Letelier Case - Allegations of U.S. Knowledge

Allegations of U.S. Knowledge

Allegations of U.S. early knowledge of the Letelier assassination hinge on the communiqués of U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, George Landau, with the State Department, and other U.S. government agencies. When Townley and his Chilean associate tried to obtain B-2 visas to the United States in Paraguay, Landau was told by Paraguayan intelligence that these Paraguayan subjects were to meet with General Walters in the United States, concerning CIA business. Landau was suspicious of this declaration, and cabled for more information. The B-2 visas were revoked by the State Department on August 9, 1976. However, under the same names, two DINA agents used fraudulent Chilean passports to travel to the U.S. on diplomatic A-2 visas, in order to shadow Letelier. Townley himself flew to the U.S. on a fraudulent Chilean passport and under another assumed name. Landau had made copies of the visa applications though, which later documented the relationship of Townley and DINA with the Paraguayan visa applications.

According to John Dinges, co-author of Assassination on Embassy Row, documents released in 1999 and 2000 establish that "the CIA had inside intelligence about the assassination alliance at least two months before Letelier was killed but failed to act to stop the plans." It also knew about an Uruguayan attempt to kill U.S. Congressman Edward Koch, which then-CIA director George H.W. Bush warned him about only after Orlando Letelier's murder .

Kenneth Maxwell points out that U.S. policymakers were aware not only of Operation Condor in general, but in particular "that a Chilean assassination team had been planning to enter the United States." A month before the Letelier assassination, Kissinger ordered "that the Latin American rulers involved be informed that the 'assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad ... would create a most serious moral and political problem." Maxwell wrote in his review of Peter Kornbluh's book, "This demarche was apparently not delivered: the U.S. embassy in Santiago demurred on the ground that to deliver such a strong rebuke would upset the dictator", and that, on September 20, 1976, the day before Letelier and Moffitt were killed, the State Department instructed the ambassadors to take no further action with regard to the Condor scheme. .

On April 10, 2010, the Associated Press reported that a document discovered by the National Security Archive indicated that the State Department communique that was supposed to have gone out to the Chilean government warning against the assassinations had been blocked by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

In July 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, in a conversation with the journalist Brian Crozier, expressed the view, that "it was a good thing Letelier had been bumped off".