That was thirty years ago. His executive assistant, Ronnie Moffatt, was killed with him.

Although an American employee of the Chilean secret service was convicted of this crime, that conviction was later overturned.

So, as far as I know, no one did it.

Now, evidence is beginning to emerge which may implicate Henry Kissinger, and even George Bush Senior, who was then head of the CIA.

No wonder they don't travel much.

It's not an open-and-shut case, but the details are worth reading:

I think one of the things this story does is back up an assertion that I and many others have had about the workings of the US government. Regardless of who is president, there is a continuing secret shadow government that continues to operate behind the scenes doing the bidding of the very powerful.

The Bush family is, without a doubt, the Godfathers of this organisation and when they occupty the top spots, things can proceed with impunity. When Carter was president, as the story intimated, investigations could be run into incidents like the Letelier assassination, but the CIA could get away with stiff arming the investigators.

Now, I don't think you'd see any Democrat really buck this shadow government for it has become so powerful and deadly that to do so would bring them ruin.

I think U.S. feds tried to link Letelier to Cuba at the time as part of a smear campaign. The CIA knew that DINA plumbers were in the U.S. for a special hit. I think the CIA knew everything about the plot to murder Letelier and chose to do nothing about it.

~~"There isn't a mouse stirs in any corner of Chile that I don't know about." -- General and El Presidente Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, and may the SOB's blood scream for all eternity

[ 22 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Now, I don't think you'd see any Democrat really buck this shadow government for it has become so powerful and deadly that to do so would bring them ruin.

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There have been serious investigations and denunciations of this shadow government, by Democrats.

The reason we know about a lot of this at all is that Democrat Frank Church ran an uncompromising congressional investigation into what went on, and published the results.

Many CIA people lost their jobs or retired as a result. The legislation governing the CIA changed, and their activities did change somewhat, at least for a period of years.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
There are lots of decent people in the US who don't want their country to be responsible for murder and torture. Given the realities of power, it is unlikely that anyone other than a Democrat will be in a sufficiently powerful position to do something about it, at least in our lifetimes.

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Lots of good lefties in the States for sure, Jeff. But they are not dealing very well with what is a very powerful right-wing lobby. How can they?. There is way too much money concentrated in the hands of a few. Way too much. And in the 1980's, Diane Frances said that Canada actually had more billionaires per capita than the Yanks at the time. We've got our own little oligarchy going on right here in Canada. And the situation is incompatible with democracy.

Meanwhile, former Cuban sugar mill owners and Bacardi rum execs who helped draft Helms-Burton are hoping they will regain lost glory in Cuba someday. They might want to think about paying Havana some back taxes and unpaid benefits owing Cuban woker's and families at some point or face arrest upon arrival.