Orlando Letelier was an exiled former Chilean diplomat. He had served in the socialist government of Salvador Allende, who, in 1973, was overthrown in a US-backed coup. The notorious dictator Augusto Pinochet took over. Letelier was seized, tortured and imprisoned. He was released a year later as a result of international pressure. He was invited to Washington, DC where he became a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, the director of the Transnational Institute, and a professor at American University.
More important, he became the leading voice of the Chilean resistance — and thanks to his lobbying, he prevented several loans from being awarded to the Pinochet regime.
On the morning of September 21,1976, Orlando Letelier was driving to work with his assistant, Ronni Moffitt, and her husband when a bomb went off under his car. It blew off the bottom half of his body and severed both legs; flying shrapnel severed the larynx and carotid artery of Ms.Moffitt who was in the passenger seat. Both died soon after.
At the time, George H.W. Bush was CIA director. And as Peter Dale Scott asserts in the excerpt below, the CIA, a Latin American assassination apparatus, and international drug dealing were all bound up together.
Sound like fiction? Well, where do you suppose fiction writers get their ideas?