THE C.I.A.'S LINK TO CHILE'S PLOT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000700060054-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 17, 2005
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: June 12, 1982
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP91-00901R00
ARTICLE APPMR1',T)
THE NATION
12 June 1982
F7A FOLLOW-UP ON THE LETELIER CASE
I-A 1i
plot
JOHN DINGES AND SAUL LANDAU
'most six years after the assassination of Chilean
exile leader Orlando Letelier in Washington,
,..? D.C., information cons? ties to surface in_
- -- _ .dicat.ing that the Central Intelligence Agency
concealed facts abort its relations with DINA, the Chilean
secret, police, that might have helped sc`ve the inurde;-
quickly.
In our earlier report [see "The Chilean Connection,"
The Nation, November 28, 1981], we showed that DINA's
head, then-Col. Manuel Contreras, visited Washington
secretly only days after he gave his agents orders to begin the
assassination operation. Contreras made the trip to f;.rr-
chase weapons illegally from a company run by former
C.I.A. officers Edwin Wilson and Frank Terpil.
New information from a year-old Congressional hear-
ing---..unnoticed at. the time-reveals ttiat Contreras had
another meeting, this one with the second-ranking officer of
the C.I.A., Deputy Director Vernon Walters. Walters told a
March 10, 1981, hearing of the I-louse Foreign Affairs Sub-
committee on Inter-American Affairs that he had two
meetings with Contreras in Washington: one, previously
publicized, in August 1975, t=i; second "a year" later. An
aide to Walters says that "every meeting" with Contreras
involved "agency-to-agency business" and none took place
after Walters's retirement from the C.I.A. on July 2, 1976.
We don't know the nature of the business, nor is there
any evidence that Contreras told Walters of the Letelier
assassination plot. But it is noteworthy that, according to
F.B.I. investigators, Walters never told them about the sec-
ond meeting with Contreras, even though its proximity to
the assassination on September 21, 1976, made it particr.rlar-
ly relevant to the investigation,
Walters's name has arisen several times in connection
with Contreras and the DINA agents plotting the murder,
according to the evidence compiled by the F.B.I. That
evidence shows that Walters traveled to Asundan,
Paraguay, in June 1976 on agency business. A month later,
two DINA agents assigned to kill Letelier arrived in
Paraguay to obtain false passports, using Walters's name
and alleging that Walters and the C.I.A. knew about the
DINA mission to Washineqon. Waiters has denied he had
anything to do with the DINA agents or the false passports.
STAT
Contreras's ti
Lance to hitheri
head of the Par
Guanes was the
the two DINA
agents were tral
Intelligence Agency A?u ua-
small arms." (Interestingly, Contreras's deal with Wilson
and Terpil was for 1,059 Colt Cobra revolvers, a small
handgun widely used by plainelothe: police.) Guanes also
said the two agents "had the coop ration of the C.I.A. /
U.S.A.," which `suggested that the
y t
i
l
y
rave
w
th documents
with another nationality since, as Chileans, it would be dif-
ficult to take such material out of tl U "
had prohibited arms sales to Chile earlier in 1976 because of
human rights violations.)
Guanes portrayed Walters, whom he had met in
Paraguay, as helping arrange the DINA agents' trip. He
said he met U.S. Ambassador GeorT Landau on August 6,
19,76, at a Chinese Embassy reception: "[Ile) took us aside
and said, `I received a call from Geneial Walters stating that
problems had arisen with the passports given to the Chileans
and that the State Department had cancelled the visas. It is
possible for the same two to enter [the United States] direct-
ly using Chilean passports, for which they would make
direct contact.' This information should be sent to my
friend Colonel Contreras.... "
Because this account differs frorij Walters's denial' and
Landau's testimony about the reception, F.B.I. agents at
first discounted it. They also assumed that because Guanes
was a friend of Contreras he might have concocted the
C.I.A. story to embarrass the United States. Bur in light of
Walters's admission of a second m~eti:ng with Contreras,
Guanes's testimony takes on new weight.
The Chilean government of Gen. Augusto Piriochet has
stonewalled on the Letelier case, de>`iying the U.S. request
for Contreras's extradition, terminating the military and
judicial investigations it had begun, and expelling from the
country the attorney for the Letelier family, former Justice
Minister Jaime Castillo.
Our new information indicates that the C.I.A., which had
pledged to cooperate with F.B.I. investigators, has joined in
that stonewalling. The C.I.A. and GOneral Walters had full
information about the incidents in' Paraguay, including
photographs of the two DINA agenth, within days of their
occurrence. The information was never turned over to the
F.B.I. Its importance is indicated by the fact that when the
photographs and cable traffic about the incidents were
unearthed by Federal investigators niore than a year later,
they led to the arrest of DINA agent Michael Townley, who
confess .d to having been involved in the plot, and to the in-
dictrnenis of Contreras and two other LDINA official
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700060054-9 S.