An Assassination on US Soil: the Long Blowback of US Support for Pinochet’s Chile

Fifty years ago, Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean cabinet minister and ambassador, was assassinated on the streets of Washington, DC, alongside a young colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Their former colleagues, along with family members and human rights activists, sought justice for these crimes, uncovering difficult questions about the US support for the Pinochet regime, and culminating in a final court decision earlier this summer.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project and co-edits Inequality.orgat the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. For several decades, she has supported efforts in the United States, Chile, and around the world to achieve accountability in the assassination of IPS colleagues Letelier and Moffitt and other victims of tyranny. In 2025, the Chilean government inducted Anderson into the Order of Bernardo O’Higgins, their highest honor bestowed on non-Chileans, for her contributions to these efforts.