Chile Secret Police Chief Was Once a CIA Informant
September 23, 2000 - 0:0
WASHINGTON The head of Chile's secret police who was convicted of plotting a car bomb assassination in Washington was a CIA informant in the mid-1970s and given a one-time payment for information during dictator Augusto Pinochet's rule, a CIA report said on Wednesday.
The CIA had contact with Manuel Contreras, head of Pinochet's feared secret service, between 1974 and 1977, the unclassified report to Congress said.
The Dina was later disbanded.
Contreras is in jail in Chile after being convicted of masterminding the car bomb attack that killed exiled Chilean socialist Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Moffitt in 1976 in Washington.
In Santiago, the daily La Tercera reported that Contreras called the CIA report "absurd." Local television reported Contreras as saying, "the CIA wanted the Dina to be a unit of the CIA.
Because I did not agree with that, our relationship was not warm but simply business-like." The CIA was encouraged to have contact with Contreras, despite U.S. concerns he was involved in human rights abuses, because of his position as chief of the main intelligence organization in Chile, the CIA report said.
(Reuter)
The CIA had contact with Manuel Contreras, head of Pinochet's feared secret service, between 1974 and 1977, the unclassified report to Congress said.
The Dina was later disbanded.
Contreras is in jail in Chile after being convicted of masterminding the car bomb attack that killed exiled Chilean socialist Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Moffitt in 1976 in Washington.
In Santiago, the daily La Tercera reported that Contreras called the CIA report "absurd." Local television reported Contreras as saying, "the CIA wanted the Dina to be a unit of the CIA.
Because I did not agree with that, our relationship was not warm but simply business-like." The CIA was encouraged to have contact with Contreras, despite U.S. concerns he was involved in human rights abuses, because of his position as chief of the main intelligence organization in Chile, the CIA report said.
(Reuter)