Assassination of Orlando Letelier

Assassination of Orlando Letelier
Location	Washington, D.C. United States
Date	September 21, 1976 9:30 am (UTC-04:00)
Target	Orlando Letelier
Attack type	Car bombing
Deaths	2
Injured	1
Perpetrators	DINA

Letelier and Moffitt Memorial on Sheridan Circle, Washington D.C.

The Assassination of Orlando Letelier was a car bombing which killed Orlando Letelier, a Chilean socialist political figure when Salvador Allende was president of Chile. It all starts when he was based in the United States as an activist. Letelier was killed in Washington, D.C. with his American assistant, Ronni Karpen and her husband, Michael Moffitt (who worked for Letelier) by some Chilean DINA agents in September 21, 1976. Until 9/11, it was known as the most infamous act of international terrorism in the capital of the US.

Declassified U.S. intelligence documents show and confirm that Pinochet ordered the killing.

Bibliography

• Dinges, John, and Landau, Saul. Assassination on Embassy Row (London, 1981) ISBN 0-07-016998-5, (McGraw-Hill, 1981)
• Dinges, John. The Condor Years (The New Press: 2004) ISBN 1-56584-764-4
• Hitchens, Christopher, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, (Verso: 2001) ISBN 1-85984-631-9
• Taylor Branch and Eugene M Propper Labyrinth (Viking Press 1983, Penguin Books1983 ISBN 0-14-006683-7)

Other websites

• Orlando Letelier Archive held by the Transnational Institute.
• MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base Nine legal documents from the trials of Letelier's assassins. Includes trial transcripts.
• Institute for Policy Studies, where Letelier and Moffitt worked at the time, gives circumstances surrounding bombing.
• John Dinges John Dinges was a correspondent for the "Washington Post" in South America from 1975 to 1983, author of The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press 2004) and (with Saul Landau Assassination on Embassy Row (Pantheon 1980), (Asesinato en Washington, Lasser 1980, Planeta 1990)