Parry writes: "Forty years ago, a car-bomb exploded in Washington killing
Chile's ex-Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, an act of state terrorism that
the CIA and its director George H.W. Bush tried to cover up."
Former president George H.W. Bush. (photo: AP)
George H.W. Bush, the CIA and a Case of State Terrorism
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
29 September 16
Forty years ago, a car-bomb exploded in Washington killing Chile's
ex-Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, an act of state terrorism that the CIA
and its director George H.W. Bush tried to cover up, Robert Parry reported
in 2000.
In early fall of 1976, after a Chilean government assassin had killed a
Chilean dissident and an American woman with a car bomb in Washington, D.C.,
George H.W. Bush's CIA leaked a false report clearing Chile's military
dictatorship and pointing the FBI in the wrong direction.
The bogus CIA assessment, spread through Newsweek magazine and other U.S.
media outlets, was planted despite CIA's now admitted awareness at the time
that Chile was participating in Operation Condor, a cross-border campaign
targeting political dissidents, and the CIA's own suspicions that the
Chilean junta was behind the terrorist bombing in Washington.
In a 21-page report to Congress on Sept. 18, 2000, the CIA officially
acknowledged for the first time that the mastermind of the terrorist attack,
Chilean intelligence chief Manuel Contreras, was a paid asset of the CIA.
The CIA report was issued almost 24 years to the day after the murders of
former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and American co-worker Ronni
Moffitt, who died on Sept. 21, 1976, when a remote-controlled bomb ripped
apart Letelier's car as they drove down Massachusetts Avenue, a stately
section of Washington known as Embassy Row.
In the report, the CIA also acknowledged publicly for the first time that it
consulted Contreras in October 1976 about the Letelier assassination. The
report added that the CIA was aware of the alleged Chilean government role
in the murders and included that suspicion in an internal cable the same
month.
"CIA's first intelligence report containing this allegation was dated 6
October 1976," a little more than two weeks after the bombing, the CIA
disclosed.
Nevertheless, the CIA - then under CIA Director George H.W. Bush - leaked
for public consumption an assessment clearing the Chilean government's
feared intelligence service, DINA, which was then run by Contreras.
Relying on the word of Bush's CIA, Newsweek reported that "the Chilean
secret police were not involved" in the Letelier assassination. "The
[Central Intelligence] agency reached its decision because the bomb was too
crude to be the work of experts and because the murder, coming while Chile's
rulers were wooing U.S. support, could only damage the Santiago regime."
[Newsweek, Oct. 11, 1976]
Bush, who later became the 41st president of the United States (and is the
father of the 43rd president), has never explained his role in putting out
the false cover story that diverted attention away from the real terrorists.
Nor has Bush explained what he knew about the Chilean intelligence operation
in the weeks before Letelier and Moffitt were killed.
Dodging Disclosure
As a Newsweek correspondent in 1988, a dozen years after the Letelier
bombing, when the elder Bush was running for president, I prepared a
detailed story about Bush's handling of the Letelier case.
The draft story included the first account from U.S. intelligence sources
that Contreras was a CIA asset in the mid-1970s. I also learned that the CIA
had consulted Contreras about the Letelier assassination, information that
the CIA then would not confirm.
The sources told me that the CIA sent its Santiago station chief, Wiley
Gilstrap, to talk with Contreras after the bombing. Gilstrap then cabled
back to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Contreras's assurances that
the Chilean government was not involved. Contreras told Gilstrap that the
most likely killers were communists who wanted to make a martyr out of
Letelier.
My story draft also described how Bush's CIA had been forewarned in 1976
about DINA's secret plans to send agents, including the assassin Michael
Townley, into the United States on false passports.
Upon learning of this strange mission, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay,
George Landau, cabled Bush about Chile's claim that Townley and another
agent were traveling to CIA headquarters for a meeting with Bush's deputy,
Vernon Walters. Landau also forwarded copies of the false passports to the
CIA.
Walters cabled back that he was unaware of any scheduled appointment with
these Chilean agents. Landau immediately canceled the visas, but Townley
simply altered his plans and continued on his way to the United States.
After arriving, he enlisted some right-wing Cuban-Americans in the Letelier
plot and went to Washington to plant the bomb under Letelier's car.
The CIA has never explained what action it took, if any, after receiving
Landau's warning. A natural follow-up would have been to contact DINA and
ask what was afoot or whether a message about the trip had been misdirected.
The CIA report in 2000 made no mention of these aspects of the case.
After the assassination, Bush promised the CIA's full cooperation in
tracking down the Letelier-Moffitt killers. But instead the CIA took
contrary actions, such as planting the false exoneration and withholding
evidence that would have implicated the Chilean junta.
"Nothing the agency gave us helped us to break this case," said federal
prosecutor Eugene Propper in a 1988 interview for the story I was drafting
for Newsweek. The CIA never volunteered Ambassador Landau's cable about the
suspicious DINA mission nor copies of the fake passports that included a
photo of Townley, the chief assassin. Nor did Bush's CIA divulge its
knowledge of the existence of Operation Condor.
FBI agents in Washington and Latin America broke the case two years later.
They discovered Operation Condor on their own and tracked the assassination
back to Townley and his accomplices in the United States.
In 1988, as then-Vice President Bush was citing his CIA work as an important
part of his government experience, I submitted questions to him asking about
his actions in the days before and after the Letelier bombing. Bush's chief
of staff, Craig Fuller, wrote back, saying Bush "will have no comment on the
specific issues raised in your letter."
As it turned out, the Bush campaign had little to fear from my discoveries.
When I submitted my story draft - with its exclusive account of Contreras's
role as a CIA asset - Newsweek's editors refused to run the story.
Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas told me that Editor Maynard Parker even
had accused me of being "out to get Bush."
The CIA's Admission
Twenty-four years after the Letelier assassination and 12 years after
Newsweek killed the first account of the Contreras-CIA relationship, the CIA
admitted that it had paid Contreras as an intelligence asset and consulted
with him about the Letelier assassination.
Still, in the sketchy report in 2000, the spy agency sought to portray
itself as more victim than accomplice. According to the report, the CIA was
internally critical of Contreras's human rights abuses and skeptical about
his credibility. The CIA said its skepticism predates the spy agency's
contact with him about the Letelier-Moffitt murders.
"The relationship, while correct, was not cordial and smooth, particularly
as evidence of Contreras' role in human rights abuses emerged," the CIA
reported. "In December 1974, the CIA concluded that Contreras was not going
to improve his human rights performance. .
"By April 1975, intelligence reporting showed that Contreras was the
principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the Junta, but
an interagency committee [within the Ford administration] directed the CIA
to continue its relationship with Contreras."
The CIA report added that "a one-time payment was given to Contreras" in
1975, a time frame when the CIA was first hearing about Operation Condor, a
cross-border program run by South America's military dictatorships to hunt
down dissidents living in other countries.
"CIA sought from Contreras information regarding evidence that emerged in
1975 of a formal Southern Cone cooperative intelligence effort - 'Operation
Condor' - building on informal cooperation in tracking and, in at least a
few cases, killing political opponents. By October 1976, there was
sufficient information that the CIA decided to approach Contreras on the
matter. Contreras confirmed Condor's existence as an intelligence-sharing
network but denied that it had a role in extra-judicial killings."
Also, in October 1976, the CIA said it "worked out" how it would assist the
FBI in its investigation of the Letelier assassination, which had occurred
the previous month. The spy agency's report offered no details of what it
did, however. The report added only that Contreras was already a murder
suspect by fall 1976.
"At that time, Contreras' possible role in the Letelier assassination became
an issue," the CIA's report said. "By the end of 1976, contacts with
Contreras were very infrequent."
Even though the CIA came to recognize the likelihood that DINA was behind
the Letelier assassination, there never was any indication that Bush's CIA
sought to correct the false impression created by its leaks to the news
media asserting DINA's innocence.
After Bush left the CIA with Jimmy Carter's inauguration in 1977, the spy
agency distanced itself from Contreras, the new report said. "During 1977,
CIA met with Contreras about half a dozen times; three of those contacts
were to request information on the Letelier assassination," the CIA report
said.
"On 3 November 1977, Contreras was transferred to a function unrelated to
intelligence so the CIA severed all contact with him," the report added.
"After a short struggle to retain power, Contreras resigned from the Army in
1978. In the interim, CIA gathered specific, detailed intelligence reporting
concerning Contreras' involvement in ordering the Letelier assassination."
Remaining Mysteries
Though the CIA report in 2000 contained the first official admission of a
relationship with Contreras, it shed no light on the actions of Bush and his
deputy, Walters, in the days before and after the Letelier assassination. It
also offered no explanation why Bush's CIA planted false information in the
American press clearing Chile's military dictatorship.
While providing the 21-page summary on its relationship with Chile's
military dictatorship, the CIA refused to release documents from a quarter
century earlier on the grounds that the disclosures might jeopardize the
CIA's "sources and methods." The refusal came in the face of President Bill
Clinton's specific order to release as much information as possible.
Perhaps the CIA was playing for time. With CIA headquarters officially named
the George Bush Center for Intelligence and with veterans of the Reagan-Bush
years still dominating the CIA's hierarchy, the spy agency might have hoped
that the election of Texas Gov. George W. Bush would free it from demands to
open up records to the American people.
For his part, former President George H.W. Bush declared his intent to take
a more active role in campaigning for his son's election. In Florida on
Sept. 22, 2000, Bush said he was "absolutely convinced" that if his son is
elected president, "we will restore the respect, honor and decency that the
White House deserves."
________________________________________
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
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Former president George H.W. Bush. (photo: AP)
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/21/george-h-w-bush-the-cia-and-a-case-of-
state-terrorism/https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/21/george-h-w-bush-the-ci
a-and-a-case-of-state-terrorism/
George H.W. Bush, the CIA and a Case of State Terrorism
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
29 September 16
Forty years ago, a car-bomb exploded in Washington killing Chile's
ex-Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, an act of state terrorism that the CIA
and its director George H.W. Bush tried to cover up, Robert Parry reported
in 2000.
n early fall of 1976, after a Chilean government assassin had killed a
Chilean dissident and an American woman with a car bomb in Washington, D.C.,
George H.W. Bush's CIA leaked a false report clearing Chile's military
dictatorship and pointing the FBI in the wrong direction.
The bogus CIA assessment, spread through Newsweek magazine and other U.S.
media outlets, was planted despite CIA's now admitted awareness at the time
that Chile was participating in Operation Condor, a cross-border campaign
targeting political dissidents, and the CIA's own suspicions that the
Chilean junta was behind the terrorist bombing in Washington.
In a 21-page report to Congress on Sept. 18, 2000, the CIA officially
acknowledged for the first time that the mastermind of the terrorist attack,
Chilean intelligence chief Manuel Contreras, was a paid asset of the CIA.
The CIA report was issued almost 24 years to the day after the murders of
former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and American co-worker Ronni
Moffitt, who died on Sept. 21, 1976, when a remote-controlled bomb ripped
apart Letelier's car as they drove down Massachusetts Avenue, a stately
section of Washington known as Embassy Row.
In the report, the CIA also acknowledged publicly for the first time that it
consulted Contreras in October 1976 about the Letelier assassination. The
report added that the CIA was aware of the alleged Chilean government role
in the murders and included that suspicion in an internal cable the same
month.
"CIA's first intelligence report containing this allegation was dated 6
October 1976," a little more than two weeks after the bombing, the CIA
disclosed.
Nevertheless, the CIA - then under CIA Director George H.W. Bush - leaked
for public consumption an assessment clearing the Chilean government's
feared intelligence service, DINA, which was then run by Contreras.
Relying on the word of Bush's CIA, Newsweek reported that "the Chilean
secret police were not involved" in the Letelier assassination. "The
[Central Intelligence] agency reached its decision because the bomb was too
crude to be the work of experts and because the murder, coming while Chile's
rulers were wooing U.S. support, could only damage the Santiago regime."
[Newsweek, Oct. 11, 1976]
Bush, who later became the 41st president of the United States (and is the
father of the 43rd president), has never explained his role in putting out
the false cover story that diverted attention away from the real terrorists.
Nor has Bush explained what he knew about the Chilean intelligence operation
in the weeks before Letelier and Moffitt were killed.
Dodging Disclosure
As a Newsweek correspondent in 1988, a dozen years after the Letelier
bombing, when the elder Bush was running for president, I prepared a
detailed story about Bush's handling of the Letelier case.
The draft story included the first account from U.S. intelligence sources
that Contreras was a CIA asset in the mid-1970s. I also learned that the CIA
had consulted Contreras about the Letelier assassination, information that
the CIA then would not confirm.
The sources told me that the CIA sent its Santiago station chief, Wiley
Gilstrap, to talk with Contreras after the bombing. Gilstrap then cabled
back to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Contreras's assurances that
the Chilean government was not involved. Contreras told Gilstrap that the
most likely killers were communists who wanted to make a martyr out of
Letelier.
My story draft also described how Bush's CIA had been forewarned in 1976
about DINA's secret plans to send agents, including the assassin Michael
Townley, into the United States on false passports.
Upon learning of this strange mission, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay,
George Landau, cabled Bush about Chile's claim that Townley and another
agent were traveling to CIA headquarters for a meeting with Bush's deputy,
Vernon Walters. Landau also forwarded copies of the false passports to the
CIA.
Walters cabled back that he was unaware of any scheduled appointment with
these Chilean agents. Landau immediately canceled the visas, but Townley
simply altered his plans and continued on his way to the United States.
After arriving, he enlisted some right-wing Cuban-Americans in the Letelier
plot and went to Washington to plant the bomb under Letelier's car.
The CIA has never explained what action it took, if any, after receiving
Landau's warning. A natural follow-up would have been to contact DINA and
ask what was afoot or whether a message about the trip had been misdirected.
The CIA report in 2000 made no mention of these aspects of the case.
After the assassination, Bush promised the CIA's full cooperation in
tracking down the Letelier-Moffitt killers. But instead the CIA took
contrary actions, such as planting the false exoneration and withholding
evidence that would have implicated the Chilean junta.
"Nothing the agency gave us helped us to break this case," said federal
prosecutor Eugene Propper in a 1988 interview for the story I was drafting
for Newsweek. The CIA never volunteered Ambassador Landau's cable about the
suspicious DINA mission nor copies of the fake passports that included a
photo of Townley, the chief assassin. Nor did Bush's CIA divulge its
knowledge of the existence of Operation Condor.
FBI agents in Washington and Latin America broke the case two years later.
They discovered Operation Condor on their own and tracked the assassination
back to Townley and his accomplices in the United States.
In 1988, as then-Vice President Bush was citing his CIA work as an important
part of his government experience, I submitted questions to him asking about
his actions in the days before and after the Letelier bombing. Bush's chief
of staff, Craig Fuller, wrote back, saying Bush "will have no comment on the
specific issues raised in your letter."
As it turned out, the Bush campaign had little to fear from my discoveries.
When I submitted my story draft - with its exclusive account of Contreras's
role as a CIA asset - Newsweek's editors refused to run the story.
Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas told me that Editor Maynard Parker even
had accused me of being "out to get Bush."
The CIA's Admission
Twenty-four years after the Letelier assassination and 12 years after
Newsweek killed the first account of the Contreras-CIA relationship, the CIA
admitted that it had paid Contreras as an intelligence asset and consulted
with him about the Letelier assassination.
Still, in the sketchy report in 2000, the spy agency sought to portray
itself as more victim than accomplice. According to the report, the CIA was
internally critical of Contreras's human rights abuses and skeptical about
his credibility. The CIA said its skepticism predates the spy agency's
contact with him about the Letelier-Moffitt murders.
"The relationship, while correct, was not cordial and smooth, particularly
as evidence of Contreras' role in human rights abuses emerged," the CIA
reported. "In December 1974, the CIA concluded that Contreras was not going
to improve his human rights performance. .
"By April 1975, intelligence reporting showed that Contreras was the
principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the Junta, but
an interagency committee [within the Ford administration] directed the CIA
to continue its relationship with Contreras."
The CIA report added that "a one-time payment was given to Contreras" in
1975, a time frame when the CIA was first hearing about Operation Condor, a
cross-border program run by South America's military dictatorships to hunt
down dissidents living in other countries.
"CIA sought from Contreras information regarding evidence that emerged in
1975 of a formal Southern Cone cooperative intelligence effort - 'Operation
Condor' - building on informal cooperation in tracking and, in at least a
few cases, killing political opponents. By October 1976, there was
sufficient information that the CIA decided to approach Contreras on the
matter. Contreras confirmed Condor's existence as an intelligence-sharing
network but denied that it had a role in extra-judicial killings."
Also, in October 1976, the CIA said it "worked out" how it would assist the
FBI in its investigation of the Letelier assassination, which had occurred
the previous month. The spy agency's report offered no details of what it
did, however. The report added only that Contreras was already a murder
suspect by fall 1976.
"At that time, Contreras' possible role in the Letelier assassination became
an issue," the CIA's report said. "By the end of 1976, contacts with
Contreras were very infrequent."
Even though the CIA came to recognize the likelihood that DINA was behind
the Letelier assassination, there never was any indication that Bush's CIA
sought to correct the false impression created by its leaks to the news
media asserting DINA's innocence.
After Bush left the CIA with Jimmy Carter's inauguration in 1977, the spy
agency distanced itself from Contreras, the new report said. "During 1977,
CIA met with Contreras about half a dozen times; three of those contacts
were to request information on the Letelier assassination," the CIA report
said.
"On 3 November 1977, Contreras was transferred to a function unrelated to
intelligence so the CIA severed all contact with him," the report added.
"After a short struggle to retain power, Contreras resigned from the Army in
1978. In the interim, CIA gathered specific, detailed intelligence reporting
concerning Contreras' involvement in ordering the Letelier assassination."
Remaining Mysteries
Though the CIA report in 2000 contained the first official admission of a
relationship with Contreras, it shed no light on the actions of Bush and his
deputy, Walters, in the days before and after the Letelier assassination. It
also offered no explanation why Bush's CIA planted false information in the
American press clearing Chile's military dictatorship.
While providing the 21-page summary on its relationship with Chile's
military dictatorship, the CIA refused to release documents from a quarter
century earlier on the grounds that the disclosures might jeopardize the
CIA's "sources and methods." The refusal came in the face of President Bill
Clinton's specific order to release as much information as possible.
Perhaps the CIA was playing for time. With CIA headquarters officially named
the George Bush Center for Intelligence and with veterans of the Reagan-Bush
years still dominating the CIA's hierarchy, the spy agency might have hoped
that the election of Texas Gov. George W. Bush would free it from demands to
open up records to the American people.
For his part, former President George H.W. Bush declared his intent to take
a more active role in campaigning for his son's election. In Florida on
Sept. 22, 2000, Bush said he was "absolutely convinced" that if his son is
elected president, "we will restore the respect, honor and decency that the
White House deserves."
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
