Assassinations of Letelier-Moffitt

[Scott Kaiser]

Washington D.C., September 23, 2016 A CIA special intelligence assessment in 1987 concluded that Chilean General Augusto Pinochet ordered an "act of state terrorism" on the streets of Washington, D.C., that took the lives of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, and his 25-year-old colleague, Ronni Moffitt, forty years ago this week.


The CIA report, along with other documents, were handed over to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet by Deputy Secretary of State Heather Higginbottom during a somber 40th anniversary commemoration today at Sheridan Circle site of the car bomb assassinations in 1976 and are being posted here by the National Security Archive.


"This CIA evaluation has come to be considered the Holy Grail of the Letelier-Moffitt case," according to Peter Kornbluh who directs the Archive's Chile Documentation Project. "With this gesture of declassification diplomacy, the Obama administration has finally provided the missing link in the paper trail of evidence that leads to Pinochet' s doorstep."

[Scott Kaiser]

Ed Kaiser - "I have information on exchange. Tuesday 26th July Ramone Orosco." On February 7, 1977 Ed Kaiser was killed, and his briefcase missing.

In April 1978 a year [after] Kaiser's murder "Contreras told a close confident that DINA was responsible for the assassination of Letelier, that he authorized the killing on direct orders from Pinochet and he admitted as much to Orozco. During the same month, Orozco stated that Pinochet had learned that Contreras had given a close friend a briefcase with very sensitive documents placing responsibility for the assassination on the president with instructions to make them public if anything happened to Contreras."

[Scott Kaiser]

An F.B.I. investigation traced the crime to DINA, and under pressure from the Carter administration, the Chilean government in 1978 handed over to the United States an American citizen Michael V. Townley, a DINA agent involved in the murders. Mr. Townley served a short prison term and was enrolled in the witness protection program.

Townley identified photos of Novo, Ross and Paz together with Chilean UN Representatives Mario Arnello and [Sergio] Crespo, who's also found in Kaiser's address book, tying the CMN to the Chilean government.

Paz is also found in Ed Kaiser's address book.