Augusto Pinochet and the Redacted Bridge to a DC Car Bomb
Names of operatives and collaborators stayed hidden for decades, even as the DOJ launched a renewed hunt for the order that killed two people on a Washington street
By Desmond Okafor ·
DINA
Augusto Pinochet and the May 1978 Cover-Up Calculus
Ronni Moffitt and Orlando Letelier were killed by a car bomb in Washington, but a secret CIA assessment spent months calculating how the Pinochet regime would lie about it.
By Theo Marchetti ·
46 Aides and the Hunt for the Intellectual Authors of the Letelier Bombing
Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt were murdered in a D.C. car bomb, yet the FBI waited 24 years to hunt for the order's author in a case where names remain blacked out
By Desmond Okafor ·
Manuel Contreras and the Blacked-Out Truth of Punto Peuco
The man who ordered the assassination of a diplomat in Washington died while serving 529 years, but the FBI's final interrogation of him remains a wall of black ink.
By Desmond Okafor ·
Michael Townley and the Thumbprint of a Dead-Man's Switch
A 1978 confession from a Chilean hitman reveals a desperate attempt to trade state secrets for survival after the car bombing of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C.
By Theo Marchetti ·
Orlando Letelier and the Senate’s Secret Map of South American Killers
The FBI and CIA tracked a network of death squads across the Southern Cone for years, but a Top Secret Senate report on the slaughter was suppressed until a leak brought it to light.
By Desmond Okafor ·
Fernandez Larios and the Negotiated Silence of the Letelier Bombing
Ronni Moffitt and Orlando Letelier were erased by a car bomb in 1976; a decade later, a DINA operative's curated confession served to insulate the architects of the hit.
By Desmond Okafor ·
Manuel Contreras and the 1989 Demand for the DINA Assassins
For over a decade, the Pinochet regime blocked the extradition of the men who blew up a diplomat in Washington, until a January 1989 summary signaled the end of the line.
By Theo Marchetti ·
Michael Townley and the American-Sourced Sarin Gas
A death squad’s quest for nerve gas utilized American suppliers and targets; the FBI’s record of the plot remained internal for decades, shielding the names of those who sold the precursors.
By Theo Marchetti ·
Michael Townley and the 33-Year Silence on a DINA Hit
Two people died in a Washington car bomb, and the American who helped build it wrote a critique of the failure that the US government kept secret until 2015
By Theo Marchetti ·
Michael Townley and the 1991 Cleaning of a DC Murder
The American agent who killed a diplomat in Washington sought survival through confessions that the Justice Department waited nearly a decade to formalize
By Theo Marchetti ·
Four Redacted Officials and the 1979 Demand to Oust Pinochet
The names of the State Department officials who protested the U.S. shielding of a foreign murderer remained blacked out for decades
By Desmond Okafor ·
Manuel Contreras and the 6-Line Gap in the DINA-US Liaison
Foreign spies operated on American soil using false identities and Nazi resources, a reality kept under Top Secret seal until the Obama administration opened the file.
By Vera Kessler ·
George Shultz and the Cable That Plotted Pinochet's Secret Fall
A January 1987 State Department cable routed through the secret Roger Channel exposed how Washington weighed Armando Fernandez Larios's turn against Manuel Contreras and Augusto Pinochet after two murders in D.C.
By Theo Marchetti ·
Fernandez Larios and the State Department's Price for Silence
An indicted assassin in the Letelier case was offered a plea bargain despite failing polygraphs, while the State Department kept the 'substantial' reward for his silence secret for decades.
By Theo Marchetti ·