Orlando Letelier/Assassination
 | |
| Date | September 21, 1976 |
|---|---|
| Location | Washington, D.C. |
| Blamed on | DINA |
| Type | car bombing |
| Deaths | 2 |
| Injured (non-fatal) | 1 |
| Interest of | John Dinges, Donald Freed |
At 9:30 a.m. on September 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier was killed by a car bomb together with his assistant Ronni Moffitt in Embassy Row of Washington, D.C.. Moffitt's husband of 4 months, Michael was in the rear of the car and survived the attack.[1] The bombing was attributed to the Chilean secret police (the DINA). The involvement of the CIA was not initially widely understood.[citation needed]
Perpetrators
The CIA knew of and/or ordered his murder, by car bomb, but the official narrative remains that "the assassination was perpetrated by agents of the Chilean secret police (the DINA), and was one among many carried out as part of Operation Condor."
FBI Investigation
An FBI investigation lead to the extradition of Michael Townley, a US expatriate who confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cuban exiles (from Operation 40?[citation needed]) 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 chosen to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll. Suárez and Romero were not extradited.
Virgilio Paz Romero was later captured and pleaded guilty to the murder in 1991.
The Official Culprit
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| DINA | The secret police of Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. |
