Today in Labor History September 21, 1976: Chilean national Orlando Letelier was assassinated in Washington, D.C. by agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), Pinochet’s secret police. An American, Ronni Moffitt, was also killed. The CIA was aware of the plans and knew of Pinochet’s involvement in the assassinations. Letelier had been a member of the government of Salvador Allende and was living in exile in the U.S. Immediately following the CIA-orchestrated coup that murdered Allende and placed Pinochet in power, Letelier was the first high-ranking Allende cabinet minister to be arrested. He spent over a year in various concentration camps, where he was repeatedly tortured. When he made it to the U.S., he worked for the Institute for Policy Studies. He wrote several articles critical of the Chicago Boys, the South American economists trained at the University of Chicago by Milton Friedman, who went on to take on positions in their home countries’ governments, including Chile’s dictatorship, where they promoted free market policies and influenced leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
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