VivirLatino

If the McCain camp want to talk about who is hanging out with terrorists, they should check their own old agendas. When John McCain was a Congressman in 1985 he had a very special meeting with then dictator and mass murderer in Chile, Augusto Pinochet. For those in Chile at the time, university students and educators were especially the targets of detentions, torture, and killings.

At the time of the meeting, in the late afternoon of December 30, the U.S. Justice Department was seeking the extradition of two close Pinochet associates – the ex-chief of the DINA (National Intelligence Directorate) and DINA officials Pedro Espinoza and Armando Fernández Larios -for an act of terrorism in Washington DC. A trial in Washington determined that they should be charged for the 1976 assassination of former ambassador to the U.S. and former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and of U.S. citizen Ronny Moffit, who accompanied Letelier. The car bombing on Sheridan Circle in the U.S. capital was widely described at the time as the most egregious act of international terrorism perpetrated on U.S. soil by a foreign power.

At the time of McCain’s meeting with Pinochet, Chile’s democratic opposition was desperately seeking support from democratic leaders around the world in an attempt to pressure Pinochet to allow a return to democracy and force a peaceful end to the dictatorship, already in its 12th year. Other U.S. congressional leaders who visited Chile made public statements against the dictatorship and in support of a return to democracy, at times becoming the target of violent pro-Pinochet demonstrations.

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