Word: townley
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...Washington shortly before the murder. The Chilean government claimed to know nothing about them, but the Washington Star unearthed and published photos of the two. One of them, "Williams," was recognized by a former Marine guard at the U.S. embassy in Santiago, who had known him as Michael Vernon Townley...
Born in Iowa, Townley had gone to Chile at 15 with his parents and stayed on as an auto mechanic. To the American community there, the lanky, goateed expatriate hardly seemed a likely conspirator. "I never thought of him as a political type," said the Marine guard, Edward Cannell. "He was more like a hippie or a Peace Corps volunteer...
According to the FBI, however, Townley was deeply involved in Chilean politics. During the Allende years he worked for the right-wing Patria y Libertad group, and after the 1973 coup headed by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, joined the new regime's military police. Shortly before Letelier's death, Townley and a Chilean army officer, Armando Fernandez, obtained visas under the names of Williams and Romeral and made three trips...
...soon as Townley's identity became known, U.S. District Attorney Eugene Propper flew to Santiago to negotiate his expulsion from Chile. "I am a supporter of the junta above everything else, and I have full confidence in Chilean justice," Townley protested. "What the U.S. is trying to do through me is carry out a political attack on the government of Chile." But while Townley's lawyers were still challenging the U.S. request, Chilean police hustled the American onto a northward-bound plane and told the FBI to take him away. The FBI agents had to depart in such...
...have any doubt that Townley is a small piece of the puzzle," said Letelier's widow Isabel. He is a piece to which many other pieces may yet be fitted...