["I accuse the government of Chile of my death,” wrote DINA
agent Michael Townley in March 1978, as FBI agents pursued him for the
September 1976 car bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni
Karpen Moffitt in Washington, D.C. ]
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THE PINOCHET DICTATORSHIP DECLASSIFIED: CONFESSIONS OF A DINA HIT MAN
 
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National Security Archive
November 22, 2023
National Security Archive
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_ "I accuse the government of Chile of my death,” wrote DINA agent
Michael Townley in March 1978, as FBI agents pursued him for the
September 1976 car bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni
Karpen Moffitt in Washington, D.C. _

,

 

WASHINGTON D.C., NOVEMBER 22, 2023 - “[I]f there has been
sufficient reason to open this envelope, I accuse the government of
Chile of my death,” wrote DINA agent Michael Townley in March 1978,
as FBI agents pursued him for the September 1976 car bomb
assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt in
Washington, D.C. If Townley himself were found murdered, he wrote, his
superior, General Manuel Contreras, the commander of Chile’s
Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), should be considered the
“intellectual author.” Townley also identified a team of DINA
assassins—his own colleagues—as the people likely to have
committed the hypothetical crime of his own killing.

Titled “Confession and Accusation,” the document is one of several
detailed reports from Townley on DINA’s criminality published as a
collection for the first time today by the National Security
Archive—45 years after they were written. Townley drafted these
dramatic admissions as a calculated and desperate effort to deter his
DINA superiors from attempting to permanently silence him rather than
turn him over to U.S. authorities.

In another document, “History of Activities in DINA,” Townley
recorded his four-year career as an American-born DINA assassin—how
he was recruited by top DINA officers in 1974, given a mansion in the
upper-class Lo Curro neighborhood of Santiago, instructed to build a
chemical warfare laboratory in his basement, and appointed to lead
“la Agrupación Avispa” (the Wasp Group)—a special DINA unit
under the command of the Mulchén Brigade “dedicated to
elimination” of Pinochet regime opponents. His confessional history
cites the murders of two Chileans using sarin nerve gas that he
manufactured in his home. As an annex to this document, a third
handwritten report, “Account of Events in the Death of Orlando
Letelier on September 21, 1976,” detailed his covert mission to
assassinate the former Chilean diplomat in Washington, D.C., with
support from the “_Red Condor_”—the Operation Condor network of
Southern Cone security services.

“The explicit orders,” according to Townley, “were: Find
Letelier’s home and workplace and contact the Cuban group [of
violent exiles working with DINA] to eliminate him, or use SARIN gas,
or orchestrate an accident, or in the end by whatever method—but the
government of Chile wanted Letelier dead.”

[Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional]
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_DINA's insignia_

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE CONFESSIONS

As insurance against being killed by his own superiors, Townley gave
these written reports to his wife, Mariana Callejas, for safekeeping.
They remained in her possession after the Pinochet regime turned
Townley over to the FBI on April 8, 1978. Contreras then launched a
media campaign to discredit Townley, claiming he was a CIA agent
planted in DINA’s ranks to embarrass the Pinochet regime—a claim
Townley anticipated and explicitly disavowed in his private
confessions. To assure the authenticity of his revelations could not
be challenged, Townley provided an inked thumbprint on each report. An
FBI forensics laboratory subsequently verified his fingerprints.

[fingerprint]
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_The final page of Townley's handwritten report on the "History of
Activities in DINA" with his signature and thumbprint_

Once in U.S. custody, Townley confessed to a number of the operations
cited in these reports. Significant parts of this history were made
public in the 1980 book _Assassination on Embassy Row,_ by John
Dinges and Saul Landau, the first comprehensive account on the
Letelier-Moffitt assassinations. The book relied on various sources,
including interviews with FBI officers and Townley’s testimony in
the 1979 trial of the murder case against the Cubans.

Twelve years after her husband was taken into U.S. custody, Callejas
provided Townley’s confessions to U.S. authorities, according to a
U.S. Department of Justice affidavit (Document 6) produced as evidence
for a request to Chile for the extradition of Contreras and his
deputy, Pedro Espinoza, for the assassination of Letelier. At some
point in the early 1990s, U.S. Justice Department authorities did a
rudimentary transcription of Townley’s handwritten accounts and
presented typed copies as well as the handwritten originals as
exhibits in an extradition package to the post-Pinochet government of
Patricio Alywin. The Townley documentation was eventually entered into
evidence in the historic prosecutions of Contreras and Espinoza in
Chile, and in 1993 both were found guilty of conspiring to murder
Letelier and Moffitt.

WHAT TOWNLEY CONFESSED TO

Over the years, references to Townley’s confession have appeared in
books and articles as researchers and reporters gained access to
Chile’s judicial files. Parts of the documents have been cited
previously by investigative journalists, including _El
País_ reporter Ernesto Ekaizer in his 2003 biography of General
Augusto Pinochet; John Dinges in _The Condor Year_s (2004); Chilean
Javier Rebolledo in his book, _La Danza de los Cuervos_ (2012); and
Chilean Mónica González in her comprehensive 2013 article in CIPER
Chile, “Las armas químicas de Pinochet”—“Pinochet’s
Chemical Weapons.”

[part of Townley confession]
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Today’s posting, however, marks the first time the Townley
confessions have been reproduced in full and published together.
“Fifty years after the creation of DINA, Townley’s papers
constitute a stark reminder of the dark, sinister and repressive
history of the Pinochet regime,” notes Peter Kornbluh, who directs
the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. As
part of the Archive’s ongoing project on “The Pinochet
Dictatorship Declassified,” U.S. government transcriptions of the
Townley documents were located by Chilean journalist Pascale Bonnefoy
at the Patricio Aylwin presidential archive at Alberto Hurtado
University in Santiago. A partial copy—missing the first two
pages—of Townley's handwritten original report, "Historia de
actuación en DINA" (History of DINA Activities) was obtained by John
Dinges as part of his investigation into Operation Condor. 

Among the significant details about DINA’s crimes contained in
Townley’s confessions:

* Townley describes in his own words a December 1976 Operation Condor
mission in Paris to murder two high-level officials of the Movimiento
de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), a leftist opposition group. The
mission failed, Townley wrote, because of a leak of information by
Argentine agents.
 
* Sarin nerve gas manufactured in the laboratory in Townley’s
home—a DINA project codenamed “ANDREA”—was used to kill a DINA
employee who had been arrested for car theft and who revealed secret
information about DINA to the Chilean police. DINA agents from
Townley’s Mulchén unit removed the employee from police custody,
transported him to La Clínica Londres, a DINA-controlled medical
facility and torture center, and poisoned him with the sarin nerve
gas. He died “almost instantaneously,” Townley reported.
 
* Townley’s sarin gas was also used to murder a real estate
conservator named René León Zenteno at his home on Avenida Holanda
in Providencia, who had refused to illegally transfer titles of
properties to DINA ownership. To prove that León Zenteno had been
poisoned, Townley suggested in his confession that his cadaver be
exhumed and tested for traces of sarin gas.
 
* In addition to manufacturing sarin nerve gas in the DINA
laboratory in his basement, Townley planned to produce even more
dangerous chemical warfare gases known as “soman” and “tabun”
using extremely toxic nerve agents such as Clostridium botulinum,
saxitoxin and tetrodotoxin.
 
* Spanish UN official Carmelo Soria was beaten to death by agents
from DINA's Mulchén Brigade in the front yard of Townley’s Lo
Curro home. The case became a high-profile human rights atrocity
committed by the Pinochet regime.
 
* Townley was allotted $30,000 to carry out missions in Mexico and
Europe, which he used to purchase multiple weapons, explosives and
remote control devices in Miami for use in attacks against exile
leaders gathered in Mexico City, who are named in the documents.
 
* In Europe, Townley met a labor union leader who had infiltrated
Chilean exile circles and who provided information used in an
assassination attempt in Rome. Townley recruited Italian fascists, led
by “Di Steffano” (Stefano delle Chiaie), who shot exile leader
Bernardo Leighton and his wife. Both survived.

TOWNLEY’S LETTER TO “DON MANUEL”

In addition to the confessions, the Archive is also posting a
handwritten letter Townley wrote to “Don Manuel”—General Manuel
Contreras, the former head of DINA. Townley’s wife provided the
letter to U.S. authorities in 1982. As a gesture of
“declassification diplomacy,” in 2015 the Obama administration
provided the letter to the Chilean government of Michelle Bachelet,
along with over 200 other newly declassified documents related to the
Letelier-Moffitt assassination (among them, Townley’s list of the
aliases he used as a DINA operative, also posted today). The letter is
undated, but it appears to have been written in early March 1978, just
after Townley was identified in the U.S. and Chilean press as the lead
suspect in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination.

Using the alias J. Andres Wilson, Townley confronted Contreras with a
series of bitter complaints about the operational mistakes in the
Letelier assassination mission that had led to his public
identification. Chile should never have relied on another country
(Condor member Paraguay) to provide false documents and visas for the
mission, he wrote. “Once the visas were canceled by the United
States the operation should have been totally canceled,” he wrote,
“with the understanding that the CIA had knowledge of the persons
involved.” In an intriguing new detail, Townley indicated his belief
that Contreras had not “let his Excellency [Pinochet] know the truth
about this case.” (Unbeknownst to Townley, as CIA intelligence
gathered around the same time revealed, Pinochet had “personally
ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murders.”) Townley
recommended that the military government issue a decree controlling
the Chilean press to prevent further revelations.

[handwriting]
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After Townley was taken into U.S. custody in April 1978, he pleaded
guilty to the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt. In
return for his cooperation and testimony, the DINA’s most prolific
international terrorist was sentenced to a ten-year prison term, but
was released on probation after serving only five years. Since his
release, Townley has been living somewhere in the United
States—under another alias—as part of the U.S. witness protection
program.

“This collection of documents makes a major contribution to the
historical record,” according to John Dinges, author of _The Condor
Years_, “because it is comprised of primary source records from
Michael Townley, who confesses to his own crimes committed on behalf
of DINA, and because he provides the names of his collaborators.”
Dinges adds that the collection “provides the only extant documents
by Townley about his actions written before he was taken into U.S.
custody.”

The National Security Archive is posting the Townley papers today to
call attention to the creation of DINA, the repressive and sinister
Chilean secret police, 50 years ago this month. In a follow-up 50th
anniversary posting, the Archive will provide a selection of
declassified CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and FBI documents that
record the genesis, operations and atrocities of the DINA from the
U.S. perspective.

READ THE DOCUMENTS

[1]
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Document 1 TOWNLEY PAPERS, “CONFESIÓN Y ACUSACIÓN [CONFESSION AND
ACCUSATION],” MARCH 13, 1978
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Mar 13, 1978
Patricio Aylwin Presidential Archive at Alberto Hurtado University

In his first “confession” Michael Townley directly states that if
this document is being read it is because his DINA superiors have
murdered him rather than turn him over to the FBI for his role in the
car bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in
Washington, D.C. “It is obvious that they intend to use the fact
that I am a foreigner,” he writes, “to attempt to divert the
responsibility of the Chilean government, and also to stop me from
talking about the other things that I have done for DINA following
orders from Gen. Contreras.” Townley then recounts a number of those
missions and atrocities, among them Condor operations in Europe,
murders using nerve gas manufactured in his house, and the beating
deaths of opponents in his front yard. “I swear that all of the
above is the truth,” he writes at the end of the report, which is
signed and includes a thumb print for authentication.

[2-a ]
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Document 2 TOWNLEY PAPERS, “HISTORIA DE ACTUACIÓN EN DINA [HISTORY
OF DINA ACTIVITIES],” MARCH 14, 1978 [U.S. GOVERNMENT TRANSCRIPTION
AND PAGES 3-6 OF ORIGINAL HANDWRITTEN DOCUMENT]
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Mar 14, 1978
Patricio Alywin Presidential Archive at Alberto Hurtado University
[transcribed typed version]; John Dinges collection, [handwritten
pages] 

In this detailed account of his four-year career as DINA’s leading
international assassin, Townley records how he was recruited by top
DINA officers in 1974, given a mansion in the upper-class Lo Curro
neighborhood of Santiago, instructed to build a chemical warfare
laboratory in his basement, and appointed to lead a special DINA unit
called the “Agrupación Avispa”—the Wasp Group—which operated
under DINA’s Mulchén Brigade and was “dedicated to elimination”
of opponents of the Pinochet regime. His confessional history cited
two murders of Chileans using sarin nerve gas that he manufactured in
the chemical laboratory in his home.

[3]
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Document 3 TOWNLEY PAPERS, “RELATO DE SUCESOS EN LA MUERTE DE
ORLANDO LETELIER EL 21 DE SEPTIEMBRE, 1976 [REPORT OF EVENTS IN THE
DEATH OF ORLANDO LETELIER, SEPTEMBER 21, 1976],” MARCH 14, 1976
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Mar 14, 1976
Patricio Aylwin Presidential Archive at Alberto Hurtado University

In his only confession to the Pinochet regime’s infamous act of
international terrorism made prior to being detained by the FBI in
Chile, Townley recounts how he received orders from DINA deputy
director Pedro Espinoza to assassinate the leading opponent of the
dictatorship, Orlando Letelier, in Washington D.C. “The explicit
orders were: Find Letelier’s home and workplace and contact the
Cuban group [of violent exiles working with DINA] to eliminate him, or
use SARIN gas, or orchestrate an accident, or in the end by whatever
method—but the government of Chile wanted Letelier dead.” In an
important admission, Townley records that the mission would draw on
the “_Red Condor_”—the Condor network of Southern Cone secret
police services. His account details how he traveled to Paraguay to
obtain false visas to go to the U.S., enlisted a team of Cuban exile
terrorists to assist him in the mission, and later assassinated
Letelier and his young associate, Ronni Moffitt, who was also in the
car when the bomb was detonated.

[4_0]
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Document 4 TOWNLEY PAPERS, “DECLARACIÓN DE PERSONALIDADES [LIST OF
ALIASES],” MARCH 14, 1976
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Mar 14, 1976
Obama 2015 Special Declassification on Letelier Case

Along with his three confessions, Townley provides the complete list
of U.S. and Chilean aliases he has used in his covert DINA operations.
“During my work in DINA, I have been known by the following
names,” he writes: Juan Andres Wilson; Hans Peterson Silva; Kenneth
William Enyart; and Pablo Andres Simpon Valle.

[5]
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Document 5
TOWNLEY PAPERS, “DEAR DON MANUEL” [LETTER FROM TOWNLEY TO DINA
CHIEF GENERAL MANUEL CONTRERAS], UNDATED [SPANISH ORIGINAL AND ENGLISH
TRANSLATION]
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Mar 1, 1978
Obama 2015 Special Declassification on Letelier Case

Signed with the alias J. Andres Wilson, Townley writes to DINA
Director Contreras shortly after his identity has been published in
the United States and in Chile as a suspect in the Letelier-Moffitt
car bombing. He stresses that he acted out of loyalty to Chile, which
he considers “_mi patria_” (his homeland), despite his U.S.
citizenship. The letter contains a list of operational errors
committed in the Letelier assassination operation. It has no date, but
from context the letter appears to have been written shortly after
Townley’s identity had become known but before Chile handed him over
to the U.S. A copy of this document was given to U.S. authorities by
Townley’s wife in 1982; it was included in a special
declassification of U.S. documentation on the Letelier-Moffitt case
that the Obama administration conducted for the Chilean government in
2015 tied to the 40th anniversary of the assassination.

[6]
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Document 6 DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, “DRAFT;
MARCY/LETELIER/AFFIDAVIT,” AUGUST 23, 1991 [ORIGINAL IN ENGLISH AND
SPANISH TRANSLATION]
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Aug 23, 1991
Clinton administration Chile declassification

This affidavit drafted by U.S. Justice Department attorney Eric B.
Marcy describes the Townley papers and how U.S. authorities obtained
them from his wife between 1982 and 1990. According to Marcy, the
confessions “were prepared by Townley prior to his expulsion from
Chile in order to protect him from the fugitives Manuel Contreras and
Pedro Espinoza and to protect his expulsion from Chile.” The
affidavit also describes the extensive efforts, codenamed
“Operación Mascarada,” that the Pinochet regime employed to cover
up its role in the assassination of Letelier and Moffitt.

_Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising
government secrecy, the National Security Archive
[[link removed]] combines a unique range of
functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on
international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S.
documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according
to the Los Angeles Times), leading non-profit user of the U.S.
Freedom of Information Act, public interest law firm defending and
expanding public access to government information, global advocate of
open government, and indexer and publisher of former secrets._

 

* Chile
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* Orlando Letelier
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* Augusto Pinochet
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