When the Terrorists Were ‘Our Guys’ By Robert Parry

In 1976, when George H.W. Bush was CIA director, the U.S. government tolerated right-wing terrorist cells inside the United States and mostly looked the other way when these killers topped even Palestinian terrorists in spilling blood, including a lethal car bombing in Washington, D.C., according to newly obtained internal government documents.

That car bombing on Sept. 21, 1976, on Washington’s Embassy Row, killed Chile’s former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker Ronni Moffitt, while wounding Moffitt’s husband.

It soon became clear to the FBI and other federal investigators that the attack likely was a joint operation of DINA, the fearsome Chilean intelligence agency of military dictator Augusto Pinochet, and U.S.-based right-wing Cuban exiles.

But Bush’s CIA steered attention away from the real assassins toward leftists who supposedly killed Letelier to create a martyr for their cause. Eventually, the CIA’s cover story collapsed and – during the Carter administration – at least some of the lower-level conspirators were prosecuted, though the full story was never told.

Recently obtained internal FBI records and notes of a U.S. prosecutor involved in counter-terrorism cases make clear that the connections among Bush’s CIA, DINA and the Cuban Nationalist Movement (CNM) – which supplied the trigger men for the Letelier bombing – were closer than was understood at the time.

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http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/when-the-terrorists-were-our-guys-by-robert-parry/

<snip>However, Garzon’s initiative prompted the Clinton administration to take a second look at the Letelier case in 2000. An FBI team reviewed new evidence that had become available and recommended the indictment of Pinochet.

But the final decision was left to the incoming administration of George W. Bush. In effect, the baton of the Letelier-Moffitt-murder cover-up was passed to a new Bush generation. Besides failing to act on the FBI’s recommendation, the Bush II administration continued to withhold relevant documents from Chilean investigators.

The younger George Bush – and his brother Florida Gov. Jeb Bush – also helped out in protecting the old Cuban terrorists who were implicated in the Cubana Airline bombing, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Both have been allowed to live out their golden years in the relative safety and comfort of the United States.

As for Pinochet, the aging general never had to face justice for his acts of international terrorism or for his domestic human rights crimes. Pinochet died of a heart attack on Dec. 10, 2006, at the age of 91.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022108a.html

(the above link is to the actual Robert Parry article)