An Assassination on US Soil: the Long Blowback of US Support for Pinochet’s Chile
September 9, 2026
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
118 Elliot
118 Elliot St Brattleboro VT 05301
A talk with Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Project Director and Inequality.org Co-editor, Institute for Policy Studies
| This September marks the 50th anniversary of an assassination carried out in Washington, DC, by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The target of the 1976 car bombing was Orlando Letelier, who had served as Chile’s ambassador to the United States and as a cabinet minister in the government of democratically elected President Salvador Allende before the 1973 coup. His colleague at the Institute for Policy Studies, 25-year-old American Ronni Karpen Moffitt, also died in the attack. Until 9/11, it was the most infamous international terrorist attack in the nation’s capital.
Over the past half century, Letelier and Moffitt’s former colleagues, along with family members and human rights lawyers and activists, have turned this tragic murder into a force for justice. Perhaps most notable: the 1998 arrest of Pinochet in London, a landmark case that struck fear in the hearts of dictators the world over. The pursuit of accountability continues to this day. In June of this year, a Chilean judge convicted three former secret police agents for Moffitt’s murder. This event will draw lessons from this rich history for U.S. foreign policy and human rights advocacy today. |
