The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; The Letelier Case

ROBERT MacNEIL: This is Orlando Letelier meeting President Nixon as Chilean Ambassador to the United States. On September 21, 1976, Letelier was murdered when a bomb exploded in his car in Washington. Today the U.S. charged seven people with the murder. Tonight: the investigation that could mean the downfall of Chile`s military government. Good evening. A federal grand jury in Washington this afternoon indicted the former head of the Chilean secret police and six other men for the car-bombing murder of Chile`s former Ambassador to the U.S., Orlando Letelier. The indictments climax a two-year investigation to untangle a web of conspiracy reaching into the highest levels of Chile`s military government. U.S. officials are reported several times to have threatened the head of the military junta, Augusto Pinochet, that diplomatic relations would be broken off if his government did not cooperate. Today`s indictment named Pinochet`s close associate, General Juan Manuel Contreras, then head of Chile`s secret police, DINA, as the man who ordered the assassination. Also named were two other DINA officials and four members of a Cuban exile movement based in the United States. Tonight, the investigative trail that led to today`s indictments, and what the charges will do to Chile`s leadership. Jim?

JIM LEHRER:Robin, Orlando Letelier, the man assassinated here in Washington two years ago, had been part of the Marxist Allende government. He was the Chilean Ambassador to the United States and later the Foreign Minister. When the Allende government was overthrown by the military junta in 1973, Letelier was arrested. After twelve months in prison he was released into exile. He came to the United States, where he was affiliated with a Washington foreign policy think tank. During his twoyear exile he spoke out continually against the new government back home in Chile and became the acknowledged leader of its opposition. Robin?

MacNEIL: While Orlando Letelier was living in Washington the military government, headed by General Pinochet, moved to solidify its control of Chile by cracking down on its critics. A close associate of General Pinochet, General Contreras, was named head of DINA, the Chilean secret police. It`s been reported that DINA`s main task was to silence political opposition to the military government, both in Chile and abroad. High on the list of those critics was Orlando Letelier. BBC reporter Michael Cockerell picks up the story of the Letelier case.

MICHAEL COCKERELL, BBC, Reporting: On September the twenty-first, 1976, Orlando Letelier 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.

(September 21, 1976.)

ISOBEL LETELIER: 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 but there was a bomb that had been put in the car and that Orlando`s body had been dismembered.

COCKERELL: Former Ambassador Letelier had a special status. The FBI was determined to find his killer.

NICK F. STAMES, FBI: It was an important case for us, the Letelier case; a very important case for us, because it was a terrorist-type case. It was a case 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.

COCKERELL: The FBI investigation into the Letelier 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 Letelier. 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 Letelier. An American newspaper published the pictures and they were republished in Chile. But the men had false names, 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 Letelier, 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 Letelier 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 ninety-six 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 the 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 Letelier investigation had now been sent to Santiago. They`d been given a special and sensitive mission.Ray Scherrer, the FBI`s top agent in Latin America, and Carter Cornick, who`d been in charge of the Letelier investigation from the day of the assassination, had come to get Michael Townley. Townley couldn`t `believe that Pinochet would let him go.

INTERVIEWER: Michael Townley, are you ready to answer to Chilean justice?

MICHAEL TOWNLEY: Yes. The Chilean judicial system has had a very well- deserved reputation through the years, and this is a problem that the Chilean judicial system will have to face. ..and I`m totally confident.

INTERVIEWER: Are you calm?

TOWNLEY: Very calm. There will be problems but we will face them.

COCKERELL: Townley wasn`t tranquil for long. He was rushed to 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 junta`s desk. He wanted Townley handed over. to the FBI, or America would break off diplomatic relations. In secret, General Pinochet drew up an order to expel Townley from Chile.

Townley`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 has agreed to talk publicly about the murder of Letelier because of the way her husband was expelled.

MARIANA TOWNLEY: I was angry; he had betrayed my husband.

COCKERELL: Pinochet had betrayed him.

TOWNLEY: 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 till two or three in the morning, and he was up at 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.

COCKERELL: What was the cause?

TOWNLEY: 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 President Pinochet. I mean, he would have done anything that President Pinochet told him to do.

COCKERELL:In America, Townley was charged with conspiracy to murder Letelier, and as Pinochet feared, he agreed to tell everything. As one FBI agent put it, he`s singing like a canary. Townley 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 tool: 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. Townley was now Ken Enyart. He returned to Chile to fight against the Marxist government, and after the coup in 1973 he was recruited as a DINA 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 DINA agent under the name of Andres Wilson. To avert suspicion from his activities abroad for DINA he acquired a Paraguayan passport under the name Juan Williams 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 Letelier.

The official who issued Townley`s false passport was recently the victim of what might be called a hit-and-run suicide. In September 1976 Captain Armando Fernandez, an other DINA agent, went with Townley to Washington. It`s now known that Townley stayed at the Envoy Motel.Fernandez went to follow Orlando Letelier and note all his movements. In his confession to the FBI, Townley has named six Cubans he recruited as hit men against Letelier. Three of them have been arrested in the past two months; two more are on the run from the FBI. Townley admits that he and the two Cubans bought explosives and placed them under the driver`s seat of Letelier`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, Townley`s confession would have been damaging enough for General Pinochet. Opponents of the junta had long suspected the activities of DINA agents, but proof was much more difficult.

The evidence now emerging implicates the highest levels of the junta. Until recently the top commander of DINA 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 Letelier investigation.

Contreras is the Haldeman, Ehrlichman 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 Ber nardo O`Higgins. Contreras and Pinochet rose together through the army ranks, and when Pinochet created DINA 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 Letelier murder plot, Pinochet will find it very difficult to claim his hands were clean.

Last month the American investigation moved determinedly closer to General Contreras. The American special prosecutor in the Letelier case came back to Chile. His last visit to Santiago resulted in the spectacular expulsion of Michael Townley. He`s the bearded Eugene Proper, the U.S. Assistant Attorney. Embassy officials were extremely touchy about the purpose of his visit.

COCKERELL: Could I ask you, Mr. Proper, why you`ve come here?

EUGENE PROPER: Just to work on the Letelier case, that`s all I can say.

COCKERELL: Are you going to seek the extradition of Manuel Contreras in connection with this case?

PROPER:I can`t comment on what we`re going to do. I just can`t comment.

COCKERELL: How long do you think you`ll be here?

PROPER: Till we finish.

COCKERELL:This Chilean papers had no doubt why Proper

had come."Now they want General Contreras," said the headline. A few months ago no newspaper would have dared to print his name. As General Pinochet`s position becomes increasingly threatened by the Letelier 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 Leigh, is now scarcely on speaking terms with the President.

COCKERELL: Do you think that Chile should agree to the extradition of Chilean citizens in connection with the killing of Orlando Letelier?

Gen. GUSTAVO LEIGH: Really, honestly, I don`t believe something like that. If it would be somebody involved in that, they have to be punished. But honestly I don`t believe something so terrible, so stupid.

COCKERELL: Despite General Leigh`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 Townley in the plot to murder Letelier: Captain Fernandez and Colonel Pedro Espinoza, who is 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 power -- the army. He knows that his decision to turn over Michael Townley to the Americans has aroused indignation among many former DINA officials now on active duty in the army. At 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 Letelier.

MacNEIL: That report was made by BBC correspondent Michael Cockerell. Last week, after the film was completed, Air Force General Gustavo Leigh was forced to resign from the military junta because of his opposition to General Pinochet. Since then a number of other top officers of the air force resigned their posts in support of General Leigh. Leigh had openly criticized General Pinochet`s plans for restoring democracy in Chile and his handling of the Letelier case. Jim?

LEHRER: Two other people were in that car on September 21, 1976: Ronni Moffitt, a young research associate of Letelier`s, was also killed. Her husband, Michael Moffitt, escaped injury. Mr. Moffitt is still in Washington and still at the Institute for Policy Studies, where Letelier and his wife also worked, and Mr. Moffitt has continued his research on Chile. Mr. Moffitt, are you pleased with these indictments today?

MICHAEL MOFFITT: Well, both Mrs. Letelier and I and our colleagues, both at the Institute and in the Chilean community here, are satisfied. We have had faith in Mr. Proper and in FBI agent Cornick since the beginning of the investigation, and we believe that if they were given the support they needed to carry out the investigation that they would eventually find that the trail led to General Pinochet himself; and we said that the very day of the assassinations, and we`ve never changed. And we believed then and we said then that the DINA and the Chilean government was responsible for the death of Orlando and my wife Ronni.

LEHRER: And you were convinced from the beginning that the FBI and Mr. Proper, the Assistant Attorney General, were determined to get to the bottom of it, right?

MOFFITT: Once we got to know Mr. Proper and Mr. Cornick, and once we found out that they were sincere about the investigation, yes, we had every faith in them.

LEHRER: Is it likely, in your opinion, that it will go any further, that General Contreras and the others in Chile will in fact be extradited and tried?

MOFFITT: I do not think that as long as President Pinochet is in power he will extradite General Contreras, Colonel Espinoza or Fernandez Larios. I don`t think anyone in this city or anyone in Chile believes seriously that the head of Pinochet`s secret police thought up the murder of Letelier all by himself. I don`t think there`s anyone who`s familiar with military protocol that a junior officer like Contreras would take that action on his own; it`s just inconceivable that Pinochet didn`t know about it and didn`t sanction, and perhaps order it, himself.

LEHRER: You`ve continued, of course, to follow events in Chile very closely. What is your reading of the effect these indictments will have on the Pinochet government?

MOFFITT: Well, I don`t like to overdo the Watergate analogy, but I think it`s quite clear that the Letelier investigation has become Pinochet`s Watergate. I think that...

LEHRER:I think also we need to make one qualifying remark here: Watergate involved no assassinations or anything like that -- Michael Cockerell`s reference to it also in the film. But go ahead; I just wanted to make that point.

MOFFITT: I mean in terms of the scandal that it has created; it`s become a tremendous scandal in Chile, and it relates to a lot of other developments that are going on. Most of the Chilean population is opposed to the Pinochet dictatorship, and the Letelier investigation has provided a vehicle for the press to reassert itself, to begin to criticize the regime, whereas there`s been very strict censorship since the coup. At the same time, President Pinochet can be expected to try to solidify his rule, to try to stabilize his .regime; and I don`t think that anyone should think that he`s going to somehow give up overnight, that he`s going to either resign or turn over any of the DINA agents who have been indicted.

LEHRER: What`s the political significance of these indictments, as far as relations between Chile and the United States are concerned?

MOFFITT: Well, I know that if I say they have political significance that President Pinochet`s supporters in Chile will say that the whole investigation is part of the Marxist conspiracy to overthrow the government of Chile and that the FBI and the prosecutor and Senator Kennedy and Jimmy Carter and everyone else are involved in it. But there is political significance, in the sense that this is a human rights violation, and it`s the most outrageous kind of human rights violation, murder. And it`s not just happened in some far off country, it`s happened here. And the U.S. government has inasmuch said that the DINA came here to assassinate Orlando Letelier; and I think that especially an administration which has made human rights the cornerstone of its foreign policy simply cannot afford to overlook that. And my hope is that President Carter makes it very, very clear to the Chilean government and to President Pinochet that he expects cooperation from him until this investigation is completed.

LEHRER: All right, thank you. Robin?

MaCNEIL: As Mr. Moffitt just said, although newspapers in Chile are subject to censorship, some news of the Letelier case has been getting through. Cecilia Domeyko, who works for Cosas, a mass-circulation magazine in Santiago, is the only permanent CE-17e-an correspondent covering this case. As such, she can give us a reading of opinions on all sides of the issue there. Miss Domeyko, how important does the case seem to the Chilean public, from what you can gather?

CECILIA DOMEYKO: I think it`s extremely important. I think the Chilean public is very attuned to the case, and as Mr. Moffitt said in his interview, the public is receiving information through newspapers, magazines, all the media. Although at the beginning of the Pinochet government there was extreme censorship, that was lessened a bit during the following years. Right now, though, at the moment, after General Leigh`s resignation, that censorship has been reinforced slightly.

MacNEIL: Can I ask you this: is there a possibility that these indictments today would cause some rallying of support among the Chilean people behind General Pinochet, following on Mr. Moffitt`s sort of scenario of it being seen as part of a kind of conspiracy or plot against him? Could it result in more support for General Pinochet, do you think?

DOMEYKO: Well, it could result in support for General Pinochet in the sense that people might begin to question the whole situation.

MacNEIL: Is it likely to have the opposite effect, to encourage those people who are against the military junta and to, in effect, make things harder for General Pinochet? In other words, what impact do you

think politically this is going to have in Chile at the moment, given a certain amount of censorship? How do you read the impact these indictments are likely to have?

DOMEYKO: Well, there are different political groups, and they are divided in their opinion of how this could strengthen or weaken General Pinochet`s position. Within the three groups they are divided. There are those that believe that he would be strengthened from the very fact that within the junta now he has less opposition because of General Leigh`s retiring. On the other hand, there are groups who believe that his position will be weakened, especially now because of not only the Letelier case but because of border difficulties that Chile has been having with Argentina, Peru and Bolivia.

MacNEIL: How close is General Contreras still personally to President Pinochet?

DOMEYKO: Well, I haven`t been in Chile for a number of months; I wouldn`t be able to say now, at this moment. But during the period that I was in Chile, General Contreras was head of DINA and it was said that he was Pinochet`s right-hand man.

MacNEIL: Would you think there was any possibility of General Pinochet agreeing to his extradition to the United States if the U.S. asks for that?

DOMEYKO: Well, from what I`ve been seeing, from different groups that I`ve talked to, some groups believe that it is possible that General Pinochet extradite him, which I think is a possibility. Now, the reaction to this on an international scale would be favorable. There are those that say that he will not extradite him. Now, this would be....

MacNEIL: This could bring him a lot of bad publicity in the international scene if he did not, is that what you were going to say?

DOMEYKO: Yes. In other words, there are those groups that think that this would bring him a lifting of his image...

MacNEIL: I see. Miss Domeyko, I think we`re going to have to leave it there; that`s all the time we have this evening. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Mr. Moffitt. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That`s all for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.