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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Armando Fernandez Larios.md
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@ -30,6 +30,8 @@ In July 1976 Fernández and [[Michael Townley]] went to [[Paraguay]] for false p
In his statement of March 22, 1978, Fernández said that in mid-July 1976, while at the National Intelligence School, he was ordered to DINA headquarters, where Espinoza "told me I would have to go to Paraguay to obtain Paraguayan passports," accompanied "by a gringo" who "would serve as my interpreter and support," and that "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." On the flight the gringo "began a real interrogation about my status as a military officer, my rank, time in rank, and my chances of promotion." He recalled signing the Paraguayan passport as Alejandro Romeral himself. His sister, Rose Marie Fernández Larios de Guest, interviewed informally by Propper and Barcella, said his travelling companion in September 1976 had called herself Iliana Walker and that he left for Chile about September 9; the Chilean court asked whether she had been told that her brother "should seek asylum or leave the territory of the Republic of Chile, since he could suffer an accident or be violently eliminated."[^3]
In a second statement on March 26, 1978, he said he had travelled to the United States in late August 1976 as Armando Faúndez Lyon (the transcript of his statement gives the first name as Alejandro; the ticket records and the foreign ministry's list give Armando) with a DINA agent whose cover name was Liliana Walker, remembering the surname from a set of silver rings the two had engraved with the false names at the Portal Fernández Concha; that at Kennedy airport "Mike" had changed the tickets from economy to first class; that in early March 1978 he went to Contreras's house at Rocas de Santo Domingo, where Contreras "replied that the matter would not have much significance" and told him "not to say that I had traveled to the US; he did not specify why, nor did I ask him"; and that his sister had told him "the FBI had advised her that it would be best for me to seek asylum because they knew I had nothing to do with the matter," since "at any moment I might turn up dead, in a motorcycle accident, or a suicide, or disappeared." He had known the biochemist [[Eugenio Berríos]], "Hermes," in his unit, "a man of disciplined conduct" whose "ideas are exaggeratedly militaristic."[^4]
### The 1987 Arrangement
In mid-January 1987 he met American officials secretly in [[Santiago]] for ten hours. He left for [[Brazil]] on January 22, was questioned there by officers of the [[Department of State|State Department]] and the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]], and was brought to the United States. Polygraph examinations found "consistent signs of deception" in his denial that he had known the purpose of the mission. A [[State Department]] memorandum of January 26 declared that "Fernandez is not a murderer" and that "the foreign policy benefits are substantial." On February 4 he pleaded guilty before Judge [[Barrington Parker]] to being an accessory after the fact. The government promised that it "would neither seek to deport [him] to Chile nor to cooperate in his extradition to Chile." Parker sentenced him on May 6 to up to seven years. In July the State Department's lawyer [[Michael Kozak]] wrote to the parole commission: "I personally have come to know Mr. Fernandez Larios and his character well." He was paroled on September 11, 1987, after five months.[^1][^2]
@ -41,3 +43,4 @@ In 2005 he applied without success for the visa given to foreign informants. On
[^1]: Cabello v. Fernandez-Larios, 402 F.3d 1148 (11th Cir. 2005).
[^2]: Kornbluh, Peter, and Sebastian Santana. "'Worst of the Worst': ICE and the Case of Chilean Intelligence Operative Armando Fernandez Larios," National Security Archive, July 10, 2026. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2026-07-10/worst-worst-ice-and-case-chilean-intelligence-operative-armando
[^3]: 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 Armando Fernández Larios, March 22 and April 12, 1978, and resolution before May 4, 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 5, 1978.
[^4]: Fiscalía Militar Ad-Hoc, Santiago, causa 192-78, 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, ampliación of the declaración of Armando Fernández Larios, March 26, 1978.