Was Death of American in D.C. a Foreshadowing of Terrorism?
20th September 2010
” … And as I learn more about this particular case, I’m further struck by the U.S. government’s complicity. American Michael Townley, a former CIA agent, later confessed to hiring a small group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles to help plant the bomb for Chile’s secret police … “
Until 9/11, most Americans didn’t believe that a terrorist attack could ever happen on U.S. soil. Yet one had occurred just a generation earlier–on September 21, 1976 on Embassy Row in Washington.
One of the victims was New Jersey-born Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a 25-year-old college graduate and newlywed. She was killed on her way to work after a bomb planted by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet blew up the car she was riding in.
Orlando Letelier, her colleague and the car’s driver, also perished.
I started to work for the Institute for Policy Studies, the nonprofit organization where Ronni and Orlando were heading that sunny day, when I was about the same age as Ronni was when she was assassinated.
Like her, I was young and eager to change the world for the better.
Ronni had become aware of the inequalities and injustices that existed in our society, and decided to make the world a better place. She was a deliberate and thoughtful individual “moved by the simple fact that she was a good and kind human being,” her brother, Michael Karpen, said on the anniversary of her death.
She taught underprivileged kids. She created a program to make musical instruments more accessible to all.
She was a committed peace activist. She became a fundraiser for a cause she believed in.
As Orlando — a Chilean diplomat exiled by Pinochet’s dictatorship — steered toward a roundabout called Sheridan Circle that fateful morning, less than a mile from the White House, a bomb went off. The explosion threw Michael Moffitt, Ronni’s new husband, out of the backseat while Ronni and Orlando remained in the crashing car.
Both died from their injuries a few hours later.
Reading about these senseless deaths makes me reflect on all the other senseless deaths at the hands of terrorists, both in the U.S. and abroad.
And as I learn more about this particular case, I’m further struck by the U.S. government’s complicity. American Michael Townley, a former CIA agent, later confessed to hiring a small group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles to help plant the bomb for Chile’s secret police, under Pinochet’s orders.
Letelier had served as Chile’s ambassador to the United States and as his country’s defense minister under the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, until the 1973 U.S.-backed coup overthrew him and installed Pinochet.
For his part, Pinochet viewed Letelier as a key enemy.
U.S. support for Pinochet’s seizure of power was as inexcusable as its complicity in Orlando and Ronni’s deaths.
“With U.S. approval, Pinochet established a secret police-intelligence apparatus that over his 17 years of rule murdered more than 3,190 people and tortured tens of thousands more,” my colleague Saul Landau writes. “In addition, he initiated Operation Condor, a network of intelligence-secret police agencies throughout Latin America, so that he and fellow military dictators could assassinate their ‘enemies’ abroad.”
Ronni, sadly, was caught in the crossfire of something our government could have and should have stopped. Instead, it aided and abetted organized state terror and failed to bring Pinochet to justice for his crimes.
In fact, a CIA report released in 2000 stated, “Many of Pinochet’s officers were involved in systematic and widespread human rights abuses… Some of these were contacts or agents of the CIA or U.S. military.”
Chile’s transition back to democracy was gradual. Pinochet was finally placed under house arrest in 2004. He had over 300 charges pending against him when he died in 2006.
Every fall, the Institute for Policy Studies honors Ronni and Orlando during our Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards ceremony and a memorial service.
As I think about the lives lost on 9/11 and the lives lost at Sheridan Circle, I think about all the people going about their daily work, only to be caught up in a preventable tragedy.
And I remember Ronni. There, but for the grace of God, go I.
Joy Zarembka is the interim director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a community of public scholars and organizers linking peace, justice, and the environment in the U.S. and globally.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
In 1971, Letelier was appointed ambassador to the United States by Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile.[1] Letelier had lived in Washington, D.C. during the 1960s and had supported Allende's campaign for the presidency. Allende believed Letelier's experience and connections in international banking would be highly beneficial to developing US–Chile diplomatic relations.[2] During 1973, Letelier served successively as Minister of Foreign Affairs, then Interior Minister, and, finally, Defense Minister. After the Chilean coup of 1973 that brought Augusto Pinochet to power, Letelier became the first member of the Allende administration to be arrested by the Chilean government and sent to a political prison in Tierra del Fuego.
He was held for 12 months in different concentration camps suffering severe torture: first at the Tacna Regiment, then at the Military Academy; later he was sent to a political prison for eight months in Dawson Island and from there he was transferred to the basement of the Air Force War Academy, and finally to the concentration camp of Ritoque, until international diplomatic pressure especially from Diego Arria, then Governor of the city of Caracas, Venezuela, and United States Secretary of StateHenry Kissinger[3] resulted in the sudden release of Letelier on the condition that he immediately leave Chile. He was told by the officer in charge of his release that "the arm of DINA is long, General Pinochet will not and does not tolerate activities against his government", a clear warning to Letelier that living outside of Chile wouldn't guarantee his safety.[4]
After his release in 1974, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he became a senior fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, an independent international policy studiesthink tank.[5] He plunged into writing, speaking, and lobbying the US Congress and European governments against Augusto Pinochet's regime, and soon he became the leading voice of the Chilean resistance, in the process preventing several loans (especially from Europe) from being awarded to the military government. He was described by his colleagues as being "the most respected and effective spokesman in the international campaign to condemn and isolate" Pinochet's dictatorship.[6] Letelier was assisted at the Institute for Policy Studies by Ronni Moffitt, a 25-year-old fundraiser who ran a "Music Carryout" program that produced musical instruments for the poor, and also campaigned for democracy in Chile.[7]
Letelier soon became a person of interest for Operation Condor, a campaign initiated by right-wingdictatorships in South America to gather intelligence on opposition movements and to assassinate the leaders of these movements. Former General and political figure Carlos Prats, who had become a vocal opponent of the Pinochet government,[8] was killed by a radio-controlled car bomb on September 30, 1974, in an assassination planned and executed by members of DINA.[9] Letelier's pro-democracy campaign and his vehement criticisms of Pinochet had been under watch by the Chilean government. Letelier became a target in DINA director Manuel Contreras' efforts to eliminate resistance to the Pinochet government.[10]
In October 1975, Letelier became the Director of Planning and Development for the International Political Economy Programme of the Transnational Institute, an international think tank for progressive politics affiliated with the Institute for Policy Studies. Through the institute's operations in the Netherlands, Letelier convinced the Dutch government not to invest US$63 million in the Chilean mining industry.[11][12] On September 10, 1976, the Chilean government revoked Letelier's Chilean citizenship. Pinochet signed a decree declaring that the former ambassador's citizenship be canceled for his interference "with normal financial support to Chile"[11] and his efforts "to hinder or prevent the investment of Dutch capital in Chile".[12] Later that day, in a speech he delivered at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden, Letelier proclaimed:
Today Pinochet has signed a decree in which it is said that I am deprived of my nationality. This is an important day for me. A dramatic day in my life in which the action of the fascist generals against me makes me feel more Chilean than ever. Because we are the true Chileans, in the tradition of O'Higgins, Balmaceda, Allende, Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Claudio Arrau and Victor Jara, and they—the fascists—are the enemies of Chile, the traitors who are selling our country to foreign investments. I was born a Chilean, I am a Chilean and I will die a Chilean. They were born traitors, they live as traitors and they will be known forever as fascist traitors.[13]
Letelier was traveling to work in Washington DC on 21 September 1976 together with Moffitt and her husband of four months Michael. Letelier was driving whilst Moffitt was in the front passenger seat and Michael was in the rear behind his wife.[14] As they rounded Sheridan Circle in Embassy Row at 9:35 AM EDT an explosion erupted under the car, lifting it off the ground. When the car came to a halt after colliding with a Volkswagen illegally parked in front of the Irish embassy Michael was able to escape from the rear end of the car by crawling out the back window.
He then saw his wife stumbling away from the car and assuming that she was alright went to assist Letelier, still in the drivers seat, barely conscious and appearing to be in great pain. Letelier's head was rolling back and forth, his eyes moved slightly, and he muttered unintelligibly. Michael tried to remove Letelier from the car but was unable to do so despite the fact that much of Letelier's lower torso was blown away and his legs had been severed.
At that point Michael noticed that Ronni had disappeared from view and as the police began to arrive he left Letelier and went across the street where he found her lying on the ground being attended to by a doctor who happened to be driving by at the time of the explosion. She was bleeding heavily from her mouth.
Both Ronni Moffitt and Orlando Letelier were taken to the George Washington University Medical Center shortly thereafter. At the hospital it was discovered Ronni's larynx and carotid artery had been severed by a piece of flying shrapnel. She drowned in her own blood some 45 minutes after Letelier's death whilst Michael suffered only a minor head wound. Michael estimated the bomb was detonated at approximately 9:30 AM; the medical examiner report set the time of death of Orlando Letelier at 9:50 AM and that of Ronni Moffitt at 10:37 AM, the cause of death for both listed as explosion-incurred injuries due to a car bomb placed under the car on the driver's side. Investigation and prosecution
Letelier and Moffitt Memorial on Sheridan Circle, Washington D.C.
Investigators initially determined that the explosion was caused by a plastic bomb, molded to concentrate the force of its blast into the driver seat. The bomb was attached by wires or magnets to the car's underside and blew a "circular hole, 2 to 2½ feet in diameter" in the driver's seat.[14] The bomb was not believed to have been controlled by a timing device or a remote-controlled detonator.[14]
In the days after the incident, spokespersons for the United States Department of State said the department "expresses its gravest concern about Dr. Orlando Letelier's death".[3] Due to the assassination of Prats and the attempted assassination of Bernardo Leighton, the incident was believed to have been the latest of a series of state-sponsored assassination attempts against Chilean political exiles.[3] A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that this was the first incident of violence against Chilean exiles on American soil, according to agency records.[3]
The FBI eventually were convinced that Michael Townley, a DINA US expatriate who had once worked for the CIA, had organized the assassination of Orlando Letelier. Townley and Armando Fernandez Larios, who was also implicated in the murder, had been given visas by Robert White, the United States ambassador to Paraguay, at the urging of the Paraguayan government despite their having false Paraguayan passports.
In 1978, Chile agreed to extradite Townley to the United States. During his U.S. trial, Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cuban exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard, after consultations with the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU) leadership, including Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll[1][2] . According to the Miami Herald, Luis Posada Carriles was at this meeting, which formalized details that led to Letelier's death and also the Cubana bombing two weeks later. Townley also agreed to provide evidence against these men in exchange for a deal that involved his pleading guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to commit murder and being given a ten year sentence. His wife, Mariana Callejas, also agreed to testify in exchange for not being prosecuted.
On 9 January 1979 the trial of the Novo Sampoll brothers and Díaz began in Washington. General Pinochet refused to allow Romero and Suárez, who were DINA officers, to be extradited. All three were found guilty of murder. Guillermo Novo and Díaz were sentenced to life imprisonment. Ignacio Novo received eighty years. Soon after the trial, Townley was freed under the Witness Protection Program.
In 1987 Larios fled Chile with the assistance of the FBI, claiming he feared that Pinochet was planning to kill him because he refused to co-operate in cover-up activities related to the Letelier murder. On February 4, 1987, Larios pled guilty to one count of acting as an accessory to the murder. In exchange for the plea and information about the plot, the authorities dropped the charges.
Several other people were also prosecuted and convicted for the murder. Among them were General Manuel Contreras, former head of the DINA, and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, also formerly of the DINA. Contreras and Espinoza were convicted in Chile on November 12, 1993 to seven and six years of prison respectively.
Pinochet, who died on December 10, 2006, was never charged in relation to this case. Orlando Letelier's son, representative Juan Pablo Letelier, gave this testimony: "What I have said once and again because I was taught to say the truth is that there is no evidence whatsoever from the thousands of pages of the process that may allow to affirm that there was participation of the Chilean Army nor of its Commander in Chief (general Pinochet) in the assassination of Orlando Letelier" (El Mercurio, June 4, 1995). Allegations of U.S. knowledge
Allegations of U.S. early knowledge of the Letelier assassination hinge on the communiqués of U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, George Landau, with the State Department, and other U.S. government agencies. When Townley and his Chilean associate tried to obtain B-2 visas to the United States in Paraguay, Landau was told by Paraguayan intelligence that these Paraguayan subjects were to meet with General Walters in the United States, concerning CIA business. Landau was suspicious of this declaration, and cabled for more information. The B-2 visas were revoked by the State Department on August 9, 1976.[15] However, under the same names, two DINA agents used fraudulent Chilean passports to travel to the U.S. on diplomatic A-2 visas, in order to shadow Letelier.[15][16] Townley himself flew to the U.S. on a fraudulent Chilean passport and under another assumed name. Landau had made copies of the visa applications though, which later documented the relationship of Townley and DINA with the Paraguayan visa applications.
American commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote on October 25, 1976: "U.S. investigators think it unlikely that Chile would risk with an action of this kind the respect it has won with great difficulty during the past year in many Western countries, which before were hostile to its policies." According to Donald Freed, Buckley had been providing disinformation for the Pinochet government since October 1974. He also unearthed information that suggest William Buckley's brother, James Buckley, met with Townley and Guillermo Novo in New York City just a week before Letelier was assassinated.[citation needed]
According to John Dinges, co-author of Assassination on Embassy Row, documents released in 1999 and 2000 establish that "the CIA had inside intelligence about the assassination alliance at least two months before Letelier was killed but failed to act to stop the plans." It also knew about an Uruguayan attempt to kill U.S. Congressman Edward Koch, which then-CIA director George H.W. Bush warned him about only after Orlando Letelier's murder[3] . Kenneth Maxwell points out that U.S. policymakers were aware not only of Operation Condor in general, but in particular "that a Chilean assassination team had been planning to enter the United States." A month before the Letelier assassination, Kissinger ordered "that the Latin American rulers involved be informed that the 'assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad ... would create a most serious moral and political problem." Maxwell wrote in his review of Peter Kornbluh's book, "This demarche was apparently not delivered: the U.S. embassy in Santiago demurred on the ground that to deliver such a strong rebuke would upset the dictator", and that, on September 20, 1976, the day before Letelier and Moffitt were killed, the State Department instructed the ambassadors to take no further action with regard to the Condor scheme. [Maxwell, 2004, 18].
On April 10, 2010, the Associated Press reported that a document discovered by the National Security Archive indicated that the State Department communique that was supposed to have gone out to the Chilean government warning against the assassinations had been blocked by then Secretary of StateHenry Kissinger.[17] The Briefcase Affair
Allegedly during the FBI investigation into Letelier's assassination, the contents of the briefcase he had with him were copied and leaked to op-ed columnists Rowland Evans and tv-host Robert Novak of the Washington Post before being returned to his widow. Allegedly the documents show that Letelier was in contact with the surviving political leadership of the various parties that made up the Popular Unity coalition exiled in East Berlin, who had been given refuge and supported by the East German Government during their stay. Evans and Novak suspected that these individuals had been recruited by the Stasi.[18] Evans and Novak claim documents in the briefcase showed that Letelier had maintained contact with Salvador Allende’s daughter, Beatriz Allende, who was married to CubanDGI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona.[19]
According to the Novak and Evans, Letelier was able to receive funding of $5,000 a month from the Cuban government and under the supervision of Beatriz Allende, he used his contacts within the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and western human rights groups to organize a campaign within the United Nations as well as the US Congress to isolate the new Chilean government.[20] This organized pressure on Pinochet’s government was thought to have been closely coordinated by the Cuban and Soviet governments, using individuals like Letelier to implement these efforts. Letelier's briefcase also allegedly contained his address book which contained the names of dozens of known and suspected Eastern Bloc intelligence agents. All correspondence between Letelier and individuals in Cuba was supposedly handled via Julian Rizo, who used his diplomatic status to hide his activities.[21][22]
Fellow IPS member and friend Saul Landau described Evans and Novak as part of an “organized right wing attack”. In 1980, Letelier's widow, Isabel, wrote in the New York Times that the money sent to her late husband from Cuba was from western sources, and that Cuba had simply acted as an intermediary.[23] See also
McCann, Joseph T. (2006), Terrorism on American Soil: A Concise History of Plots and Perpetrators from the Famous to the Forgotten, Boulder: Sentient Publications, ISBN1565849361, OCLC70866968 .
^ abcd Binder, David (September 22, 1976). "Opponent of Chilean Junta Slain In Washington by Bomb in His Auto". New York Times. http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?pag...ocs_220976. Retrieved 2010-04-10. "Orlando Letelier, who was foreign minister in the Chilean government of President Salvador Allende Gossens, was killed here today when a bomb exploded in his car as it sped along fashionable Embassy Row. A woman assistant to Mr. Letelier was killed and a third person was injured. Mr. Letelier was a leader of Chilean political exiles in this country who oppose the military junta that overthrew President Allende in 1973."
^"Cable Ties Kissinger to Chile Scandal". Associated Press in the New York Times. April 10, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/...ml?_r=1&hp. Retrieved 2010-04-10. "As secretary of state, Henry Kissinger canceled a U.S. warning against carrying out international political assassinations that was to have gone to Chile and two neighboring nations just days before a former ambassador was killed by Chilean agents on Washington's Embassy Row in 1976, a newly released State Department cable shows."
^Robert Moss, The Letelier Papers. Foreign Report; March 22, 1977
MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base Nine legal documents from the trials of Letelier's assassins. Includes trial transcripts.
Institute for Policy Studies, where Letelier and Moffitt worked at the time, gives circumstances surrounding bombing.
John DingesJohn Dinges was a correspondent for the "Washington Post" in South America from 1975 to 1983, author of The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press 2004) and (with Saul Landau) Assassination on Embassy Row (Pantheon 1980), (Asesinato en Washington, Lasser 1980, Planeta 1990)
September 10, 1976, a decree was issued, stripping Orlando Letelier of his Chilean nationality. The charges:
TNI
November 2005
September 10, 1976, a decree was issued, stripping Orlando Letelier of his Chilean nationality. The charges:
This personage is carring on a publicity campaign abroad, aiming at a political, economic and cultural isolation of Chile. In the concrete case of his activities in Holland, he incited the dock workers and transport workers of this country to proclaim a boycott over goods with Chilean destination or origin, and persuaded the Dutch government to hinder or prevent the investment of Dutch capital in Chile.
The assassination of Letelier, indeed, brought American investigators to TNI's doorstep in Amsterdam and later, in January 1979, four Dutch witnesses (Relus ter Beek, Jan Joost Teunissen, Emile Fallaux and Herman Vuijsje) appeared at the US trial. Although it was believed that there was a direct connection between Letelier's activities in the Netherlands, the issuance of the decree and the assassination, the story of Letelier's trips to Holland and the Stevin Group Affair has sofar never been told. The conclusion one should draw is that Letelier played a role in Stevin company's decision to withdraw from Chile, as well as the Dutch politicians who were involved, but the determining force seems to have been the role of the municipalities. Letelier's Trips to Holland and the Stevin Group Affair October 1975, Letelier was appointed TNI Director ("Director of Planning and Development for the International Political Economy Programme"). The Transnational Institute, with its office in Amsterdam, was an affiliate of the Institute for Policy Studies, based in Washington DC, where the Letelier family lived. In his capacity as Director, Letelier visited the Netherlands four times in 1976: in February, June, July and August/September.
Letelier's first visit coincided with the start of a broad boycott campaign coordinated by the Dutch Chile Committee. In this campaign, the public statements by Letelier were often used as a kind of "chief witness". February 23, the Chile Committee organised, in cooperation with the representative of the Central Unica de Trabajadores (CUT) in the Netherlands and the Dutch Transport Federation (composed of the two biggest trade unions NVV and NKV), a press conference in The Hague. Letelier spoke at this conference as the representative of the Chilean resistance. In his speech, he strongly urged the necessity of an economic boycott of Chile:
Even a boycott by one country can be effective. Even if such a boycott may not have direct consequences upon the Chilean economy, it produces a political effect.
Apart from this press conference, Letelier granted interviews to various Dutch media, stressing the importance of fighting the junta by means of a boycott. In the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer he extensively elaborated his argument.
Economic actions abroad are of utmost importance, because of the vulnerability of the junta in its financial dependence on foreign countries. I heard Dutch trade union officials saying that a boycott makes sense only if nearly every port in the world participates. But a boycott in one port already means a step forward in the defeat of the fascist dictatorship.
Referring to the important Dutch investments in Chile (by that time the Netherlands rated first on the list of countries investing in Chile), he said in the same interview in De Groene Amsterdammer:
In my opinion any investment in Chile at this moment is immoral, because it sustains one of the most fascist regimes in the world.
He continued, warning investors that they run important commercial risks, because a post-junta government could nullify agreements, made with the illegitimate government of Chile. In an interview with VPRO Radio, that was broadcasted later on March 26, Letelier made similar statements. That same day, the Dutch Chile Committee organised a boycott action in the port of Rotterdam, directed against the arrival of the first ship with Chilean fruit of the 1976 harvest.
Between Letelier's first visit in February and his second visit in June, the Stevin Group affair became a public issue. The Stevin Group was a Dutch contractor firm, that in 1975 had signed a contract with the Chilean junta for the investment of at most $ 62,5 million in mining and ore proceeding actvities in the Chilean coastal area. This projected investment gave the Netherlands its first place among the foreign countries investing in Chile.
During the months of March, April and May, public opinion was successfully mobilised against the Stevin Group Project. A crucial moment came the first of June, when the municipality of Groningen threatened to boycott the Stevin Group if it continued its Chilean project. Later on, the Groningen example was followed by Rotterdam (that, like Groningen, was governed by a leftist coalition) and other municipalities.
June 10, the Stevin Group suspended its activities in Chile until talks with the most important municipalities would have taken place. The Stevin Group was to a great extent dependent on public work orders by municipalities. The start of Letelier's second visit coincided with this decision taken by the Stevin Group. Letelier's presence and prestige was used in the effort to force the Stevin Group to completely withdraw its Chilean project. He was put in contact with Jan Pronk, Minister for Development Cooperation, with André van der Louw, mayor of Rotterdam, with Relus ter Beek, member of the Dutch Parliament and one of the specialists in foreign affairs of the Dutch Labour Party, and with Ien van den Heuvel, president of the Dutch Labour Party (at the time the biggest government party). In all these conversations, Letelier made a plea for economic boycott measures against Chile, and more specifically mentioned the Stevin Group. Letelier also had direct contact with Stevin's director who handled the Chilean case, J.K.J. Kokje.
Letelier visited Holland again in July and returned to Amsterdam on August 27 for a Fellows' Meeting at the Transnational Institute. This fourth and final visit coincided with a decisive phase in the Stevin Group Affair. On August 27, the Stevin Group published its final decision to withdraw completely from Chile.
Transcript of Orlando Letelier's Speech
at the Felt Forum, Madison Square Garden
on September 10, 1976
Dear Friends of Chile, dear friends of the true Chile:
In the name of our dead ones; in the name of more than one hunderd thousand Chileans that have been put in the jails and concentration camps of the military dictatorship; of the thousands and thousands that have suffered brutal torture; of the families of those who have disappeared murdered by the secret police; of the more than 200,000 Chileans who have been expelled from their country and now live in exile; of the millions of Chileans who have no jobs and who are starving under the criminal economic policy of the fascist Junta; in the name of those who in Chile and abroad resist fascism and struggle for the restoration of democracy in our country, I bring here a message of gratitude to all of you.
From the very moment that a group of generals, serving the most reactionary economic groups, decided three years ago to declare war against the Chilean people and to occupy our country, an impressive worldwide movement of solidarity with the Chilean people has emerged. This vast solidarity movement has expressed, from the most diverse ideological and political perspectives, the repulsion of the civilized world for the barbaric and brutal violation of all human rights by the Chilean military junta. During the past three years the international support to the Chilean people by governments, political parties, churches, international organizations, humanitarian institutions, and persons of good will, has saved countless number of lives, and has liberated hundreds of political prisoners from the hands of the most repressive regime the world has known since the destruction of fascism and nazism in Europe.
This concert is a new demonstration of the fraternal reaction that the suffering of the Chilean people has brought about all over the world. In this gathering tonight there are many Chileans and Americans who have suffered imprisonment by the Chilean military dictatorship; there are many whose sons and daughters have been murdered by the Chilean fascists. If we were liberated it was because of the international pressure on the military junta; it was because of your support and your efforts for the restoration of Human Rights in Chile.
We have tonight with us several ambassadors and representatives of governments from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. We are particularly pleased to have with us Ambassador Dinh Ba Thi, permanent observer to the United nations, of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. To all of them our appreciation.
We also have members of the National Council of Churches of the United States; representatives of the United Auto Workers, and several other labor unions; many community leaders, particularly of the black, Puerto Rican and Chicano people; and representatives of Amnesty International, that has played such an important role in obtaining the freedom of hundreds of Chilean political prisoners.
Today Pinochet has signed a decree in which it is said that I am deprived of my nationality. This is an important day for me. A dramatic day in my life in which the action of the fascist generals against me makes me feel more Chilean than ever. Because we are the true Chileans, in the tradition of O'Higgins, Balmaceda, Allende, Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Claudio Arrau and Victor Jara, and they - the fascists - are the enemies of Chile, the traitors who are selling our country to foreign investments. I was born a Chilean, I am a Chilean and I will die a Chilean. They were born traitors, they live as traitors and they will be known forever as fascist traitors.
Tonight the popular music of Chile and the United States are brought together in the songs of Aparcoa, one of the most authentic expressions of Chilean folklore; the art of Pete Seeger, the great singer of freedom, and the music of Joan Baez, one of the most extraordinary artistic expressions that this country has given to the world.
Precisely two years ago I was released from a Chilean concentration camp and expelled to Venezuela. The day I arrived in Caracas, Joan Baez was giving a concert in the biggest stadium of that city, and she dedicated her songs to the struggle and suffering of the Chilean people. This was my first contact with the expressions of solidarity which I knew existed, but I had not yet witnessed. There, in that Venezuelan stadium, was this extraordinary women with her guitar, with her voice full of emotion and feeling, bringing her message of human solidarity with the Chilean people to thousands of Venezuelans.
Tonight she is with us again and on behalf of the people of my country, I want to express to her our admiration and deep gratitude.
Three years ago, Salvador Allende died defending democracy, our Constitution and the conquests of the Chilean people in their struggle for dignity, freedom and socialism. We are not here today only to commemorate the death of a great hero of our country, but also to project his message into the future.
The military junta is today totally isolated internally and almost completely isolated from an international point of view. At least 80% of the Chilean population is against the Junta and different forms of resistance express themselves every day in spite of the terror and repression. The political parties, the labor unions, the churches, the student movement, the neighborhood organizations, are developing different forms of struggle against the dictatorship. The number of underground periodicals is constantly increasing. Today there are ten clandestine newspapers which manage to reach and involve increasing number of Chileans in the struggle.
The international isolation of the Chilean dictatorship was shown during the last UN General Assembly when 95 countries condemned the Junta for its permanent violations of all human rights. In its desperate reaction to universal condemnation the Chilean fascists have designed a new method to prevent pressure from outside for the liberation of political prisoners. People are now being detained and disappear without leaving a trace in such a way so as to evade the responsibility and frustrate international concern. More than 2,000 Chileans have disappeared in the hands of DINA, Pinochet's private secret police, and the cornerstone of his regime. Those concerned with human rights in Chile, realize that efforts to liberate political prisoners, important as they are, may not be enough, because DINA detains every day a number of people which is always greater than the number of persons that are released. The struggle for human rights must also concentrate in the destruction of the repressive apparatus built by the dictatorship.
The solidarity of the American people in favor of the restoration of human rights and democracy in Chile must continue to grow. This solidarity is paramount to us. We will never rest until we achieve the overthrow of the fascist regime in Chile. At that time, when we shall be building a new democracy, we will be counting on your support to uphold the hard fought conquests of the Chilean people and to stop once and for all the reactionary forces that from within Chile and abroad destroyed our democracy.
The words of Salvador Allende have a stronger meaning now than ever before. In the final moments of his epic fight he said: I have faith in Chile and her destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment where treason imposed itself. May you continue to know that much sonner than later, great avenues will open through which free men will pass to build a better society.
Thank you very much.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
On 21 September 1976, Transnational Institute discovered the brutal cost of fighting for economic and social justice, when Chilean secret service agents set off a car bomb in Washington DC killing TNI's director, Orlando Letelier along with Ronni Moffitt, a fundraiser for the Institute for Policy Studies. It has taken more than 30 years of struggle to bring some of those responsible to justice.
On 21 September 1976, Transnational Institute discovered the brutal cost of fighting for economic and social justice, when Chilean secret service agents set off a car bomb in Washington DC killing TNI's director, Orlando Letelier along with Ronni Moffitt, a fundraiser for the Institute for Policy Studies. It has taken more than 30 years of struggle to bring some of those responsible to justice.
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who shared primary responsibility, evaded imprisonment by his death, but the tireless fight to bring him to justice set down precedents that continue to have relevance for countless struggles against impunity worldwide. >The full archive on the Pinochet case can be found here > Each year, the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights awards are held to honour human rights defenders in the United States and Latin America.
“There has to be a place to remember.
There have to be occasions when I can say to you as I say to you tonight:
Once upon a time there was a country where three couples danced tango.
Once upon a time a man called Orlando Letelier was alive.
Once upon a time many people decided not to let him die.”
Ariel Dorfman, October 1993 An assassination in broad US daylight TNI Fellow and close friend of Orlando Letelier, Saul Landau wrote this account of Letelier's assassination on 21 September 1976:
“At 8:45 Tuesday morning, a Latin woman walking in front of Letelier's residence noticed a late-model grey sedan parked near the Letelier driveway. Three occupants sat inside and one man stood by the car. She identified him as certainly a Latin, about 30, wearing a grey suit and tie. The four appeared to be enjoying an inside joke, she said.
At 8:55 the Moffitts arrived in the Letelier car, and pulled into Letelier's driveway. Engaged in conversation, they did not notice any other vehicles nearby. They also did not know that one of the men in the grey sedan car, Michael Townley, had taped a bomb to the bottom of Letelier’s car two days earlier.
At 9.15, Letelier, Ronni and Michael Moffitt left the house and began the drive from Bethesda to the District of Columbia. Letelier took the route he always drove River Road to 46th to Massachusetts Avenue. They talked about the day's business and the dreary weather. No one paid attention to a grey sedan trailing them at a safe distance.
As Letelier entered Sheridan Circle, a hand in the grey car depressed a button. Michael Moffitt heard the sound of water on a hot wire and then saw a white flash. Thrown clear of the explosion, Moffitt tried to free the unconscious Letelier from the wreckage on top of him. His legs had been snapped from his body and catapulted some 15 feet away. Ronni Moffitt stumbled away from the smouldering Chevrolet; she seemed to be OK, but in fact had suffered a severed artery and soon bled to death. Michael screamed out into the world, The Chilean Fascists have done this.” Uncovering those responsible
Amidst the devastating grief, IPS and the FBI's investigations soon pointed to the role of the Chilean dictatorship in his assassination. Orlando Letelier was a former Minister for Foreign Affairs under the Salvador Allende government, which was brutally overthrown in a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September 1973. Letelier was arrested, tortured and detained before being released as a result of diplomatic pressure. Exiled to Venezuela, Letelier soon moved to Washington D.C., started work at IPS, and started to build an international campaign to isolate the Pinochet regime.
[URL="http://old.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?page=archives_landau_done"]
According to Chilean sources, the actual plot for the murder of Letelier began during a debate within the Chilean junta in June 1976[/URL]. They were increasingly fearful about Letelier's public attempts to isolate and denigrate the ruling junta. They believed Letelier had been instrumental in blocking a $63-million Dutch investment. Letelier had testified before the United Nations and other world bodies about torture in Chile and had briefed members of Congress and State Department officials. He was highly respected at international banking and lending agencies (Letelier was an economist and a former official of the Inter-American Development Bank).
Letelier's defiance and his continuous high profile criticisms of the regime is thought to have tipped the balance with Pinochet authorising his assassination. Learning of the regime's decision to withdraw his citizenship, Letelier made a defiant speech in Madison Square Garden: “I was born a Chilean, I am a Chilean and I will die a Chilean. They, the Fascists, were born traitors, live as traitors, and will be remembered forever as Fascist traitors.” On August 28, 1976, Letelier had also published an influential article in The Nation, "Chile: Economic Freedoms Awful Toll," which connected the campaign of state terror to the Milton Friedman economic model.
FBI investigations revealed that Michael Townley, a Chilean Secret Service (DINA) agent landed in Miami on September 13, 1976. He flew to New York and met with Armando Fernandez Larios, another DINA operative who briefed him on Letelier's habits, his car description, daily departure times, route to work, parking location, and probable work schedule at the Institute for Policy Studies. The following week, a group of Cuban exiles who had already been alerted that a contract was in the offing, joined the plot. Townley worked out the details of the Letelier assassination with the five Cuban terrorists. They supplied some of the ingredients for the bomb and departed for Washington where Townley made the bomb and the detonator. Network of terror with US duplicity
Letelier and Moffitt were the most famous victims of Operation Condor, a covert program to murder political opponents that was carried out by a network of six South American secret police agencies - from Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. A Chilean government commission later ascertained that Pinochet's regime had assassinated at least 3,200 persons within Chile, tortured tens of thousands and forced hundreds of thousands into exile.
Furthermore, investigations showed that the US administration both turned a blind eye to these abuses but also condoned them through their active political, diplomatic and economic support to the Pinochet regime. These came to light most clearly in the 1975 US Senate Church Report and other official documents which were declassified during the Clinton administration. CIA testimony proved the US government “sought in 1970 to foment a military coup in Chile; after 1970 it adopted a policy both overt and covert, of opposition to Allende; and it remained in intelligence contact with the Chilean military, including officers who were participating in coup plotting.”
Once Pinochet seized power, the US gave full support to his regime. At a meeting with Pinochet on 8 June 1976, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Pinochet that he would ignore the Chilean regime’s use of torture, disappearances and human rights abuses, telling Pinochet, "In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here." Kissinger added. "I think that the previous government was headed toward communism. We wish your government well". Kissinger dismissed American human rights campaigns against Chile's government as "domestic problems". He also assured Pinochet that he opposed sanctions such as those proposed by Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat representative of Massachusetts, which would ban arms sales to governments that were human rights violators. At the meeting, Pinochet raised his concerns about Letelier directly: "Letelier has access to the Congress. We know they are giving false information. We are worried about our image". Kissinger notably did not stress America's support for the rights of political opponents.
De-classified CIA documents show Kissinger knew of the existence of Operation Condor in March 1976, described at the time by the CIA in favourable terms as a "cooperative effort by the intelligence/security services of several South American countries to combat terrorism and subversion." Declassified documents show there were discussions in the US administration expressing concerns about Operation Condor. However internal delays and debates meant that no formal warnings were ever delivered to Pinochet by the US warning him against activating his assassination network.
In August, the US ambassador to Paraguay authorised visas to two Chilean Secret Service agents, Michael Townley and Armando Fernandez Larios who were travelling under false names and Paraguayan passports.
On Sept. 20, 1976, one day before the assassination, Assistant Secretary of State Harry Shlaudeman ordered his deputy, William Luers, to "simply instruct the Ambassadors to take no further action, noting that there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme."
18 hours later, the bomb that killed Letelier and Moffitt exploded. Despite what officials knew about Condor and the Paraguay scheme, a CIA source leaked to the media the absurd notion that leftists had killed Letelier to create a martyr. It took more than a year for the Justice Department to examine the Paraguay passport photos, which identified the two DINA assassins: Townley and Fernandez Larios. Finding the killers
The first focus in the struggle to bring those responsible to justice was on the killers themselves. On 8 April 1978, Michael Vernon Townley, who coordinated the assassination, was arrested in Chile and handed over to US officials. Townley confessed that he had contracted five Cuban exiles and agreed to provide evidence against them in exchange for a reduced sentence and immunity from prosecution for other crimes. This meant he escaped conviction for the 1974 car bombing in Buenos Aires of exiled Chilean Chief of Staff, General Carlos Prats and his wife and the 1975 shooting of exiled Chilean politician Bernardo Leighton and his wife in Rome. His confession though was critical in exposing the role of Chilean secret police Chief Manuel Contreras and Brigadier General Pedro Espinoza in coordinating the assassination from Chile.
Three of the killers: Alvin Ross Díaz, Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll were tried in 1980. Guillermo Novo Sampoll and Ross Diaz were found guilty of conspiracy to assassinate, while Ignacio Novo Sampoll was convicted of aiding and abetting. All were released at a second trial two years later after they had successfully appealed based on “procedural errors.” Two other killers Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero went into hiding but were finally arrested in 1990 and 1991 respectively. They served seven years each and were paroled.
Those heading up the operation in Chile, Contreras and Espinoza, escaped justice until 1995 – 19 years after the crime – before they were finally convicted in Chilean courts. Targeting Pinochet
However the person who remained ultimately responsible for both Letelier, Moffitt and countless other Chileans deaths was Augusto Pinochet. Although a plebiscite had forced him to relinquish the Presidency in 1990, Pinochet had remained on as Commander-in-Chief of the Army until 1998, and from there moved directly into a non-elected lifetime seat in the Chilean Senate. Until 2001 when he was removed from that self-appointed post, this position afforded him special immunity from prosecution on top of the blanket amnesty decreed by his own junta in 1978.
However the documentation amassed by Chilean human rights groups during the 17-year dictatorship and the 1991 Rettig Report, a Chilean commission that examined human rights abuses, ultimately served as invaluable evidence in bringing legal cases against Pinochet. Evidence collected during FBI investigations as well as declassified CIA documents also suggested that Pinochet was certain to have known of the mission to assassinate Letelier. Two former FBI agents and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney insisted that it was “inconceivable” that the Letelier assassination was carried out without Pinochet’s authorization. This was confirmed by chief of secret police Contreras who, in an affidavit sent to the Chilean Supreme Court in December 1997, stated that no major DINA missions were undertaken without Pinochet’s authorization.
These investigations were backed up by a constant campaign by TNI and IPS, together with an international coalition of groups and individuals, to keep the story of Pinochet's terror and the demands for justice in the public eye. Letter writing campaigns, memorial services, and human rights awards organized by Orlando's widow Isabel Letelier complemented the documentation and advocacy work of Chilean human rights groups and other international solidarity efforts. Articles and op-eds in leading magazines and newspapers as well as books such as Assassination on Embassy Row by TNI Fellow Saul Landau and journalist John Dinges also helped keep the case alive. Breakthrough
The breakthrough in bringing Pinochet closer to justice came on October 16, 1998, when Pinochet was arrested in London on a Spanish court order. The news of his arrest caused shock and reverberations worldwide, but it was based on years of groundwork by Juan Garcés who coordinated the work of many lawyers and activists. In 1996, the Spanish Union of Public Prosecutors filed a case on behalf of Spanish victims of the Argentine Dirty War. Shortly thereafter, Garces added a criminal complaint against Pinochet and other military officers on behalf of thousands of Chileans who had suffered torture or who were seeking justice for their murdered or disappeared loved ones. Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón's willingness to issue the arrest warrant, when notified that Pinochet was in London and his commitment from that point forward, were also crucial to development of the case
The Spanish case against Pinochet also benefited from public efforts to generate the political will for prosecution. In 1997, at the urging of human rights advocates and lawyers, the European Parliament and the Spanish Chamber of Deputies both passed unanimous resolutions in support of the Spanish investigation into Pinochet's crimes. Actions such as these helped to legitimise the case in the eyes of the public and government officials.
Immediately after the arrest, public mobilization efforts sprung up around the world. The European, Spanish and French Parliaments continued to defend the Spanish court's attempt to extradite Pinochet. The Chilean 'Picket of London' staged daily demonstrations outside the British courts and Pinochet's temporary home in London, while Chilean victims' groups returned to the streets of Santiago to air their ongoing demand for justice.
In the US, NGOs and human rights activists convinced nearly 40 US Representatives to join them in sending a stream of letters asking for Administration officials to support the Spanish case, reopen the Letelier-Moffitt investigation in the US, and declassify documents on human rights abuses in Chile. As a result, Clinton officials re-activated the Letelier-Moffitt investigation, sending a team to Chile in early 2000 for court proceedings involving 42 potential witnesses subpoenaed on behalf of the U.S. government. The Washington Post reported that “Federal investigators have uncovered evidence that some of them believe is sufficient to indict General Augusto Pinochet for conspiracy to commit murder in the 1976 car bombing.”
While British courts stripped Pinochet of his “sovereign immunity” and ruled that Spain could extradite him for torture, Pinochet escaped extradition when British Home Secretary Jack Straw intervened and released him after 16 months detention based on probable feigned mental illness by the Chilean dictator. Pinochet Precedent
Although his release was a grave disappointment, the so-called Pinochet Precedent – that no dictator is above international law - had then been set. In Chile, Pinochet's arrest revitalised the public movement for justice and catalysed political and legal changes in Chile, allowing for historic proceedings against human rights violators in the Chilean courts. It succeeded in putting the history of the dictatorship on the front pages of the Chilean newspapers, re-opening public debate on the issue and permanently altering Pinochet's carefully constructed public image.
Eugenio Ahumada, who worked to document human rights abuses at Chilean Vicariate of Solidarity during the dictatorship, saw the changes firsthand: “The Pinochet case created an opening in Chile. It led the Right to finally start talking about what happened. It also led the Armed Forces to admit publicly for the first time that they did participate in abuses.”
Shortly after Pinochet's return to Chile, the Chilean Supreme Court stripped the dictator of his parliamentary immunity for prosecution. A few months later, Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán indicted him and placed him under house arrest. Pinochet, once seemingly invincible, was now reduced to making highly publicized visits to the hospital for every twinge and toothache in an attempt to win sympathy from the public, politicians and judges. A bench of the Santiago Appeals Court eventually acquiesced, deciding that the general was mentally and physically unfit to stand trial.
Revelations in 2005 that Pinochet had laundered millions of dollars put the final nail in the myth of the incorruptible strongman that Pinochet wanted to leave for posterity. Riggs Bank failed to freeze a reported $8 million that the General had on deposit with the bank, agreed in February 2005 to give $8 million to a foundation in Spain that will distribute it to victims of the Pinochet regime or their families.
On 10 December 2006 Pinochet died of a heart attack. The refusal of then incumbent President Michelle Bachelet to attend his funeral – she was elected a few months earlier (whose father had been tortured and killed by Pinochet's regime and whose mother had worked at IPS) – was perhaps a final testament to the rejection of Pinochet and the beginnings of a new political era in Chile. Legacy
In the aftermath of Pinochet's arrest in London, it was clear that the international landscape had forever changed for leaders responsible for human rights abuses. Previously leaders like Pinochet travelled untroubled to shop in Harrods in London or to sail on yachts off the coast of Spain. Now no dictator or even democratically-elected leader responsible for human rights crimes can travel internationally without fearing that they could be indicted.
In the wake of Pinochet’s London arrest, President Suharto of Indonesia reportedly declined to seek medical care in Germany as he was sought by Portuguese activists for murders committed during 1975 invasion of East Timor. Laurent Kabila of Congo sent an advance team to Belgium to get a written assurance that he would not be arrested upon arrival. Stacie Jones, who coordinated TNI and IPS's project, Pinochet Watch, reflects: “As we look back at the past two and a half decades, we see the convergence of history, convictions, and hard work that has brought the world much closer to the justice sought in the name of Orlando Letelier, Ronni Moffitt, and thousands of other victims of Pinochet.
“Personal commitments to see justice done for family and friends have grown into an international movement against impunity, which is now a wolf at the door of repressive regimes everywhere. The name that once symbolized dictatorship and state-sponsored terror now also strikes fear in the hearts of aspiring strongmen, aware that they too could one day be 'Pinocheted' for their crimes.”
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
An Argentine court has sentenced a former Chilean secret service agent to life in prison in connection with the assassination of Chile's former army chief, General Carlos Prats, and his wife in Buenos Aires in 1974. Eduardo Arancibia Clavel was found guilty of participating directly in the killing while he was a member of Chile's secret police, the Dina. Mr Arancibia insists he is innocent and his lawyers say they will appeal. Pinochet (left) shortly before the coup that ousted Allende (right)
Carlos Prats and his wife, Sofia Cuthbert, died in a car bomb explosion. They had fled to Argentina after General Augusto Pinochet took power in a military coup in 1973. The investigation into Mr Prats' death has named General Pinochet as one of the main suspects in the case. Last month, the Argentine authorities requested General Pinochet's extradition from Chile in connection with the killing. While a Chilean judge considers the request, the Supreme Court in Santiago has barred the former military ruler from leaving Chile and has placed him under court supervision. Pinochet mentioned Carlos Prats was the commander of the Chilean army during the socialist government of President Salvador Allende. He was considered by many Chileans the last symbol of a constitutional army. He was succeeded by General Pinochet in August 1973, less than a month before he lead the coup. After a series of death threats, General Prats fled to Buenos Aires. At the time of his murder in September 1974, General Prats was emerging as an important voice calling for a swift return to democratic rule in Chile. So far Enrique Arancibia is the only person to have been sentenced for the assassination. But during the judicial hearings - in which more than 50 witnesses testified - the name of General Pinochet appeared frequently, prompting General Prats' daughters to request his extradition. Correspondents say it is unlikely that Chile will approve General Pinochet's extradition to Argentina. But he is already facing a possible trial at home over possible human rights abuses committed during his 17-year rule.
Washington, DC, April 10, 2010 - Only five days before a car bomb planted by agents of the Pinochet regime rocked downtown Washington D.C. on September 21, 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger rescinded instructions sent to, but never implemented by, U.S. ambassadors in the Southern Cone to warn military leaders there against orchestrating "a series of international murders," declassified documents obtained and posted by the National Security Archive revealed today.
The Secretary "has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter," stated a September 16, 1976, cable sent from Lusaka (where Kissinger was traveling) to his assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, Harry Shlaudeman. The instructions effectively ended efforts by senior State Department officials to deliver a diplomatic demarche, approved by Kissinger only three weeks earlier, to express "our deep concern" over "plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians, and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad." Aimed at the heads of state of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, the demarche was never delivered.
"The September 16th cable is the missing piece of the historical puzzle on Kissinger's role in the action, and inaction, of the U.S. government after learning of Condor assassination plots," according to Peter Kornbluh, the Archive's senior analyst on Chile and author of the book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. "We know now what happened: The State Department initiated a timely effort to thwart a 'Murder Inc' in the Southern Cone, and Kissinger, without explanation, aborted it," Kornbluh said. "The Kissinger cancellation on warning the Condor nations prevented the delivery of a diplomatic protest that conceivably could have deterred an act of terrorism in Washington D.C."
Kissinger's September 16 instructions responded to an August 30, 1976 secret memorandum from Shlaudeman, titled "Operation Condor," that advised him: "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." After receiving Kissinger's orders, on September 20, Shlaudeman directed his deputy, William Luers, to "instruct the [U.S.] ambassadors to take no further action noting that there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme."
The next day, a massive car bomb claimed the life of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and his 26-year old American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, as they drove down Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. The bombing remains the most infamous attack of "Condor"—a collaboration between the secret police services in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and several other Latin American military dictatorships, to track down and kill opponents of their regimes. Until 9/11, the Letelier-Moffitt assassination was known as the most significant act of international terrorism ever committed in the capital city of the United States.
In the August 30th memorandum Shlaudeman informed Kissinger that the U.S. ambassador to Montevideo, Ernest Siracusa, had resisted delivering the demarche against Condor assassinations to the Uruguayan generals for fear that his life would be endangered, and wanted further instructions. Shlaudeman recommended that Kissinger authorize a telegram to Siracusa "to talk to both [Foreign Minister Juan Carlos] Blanco and [military commander-in-chief] General [Julio César] Vadora" and a "parallel approach" in which Shlaudeman would meet with the Uruguayan ambassador in Washington. He also offered an alternative of having a CIA official meet with his counterpart in Montevideo. (This memo was obtained under the FOIA by Kornbluh.)
Several days earlier, the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, David Popper, had also protested the order to present the demarche to General Augusto Pinochet. "[G]iven Pinochet's sensitivities," Popper cabled, "he might well take as an insult any inference that he was connected with such assassination plots." Like Siracusa, Popper requested further instructions.
Kissinger did not respond to the Shlaudeman memo for more than two weeks. In his September 16th cable, Kissinger "declined to approve message to Montevideo" and effectively reversed instructions to the U.S. ambassadors in Chile and Argentina to deliver the demarche to General Augusto Pinochet and General Jorge Videla.
The cable was discovered by Archive Southern Cone analyst Carlos Osorio among tens of thousands of routinely declassified State Department cables from 1976.
"We now know that it was Kissinger himself who was responsible," stated John Dinges, author of The Condor Years, and a National Security Archive associate fellow. "He cancelled his own order; and Chile went ahead with the assassination in Washington."
Only after the Letelier-Moffitt assassination did a member of the CIA station in Santiago meet with the head of the Chilean secret police, Col. Manuel Contreras, to discuss the demarche. The meeting took place the first week of October. In a secret memorandum from Shlaudeman to Kissinger—also obtained by Kornbluh under the FOIA—he reported that passing U.S. concerns to Contreras "seems to me sufficient action for the time being. The Chileans are the prime movers in Operation Condor."
The memorandum makes no mention of the CIA pressing Contreras on the issue of the Letelier-Moffitt assassination. Several years later, the FBI identified him as responsible for that atrocity, and the U.S. demanded his extradition, which the Pinochet regime refused. In November 1993, after Pinochet left power, a Chilean court found Contreras guilty for the Condor murders and sentenced him to seven years in a specially-constructed prison.
Henry Kissinger's role in rescinding the Condor demarche was at the center of a contentious controversy at the prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs (FA), in 2004. In a FA review of Kornbluh's book, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Kenneth Maxwell referred to the undelivered demarche, and Shlaudeman's September 20th instructions to the ambassadors to "take no further action." In a response, the late William D. Rogers, Kissinger's close associate, lawyer, and a former assistant secretary of State, stated—incorrectly it is now clear—that "Kissinger had nothing to do with the cable." When Maxwell responded to the Rogers letter, he reiterated that the demarche was never made in Chile, and that the Letelier-Moffitt assassination "was a tragedy that might have been prevented" if it had.
In response, Kissinger enlisted two wealthy members of the Council to pressure the editor of FA, James Hoge, to allow Rogers to have the last word. In a second letter-to-the-editor, Rogers accused Maxwell of "bias," and of challenging Shlaudeman's integrity by suggesting that he had countermanded "a direct, personal instruction from Kissinger" to issue the demarche, "and to do it behind his back" while Kissinger was on a diplomatic mission in Africa. When Hoge refused to publish Maxwell's response, Maxwell resigned from his positions at FA and the Council.
In the letter that his own employer refused to publish, Maxwell wrote that, to the contrary, "it is hard to believe that Shlaudeman would have sent a cable rescinding the [demarche] without the approval of the Secretary of State who had authorized [it] in the first place." He called on Kissinger to step forward and clarify the progression of policy decisions leading up to the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, and for the full record to be declassified.
The declassification of Kissinger's September 16th cable demonstrates that Maxwell was correct. It was Kissinger who ordered an end to diplomatic attempts to deliver the demarche and call a halt to Condor murder operations.
Documents Document 1 - Department of State, Cable, "Operation Condor", drafted August 18, 1976 and sent August 23, 1976
This action cable signed by Secretary of State Kissinger reflects a decision by the Latin American bureau in the State Department to try to stop the Condor plans known to be underway, especially those outside of Latin America. Kissinger instructs the ambassadors of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay to meet as soon as possible with the chief of state or the highest appropriate official of their respective countries and to convey a direct message, known in diplomatic language as a "demarche." The ambassadors are instructed to tell the officials the U.S. government has received information that Operation Condor goes beyond information exchange and may "include plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad." Further, the ambassadors are to express the U.S. government's "deep concern," about the reports and to warn that, if true, they would "create a most serious moral and political problem." Document 2 - Department of State, Action Memorandum, Ambassador Harry Schlaudeman to Secretary Kissinger, "Operation Condor," August 30, 1976
In his 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." Shlaudeman's memo requests approval from Kissinger to direct U.S. ambassador to Uruguay, Ernest Siracusa, to proceed to meet with high officials in Montevideo and present the Condor demarche. Document 3 - Department of State, Cable, "Actions Taken," September 16, 1976
In this cable, sent from Lusaka where Kissinger is traveling, the Secretary of State refuses to authorize sending a telegram to U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay, Ernest Siracusa, instructing him to proceed with the Condor demarche. Kissinger than broadens his instructions to cover the delivery of the demarche in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay: "The Secretary has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter." These instructions effectively end the State Department initiative to warn the Condor military regimes not to proceed with international assassination operations, since the demarche has not been delivered in Chile or Argentina. Document 4 - Department of State, Cable, "Operation Condor," Septmber 20, 1976
Kissinger's Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs received his instructions on turning off the Condor demarche on September 16th. Three days later, while in Costa Rica, Shlaudeman receives another cable, which remains secret, from his deputy, William Luers, regarding how to proceed on the demarche. At this point, on September 20, Shlaudeman directs Luers, to "instruct the [U.S.] ambassadors to take no further action noting that there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme."
Condor's most infamous "scheme" comes to fruition the very next day when a car-bomb planted by agents of the Chilean secret police takes the life of former Chilean diplomat, and leading Pinochet opponent, Orlando Letelier, and his 26-year old American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in downtown Washington D.C. Document 5 - Briefing Memorandum, Ambassador Harry Schlaudeman to Secretary Kissinger, "Operation Condor," October 8, 1976
In his October 8 memo to Kissinger transmitting a 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 philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
It would seem to be a common-sensical sort of observation that economic policies are conditioned by and at the same time modify the social and political situation where they are put into practice. Economic policies, therefore, are introduced in order to alter social structures.
If I dwell on these considerations, therefore, it is because the necessary connection between economic policy and
its sociopolitical setting appears to be absent from many analyses of the current situation in Chile. To put it briefly, the violation of human rights, the system of institutionalized brutality, the drastic control and suppression of every form of meaningful dissent is discussed (and often condemned) as a phenomenon only indirectly linked, or indeed entirely unrelated, to the classical unrestrained free market policies that have been enforced by the military junta. This failure to connect has been particularly characteristic of private and public financial institutions, which have publicly praised and supported the economic policies adopted by the Pinochet government, while regretting the bad international image the junta has gained from its
incomprehensible persistence in torturing, jailing and persecuting all its critics. A recent World Bank decision to grant a $33 million loan to the junta was justified by its President, Robert McNamara, as based on purely technical criteria, implying no particular relationship to the present political and social conditions in the country. The same line of justification has been followed by American private banks which, in the words of a spokesman for a business consulting firm, have been falling all over one another to make loans. (See Ann Crittenden: 'Loans from Abroad Flow to Chile's Rightist Junta', (The New York Times, February 20.) But probably no one has expressed this attitude better than the US Secretary of the Treasury. After a visit to Chile, during which he discussed human rights violations by the military government, William Simon congratulated Pinochet for bringing economic freedom to the Chilean people (The Times, May 17). This particularly convenient concept of a social system in which economic freedom and political terror coexist without touching each other, allows these financial spokesmen to support their concept of freedom while exercising their verbal muscles in defense of human rights.
The usefulness of the distinction has been particularly appreciated by those who have generated the economic policies now being carried out in Chile. In Newsweek of June 14, Milton Friedman, who is the intellectual architect and unofficial adviser for the team of economists now running the Chilean economy, stated: In spite of my profound disagreement with the authoritarian political system of Chile, I do not consider it as evil for an economist to render technical economic advice to the Chilean Government, any more than I would regard it as evil for a physician to give technical medical advice to the Chilean Government to help end a medical plague.
It is curious that the man who wrote a book, Capitalism and Freedom, to drive home the argument that only classical economic liberalism can support political democracy can now so easily disentangle economics from politics when the economic theories he advocates coincide with an absolute restriction of every type of democratic freedom. One would logically expect that if those who curtail private enterprise are held responsible for the effects of their measures in the political sphere, those who impose unrestrained economic freedom would also be held responsible when the imposition of this policy is inevitably accompanied by massive repression, hunger, unemployment and the permanence of a brutal police state. The Economic Prescription and Chile's Reality
The economic plan now being carried out in Chile realizes an historic aspiration of a group of Chilean economists, most of them trained at Chicago University by Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger. Deeply involved in the preparation of the coup, the Chicago boys, as they are known in Chile, convinced the generals that they were prepared to supplement the brutality, which the military possessed, with the intellectual assets it lacked. The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has disclosed that CIA collaborators helped plan the economic measures that Chile's junta enacted immediately after seizing power ('A Draconian Cure for Chile's Economic Ills', Business Week, January 12). Committee witnesses maintain that some of the Chicago boys received CIA funds for such research efforts as a 300-page economic blueprint that was given to military leaders before the coup. It is therefore understandable that after seizing power they were, as The Wall Street Journal (November 2, 1973) put it, champing to be unleashed on the Chilean economy. Their first approach to the situation was gradual; only after a year of relative confusion did they decide to implement without major modification the theoretical model they had been taught at Chicago. The occasion merited a visit to Chile by Mr. Friedman himself who, along with his associate, Professor Harberger, made a series of well-publicized appearances to promote a shock treatment for the Chilean economy - something that Friedman emphatically described as the only medicine. Absolutely. There is no other. There is no other long-term solution. (The quotation is from El Mercurio of Santiago, March 23, 1975.)
These are the basic principles of the economic model offered by Friedman and his followers and adopted by the Chilean junta: that the only possible framework for economic development is one within which the private sector can freely operate; that private enterprise is the most efficient form of economic organization and that, therefore, the private sector should be the predominant factor in the economy. Prices should fluctuate freely in accordance with the laws of competition. Inflation, the worst enemy of economic progress, is the direct result of monetary expansion and can be eliminated only by a drastic reduction of government spending.
Except in present-day Chile, no government in the world gives private enterprise an absolutely free hand. That is so because every economist (except Friedman and his followers) has known for decades that, in the real life of capitalism, there is no such thing as the perfect competition described by classical liberal economists. In March 1975, in Santiago, a newsman dared suggest to Friedman that even in more advanced capitalist countries, as for example the United States, the government applies various types of controls on the economy. Mr. Friedman answered: I have always been against it, I don't approve of them. I believe we should not apply them. I am against economic intervention by the government, in my own country, as well as in Chile or
anywhere else (Que Pasa, Chilean weekly, April 3, 1975).
This is not the place to evaluate the general validity of the postulates advanced by Friedman and the Chicago School. I want to concentrate only on what happens when their model is applied to a country like Chile. Here Friedman's theories are especially objectionable - from an economic as well as a moral point of view - because they propose a total free market policy in a framework of extreme inequality among the economic agents involved: inequality between monopolistic and small and medium entrepreneurs; inequality between the owners of capital and those who own only their capacity to work, etc. Similar situations would exist if the model were applied to any other underdeveloped, dependent economy.
It is preposterous to speak about free competition in Chile. The economy there is highly monopolized. An academic study made during President Frei's regime pointed out that in 1966 284 enterprises controlled each and every one of the subdivisions of Chilean economic activities. In the industrial sector, 144 enterprises controlled each and every one of the subsectors. In turn, within each of these 144 manufacturing enterprises which constituted the core of the industrial sector, a few shareholders controlled management: in more than 50% of the enterprises, the ten largest shareholders owned between 90 and 100% of the capital (Politica y Espiritu, No. 356, 1975).
On the other hand, studies also conducted during the pre-Allende period demonstrated the extent to which the Chilean economy has been dominated by foreign-based multinationals. As Barnet and Müller put it in Global Reach, In pre-Allende Chile, 51% of the largest 160 firms were effectively controlled by global corporations. In each of the seven key industries of the economy one to three firms controlled at least 51% of the production. Of the top twenty-two global corporations operating in the country, nineteen either operated free of all competition or shared the market with other oligopolists.
From 1971 to 1973, most of the monopolistic and oligopolistic industries were nationalized and transferred to the public sector. However, the zeal with which the military dictatorship has dismantled state participation in the economy and transferred industries to foreign ownership suggests that levels of concentration and monopolization are now at least as high as they were before the Popular Unity (Allende) Government.
An International Monetary Fund Report of May 1976 points out: The process of returning to the private sector the vast majority of the enterprises which over the previous fifteen years, but especially in 1971-73, had become part of the public sector continued [during 1975] ... At the end of 1973 the Public Development Corporation (CORFO) had a total of 492 enterprises, including eighteen commercial banks ... Of this total, 253 enterprises ... have been returned to their former owners. Among the other 239 enterprises ... 104 (among them ten banks) have been sold; sixteen (including two banks) have already been adjudicated, with the completion of the transfer procedure being a matter of weeks; the sale of another twenty-one is being negotiated bilaterally with groups of potential buyers... Competitive bidding is still to be solicited for the remaining enterprises. Obviously the buyers are always a small number of powerful economic interests who have been adding these enterprises to the monopolistic or oligopolistic structures within which they operate. At the same time, a considerable number of industries have been sold to transnational corporations, among them the national tire industry (INSA), bought by Firestone for an undisclosed sum, and one of the main paper pulp industries (Celulosa Forestal Arauco), bought by Parsons & Whittemore.
There are many other examples to show that, as far as competition goes, Mr. Friedman's prescription does not yield the economic effects implicit in his theoretical model. In the first half of 1975, as part of the process of lifting regulations from the economy, the price of milk was exempted from control. With what result? The price to the consumer rose 40% and the price paid to the producer dropped 22%. There are more than 10,000 milk producers in Chile but only two milk processing companies, which control the market. More than 80% of Chilean paper production and all of certain types of paper come from one enterprise - the Compañia Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones, controlled by the Alessandri interests - which establishes prices without fear of competition. More than fifteen foreign brands are offered in the Chilean home appliances market, but they are all in the hands of only three companies, which assemble them in Chile and determine their retail prices.
Of course, any of the followers of the Chicago School would say that, with the liberalization of the international market, as prescribed by the model, Chilean monopolies and oligopolies would be exposed to competition from abroad. However, that does not happen. Chile so lacks foreign currency that it cannot import what it needs of even the most essential goods. Still more important is the fact that foreign enterprises are not interested in sending to Chile goods which could compete with those manufactured by their own Chilean subsidiaries. Besides, in Chile the economic interests which control the manufacturing
industry also control the financial apparatus and import activities. These groups are not disposed to compete with themselves. In short, the application of Friedman's theories to the real world of Chile means that the industrialists can freely compete at whatever price levels they choose.
Other aspects of the brand of economies taught at the University of Chicago are conveniently ignored by the junta's economic advisers. One is the importance of wage contracts freely negotiated between employers and workers; another is the efficiency of the market as an instrument to allocate resources in the economy. It is sardonic to mention the right of the workers to negotiate in a country where the Central Workers' Federation has been outlawed and where salaries are established by the junta's decree. lt may also seem grotesque to speak of the market as the most effective instrument for allocating resources when it is widely known that there are practically no productive investments in the economy because the most profitable investment is speculation. Under the slogan We must create a capital market in Chile, selected private groups enjoying the junta's protection have been authorized to establish so-called financieras, which engaged in the most outrageous financial speculations. Their abuses have been so flagrant that even Orlando Saez, former president of the Chilean Industrialists' Association and a staunch supporter of the coup, could not refrain from protesting. It is not possible, he said, to continue with the financial chaos that dominates in Chile. lt is necessary to channel into productive investments the millions and millions of financial resources that are now being used in wild-cat speculative operations before the very eyes of those who don't even have a job (La Tercera, April 9, 1975).
But the crux of Friedman's prescription, as the junta never ceases to emphasize, is control of inflation. It should, according to the junta, enlist the vigorous efforts of all Chileans. Professor Harberger declared categorically in April 1975: I can see no excuses for not stopping inflation: its origins are well known; government deficits and monetary expansion have to be stopped. I know you are going to ask me about unemployment; if the government deficits were reduced by half, still the rate of unemployment would not increase more than 1% (Que Pasa, April 10, 1975). According to the junta's official figures, between April and December 1975, the government deficit was reduced by approximately the 50% that Harberger recommended. In the same period, unemployment rose six times as much as he had predicted. The remedy he continues to advocate consists of reducing government spending, which will reduce the amount of currency in circulation. This will result in a contraction of demand, which in turn will bring about a general reduction of prices. Thus inflation would be defeated. Professor Harberger does not say explicitly who would have to lower their standard of living to bear the costs of the cure.
Without a doubt, excessive monetary expansion constitutes an important inflationary factor in any economy. However, inflation in Chile (or any underdeveloped country) is a far more complex problem than the one presupposed by the mechanical models of the monetarist theorists. The followers of the Chicago School seem to forget, for example, that the monopolistic structure of the Chilean economy allows the dominant firms to maintain prices in the face of falling demand. They also forget the role that so-called inflationary expectations play in generating price increases. In Chile, inflationary expectations have lately been approximating 15% per month. Looking ahead, firms prepare for rising costs by raising their own prices. This continuous price
leap-frogging feeds a general inflationary spiral. On the other hand, in such an inflationary climate, no one with liquid assets wants to hold them. Powerful interest groups, operating without government control, can thus manipulate the financial apparatus. They create institutions to absorb any available money and use it in various forms of speculation, which thrive on and propel inflation. The Economic Results
Three years have passed since this experiment began in Chile and sufficient information is available to conclude that Friedman's Chilean disciples failed - at least in their avowed and measurable objectives - and particularly in their attempts to control inflation. But they have succeeded, at least temporarily, in their broader purpose: to secure the economic and political power of a small dominant class by effecting a massive transfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes to a select group of monopolists and financial speculators.
The empirical proof of the economic failure is overwhelming. On April 24, 1975, after the last known visit of Messrs. Friedman and Harberger to Chile, the junta's Minister of Finance, Jorge Cauas, said: The Hon. junta have asked me to formulate and carry out an economic program primarily directed to eradicate inflation. Together with a numerous group of technicians, we have presented to the Chilean authorities a program of economic revival which has been approved and is beginning. The principal objective of this program is to stop inflation in the remainder of 1975. (The group of technicians is obviously Friedman and company.) By the end of 1975 Chile's annual rate of inflation had reached 341% - that is, the highest rate of inflation in the world (1). Consumer prices increased that same year by an average 375%; wholesale prices rose by 440%.
Analysing the causes of Chilean inflation in 1975, a recent report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says: The cutback in government spending, with its adverse effects on employment, in housing, and public works, went significantly further than programmed in order to accommodate the large credit demands of the private sector... Later on it states: Overall monetary management remained expansionary in 1975. Moreover, continued high inflationary expectations and the public's attendant unwillingness to increase its real cash balances greatly complicated the implementation of the monetary program. Referring to private organizations which have begun to operate without any control, the report adds that the financieras have been allowed to operate beside the commercial banking system and at interest rates up to 50% higher than the maximum permissible banking rate. According to the same source, the financieras were operating in 1975 at an interest rate of 14% a month, or 168% a year; they obtained loans in New York at 10% to 12% a year.
The implementation of the Chicago model has not achieved a significant reduction of monetary expansion. It has, however, brought about a merciless reduction of the income of wage earners and a dramatic increase in unemployment; at the same time it has increased the amount of currency in circulation by means of loans and transfers to big firms, and by granting to private financial institutions the power to create money. As James Petras, an American political scientist, puts it (New Politics, Winter 1976): The very social classes on which the junta depends are the main instrumentalities of the inflation.
The inflationary process, which the junta's policies stimulated immediately after the coup, was slightly reduced in 1975 as compared to the unbelievable rate of 375.9% in 1974. Such a minor reduction, however, does not indicate any substantial approach to stabilization and seems on the whole utterly irrelevant to the majority of Chileans who must endure the total collapse of their economy. This situation recalls the story of a Latin American dictator at the beginning of this century. When his advisers came to tell him that the country was suffering from a very serious educational problem, he ordered all public schools closed. Now, more than seventy years into this century, there still remain disciples of the anecdotal dictator who think that the way to eradicate poverty in Chile is to kill the poor people.
The exchange rate depreciations and the cutbacks in governmental expenditures have produced a depression which, in less than three years, has slowed the country's rate of development to what it was twelve years ago. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted during 1975 by nearly 15% to its lowest level since 1969, while, according to the IMF, real national income dropped by, as much as 26%, leaving real per capita income below its level ten years earlier. The decline in the overall 1975 GDP reflects an 8.1% drop in the mining sector, a 27% decline in the manufacturing industries and a 35% drop in construction.
Petroleum extraction declined by an estimated 11%, while transport, storage and communications declined 15.3%, and commerce fell 21.5%.
In the agricultural sector production appears virtually stagnant in 1975-76, with only an 0.4% variation from the previous agricultural year. This stagnation has been caused by a combination of factors, including the continued rise in the cost of imported fertilizers and pesticides. The use of fertilizer dropped by an estimated 40% in 1975-76. The increase in import prices also accounted for the decline in production of pork and poultry, which are almost entirely dependent on imported feed. The return to the former owners of several million hectares of farm land that had been expropriated and transferred to peasant organisations
under the 1967 Agrarian Reform Law, has also reduced agricultural production. As of the end of 1975 almost 60% of all agricultural estates affected by the land reform - equivalent to about 24% of total expropriated land - has been subject to the junta's decisions. Of this total, 40% of the agricultural enterprises (75% of the physical acreage and more than 50% of the irrigated land) have entirely reverted to former owners.
In the external sector of the economy, the results have been equally disastrous. In 1975 the value of exports dropped 28%, from $2.13 billion to $1.53 billion, and the value of imports dropped 18%, from $2.24 billion to $1.81 billion, thus showing a trade deficit of $280 million. Imports of foodstuffs dropped from $561 million in 1974, to $361 million in 1975. In the same period domestic food production declined, causing a drastic reduction in food for the masses of the population. Concurrently, the outstanding external public debt repayable in foreign currency increased from $3.60 billion on December 31, 1974, to $4.31 billion on December 31, 1975. This accentuated Chile's dependence on external sources of financing, especially from the United States. The junta's policies have burdened Chile with one of the highest per capita foreign debts in the world. In the years to come the nation will have to allocate more than 34% of its projected exports earnings to the payment of external debts.
But the most dramatic result of the economic policies has been the rise in unemployment. Before the coup, unemployment in Chile was 3.1%, one of the lowest in the Western Hemisphere. By the end of 1974, the jobless rate had climbed beyond 10% in the Santiago metropolitan area and was also higher in several other sections of the country. Official junta and IMF figures show that by the end of 1975 unemployment in the Santiago metropolitan area had reached 18.7%; the corresponding figure in other parts of the country was more than 22%; and in specific sectors, such as the construction industry, it had reached almost 40 per cent. Unemployment has continued to climb in 1976 and, according to the most conservative estimates, in July approximately 2.5 million Chileans (about one-fourth of the population) had no income at all; they survive thanks to the food and clothing distributed by church and other humanitarian organizations. The attempts by religious and other institutions to ease the economic desperation of thousands of Chilean families have been made, in most cases, under the suspicion and hostile actions of the secret police.
The inhuman conditions under which a high percentage of the Chilean population lives is reflected most dramatically by substantial increases in malnutrition, infant mortality and the appearance of thousands of beggars on the streets of Chilean cities. It forms a picture of hunger and deprivation never seen before in Chile. Families receiving the minimum wage cannot purchase more than 1,000 calories and 15 grams of protein per person per day. That is less than half the minimum satisfactory level of consumption established by the World Health Organization. It is, in short, slow starvation. Infant mortality, reduced significantly during the Allende years, jumped a dramatic 18% during the first year of the military government, according to figures provided by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America. To deflect criticism from within its own ranks against the brutal consequences of layoffs, the junta in 1975 established a token minimum employment program. However, it covers only 3% of the labor force, and pays salaries amounting to less than $30 - a month!
Although the economic policies have more mercilessly affected the working classes, the general debacle has significantly touched the middle class as well. At the same time, medium-size national enterprises have had their expectations destroyed by the reduction in demand, and have been engulfed and destroyed by the monopolies against which they were supposed to compete. Because of the collapse of the automobile industry, hundreds of machine shops and small industries which acted as subcontractors have faced bankruptcy. Three major textile firms (FIAD, Tomé Oveja and Bellavista) are working three days a week;
several shoe companies, among them Calzados Bata, have had to close. Ferriloza, one of the main producers of consumer durables, recently declared itself bankrupt. Facing this situation, Raul Sahli, the new president of the Chilean Industrialists' Association and himself linked to big monopolies, declared earlier in the year: The social market economy should be applied in all its breadth. If there are industrialists who complain because of this, let them go to hell. I won't defend them. He is so quoted by André Gunder Frank in a Second Open Letter to Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, April 1976.
The nature of the economic prescription and its results can be most vividly stated by citing the pattern of domestic income distribution. In 1972, the Popular Unity Government employees and workers received 62.9% of the total national income; 37.1% went to the propertied sector. By 1974 the share of the wage earners had been reduced to 38.2%, while the participation of property had increased to 61.8%. During 1975, 16 average real wages are estimated to have declined by almost 8%, according to the International Monetary Fund. lt is probable that these regressive trends in income distribution have continued
during 1976. What it means is that during the last three years several billions of dollars were taken from the pockets of wage earners and placed in those of capitalists and landowners. These are the economic results of the application in Chile of the prescription proposed by Friedman and his group. A Rationale tor Power
The economic policies of the Chilean junta and its results have to be placed in the context of a wide counterrevolutionary process that aims to restore to a small minority the economic, social and political control it gradually lost over the last thirty years, and particularly in the years of the Popular Unity Government.
Until September 11, 1973, the date of the coup, Chilean society had been characterized by the increasing participation of the working class and its political parties in economic and social decision making. Since about 1900, employing the mechanisms of representative democracy, workers had steadily gained new economic, social and political power. The election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile was the culmination of this process. For the first time in history a society attempted to build socialism by peaceful means. During Allende's time in office, there was a marked improvement in the conditions of
employment, health, housing, land tenure and education of the masses. And as this occurred, the privileged domestic groups and the dominant foreign interests perceived themselves to be seriously threatened.
Despite strong financial and political pressure from abroad and efforts to manipulate the attitudes of the middle class by propaganda, popular support for the Allende government increased significantly between 1970 and 1973. In March 1973, only five months before the military coup, there were Congressional elections in Chile. The political parties of the Popular Unity increased their share of the votes by more than 7 percentage points over their totals in the Presidential election of 1970. This was the first time in Chilean history that the political parties supporting the administration in power gained votes during a midterm election. The trend convinced the national bourgeoisie and its foreign supporters that they would be unable to recoup their privileges through the democratic process. That is why they resolved to destroy the democratic system and the institutions of the state, and, through an alliance with the military, to seize power by force.
In such a context, concentration of wealth is no accident, but a rule; it is not the marginal outcome of a difficult situation - as they would like the world to believe - but the base for a social project; it is not an economic liability but a temporary political success. Their real failure is not their apparent inability to redistribute wealth or to generate a more even path of development (these are not their priorities) but their inability to convince the majority of Chileans that their policies are reasonable and necessary. In short, they have failed to destroy the consciousness of the Chilean people. The economic plan has had to be enforced, and in the Chilean context that could be done only by the killing of thousands, the establishment of concentration camps all over the country, the jailing of more than 100,000 persons in three years, the closing of trade unions and neighbourhood organizations, and the prohibition of all political activities and all forms of free expression.
While the Chicago boys have provided an appearance of technical respectability to the laissez-faire dreams and political greed of the old landowning oligarchy and upper bourgeoisie of monopolists and financial speculators, the military has applied the brutal force required to achieve those goals. Repression for the majorities and economic freedom for small privileged groups are in Chile two sides of the same coin.
There is, therefore, an inner harmony between the two central priorities announced by the junta after the coup in 1973: the 'destruction of the Marxist cancer (which has come to mean not only the repression of the political parties of the Left but also the destruction of all labor organizations democratically elected and all opposition, including Christian-Democrats and church organizations), the establishment of a free private economy and the control of inflation à la Friedman.
It is nonsensical, consequently, that those who inspire, support or finance that economic policy should try to present their advocacy as restricted to technical considerations, while pretending to reject the system of terror it
requires to succeed. References 1. The two countries with the next highest rates of inflation in 1975 were Argentina, with 312%, and Uruguay with 68.1%. Both are countries with dependent capitalist economies that apply junta-style models of political repression and economic freedom.
Allende's Economic Record
There is a, widespread notion - reported by the American press often without substantiation - that the Allende government made a shambles of the Chilean economy. lt is hardly acceptable to judge an ongoing sociopolitical process only
by traditional economic indicators which describe aggregate economic features and not the general condition of society. However, when those indicators are applied to Chile, the Popular Unity Government fares very well.
In 1971, the first year of the Allende government, the GNP increased 8.9%; industrial production rose by 11%; agricultural output went up by 6%; unemployment, which at the end of the Frei government was above 8%, fell to 3.8%. Inflation, which in the previous year had been nearly 35%, was reduced to an annual rate of 22.1%.
During 1972 the external pressures applied on the government and the backlash of the domestic opposition began to be felt. On the one hand, lines of credit and financing coming from multinational lending institutions and from the private banks and the government of the United States were severed (the exception being aid to the military). On the other hand, the Chilean Congress, controlled by the opposition, approved measures which escalated government expenditure without producing the necessary revenues (through an increase of taxes); this added momentum to the inflationary process. At the same time, factions of the traditional right wing began to foment violence aimed at overthrowing the government. Despite all this and the fact that the price of copper, which represented almost 80% of Chile's export earnings, fell to its lowest level in thirty years, the Chilean economy continued to improve throughout 1972.
By the end of that year, the growing participation of the workers and peasants in the decision-making process, which accompanied the economic progress of the preceding two years, began to threaten seriously the privileges of traditional ruling groups and provoked in them more violent resistance. By 1973, Chile was experiencing the full effects of the most destructive and
sophisticated conspiracy in Latin American history. Reactionary forces, supported feverishly by their friends abroad, developed a broad and systematic campaign of sabotage and terror, which was intensified when the government gained in the March Congressional elections. This included the illegal hoarding of goods by the rich; creation of a vast black market; blowing up industrial plants, electrical installations and pipe lines; paralysis of the transportation system and, in general, attempts to disrupt the entire economy in such a way as to create the conditions needed to justify the military coup. It was this deliberate disruption, and not the Popular Unity, which created any chaos during the final days of the Allende government.
Between 1970 and 1973, the working classes had access to food and clothing, to health care, housing and education to an extent unknown before. These achievements were never threatened or diminished, even during the most difficult and dramatic moments of the government's last year in power. The priorities which the Popular Unity had established in its program of social transformations were largely reached. The broad masses of the Chilean people will never forget it.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
During the FBI investigation into Orlando Letelier's assassination, the contents of the briefcase he had with him were copied and leaked to Novak and his partner Rowland Evans as well as Jack Anderson of the New York Times by the FBI before being returned to Letelier's widow.[35] According to Novak and Evans, the documents showed that Letelier was in constant contact with the leadership of the Unidad Popular exiled in East Berlin and supported by the East German Government.[36] The FBI suspected that these leaders had been recruited by the Stasi.[37] According to Novak, Evans and Anderson, documents in the briefcase showed that Letelier had maintained contact with Salvador Allende's daughter, Beatriz Allende, wife of CubanDGI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona.[36][38]
According to the Novak and Evans, Letelier was able to receive funding of $5,000 a month from the Cuban government and under the supervision of Beatriz Allende, he used his contacts within the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and western human rights groups to organize a campaign within the United Nations as well as the US Congress to isolate the new Chilean government.[38] Novak and Evans claimed this was part of an organized campaign to put pressure on Pinochet's government closely coordinated by the Cuban and Soviet governments, using individuals like Letelier to implement these efforts. Letelier's briefcase also allegedly contained his address book which contained the names of dozens of known and suspected Eastern Bloc intelligence agents. All correspondence between Letelier and individuals in Cuba was supposedly handled via Julian Rizo, who used his diplomatic status to hide his activities.[37][39]
Fellow IPS member and friend Saul Landau described Evans and Novak as part of an “organized right wing attack”. In 1980, Letelier's widow, Isabel, wrote in The New York Times that the money sent to her late husband from Cuba was from western sources, and that Cuba had simply acted as an intermediary.[40] Reporter John Nichols has written in The Nation that observers should "have a hard time forgiving" Novak for his role in the incident.[41]
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
![[Image: Letelier1975.jpg]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Letelier1975.jpg)
![[Image: 150px-Ronni_Moffitt.jpg]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ronni_Moffitt.jpg)
![[Image: 250px-Orlando_Letelier_%26_Ronni_K_Moffi...375046.jpg]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orlando_Letelier_%26_Ronni_K_Moffit_Memorial_28375046.jpg)
![[Image: ticket2.jpg]](http://www.tni.org/archives/images/letelier/ticket2.jpg)
October 1975, Letelier was appointed TNI Director ("Director of Planning and Development for the International Political Economy Programme"). The Transnational Institute, with its office in Amsterdam, was an affiliate of the Institute for Policy Studies, based in Washington DC, where the Letelier family lived. In his capacity as Director, Letelier visited the Netherlands four times in 1976: in February, June, July and August/September.![[Image: letelierstraat.jpg]](http://www.tni.org/archives/images/letelier/letelierstraat.jpg)
![[Image: _1022347_coup.jpg]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1020000/images/_1022347_coup.jpg)
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![[Image: letelier.jpg]](http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB312/letelier.jpg)
![[Image: pinochetfile2.jpg]](http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB312/pinochetfile2.jpg)
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![[Image: nation.jpg]](http://www.tni.org/archives/images/letelier/nation.jpg)