Letelier’s Son Looks Back 40 Years After Father’s Assassination

FEATURING FRANCISCO LETELIER – This week marks the 40th anniversary of a shocking act of foreign state-sponsored terrorism on US soil. On September 21, 1976, Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his US colleague Ronni Moffitt were assassinated in Washington DC when a remote controlled bomb exploded in their car.

Letelier was a member of former Chilean president Salvador Allende’s administration. It was just 3 years prior to his killing that a US-backed coup ousted Allende on September 11, 1973, installing dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Declassified documents in the years’ since Letelier’s killing found that Pinochet directly ordered the assassination. However, the dictator, who died in 2006, was never held accountable for that crime.

Francisco Letelier, Chilean-born artist, muralist, writer, and activist currently based in Los Angeles. He was 17 when his father, Orlando Letelier was assassinated in Washington DC. Francisco joins us from DC where he is commemorating the events of 40 years ago with a series of murals.