Defense
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Orlando Letelier, Chilean ambassador to the US, right, with Chilean Foreign Minister Clodomiro Almevda at a
- On September 21, 1976, former Chilean ambassador and minister Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronni Moffitt were killed by a car bomb in Washington, DC.
- The attack was orchestrated by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a Cold War ally of the US, and it was one of the deadliest foreign terrorist attacks on US soil prior to the September 11 attacks.
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On September 21, 1976, a car bomb detonated in Sheridan Circle, in the heart of Embassy Row in Washington, DC. The car's windows shattered and floor panel blown off. The road in front of the Romanian Embassy was littered with blood and debris.
Orlando Letelier, an ambassador and minister jailed and exiled after Chilean President Salvador Allende was overthrown, and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt, were killed in the blast. Moffitt's husband, Michael, survived.
The bombing, orchestrated by the regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, has faded from memory in the US. It came amid Operation Condor, a larger effort by right-wing governments in Latin America to target opponents at home and abroad, at times with the US government's knowledge.
"The cooperation of Latin American regimes to silence opponents was fueled by zealous beliefs in economic and development models," one of Letelier's sons, Francisco, said at a commemoration this weekend in Washington. "Recently I learned that white supremacists marched in US cities wearing T-shirts that say, 'Pinochet did nothing wrong' ... Operation Condor lives in the present. Everywhere we can we have to share what we know."
In an email interview, Alan McPherson, a history professor at Temple University and author of "Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice," explained why Pinochet's regime targeted Letelier, how it carried out the plot, and what consequences it faced.