{"id":1089896,"date":"2023-06-16T14:26:22","date_gmt":"2023-06-16T14:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/production.public.theintercept.cloud\/?p=431800"},"modified":"2023-06-16T14:26:22","modified_gmt":"2023-06-16T14:26:22","slug":"how-henry-kissinger-paved-the-way-for-orlando-leteliers-assassination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/06\/16\/how-henry-kissinger-paved-the-way-for-orlando-leteliers-assassination\/","title":{"rendered":"How Henry Kissinger Paved the Way for Orlando Letelier\u2019s Assassination"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the morning<\/u> of September 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier, the former foreign minister of Chile living in exile in the United States, was driving to work in downtown Washington, D.C., when a bomb planted in his car exploded, killing him and one passenger while wounding another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letelier was assassinated in the heart of Washington by the brutal regime of Chilean President Augusto Pinochet, a far-right dictator who gained power in a 1973 coup backed by the Nixon administration and the CIA, overthrowing the socialist government of President Salvador Allende. Letelier served as foreign minister for Allende, and later was arrested and tortured by Pinochet. After a year in prison, Letelier was released thanks to international diplomatic pressure and eventually settled in Washington, where he was a prominent opponent of the Pinochet regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in exile, Letelier still had a target on his back. The Pinochet regime, along with the right-wing governments of Argentina and Uruguay, launched a vicious international assassination program \u2014 code-named Operation Condor \u2014 to kill dissidents living abroad, and Letelier was one of Operation Condor\u2019s most prominent victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 50 years later, the full story of Letelier\u2019s assassination<\/a>, one of the most brazen acts of state-sponsored terrorism ever conducted on American soil, is still coming into focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the 100th birthday of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, which has been marked in the press by both powerful investigations<\/a> as well as puff pieces<\/a> and hagiography<\/a>, offers an opportunity to reexamine the Letelier assassination and the broader U.S. role in overthrowing Chile\u2019s democratically elected government in order to impose a brutal dictatorship. It was one of the darkest chapters in Kissinger\u2019s career and one of the most blatant abuses of power in the CIA\u2019s long and ugly history.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"1973\n

Tanks arrive in front of La Moneda, Chile, in the aftermath of the 1973 coup d\u2019\u00e9tat led by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Horacio Villalobos\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Making a Coup<\/h2>\n

The first steps in the covert campaign by Nixon, Kissinger, and the CIA to stage a coup in Chile began even before Allende took office. Their actions were eerily similar to President Donald Trump\u2019s coup attempt following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried to block the congressional certification of the election, culminating in the January 6, 2021, insurrection.<\/p>\n

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On September 4, 1970, Allende came in first in the Chilean presidential election, but since he did not gain an outright majority, Chile\u2019s legislature had to choose the winner. Scheduled for late October, that legislative action was supposed to be a pro-forma certification of Allende, the first-place candidate, but Nixon, fueled by anti-communist paranoia that led him to oppose leftist governments all around the world, wanted to use that time to stop Allende from coming to power.<\/p>\n

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The Nixon administration pursued a two-track strategy. The first track included a campaign of propaganda and disinformation against Allende, as well as bribes to key players on Chile\u2019s political scene and boycotts and economic pressure from American multinational corporations with operations in Chile.<\/p>\n\n

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The second track, which was far more secretive, called for a CIA-backed military coup. <\/p>\n

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On September 15, 1970, in a White House meeting, Nixon ordered CIA Director Richard Helms to secretly foment a military coup to stop Allende from becoming Chile\u2019s president. Also attending the meeting was Kissinger, who was then Nixon\u2019s national security adviser, and Attorney General John Mitchell. Helms later said that \u201cif I ever carried a marshal’s baton in my knapsack out of the Oval Office, it was that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Helms and the other CIA officials involved didn\u2019t think they had much of a chance of mounting a successful coup \u2014 and they were right, at least in 1970. Their coup efforts failed that year, but a renewed coup attempt succeeded in 1973, during which Allende died and Pinochet came to power.<\/p>\n

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Pinochet\u2019s Guardian<\/h2>\n

By 1976, three years after gaining power in the CIA-backed coup, Pinochet had created a bloody police state, torturing, imprisoning, and killing thousands. Despite its draconian practices, Pinochet\u2019s intelligence service enjoyed close relations with the CIA, while Kissinger remained Pinochet\u2019s guardian in Washington, fending off congressional efforts to punish Pinochet\u2019s regime over its human rights record.<\/p>\n

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Kissinger held a secret meeting with Pinochet to privately tell the dictator that he could ignore the public upbraiding that he was about to give him.<\/blockquote>\n

By September 1976, when Letelier was killed, Pinochet had good reason to believe he could get away with murder in the heart of Washington. In fact, Letelier\u2019s assassination may have been enabled by a secret meeting between Pinochet and Kissinger three months earlier.<\/p>\n

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On June 8, 1976, Kissinger \u2014 by then the secretary of state for President Gerald Ford \u2014 met with Pinochet at the presidential palace in Santiago, just as Pinochet\u2019s vicious human rights record was becoming a major international issue. The Church Committee<\/a>, the Senate\u2019s first investigation of the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, had just completed an inquiry into the CIA\u2019s efforts to foment a coup in Chile, and had closely examined a CIA scheme in 1970 to kidnap a top Chilean general who had refused to go along with the CIA-backed anti-Allende plots. As part of its CIA-Chile investigation, the Church Committee secretly interviewed the exiled Orlando Letelier.<\/p>\n

\"A\n

Former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier\u2019s car, following his assassination by car bomb in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 21, 1976.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Peter Bregg\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

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In the summer of 1975, Church Committee staffer Rick Inderfurth and another staffer quietly interviewed Letelier at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, where he was living with his wife and four children. Inderfurth questioned Letelier about a wide range of issues, including how the overt and covert policies of the CIA and the Nixon administration in the years leading up to the 1973 coup had destabilized the Allende government. Letelier provided valuable insights for the Church Committee\u2019s investigation, but he did not testify in public during its hearings on Chile. The fact that Letelier was interviewed by the Church Committee was reported for the first time in my new book, \u201cThe Last Honest Man<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Even though he lived in Washington, Letelier wasn\u2019t safe from Pinochet. <\/p>\n

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After the Church Committee\u2019s investigation and other disclosures, Congress was seeking to punish Pinochet\u2019s regime for its use of torture and other human rights abuses, and Letelier met with congressional leaders about how to hold Pinochet accountable. Kissinger, who held broad sway on foreign policy under Ford, was under mounting pressure to publicly reprimand Pinochet.<\/p>\n\n

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Kissinger agreed to travel to Chile in June 1976 to give a speech to publicly criticize Pinochet on human rights. But just before his address, Kissinger held a secret meeting with Pinochet to privately tell the dictator that he could ignore the public upbraiding that he was about to give him. Kissinger made it clear to Pinochet that his public criticism was all for show and part of an effort to placate the U.S. Congress. During their private talk, Kissinger made clear that he thought the complaints about Pinochet\u2019s human rights record were just part of a left-wing campaign against his government. Kissinger emphasized that he and the Ford administration were firmly on Pinochet\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,\u201d Kissinger told Pinochet, according to a declassified State Department memo<\/a> recounting the conversation, published in \u201cThe Pinochet File<\/a>,\u201d by Peter Kornbluh. \u201cI think that the previous government [Allende\u2019s administration] was headed toward Communism. We wish your government well. \u2026 As you know, Congress is now debating further restraints on aid to Chile. We are opposed. \u2026 I\u2019m going to speak about human rights this afternoon in the General Assembly. I delayed my statement until I could talk to you. I wanted you to understand my position.\u201d <\/p>\n

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After getting Kissinger\u2019s reassurances, Pinochet began to complain that the U.S. Congress was listening to his enemies \u2014 including Letelier.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are constantly being attacked\u201d by political opponents in Washington, Pinochet told Kissinger. \u201cThey have a strong voice in Washington. Not the people in the Pentagon, but they do get through to Congress. Gabriel Valdez [a longtime Pinochet foe] has access. Also Letelier.\u201d Pinochet bitterly added that \u201cLetelier has access to the Congress. We know they are giving false information. \u2026 We are worried about our image.\u201d It is not known whether Pinochet was aware that Letelier had been a secret witness for the Church Committee, or whether the dictator only knew about Letelier\u2019s more public lobbying efforts to get Congress to take action against the Pinochet regime.<\/p>\n

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\n Related <\/h2>\n

The Assassination of Orlando Letelier and the Politics of Silence<\/h3>\n <\/span>\n <\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n

During the June 8 meeting, Kissinger did not respond to Pinochet\u2019s complaints about Letelier. Instead, he told Pinochet, \u201cWe welcomed the overthrow of the Communist-inclined [Allende] government here. We are not out to weaken your position.\u201d Given the context of the meeting, during which Kissinger signaled to Pinochet that the Ford administration was not going to penalize him for his regime\u2019s human rights record, Kissinger\u2019s silence in the face of Pinochet\u2019s complaints about Letelier must have been viewed by Pinochet as a green light to take brutal action against the dissident. <\/p>\n

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Kissinger took further action later in the year that gave Pinochet the freedom he needed to move against Letelier. After the U.S. found out about Operation Condor, State Department officials wanted to notify the Pinochet regime and the governments of Argentina and Uruguay not to conduct assassinations. But on September 16, 1976, Kissinger blocked the State Department\u2019s plans. Kissinger ordered that \u201cno further action be taken on this matter\u201d by the State Department, effectively blocking any effort to curb Pinochet\u2019s bloody plans. Letelier was assassinated in Washington five days later. <\/p>\n

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Letelier was one of three witnesses of the Church Committee who were murdered, either before or after they talked to the committee. (The other two were Chicago mobster Sam Giancana and Las Vegas gangster Johnny Roselli, who were both involved in the CIA\u2019s secret alliance with the Mafia in the early 1960s to try to kill Fidel Castro, a scheme that was the subject of a major investigation by the Church Committee.) Meanwhile, Pinochet remained president of Chile until 1990.<\/p>\n

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Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998 in connection with the human rights abuses he committed while in power, and was placed under house arrest in the United Kingdom until 2000, when he was released on medical grounds without facing trial in Britain. He returned to Chile and faced a complex series of investigations and indictments \u2014 but no actual trial in his homeland \u2014 until his death in 2006.<\/p>\n

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Henry Kissinger has never been held to account.<\/p>\n

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The post How Henry Kissinger Paved the Way for Orlando Letelier\u2019s Assassination<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Intercept<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During a visit to Chile in 1976, Kissinger met the dictator Augusto Pinochet and offered no objection to his violent rule.<\/p>\n

The post How Henry Kissinger Paved the Way for Orlando Letelier\u2019s Assassination<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":356,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[383,340],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089896"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/356"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1089896"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105914,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089896\/revisions\/1105914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1089896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1089896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1089896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}