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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PARAMILITARY/Cuban Nationalist Movement.md

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+---
+category: "Paramilitary"
+tags:
+  - Organization
+  - CubanNationalistMovement
+  - CubanExiles
+  - DINA
+  - OperationCondor
+  - LetelierAssassination
+  - Terrorism
+alias:
+  - CNM
+  - Movimiento Nacionalista Cubano
+summary: "Cuban exile group in New Jersey whose leaders supplied the men who helped the Chilean secret police agent Michael Townley kill Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976."
+location: "New Jersey"
+created: 2026-09-21
+updated: 2026-09-21
+---
+
+The Cuban Nationalist Movement was an anti-Castro exile organization based in [[New Jersey]], whose leaders in the 1970s included [[Guillermo Novo]]. The Chilean secret police, [[DINA]], used it as the "Cuban group" in the assassination of [[Orlando Letelier]] and [[Ronni Moffitt]] on September 21, 1976.[^1][^2]
+
+### The Letelier Operation
+
+[[Michael Townley]] testified that in the summer of 1976 DINA assigned him to go to the [[United States]] and arrange the murder, and told him to get in touch with the movement. The orders of Colonel [[Pedro Espinoza]], as Townley recorded them in 1978, were to "contact the Cuban group to eliminate him, or use SARIN gas, or orchestrate an accident." He arrived on September 9 and the next day met Novo, [[Alvin Ross Díaz|Alvin Ross]], [[Virgilio Paz]], [[José Dionisio Suárez]], and other members in a hotel room in New Jersey. Novo told him the following day that the movement would cooperate but insisted that Townley take part himself. Townley, Paz, and Suárez went to Washington and built the bomb, and Townley fixed it under the driver's seat at midnight on September 18. It was set off by remote control at [[Sheridan Circle]].[^1][^2]
+
+### Trials
+
+Novo and Ross were convicted in 1979 of murder, murder of a foreign official, and conspiracy, and Novo's brother [[Ignacio Novo]] of lying to the grand jury. Part of the evidence came from jailhouse informants working with the government. One of them, [[Sherman Kaminsky]], testified that Ross "told me that he was involved in the murder of Orlando Letelier together with generals in DINA, Sepulveda, Michael Townley, and other members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement in this country." In 1980 the Supreme Court held such testimony inadmissible in United States v. Henry, and the [[United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit|court of appeals]] reversed the convictions of Novo and Ross and ordered a new trial. It reversed Ignacio Novo's for the failure to try him separately.[^1]
+
+At the retrial in May 1981 the defense undertook to prove "that Townley and DINA alone plotted to kill Letelier." Townley, the government's witness, admitted that he had lied to a Chilean military investigator and had given [[El Mercurio]] a false statement that he had nothing to do with the killing. Paz and Suárez were not tried with them.[^3]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: United States v. Novo Sampol, 636 F.2d 621 (D.C. Cir. 1980).
+[^2]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "The Pinochet Dictatorship Declassified: Confessions of a DINA Hit Man," National Security Archive, November 22, 2023. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2023-11-22/pinochet-dictatorship-declassified-confessions-dina-hit-man
+[^3]: Kiernan, Laura A. "Townley Admits Lying to Chilean Questioners," *The Washington Post,* May 17, 1981, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000606730006-5.

20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PARAMILITARY/Patria y Libertad.md

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+---
+category: "Paramilitary"
+tags:
+  - Organization
+  - PatriaYLibertad
+  - Chile
+  - CIA
+  - ProjectFUBELT
+  - Paramilitary
+  - ChileanCoup1973
+alias:
+  - Fatherland and Liberty
+  - Frente Nacionalista Patria y Libertad
+summary: "Chilean rightist paramilitary group formed after Salvador Allende's election in 1970, which received 38,500 dollars from the CIA during the agency's coup plotting and joined the failed tank uprising of June 1973."
+start: 1970
+location: "Santiago, Chile"
+created: 2026-09-21
+updated: 2026-09-21
+---
+
+Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Liberty) was the most prominent of the rightist paramilitary groups that opposed the government of [[Salvador Allende]] in [[Chile]]. It formed after the election of September 4, 1970, during the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] operation known as Track II or [[Project FUBELT]]. Its leaders included [[Roberto Thieme]].[^1]
+
+### CIA Money
+
+The Senate's 1975 staff report on covert action in Chile states: "The CIA provided Patria y Libertad with $38,500 through a third party during the Track II period, in an effort to create tension and a possible pretext for intervention by the Chilean military. After Allende took office, the CIA occasionally provided the group small sums through third parties for demonstrations or specific propaganda activity. Those disbursements, about seven thousand dollars in total, ended in 1971." It adds: "It is possible that CIA funds given to political parties reached Patria y Libertad and a similar grouping, the [[Rolando Matus Brigade]], given the close ties between the parties and these organizations." Of the truck owners' strikes of October 1972 and mid 1973 the report found that the [[40 Committee]] "did not approve any funds to be given directly to the strikers," that "all observers agree that the two lengthy strikes could not have been maintained on the basis of union funds," and that it remained open "whether or to what extent CIA funds passed to opposition parties may have been siphoned off to support strikes." The agency's total spending in Chile from 1963 to 1973 included 1.2 million dollars under the heading "promoting military coup d'etat."[^1]
+
+### 1973
+
+The group joined junior army officers in the Tanquetazo, the attempted coup of June 29, 1973, which General [[Carlos Prats]] suppressed. On July 17 it announced a "total armed offensive" against the government. [[Michael Townley]], an American electronics specialist living in [[Santiago]], worked with it in operations against Allende before the secret police, [[DINA]], recruited him in 1974.[^1][^2]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973,* staff report, 94th Cong., 1st sess., 1975, including table I. https://archive.org/details/CovertActionInChile196373
+[^2]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "The Pinochet Regime at 50: The Assassination of General Carlos Prats and Sofía Cuthbert," National Security Archive, October 1, 2024. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2024-10-01/pinochet-regime-50-assassination-general-carlos-prats-and-sofia