Word: dina
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Michael Vernon Townley, an American working for the Chilean National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), told the FBI last week he would supply information on DINA operations in exchange for a reduced sentence for his role in the 1976 assassination of former Chilean Ambassador to the U.S. Orlando Letelier, and his associate at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Ronni K. Moffitt...
Townley, who had lived in Chile since 1958, is believed by the FBI to be the link between a group of anti-Castro Cubans suspected of placing the bomb under Letelier's car in September 1976, and DINA, formerly headed by General Manuel Contreras Sepulveda...
...Chilean press has more than covered the allegations surrounding the Letelier case. They have even suggested the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was in collusion with DINA--an organization started by the head of the ruling Chilean junta, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Moffitt draws a parallel between the Chilean coverage of this investigation and the American press coverage of Watergate; he says that Pinochet's enemies are using this scandal to force him out of office, in the same way Americans said that Nixon couldn't govern the country amidst the Watergate revelations. He adds that an official in the State Department...
...because he couldn't deny that Townley was issued an official passport. An interesting sidelight Moffitt mentions is a subscandal involving Guillermo Ossorio, the man who issued the passports to Townley and Larios. Ossorio died on October 21, 1977, after last being seen with Contreras, the former head of DINA. In November, the government announced he had died of a heart attack, but when his body was exhumed in February of this year, it was apparent Ossorio had been shot. The Chilean government has now termed his death a suicide...
Moffitt claims the FBI is "terrified that the Cubans are going to kill Townley before he ever gets to the grand jury," because he theoretically knows a lot of behind-the-scenes information on both the anti-Castro Cubans and DINA. "I think that he's the kind of character that could plea bargain for a lesser charge, and talk about the other people," Moffitt claimed prior to the report last week that Townley is indeed prepared to talk in order to reduce his sentence. "Although the problem with that is, if he does, he'll never sleep again...