Santiago de Chile, October 10 (RHC)-- New declassified documents show former Chilean General Augusto Pinochet directly ordered the 1976 assassination of a Chilean diplomat on U.S. soil. 

Orlando Letelier had served as a foreign minister under President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup in 1973.  Letelier fled to the United States after being tortured and incarcerated under Pinochet’s dictatorship. 

He was killed in a car bomb in Washington, D.C. in September 1976, only a mile from the White House.  The declassified documents also show Pinochet was so concerned about covering up his role in ordering Letelier’s assassination that he also planned to assassinate his head of intelligence agency, just to keep him quiet.