The Director of Policy Planning of the US State Department, David McKean, delivered a folder and multiple disks with information, which will be posted on the State Department website.
Today, the Director of Policy Planning of the State Department, David McKean, delivered to Ambassador of Chile to the United States, Juan Gabriel Valdés, about 250 confidential documents that show the research conducted by this country after the assassination of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and American citizen, Ronnie Moffitt, in a terrorist attack in the diplomatic heart of Washington, D.C., on September 21, 1976.
The initiative responds to a formal request made by Ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdés in 2014 to the State Department in order to gain access to an investigation by the US Attorney General, in 2000, to establish the role played by Augusto Pinochet in the planning of the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffitt.
After receiving the files, Ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdés highlighted "the willingness shown by the Obama administration in seeking these documents, distributed in different agencies, archives and ministries. These 250 documents, which were never declassified before, help to better understand what was known by the U.S. about the assassination of Orlando Letelier."
Ambassador Valdés added that during the delivery of the documents, the representative of the White House told him that the U.S. Government is very pleased to have contributed to the memory of Chile, one year after the embassy made a formal request. Valdés also said that McKean informed him that documents still remain that must be declassified, which will be delivered as soon as they arrive to the State Department.
Background
Between July 1999 and November 2000, the government of President Bill Clinton ordered the declassification of nearly 23,000 documents related to Chile. However, it became known that they were kept in reserve and were part of the evidence gathered by Attorney General, Janet Reno, in her research.
In March 2000, a team of FBI detectives along with a group of lawyers led by the Director of the Transnational Crime Division of the Department of Justice, John Beasley, traveled to Santiago where, with support of the Investigations Police of Chile (PDI), they interviewed witnesses and potentially involved persons in the events, to gather evidence.
In August of that same year, the team in charge of the investigation concluded that there was evidence involving Augusto Pinochet in the death of Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffitt.