vault backup: 2026-09-21 22:39:08

10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Vernon Walters.md

@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ born: 1917-01-03
 died: 2002-02-10
 location: New York, NY / Washington, DC / Rio de Janeiro
 created: 2026-06-05
-updated: 2026-06-05
+updated: 2026-09-21
 ---
 
 Vernon Anthony Walters (January 3, 1917 - February 10, 2002) was the US Army attaché in Brazil from 1962 to 1967, including the period of the military coup that overthrew President [[Joao Goulart]], and later served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) under President [[Richard Nixon]] from May 2, 1972 to July 2, 1976. His role in the 1964 Brazilian coup was the most consequential of his long career as a military diplomat and intelligence officer, and illustrated the importance of personal relationships, cultivated over years, in enabling US-backed coups without direct US military intervention.[^1]
@@ -72,6 +72,10 @@ On Saturday, July 5, 1975, Walters met Contreras secretly at a CIA office at [[F
 
 In June 1976 Walters went to [[Paraguay]] to remove the CIA station chief, who had deceived Ambassador [[George Landau]], and to ask the government of General [[Alfredo Stroessner]] not to kill a Paraguayan agent of the CIA who had been arrested and tortured. He was received by Stroessner's aide [[Conrado Pappalardo]] and left in the last week of June with the agent still in prison. In July Pappalardo asked Landau for American visas in false Paraguayan passports for two Chilean officers, saying that they were to contact Walters in Washington. Landau told Walters that the request appeared to be "the quid pro quo that Paraguay was demanding in exchange for sparing the CIA agent's life," issued the visas, and sent photographs of the passports to Walters through the State Department's "Roger Channel" on July 28. Walters was on leave in [[Florida]] before retirement, and the cable went to Director [[George H.W. Bush|George Bush]]. On August 4 Walters replied that he had made no arrangement with Pappalardo, that he and Bush "had agreed that the agency wanted nothing to do with the DINA matter," and that the request was "highly irregular" and "a strange way of doing business." Two DINA captains using the same false names reached Washington on August 22 and had the Chilean embassy telephone Walters's office at Langley. The CIA did not tell the prosecutor of the [[Orlando Letelier|Letelier]] murder, [[Eugene Propper]], of any of this when it began sending him files that fall.[^20]
 
+One of the two, Captain René Riveros Valderrama, gave a sworn statement in Santiago on March 22, 1978, to the Chilean court investigating Contreras and Espinoza. He and Captain Rolando Mosqueira Jarpa had left for Washington on August 21, 1976, on official passports in the names Juan Williams Rose and Alejandro Romeral Jara, prepared by DINA's passport section, on a mission given them by Contreras "to make contact with the North American General Don Vernon Walters in order to receive certain information relating to the names of certain persons." They could not reach him: he was handing over his post and on leave, and "finally a CIA secretary whom we could not identify told us that General Walters no longer worked at that intelligence agency." They then called on a Chilean general Mosqueira knew, giving their real names and ranks but not their errand, and when every approach failed telephoned Espinoza, DINA's chief of operations, who authorized them to return.[^21]
+
+Contreras told the Chilean military prosecutor on March 22, 1978, that "around June or early July 1976, CIA Chile informed me that the Deputy Director of the CIA, General Vernon Walters, needed a contact in the US to give us a list of lobbyists and people who could cooperate with Chile before the US Senate and also for the UN's forthcoming session that year." Espinoza testified on April 24 that Contreras ordered him to designate an agent for the mission with a companion fluent in English; he chose Fernández Larios, and "the name of the second man was suggested by then-Major [[Raúl Iturriaga Neumann|Iturriaga]], under the name Andrés Wilson," who "turned out to be the same person I had known since November or December 1974 as Michael Townley." Fernández Larios said he was told "once in the US I had to speak with a CIA chief named Vernon Walters, because he was going to give me a list of people sympathetic to Chile for purposes of presenting the Chilean position before the United Nations." The second pair, Captains [[René Riveros]] and [[Rolando Mosqueira]], could not find him. The FBI interviewed Walters on June 14, 1978, at the Chilean prosecutor's request. "When told that several DINA officials were claiming that their trip to the US in August of 1976 was to see him, the General laughed and dismissed the idea as being ludicrous on its face, saying it was impossible since he had retired during the previous month." He said his trip to Paraguay "had been completely unrelated to the Letelier assassination," that "at no time had he discussed with any Paraguayan officials the issuance of false passports," that his only contact with Contreras had been the 1975 visit, and he "offered to take a polygraph examination." Propper added: "I have been advised by the CIA that General Vernon Walters retired from the CIA on July 2, 1976. He was no longer there at the time either mission to the United States by DINA personnel took place."[^22]
+
 As ambassador at large for President [[Ronald Reagan]], Walters visited Pinochet in February 1981. "We spoke as old friends," he reported. "He offered full support and said he would do anything we wanted to help us in the Salvadoran situation." He told a congressional committee that the Letelier bombing had been "a mistake," like [[Napoleon]]'s execution of the Duke of Enghien: "You can't rub their noses in it forever."[^19]
 
 ### Later Career
@@ -102,3 +106,5 @@ Under President Ronald Reagan, Walters served as Ambassador-at-Large from 1981 t
 [^18]: National Security Archive, "The Pinochet Regime Declassified: DINA," June 2024; Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, "Staff Report on Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973," December 18, 1975 (released by Church Committee); Contreras CIA payroll: CIA Inspector General report on DINA relationship, released 2023.
 [^19]: Kornbluh, Peter. *The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability*. New Press, 2003, pp. 213-215, 409-410, and note 34 at p. 522.
 [^20]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 200-201, 242-243, 309-311, 383-384.
+[^21]: Corte Suprema de Justicia de Chile, proceso contra Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda y Pedro Espinoza Bravo, ministro instructor Adolfo Bañados, tomo 1, declaración de René Miguel Riveros Valderrama, Santiago, March 22, 1978, scan at latinamericanstudies.org, Causa-Contreras-Espinoza-1991.pdf. Quotations translated from the Spanish
+[^22]: Fiscalía Militar Ad-Hoc, Santiago, causa 192-78 (fiscal Héctor Orozco), as reproduced in *Proceso contra Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda y Pedro Espinoza Bravo,* ministro instructor Adolfo Bañados, tomo 1, scan at https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Causa-Contreras-Espinoza-1991.pdf. Quotations translated from the Spanish, declaraciones of Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda (March 22, 1978), Armando Fernández Larios (March 22, 1978), and Pedro Espinoza Bravo (April 24, 1978); Fiscalía Militar Ad-Hoc, Santiago, causa 192-78, as reproduced in *Proceso contra Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda y Pedro Espinoza Bravo,* tomo 2, scan at https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Causa-Contreras-Espinoza-1991-2.pdf. Quotations translated from the Spanish, memorandum of Eugene M. Propper and E. Lawrence Barcella, June 22, 1978, with the FBI report of the interview of June 14, 1978, and addendum of June 9, 1978.