. attorney] the key to the
car-bombing of Orlando Letelier.
The AUSA cut a
deal with Otero that if Otero talked about the
Letelier case, he would not have to give any
information about [terrorism] cases
in Miami.
The prosecutors notes also complained of a wider
lack of cooperation from Washington in the many
cases of Cuban-exile terrorism in Miami.
Regarding the information generated by the
Letelier prosecution, the Miami prosecutor asked,
why wasnt that information ever communicated to
Miami, the Cuban exile stronghold, where the most
devious and clandestine plots were discussed on a
regular basis? The links to Miami were so thick,
the exchange of communication so thin.
As for the CIA's initial Letelier cover-up,
neither Bush nor Walters was ever pressed to provide a full explanation.
When I submitted questions to Bush in 1988
while he was running for president and I was a
Newsweek correspondent preparing a story on his
year as CIA director Bushs chief of staff
Craig Fuller responded, saying the Vice
President generally does not comment on issues
related to the time he was at the Central
Intelligence Agency and he will have no comment
on the specific issues raised in your letter.
Newsweek editors subsequently killed my critical
story about Bushs CIA tenure, even though he was
citing that experience as an important element of
his résumé for the presidency. Walters also
rebuffed interview requests on the Letelier topic
prior to his death on Feb. 10, 2002, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
New Cover-up
In 1995, after the Pinochet dictatorship had
ended, DINA chief Contreras and his assistant
Espinoza were convicted in Chile for the Letelier
assassination and sentenced to seven and six
years, respectively. Contreras began implicating
Pinochet in the Letelier case and other acts of
terrorism, saying Pinochet knew and approved all of these actions.
As for Pinochet, former President Bush didnt
hold a grudge against this foreign leader who
allegedly had sponsored a terrorist attack under
the nose of the U.S. government at a time when
Bush was chief of U.S. intelligence.
In 1998, when Pinochet was detained in Great
Britain on an extradition request from Spanish
Judge Baltasar Garzon, who was pursuing Pinochet
for killing Spanish citizens, George H.W. Bush
was one of the world leaders who rallied to Pinochets defense.
Bush called the case against Pinochet a travesty
of justice and demanded that Pinochet be sent
home to Chile as soon as possible, which the British courts did.
However, Garzons initiative prompted the Clinton
administration to take a second look at the
Letelier case in 2000. An FBI team reviewed new
evidence that had become available and recommended the indictment of Pinochet.
But the final decision was left to the incoming
administration of George W. Bush. In effect, the
baton of the Letelier-Moffitt-murder cover-up was
passed to a new Bush generation. Besides failing
to act on the FBIs recommendation, the Bush II
administration continued to withhold relevant
documents from Chilean investigators.
The younger George Bush and his brother Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush also helped out in protecting the
old Cuban terrorists who were implicated in the
Cubana Airline bombing, Orlando Bosch and Luis
Posada Carriles. Both have been allowed to live
out their golden years in the relative safety and comfort of the United States.
As for Pinochet, the aging general never had to
face justice for his acts of international
terrorism or for his domestic human rights
crimes. Pinochet died of a heart attack on Dec. 10, 2006, at the age of 91.
Blood Boil
When I tracked down former Assistant U.S.
Attorney Jerry Sanford, who was assigned to the
Cuban terrorism cases in the mid-1970s, he still
sounded frustrated at the lack of support he got
from Washington to pursue these killers who
inflicted death both inside and outside the United States.
My blood starts to boil when I think of how much
we could have done but how badly we were kept in
the dark, said Sanford, now 66, living in
northern Florida. I asked for stuff and never got it.
Sanford recalled that when CIA Director Bush
visited Miami at the end of the bloody year 1976,
FBI agents asked him for information from the
CIA on where explosives [for the Cuban exiles]
were stashed. The response from Bush, according
to Sanford, was forget about it.
Referring to the umbrella organization CORU,
Sanford said, it was the only terrorist group
that ever exported terrorism from the United States.
Ironically, the CIAs analytical division reached
a similar, troubling conclusion in an annual
report entitled International Terrorism in 1976
that was published in July 1977, after CIA Director Bush had left office.
Cuban exile groups operating under the aegis of
a new alliance called the Coordination of United
Revolutionary Organizations [CORU] were
particularly active during the second half of the
year, the CIA reported. They were responsible
for no less than 17 acts of international
terrorism (at least three of which took place in the US).
Statistically, this matches the record compiled
by the various Palestinian terrorist groups
during the same period. But largely because the
Cuban exile operations included the October
bombing of a Cubana Airlines passenger aircraft,
their consequences were far more bloody.
In other words, Cuban exiles based in the United
States during George H.W. Bushs year in charge
of the CIA outpaced Palestinian terrorists in terms of a total body count.
After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, the U.S.
government presented itself as the innocent
victim of international terrorism with a moral
right not only to pursue the bad guys across
the globe but to subject some captives to
torture, to lock others up indefinitely without
trial, and to launch attacks that have killed many thousands of innocents.
In the years that have followed, there were few
recollections of the days under the current
presidents father when the bloodiest terrorists were our guys.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and
Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The
Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was
written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and
can be ordered at
<http://www.neckdeepbook.com/>neckdeepbook.com.
His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The
Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq
and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press &
'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go
to
<http://www.amazon.com/Neck-Deep-Disastrous-Presidency-George/dp/1893517020/ref=ed_oe_h/105-6934069-6141258?ie=UTF8&qid=1189519378&sr=8-1>Amazon.com.
Freedom Archives
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