Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond

In 1974 DINA began to operate outside Chile. It started in Argentina by planting a car bomb that killed Chile’s former army commander-in-chief General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofia, because Prats had refused to join the coup and was feared by Pinochet as a potential threat. DINA then launched an international campaign of government terrorism, called Operation Condor, by convening a meeting of the heads of the secret police of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and eventually Brazil, in order to cooperate on cross-border manhunts of exiles, leftists, and political figures. Hundreds of Chileans were tracked down and killed in other South American countries, Europe, and even one in the U.S. The U.S. case occurred in 1976, in Washington, DC, only 14 blocks from the White House, when a car bomb killed the former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier (minister of defense under Allende), plus an American colleague. As I mentioned previously, that was the only known case of a foreign terrorist killing an American citizen on American soil—until the World Trade Towers attack of 2001.