Michael Vernon Townley

[Dealey Joe]

Michael Vernon Townley is a US citizen currently living in the United States under terms of the federal witness protection program. A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent and operative of the Chilean secret police, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United States for the 1976 Washington, D.C., assassination of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the United States. As part of his plea bargain, Townley received immunity from further prosecution and was therefore not extradited to Argentina to stand trial for the assassination of Chilean general Carlos Prats and his wife.[1] Townley has also been convicted (1993), in absentia, by an Italian court for carrying out the 1975 Rome murder attempt on Bernardo Leighton.[2] Townley worked in producing chemical weapons for Chilean dictator, General Pinochet's, use against political opponents along with Colonel Gerardo Huber[3] and the DINA biochemist Eugenio Berríos.According to head of DINA Manuel Contreras, Townley returned to Chile at the end of 1973, working for the CIA, with the intent of receiving from the "Highest National Authority, in agreement with what had already been planned by the CIA ... the order to act in direct, personal and exclusive form, without intermediaries, against General Prats in Buenos Aires". Prats was killed with a car bomb in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974. Contreras also said that Townley travelled with a false passport provided by the CIA under the name of Kenneth Enyart.[5] Contreras stated Townley was aided by CIA agents as well as Argentine and Chilean agents and paramilitary groups such as the Triple A and the Grupo Milicias. Contreras stated he thought this occurred because the CIA feared Carlos Prats would try to overthrow Pinochet's dictatorship with the help of the Argentine Army, thus leading to a war between Chile and Argentina which would constitute "a difficult problem for the United States in the Cold War era".1975 Bernardo Leighton assassination attemptMain article: Leighton caseAccording to declassified CIA documents, in 1975, he met with Italian Gladio member Stefano Delle Chiaie, founder of Avanguardia Nazionale, and was also in contact with OAS member Albert Spaggiari.[7] He has been sentenced in absentia in Italy to 15 years of jail, due to his role as an intermediary between the Chilean DINA and Italian neo-fascists[8] According to Townley, both Stefano Delle Chiaie and Albert Spaggiari worked for DINA.[9]Michael Townley also stated that Enrique Arranciaba had traveled to California in the fall of 1977 on banking business for ALFA, alias Stefano Delle Chiaie.[9] Enrique Arranciaba is a former DINA agent who resided in unofficial exile in Buenos Aires after the assassination of Chilean Army Chief of Staff René Schneider on October 25, 1970. Arranciaba was arrested by Argentine intelligence officers shortly after the extradition of Townley to the US and charged with espionage.[10][edit]Convicted for Orlando Letelier's murderMain article: Letelier caseTownley was convicted in the United States for the 1976 murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. and during his trial, he stated that Augusto Pinochet was responsible for planning the murder. Head of DINA Manuel Contreras also stated that Pinochet planned the assassination of both Carlos Prats and Letelier.[6] Townley served 62 months in prison for the murder.[11]Michael Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castrist Cuban exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard, after consultations with the leadership of the anti-Castro Cuban organization CORU, including Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll.[12] According to the Miami Herald, Luis Posada Carriles was also at this meeting, which decided on Letelier's death and also about the Cubana Flight 455 bombing.In 1978, Chile agreed to extradite him to the USA, in order to reduce the tension resulting from Orlando Letelier's murder. He made an agreement with the US government on April 17, 1978, which required that he only provide information relevant to violations of US law or offenses committed in US jurisdiction. Based on that argument, he refused to provide any information concerning DINA during the trial of the three Cuban defendants in Washington DC, early 1979, concerning Letelier's assassination.[13] Michael Townley was then freed under the federal Witness Protection Program. The United States is still waiting for Contreras and Pedro Espinoza Bravo to be extradited.In an interview with authorities on October 20, 1981, Townley declared that Castro opponent Virgilio Paz Romero brought with him a Colt .45 caliber automatic pistol, which was a special competition model, when he visited Chile in Spring 1976. According to Townley, Romero said that the weapon had recently been used in a "hit" by the Cuban Nationalist Movement and that his purpose in Chile was to use it again. Townley then said that Romero had broken the weapon in pieces and scattered the pieces throughout Santiago.[14]In 2005, DINA chief Manuel Contreras also told the Chilean judge responsible for trying the case that Townley had been supported for Letelier's assassination by CIA agents, as well as the Cuban Nationalist Movement and members of the DISIP (for which Luis Posada Carriles worked for). CIA deputy director from 1972 to 1976, General Vernon Walters, informed Pinochet that Letelier represented a threat for the US and was preparing a Chilean government in exile, according to Contreras. Contreras wrote in the document that "the Chilean President disposed in personal, exclusive and direct manner of the action of CIA agent Michael Townley against Mr. Orlando Letelier".Contreras also stated that the CNI handed out monthly payments between 1978 and 1990 to the persons who had worked with Townley in Chile, all members of Patria y Libertad: Mariana Callejas (Townley's wife), Francisco Oyarzún, Gustavo Etchepare and Eugenio Berríos.[6] Assassinated in 1995, Berríos worked with drug traffickers and DEA agents.[15][edit]Ongoing investigationsIn 2003, Argentine Federal Judge Maria Servini de Cubria asked Chile for the extradition of Mariana Callejas, who was accused of Carlos Prats' murder. But, in July 2005, Chilean Judge Nibaldo Segura of the Court of Appeals stated that the case cannot proceed, arguing that Callejas was already being tried in Chile.Questioned in March 2005 by Judge Alejandro Madrid about ex-Chilean Christian Democrat President Eduardo Frei Montalva's death, Michael Townley acknowledged links between Colonia Dignidad, led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer and DINA on one side and the Laboratorio de Guerra Bacteriológica del Ejército (Bacteriological War Army Laboratory) on the other. It is suspected the toxin that killed Frei Montalva in a Santa Maria clinic in 1982 was created there. This new laboratory in Colonia Dignidad would have been, according to him, the continuation of the laboratory the DINA had in Via Naranja de lo Curro where he worked with DINA biochemist Eugenio Berríos. Townley would also have testified on biological experiments made upon prisoners in Colonia Dignidad with the help of the two above mentioned laboratories.[4]In 1992, Townley testified that the Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, assassinated in 1976, had been detained at his home on Via Naranja in the sector of Lo Curro.[16] There he was tortured and, since he did not speak, subjected to sarin gas (which had been re-invented by Berríos).[17] Soria was then detained and tortured again in the Villa Grimaldi and his case was included in Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon's indictment of Pinochet.[18][edit]Townley, Razin and PalmeAccording to an interview with former CIA agents Ibrahim Razin and Richard Brenneke by RAI journalist Ennio Remondino, Michael Townley was in Stockholm in 1986 a week before the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, possibly in connection with the Iran-Contra affair. After the interview the Italian magazine Panorama revealed president Francesco Cossiga sent a letter to prime minister Giulio Andreotti stating:If the government were to think that the information had any basis, I think that it should inform the judiciary authority and the Parliamentary Commission on Massacres and, at the level of the bilateral relations, the relevant authorities in the USA and in Sweden.If, on the other hand, the government, after careful evaluation, were to conclude that the information broadcast by the RAI-TV is false or even recklessly provocatory, I think that the government should inform the judiciary authorities of possible penal law violations and undertake necessary measures to find out the managers and personnel of the national TV center responsible.Razin claimed in the interview to know of several forces behind the assassination and to have intercepted a telegram with the words 'tell our friend the Swedish palm will be felled'. The reason for this action was supposedly Sweden's involvement in the Iran-Iraq war.[19][edit]OthersDuring a 1981 interview contents of which were revealed by 2000 CIA declassified documents, Michael Townley explained that CORU member Novo Sampol had agreed to commit the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the Buenos Aires kidnapping of a president of a Dutch bank by the civilian the Argentine intelligence agency SIDE to obtain a ransom. Townley said Novo Sampol provided $6.000 from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, forwarded to SIDE for expenses in preparing the kidnapping. After returning to the US, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper used to print pamphlets in the name of "Grupo Rojo" (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organisation which was to claim credit for the kidnapping. Townley claimed the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and Córdoba in relation with false flag bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents which had as their aim to accredit the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However the SIDE agents procrastinated too much and the kidnapping was finally canceled.

[Bruce Patrick Brychek]

09.17.2012Dear JFK Murder Solved Forum Members and Readers:01.08.2012 - Mr. Joe Hall, an Excellent Friend of both J and B, JFKMS Moderator, Member, and Contributororiginally Posted this Headline about a very significant person with relationships to the JFK Removal,who is mostly ignored.Michael Vernon Townley was the first, and perhaps the only authoritative voice, to emphatically statethat he knew JFK's Remains were "Buried" in the ocean.Townley was later convicted for the 1976 Daylight Bombing and Murder or Orlando Letelier in broad daylightin Washington, D.C.As always, I recommend that you completely read, research, and study material on your own, then formulate your own Opinions and Thoughts.Any additional analyses, interviews, investigations, readings, research, studies, thoughts, or writings on any aspect of this Subject Matter ?Bear in mind that we are trying to attract and educate a Whole New Generation of JFK Researcher's who may not be as well versed as you.Comments ?Respectfully,BB.

[Bruce Patrick Brychek]

02.11.2017Dear JFK Murder Solved Forum Members and Readers:01.08.2012 - Mr. Joe Hall, an Excellent Moderator, Member, and JFK Contributor and Researcheroriginally Posted this Headline.Michael Vernon Townley was an important, powerful link in many matters relating to the JFKSubject Matter before, during, and after 11.22.1963.Townley was the first person to emphatically state that he knew that JFK's Remains were "Buried"in the ocean.As always, I recommend that you completely read, research, and study material on your own, then formulate your own Opinions and Thoughts.Any additional analyses, interviews, investigations, readings, research, studies, thoughts, or writings on any aspect of this Subject Matter ?Bear in mind that we are trying to attract and educate a Whole New Generation of JFK Researcher's who may not be as well versed as you.Comments ?Respectfully,BB.

[Bruce Patrick Brychek]

02.13.2017:Dear JFK Murder Solved Forum Members and Readers:SPECIAL NOTE: (GEORGE H. W. BUSH, DAVID ATLEE PHILLIPS, OTHERS, AND THE CIA HAVE THEIR FINGERPRINTS ALL OVER TERRORISM AND VIOLENCE ALL OVER THE WORLD, AND WITHIN THE CONTINENTAL U.S., INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO WASHINGTON, D.C. 02.13.2017, BB.)WHEN THE TERRORIST’s WERE “OUR GUYS:”By Robert Parry (A Special Report) February 22, 2008In 1976, when George H.W. Bush was CIA director, the U.S. government tolerated right-wing terrorist cells inside the United States and mostly looked the other way when these killers topped even Palestinian terrorists in spilling blood, including a lethal car bombing in Washington, D.C., according to newly obtained internal government documents.That car bombing on Sept. 21, 1976, on Washington’s Embassy Row, killed Chile’s former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker Ronni Moffitt, while wounding Moffitt’s husband.It soon became clear to the FBI and other federal investigators that the attack likely was a joint operation of DINA, the fearsome Chilean intelligence agency of military dictator Augusto Pinochet, and U.S.-based right-wing Cuban exiles.But Bush’s CIA steered attention away from the real assassins toward leftists who supposedly killed Letelier to create a martyr for their cause. Eventually, the CIA’s cover story collapsed and – during the Carter administration – at least some of the lower-level conspirators were prosecuted, though the full story was never told.Recently obtained internal FBI records and notes of a U.S. prosecutor involved in counter-terrorism cases make clear that the connections among Bush’s CIA, DINA and the Cuban Nationalist Movement (CNM) – which supplied the trigger men for the Letelier bombing – were closer than was understood at the time.DINA provided intelligence training for CNM terrorists who acted like a “sleeper cell” inside the United States; federal prosecutions of right-wing Cuban terrorists were routinely frustrated; and the CIA did all it could to cover for its anticommunist allies who were part of a broader international terror campaign called Operation Condor.Beginning in late 1975, Operation Condor -- named after Chile's national bird -- was a joint operation of right-wing South American military dictatorships, working closely with U.S.-based Cuban and other anticommunist extremists on cross-border assassinations of political dissidents as far away as Europe.This meant that during George H.W. Bush’s year at the CIA’s helm, the United States both harbored domestic terrorist cells and served as a base for international terrorism. Yet no U.S. official was ever held accountable -- and in many cases, just the opposite.George H.W. Bush rose to be Vice President four years later and to be President eight years after that, with his son now sitting in the Oval Office. Former President Bill Clinton has said his wife's first act as President would be to dispatch him and George H.W. Bush on a worldwide fence-mending tour.THE LETELIER PLOT:Regarding the DINA-CNM alliance, Chile’s star assassin Michael Townley told FBI interrogators after his arrest in 1978 that Cuban exiles involved in the Letelier murder had received DINA training, including CNM member Virgilio Paz, who “attended a one-month ‘quickie’ intelligence course sponsored by DINA,” the internal FBI report said.Townley, a fiercely anticommunist American expatriate who had emerged as DINA’s chief overseas assassin, told the FBI that Paz’s training was personally approved by DINA’s director, Col. Manuel Contreras, who – the CIA later acknowledged – was an asset of the U.S. spy agency.Paz lived at Townley’s residence during his three-month stay in Chile and DINA paid for Paz’s frequent calls back home to the United States, Townley said, recalling that Paz left Chile close to his son Brian’s birthday on June 6, 1976.About a month later, Colonel Pedro Espinoza, DINA’s director of operations, summoned Townley to a meeting near St. Georges School in suburban Santiago. Townley recalled driving his DINA-supplied Fiat 125 sedan to the early-morning meeting and taking a thermos of coffee.Espinoza asked Townley if he’d be available for a special operation outside Chile. Townley complained “that he had spent a majority of 1975 in Europe on DINA missions and that he felt he was neglecting his family with constant travel on behalf of DINA,” according to the FBI report.(Only later would investigators learn that Townley had been working with European neo-fascists in hunting down Chilean dissidents in Europe, including Christian Democratic leader Bernard Leighton, who was severely wounded along with his wife in an assassination attempt in Rome on Oct. 6, 1975.)In late July 1976, Townley said he drove a stubby metallic green MG 1300 to a second meeting and spoke with Colonel Espinoza outside the car. Espinoza informed Townley that his mission would be the assassination of Orlando Letelier, who had emerged as an articulate critic of Pinochet’s dictatorship and was putting an unwanted spotlight on Chile’s central role in the spreading human rights calamity across South America.Espinoza said Paraguayan travel documents would be used for the operation and the preferred method of death was an arranged traffic accident while Letelier was alone.“Colonel Espinosa [sic] instructed him [Townley] that Cuban exile terrorists were to be utilized to carry out the actual assassination, and that his and [his DINA accomplice’s] role would be to plan the assassination and then withdraw leaving its execution to the Cubans,” the FBI report said.“Based on his [Townley’s] recent favorable association with Paz and the latter’s recent training under DINA sponsorship, he [Townley] told Colonel Espinosa [sic] that he believed the assassination in the United States might be arranged,” the FBI document said.THE CORU UMBRELLA:By June 1976, CNM also had joined in another campaign of right-wing terrorism, this one organized by Cuban exile Orlando Bosch under an umbrella group called the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), which targeted Fidel Castro’s Cuba.According to the federal prosecutor’s notes, the CORU organizational meeting in the Dominican Republic in June 1976 brought together CNM and four other exile groups, including the “Force Fourteen (F-14, led by a CIA asset),” meaning the U.S. spy agency surely knew about CORU’s plans from the start.In early July 1976, after getting the assignment to murder Letelier, Townley said he contacted Paz and other CNM members to assist him.First, however, Townley and his DINA accomplice, Chilean Army Lieutenant Armando Fernandez Larios, went to Paraguay to arrange visas for a trip to the United States, using the false names, Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral.Their cover story was that they were investigating suspected leftists working for Chile’s state copper company in New York and that – while in the United States – they would meet with Bush’s CIA deputy, Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters.A senior Paraguayan official, Conrado Pappalardo, urged U.S. Ambassador George Landau to cooperate, citing a direct appeal from Pinochet. An alarmed Landau recognized the visa request as highly unusual, since such operations were normally coordinated with the CIA station in the host country and were cleared with CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.Though granting the visas, Landau took the precaution of sending an urgent cable to Walters and photostatic copies of the fake passports to the CIA. Landau said he received an urgent cable back signed by CIA Director Bush, reporting that Walters, who was in the process of retiring, was out of town.When Walters returned a few days later, he cabled Landau that he had “nothing to do with this” mission. Landau immediately canceled the visas, but the U.S. government apparently never delivered a specific warning to DINA to call off the operation.To this day, it remains unclear what – if anything – Bush’s CIA did after learning about the “Paraguayan caper.”Nevertheless, Townley said he and DINA’s Col. Espinoza worried about delays in getting the original visas, which suggested that the Paraguayan approach was compromised, Townley said in his FBI interrogation.To allay any U.S. suspicions, DINA did dispatch two other Chilean operatives using the phony names Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral. After they arrived in the United States on Aug. 22, 1976, they made a point of having the Chilean Embassy notify Walters’s office, but the CIA again demonstrated little curiosity about the mission.BEYOND BELIEF:“It is quite beyond belief that the CIA is so lax in its counterespionage functions that it would simply have ignored a clandestine operation by a foreign intelligence service in Washington, D.C., or elsewhere in the United States,” wrote John Dinges and Saul Landau in their 1980 book, Assassination on Embassy Row.“It is equally implausible that Bush, Walters, Landau and other officials were unaware of the chain of international assassinations that had been attributed to DINA.”As for the Letelier assassination, DINA was soon plotting another way to carry out the killing. In late August 1976, DINA dispatched a preliminary team, consisting of Larios Fernandez and a female agent, to do surveillance on Letelier as he moved around Washington.Then, on Sept. 8, 1976, Townley followed, using an official Chilean passport under the fictitious name of Hans Petersen Silva.After arriving at New York’s Kennedy International Airport, Townley said he contacted Virgilio Paz by telephone and then rented a car to drive to Union City, New Jersey, to meet Paz at a restaurant named “Bottom of the Barrel,” according to the FBI report.The next night, Paz brought members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement to Townley’s motel room, including Guillermo Novo Sampol and Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel, Townley said.“Cuban exiles present at the meeting agreed that the CNM would assist DINA in assassinating Letelier,” the FBI report said. “Shortly thereafter he [Townley] traveled to Washington, D.C. in the automobile of Virgilio Paz in order to conduct additional surveillance on Letelier and to purchase additional materials necessary to make the bomb which would be utilized to kill Letelier.“Basically, the bomb was made up of TNT and a substance which he [Townley] believed to be C-3 plastic. Several months previously he modified a CB Fanon Courier … receiver in Chile at the request of the CNM to be utilized at a future date. …“The crystal on the receiver was set at 31.040 megahurts [sic]. A major modification made by Townley was to remove the speaker from the receiver and put in a transformer. A standard blasting cap was used in the construction of the bomb. The bomb was contained in an aluminum baking tin.”Townley’s remark about DINA’s preparation of the explosive device for the U.S.-based Cuban extremists further indicates that the DINA-CNM relationship represented an active penetration of the United States by an international terrorist cabal operating under the nose of U.S. intelligence.FINAL PLANS:After arriving in Washington and checking into a downtown Holiday Inn, Townley and Paz spent several days conducting surveillance of Letelier. After another CNM operative Suarez Equivel arrived, the assassination team took the next step, heading to Letelier’s house in suburban Maryland.Late that Saturday night, Sept. 18, or early Sunday morning, Sept. 19, Paz drove Townley to Letelier’s neighborhood. Townley “was dropped off at the top of a hill in a cul-de-sac street, immediately adjacent to the Letelier home. [After crawling under Letelier’s Chevelle] he affixed the bomb to the cross-member and recalled he had some trepidation as to whether the bomb would remain attached since he ran out of tape," the FBI report said.“The bomb contained a safety switch which he placed in the ‘on’ position after covering the switch with tape. … While he was placing the bomb he recalled that a police cruiser passed by … however, he was undetected. After placing the bomb he walked down the hill and joined Virgilio Paz in the latter’s automobile and they left the area and returned to their hotel.”On Sunday morning, Townley flew from Washington National Airport to Newark where he met CNM leader Novo Sampol for breakfast. Then they drove to New York City where Novo had a meeting with an “attorney apparently connected with the local New York City government,” the FBI report said.After a family visit in Westchester County, Townley flew to Miami where he saw his parents at their Boca Raton home before meeting with Miami CNM member Felipe Rivero Diaz, who pressed Townley for more assistance from DINA, the FBI report said.By Monday evening, Townley had become “troubled that no news had been received concerning Letelier and he suspected that something had gone wrong with the plan to assassinate him.”Early Tuesday morning, Sept. 21, Townley called Virgilio Paz to find out what had happened. “Paz was extremely angry at the early hour of the call and the use of the telephone from a security standpoint. Paz furnished no information concerning the Letelier bomb,” the report said.“Later on during the morning he [Townley] contacted Ignacio Novo Sampol in Miami and they arranged to have lunch at a Miami restaurant. During the telephone conversation, Novo informed him that something had happened in Washington, D.C. Subsequent news broadcast the death of Letelier as a result of a bomb which detonated in the latter’s automobile.”Next, Townley said he “eliminated the identity of Hans Petersen Silva and returned to Chile utilizing a United States passport under the name of Kenneth Enyart.”SLOWLY INTO FOCUS:Back in Washington, the facts of the assassination slowly came into focus. The explosion that ripped apart Letelier’s Chevelle had shattered a quiet morning in the stately section of the capital where embassies line Massachusetts Avenue, what is called Embassy Row.The blast ripped off Letelier’s legs and punctured a hole in Ronni Moffitt’s jugular vein. She drowned in her own blood at the scene; Letelier died after being taken to George Washington University Hospital. Ronni’s husband, Michael Moffitt, survived.At the time, the attack represented the worst act of international terrorism on U.S. soil and remains the most notorious terror attack sponsored by a foreign government inside the United States.Adding to the potential for scandal, the terrorism had been carried out by a regime that was an ostensible ally of the United States, one that had gained power in 1973 with the help of the Nixon administration and the CIA.The scandal also jeopardized the reputation of CIA Director George H.W. Bush and the political future of his boss, President Gerald Ford, who was in the midst of a heated presidential campaign against Democrat Jimmy Carter.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.” [See Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]A problem, however, was that one of the CIA’s best-placed assets – DINA chief Manuel Contreras – would turn out to be a 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 that DINA already had used in hundreds of “disappearances” of dissidents, 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 had plenty of reasons to disbelieve Contreras.“The CIA had substantive evidence to show that Contreras was lying,” researcher Peter Kornbluh wrote in his 2004 book, 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.As the Ford administration dawdled and Bush’s CIA kept its head down, right-wing Cuban terrorists stepped up their war against leftists in general and Fidel Castro’s communist government in particular.On Oct. 6, 1976, a Cubana airliner, flying the Cuban Olympic fencing team and other passengers to Cuba, exploded after taking off in Barbados, killing everyone onboard. At the time, this sort of mid-air bombing was unprecedented, and the evidence quickly pointed to Cuban extremists linked to CORU and the CIA.But the U.S. government either resisted putting the pieces together or chose to avoid the obvious conclusions.On Oct. 6, the day of the Cubana Airline bombing, a CIA informant in Chile went to the CIA station in Santiago and relayed an account of Pinochet denouncing Letelier, with the dictator calling Letelier’s criticism of the government “unacceptable.”The source “believes that the Chilean Government is directly involved in Letelier’s death and feels that investigation into the incident will so indicate,” the CIA field report said.But Bush’s CIA chose to accept Contreras’s denials and even began leaking information that pointed away from the real killers.Newsweek reported in the magazine’s Oct. 11, 1976, issue that “the Chilean secret police were not involved. …. 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.”Similar stories ran in other newspapers. On Nov. 1, 1976, the day before the presidential election, the Washington Post became another vehicle for trumpeting Pinochet’s innocence.“Operatives of the present Chilean military Junta did not take part in Letelier’s killing,” the Post wrote, citing CIA officials. “CIA Director Bush expressed this view in a conversation late last week with Secretary of State [Henry] Kissinger.”Despite Bush’s success in keeping the truth about the Letelier assassination under wraps, Democrat Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated Ford on Nov. 2, 1976.CRACKING THE CASE:Over the next two years, federal investigators would crack the case, successfully bringing charges against Townley and several Cuban-American conspirators. But prosecutor Eugene Propper told me that the CIA didn’t volunteer the crucial information about the Paraguayan gambit or hand over the photo of the chief assassin, Townley.“Nothing the agency gave us helped us break this case,” Propper said.According to the recently obtained prosecutor’s notes, one of the breaks in the Letelier case came from Rolando Otero, a Cuban exile who was believed to be the youngest member of the CIA-trained Bay of Pigs invasion force in 1961 and who was implicated in a string of 1975-76 bombings in Miami (though ultimately acquitted).Otero had worked with Chile’s DINA, but – according to John Dinges’s 2005 book, The Condor Years – was a double agent for Venezuela’s intelligence service, DISIP, causing his Chilean controllers to jail and torture him before expelling him to the United States.According to the prosecutor’s notes, “Otero became the witness who gave a Washington, D.C. AUSA [assistant U.S. attorney] the key to the car-bombing of Orlando Letelier. … The AUSA cut a deal with Otero that if Otero talked about the Letelier case, he would not have to give any information about [terrorism] cases … in Miami.”The prosecutor’s notes also complained of a wider lack of cooperation from Washington in the many cases of Cuban-exile terrorism in Miami.Regarding the information generated by the Letelier prosecution, the Miami prosecutor asked, “why wasn’t that information ever communicated to Miami, the Cuban exile stronghold, where the most devious and clandestine plots were discussed on a regular basis? The links to Miami were so thick, the exchange of communication so thin.”As for the CIA's initial Letelier cover-up, neither Bush nor Walters was ever pressed to provide a full explanation.When I submitted questions to Bush in 1988 – while he was running for president and I was a Newsweek correspondent preparing a story on his year as CIA director – Bush’s chief of staff Craig Fuller responded, saying “the Vice President generally does not comment on issues related to the time he was at the Central Intelligence Agency and he will have no comment on the specific issues raised in your letter.”Newsweek editors subsequently killed my critical story about Bush’s CIA tenure, even though he was citing that experience as an important element of his résumé for the presidency. Walters also rebuffed interview requests on the Letelier topic prior to his death on Feb. 10, 2002, in West Palm Beach, Florida.NEW COVER-UP:In 1995, after the Pinochet dictatorship had ended, DINA chief Contreras and his assistant Espinoza were convicted in Chile for the Letelier assassination and sentenced to seven and six years, respectively. Contreras began implicating Pinochet in the Letelier case and other acts of terrorism, saying Pinochet knew and approved all of these actions.As for Pinochet, former President Bush didn’t hold a grudge against this foreign leader who allegedly had sponsored a terrorist attack under the nose of the U.S. government at a time when Bush was chief of U.S. intelligence.In 1998, when Pinochet was detained in Great Britain on an extradition request from Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who was pursuing Pinochet for killing Spanish citizens, George H.W. Bush was one of the world leaders who rallied to Pinochet’s defense.Bush called the case against Pinochet “a travesty of justice” and demanded that Pinochet be sent home to Chile “as soon as possible,” which the British courts did.However, Garzon’s initiative prompted the Clinton administration to take a second look at the Letelier case in 2000. An FBI team reviewed new evidence that had become available and recommended the indictment of Pinochet.But the final decision was left to the incoming administration of George W. Bush. In effect, the baton of the Letelier-Moffitt-murder cover-up was passed to a new Bush generation. Besides failing to act on the FBI’s recommendation, the Bush II administration continued to withhold relevant documents from Chilean investigators.The younger George Bush – and his brother Florida Gov. Jeb Bush – also helped out in protecting the old Cuban terrorists who were implicated in the Cubana Airline bombing, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Both have been allowed to live out their golden years in the relative safety and comfort of the United States.As for Pinochet, the aging general never had to face justice for his acts of international terrorism or for his domestic human rights crimes. Pinochet died of a heart attack on Dec. 10, 2006, at the age of 91.BLOOD BOIL:When I tracked down former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jerry Sanford, who was assigned to the Cuban terrorism cases in the mid-1970s, he still sounded frustrated at the lack of support he got from Washington to pursue these killers who inflicted death both inside and outside the United States.“My blood starts to boil when I think of how much we could have done but how badly we were kept in the dark,” said Sanford, now 66, living in northern Florida. “I asked for stuff and never got it.”Sanford recalled that when CIA Director Bush visited Miami at the end of the bloody year 1976, FBI agents “asked him for information from the CIA on where explosives [for the Cuban exiles] were stashed.” The response from Bush, according to Sanford, was “forget about it.”Referring to the umbrella organization CORU, Sanford said, “it was the only terrorist group that ever exported terrorism from the United States.”Ironically, the CIA’s analytical division reached a similar, troubling conclusion in an annual report entitled “International Terrorism in 1976” that was published in July 1977, after CIA Director Bush had left office.“Cuban exile groups operating under the aegis of a new alliance called the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations [CORU] were particularly active during the second half of the year,” the CIA reported. “They were responsible for no less than 17 acts of international terrorism (at least three of which took place in the US).“Statistically, this matches the record compiled by the various Palestinian terrorist groups during the same period. But largely because the Cuban exile operations included the October bombing of a Cubana Airlines passenger aircraft, their consequences were far more bloody.”In other words, Cuban exiles based in the United States – during George H.W. Bush’s year in charge of the CIA – outpaced Palestinian terrorists in terms of a total body count.After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, the U.S. government presented itself as the innocent victim of international terrorism with a moral right not only to pursue the “bad guys” across the globe but to subject some captives to torture, to lock others up indefinitely without trial, and to launch attacks that have killed many thousands of innocents.In the years that have followed, there were few recollections of the days under the current president’s father when the bloodiest terrorists were “our guys.”Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.As always, I recommend that you completely read, research, and study material on your own, then formulate your own Opinions and Thoughts.Any additional analyses, interviews, investigations, readings, research, studies, thoughts, or writings on any aspect of this Subject Matter ?Bear in mind that we are trying to attract and educate a Whole New Generation of JFK Researcher's who may not be as well versed as you.Comments ?Respectfully,BB.

[Bruce Patrick Brychek]

02.13.2017:Dear JFK Murder Solved Forum Members and Readers:SPECIAL NOTE: (MICHAEL VERNON TOWNLEY WORKED FOR, WAS CONTROLLED BY, AND ULTIMATELY PROTECTED BY THE CIA. YOU NEED TO SERIOUSLY ANALYZE, READ, RESEARCH, AND STUDY THE CONNECTIONS TO GEORGE H. W. BUSH. 02.13.2017. BB.)MICHAEL VERNON TOWNLEY MASTERMINDED THE PLOT TO KILL CHILEAN EXILE ORLANDO LBTELIER, THE ONLY DAYLIGHT ASSASSINATION-BOMBING OF A PERSON IN WASHINGTON, D.C. IN THE HISTORY OF THE U.S.By JUDI HASSON | May 20, 1983 WASHINGTON -- Michael V. Townley, who masterminded the plot to kill Chilean exile Orlando Letelier, was granted parole two weeks ago but not released because Argentina is seeking his extradition on other murder charges.The Justice Department announced Thursday it asked a federal court to extradite Townley to Argentina to face charges of murdering Gen. Carlos Prats Gonzalez, former chief of the Chilean Army, and and his wife, in a 1974 car-bombing incident in Buenos Aires.Townley, who orchestrated the car-bombing murder of Letelier on a busy Washington street seven years ago, had served about half of his 40-month to 10-year sentence before his scheduled May 6 parole date.Letelier, ambassador to Washington under Marxist President Salvador Allende, and an American assistant were killed when the bomb exploded under their car as they were driving to work along Washington's Embassy Row.Officials said Townley was detained instead of released two weeks ago because Argentina is seeking his extradition.At a brief hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Albert V. Bryan, Jr., denied Townley's application for bail. A hearing to determine whether Townley can be extradited will be held after Argentina submits its formal extradition documents.Seymour Glanzer, one of Townley's lawyers, said the U.S. government is 'facilitating an extradition action that they know will place him in a dire situation with regard to his own safety and they can't vouch for his safety.'Glanzer said the United States promised to protect Townley in exchange for his cooperation in the Letelier case.The decision to send Townley to Argentina to face other murder charges would be made by the federal court, not by the Justice Department.Argentina's request for Townley coincides with a U.S. request that Argentina allow the extradition of Luis Arce Gomez, a former Bolivian cabinet minister and police chief who is wanted on charges of exporting illegal drugs to the United States. He was arrested Monday in Argentina. Justice Department officials said the two cases are unrelated.Townley, an American-born agent of the Chilean secret police, became the government's star witness in the case against three anti-Castro Cubans accused of participating in the scheme to murder Letelier.He testified he had recruited the Cubans to help carry out the assassination plot against Letelier, an outspoken critic of the Chilean junta that came to power when Allende's Marxist government was overthrown in 1973.In August 1978, Townley pleaded guilty to murdering a foreign official, in exchange for the government's promise to recommend that he be paroled after serving the minimum amount of his jail term.Officials declined to say where Townley is being held. He has served his sentence in the custody of the federal witness protection program.Much of the government's case in the Letelier murder trial rested on Townley's testimony that he had recruited the Cubans to help carry out the assassination plot directed by the Chilean secret police, known as DINA.In 1980, the convictions of three anti-Castro Cubans convicted in connection with the murder were overturned. Two of them were retried a year later and acquitted.With a history of reliable reporting dating back to 1907, today's UPI is a credible source for the most important stories of the day, continually updated - a one-stop site for U.S. and world news, as well as entertainment, trends, science, health and stunning photography. UPI also provides insightful reports on key topics of geopolitical importance, including energy and security.Copyright © 2017 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICYAs always, I recommend that you completely read, research, and study material on your own, then formulate your own Opinions and Thoughts.Any additional analyses, interviews, investigations, readings, research, studies, thoughts, or writings on any aspect of this Subject Matter ?Bear in mind that we are trying to attract and educate a Whole New Generation of JFK Researcher's who may not be as well versed as you.Comments ?Respectfully,BB.

[Bruce Patrick Brychek]

02.13.2017:Dear JFK Murder Solved Forum Members and Readers:MICHAEL VERNON TOWNLEY:SPECIAL NOTE: (MICHAEL VERNON TOWNLEY WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO AUTHORITATIVELY ANNOUNCE THAT JFK's REMAINS WERE DROPPED INTO THE OCEAN.TOWNLEY's RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CIA, DAVID ATLEE PHILLIPS, AND GEORGE H. W. BUSH MERITS MUCH MORE SERIOUS ANALYSIS, READING, RESEARCH, STUDY, AND WRITING THAN HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED THUS FAR. 02.13.2017. BB)Michael Vernon Townley was born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1942. His father, Vernon Townley, was appointed head of the Ford Motor Company in Chile. As a result, the family moved to Santiago. Vernon Townley, who had developed links with the CIA while working in the Philippines, became involved in politics and helped fund the 1958 presidential campaign of conservative candidate, Jorge Alessandri who narrowly managed to defeat Salvador Allende in the election.Michael Townley went to work for Investors Overseas Services, the company owned by Bernard Cornfeld and Robert Vesco. In 1961 Townley married Mariana Callejas. Although active in the Socialist Party of Chile, she was actually working as an informer for Chilean military intelligence. Soon afterwards Townley began working for the CIA. He became associated with a Cuban group called the Chicago Junta. This group included Frank Sturgis, Orlando Bosch, Antonio Veciana and Aldo Vera Serafin. According to Peter Dale Scott, this operational hit team was disbanded on 21st November, 1963, the day before John F. Kennedy was assassinated.In 1967 Townley moved to Miami. According to Donald Freed (Death in Washington: The Murder of Orlando Letelier) Towney was now being sponsored by Frank Sturgis and the Secret Army Organization (SAO). "Townley began an intensive study of electronics and explosives under the tutelage of several former CIA men who were in the process of taking over an electronics operation in the Fort Lauderdale area." One of Townley's tasks was to plant bombs under the cars of people living in Miami.MARIANA CALLEJAS AND MICHAEL VERNON TOWNLEY:In 1969 the CIA arranged for Townley to be sent to Chile under the alias of Kenneth W. Enyart. He was accompanied by Aldo Vera Serafin of the SAO. Townley now came under the control of David Atlee Phillips who had been asked to lead a special task force assigned to prevent the election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile. This campaign was unsuccessful and Allende gained power in 1970. He therefore became the first Marxist to gain power in a free democratic election.The CIA attempted to persuade Chile's Chief of Staff General Rene Schneider, to overthrow Allende. He refused and on 22nd October, 1970, his car was ambushed. Schneider drew a gun to defend himself, and was shot point-blank several times. He was rushed to hospital, but he died three days later. Military courts in Chile found that Schneider's death was caused by two military groups, one led by Roberto Viaux and the other by Camilo Valenzuela. It was claimed that the CIA was providing support for both groups.David Atlee Phillips set Townley the task of organizing two paramilitary action groups Orden y Libertad (Order and Freedom) and Protecion Comunal y Soberania (Common Protection and Sovereignty). Townley also established an arson squad that started several fires in Santiago. Townley also mounted a smear campaign against General Carlos Prats, the head of the Chilean Army. Prats resigned on 21st August, 1973. His replacement as Commander in Chief was General Augusto Pinochet.On 11th September, 1973, a military coup removed Allende's government from power. Salvador Allende died in the fighting in the presidential palace in Santiago. General Augusto Pinochet replaced Allende as president. Soon afterwards Townley was recruited by General Juan Manuel Contreras, the head of DINA, the new secret police.Townley's main task was to deal with those dissents who had fled Chile after General Augusto Pinochet gained power. This included General Carlos Prats who was writing his memoirs in Argentina. Donald Freed argues in Death in Washington: The Murder of Orlando Letelier that: "On September 30, 1974, shortly after the first anniversary of the violent overthrow of the Allende government, Townley and a team of assassins murdered Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires. Their auto was exploded by a bomb."Promoted to the rank of major by General Juan Manuel Contreras Townley made regular visits to the United States in 1975 to meet with Rolando Otero and other members of the White Hand group. In September 1975, Townley's death squad struck again. Former Chilean vice-president Bernardo Leighton and his wife were gunned down in Rome by local fascists working with DINA.On 25th November 1975, leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met, with Juan Manuel Contreras in Santiago de Chile. The main objective was for the CIA to coordinate the actions of the various security services in "eliminating Marxist subversion". Operation Condor was given tacit approval by the United States which feared a Marxist revolution in the region. The targets were officially leftist guerrillas but in fact included all kinds of political opponents. Townley soon became involved in this undercover operation.Donald Freed claims that on 29th June, 1976, Townley had a meeting with Bernardo De Torres, Armando Lopez Estrada, Hector Duran and General Juan Manuel Contreras Sepulveda. The following month Frank Castro, Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch and Guillermo Novo established Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). CORU was partly financed by Guillermo Hernández Cartaya, another Bay of Pigs veteran closely linked to the CIA. He was later charged with money laundering, drugs & arms trafficking and embezzlement. The federal prosecutor told Pete Brewton that he had been approached by a CIA officer who explained that "Cartaya had done a bunch of things that the government was indebted to him for, and he asked me to drop the charges against him."One Miami police veteran told the authors of Assassination on Embassy Row (1980): "The Cubans held the CORU meeting at the request of the CIA. The Cuban groups... were running amok in the mid-1970s, and the United States had lost control of them. So the United States backed the meeting to get them all going in the same direction again, under United States control." It has been pointed out that George H. W. Bush was director of the CIA when this meeting took place.Frank Castro told the Miami Herald why he had helped establish CORU: "I believe that the United States has betrayed freedom fighters around the world. They trained us to fight, brainwashed us how to fight and now they put Cuban exiles in jail for what they had been taught to do in the early years."On 18th September, 1976, Orlando Letelier, who served as foreign minister under Salvador Allende, was traveling to work at the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington when a bomb was ignited under his car. Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, a 25 year old woman who was campaigning for democracy in Chile, both died of their injuries.RONNIE MOFFITT:The director of the CIA, George H. W. Bush, was quickly told that DINA and several of his contract agents were involved in the assassination. However, he leaked a story to members of Operation Mockingbird that attempted to cover-up the role that the CIA and DINA had played in the killings. Jeremiah O'Leary in the Washington Star (8th October, 1976) wrote: "The right-wing Chilean junta had nothing to gain and everything to lose by the assassination of a peaceful and popular socialist leader." Newsweek added: "The CIA has concluded that the Chilean secret police was not involved." (11th October).According to Gaeton Fonzi, the author of The Last Investigation (1993), Virginia Prewett, who was working for the Council for Inter-American Security, a right-wing think tank, attacked the journalists who assumed that Chilean generals were involved in murdering Letelier. "She, too, suggested that Letelier may have been sacrificed by leftists to turn world opinion and U.S. policy against the Pinochet regime."William F. Buckley also took part in this disinformation campaign and on 25th October wrote: "U.S. investigators think it unlikely that Chile would risk with an action of this kind the respect it has won with great difficulty during the past year in many Western countries, which before were hostile to its policies." According to Donald Freed Buckley had been providing disinformation for the General Augusto Pinochet government since October 1974. He also unearthed information that William Buckley's brother, James Buckley, met with Michael Townley and Guillermo Novo in New York City just a week before Orlando Letelier was assassinated.The FBI eventually became convinced that Michael Townley was organized the assassination of Orlando Letelier. In 1978 Chile agreed to extradite him to the United States. Townley confessed he had hired five anti-Castro Cubans exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. Guillermo Novo, Ignacio Novo, Virgilio Paz Romero, Dionisio Suárez, and Alvin Ross Díaz were eventually indicted for the crime.Townley agreed to provide evidence against these men in exchange for a deal that involved him pleading guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to commit murder and being given a ten-year sentence. His wife, Mariana Callejas also agreed to testify, in exchange for not being prosecuted.On the 9th January, 1979, the trial of Guillermo Novo, Ignacio Novo and Alvin Ross Díaz began in Washington. General Augusto Pinochet refused to allow Virgilio Paz Romero and Dionisio Suárez, two DINA officers, to be extradited. All three were found guilty of murder. Guillermo Novo and Alvin Ross were sentenced to life imprisonment. Ignacio Novo received eighty years. Soon after the trial Michael Townley was freed under the Witness Protection Program.By John Simkin (john@spartacus-educational.com) © September 1997 (updated August 2014).▲ Main Article ▲Primary Sources:(1) Donald Freed, Death in Washington: The Murder of Orlando Letelier (1980)By August 1972 Plan September was underway. Townley, Vera Serafin, and their toughs were fighting police as the Pots and Pans marched again. A select Townley arson squad had been hard at work all through the spring. Townley's young freedom fighters were also active in middle- and upper-class residential districts organizing "security contingency" against the constantly predicted Marxist sacking to come.By August 21, Allende had declared a temporary state of emergency in Santiago, primarily because of the street violence and burnings. In Concepcion, the army took control of the city as P y L-staged violence provoked left-wing youth into street responses.On September 2, President Allende charged that there was something called Plan September, a conspiracy to overthrow the government. A radio station in the provincial capital of Los Angeles was identified as a right-wing propaganda front and ordered closed by the government. The station was, in fact, one of Phillips's assets being fed violent disinformation, composed by Callejas and others. The next radio station to be closed for forty eight hours, as violence spread, was Radio Agricultura, another component in the Phillips network, for whom Callejas also worked. Townley led bloody street fighting to protest the closings.On October 10, Plan September went into high gear. A nationwide truckers' strike started on that day and grew into a general protest against the government. It did not end until November 5, three days after Allende had been forced to revise his cabinet.In Langley and Rio, money and plans for the support and, in a number of instances, instigation of these strikes flowed through the fingers of David Phillips and Nathaniel Davis. By way of a dramatic compromise, President Allende shuffled his cabinet to bring a number of military officers into the government. Then he left to try to rally support outside of Chile.(2) Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (1993)Soon a series of stories were planted in the press. Newsweek's "Periscope" column said: "After studying FBI and other field investigations, the CIA has concluded that the Chilean secret police were not involved in the death of Orlando Letelier...Jeremiah O'Leary, a Washington Star reporter long close to David Phillips, wrote: "Probers are not ruling out the theory that Letelier might just as well have been killed by leftist extremists to create a martyr as by rightist conspirators."Reported the Washington Post: "CIA officials say ... they believe that operatives of the present Chilean military junta did not take part in Letelier's killing, according to informed sources. CIA Director Bush expressed this view in a conversation late last week with Secretary of State Kissinger, the sources said. What evidence the CIA has obtained to support his initial conclusion was not disclosed."One of the more interesting interpretations of the case came from a "Special Report" produced by the Council for Inter-American Security, a right-wing think tank, and distributed to the national media. It was written by Virginia Prewett, the journalist who had a special relationship with David Phillips. The piece Prewett wrote about the Letelier bombing indicates why she was one of Phillips's most effective media assets.Prewett's "Special Report" was actually a diatribe against the Washington press for initially assuming that Chilean generals were involved in murdering Letelier. She, too, suggested that Letelier may have been sacrificed by leftists to turn world opinion and U.S. policy against the Pinochet regime. "Letelier was headquartered at and operated under the aegis of the radical leftist Institute for Policy Studies," she noted darkly. "Since the days of Stalin and Trotsky, intramural strife and expenditure of human life for political ends have been commonplace within the left."However, extreme pressure on the U.S. Government from Letelier's associates at the Institute for Policy Studies drove a small group of dedicated individuals in the U.S. Attorney's office and the FBI to successfully pursue the case, despite the obstacles and false markers placed along the path by their own Government. Here's what they eventually were able to prove:The orders to kill Letelier did, indeed, come from the highest levels of the Chilean government, through the head of DINA. Two high-level DINA officers carrying false passports were sent to the U.S. and they, in turn, contacted the anti-Castro Cubans who carried out the assassination. But the designer of the plan itself, the bomb maker and bomb planter, was the DINA agent in charge, Iowa-born electronics expert Michael Townley. Thirty-eight years old, tall and lanky with longish brown hair and a droopy moustache, Townley was the son of an American business executive who wound up as general manager of the Ford Motor plant in Santiago, Chile. Young Michael went back to the States to attend boarding school in Florida. He later worked as a mechanic among the Miami's Cuban exiles and returned to Chile just before Allende's election. He immediately became involved with the most radical opposition which, after Allende's overthrow, led to his connection with DINA.Both Townley and the CIA deny he was an agent, but Townley admitted contacting the Agency before he returned to Chile. Agency records also show he was given "Preliminary Operational Approval," the green light to be used as an asset. The Agency claims that approval was later canceled, but has never satisfactorily explained why.Townley eventually made a deal and testified against his DINA bosses and the five anti-Castro Cubans involved. He received a ten year sentence, served five and is now living under the Government's witness protection plan. General Pinochet refused to let the DINA bosses be extradited and the Chilean military courts refused jurisdiction.Three of the five Cubans tried were convicted but their convictions were overturned for procedural error on appeal. (The other two had fled but were eventually caught; the last one arrested in 1991. Both pleaded guilty and each given a twelve-year sentence.) As part of an informal agreement with Townley, the Government agreed not to pursue his business relationship with his father, J. Vernon Townley, who had become a vice president of a major South Florida bank. (Townley and son had set up a corporation, called PROCIN, which imported chemicals which Michael Townley used to manufacture poison gas. Michael Townley had used the pseudonym of Kenneth Enyard on the corporation papers.)While there are no available records which indicate that David Phillips had any operational association with Michael Townley, it's quite likely. Townley, for instance, ran a clandestine radio station to broadcast anti-Allende propaganda during the period Phillips ran the CIA's anti-Allende operation. What is known is that Phillips and J. Vernon Townley were well acquainted in Chile. Both were active in the urbane Latin American subculture of American diplomats and affluent U.S. corporate executives and they were buddies at the same social club in Santiago.(3) William Turner, Rearview Mirror (2001)In 1968, as the CIA scaled back its Cuba campaign, Orlando Bosch's MIRR morphed into Cuban Power, a terrorist faction that, like the religious lunatic on the train in "On the Twentieth Century", stuck trademark red, white and blue stickers at the scene of the crime. On May 31, a Japanese freighter docked at Tampa and a British merchantman under way off Key West were racked by explosions. The following day, in Miami, a man calling himself Ernesto staged a press conference condemning countries doing business with Cuba and warned that "other ships are going to explode." Although Ernesto wore a sack over his head in the manner of a Mafia defector before a Senate hearing, he was easily identified as Bosch. That summer Cuban Power terrorism spread to Los Angeles, where an Air France office, the Mexico Tourist Department and the British consulate were bombed, and Manhattan, where the diplomatic and tourist agencies of six countries with normal relations with Cuba were hit, and a time bomb was found in the Air France facility in Rockefeller Center. For good measure, two bars frequented by pro-Castro Cubans were bombed, and the audience attending a play, "The Cuban Thing", at the Henry Miller Theater off Times Square were driven crying into the street by tear gas devices. But on September 16, 1968, Bosch was caught red-handed by FBI agents tipped off by an informant inside Cuban Power as he fired on the Polish motor ship Polancia at dock in Miami. Convicted of terrorism, he was incarcerated at the Marion Federal Penitentiary, where he played gin rummy with Rolando Masferrer, locked up for violating the Neutrality Act.When Bosch was released from prison in the fall of 1972 through the intercession of Florida politicians eyeing the exile-bloc vote, Republican Governor Claude Kirk rhapsodized, "When I think of free men seeking a homeland, I must necessarily think of Dr. Bosch." As it turned out, the mad bomber was free to resume his old ways, this time promising "an internationalization of the war." By early 1975 he was in Chile, where General Augusto Pinochet, whose junta had bloodily overthrown Allende, put him up in a government guest house while he conferred with Pinochet's secret police, the brutal DINA (National Intelligence Directorate), which was responsible for hundreds of desaparecidos during the dictatorship. "Bosch had a book on the life of Yasir Arafat with him," reported a Miami newsman who interviewed him there, "and an impressive stack of cash on the table." On September 21, 1976, Allende's ambassador, Orlando Letelier, an effective opponent of the Pinochet regime, was driving along Washington's Embassy Row when a radio-triggered bomb under his car exploded, killing him and a companion.As CIA director, George Bush was in the loop on this one: within a week the Agency knew that DINA and several CIA-connected Cubans were responsible. But it leaked an item to Newsweek reading, "The CIA has concluded that the Chilean secret police was not involved." The lie was put to that when DINA agent Michael V. Townley was arrested and convicted. Townley implicated two journeymen in Bosch's network, Guillermo Novo and Alvin Ross Diaz, who were tried and convicted, then acquitted at a retrial (when arrested in Miami, the pair was in possession of a pound of cocaine, a terrorist currency). And in 1993, after democracy returned to Chile, Manuel Contreras, the head of DINA at the time, was convicted of masterminding the Letelier murder. In a recent clemency petition, Contreras deposed that Pinochet approved and supervised all major DINA operations.(4) John Dinges & Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (1980)Townley added the final touches to the bomb as Paz held the parts in place for him. Suarez read and talked. Townley planned to place the bomb under the driver's seat; he molded the plastique to blow the full explosive force directly upward.At about midnight he felt satisfied with his handiwork. The three left the motel in Paz's Volvo and stopped by the train station; Townley went to the ticket window to find out if there were any trains leaving for the New York area in the early morning hours. There were none."During the ride to Letelier's house," he wrote, "I was informed by Paz and Suarez that they expected me to place the device on the car as they wished to have a DINA agent, namely myself, directly tied to the placing of the device."Townley kept quiet. He carried the bomb under his dark blue sweatshirt and wore corduroy pants. He hadn't planned on getting his pants dirty, but he had weighed the alternatives and decided he would have to tape the bomb himself.Paz drove into the street parallel to Ogden Court. Townley walked from behind two houses into the turn-around area of the cul-de-sac and surveyed the block. People were entering a neighboring house, "so I turned around, returning to the parallel street, and walked up the hill on this parallel street, until I met Paz and Suarez, at which time we drove around to take up some time and then returned to the entrance of Letelier's street, where I was dropped off at the top of the hill."On one side of the Leteliers lived an FBI agent; on the other, a Foreign Service officer. As Townley walked down the hill, some dogs barked, then stopped. Television screens glowed greyly through windows.Letelier's car was parked in the driveway, nose in. Townley walked directly to the car, lay down on his back on the driver's side, pulled up his blue sweatshirt to expose the bomb, put his tools in accessible positions, and slid under the car. The space was small, Townley large. Moving as little as possible, he attached the bomb to the crossbeam with black electrical tape, occasionally flicking on a pencil flashlight to check its position.Footsteps. Townley froze, trying to control his breathing. Not more than two inches separated him from the car chassis. The footsteps faded. He began to run tape from the speedometer cable to the explosive. What had seemed like an ample supply of tape now appeared scanty. He didn't want the bomb to slip or fall off.He heard the sound of an engine: a car was approaching with its radio on. He stopped again, perspiration now pouring down his face and soaking his hands and body. The radio became louder; it was a police band. Townley fought to stay calm. The radio got still louder; now he could see the tires from the corner of his eye. But the car moved on, turned around in the cul-de-sac, and picking up speed, left the block. Townley flicked the flashlight on. The bomb was firmly attached, even though he would have preferred to run more tape around the crossbeam. He began to slide out. But had he taped the slide switch into the "on" position? He might have covered it in the "off" or "safety" position. He slid back under and felt, trying to remember which side was on and which off. He found the nub; it was off. He pushed it until it clicked, then pressed the tape into the groove with his finger to prevent the switch from falling back. But electrical tape is pliant and may not hold the switch, he thought.Lack of time could lead to mistakes. Paz and Suarez had insisted that he place the bomb personally and that he do it that night. Townley felt a chill enter his sweat-laden body as he walked up the hill out of Ogden Court.The Cubans picked him up on the deserted corner and headed slowly onto River Road. Townley told them of his uncertainty about the switch being in the correct position.(5) Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian (22nd December, 2006)Some secrets, it turns out, are too old or too big to keep - even for the Bush administration, which has made a crusade of rooting out leaks and clamping down on information on the inner workings of government.In the new year, the CIA, FBI, state department and more than 80 other government agencies that handle state secrets will declassify hundreds of millions of pages of documents under a new policy that institutes an automatic release of material after 25 years.Within those documents lie the most turbulent episodes of the 20th century: the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Vietnam war, the CIA's unauthorised experiments with LSD and its internal thinking on a raft of investigations into coups and assassinations overseas, and the FBI's hunt for communist sympathisers on US soil.The release, awaited by scholars and journalists, goes against the grain for the president, George Bush, and the vice-president, Dick Cheney, who has argued that the disclosure of information from the White House erodes presidential power.The decision to release documents after 25 years was made in 1995 under President Bill Clinton, although the Bush administration managed to delay it. "I was pleasantly surprised," said Steven Aftergood, who runs a project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. "I could have easily imagined this administration saying: 'Oh, no we can't possibly adopt an automatic declassification policy. That will only assist the terrorists'."Until now, material could remain secret indefinitely unless researchers lodged a specific request under freedom of information regulations. But declassification does not guarantee documents will be made public. Government agencies can withhold them on privacy grounds, to protect an intelligence source, or to avoid compromising an ongoing investigation.The FBI has been notoriously stringent about exercising that prerogative, refusing to release documents on the assassination in Washington of the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier by agents of the Pinochet regime on the grounds that investigators were still pursuing leads.(6) Robert Parry, Consortium News (22nd February, 2008)In 1976, when George H.W. Bush was CIA director, the U.S. government tolerated right-wing terrorist cells inside the United States and mostly looked the other way when these killers topped even Palestinian terrorists in spilling blood, including a lethal car bombing in Washington, D.C., according to newly obtained internal government documents.That car bombing on Sept. 21, 1976, on Washington’s Embassy Row, killed Chile’s former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker Ronni Moffitt, while wounding Moffitt’s husband.It soon became clear to the FBI and other federal investigators that the attack likely was a joint operation of DINA, the fearsome Chilean intelligence agency of military dictator Augusto Pinochet, and U.S.-based right-wing Cuban exiles.But Bush’s CIA steered attention away from the real assassins toward leftists who supposedly killed Letelier to create a martyr for their cause. Eventually, the CIA’s cover story collapsed and – during the Carter administration – at least some of the lower-level conspirators were prosecuted, though the full story was never told.Recently obtained internal FBI records and notes of a U.S. prosecutor involved in counter-terrorism cases make clear that the connections among Bush’s CIA, DINA and the Cuban Nationalist Movement (CNM) – which supplied the trigger men for the Letelier bombing – were closer than was understood at the time.DINA provided intelligence training for CNM terrorists who acted like a “sleeper cell” inside the United States; federal prosecutions of right-wing Cuban terrorists were routinely frustrated; and the CIA did all it could to cover for its anticommunist allies who were part of a broader international terror campaign called Operation Condor.Beginning in late 1975, Operation Condor -- named after Chile's national bird -- was a joint operation of right-wing South American military dictatorships, working closely with U.S.-based Cuban and other anticommunist extremists on cross-border assassinations of political dissidents as far away as Europe.This meant that during George H.W. Bush’s year at the CIA’s helm, the United States both harbored domestic terrorist cells and served as a base for international terrorism. Yet no U.S. official was ever held accountable -- and in many cases, just the opposite....Regarding the DINA-CNM alliance, Chile’s star assassin Michael Townley told FBI interrogators after his arrest in 1978 that Cuban exiles involved in the Letelier murder had received DINA training, including CNM member Virgilio Paz, who “attended a one-month ‘quickie’ intelligence course sponsored by DINA,” the internal FBI report said.Townley, a fiercely anticommunist American expatriate who had emerged as DINA’s chief overseas assassin, told the FBI that Paz’s training was personally approved by DINA’s director, Col. Manuel Contreras, who – the CIA later acknowledged – was an asset of the U.S. spy agency.Paz lived at Townley’s residence during his three-month stay in Chile and DINA paid for Paz’s frequent calls back home to the United States, Townley said, recalling that Paz left Chile close to his son Brian’s birthday on June 6, 1976.About a month later, Colonel Pedro Espinoza, DINA’s director of operations, summoned Townley to a meeting near St. Georges School in suburban Santiago. Townley recalled driving his DINA-supplied Fiat 125 sedan to the early-morning meeting and taking a thermos of coffee.Espinoza asked Townley if he’d be available for a special operation outside Chile. Townley complained “that he had spent a majority of 1975 in Europe on DINA missions and that he felt he was neglecting his family with constant travel on behalf of DINA,” according to the FBI report...When I tracked down former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jerry Sanford, who was assigned to the Cuban terrorism cases in the mid-1970s, he still sounded frustrated at the lack of support he got from Washington to pursue these killers who inflicted death both inside and outside the United States.“My blood starts to boil when I think of how much we could have done but how badly we were kept in the dark,” said Sanford, now 66, living in northern Florida. “I asked for stuff and never got it.”Sanford recalled that when CIA Director Bush visited Miami at the end of the bloody year 1976, FBI agents “asked him for information from the CIA on where explosives [for the Cuban exiles] were stashed.” The response from Bush, according to Sanford, was “forget about it.”Referring to the umbrella organization CORU, Sanford said, “it was the only terrorist group that ever exported terrorism from the United States.”Ironically, the CIA’s analytical division reached a similar, troubling conclusion in an annual report entitled “International Terrorism in 1976” that was published in July 1977, after CIA Director Bush had left office.“Cuban exile groups operating under the aegis of a new alliance called the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations [CORU] were particularly active during the second half of the year,” the CIA reported. “They were responsible for no less than 17 acts of international terrorism (at least three of which took place in the US).“Statistically, this matches the record compiled by the various Palestinian terrorist groups during the same period. But largely because the Cuban exile operations included the October bombing of a Cubana Airlines passenger aircraft, their consequences were far more bloody.”In other words, Cuban exiles based in the United States – during George H.W. Bush’s year in charge of the CIA – outpaced Palestinian terrorists in terms of a total body count. Written by John Simkin:As always, I recommend that you completely read, research, and study material on your own, then formulate your own Opinions and Thoughts.Any additional analyses, interviews, investigations, readings, research, studies, thoughts, or writings on any aspect of this Subject Matter ?Bear in mind that we are trying to attract and educate a Whole New Generation of JFK Researcher's who may not be as well versed as you.Comments ?Respectfully,BB.

[kenmurray]

The Man Who Would Not Disappear:http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news ... -disappear