78-15-A2
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Letelier II
TranscriptLast time we discussed the assassination of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean diplomat in Washington, and the efforts of leftist groups to get our government to pin it on the current government in Chile. Today, let's look at Letelier's own group, the Institute for Policy Studies, and just what Letelier was up to in Washington. According to Virginia Prewett, the award-winning journalist whose report "The Mysterious Letelier Affair: Another Rush to Judgment?" has just been released by the Council for Inter-American Security, the IPS's Transitional Institute, which Letelier headed, had awarded a grant to Tariq Ali, an advocate of urban terrorism. And, among the IPS's leadership are Peter Weiss, chairman, a leading figure in the National Lawyers Guild which consistently follows a Marxist line, and IPS Fellow Roberta Salper, identified as a member of "the U.S. Zone of the Marxist Puerto Rican Socialist Party". That party, in turn, has extensive connections with Castro 's international intelligence network. Letelier's connections with Marxists and far-left causes became clearer when columnists Jack Anderson and Evans and Novak revealed that among the contents of Letelier's briefcase on the day he was killed were documents showing that he was getting $1,000 a month from Allende's daughter in Havana "for his work". According to Miss Prewett, what emerged from "The Briefcase Papers" was a picture of a man who was systematically taking advantage of the human rights impulses of liberal members of Congress in order to get an amendment added to the US. Foreign Assistance Act of 1976 imposing mandatory penalties on nations which allegedly violated human rights. This did become law. The Prewett report says that "the briefcase documents identify Letelier with an intercontinental network of clandestine political activity, within an apparatus co-directed by Havana Communists and aided by the governments of East Germany and the Soviet Union." She adds, "The 'Briefcase Papers' further revealed that Havana was manufacturing propaganda on (so-called) 'hunan right violations' in Chile for Letelier to use at the UN and elsewhere." According to the Prewitt report, Letelier took pains to conceal his links to international Marxist and terrorist groups. In fact, having successfully lobbied for legislation that would have the effect of cutting off military aid to non-leftist governments in Latin America, Letelier would have became a severe liability to the Marxist cause if he were exposed as an unregistered foreign agent. In fact, his exposure might have caused a sharp backlash. All this was about the time Tongsun Park's lobbying activities for South Korea were surfacing. Miss Prewett raises the question of whether Letelier might have been murdered by his own masters. Alive he could be compromised; dead he could become a martyr. And the left didn't lose a minute in making him one. I don't know the answer, but it is a question worth asking, especially since the nation's most influential media have been almost totally lacking in curiosity about the matter. When then-Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General George Brown testified on the Panama Canal treaty in 1976, he pointed out that the first objective of Soviet policy in the Western Hemisphere is to destroy U.S. military relations with Latin America. Since the passage of the 1976 foreign aid bill and the emergence of a hard-line human rights campaign, it is military aid and our allegiances with Latin American nations which have suffered most. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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