"Landau expected Walters to take quick action in the event that the Chilean mission did not have CIA clearance. Yet a week passed during which the assassination team could well have had time to carry out their original plan to go directly from Paraguay to Washington to kill Letelier. Walters and Bush conferred during that week about the matter."
"One thing is clear," Dinges and Landau wrote, "DINA chief Manuel Contreras would have called off the assassination mission if the CIA or State Department had expressed their displeasure to the Chilean government. An intelligence officer familiar with the case said that any warning would have been sufficient to cause the assassination to be scuttled. Whatever Walters and Bush did - if anything - the DINA mission proceeded."
Within hours of the bombing, Letelier's associates accused the Pinochet regime, citing its hatred of Letelier and its record for brutality. The Chilean government, however, heatedly denied any responsibility.
That night, at a dinner at the Jordanian Embassy, Sen. James Abourezk, a South Dakota Democrat, spotted Bush and approached the CIA director. Abourezk said he was a friend of Letelier's and beseeched Bush to use the CIA "to find the bastards who killed him."
Abourezk said Bush responded: "I'll see what I can do. We are not without assets in Chile."
A problem, however, was that one of the CIA's best-placed assets - DINA chief Manuel Contreras - would turn out to be the mastermind of the assassination.
Wiley Gilstrap, the CIA's Santiago station chief, did approach Contreras with questions about the Letelier bombing and wired back to Langley Contreras's assurance that the Chilean government wasn't involved.
Following the strategy of public misdirection already used in hundreds of "disappearances," Contreras pointed the finger at the Chilean Left. Contreras suggested that leftists had killed Letelier to turn him into a martyr.
Evidence of Lying
The Ford administration, of course, had plenty of evidence that Contreras was lying.
Like a quarter century later, when the U.S. government immediately recognized al-Qaeda's hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington because U.S. officials knew about Osama bin Laden's intentions, there were signs everywhere in September 1976 that DINA had been plotting some kind of attack inside the United States.
If anything, the Letelier assassination should have been even easier to solve since the Pinochet government had flashed its intention to mount a suspicious operation inside the United States by involving the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay and the deputy director of the CIA. Bush's CIA even had in its files a photograph of the leader of the terrorist squad, Michael Townley.
"The CIA had substantive evidence to show that Contreras was lying," research Peter Kornbluh wrote in The Pinochet File. "The Agency had concrete knowledge that DINA had murdered other political opponents abroad, using the same modus operandi as the Letelier case. The Agency had substantive intelligence on Condor, and Chile's involvement in planning murders of political opponents in Europe."
Rather than fulfilling his promise to Abourezk to "see what I can do," Bush ignored leads that would have taken him into a confrontation with Pinochet.
Any publicity might have opened up the Ford administration to another round of political damage for coddling a terrorist regime. The CIA either didn't put the pieces together or chose to avoid the obvious conclusions that the evidence presented.
Indeed, the CIA didn't seem to want any information that might implicate the Pinochet regime. On Oct. 6, a CIA informant in Chile went to the CIA station in Santiago and relayed an account of Pinochet denouncing Letelier.
"One thing is clear," Dinges and Landau wrote, "DINA chief Manuel Contreras would have called off the assassination mission if the CIA or State Department had expressed their displeasure to the Chilean government. An intelligence officer familiar with the case said that any warning would have been sufficient to cause the assassination to be scuttled. Whatever Walters and Bush did - if anything - the DINA mission proceeded."
Within hours of the bombing, Letelier's associates accused the Pinochet regime, citing its hatred of Letelier and its record for brutality. The Chilean government, however, heatedly denied any responsibility.
That night, at a dinner at the Jordanian Embassy, Sen. James Abourezk, a South Dakota Democrat, spotted Bush and approached the CIA director. Abourezk said he was a friend of Letelier's and beseeched Bush to use the CIA "to find the bastards who killed him."
A problem, however, was that one of the CIA's best-placed assets - DINA chief Manuel Contreras - would turn out to be the mastermind of the assassination.
Wiley Gilstrap, the CIA's Santiago station chief, did approach Contreras with questions about the Letelier bombing and wired back to Langley Contreras's assurance that the Chilean government wasn't involved.
Following the strategy of public misdirection already used in hundreds of "disappearances," Contreras pointed the finger at the Chilean Left. Contreras suggested that leftists had killed Letelier to turn him into a martyr.
Evidence of Lying
The Ford administration, of course, had plenty of evidence that Contreras was lying.
Like a quarter century later, when the U.S. government immediately recognized al-Qaeda's hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington because U.S. officials knew about Osama bin Laden's intentions, there were signs everywhere in September 1976 that DINA had been plotting some kind of attack inside the United States.
If anything, the Letelier assassination should have been even easier to solve since the Pinochet government had flashed its intention to mount a suspicious operation inside the United States by involving the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay and the deputy director of the CIA. Bush's CIA even had in its files a photograph of the leader of the terrorist squad, Michael Townley.
"The CIA had substantive evidence to show that Contreras was lying," research Peter Kornbluh wrote in The Pinochet File. "The Agency had concrete knowledge that DINA had murdered other political opponents abroad, using the same modus operandi as the Letelier case. The Agency had substantive intelligence on Condor, and Chile's involvement in planning murders of political opponents in Europe."
Rather than fulfilling his promise to Abourezk to "see what I can do," Bush ignored leads that would have taken him into a confrontation with Pinochet.
Any publicity might have opened up the Ford administration to another round of political damage for coddling a terrorist regime. The CIA either didn't put the pieces together or chose to avoid the obvious conclusions that the evidence presented.
Indeed, the CIA didn't seem to want any information that might implicate the Pinochet regime. On Oct. 6, a CIA informant in Chile went to the CIA station in Santiago and relayed an account of Pinochet denouncing Letelier.
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