"After Allende's enemies finally claimed their victory against him on 11 September, Chileans protected themselves as best they could while Pinochet and his cohorts, well favoured now by Washington, turned to making themselves fortunes from the privatisation of public services and, quietly, from the trade in cocaine from Bolivia which the US never seemed to want to criticise or attack.
So confident was Pinochet in his protectors in "the free world" that on 17 September 1976 he ordered the killing of Orlando Letelier, Allende's former defence minister, with a bomb planted in his car in Sheridan Circle in the diplomatic heart of Washington itself. Such an atrocity, had it been committed by any Arab or Iranian, or indeed a Muslim of any persuasion, would have brought down instant punishment, or even war. But Pinochet was in no danger. After all, he had been Nixon's man all along.
Hugh O'Shaughnessy is the author of Pinochet, The Politics of Torture, published by Latin America Bureau and New York University Press"
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www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/07/ch...oup-pinochet-allende
