ORLANDO LETLIER

[Dealey Joe]

Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar (April 13, 1932 – September 21, 1976) was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende. As a refugee from the military dictatorship of US-backed General Augusto Pinochet, Letelier accepted several academic positions in Washington, D.C., where he was assassinated by Pinochet's DINA agents in 1976.Letelier was born in Temuco, Chile, the youngest child of Orlando Letelier Ruiz and Inés del Solar. He studied at the Instituto Nacional and, at the age of sixteen, he was accepted as a cadet of the Chilean Military Academy, where he completed his secondary studies. Later he abandoned the military life to attend the University of Chile, where he graduated as a lawyer in 1954. In 1955, he joined the recently formed Copper Office (Departamento del Cobre, now CODELCO), where he worked until 1959 as a research analyst in the copper industry. In that year, Orlando Letelier was fired for supporting Salvador Allende's unsuccessful second presidential campaign. The Letelier family had to leave for Venezuela, where he became a copper consultant for the Finance Ministry. From there, Letelier made his way to then recently created Inter-American Development Bank, where he eventually became senior economist and director of the loan division. He was also one of the UN consultants responsible for the establishment of the Asian Development Bank.His first political participations were as a university student, when he became a student representative at the University of Chile's Student Union. In 1959 Letelier joined the Chilean Socialist Party (PS). In 1971 President Allende appointed him ambassador to the United States because he had some unique leadership qualities rare among Latin American socialists of the time: chiefly among them a sophisticated grasp of the complexities of US politics and an in-depth knowledge of the copper industry. His specific mission was to try to defend the Chilean nationalization of copper against the privatization favored by the US government.During 1973, Letelier was recalled to Chile and served successively as minister of Foreign Affairs, Interior and Defense. In the coup d'état of September 11, 1973, he was the first high-ranking member of the Allende administration seized and arrested, when he arrived at his office at the Ministry of Defense. He was held for twelve months in different concentration camps suffering severe torture: first at the Tacna Regiment, then at the Military Academy; later he was sent for eight months to a political prison on Dawson Island and from there he was transferred to the basement of the Air Force War Academy, and finally to the concentration camp of Ritoque, until international diplomatic pressure, especially from Diego Arria, then Governor of the city of Caracas in Venezuela, resulted in the sudden release of Letelier on the condition that he immediately leave Chile.After his release in September 1974, he and his family resettled in Caracas, but then Letelier decided to head for Washington D.C., at the proposal of American writer Saul Landau. In 1975 Letelier moved to Washington where he became senior fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS is an independent research institute based in Washington, D.C., devoted to international policy studies), where Landau worked at the time. He also became director of the Transnational Institute (TNI is an independent research institute based in Amsterdam), and taught at the School of International Service of the American University, in Washington, D.C. He plunged into writing, speaking and lobbying the US Congress and European governments against Augusto Pinochet's regime, and soon became the leading voice of the Chilean resistance, preventing several loans (especially from Europe) from being awarded to the military government. On September 10, 1976, he was deprived of his Chilean nationality by decree.Letelier was killed by a car bomb explosion on September 21, 1976, in Sheridan Circle, along with his US assistant, Ronni Moffitt.[1][dead link][2] Her husband Michael Moffitt was injured but survived. Several people were prosecuted and convicted for the murder. Among them were Michael Townley, a DINA U.S. expatriate who had once worked for the CIA; General Manuel Contreras, former head of the DINA; and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, also formerly of DINA. Townley was convicted in the United States in 1978 and served 62 months in prison for the murder;[3] he is now free as a participant in the United States Federal Witness Protection Program. Contreras and Espinoza were convicted in Chile in 1993. General Augusto Pinochet, who died on December 10, 2006, was never brought to trial for the murders, although Townley implicated him as being responsible for them.