As Monuments to White Supremacists Fall, a New Statue Celebrating Chilean Human Rights Hero Arises
Remarks at the unveiling of the Orlando Letelier statue
February 26, 2018 | Sarah Anderson
(From left) Orlando Letelier’s son Francisco, Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archives, IPS
Director John Cavanagh, IPS project director Sarah Anderson, and journalist John Dinges.
More than 100 years ago, when groups began installing statues across this country of pro-slavery Civil War leaders, they were hoping to embolden white supremacists for years to come.
Thirty-six years ago, when Peter Kornbluh and others helped install the monument to Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt on the other side of Sheridan Circle, they were hoping to embolden human rights heroes for years to come.
Today we celebrate another monument designed to embolden human rights heroes. And we can finally say we not only have a tribute to Orlando and Ronni on the soil of a country (the United States) that supported the Chilean dictatorship that ordered their killing. We now also have one on property that belonged to that dictatorship.
And we are marking this milestone at a time when the monuments to white supremacists are finally starting to come down.
More:
http://www.ips-dc.org/monuments-white-supremacists-fall-new-statue-celebrating-chilean-human-rights-hero-arises/
Ronni Moffit
Mural painted by the son of Orlando Letelier showing his father and his father's aide, Ronni Moffit
= new reply since forum marked as read
Info. from older DU thread:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141228516#post11
Many people have known about the Cuban "exiles" involved in this evil filth for years.
A couple of them were released from prison by George W. Bush soon after he occupied the White House. Very sad, and flagrant act by him.
Here's a quick google grab chosen immediately after seeing your post:
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Orlando Letelier
from the book
The CIAs Greatest Hits
by Mark Zepezauer
"Are you the wife of Orlando Letelier?" asked the anonymous caller. "Yes," she answered. "No," the caller said, ~ you are his widow."
A week later, on September 21, 1976, the exiled Chilean diplomat and prominent critic of the CIA-backed Pinochet regime was torn to pieces by a car bomb on the streets of Washington DC. Also killed was Letelier's American aide, Ronni Moffit. Her husband, blown clear of the car, immediately began shouting that Chilean fascists were responsible for the atrocity.
He was right, but those fascists had powerful allies in Washington. An FBI informant knew of the plot to assassinate Letelier before the fact but the FBI did nothing to protect him. After the bombing, CIA Director George Bush told the FBI that there'd been no Chilean involvement whatever. The CIA was certain of this, he said, because it had many reliable sources inside the Chilean secret police, DINA.
Actually, the CIA had known that a DINA hit squad was in the US and headed for Washington. After the bombing, the agency purged its files of photos of the assassins. The CIA and DINA then began planting stories in the press suggesting that Letelier had been killed by leftists seeking to make a martyr of him.
The FBI figured out the identities of Letelier's assassins within weeks, but didn't charge them until the CIA's cover-up unraveled several years later. The unraveling began a month after the killing, when a Cuban airliner was bombed, killing 73 passengers. That bombing was done by a violent group of CIA-linked Cuban exiles who were connected with the Bay of Pigs and the JFK assassination and who went on to do similar things in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Investigators into the airliner bombing discovered that both it and the Letelier/Moffit killings were planned at the same meeting, which was organized by a man with longtime CIA connections and was attended by other FBI and CIA men.
Apologists argue that no one can prove that Letelier's convicted assassins, "former" CIA agent Michael Townley and two Cuban exiles, were acting under agency orders. But if they weren't, why did the CIA immediately begin covering up for them?
More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/Letelier_CIAHits.html
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The Bush dynasty and the Cuban criminals
New book reveals links of two presidents and the governor of Florida with exiled hardliners
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Sunday 1 December 2002 20.54 EST
. . .
Other Cuban exiles involved in terrorist acts, Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero, who carried out the 1976 assassination of the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington, have also been released by the current Bush administration.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/dec/02/usa.books
