Скачать или смотреть USA: PINOCHET LINKED TO ASSASSINATION

(14 Nov 2000) English/Nat
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Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has been linked to two men convicted of assassinating a former Chilean foreign minister in the United States during the late seventies.

It is believed to be the first public link between Pinochet and the two.

Pinochet's involvement was disclosed in a State Department document made public on Monday.

The documents on Chile amount to 120 volumes, each nearly two inches (10 cm) thick.

While there are many documents that continue to have major portions crossed out, so that researchers cannot read the entire document, there is evidence of U-S participation.

One set of documents deals with money set aside by the Nixon Administration to help right- wing candidates during the election of President Allende.

But the major finding was information regarding the assassination in Washington of former Chilean foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.

Letelier was assassinated in September 1976 by a car bomb that exploded on a Washington DC street.

And a lawyer for the Latelier family says the document proves General Pinochet was linked to his killers.

SOUNDBITE:(English)
"But, if nothing else, the direct evidence now that General Pinochet made the call to President Strosner personally requesting the issuance of the false passports that would be used by Townley and Fernades Larios to come to the United States to carry out the assassination. And, its compelling evidence of General Pinochet's direct involvement".
SUPER CAPTION: Sam Buffone, lawyer for Orlando Letelier family

The assassins were members of Chile's secret police, American-born Michael Townley and Major Armando Fernandez.

They used Chilean passports to fly to the United States.

Weeks later, former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, an ally of former President Salvador Allende, died in the bombing of his car on a Washington street.

An American assistant, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, was also killed.

The declassification process involved the release of 16,000 previously secret documents, most from the State Department.

The package also included C-I-A documents.

SOUNDBITE:(English)
"The agency has been brought kicking and screaming into the democratic process of declassifying documents that really serve no other purpose than to advance the historical record and fulfill a principle of our country, of our constitution, the right to know, the right to informed debate. And, I think it's been illustrative that this whole exercise has become a struggle over openness versus secrecy."
SUPER CAPTION: Peter Kornbluh, Chilean Documents Project

Monday's release of documents was the third and final release of documents concerning the period before and during the Pinochet government.

President Clinton ordered the declassification four months after Pinochet was placed under house arrest in Britain at the request of a Spanish judge who wanted the former Chilean leader tried under an international torture convention.

Instead, Pinochet was allowed to return to Chile this year on the ground that he was too ill to stand trial.

For years, there have been suspicions of CIA involvement in the tumultuous period leading up to the overthrow of Allende's socialist government on Sept. 11, 1973.

In an undated memorandum, apparently written within a year or two after Allende's ouster, former CIA director William Colby said U.S. policy during the Allende years was to "maintain maximum covert pressure" on the Allende government to prevent its consolidation.


APTN

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