René Riveros

René Miguel Riveros Valderrama, a captain of the Chilean army serving in an "extra-institutional commission" of DINA, testified on March 22, 1978, that in August 1976 Manuel Contreras gave him and Captain Rolando Mosqueira a mission to Washington "to make contact with the North American General Vernon Walters in order to receive certain information relating to the names of certain persons." They left on August 21 on official Chilean passports, his in the name Juan Williams Rose and Mosqueira's as Alejandro Romeral Jara, "handed to us ready by the passport staff at DINA, together with the tickets via Aero Perú." The passport was issued on August 17, 1976, number 528/76, with a birth date of March 12, 1949, an address at Bustamante 24, and blue eyes; the American embassy in Santiago issued official A-2 visas the same day. The names were those on the Paraguayan passports that Michael Townley and Armando Fernández Larios had carried in July, whose visas the United States had revoked.¹²

Washington

They could not find Walters, who was giving up his post and on leave; "finally a CIA secretary whom we could not identify told us that General Walters no longer worked at that intelligence agency." They called on a Chilean general Mosqueira knew, giving their real names and ranks but not their errand, and when every approach failed telephoned Pedro Espinoza, DINA's chief of operations, who authorized their return. Walters, interviewed by the FBI on June 14, 1978, "laughed and dismissed the idea as being ludicrous on its face," since he had retired on July 2, 1976.¹³

The Letters Rogatory

A letter rogatory of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, signed by Chief Judge William B. Bryant and certified by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Attorney General Griffin Bell, was delivered unsealed to the Chilean foreign ministry by the chargé d'affaires, Thomas Boyatt, and forwarded to the Supreme Court on February 27, 1978. It stated that "two members of the Chilean armed forces entered the United States one month before the murder of Mr. Letelier and Mrs. Moffitt. At least one of these men met with one of the persons believed to be responsible for the acts in question. Previously, both had obtained visas to enter the United States by using fraudulent documents from a country other than Chile," the Paraguayan passports of Townley and Fernández Larios, and asked that "Juan Williams Rose" and "Alejandro Romeral Jara" answer 55 written questions under oath with Eugene Propper present: who gave the orders; whether they had discussed the mission with Contreras or with "the President of Chile, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, or with any of his direct subordinates"; their contacts with Guillermo Novo, Ignacio Novo, José Dionisio Suárez, Alvin Ross, Orlando Bosch, and Felipe Rivero; whether they had brought explosives; whether they had stayed at the Chilean embassy or military mission; and a meeting in February 1976 with Rolando Otero, "at that time a fugitive from United States law," attended by "a man who introduced himself as Major Torres of DINA" and another calling himself Marcelo Estobel. Chile's Supreme Court noted that no treaty on letters rogatory existed between the two countries. General Nilo Floody, head of the military mission in Washington, answered the prosecutor that the two were at his home in late August "to greet me," that he did not know their mission, and that his secretary, telephoning Walters's office at his request, was told "that he no longer belonged to the CIA." In March 1978 the civilian judge Marcos Libedinsky, who had taken the statements of the two captains on March 20 and released them on bond, found that the passports "were used in August 1976 to travel to the United States and then return to Chile by two Army Captains, in fulfillment of a confidential mission assigned to them by their superiors," and sent the case to the military courts, where on March 23 it was joined to the file of the ad hoc military prosecutor Héctor Orozco, before whom Riveros testified on March 22.⁴