New documents link Kissinger, Bush senior to Letelier assassination [View All]

[Hannah Bell]

Documents released last week by the National Security Archive... provide new details on the role of top US officials in facilitating the assassination of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier. These documents add to the overwhelming case for the prosecution of then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger, then-CIA director George H. W. Bush and other top officials for their role in these and other murders...

For the past three decades, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Kissinger and Bush have maintained that the US government had no responsibility for the assassination of Letelier. The initial story — backed by selective leaks to friendly publications like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Newsweek — was that Letelier had probably been killed by “leftist extremists,” or else by “rogue” Chilean operatives acting independently of the Pinochet regime. In the 1990s, however, with the end of the Chilean junta, some evidence of its past crimes began to emerge...

The documents released on April 10 by the National Security Archive relate to Kissinger’s personal role in the last stages of the preparation of the assassination of Letelier...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/lete-a20.shtml