The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; The Letelier Case

You On September the 21st, 1976, Orlando Latelier was driving to work in Washington down Massachusetts Avenue, Embassy Row. On Sheridan Circle, his car turned right and he drove past the residence of the Chilean ambassador, where for three years he had lived. My first reaction was I have to see Orlando. And somebody from FBI took me to another room and explained to me that this was not a regular accident, that there was a bomb that had been put in the car and that Orlando's body had been dismembered.

Former ambassador Latelier had a special status. The FBI was determined to find his killer. It was an important case for us, the Latelier case, a very important case for us because it was a terrorist type case. It was in case in which, really, we had to solve it was important for the country, for the security of this nation. We didn't want the world to think that they had free access to the United States and to be able to be in a position to bomb our ambassadors and our visiting dignitaries. It had to be stopped otherwise. I could have foreseen situations throughout the country where this would have occurred. The FBI investigation into the Latelier killing is one of the biggest since the assassinations of Martin Luther King and President Kennedy. The first lead in the investigation came from Florida, from within the huge Cuban exile community now living in Miami's little Havana.

There, the eternal flame commemorates the martyrs of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion against Fidel Castro. Many of the Cuban exiles belong to violent, even fanatical anti-communist groups. Informers told the FBI that the Chilean secret police had recruited Cuban hit men against Latelier, but until two months ago nothing could be proved. The FBI had acquired two photographs of the men they believed had arranged the murder of Latelier, an American newspaper published the pictures and they were republished in Chile. But the men had full snames and the junta denied all knowledge of them. Other people in Santiago knew differently. Within days, this man was identified as a Chilean secret police agent, Captain Armando Fernandez. And the other man was identified as Michael Townley, an American living in Chile and an agent of the secret police. In Santiago, at the headquarters of the military junta, this was the moment when things fell apart.

The official who'd issued Fernandez and Townley with their false passports was found mysteriously to have committed suicide. And when the Americans sought to question the two men in connection with the murder of Latelier, at first the junta produced two completely different men. The Americans were furious, and at last the two men were produced, but Townley refused to talk. Now the American ambassador made a further demand. He wanted Townley an American citizen handed over to the FBI. For General Pinochet, this was an acute dilemma. He knew that once in America, Townley might reveal everything about the murder plot against Latelier and who'd given him the orders to kill. But Pinochet was in no position to resist American pressure. After four and a half years of military rule, Chile was virtually without a friend in the world. At the end of last year, 96 countries in the United Nations had voted to condemn the continuing violations of human rights in Chile. The Pinochet junta had serious border problems with a threat of war from its two neighbors Argentina and Peru, while a third Bolivia had just broken off diplomatic relations.

Chile was isolated. The last thing Pinochet could risk was further to offend the Americans. The two FBI agents in charge of the Latelier investigation had now been sent to Santiago. They'd been given a special and sensitive mission. Ray Shearer, the FBI's top agent in Latin America, and Carter Kornick, who'd been in charge of the Latelier investigation from the day of the assassination, had come to get Michael Townley. umm sharply couldn't believe that Pinochet would let him go. This time we spent seven times three years after this campus. It civilizeded how they were equipped instead of ending the maximum of my students kept so I would like to

to find a high value So what we're doing To give back a positive Here are more As in of the defense ministry for hours of questioning. At the same time, the American ambassador in Chile, a forceful personality of Austrian origin, apparently went and banged on the junters' desk. He wanted Taunley handed over to the FBI, or America would break off diplomatic relations. In secret, General Pinochet drew up an order to expel Taunley from Chile. Taunley's wife, Mariana, is a Chilean. She still lives in their large family house in Santiago, like her husband. She was an agent of the Chilean secret police, the Dina, and a passionate supporter of General Pinochet. Now, she's agreed to talk publicly about the murder of La Talle, because of the way her husband was expelled. I was angry. He had betrayed my husband.

Pinochet had betrayed him. Pinochet betrayed Michael. Michael had been working against communism, and he had been working for a military government since 1970. He had given everything he had in 1973. We had to give up everything we had. We had to give up our house. And we lost everything we had to help establish a military government in the country. And naturally, since 1974, he had been working for Dina doing everything that they told him to do, and working long, long hours. Sometimes the two or three in the morning, and he was about eight o'clock in the morning, every single morning. And he made very little money. He could have made a lot more money someplace else. He had given his life to a cause. And the cause was to keep the military government settled, because he believed that the military government was the best for Chile.

And he was very, very fond of present Pinochet. I mean, he would have done anything the present Pinochet had altered to do. In America, townly was charged with conspiracy to murder L'etelier. And as Pinochet feared, he agreed to tell everything. As one FBI agent put it, he's singing like a canary. Townly has had the typically disturbed career that produces mercenaries or fringe intelligence agents. He'd come to Santiago as a boy when his father was head of the Ford Motor Company in Chile. In 1960, he married Mariana. And seven years later, he became a salesman for the fraudulent Bernie Cornfeld insurance organization and had to flee from Chile and his angry creditors. He went with his family to live in Miami. As a committed Spanish speaking anti-communist, he made contacts with the Cuban exile community. He took a job fixing automatic transmission on cars on eighth street in the heart of Little Havana. And he learned about electronics and bugging. And in the course of the next five years,

he was to go through a complex series of different identities. It began in Miami when he applied for a new American passport using a friend's name and birth certificate. Townly was now Ken Enyard. He returned to Chile to fight against the Marxist government. And after the coup in 1973, he was recruited as a dinner agent. His first mission was to Miami to buy sophisticated bugging equipment and to re-establish contacts with Cuban extremists. Inside Chile, he operated as a dinner agent under the name of Andres Wilson. To avert suspicion from his activities abroad for dinner, he acquired a Paraguayan passport under the name Juan William's Rose, but he couldn't obtain an American visa for it. So in 1976, he took a fifth identity. He was given an official Chilean passport under the name of Hans Peterson. He used it to travel to the states to arrange the assassination of Orlando Latelier.

The official who issued Townly's false passport was recently the victim of what might be called a hit-and-run suicide. In September 1976, Captain Armando Fernandez, another dinner agent, went with Townly to Washington. It's now known that Townly stayed at the Envoy Motel. Fernandez went to follow Orlando Latelier and note all his movements. In his confession to the FBI, Townly has named six Cubans he recruited as hit men against Latelier. Three of them have been arrested in the past two months. Two more are on the run from the FBI. Townly admits that he and the two Cubans bought explosives and placed them under the driver's seat of Latelier's car. The Cubans decided to detonate the explosives by remote control as the car was passing the Chilean ambassador's residence. If it had stopped there, Townly's confession would have been damaging enough for General Pinochet. Opponents of the junta had long suspected the activities

of dinner agents, but proof was much more difficult. The evidence now emerging implicates the highest levels of the junta. Until recently, the top commander of dinner was a shadowy figure whose name it was dangerous and sometimes fatal for Chileans to mention in public. Only one photograph exists of General Manuel Contreras, the secret police chief, since the coup. He's now become the central figure in the Latelier investigation. Contreras is the Holderman, Ericman and Colson of Chile's Watergate affair. He's General Pinochet's oldest friend and most trusted colleague. The two men were cadets together at Chile's Sandhurst, named after the man who liberated Chile from Spanish rule in 1818, the Latin Irishman, General Bernardo O'Higgins. Contreras and Pinochet rose together through the army ranks

and when Pinochet created dinner immediately after the coup in 1973, he appointed his friend Manuel Contreras to head it. The two men became even closer. Dina was answerable only to Pinochet. Each day, he'd have breakfast with Contreras. On the menu were the latest secret police reports. If the Americans can prove that Contreras was involved in the Latelier murder plot, Pinochet will find it very difficult to claim his hands were clean. Last month, the American investigation moved to terminally closer to General Contreras. The American special prosecutor in the Latelier case came back to Chile. His last visit to Santiago resulted in the spectacular expulsion of Michael Tarnley. He's the bearded Eugene proper, the US assistant attorney. Embassy officials were extremely touchy about the purpose of his visit. Can I ask Mr. Corporal, why you come here, please? Just to work on your case, that's what I can say.

Are you going to seek the extradition of Manuel Contreras and connection with his case? I can't come, I'm not working on that. I just can't come. How long do you think you'll be here? Shall we finish? All right. The Chilean papers had no doubt by proper had come. Now they want General Contreras, said the headline. A few months ago, no newspaper would have dared to print his name. And as General Pinochet's position becomes increasingly threatened by the Latelier affair, he knows that he has the other members of the military junta right behind him. But these days he can't be quite sure what they're doing there. It's now known that the other generals resent General Pinochet's growing cult of personality and feel he's become a political liability for Chile. The Air Force Commander General Lee has now scarcely on speaking terms with the president. Do you think that Chile should agree to the extradition of Chilean citizens in connection with the killing of Orlando Latelier?

Really, honestly, I don't believe. I don't believe something later. If would be somebody involved in that, they have to be conscious. But, honestly, I don't believe something so. So terrible, so stupid. Despite General Lee's disbelief, the American investigation has moved closer to General Contreras. And General Pinochet has attempted to distance himself from his old friend. Contreras has now been replaced as head of Dina and has suddenly resigned as an army general. Within the next two months, the pressures from Washington on General Pinochet will reach their peak. The Americans apparently now intend to demand the extradition of the Dina men named by Tarnley in the plot to murder Latelier. Captain Fernandez and Colonel Pedro Espinoza, who was deputy head of Dina.

The Americans are still completing their case against General Contreras. The American demand for extradition will present General Pinochet with his greatest problem yet in the whole case. Can he afford to sacrifice Chilean army officers in the hope of saving himself? Or should he seek ways of blocking the extradition? General Pinochet's future as president is now in the hands of the men who brought him to par. The army. He knows that his decision to turn over Michael Tarnley to the Americans has aroused indignation among many former Dina officials now on an active duty in the army. But a brotherhood dinner recently, Pinochet assured his fellow officers that he was not disloyal. But the question of the army's loyalty to General Pinochet is now central to whether he can survive the investigation into the death of Orlando Latelier. WITH...

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