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<font face="Verdana" size=4 color="#FF0000">TWO STORIES FOLLOW<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=4 color="#00007F">Alarcon Points at
Blood on US Hands<br>
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<a href="http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={A3A2307C-58E5-4D9C-81A7-2E503713EDAA})&language=EN" eudora="autourl">
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={A3A2307C-58E5-4D9C-81A7-2E503713EDAA})&language=EN<br>
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</a>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"Letelier and all terrorism victims will live whenever we are
capable of make them live, demanding punishment for those murderers and
their accomplices,"<br><br>
concluded the parliamentary leader.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
sus/iff/jrr/mf<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=5><b>LETELIER-MOFFITT ASSASSINATION<br>
30 YEARS LATER<br>
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<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/index.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/index.htm<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=4>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<br><br>
Archive releases new document on CIA approach to Manuel Contreras on
Operation Condor<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>National Security Archive Electronic
Briefing Book No. 199<br><br>
Posted - September 20, 2006<br><br>
<br><br>
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<dd>Washington, DC, September 20, 2006</b><font size=3> - 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.<br><br>
<dd>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."<br><br>
<dd>The Archive today released a
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19761008.pdf">
declassified memo to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger</a> 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.<br><br>
<dd>The document was obtained by Kornbluh under the Freedom of
Information Act.<br><br>
<dd>The memorandum to Kissinger adds to a
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/../NSAEBB125/index.htm">
series of documents</a> 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
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/../NSAEBB125/condor06.pdf">
carefully-worded demarche</a> 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,
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/../NSAEBB125/condor07.pdf">
U.S. Ambassador to Chile David Popper balked at approaching Pinochet</a>
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.<br><br>
<dd>Indeed, on September 20, 1976, the day before the Letelier-Moffitt
assassination,
<a href="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"</a> 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
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19761008.pdf">
October 8 memo to Kissinger</a> 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." <br><br>
<dd>The Archive also released a
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19760830.pdf">
second memo from Schlaudeman to Kissinger</a> 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
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/19760830.pdf">memo
to Kissinger dated August 30, 1976</a>, 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."
<br><br>
<dd>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."<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
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