Editing 78-15-A1 (section)

=== Transcript ===
In Washington, on September 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier, who had been Chile's
ambassador to the United States in the leftist Allende government, died in a bomb
explosion in his automobile. A woman co-worker died with him. Letelier, living
in exile in Washington, had been working out of a radical leftist think tank, the
Institute for Policy Studies. More about that later.

First, the question of who killed Letelier has not been answered, though an
American living in Chile, one Michael Townley, has confessed to U.S. authorities
that he placed the bomb under the car. Townley implicated five Cuban anti-Castro
exiles (who have been indicted) and in exchange for a promise in advance of a light
sentence, he has claimed that the parties responsible for Letelier's death are the
former head of Chile's disbanded security agency called DINA and two of his
subordinates. A Washington grand jury has indicted them and asked Chile to
extradite them. There, a court will decide whether or not to go along with the
request. General Contreras, that former head of DINA, is close to General Pincohet,
head of the Chilean government, and, as a report just released by the Council on
Inter-American Security points out, the real objective of Letelier's leftist comrades
is to discredit Chile's government in order to make it fall.

Virginia Prewett, a veteran award-winning journalist who has specialized in
Latin American affairs, is the author of the new report and she raises some important
points that have received very little attention in our news media, especially the
media in Washington on which members of Congress depend for much foreign affairs
information.

She says, "Washington TV stations flashed bulletins on the (Letelier)
assassination, and then groped in unfamiliar subject matter for follow-up news.
Within hours, the IPS (Letelier's radical think-tank), taking advantage of this
news vacuum, staged a daIDnstration at Washington's nearby DuPont Circle, to which
1V newsmen flocked. There, activists in pale-pink paper masks flourished placards
accusing the DINA, Pinochet, U.S. imperialism and the fascist military-industrial
complex."

Miss Prewett says that over the next three days, Letelier's widow and two IPS
directors filled the media with statements blaming Chile's government for the deaths.
They were seen on Washington television 14 times, compared with four brief
appearances by Chile's ambassador to deny the charges.

This set the tone for most media coverage since, but Miss Prewett doubts that
the Pincohet government had anything to gain by engineering the assassination of
Letelier. On the contrary. The very day Letelier was killed, Chile's finance
minister arrived in Washington to confer with then-Secretary of the Treasury
William Sirron on financial aid Chile needed to pursue its economic recovery plan.
In fact, the Chilean embassy had scheduled a press conference to kick-off the plan.
The Letelier murder wiped it out. Virginia Prewett asks, "Why would Pinochet tell
his right-hand man to kill Letelier on the very day when such a murder would torpedo
the (finance minister's) conference, the key to Chile's hoped-for restoration to
the good graces of international finance?" Why, indeed? 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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