Letelier-Moffitt Memorial

On the morning of September 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier stopped to pick up two colleagues, Michael and Ronni Moffitt, while on his way to work at the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-wing think tank in Washington, D.C. The Moffitts, who had been married for just under four months, were experiencing car trouble and needed a lift to work. After collecting the couple, Letelier drove along Massachusetts Avenue NW, eventually turning into Sheridan Circle. Unbeknownst to Letelier and the Moffitts, they were being followed. Moments after Letelier’s vehicle entered the roundabout, a remote-controlled bomb taped to its undercarriage, directly below the driver’s seat, detonated. 

What police saw when they arrived on the scene truly shocked them. The area was covered in blood, broken glass, and smoldering debris. A severed human foot lay in the middle of the road. Letelier, his legs blown off below the knee, lay on the pavement barely conscious and bleeding profusely. Within minutes, he was dead. Ronni Moffitt was nearby, bleeding from the neck. A piece of shrapnel from the explosion had lacerated her larynx and one of her carotid arteries. She died at a local hospital about thirty minutes later. Miraculously, Michael Moffitt, who was sitting in the backseat of the car, escaped with only superficial injuries.

At the time of his death, Letelier was the most prominent Chilean exile living in the United States, and the target of a South American dictator. From 1971 to 1973, he served as his country’s ambassador to the United States. After a September 1973 military coup deposed Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and brought to power General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean armed forces arrested Letelier and other officials from Allende’s government. After spending nearly a year in prison, the former ambassador was released and eventually fled to the United States. In the two years preceding his death, Letelier worked at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., which often directed intense criticism at not only the Pinochet regime, but also the United States for its Cold War policy of supporting right-wing, military dictatorships in South America. 

While Letelier was working for the Institute for Policy Studies, six U.S.-backed, right-wing military dictatorships in South America launched Operation Condor. Through cooperation and intelligence sharing, these countries hoped to track down and capture or kill left-wing political dissidents at home and abroad. From 1975 to the early 1980s, the secret police of these regimes imprisoned, raped, tortured, and killed tens of thousands of people. One of the countries involved in Operation Condor was Pinochet’s Chile, and one of the military dictator’s most prized targets was Letelier. 

In the years following the bombing in Sheridan Circle, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uncovered the individuals responsible for the deaths of Letelier and Moffitt. The organizer was Michael Townley, an American who was working for Pinochet’s secret police. Townley recruited a few anticommunist Cuban exiles living in the United States to plant the bomb and detonate it using a remote control. At the time of the investigation, rumors swirled regarding Pinochet’s role in the bombing. It was not until 2015, when newly declassified intelligence documents concerning the assassination were released, that the American public came to know that not only was Chile’s military dictator directly involved in the bombing, but also that the U.S. government knew about it as early as 1978. Since Chile was an important ally to the United States in the latter stages of the Cold War, however, the U.S. government did not punish Pinochet.

Shortly after the bombing, the Institute for Policy Studies created the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award. Still given annually, the award acknowledges the efforts of individuals and groups, both in the United States and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, who are dedicated to the struggle for human rights. By the 1980s, however, a strong desire emerged among those within the organization, as well as among the family and friends of Letelier and Moffitt, to create a memorial at the site of the tragedy in Sheridan Circle. On the morning of September 20, 1981, the day before the fifth anniversary of the bombing, 250 people gathered for the memorial’s unveiling. Designed by D.C. urban planner Ned Echeverria, the memorial consists of a three-foot-tall granite base topped with a circular bronze plaque. The plaque features a bas-relief of the faces of Letelier and Moffitt. Their names, along with the dates of their births and deaths, are etched into the surrounding granite. Each year, after the presentation of the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, those in attendance at the ceremony pay a visit to the memorial. 

"44th Annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards." Institute for Policy Studies. Web. 9 February 2021 <https://ips-dc.org/about/letelier-moffitt-human-rights-awards/>.

DeYoung, Karen, David Montgomery, Missy Ryan, Ishaan Tharoor, and Jia Lynn Yang. "'This was not an accident. This was a bomb.'" The Washington Post, September 20, 2016 <https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/09/20/this-was-not-an-accident-this-was-a-bomb/>.

Little, Becky. "How Pinochet Got Away With a Brazen Murder in D.C. in 1976." History. A&E Television Networks. 16 October 2018. Web. 9 February 2021 <https://www.history.com/news/pinochet-terror-attack-dc>.

McCarthy, Colman. "Memorial Honors Letelier, Moffitt at Sheridan Circle Where They Died." The Washington Post, September 21, 1981 <https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1981/09/21/memorial-honors-letelier-moffitt-at-sheridan-circle-where-they-died/5f5d85f6-1cf0-4f1a-b17a-7850c119a564/>.

McKiernan, Zachary. "Human Rights Lessons: The Letelier-Moffitt Monument and an international Terrorist Attack." History@Work. National Council on Public History. 24 May 2011. Web. 9 February 2021 <https://ncph.org/history-at-work/human-rights-lessons-the-letelier-moffitt-monument-and-an-international-terrorist-attack/>.