The Echo of a Car Bomb Exploded in Washington

A note on the whiteboard behind the counter of the coffee bar reminded me. The mostly college-age clerks there usually post some sort of odd birthday (Jimmy Durante was my favorite) or “trivia” question related to the day.This time it said “Orlando Letelier, a Chilean dissident, was assassinated by a car bomb on September 23, 1976. [Actually it was September 21.] In what city did this happen?

”The answer is posted on another white board nearby: “Washington, D.C.”

I’m sure it is amazing to even politically aware college students that a car bomb assassination could have taken place in the nation’s capital (and not be famous), and it is an eerie counterpoint to the daily news from Iraq. But even I was a little shaken by the memory---and I was there.

Orlando Letelier had been an official in the Salvador Allende government in Chile, an elected government with broad public support but an openly socialist democratic agenda. Entrenched political and corporate interests didn't like it much, and the Cold War heat was on such suspiciously non-captalistic regimes. Allende was assassinated during a military coup in 1973, that brought the now notorious dictator and ruthless murderer, General Augusto Pinochet to power.Over the next decade Pinochet and his secret police turned “disappeared” into a verb. Thousands of Chileans over the next several decades were disappeared by his secret police.

One of the first was Orlando Letelier, who in 1976 was traveling the world for the Institute for Policy Studies, and organizing boycotts and other opposition to the Chilean dictatorship. On an autumn evening in 1976, a bomb planted in his car exploded on a Washington street, not far from the White House. He was killed instantly. A young American woman, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, his assistant, was also killed. Her husband, Michael Moffitt, was injured.

It later became clear that the Chilean coup and the murder of Allende were at least facilitated by the U.S. government, specifically the CIA. The role of Henry Kissinger was allegedly large.

It wasn’t until 2000 or so that the CIA’s involvement in Letelier’s assassination was partially acknowledged. The CIA, directed by George H.W. Bush in 1976, at the very least covered up their knowledge that the Chilean secret police did the hit. They may have been much more involved than that.At the time I was the editor of a weekly alternative newspaper called Washington Newsworks, and I’m proud to say that our coverage of the Letelier assassination was more extensive that week, and holds up better now, than anyone else’s in town, including the Washington Post.

The real credit goes to Jeff Stein, who did the reporting and wrote the stories. Just about all I did was recognize the importance of it, and I made the decision to put it on the cover and give it full play inside. Jeff Stein now edits the Congressional Quarterly’s newsletter on Homeland Security.In particular, Jeff’s reporting and our coverage did not buy the official line in the immediate aftermath, that the bomb was planted by leftists. It was G.H.W. Bush himself who convinced the establishment media that Chile’s Secret Police wasn’t involved. That’s why not many people know about this bit of infamous history. Letelier and Moffitt both deserved better then, and they deserve better now.

G.W. Bush likes to make himself out to be the champion of the good and the righteous, and anyone who opposes his definition of the United States as the evildoers. There’s no doubt that there are a lot of evildoers out there, but the U.S. governing establishment that two generations of Bushes represent is hardly innocent. Complicity in assassination and coups in the Americas is only the beginning. They don’t want it particularly known that most of their selected evildoers---especially Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein---were once American-funded American allies, and much of the training of fighters and their arms in Iraq killing American soldiers now, either came directly from the U.S. or began with U.S. intervention in the region during the Nixon or Reagan or Bush the First administrations. Highly placed members of the current administration were involved.

Now we see and hear more and more evidence of the reckless killing of civilians in Iraq, and the officially sanctioned torture of captives, both in the Middle East and at Guantanamo. The principals of this administration may look at the world in a different way, they may sincerely believe that what they do is for the good of America (or at least their close corporate friends) but if they want to see evildoers, all they need do is look in the mirror.

Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt may be forgotten, but they deserve to be known as heroes more than anyone in this bunch in Washington could ever hope to be.