Michael Townley
Encyclopedia
Michael Vernon Townley is a US citizen currently living in the United States
under terms of the federal witness protection program
. A Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) agent and operative of the Chile
an secret police
, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United States for the 1976 Washington, D.C.
, assassination of Orlando Letelier
, former Chilean ambassador
to the United States. As part of his plea bargain, Townley received immunity from further prosecution and was therefore not extradited to Argentina
to stand trial for the assassination of Chilean general
Carlos Prats
and his wife. Townley has also been convicted (1993), in absentia
, by an Italian
court for carrying out the 1975 Rome
murder attempt on Bernardo Leighton
. Townley worked in producing chemical weapons for Chilean dictator, General Pinochet's, use against political opponents along with Colonel Gerardo Huber
and the DINA biochemist Eugenio Berríos
.
, Townley returned to Chile at the end of 1973, working for the CIA, with the intent of receiving from the "Highest National Authority, in agreement with what had already been planned by the CIA ... the order to act in direct, personal and exclusive form, without intermediaries, against General Prats in Buenos Aires". Prats was killed with a car bomb in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974. Contreras also said that Townley travelled with a false passport provided by the CIA under the name of Kenneth Enyart. Contreras stated Townley was aided by CIA agents as well as Argentine and Chilean agents and paramilitary groups such as the Triple A and the Grupo Milicias. Contreras stated he thought this occurred because the CIA feared Carlos Prats would try to overthrow Pinochet's dictatorship with the help of the Argentine Army
, thus leading to a war between Chile and Argentina which would constitute "a difficult problem for the United States in the Cold War
era".
member Stefano Delle Chiaie
, founder of Avanguardia Nazionale, and was also in contact with OAS
member Albert Spaggiari
. He has been sentenced in absentia
in Italy to 15 years of jail, due to his role as an intermediary between the Chilean DINA and Italian neo-fascists According to Townley, both Stefano Delle Chiaie and Albert Spaggiari worked for DINA.
Michael Townley also stated that Enrique Arranciaba had traveled to California in the fall of 1977 on banking business for ALFA, alias Stefano Delle Chiaie
. Enrique Arranciaba is a former DINA agent who resided in unofficial exile in Buenos Aires after the assassination of Chilean Army Chief of Staff René Schneider
on October 25, 1970. Arranciaba was arrested by Argentine intelligence officers shortly after the extradition of Townley to the US and charged with espionage.
in Washington, D.C.
and during his trial, he stated that Augusto Pinochet was responsible for planning the murder. Head of DINA Manuel Contreras also stated that Pinochet planned the assassination of both Carlos Prats and Letelier. Townley served 62 months in prison for the murder.
Michael Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castrist
Cuban exile
s to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard
, after consultations with the leadership of the anti-Castro Cuban organization CORU, including Luis Posada Carriles
and Orlando Bosch
, those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero
, Alvin Ross Díaz and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll. According to the Miami Herald, Luis Posada Carriles
was also at this meeting, which decided on Letelier's death and also about the Cubana Flight 455 bombing
.
In 1978, Chile agreed to extradite
him to the USA, in order to reduce the tension resulting from Orlando Letelier's murder. He made an agreement with the US government on April 17, 1978, which required that he only provide information relevant to violations of US law or offenses committed in US jurisdiction. Based on that argument, he refused to provide any information concerning DINA during the trial of the three Cuban defendant
s in Washington DC, early 1979, concerning Letelier's assassination. Michael Townley was then freed under the federal Witness Protection Program. The United States is still waiting for Contreras and Pedro Espinoza Bravo to be extradited.
In an interview with authorities on October 20, 1981, Townley declared that Castro opponent Virgilio Paz Romero
brought with him a Colt .45 caliber automatic pistol, which was a special competition model, when he visited Chile in Spring 1976. According to Townley, Romero said that the weapon had recently been used in a "hit" by the Cuban Nationalist Movement and that his purpose in Chile was to use it again. Townley then said that Romero had broken the weapon in pieces and scattered the pieces throughout Santiago.
In 2005, DINA chief Manuel Contreras also told the Chilean judge responsible for trying the case that Townley had been supported for Letelier's assassination by CIA agents, as well as the Cuban Nationalist Movement and members of the DISIP (for which Luis Posada Carriles worked for). CIA deputy director from 1972 to 1976, General Vernon Walters, informed Pinochet that Letelier represented a threat for the US and was preparing a Chilean government in exile, according to Contreras. Contreras wrote in the document that "the Chilean President disposed in personal, exclusive and direct manner of the action of CIA agent Michael Townley against Mr. Orlando Letelier".
Contreras also stated that the CNI handed out monthly payments between 1978 and 1990 to the persons who had worked with Townley in Chile, all members of Patria y Libertad: Mariana Callejas (Townley's wife), Francisco Oyarzún, Gustavo Etchepare and Eugenio Berríos. Assassinated in 1995, Berríos worked with drug traffickers and DEA
agents.
Questioned in March 2005 by Judge Alejandro Madrid about ex-Chilean Christian Democrat President Eduardo Frei Montalva
's death, Michael Townley acknowledged links between Colonia Dignidad
, led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer
and DINA on one side and the Laboratorio de Guerra Bacteriológica del Ejército (Bacteriological War Army Laboratory) on the other. It is suspected the toxin that killed Frei Montalva in a Santa Maria clinic in 1982 was created there. This new laboratory in Colonia Dignidad would have been, according to him, the continuation of the laboratory the DINA had in Via Naranja de lo Curro where he worked with DINA biochemist Eugenio Berríos
. Townley would also have testified on biological experiments made upon prisoners in Colonia Dignidad with the help of the two above mentioned laboratories.
In 1992, Townley testified that the Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria
, assassinated in 1976, had been detained at his home on Via Naranja in the sector of Lo Curro. There he was tortured and, since he did not speak, subjected to sarin gas (which had been re-invented by Berríos). Soria was then detained and tortured again in the Villa Grimaldi
and his case was included in Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon
's indictment of Pinochet
.
journalist Ennio Remondino, Michael Townley was in Stockholm
in 1986 a week before the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme
, possibly in connection with the Iran-Contra affair
. After the interview the Italian magazine Panorama
revealed president Francesco Cossiga
sent a letter to prime minister Giulio Andreotti
stating:
Razin claimed in the interview to know of several forces behind the assassination and to have intercepted a telegram with the words 'tell our friend the Swedish palm will be felled'. The reason for this action was supposedly Sweden's involvement in the Iran-Iraq war.
to obtain a ransom. Townley said Novo Sampol provided $6.000 from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, forwarded to SIDE for expenses in preparing the kidnapping. After returning to the US, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper used to print pamphlets in the name of "Grupo Rojo" (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organisation which was to claim credit for the kidnapping. Townley claimed the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza
and Córdoba
in relation with false flag
bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents which had as their aim to accredit the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However the SIDE agents procrastinated too much and the kidnapping was finally canceled.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
under terms of the federal witness protection program
United States Federal Witness Protection Program
The United States Federal Witness Protection Program is a witness protection program administered by the United States Department of Justice and operated by the United States Marshals Service that is designed to protect threatened witnesses before, during, and after a trial.A few states, including...
. A Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) agent and operative of the Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United States for the 1976 Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, assassination of Orlando Letelier
Orlando Letelier
Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...
, former Chilean ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
to the United States. As part of his plea bargain, Townley received immunity from further prosecution and was therefore not extradited to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
to stand trial for the assassination of Chilean general
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
Carlos Prats
Carlos Prats
General Carlos Prats González was a Chilean Army officer, a political figure, minister and Vice President of Chile during President Salvador Allende's government, and General Augusto Pinochet's predecessor as commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army...
and his wife. Townley has also been convicted (1993), in absentia
In absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...
, by an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
court for carrying out the 1975 Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
murder attempt on Bernardo Leighton
Bernardo Leighton
Bernardo Leighton Guzmán was a Chilean Christian Democrat who was targeted by Operation Condor.In 1937, President Arturo Alessandri Palma appointed him as Employment minister....
. Townley worked in producing chemical weapons for Chilean dictator, General Pinochet's, use against political opponents along with Colonel Gerardo Huber
Gerardo Huber
Gerardo Huber Olivares was a Chilean Army Colonel and agent of the DINA, Chile's intelligence agency. He was in charge of purchasing weapons abroad for the army...
and the DINA biochemist Eugenio Berríos
Eugenio Berríos
Eugenio Berríos Sagredo was a Chilean biochemist who worked for the DINA intelligence agency.Berríos was charged with carrying outProyecto Andrea in which Pinochet ordered the production of sarin gas, a chemical weapon used by the DINA. Sarin gas leaves no trace and victims' deaths closely mimic...
.
1974 assassination of Carlos Prats
According to head of DINA Manuel ContrerasManuel Contreras
Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda is a Chilean military officer and the former head of DINA, Chile's secret police during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. As head of DINA he was the most powerful and feared man in the country, after Pinochet...
, Townley returned to Chile at the end of 1973, working for the CIA, with the intent of receiving from the "Highest National Authority, in agreement with what had already been planned by the CIA ... the order to act in direct, personal and exclusive form, without intermediaries, against General Prats in Buenos Aires". Prats was killed with a car bomb in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974. Contreras also said that Townley travelled with a false passport provided by the CIA under the name of Kenneth Enyart. Contreras stated Townley was aided by CIA agents as well as Argentine and Chilean agents and paramilitary groups such as the Triple A and the Grupo Milicias. Contreras stated he thought this occurred because the CIA feared Carlos Prats would try to overthrow Pinochet's dictatorship with the help of the Argentine Army
Argentine Army
The Argentine Army is the land armed force branch of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic and the senior military service of the country.- History :...
, thus leading to a war between Chile and Argentina which would constitute "a difficult problem for the United States in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
era".
1975 Bernardo Leighton assassination attempt
According to declassified CIA documents, in 1975, he met with Italian GladioOperation Gladio
Operation Gladio is the codename for a clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy after World War II. Its purpose was to continue anti-communist actions in the event of a shift to a Communist party led government...
member Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...
, founder of Avanguardia Nazionale, and was also in contact with OAS
Organisation armée secrète
The Organisation de l'armée secrète was a short-lived, French far-right nationalist militant and underground organization during the Algerian War . The OAS used armed struggle in an attempt to prevent Algeria's independence...
member Albert Spaggiari
Albert Spaggiari
Albert Spaggiari , nicknamed Bert, was a French criminal chiefly known as the organizer of a break-in into a Société Générale bank in Nice, France in 1976.-Earlier life:...
. He has been sentenced in absentia
In absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...
in Italy to 15 years of jail, due to his role as an intermediary between the Chilean DINA and Italian neo-fascists According to Townley, both Stefano Delle Chiaie and Albert Spaggiari worked for DINA.
Michael Townley also stated that Enrique Arranciaba had traveled to California in the fall of 1977 on banking business for ALFA, alias Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...
. Enrique Arranciaba is a former DINA agent who resided in unofficial exile in Buenos Aires after the assassination of Chilean Army Chief of Staff René Schneider
René Schneider
General René Schneider Chereau was the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army at the time of the 1970 Chilean presidential election, when he was assassinated during a botched kidnapping attempt. His murder virtually assured Salvador Allende's eventual overthrow and death in a coup three years later...
on October 25, 1970. Arranciaba was arrested by Argentine intelligence officers shortly after the extradition of Townley to the US and charged with espionage.
Convicted for Orlando Letelier's murder
Townley was convicted in the United States for the 1976 murder of Orlando LetelierOrlando Letelier
Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and during his trial, he stated that Augusto Pinochet was responsible for planning the murder. Head of DINA Manuel Contreras also stated that Pinochet planned the assassination of both Carlos Prats and Letelier. Townley served 62 months in prison for the murder.
Michael Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castrist
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
Cuban exile
Cuban exile
The term "Cuban exile" refers to the many Cubans who have sought alternative political or economic conditions outside the island, dating back to the Ten Years' War and the struggle for Cuban independence during the 19th century...
s to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard
Jean-Guy Allard
Jean-Guy Allard is a Canadian journalist who as editor and reporter worked for Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec from 1971 to 2000. He retired to Cuba, and now who writes for Granma...
, after consultations with the leadership of the anti-Castro Cuban organization CORU, including Luis Posada Carriles
Luis Posada Carriles
Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist and former Central Intelligence Agency agent....
and Orlando Bosch
Orlando Bosch
Orlando Bosch Ávila was a Cuban exile militant, former Central Intelligence Agency-backed operative, and head of Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, which the FBI has described as "an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization". Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called...
, those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero
Virgilio Paz Romero
Virgilio Paz Romero is an anti-Castro Cuban exile, involved in various anti-communist acts. He has been accused of taking part in Operation Condor, carrying out Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's murder in Washington, D.C...
, Alvin Ross Díaz and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll. According to the Miami Herald, Luis Posada Carriles
Luis Posada Carriles
Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist and former Central Intelligence Agency agent....
was also at this meeting, which decided on Letelier's death and also about the Cubana Flight 455 bombing
Cubana Flight 455
Cubana Flight 455 was a Cuban flight from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down by a terrorist attack on October 6, 1976. All 78 people on board the Douglas DC-8 aircraft were killed in what was then the deadliest terrorist airline attack in the Western hemisphere...
.
In 1978, Chile agreed to extradite
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
him to the USA, in order to reduce the tension resulting from Orlando Letelier's murder. He made an agreement with the US government on April 17, 1978, which required that he only provide information relevant to violations of US law or offenses committed in US jurisdiction. Based on that argument, he refused to provide any information concerning DINA during the trial of the three Cuban defendant
Defendant
A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute...
s in Washington DC, early 1979, concerning Letelier's assassination. Michael Townley was then freed under the federal Witness Protection Program. The United States is still waiting for Contreras and Pedro Espinoza Bravo to be extradited.
In an interview with authorities on October 20, 1981, Townley declared that Castro opponent Virgilio Paz Romero
Virgilio Paz Romero
Virgilio Paz Romero is an anti-Castro Cuban exile, involved in various anti-communist acts. He has been accused of taking part in Operation Condor, carrying out Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's murder in Washington, D.C...
brought with him a Colt .45 caliber automatic pistol, which was a special competition model, when he visited Chile in Spring 1976. According to Townley, Romero said that the weapon had recently been used in a "hit" by the Cuban Nationalist Movement and that his purpose in Chile was to use it again. Townley then said that Romero had broken the weapon in pieces and scattered the pieces throughout Santiago.
In 2005, DINA chief Manuel Contreras also told the Chilean judge responsible for trying the case that Townley had been supported for Letelier's assassination by CIA agents, as well as the Cuban Nationalist Movement and members of the DISIP (for which Luis Posada Carriles worked for). CIA deputy director from 1972 to 1976, General Vernon Walters, informed Pinochet that Letelier represented a threat for the US and was preparing a Chilean government in exile, according to Contreras. Contreras wrote in the document that "the Chilean President disposed in personal, exclusive and direct manner of the action of CIA agent Michael Townley against Mr. Orlando Letelier".
Contreras also stated that the CNI handed out monthly payments between 1978 and 1990 to the persons who had worked with Townley in Chile, all members of Patria y Libertad: Mariana Callejas (Townley's wife), Francisco Oyarzún, Gustavo Etchepare and Eugenio Berríos. Assassinated in 1995, Berríos worked with drug traffickers and DEA
Drug Enforcement Administration
The Drug Enforcement Administration is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the United States...
agents.
Ongoing investigations
In 2003, Argentine Federal Judge Maria Servini de Cubria asked Chile for the extradition of Mariana Callejas, who was accused of Carlos Prats' murder. But, in July 2005, Chilean Judge Nibaldo Segura of the Court of Appeals stated that the case cannot proceed, arguing that Callejas was already being tried in Chile.Questioned in March 2005 by Judge Alejandro Madrid about ex-Chilean Christian Democrat President Eduardo Frei Montalva
Eduardo Frei Montalva
Eduardo Frei Montalva was a Chilean political leader of world stature. In his long political career, he was Minister of Public Works, president of his Christian Democratic Party, senator, President of the Senate, and president of Chile from 1964 to 1970...
's death, Michael Townley acknowledged links between Colonia Dignidad
Colonia Dignidad
Villa Baviera , formerly known as Colonia Dignidad is a hamlet in Parral Commune, Linares Province, Maule Region, Chile. Located in an isolated area of central Chile, it lies 35 km southeast of the city of Parral, on the north bank of the Perquilauquén River. It was founded by a group of German...
, led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer
Paul Schäfer
Paul Schäfer Schneider was the founder and former leader of a sect and agricultural commune of German immigrants called Colonia Dignidad —later renamed Villa Baviera—located in the south of Chile, about 340 km south of Santiago...
and DINA on one side and the Laboratorio de Guerra Bacteriológica del Ejército (Bacteriological War Army Laboratory) on the other. It is suspected the toxin that killed Frei Montalva in a Santa Maria clinic in 1982 was created there. This new laboratory in Colonia Dignidad would have been, according to him, the continuation of the laboratory the DINA had in Via Naranja de lo Curro where he worked with DINA biochemist Eugenio Berríos
Eugenio Berríos
Eugenio Berríos Sagredo was a Chilean biochemist who worked for the DINA intelligence agency.Berríos was charged with carrying outProyecto Andrea in which Pinochet ordered the production of sarin gas, a chemical weapon used by the DINA. Sarin gas leaves no trace and victims' deaths closely mimic...
. Townley would also have testified on biological experiments made upon prisoners in Colonia Dignidad with the help of the two above mentioned laboratories.
In 1992, Townley testified that the Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria
Carmelo Soria
Carmelo Soria was a Spanish-Chilean United Nations diplomat. A member of the CEPAL in the 1970s, he was assassinated by Chile's DINA agents as a part of Operation Condor...
, assassinated in 1976, had been detained at his home on Via Naranja in the sector of Lo Curro. There he was tortured and, since he did not speak, subjected to sarin gas (which had been re-invented by Berríos). Soria was then detained and tortured again in the Villa Grimaldi
Villa Grimaldi
Villa Grimaldi was a complex of buildings used for the interrogation and torture of political prisoners by DINA, the Chilean secret police, during the government of Augusto Pinochet. The complex was located in Peñalolén, in the outskirts of Santiago, and was in operation from mid-1974 to mid-1978...
and his case was included in Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon
Baltasar Garzón
Baltasar Garzón Real is a Spanish jurist who served on Spain's central criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional. He was the examining magistrate of the Juzgado Central de Instrucción No...
's indictment of Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet's arrest and trial
General Augusto Pinochet was indicted for human rights violations committed in his native Chile by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón on 10 October 1998. He was arrested in London six days later and finally released by the British government in March 2000...
.
Townley, Razin and Palme
According to an interview with former CIA agents Ibrahim Razin and Richard Brenneke by RAIRAI
RAI — Radiotelevisione italiana S.p.A. known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane, is the Italian state owned public service broadcaster controlled by the Ministry of Economic Development. Rai is the biggest television company in Italy...
journalist Ennio Remondino, Michael Townley was in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
in 1986 a week before the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme
Olof Palme
Sven Olof Joachim Palme was a Swedish politician. A long-time protegé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 to his assassination, and was a two-term Prime Minister of Sweden, heading a Privy Council Government from 1969 to 1976 and a cabinet...
, possibly in connection with the Iran-Contra affair
Iran-Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair , also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or Iran-Contra-Gate, was a political scandal in the United States that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials and President Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of...
. After the interview the Italian magazine Panorama
Panorama
A panorama is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film/video, or a three-dimensional model....
revealed president Francesco Cossiga
Francesco Cossiga
Francesco Cossiga was an Italian politician, the 43rd Prime Minister and the eighth President of the Italian Republic. He was also a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sassari....
sent a letter to prime minister Giulio Andreotti
Giulio Andreotti
Giulio Andreotti is an Italian politician of the now dissolved centrist Christian Democracy party. He served as the 42nd Prime Minister of Italy from 1972 to 1973, from 1976 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1992. He also served as Minister of the Interior , Defense Minister and Foreign Minister and he...
stating:
If the government were to think that the information had any basis, I think that it should inform the judiciary authority and the Parliamentary Commission on Massacres and, at the level of the bilateral relations, the relevant authorities in the USA and in Sweden.
If, on the other hand, the government, after careful evaluation, were to conclude that the information broadcast by the RAI-TV is false or even recklessly provocatory, I think that the government should inform the judiciary authorities of possible penal law violations and undertake necessary measures to find out the managers and personnel of the national TV center responsible.
Razin claimed in the interview to know of several forces behind the assassination and to have intercepted a telegram with the words 'tell our friend the Swedish palm will be felled'. The reason for this action was supposedly Sweden's involvement in the Iran-Iraq war.
Others
During a 1981 interview contents of which were revealed by 2000 CIA declassified documents, Michael Townley explained that CORU member Novo Sampol had agreed to commit the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the Buenos Aires kidnapping of a president of a Dutch bank by the civilian the Argentine intelligence agency SIDESide
Side was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, in the region of Pamphylia, in what is now Antalya province, on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey...
to obtain a ransom. Townley said Novo Sampol provided $6.000 from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, forwarded to SIDE for expenses in preparing the kidnapping. After returning to the US, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper used to print pamphlets in the name of "Grupo Rojo" (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organisation which was to claim credit for the kidnapping. Townley claimed the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza
Mendoza, Argentina
Mendoza is the capital city of Mendoza Province, in Argentina. It is located in the northern-central part of the province, in a region of foothills and high plains, on the eastern side of the Andes. As of the , Mendoza's population was 110,993...
and Córdoba
Córdoba, Argentina
Córdoba is a city located near the geographical center of Argentina, in the foothills of the Sierras Chicas on the Suquía River, about northwest of Buenos Aires. It is the capital of Córdoba Province. Córdoba is the second-largest city in Argentina after the federal capital Buenos Aires, with...
in relation with false flag
False flag
False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one's own...
bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents which had as their aim to accredit the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However the SIDE agents procrastinated too much and the kidnapping was finally canceled.