Assassination on Embassy Row

This book details the strange story behind the murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in 1976. Dinges, a journalist with extensive experience in Chile, and Landau, director of the institute where Moffitt worked, are exceptionally qualified for telling this story. Orlando Letelier was the Chilean ambassador to the USA under the Allende administration, and was at the time of the murders, serving as the director of the Transnational Institute, where Moffitt worked. Dinges and Landau present the background behind the murders from many points of view, going back to Allende's rise to power, and CIA connections to groups opposing him. They tell the life story of Orlando Letelier, how he came to serve as ambassador, how he was tortured under the Pinochet regime, and how he was eventually assassinated by a Chilean government terrorist team led by Michael Townley, an American who had adopted Chile as his home. The text is exceptionally well written and well documented, although it does get a little bogged down in legalistic detail towards the end.Fifteen years ago, I met a Chilean named Juan in the streets of Stockholm. At the time, I had never heard of Allende or of his overthrow. Juan told me that I should learn about his story because the CIA were behind the assassination of this democratically elected leader. At the time, I found Juan's tale a little hard to believe- -would the CIA really dare to murder a foreign leader in his own country, and why would they care about the politics of a small South American country anyway? On the other hand, I could see that Juan's life had been ruined by the coup. Identified as an Allende supporter, he had been jailed and tortured. He had escaped to Sweden, but his life was in tatters. He was a middle school Spanish literature teacher by training, but the only work he could find in Sweden was as a school janitor. Juan spent his spare time studying Swedish and English. Meanwhile, all his family and friends were 10,000 miles away. After meeting Juan, I have always wanted to learn more about the CIA connection to Allende's overthrow. This book provides a lot of documentation concerning that period in Chilean history. It answers some of the questions that I had, but it has also given me many more to think about.

I'm saddened to learn that this book is out of print. It tells a compelling story of how a courageous man was killed in the United States, the political problems of his native country reaching out to him here. The U.S. is often a temporary home to dissidents from oppressive regimes, but it is not always the safe haven it seems. Full of intrigue and fact, this book is a good read.