Chile: Wet Dessert

Wet Desert Chile’s Atacama Desert, the world’s oldest nonpolar desert, is one of the driest places on Earth. Scientists have long believed that it has remained consistently arid for 40 million years. But now, thanks to a capybara tooth found in its sands, researchers say it was not so dry a few million years ago. “Finding a capybara tooth in a marine deposit in what today is one of the driest regions on Earth is just freakish,” said Priscilla Martinez, the study’s lead author and a doctoral student at the University of Arizona’s Department of Geosciences, in a statement. She was part of a team that discovered a fossilized tooth from an extinct capybara relative in a 3-foot-thick sediment bed at El Morro in northern Chile. The tooth, which dates to about 8.8 million years ago, belongs to the extinct genus Cardiatherium, a relative of modern capybaras. This discovery suggests that parts of the region were considerably wetter nearly 9 million years ago and were able to accommodate mammals such as the capybara even though no capybaras live in Chile today. The discovery is significant because modern capybaras, the world’s largest living rodents, are semiaquatic animals that depend on reliable water and vegetation. The tooth was not the sole evidence of a wetter environment: remains of palms and other flowering plants from roughly the same period were also identified by researchers. Together, the evidence points to a freshwater and riverside ecosystem capable of supporting large water-dependent mammals in the southern Atacama. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, also raises questions about how ancient animals moved across South America. Researchers say the wetlands may have been connected to other parts of the continent through routes across or around the Andes. “The more we understand deserts, which are extremely sensitive to changes in climate, including shifts in monsoon intensity from year to year, the better we can predict how they fare long term,” said Martinez. “And if we can understand past climate changes that had nothing to do with humans, it gives us a baseline to work off of to understand how climate can evolve over time with humans in the mix.”

Bolsonaro Declares Victory In Election After Fleeing Brasil

Bolsonaro Declares Victory in Election After Fleeing Brazil BRAZIL Brazil Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro alleged electoral fraud in the presidential election and declared himself the rightful “leader” after fleeing the country and arriving in the United States on Wednesday. Bolsonaro claimed that the election had been stolen by the victor, incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in what was a sharp turnaround by the candidate who had essentially accepted the results of Sunday’s runoff election. “On Sunday night, I was stunned by the electoral fraud that became reality before my eyes,” he wrote on X. His private plane, which departed from Argentina and stopped in Ecuador, landed at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport. His whereabouts had been unknown since Sunday’s election, in which Lula won 51.8 percent of the vote. A court order had barred him from leaving the country. Brazil’s Supreme Court is investigating Bolsonaro for allegedly accepting millions of dollars from a disgraced banker, as well as using a sports betting corporation to launder public money from government pensions. Also, earlier this week, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered a police investigation into alleged ties between a donor network co-founded by Vice President JD Vance and Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, the Washington Post reported. Following his defeat, his parliamentary immunity was set to end. He had been ordered to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports. Meanwhile, a senior US State Department official announced Bolsonaro and his family would be granted US visas. Bolsonaro is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence under house arrest for attempting a coup following his defeat to Lula in the 2022 presidential election. He also fled to the United States after his defeat before returning to Brazil soon after. Following the release of the election results, Bolsonaro said he would seek to annul the vote, citing last-minute court decisions to extend polling hours due to weather and transport problems that prevented some voters from reaching the polls. Both Bolsonaro and Lula had requested these extensions. Lula has not commented on the electoral fraud allegations. Kassio Nunes Marques, chief of the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court, defended the election result as “respecting all legal and constitutional requirements.”

Surinam: It's Oil and Farming vs Rain Forests

In Suriname, It’s Oil and Farming Versus the Rainforests SURINAME Suriname A few years ago, a plan to move more than 1,000 Mennonite families from Belize to Suriname to establish massive farming communities in a heavily forested area seemed like a good idea. The small country off the northeastern coast of South America had wanted to increase its domestic food production and the conservative Christian group was well known for its agricultural savvy across Central and South America. However, the plan soon faced a backlash: Critics worried that such a development would threaten Indigenous communities and lead to mass deforestation in a country that has one of the largest rainforests in the world – it covers 93 percent of its land. “We live off the forest and rivers … How will we live then?” Remon Clemens, grand chief of the Kwinti Maroon community, which descends from enslaved Africans, told the Guardian in 2023 about the idea after he learned of it. Soon after, protests broke out and Suriname canceled the Mennonite settlement program. But earlier this year, private investors revived efforts to bring in Mennonites, again unleashing a backlash over the threats to ancestral tribal lands and to the environment. In August, the government stepped in. President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons announced a crackdown on unauthorized agricultural settlements, including those established by Mennonites. “We also have the issue that people have come into our country, go inland and started cutting down our forests … and plan to cut down even more,” Geerlings-Simons said. “The people who are active there in the interior and have cleared land to live there, are there illegally. And that means that we’re going to take measures against them.” Still, evicting settlers and taking back land doesn’t solve a fundamental dilemma the country is now facing: How to develop itself and meet its population’s needs while also preserving its natural heritage and the benefits that arise from it. Currently, Suriname, a country of roughly 640,000 people, is preparing for an oil boom. Its offshore discoveries, beginning in 2020, have attracted major international energy companies and led to hopes that the Surinamese will follow in the footsteps of neighboring Guyana: There, gross domestic product per capita increased 45 percent in 2024 to almost $30,000 annually, more than four times greater than Suriname’s $7,000 per capita that year. French energy giant TotalEnergies and its partners are investing an estimated $12 billion in GranMorgu, a deepwater oilfield development. Production is scheduled to begin in mid-2028 and it is projected to pump as much as 220,000 barrels per day from offshore fields containing 760 million barrels in total. The IMF forecasts economic growth of around 30 percent that year. The timing couldn’t be better: The conflict in the Middle East has highlighted the risks of relying on supplies from the Persian Gulf. The government is planning to invest future petroleum revenues in everything from education to infrastructure but particularly in agriculture to boost food production and exports. But expanding farmland could destroy rainforests, which in turn would threaten its carbon-negative status and its plans to earn revenue from carbon credits it would receive from protecting its carbon-absorbing forests. Suriname has lost about 1.5 percent of its forest cover since 2000, according to Grist, a US nonprofit environmental news organization. “If left unchecked, deforestation could threaten the country’s carbon-negative status sometime in the next decade,” it said. For Suriname, the challenge is turning the windfall into a diversified economy and lasting prosperity while also protecting its slice of the Amazon. Geerlings-Simons said as much even as she and other officials are convinced they will be able to balance the competing priorities, with effort and time even if it is a long and complicated process. “The problems of the country are enormous,” she told Americas Quarterly, a US magazine that covers Central and South America. “The time we have to prevent a resource curse is very short. I can’t turn a mud puddle into a glass of water in just one step.”

Lula Wins Brasilian Presidential Election

Lula Wins Brazilian Presidential Election as Bolsonaro Refuses to Concede BRAZIL Brazil Leftwing Brazilian incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a surprise comeback Sunday, defeating rightwing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro to win the presidential election, even as the conservative candidate refused to concede the race. With 100 percent of the vote counted, Brazil’s electoral court said Lula, 80, won the second round of the election with 51.8 percent of the vote. The result was a shock to Bolsonaro supporters after the Brazilian leader lost the first round to the challenger earlier this month by more than 2 million votes. After the results were announced, a huge roar echoed on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, with cars blaring their horns and residents streaming onto the streets, cheering and setting off fireworks in celebration. The mood among Bolsonaro supporters was somber and angry. On Sunday, Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat and asked for the election results to be annulled. At issue is a ruling by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin just minutes before polls were scheduled to close to keep them open for two more hours following requests by both candidates. Lula asked for the extension after issues with buses that provide transportation to polls in São Paulo and Salvador, his strongholds. Bolsonaro’s request came after heavy rains in Brazil’s south, where he led the polls, hampered voting. The decision delayed tallying the votes by two hours. “It’s impossible to recognize the results of the election in the context of these things that happened,” Bolsonaro said. Analysts say it is unclear if Bolsonaro’s complaint could meet the legal threshold to annul the results. Bolsonaro also has the right to request a recount if he provides evidence of fraud. Bolsonaro is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula. Meanwhile, analysts predict a difficult term for Lula: He faces the most conservative Congress since the country’s return to democracy in the 1980s. Combined, Bolsonaro's Liberal Party and its allies could control more than 280 seats in the lower house and up to 50 in the Senate, enough for comfortable majorities in both chambers. Still, Lula’s triumph bucks a conservative wave in the region after recent victories for rightwing presidential candidates allied with US President Donald Trump, for example in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. Lula will be sworn in for his fourth term on Jan. 5, 2027.

Brasilians Want Change. That's A Problem For Both Candidates

Brazilians Want Change. That’s a Problem for Both Presidential Candidates BRAZIL Brazil Thousands of Brazilians marched through Rio de Janeiro recently to protest against presidential contender Flávio Bolsonaro, who won the first round of elections Oct. 4. With drums, fireworks and dancing, they chanted, "Never Again Bolsonaro" and called for support for leftist incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who came in second place. "I'm here because I believe in democracy, because I'm scared," Alice Carneiro, 25, told Agence France-Presse, explaining that her stance was due to her experience with the frontrunner’s father, Jair Bolsonaro. "I remember my family's lives being at risk during the pandemic...I remember the vaccine denial." She is part of the “never Bolsonaro” camp. These people make up about 45 percent of Brazilian voters. Across the aisle, there is an equally fierce “never Lula” camp that makes up the same percentage of voters, Brazilians like Carolina Varella Tim of the southern city of Porto Alegre. “I vote against Lula, regardless of who the candidate is,” she told the New York Times. Currently, analysts say Lula is facing an uphill battle against Flávio Bolsonaro, who won the first round of voting by 2 percentage points against Lula in a field that included 10 other candidates. Now he and the incumbent president are vying for control of the South American country in an Oct. 25 runoff vote. The winner will be inaugurated in early January. Meanwhile, both candidates have their liabilities as they face an electorate hungry for change. Seeking his fourth term in office, Lula, 80, was imprisoned for almost two years on corruption charges until he was released in 2019 on a technicality. The country’s Supreme Court annulled the charges afterward, paving the way for him to re-enter politics. During this period, his close ally, Dilma Rousseff, became president but was impeached and removed from office in 2016. The main beneficiary of these developments was Jair Bolsonaro – he is currently serving more than 27 years in prison for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election to Lula by the narrowest margin in the country’s history. He has anointed his oldest son, Flávio Bolsonaro, to run in his place, and the presidential contender has promised to grant his father amnesty if elected. The family drama surrounding the Bolsonaros escalated after Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian judge, recently ordered the arrest of Flávio Bolsonaro’s brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in the US. Eduardo Bolsonaro, the judge says, allegedly attempted to pressure Brazilian judicial officials by threatening to lobby American leaders to impose sanctions and tariffs against Brazil unless the officials helped his father. The American government slapped sanctions on de Moraes last year for what the US government said was his political persecution of the elder Bolsonaro. At the same time, Flávio Bolsonaro is ​under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering tied to now-defunct lender Banco Master. The allegations against him center on his role in securing at least $12 million from banker Daniel Vorcaro to finance “Dark Horse,” a sympathetic film about his father. Vorcaro is the former owner of Banco Master, which was shut down last year over a multibillion-dollar fraud case involving fake loans that cost Brazil’s deposit insurance system billions. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes is accused of feeding Vorcaro information about the investigation. Flávio Bolsonaro and de Moraes have denied the allegations. The case has not dented the 45-year-old frontrunner, with polls saying he is likely to defeat Lula when voters go to the polls. Vowing to follow free-market policies like those of Argentine President Javier Milei, Flávio Bolsonaro is hoping to clinch a major victory for the right and decisively defeat Lula’s leftist movement. “The word is change,” said Flávio Bolsonaro after the election results were in. “Brazil can’t take it anymore. The era of [Lula’s] Workers’ Party is hereby over, leaving behind a record of hopelessness.” Lula is behind in the race because he has been remiss in addressing issues Brazilian voters care about, such as the cost of living, inflation and corruption, explained Foreign Policy. With only a few weeks to go before the runoff vote, he began discussing how he would crack down on crime – a topic that Flávio Bolsonaro has been beating like a drum for months, the magazine added. Even so, Lula said after the first round that while the results of the first round surprised him, he’s the master of comebacks: “I am very good in the knockout stage.” Currently, polls show a statistical tie. The candidate in third place, writer Augusto Cury, said he would not endorse Lula. Other candidates in the first round such as Ronaldo Caiado and Renan Santos have made similar statements. Meanwhile, about 20 percent of voters abstained from casting a ballot in the first round. Analysts say they are likely to stay away again. Analysts say the election is really about change – Flávio Bolsonaro promises change even as many voters believe it would restore the governance of his father, wrote World Politics Review. At the same time, Lula has been part of the political scene in Brazil for decades and in this last term, is not seen as fulfilling his campaign promises and bringing about change. As a result, analysts doubt he can defeat that desire for change in the electorate. “An election about change is very difficult for the incumbent,” George Washington University economist Maurício Moura, founder of the polling firm Ideia, told the Washington Post. “Lula has to create the expectation that, in this case, change is bad.”

Brasil: Thousands Protest Against Bolsonaro Ahead of Presidential Runoff

Thousands Protest in Brazil Against Bolsonaro Ahead of Presidential Runoff BRAZIL Brazil Thousands of people took to the streets of Rio de Janeiro this week to protest against conservative presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, who beat left-wing incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round of the presidential election. Protesters marched between historic squares in central Rio, carrying signs supporting democracy and Brazil’s sovereignty. Many wore red and chanted “Never Again Bolsonaro” while calling for support for Lula. Flávio Bolsonaro received about 47 percent of the vote while Lula garnered about 45 percent. The two candidates will face each other in a runoff vote Oct. 25. Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil from 2019 to 2022. Jair Bolsonaro is currently serving a 27-year sentence after being convicted of attempting a coup after he lost the 2022 election to Lula. Protesters criticized Flávio Bolsonaro over corruption allegations and the political legacy of his father, including his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Flávio Bolsonaro is currently under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion, charges he denies and says are politically motivated. With less than three weeks before the runoff, both candidates face an uphill battle in attracting voters who either did not participate in Sunday’s vote or backed other candidates such as Augusto Cury, who came in third in the election with 2.89 percent of the vote, and Renan Santos, who garnered 2.18 percent and came in fourth place. Still, Flávio Bolsonaro, analysts say, holds a strong advantage in the runoff: Cury and Santos are both right-leaning, increasing chances that their combined 6 million voters will choose Flávio Bolsonaro. They add that the first round underscored how many voters in Brazil are concerned about crime and inflation, and believe Lula has done little to address either of those.

Cubana Flight 455: An Act of Aviation Terrorism 50 Years Later

Cubana Flight 455: An Act of Aviation Terrorism 50 Years Later Barbados Monument On the 50th Anniversary of Plane Bombing, National Security Archive Posts Most Revealing U.S. Intelligence Records on Atrocity Anti-Castro Terrorism Took Lives of all Men, Women, and Children on Board FBI Report on Terrorist Message: “a bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed” Published: Oct 8, 2026 Briefing Book # 932 Edited by Peter Kornbluh For more information, contact: 202-994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu Subjects Human Rights and Genocide Regions Cuba and Caribbean Project Cuba RELATED LINKS Luis Posada Carriles, CIA-created "Frankenstein", Dies at 90 Bombing of Cuban Jetliner 40 Years Later: Colgate Toothpaste Disguised Plastic Explosives in 1976 Terrorist Attack The CIA File on Luis Posada Carriles: A Former Agency Asset Goes on Trial in the U.S. Posada Carriles Built Bombs for, and Informed on, Jorge Mas Canosa, CIA Records Reveal Terrorism Case of Luis Posada Debated on Capitol Hill: Archive Analyst Peter Kornbluh Shares Declassified CIA and FBI Intelligence Reports with House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee Documents Linked to Cuban Exile Luis Posada Highlighted Targets for Terrorism: Bomber's Confessions Point to Explosives Hidden in Toothpaste Tube that Brought Down Civilian Airliner in 1976 The Posada File: Part II - Posada Boasted of Plans to "Hit" Cuban Plane, CIA Document States Luis Posada Carriles: The Declassified Record Washington, D.C., October 8, 2026 - Fifty years ago this week, a small bomb of plastic explosives hidden inside a tube of Colgate toothpaste destroyed a civilian Cuban airliner off the coast of Barbados. The mid-air terrorist attack on Cubana flight 455 killed everyone on board, including the entire Cuban national fencing team returning with gold medals from a Panamerican competition. CIA and FBI intelligence reports soon identified the masterminds of the atrocity as Luis Posada Carriles, a longtime CIA asset/informant, and Orlando Bosch, considered to be the godfathers of terrorist violence against Cuba. After the airliner plunged into the ocean, according to one FBI informant, a Posada employee who had planted the bomb on the plane telephoned Bosch with this chilling message: “a bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed.” In commemoration of the victims of the Cubana 455 bombing, the National Security Archive today is posting ten of the most revealing intelligence records on this atrocity and those who perpetrated it. Since the mid-1990s, the Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project has been pursuing and disseminating declassified records on the case. “This infamous act of aviation terrorism, the worst in the Western Hemisphere before 9/11, must never be forgotten,” noted Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Cuba project. “The declassified record reminds us of what happened and who did it.” Orlando and Posada Orlando Bosch Avila Luis Posada Carriles Only days after the October 6, 1976, plane bombing, both Posada and Bosch were arrested in Venezuela, which had become a base for violent operations against Cuba. Bosch was released in 1987 and came to Florida the next year, illegally entering the country. He was detained by immigration authorities for almost two years. But in 1990, President George H.W. Bush—ignoring the objections of his own Attorney General, who labeled Bosch a “terrorist” and a threat to U.S. security—made a political decision to protect Bosch from further legal accountability and granted him permanent residency in the United States. Posada bribed his way out of a Venezuelan prison in 1985 using funds secretly supplied by wealthy Cuban American benefactors and escaped to Central America. He then joined the Reagan administration’s covert operations, run by Oliver North out of El Salvador’s Ilopango airbase, to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. (Today’s posting includes Posada’s interrogation by Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.) Posada stayed in Central America working in Guatemala and Honduras but continued his terrorist operations targeting Cuba. To deter tourism to Cuba, in the mid-1990s, he orchestrated a series of bombings in prominent Havana hotels that killed one Italian businessman and wounded numerous others. “That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Posada proudly confessed in an interview with the New York Times, “but I sleep like a baby.” document2 The first FBI report on the Cubana 455 bombing In November 2000, Posada was detained in Panama as Fidel Castro arrived to attend the Ibero-American summit in Panama City. Posada was charged with plotting to assassinate the Cuban leader with a 200-pound bomb planted in the auditorium where the Latin American leaders were meeting. In 2004, he was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. But Panama’s president, Mireya Moscoso, inexplicably pardoned him in August 2004, and he was freed. With the assistance of a network of Cuban American supporters in Florida, in early 2005, Posada illegally entered the United States and openly took up residence in Miami. Despite a post-9/11 policy of penalizing nations that harbored international terrorists, the George W. Bush administration allowed Posada to live freely in Florida and even to apply to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Only after the New York Times and the Miami Herald ran front page articles on Posada’s responsibility for the plane bombing—based on CIA and FBI intelligence reports provided by the National Security Archive (and posted today)—did authorities move to arrest him on May 17, 2005. He was eventually charged not with committing acts of terrorism but rather of committing perjury and immigration fraud when applying to become a citizen. For his trial in El Paso, the CIA submitted a short summary of his longstanding ties to the agency, dating back to the early 1960s and ending in the early 1990s when CIA officials warned Posada in Honduras that they had uncovered a plot to assassinate him. The three-month-long trial ended when the jury found Posada, by then 83 years old, innocent of all charges after just three hours of deliberations. Document Hand-drawn diagram of bomb detonator Both Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada lived out their lives as free men in Florida. Bosch died at age 84 on April 27, 2011, in a Miami hospital; Posada died at age 90 in May 2018. “Given the travesty of justice for the 73 victims of Cubana flight 455 over the last half century,” according to Kornbluh, “the declassified documents on Posada’s and Bosch’s role provide the only possible verdict—the verdict of history.” This history remains relevant to the current crisis in U.S.-Cuba relations, Kornbluh noted. “At a time when the Trump administration has sought to justify its regime change operations by accusing Cuba of terrorist efforts against the United States, the documents demonstrate that Cuba has for decades been the target of terrorism committed by violent individuals long associated with the United States.” The Documents d1 Document 1 FBI, Intelligence Cable, “Suspected Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados,” Secret, October 7, 1976 Oct 7, 1976 Only one day after the bombing of Cubana flight 455, sources in Caracas are already sharing intelligence that Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch masterminded the terrorist attack and were getting ready to flee Venezuela. “The confidential source further advised,” the FBI reported, that “[deleted reference to DISIP, Venezuela’s intelligence service] was arranging for Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch Avila to leave Venezuela as soon as possible. The source all but admitted that Posada and Bosch had engineered the bombing of the airplane.” d2 Document 2 CIA, Secret Intelligence Report, “Activities of Cuban Exile Leader Orlando Bosch During his Stay in Venezuela,” Secret, October 14, 1976 Oct 14, 1976 A source in Venezuela supplied the CIA with detailed intelligence on a fundraiser held for Orlando Bosch and his organization CORU after he arrived in Caracas in September 1976. The source described the dinner at the house of a Cuban exile doctor, Hildo Folgar, which included Venezuelan government officials. Bosch was said to have demanded a bribe to refrain from acts of violence during the United Nations meeting in November 1976, which would be attended by Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez. He was also quoted as saying that his group had done a “great job” in assassinating former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., on September 21 and now was going to “try something else.” A few days later, according to this intelligence report, Luis Posada Carriles was overheard to say that “we are going to hit a Cuban airplane” and “Orlando has the details.” d3 Document 3 State Department, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Memorandum, “Castro’s Allegations,” October 18, 1976 Oct 18, 1976 The first report to Secretary of State Kissinger from the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research on the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 details Cuba’s allegation that the CIA was involved in the bombing and provides an outline of the suspects’ relationship to the U.S. The report notes that a CIA source had overheard Posada prior to the bombing in late September 1976 stating that, “We are going to hit a Cuban airliner.” This information was apparently not passed to the CIA until after the plane went down. d4 Document 4 FBI, Letter to Kissinger, [Regarding Special Agent Leo], October 20, 1976 Oct 20, 1976 This report to Secretary of State Kissinger from Clarence M. Kelly, director of the FBI, explains the association between Joseph S. Leo, Special Agent and Legal Attaché in Caracas, to the suspects in the Cubana Airlines Flight 455 bombing. Investigators found Leo’s name among the possessions of Hernan Ricardo Lozano, one of the two Posada employees who planted the explosive device on the plane. The report notes that there were at least two contacts between Lozano and Leo in the weeks leading up to the bombing. d5 Document 5 FBI, Letter to Kissinger, [Regarding Contact with Bombing Suspects], October 29, 1976 Oct 29, 1976 The second report to Secretary of State Kissinger from FBI director Clarence M. Kelly provides additional information regarding the relationship between Special Agent Leo and the Cubana Airlines bombing suspects. The report details Leo’s contacts with Lozano and Posada going back to the summer of 1975 and notes that Leo suspected Posada and Hernan Ricardo Lozano of acts of terrorism but still granted Ricardo’s request for a visa to the United States. d6 Document 6 FBI, Letter to Kissinger, [Regarding Ricardo Morales Navarette], November 5, 1976 Nov 5, 1976 A third report to Secretary of State Kissinger from Clarence M. Kelly, director of the FBI, relays information from a confidential FBI source that the bombing of the Cubana Airlines flight was planned in Caracas, Venezuela, by Luis Posada Carriles, Frank Castro, and Ricardo Morales Navarrete. The source states that the group had made previous unsuccessful attempts to bomb Cuban aircraft in Jamaica and Panama. Shortly after the plane crashed, bombing suspect Hernan Ricardo Lozano telephoned Bosch stating, “a bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed.” The source also states that anti-Castro Cuban exiles working with the Chilean National Directorate for Intelligence (DINA) carried out the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 1976. d7 Document 7 Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of National Security, October 26, 1976, [Dennis Elliott Ramdwar deposition regarding Hernan Ricardo Lozano and Freddy Lugo] Oct 26, 1976 Trinidad and Tobago Deputy Commissioner of Police Dennis Ramdwar led the inquiries regarding the crash of Cubana Airline flight 455. In his written statement, he notes that Freddy Lugo initially denied knowledge of the crash. Eight days later, Lugo tells Ramdwar that he is convinced that Lozano placed the bomb on the aircraft. He states that Ricardo told him twice that he was going to blow up a Cubana aircraft as the two were headed to the airport prior to the bombing. In a separate interview, Lozano gives Ramdwar details of how a “certain chemical is filled in a tube of Colgate toothpaste after the toothpaste is extracted” to construct the bomb. d8 Document 8 CIA, Memorandum, "AMCLEVE /15," July 21, 1966 Jul 21, 1966 This document identifies early CIA ties to Luis Posada Carriles. It includes two parts: a cover letter written by Grover T. Lythcott, Posada’s CIA handler, and an attached request written by Posada to accept a position on a new coordinating Junta composed of several anti-Castro organizations. In the cover letter, Lythcott refers to Posada by his then-codename, AMCLEVE/I5, and discusses his previous involvement with the Agency. He lionizes Posada, writing that his “performance in all assigned tasks has been excellent” and urging that he be permitted to work with the combined anti-Castro exile groups. According to the document, Lythcott suggests that Posada be taken off the CIA payroll to facilitate his joining the anti-Castro militant junta, which will be led by RECE. Lythcott insists that Posada will function as an effective moderating force considering he is “acutely aware of the international implications of ill planned or over enthusiastic activities against Cuba.” In an attached memo, Posada, using the name “Pete,” writes that if he is on the Junta, “they will never do anything to endanger the security of this Country (like blow up Russian ships)” and volunteers to “give the Company all the intelligence that I can collect.” d9 Document 9 CIA, summary, “Unclassified Summary of the CIA’s Relationship With Luis Clemente Posada Carriles,” ca January 2011 Jan 2011 This short, unclassified summary of the relationship between Luis Posada Carriles and the CIA was drafted for Posada’s 2011 El Paso trial on perjury charges related to immigration and naturalization proceedings after he illegally entered the U.S. in 2005. It was provided to the court by the U.S. Justice Department. The summary admits that the CIA first had contact with Posada in connection with planning the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. He remained a paid agent of the CIA from 1965-1967 and again from 1968-1974. From 1974-76, Posada provided unsolicited threat reporting on his and other violent exile operations, including an attempt to blow up a Cuban airliner in June 1976. According to this document, the CIA last had contact with Posada in 1993 when they anonymously contacted him in Honduras by telephone to warn him of a threat to his life. d10 Document 10 Office of the Independent Counsel, Lawrence Walsh, “Record of Interview with Luis Posada Carriles,” Secret, February 7, 1992 Feb 7, 1992 Two FBI agents interviewed Posada at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in February 1992. He provided a detailed account of his work for the contra war, which included descriptions of escaping from Venezuela in a private aircraft and being flown to Aruba and then on to El Salvador. The 31-page interview transcript also provides extensive details on his operations in El Salvador and Guatemala after the Iran Contra scandal broke in November 1986 and the contra resupply operation was shut down. Although Posada accumulated $40,000 from the contra work—he and others were paid from profits from the sale of armaments to Iran—he eventually ran out of funds. At one point, Richard Secord sent him $1,000 for one of his paintings.

A Decades Old Dispute Over the Falkans Islands Is Heating Up Again

A Decades-Old Dispute Over the Falkland Islands Is Heating Up Again FALKLAND ISLANDS After the British government announced sanctions against Israel over the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, Israeli officials accused the United Kingdom of “occupying” a territory in the South Atlantic, the Falkland Islands. The spat arose during a recent gathering of world leaders at the United Nations when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called British and French critics of Israeli policies hypocrites. “They accuse Israel, tiny Israel, of colonialism – some colonialism,” said Netanyahu. “And who’s accusing us? Among them are people in Britain and in France. For God’s sakes, they invented the term.” Argentine President Javier Milei jumped in soon afterward, saying the international community was “looking the other way” as Argentina's claim to the islands has been ignored. He added that the islanders do not have a right to self-determination, while calling for negotiations with the UK to find a peaceful solution to the conflict. Beyond the contretemps at the United Nations, a very real dispute over the Falkland Islands has been heating up lately, more than 44 years after Britain and Argentina went to war over the British overseas territory. In early September, Milei, seizing on statements by US President Donald Trump that the US may reconsider its neutral stance on the islands’ sovereignty, blasted an oil drilling project just north of the islands, which lie about 300 miles from the Argentine mainland. “Argentina will not stand idly by,” Milei said in a televised address to the nation in September. “Any further advance on the [Falkland] Islands will be considered a violation of our national security.” The project, Sea Lion, promises to transform the Falklands’ economy, which has long been dependent on fishing. However, Argentina opposes the project that would allow foreign companies to extract oil deposits it regards as its own. Argentina has sought to impose sanctions on the companies involved in the project and has filed three criminal complaints against Tel Aviv-listed Navitas, the UK’s Rockhopper Exploration and eight other companies and their executives for allegedly violating Argentine law by pursuing oil operations without the country’s authorization. An Argentine judge has ordered it to halt. Meanwhile, the dispute escalated further this week, with Argentina vowing to use legal and diplomatic means to stop the project as Navitas said it was replacing two contractors that would no longer work on it amid the sanctions campaign. Rockhopper Exploration and Navitas Petroleum have said they would continue with the project under licenses granted by the Falkland Islands government and backed by the UK. Meanwhile, Argentina has also pledged to expand a military base in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of the country, making it easier to deploy ships to the Falkland Islands – which Argentines call Islas Malvinas – in case of war. The UK has more than a thousand troops, jets and Royal Navy patrols in and around the Falklands. The history of the islands plays into the dispute. The Falkland Islands are a self-governing British territory, but Argentina has claimed them since 1833. In 1982, Argentina invaded but lost the subsequent 10-week war, helping bring an end to the military junta then running the country. In 2013, the islands’ roughly 4,000 inhabitants voted overwhelmingly to remain British. Argentina dismissed that referendum, however, saying Britain placed settlers on the islands when their status was disputed. Milei won’t deport those inhabitants, he says, if Britain gives up control of the islands. Meanwhile, the UK has repeatedly insisted it would not relinquish control over the Falklands. “The UK’s position on the Falkland Islands is unwavering,” Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said on X. “The Islands are British and will remain so because that is the overwhelming position of the Islanders.” The US has long formally recognized the UK’s de facto administration of the islands but has not taken a formal position on sovereignty. However, in April, the Trump administration floated the possibility of reversing its position to punish NATO allies such as the UK for declining direct involvement in the US-Israeli war on Iran. “Your country was not there to help me,” Trump said in early September. “We didn’t need help, but I did ask NATO, and I asked your former leader [Keir Starmer], ‘Why don’t you send a couple of ships?’ He said, ‘We don’t have any.’ It was pretty sad, the whole thing.” Meanwhile, Argentina’s sovereignty claim over the Falklands is enshrined in Argentina’s constitution and frequently invoked as an expression of national pride – it is also one of the few issues that cuts across the country’s partisan divides. Still, some believe Milei, who is up for reelection next year, is seizing on the issue because of a decline in his approval ratings. “When you have political troubles, this is a tried and true way to try to get out of them and boost support,” Michael Shifter of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, told the Wall Street Journal. “So it’s not surprising that Milei is trying to take full advantage of it for political reasons, because he is in trouble.”

Argentina Bonds Are Still A Good Investment

Emerging Markets International Trader Argentina’s Economy Stumbles. Its Bonds Are Still Attractive. By Craig Mellow Follow Oct 01, 2026, 3:00 am EDT Gift Article Listen (4 min) President of Argentina Javier Milei addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images) Key Points About This Summary Argentine President Javier Milei is losing momentum a year before his re-election bid, with his approval rating dropping. Argentina’s annual inflation rate is stuck around 30%, poverty is increasing, real wages are stagnant and unemployment is rising. Despite the economic challenges, some investment managers view Argentine bonds as potentially attractive due to the country’s fiscal situation. Argentine President Javier Milei is losing momentum a year before his bid for re-election. Luckily for him and bondholders, his Peronist opponents are stuck in reverse. The libertarian firebrand, in office since December 2023, achieved global celebrity as his shock therapy whipped near-hyperinflation and doubled currency reserves in the world’s most-defaulting nation. But he has largely squandered a political boost he got from successful 2025 midterm elections. Advertisement - Scroll to Continue At home, Milei’s drawn-out defense of cabinet chief Manuel Adorni against corruption allegations left vital structural reforms of taxation and pensions to languish. “The Adorni scandal consumed way too much oxygen,” says Bruno Binetti, a fellow at Chatham House. Adorni stepped down in late June. Abroad, Milei’s administration whiffed on a chance to re-enter bond markets before the summer surge in global yields. “If they didn’t want to issue at 9%, they won’t come to market now at 11%,” says Jeff Grills, head of emerging markets debt at Aegon Asset Management. That has left the economy to drift in the wrong direction for most of Argentina’s 46 million citizens. Inflation is stuck around a still-punishing 30% annual rate. Poverty is increasing again after a sharp contraction in Milei’s first two years. This year’s 2% to 3% economic growth is concentrated where jobs aren’t, in oil and mining exploration and agriculture. “Real wages are stagnant and unemployment is rising,” summarizes Thierry Larose, portfolio manager for emerging markets local debt at Vontobel Asset Management. Milei’s poll numbers have dropped accordingly, with voters disapproving of his stewardship by a 60-to-40 margin, according to pollster AtlasIntel. So have bond prices. Benchmark paper maturing in 2038 has fallen from 83 cents on the dollar to 74 cents over the past two months. Advertisement - Scroll to Continue Argentines may well see the alternative as worse when they cast ballots in October 2027, though. Peronism’s leading lights, former President Cristina Kirchner and Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof, have feuded with each other and rehashed the disastrous policy prescriptions that ushered Milei into power. “The Peronists are very nostalgic about a golden age that disappeared more than 15 years ago,” Binetti says. “With the information we have today, continuity is more likely than change” next year, says Alejo Czerwonko, chief investment officer for emerging markets at UBS Global Wealth Management. On that assumption, Argentine bonds are a buy. “They are trading at a steep premium over other B-rated credits despite one of healthiest fiscal situations on the planet,” Czerwonko argues. Aegon’s Grills is a tad more cautious, seeing Argentine credit as “not too far from an entry point.” Yields are near, if not at the top of, the emerging market charts, paying a percentage point more than neighboring Ecuador and nearly as much as Gabon, he notes. Vontobel’s Larose considers “the outlook for Argentine bonds as challenging but potentially attractive.” Advertisement - Scroll to Continue Stagnation might get incumbents thrown out in other countries. In Argentina, it is something of an achievement compared with past chaos and contraction. “Milei is delivering a modicum of stability in the ultimate boom-and-bust economy,” Czerwonko says. He has powerful friends to buttress that stability if necessary, at the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury, which opened a $20 billion credit line to Buenos Aires to fortify the peso before last year’s midterms. Milei’s reforms could still fail, like those of Mauricio Macri before him. But investors may be getting paid adequately for that risk. Write to editors@barrons.com

Bolivia Arrests Attorney General Over Alleged Drug Ties

Bolivia Arrests Attorney General Over Alleged Drug Ties After US Pressure BOLIVIA Bolivia Bolivian police arrested Attorney General Roger Mariaca this week, days after the United States blacklisted him and more than a dozen other officials over alleged ties to drug trafficking cartels. He was arrested Wednesday, with local media reporting that police detained him at Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz. Police also arrested Santa Cruz prosecutor Alberto Zeballos. He and Mariaca were among nearly 20 people from Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador whom the US State Department accused this week of corruption, links to drug trafficking or conspiring against their governments. The State Department said Monday that Mariaca received “bribes to facilitate drug trafficking” and help violent criminals evade justice. Washington revoked the visas of 12 Bolivian officials and made nine other Bolivian nationals who did not have visas ineligible to receive them. Mariaca denied the accusations Monday, describing Washington’s decision as an act of “interference” and “political pressure” in response to his investigations. The Office of the Attorney General also denounced Wednesday’s police action as illegal. The crackdown comes months after notorious Latin American drug trafficker Sebastián Marset, who had eluded police for years, was arrested in Bolivia and handed over to US authorities earlier this year.

Banking Scandal and US Pressure Campaign Roil Brasil's Tight Presidential Race

Banking Scandal and US Pressure Campaign Roil Brazil’s Tight Presidential Race BRAZIL Brazil A month ago, crime and cost of living – along with foreign interference – were the top issues for Brazilian voters ahead of the presidential election on Oct. 4. But that was before the eruption of a sprawling banking scandal implicating the son of the last president, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who is vying to unseat incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) in an extremely tight race. Now, corruption has become a major issue in the vote. “Brazil’s voters hate it,” wrote the Economist. “As the scandal unfurls, corruption has become their primary concern.” On Sept. 11, court documents were unsealed that showed Flávio Bolsonaro is ​under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering tied to now-defunct lender Banco Master. The case has also implicated other politicians and a justice from the country’s highest court. The allegations against Flávio Bolsonaro center on his role in securing at least $12 million from banker Daniel Vorcaro to finance “Dark Horse,” a sympathetic film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has faced multiple corruption allegations and is serving a 27-year prison sentence for plotting to remain in power after losing the 2022 election to Lula. Vorcaro is the former owner of Banco Master, which was shut down last year over a multibillion-dollar fraud case involving fake loans that cost Brazil’s deposit insurance system billions. Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes is accused of feeding Vorcaro information about the investigation. Flávio Bolsonaro and Moraes deny wrongdoing. The turmoil comes as Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro are locked in an exceptionally tight race, with the 11 other candidates trailing far behind. Lula, 80, is seeking a fourth nonconsecutive term. A poll released Sept. 23 put Lula’s share of the vote at 45.8 percent and Flávio Bolsonaro at 43.4 percent in the first round, while they were statistically tied in a hypothetical Oct. 25 runoff, required if no candidate wins a majority. Flávio Bolsonaro’s share of the vote has not dropped since the banking scandal unfurled, polls show. However, some voters like Laiza Sousa, a 22-year-old grocery store worker from the northeastern state of Bahia, say corruption has now become their main issue and see little to like in either candidate. “Neither of them brings anything to Brazil. Flávio … he's from [Jair] Bolsonaro's inner circle,” she told Brazil’s Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. “I haven't seen them improve Brazil, things only get worse.” The case has shaken the race even as voters also worry about violent crime and foreign involvement in the election: US tariffs and sanctions have intensified scrutiny of Washington’s role in an already volatile campaign. Despite a declining national homicide rate, violence remains a top concern for Brazilians, while powerful criminal organizations increasingly control territory and economic activity. In May, Flávio Bolsonaro urged the Trump administration to designate Brazil’s two largest criminal groups as terrorist organizations, a step Washington later took, which Lula opposed as foreign interference. “The main driver of this decision was politics, to pressure Lula and help Flávio prior to the October election,” Latin America analyst Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of US publication Americas Quarterly, told the Washington Post. US tariffs have further drawn Washington into the campaign since Trump imposed new duties on Brazilian goods in July. Flávio Bolsonaro, whose family has close ties to US President Donald Trump, lobbied Washington to postpone them until after the election, arguing the timing could benefit his rival. Lula’s approval rose to its highest level last year after an earlier Trump tariff hike raised duties on Brazilian goods to 50 percent and sanctioned de Moraes at the urging of another Bolsonaro son, Eduardo, a former lawmaker convicted of coercion and sentenced to four years in prison who was granted asylum in the US last year. “What is certain is that the issue of sovereignty and tariffs will be in the campaign,” Cila Schulman, CEO of Brazilian pollster Ideia, told Brazilian business publication Exame. “Foreign policy is (usually) never an issue in Brazilian elections. This time, we will see the relationship with the United States in the debate through the economy.” Lula has increasingly presented US pressure as a challenge to Brazilian sovereignty, while Flávio Bolsonaro’s ties to Trump have become part of broader public concern about foreign involvement, New York University political scientist Patricio Navia told Al Jazeera: “Even right-wing Brazilians, when they see President Trump trying to meddle with Brazilian elections, are not very pleased, because they think that Brazilian problems should be solved in Brazil, not in Washington, DC.”

Hidden Paths In Peru

Hidden Paths Polish and Peruvian archaeologists recently discovered more than 1.5 miles of previously unknown roads beneath the dense forests surrounding Machu Picchu, providing new clues as to how people may have moved through the mountainous landscape around the famous Inca citadel. The archaeological team uncovered the pre-Hispanic routes on the slopes of Mount Yanantin, at altitudes of around 6,500 to 8,860 feet, an area thick with tropical vegetation that has made conventional archaeological surveys difficult. The findings follow preliminary reconnaissance carried out in July 2023 around the Mandor wall, east of Machu Picchu, within the Machu Picchu National Archaeological Park. To see through the dense canopy, researchers turned to Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). The technology fires laser pulses from a drone toward the ground, allowing scientists to digitally strip away vegetation and build a detailed 3D model of the terrain underneath. The scans exposed narrow, zigzagging paths hidden by the cloud forest, alongside possible agricultural terraces, platforms and circular structures. The longest clearly identified stretch of road runs for at least 0.7 miles and displays features associated with Inca construction techniques, according to Heritage Daily. Although archaeologists have not yet conclusively determined the age of the roads, the discovery could reshape researchers' understanding of the wider landscape surrounding Machu Picchu. More than 60 archaeological sites around the citadel are already linked by roads, but most known sites are located on the same side of the Urubamba River. The newly detected routes suggest substantial activity also took place across the river. “The roads we have discovered alter this picture – it turns out that the other side of the river also underwent significant cultural transformations during the Inca period,” Mariusz Ziółkowski, director of the Center for Andean Studies at the University of Warsaw, said in a statement. Machu Picchu – built high in the Peruvian Andes and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site – has undergone more than a century of archaeological investigation. Yet its surrounding forests continue to conceal evidence of a much broader network of human activity. Ziółkowski and his colleagues are planning additional LiDAR surveys and possible excavations to determine when the roads were built and whether they formed part of the wider Inca Road system. “This discovery complements and significantly revises hypotheses regarding the functioning of the entire complex,” he said.

Deep Political Unrest in Venezuela

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcIy7x-kW-A

Concerns Rise Over Venezuela Oil Deal

Black Gold Dreams and Nightmares: Concerns Rise Over the US-Venezuelan Oil Deal VENEZUELA Venezuela From the US to Russia, and almost everywhere in between, drivers around the world are feeling tremendous pain at the fuel pump. The US, however, has a plan to help American drivers: use Venezuela’s oil. More than nine months after American troops seized former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is now in New York facing federal charges that include narco-terrorism and drug trafficking, officials in both countries recently released details about how the US plans to acquire as much as a quarter of Venezuela’s oil. Citing Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, the Associated Press described how the US government and Barbados-based North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), the biggest private oil company operating in Venezuela, formed a joint venture with rights to drill for oil in the South American country for a century. The expectation is that the joint venture will tap 65 billion barrels of crude that will require $100 billion of investment into Venezuelan infrastructure and generate $209 billion in tax revenues for the country. The US Department of Defense will own 35 percent of the joint venture. The US State Department will have the right to purchase 20 percent of its output at cost. On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump “reveled” in the new US access to Venezuela’s oil fields while addressing the UN General Assembly in New York. “It’s perhaps the biggest deal ever made,” he told the audience. “To the victor belong the spoils.” However, the deal has been strongly criticized by some US officials, Venezuelans and others who echoed World Politics Review when it wrote that it “does not pass the sniff test.” One major concern is the involvement of Venezuelan oligarch Alejandro Betancourt, who controls NABEP and who is a close ally of Rodríguez: He owes his fortune in part to no-bid contracts his companies were awarded under former President Hugo Chávez; he has been investigated for money laundering in Switzerland and Spain and was arrested twice in the United Kingdom last year on warrants related to those charges. The US has pressured Switzerland to drop its case and the UK to release Betancourt. He has not yet been charged with a crime. However, observers say Betancourt is extremely controversial in Venezuela, not least because it was his company that was awarded a no-bid contract under Chávez to upgrade state electricity power plants. Venezuela suffers from blackouts to this day. Then there are the worries over the echoes of “imperialism,” as French newspaper Le Monde labelled the deal. What right, they asked, does the US have to abscond with Venezuelan oil, even if the deal benefits ordinary Venezuelans – a big “if” given the rampant corruption and the country’s broken economy? “Nothing about this deal, closer to an ultimatum than a real compromise, rings right,” it wrote. “It represents a predatory move reminiscent of the worst eras of colonial empires, imposed on the land of Bolivarian ideals, which once championed mutual respect between nations.” Meanwhile, free-marketeers at the conservative Cato Institute worried about the lack of transparency, the lack of legitimacy, and the expansion of state corporatism with the US government getting involved directly in the oil business after years of American leaders criticizing meddling socialist governments like Venezuela’s. “This isn’t even ‘creeping’ socialism anymore,” they said, adding that the legality of the deal with an unelected leadership and one not approved by the legislature was in doubt. Regardless, after announcing his intentions to strike the deal months ago, Trump said the deal would unleash a massive wave of foreign investment into Venezuela. So far, observers say he’s right. Continental Resources recently announced a plan with state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) to develop and operate a 126,000-acre patch in the Orinoco Belt, an oil region in the country’s center. Exxon is also preparing to make a big investment to start pumping black gold even though the CEO of ExxonMobil told Trump at a White House meeting earlier this year that Venezuela remains “uninvestable.” Such a move would be a “staggering reversal” for Exxon, Reuters noted: The company left Venezuela after Chávez, a socialist, nationalized its facilities, sued the country and is still owed billions in damages for the expropriation. Regardless, if and when the joint venture starts shipping crude, it will likely be years before that oil helps oil consumers abroad, wrote PolitiFact. The Venezuelan oil industry is decrepit after decades of mismanagement and corruption under the Chávez and Maduro administrations and will take years to upgrade. Armed groups control some areas that are necessary to access in order to drill for oil. Between then and now, a new US administration could scuttle the deal – or the Venezuelans could, if they shrug off their dictatorship in the future. Already, the Venezuelan opposition, which was not party to the deal, has reacted angrily to the agreement, which it sees as theft of national resources. The public is just as dismayed – with 87 percent opposed according to recent polling. Now, the opposition, observers and analysts also worry that the deal will disincentivize any push to restore democracy despite progress that was made in August with the first talks between the government and the opposition, a “National Dialogue” that is supposed to lead to reconciliation and a restoration of democracy. However, such an outcome would likely threaten the arrangement for Rodríguez and the US, analysts say. US officials counter that the deal is key to getting Venezuela’s destroyed economy back on track before any election is held. They say it’s necessary to give democracy a solid foundation. But Venezuelans, many of whom supported the US action to capture Maduro, aren’t buying that, as one Venezuelan told the Economist: “This is all being done behind the people’s back by people who are illegitimately in power.”

The Letelier-Moffit Case At 50: The Verdict of History on Pinochet's Role

The Letelier-Moffitt Case at 50: The Verdict of History on Pinochet’s Role Letelier Moffitt National Security Archive Publishes New FBI Records on “CHILBOM” Investigation into Car Bombing that Killed Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt FBI Agents Interviewed Henry Kissinger on Pinochet’s Role Secretary of State George Shultz Raised Issue of Indicting Pinochet in 1987; Attorney General Janet Reno Authorized “Major” Investigation in 1999 Published: Sep 21, 2026 Briefing Book # 930 Edited by Peter Kornbluh and For more information, contact: 202-994-7000 or peter.kornbluh@gmail.com Subjects Human Rights and Genocide Secrecy and FOIA Terrorism and Counterterrorism Regions South America Events Chile – Coup d’État, 1973 Project Chile BOOKS assassination on embassy row book cover Assassination on Embassy Row by John Dinges book The Pinochet File by Peter Kornbluh, The New Press, Updated edition (September 11, 2013) book cover Pinochet desclasificado by Peter Kornbluh, Un Dia en La Vida/Editorial Catalonia (August, 2023) The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents by John Dinges, The New Press (August 1, 2012) Los Anos del Condor book cover Los años del Cóndor (Spanish Edition) by John Dinges, DEBATE (June 1, 2021) Washington, D.C., September 21, 2026 - As part of a “major case” investigation into the role of General Augusto Pinochet in an act of terrorism in Washington, D.C., the FBI interviewed former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, according to declassified FBI documents posted today by the National Security Archive. In a meeting with FBI agents on May 25, 2000, in New York, Kissinger related a private meeting he had with General Pinochet in Santiago, Chile, just three months before the assassination, according to a newly disclosed FBI summary of the interview. “Kissinger recalled Pinochet bringing up Orlando Letelier’s name when he referenced contact which was being made by Christian Democrats and opponents to the Pinochet regime with members of the US congress. Kissinger could not recall if Pinochet became angry when speaking of Orlando Letelier.” The Archive’s posting marks the 50th anniversary of the car bombing that killed former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier, and his young colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in Washington, D.C. The FBI documents were obtained pursuant to Freedom of Information Act requests filed more than a decade ago by the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project. Codenamed “CHILBOM,” the renewed FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation was authorized by Attorney General Janet Reno on February 8, 1999, several months after General Pinochet was detained in London on an Interpol warrant filed by Spain under the European Anti-Terrorism Convention. “The objective of the renewed investigation is to determine whether sufficient admissible, credible evidence, exists to establish that one or more additional persons, up to and including General Augusto Pinochet was involved in the [Letelier and Moffitt] homicides,” states one FBI overview of the investigation, posted today. “There are still unsolved aspects of the case,” states another FBI report dated March 27, 2000. “The intellectual authors of the crime are still being sought, and this may lead to the highest levels of the former Chilean government, which at the time of the bombing was led by General Augusto Pinochet.” Pinochet’s Role Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt were killed the morning of September 21, 1976, when a bomb planted under the chassis of Letelier’s car exploded as they drove to work along a stretch of Massachusetts Avenue known as Embassy Row. Letelier had served as President Salvador Allende’s ambassador to Washington and minister of defense before the coup and was widely recognized as the most distinguished international voice of opposition to the Pinochet regime. Ronni Moffitt, 25 years old, was a fundraiser at the Institute for Policy Studies, where they both worked. Her husband, Michael Moffitt, Letelier’s research assistant, was the sole survivor of the bombing. Bombed Car Within seven days of the car bombing, the FBI attaché in Buenos Aires, Robert Scherrer, developed a concrete lead from an Argentine intelligence source—the existence of Operation Condor, a collaboration between Southern Cone secret police agencies to track and eliminate their opponents in the region and around the world. “Chile is the center for ‘Operation Condor,’” Scherrer reported in his September 28, 1976, intelligence cable. “It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the recent assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. may have been carried out as a third phase action of ‘Operation Condor.’” For almost twenty years, this secret Condor cable was the only publicly available document trying Chile to the Letelier assassination. It was first obtained and cited by investigative journalist John Dinges, who co-authored with Saul Landau the first book on the Letelier-Moffitt case: Assassination on Embassy Row. Despite this early intelligence, it took almost two years for the FBI to concretely identify the Chilean secret police, DINA, as responsible for the car bombing. A break in the investigation came after photographs of two Chilean operatives who, under the Condor collaboration, had sought false visas in Paraguay for a mission to the United States in August 1976, were published on the front page of a Washington, D.C., newspaper. Within hours, the two were identified as DINA agents: American-born Michael Townley and Major Armando Fernandez Larios. The Carter administration demanded that Townley, a U.S. citizen, be transferred into U.S. custody. After months of delay and obfuscation, the Pinochet regime finally turned him over to the FBI, but only after U.S. authorities agreed not to question him about DINA operations other than the Letelier mission. Based on Townley’s detailed confessions on DINA’s responsibility for the car bombing, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted DINA director Col. Manuel Contreras and his deputy, Pedro Espinoza, along with Armando Fernandez Larios. The U.S. filed formal requests to Chile that they be extradited to the United States to stand trial, generating what one member of Pinochet’s military junta called “a Chilean Watergate.” At that point, General Pinochet spearheaded a major cover up of his and DINA’s role in the car bombing, according to detailed CIA intelligence reports. Pinochet planned to “stonewall” any investigation, the CIA station in Santiago advised in June 1978, using the following strategy: “A. Protect General (r) Manuel Contreras from successful prosecution; B. Stonewall any further requests from the U.S. Government; C. Continue to ‘lobby’ the [Chilean] Supreme Court justices to ensure that requests for extradition of Chilean citizens following anticipated indictments are rejected. D. Continue to exploit Chilean nationalism with a covert action campaign to portray the Letelier investigation as being politically motivated -- another pretext for destabilizing the Pinochet regime.” The CIA also reported that Contreras “admitted his culpability” for the crime to the official Chilean military investigator, but “threatened to claim he was acting on orders from Pinochet in the event he was prosecuted.” According to CIA sources, Contreras “claimed he had safely secreted documentation to support his claim. This blackmail threat worked,” the CIA station reported. “Thus, the coverup began.” The Fernandez Larios Defection This document and other intelligence the CIA gathered on Pinochet’s role remained secret for decades, effectively permitting successive U.S. administrations to evade public pressure to prosecute General Pinochet.But international attention to Pinochet’s criminality as the intellectual author of the Letelier-Moffitt assassination was revived by the defection, in early 1987, of one of the original DINA operatives in the case—Armando Fernandez Larios. In October 1986, U.S. authorities reached out to Fernandez Larios in Chile, using a backchannel intermediary, to offer him a deal: sanctuary in the United States in return for full and honest testimony on the car bombing. A small team of U.S. officials secretly traveled to Santiago and debriefed Fernandez for ten hours in a CIA safe house on January 14, 1987. According to two detailed debriefing reports posted by the Archive today for the first time Fernandez Larios implicated Pinochet as responsible for ordering Letelier’s assassination and orchestrating a concerted cover-up of that crime. In face-to-face meetings with Pinochet in 1978, according to the debriefing papers, Fernandez Larios told Pinochet he was going to go to the U.S. and confess his role in the Letelier operation. “Pinochet was upset that Fernandez had developed this attitude,” according to the debriefing report. Pinochet “told him that he had to be a good soldier, to continue this struggle and this problem would have a happy end.” Twice, according to Fernandez Larios, he requested that Pinochet allow him to resign from the military; and twice Pinochet “refused to allow him to separate from the Army’s jurisdiction.” More importantly, Fernandez Larios related details he had heard and witnessed from DINA’s former deputy director, Pedro Espinoza. Espinoza related to him that DINA Director Manuel Contreras had admitted to the official military investigator in the Letelier case, Hector Orozco, that he had “given the order” to kill Letelier. “When asked why, he stated that he (Contreras) had received an order. When asked from whom, he advised Orozco to ‘ask the chief.’ Since Contreras reported directly to Pinochet the reference to the chief is reasonably clear.” This information became public on February 4, 1987, when Fernandez Larios appeared in the Washington District Court to plead guilty to “being an accessory after the fact” to the murder of Letelier. (He was sentenced to up to seven years in prison and released after only five months.) It was contained in a legal “proffer” of testimony Fernandez Larios provided as part of his plea-bargain agreement with the Justice Department. Although of low evidentiary value, the proffer generated news headlines around the world on Pinochet’s role in the terrorist attack, and became the catalyst, inside the Reagan administration, for a major effort to finally terminate U.S. support for his regime. Secretary of State George Shultz, a leading advocate of breaking Washington’s ties to the Pinochet dictatorship, used the Fernandez Larios evidence to lobby President Reagan to abandon the military regime and support a return to civilian rule. To obtain ammunition for this argument, Shultz requested that the CIA do a comprehensive file review of its raw intelligence on the Letelier-Moffitt assassination. On May 1, 1987, the CIA provided the secretary of state with what remains the most consequential declassified document of thousands of records on the Letelier Moffitt case—a secret report titled “Pinochet’s Role in the Letelier Assassination and Subsequent Coverup” (reposted today). secret memo “A review of our files on the Letelier assassination,” the CIA concluded, “has provided what we regard as convincing evidence that President Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murder.” The assessment added that Pinochet later “decided to stonewall on the case to hide his involvement…to protect his hold on the presidency.” Pinochet had even considered murdering Manual Contreras, the head of DINA, because he was the one man who could testify that Pinochet had ordered the assassination. Shultz then summarized the CIA’s conclusions in a forceful memorandum to President Reagan titled “Pinochet and the Letelier-Moffitt Murders: Implications for US Policy.” The car bombing was “a blatant example of a chief of state’s direct involvement in an act of state terrorism, one that is particularly disturbing both because it occurred in our capital and since his government is generally considered to be friendly,” Shultz argued. “What we now know about Pinochet’s role in this assassination is of the greatest seriousness and adds further impetus to the need to work toward complete democratization of Chile.” Indicting Pinochet? The Secretary of State also lofted the idea of indicting Pinochet as the mastermind of a terrorist attack on the streets of Washinton, D.C. “The CIA has never before drawn and presented its conclusion that such strong evidence exists of his leadership role in this act of terrorism,” Shultz advised Reagan. But “it is not clear whether we can or would want to consider indicting Pinochet, even if we had more public sources of evidence.” Pinochet At the time, the United States government took no steps to indict Pinochet; rather, U.S. policy focused on supporting a transition to democracy in Chile in 1990 and pressing the new civilian government in Chile to prosecute the top DINA officers, Manuel Contreras and his deputy, Pedro Espinoza. In high-profile legal proceedings in the early 1990s, they were both convicted and sentenced to seven and six years respectively in a luxury prison built especially to house them. Only after Pinochet was arrested in London on October 16, 1998, did the Clinton Administration—under pressure from the Letelier and Moffitt families and human rights advocates—revisit the idea of prosecuting Pinochet as the “intellectual author” of an act of terrorism in Washington, D.C. With Attorney General Reno’s February 1999 authorization for a “major” investigation, the Justice Department established a special “terrorism task force” to gather evidence on Pinochet’s role over the course of an 18-month investigation. In March/April 2000, a team of DOJ lawyers and FBI investigators spent close to a month in Chile deposing former military regime officials, among them former DINA director Manuel Contreras, who was officially interrogated at the Punto Peuco luxury prison. The declassified FBI summary of the Contreras deposition is almost entirely redacted. But one U.S. official who was there said that Contreras provided investigators with the regime’s cover story for the Letelier assassination—that the CIA was responsible for the car bombing. Pro-Pinochet reporters who Contreras had invited to the prison, then ambushed the task force team as they left, turning the deposition into a media propaganda opportunity to absolve the military regime of responsibility for the terrorist attack. Around August 2000, only a few months after Pinochet returned from over a year of house arrest in London, the DOJ lawyers investigating him presented Attorney General Reno with summaries of evidence and recommendations on indicting the former dictator. But Reno deferred action on prosecuting Pinochet to the incoming administration of George W. Bush, who assumed the presidency in January 2001. The Bush administration appears to have shelved the Pinochet investigation. “The Letelier case disappeared down a black hole,” one U.S. official told Chilean journalist Pascale Bonnefoy in 2002. Fifty years after the car bombing occurred on Embassy Row, none of the FBI evidentiary records or DOJ recommendations have been declassified. One December 2000 FBI memorandum identified “an investigative summary of the CHILBOM investigation” that was being filed. But that summary was withheld from declassification to the National Security Archive. On the 50th anniversary of the assassination, the Archive called on the Department of Justice to release all remaining records on the investigation and its conclusions. “The Letelier-Moffitt case remains the most infamous and emblematic atrocity of the many heinous human rights crimes committed by the Pinochet regime,” said Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project. “The verdict of history on General Pinochet’s role as an international terrorist awaits the declassification of these final documents.” The Documents ebb930 doc1 Document 1 FBI, interview summary, [Formal FBI Interview with Henry Kissinger], May 25, 2000 May 25, 2000 Source National Security Archive Freedom of Information Act Request As part of the FBI/DOJ investigation into Pinochet’s role in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, several FBI special attaches interviewed Henry Kissinger in his New York office on May 25, 2000. Kissinger told them he had met with General Pinochet in Santiago, Chile, only a few months before the assassination, accompanied by his top aide for Latin America, Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs William Rogers (whose name is redacted in the document). According to this summary of the conversation, “Kissinger recalled Pinochet bringing up Orlando Letelier’s name when he referenced contact which was being made by Christian Democrats and opponents to the Pinochet regime with members of the US congress. Kissinger could not recall if Pinochet became angry when speaking of Orlando Letelier.” ebb930 doc2 Document 2 FBI, status report, “CHILBOM Investigation: Overview/Update,” ca. May 2000 May 2000 Source National Security Archive Freedom of Information Act Request In this update report on the status of the CHILBOM investigation, the FBI provides details on Pinochet’s role. The three-page overview—in which the names of well-known Chilean DINA officials and operatives and their anti-Castro Cuban collaborators in the car-bomb operation are inexplicably redacted—provides a specific statement of mission: “In February 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno authorized the renewed investigation of the Letelier and Moffitt murders. The objective of the renewed investigation is to determine whether sufficient admissible, credible evidence, exists to establish that one or more additional persons, up to and including General Augusto Pinochet was involved in the homicides.” The report advises that agents have traveled to Chile and Argentina to review thousands of documents on the case, and that a special DOJ/FBI delegation spent a month in Chile—March 20-April 20, 2000— “taking sworn testimony from 38 of the 46 witnesses requested. Five of the 46 were found to be deceased,” the FBI reported, “and two are fugitives on unrelated matters.” ebb930 doc3 Document 3 FBI, [Request for Three Investigators to go to Chile to Conduct Inquiry], March 20, 2000 Mar 20, 2000 The FBI’s Terrorism Task Force prepares for a second extended investigative trip to Chile, as described in this report. The report cites the first trip, in January 2000, of FBI investigators who traveled to Santiago to undertake a “full file review” of archival documents. Now investigators will go to Chile to officially depose some 50 individuals who “were involved with the Pinochet Junta during 1973-1990.” The investigators will not be allowed to question the witnesses directly; that will be done by a Chilean lawyer, Alfredo Etcheberry, who represents the U.S. government. The FBI and DOJ officials will watch the proceedings via a closed-circuit TV set-up from an adjacent room in the courthouse. ebb930 doc4 Document 4 FBI, cable, [Request for Attorney General Approval to Interview Witnesses in Chile], Secret, March 27, 2000 Mar 27, 2000 Source National Security Archive FOIA Request This cable reports on the activities of a DOJ/FBI team that has arrived in Chile to formally investigate Pinochet’s role in the Letelier-Moffitt car bombing. The team has requested that the Chilean courts arrange for the depositions of 46 former aides to Pinochet and the former head of DINA, Gen. Manuel Contreras. “The assassination,” the cable states, “was a particularly notorious and vicious criminal act committed on U.S. soil.” “There are still unsolved aspects of the case,” the FBI investigator notes. “The intellectual authors of the crime are still being sought, and this may lead to the highest levels of the former Chilean government, which at the time of the bombing was led by General Augusto Pinochet.” ebb930 doc5 Document 5 FBI, summary, [Deposition of former DINA Director, Gen. Manuel Contreras], May 3, 2000 May 3, 2000 Source National Security Archive FOIA Request On April 10, 2000, the FBI/DOJ team of investigators deposed former DINA chieftain Manuel Contreras in Punto Peuco, the luxury prison that was built for him when he was first convicted for the assassination of Orlando Letelier in 1993. The entirety of Contreras’ testimony has been redacted. The day before the official interrogation, the FBI/DOJ investigators met with Contreras at the prison. According to one of the investigators, Contreras blamed the CIA for the assassination, advancing the cover story he and Pinochet had concocted in 1978—when DINA operatives were identified as responsible—that the CIA had planted the bomber, American-born DINA agent Michael Townley, inside the Chilean secret police to embarrass the Chilean regime. ebb930 doc6 Document 6 FBI, “Investigative summary on CHILBOM investigation,” December 11, 2000 Dec 11, 2000 Source National Security Archive FOIA Request Almost two years after the CHILBOM inquiry was authorized by Attorney General Janet Reno, and as the new Bush administration prepares to take office, the FBI files a copy of an “investigative summary” on the case. The summary, which presumably catalogues the evidence on Pinochet’s role, has been compiled at the Washington Field Office (WFO) of the FBI; but the name of the person, or agency, which compiled it is redacted. The summary remains secret fifty years after the Letelier-Moffitt car bombing. ebb930 doc7 Document 7 State Department, cable, [Highlights of Ten-Hour Debriefing with Fernandez Larios], Top Secret Eyes-Only Roger Channel, January 15, 1987 Jan 15, 1987 Source Obama Administration Special Declassification on Letelier Case In early January, a small U.S. team arrived in Chile to hold a secret debriefing session with Armando Fernandez Larios, pursuing a deal with him to provide evidence in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination. This cable summarizes the most important information he provided over the course of a ten-hour meeting. Fernandez Larios shared details of Pinochet’s effort to block him from going to the the United States to face charges in the car-bombing. “Pinochet was upset that Fernandez had developed this attitude,” according to the summary of the Fernandez debriefing. Pinochet also rejected his attempts to resign from the military. Fernandez also related hearing that Pinochet, identified as “the chief,” had given the order to DINA head Manuel Contreras to assassinate Letelier. “Pinochet was implicated as ordering the assassination,” according to this report. ebb930 doc8 Document 8 State Department, cable, “Letelier Case,” Secret Roger Channel, January 22, 1987 Jan 22, 1987 Source Obama Administration Special Declassification on Letelier-Moffitt Case This nine-page summary of the January 14, 1987, debriefing of Armando Fernandez Larios at a safe house in Santiago, Chile, states that it is a “transcript of interview with Fernandez.” Rather than a literal transcript, it is a summary of the ten-hour meeting, how it progressed and who said what. The long memorandum traces the entire debriefing from beginning to end, including Fernandez Larios’ description of: the initial mission to Paraguay with DINA operative Michael Townley to obtain false passports to the U.S. before the assassination; meeting with Townley in a men’s room at JFK airport to provide him with cash and surveillance information for the Letelier mission; and his interactions with Gen. Pinochet and Col. Contreras after the assassination. In this first meeting with U.S. officials, Fernandez claims that he had only been told the mission to the U.S. was to conduct surveillance on Letelier, not to harm him. A week later in Brazil, however, he repeatedly failed a polygraph test on the question of his knowledge of the real objective to assassinate Letelier. ebb930 doc9 Document 9 CIA, Intelligence Assessment, “Pinochet’s Role in the Letelier Assassination and Subsequent Coverup,” Secret, May 1, 1987 May 1, 1987 Source Obama Chile Declassification At the request of Secretary of State George Shultz, the CIA reviewed its raw intelligence intercepts and reports on General Augusto Pinochet’s role in the September 21, 1976, car bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt. Beginning in 1978, the agency gathered intelligence—still classified—supplied by high-level informants close to Pinochet and to his secret police chief, Manuel Contreras. The informants provided detailed information on the relationship between Contreras and Pinochet as well as Pinochet’s personal role in covering up his responsibility for the assassination. “A review of our files on the Letelier assassination,” the CIA reported, “has provided what we regard as convincing evidence that President Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murder.” The assessment added that Pinochet later “decided to stonewall on the case to hide his involvement…to protect his hold on the presidency” and even considered murdering Manual Contreras, the head of DINA, because he was the one man who knew Pinochet had ordered the assassination. ebb930 doc10 Document 10 DOS, Memorandum to the President, “Pinochet and the Letelier-Moffitt Murders: Implications for US Policy,” Secret, October 6, 1987 Oct 6, 1987 To convince President Reagan that the time has come to terminate U.S. support for the Pinochet regime, Secretary of State George Shultz reports that the CIA has “convincing evidence” that Pinochet “personally ordered” the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington. Shultz characterizes the car bombing as “perhaps the only clear case of state-supported terrorism that has occurred in Washington D.C.” According to Shultz, “this is a blatant example of a chief of state’s direct involvement in an act of state terrorism, one that is particularly disturbing both because it occurred in our capital and since his government is generally considered to be friendly.” Secretary Shultz advises the President that Pinochet’s direct involvement must affect...our overall policy towards Chile.” He urges Reagan to shift U.S. policy from support for the dictatorship to a push for civilian governance. “What we now know about Pinochet’s role in these assassinations,” Shultz concludes, “is of the greatest seriousness and adds further impetus to the need to work toward complete democratization of Chile.” ebb930 doc11 Document 11 CIA, intelligence cable, “[Deleted] Strategy of Chilean Government with Respect to Letelier Case, and Impact of Case on Stability of President Pinochet,” Secret, June 23, 1978 Jun 23, 1978 Source Clinton Chile Declassification Project As revelations of DINA’s role in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination spread in Chile, the CIA station in Santiago transmits a detailed report on Pinochet’s efforts to “stonewall” any investigation of his own role and block prosecution of his officials. Drawing on CIA sources inside the military, the report summarizes Pinochet’s strategy: “A. Protect General (r) Manuel Contreras from successful prosecution; B. Stonewall any further requests from the U.S. Government; C. Continue to ‘lobby’ the [Chilean] Supreme Court justices to ensure that requests for extradition of Chilean citizens following anticipated indictments are rejected. D. Continue to exploit Chilean nationalism with a covert action campaign to portray the Letelier investigation as being politically motivated -- another pretext for destabilizing the Pinochet regime.” The CIA also reports that Contreras “admitted his culpability” for the crime to the official Chilean military investigator but “threatened to claim he was acting on orders from Pinochet in the event he were prosecuted.” According to the CIA, Contreras “claimed he had safely secreted documentation to support his claim. This blackmail threat worked,” the CIA reported. “Thus, the coverup began.” ebb930 doc12 Document 12 CIA, Intelligence Assessment, “Chile: Implications of the Letelier Case,” Secret-Sensitive, May 1978 May 1, 1978 Source Clinton Chile Declassification Project After the FBI identified the Chilean secret police, DINA, as responsible for the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, the CIA drafted a comprehensive assessment on how Pinochet will attempt to hide his regime’s role in an act of international terrorism and move to protect his power if he is implicated in this atrocity. “The [Chilean] government’s reaction to proof of Pinochet’s complicity in the Letelier slaying might take one of several courses,” according to the assessment, which correctly predicts “an attempt to institute a coverup, with charges that the US is trying to destabilize the regime.” The assessment quotes a member of the military junta as calling the scandal “a Chilean Watergate.”

Argentina's Wild Oil Boom In Vaca de Muerte

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/world/americas/argentina-oil-patagonia-milei.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8FA.wFfE.Y3jGNuF0tiem&smid=url-share

At Least 216 Dead In Colombia's Strongest Quake In Years

At Least 216 Dead in Colombia’s Strongest Quake in Years COLOMBIA Colombia Rescuers continued to search for thousands of missing people Tuesday after a powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia earlier this week, killing at least 216 people, injuring almost 2,600 more, leaving nearly 4,000 unaccounted for and collapsing structures across the country. The quake struck shortly after 7:30 a.m. local time Monday, hitting cities including Cali, Pereira, Quibdó and Manizales, with tremors also felt in neighboring Ecuador and Panama. The US Geological Survey said the epicenter was near San José del Palmar, a community of about 4,800 people in the Chocó region, about 250 miles west of Bogotá. The Colombian Geological Service described it as the country’s strongest recorded earthquake “in the 21st century.” Several aftershocks followed. Officials said around 1,600 buildings were damaged or had collapsed across the country. In Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, search teams and civilians formed lines to remove concrete and rubble from destroyed buildings. Pereira, another of the hardest-hit cities, was plunged into darkness Monday evening as volunteers searched for survivors. Authorities had little information about the full extent of damage in Chocó, one of Colombia’s poorest regions, where dense jungle and limited road access are complicating efforts to assess the toll. The disaster presents the first major challenge for President Abelardo de la Espriella, who was sworn in over the weekend and had been in office for only three days. De la Espriella declared a state of emergency and said he had personally taken charge of the response, mobilizing the military and police. The earthquake follows two powerful quakes in neighboring Venezuela in late June, killing more than 6,300 people and destroying hundreds of buildings. International assistance began mobilizing Monday night, with the US State Department announcing $15.5 million for emergency shelter, food and other aid. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Chilean President José Antonio Kast also offered assistance.

Iran's IRGC Plans To Launch Attacks In The US!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9lNAlMITxE

Argentina, U.S. In Diplomatic Fight with Brasil Over Election Interference

Argentina, US in Diplomatic Fight With Brazil Over Election Interference BRAZIL Brazil Brazilian fears of interference in its upcoming presidential election are causing a severe diplomatic brouhaha on two continents, with the country recalling its ambassador to Argentina and accusing the US of attempting to manipulate the vote results in favor of the current president’s right-wing opponent. On Tuesday, Brazil recalled its ambassador and downgraded its diplomatic relations with Argentina following a fresh round of remarks by Argentine President Javier Milei criticizing his Brazilian counterpart, leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula. At a rally over the weekend in the Brazilian city of São Paulo to launch the campaign of Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro and Lula’s main opponent in Brazil's October presidential vote, the Argentine leader referred to Lula as a "thief." He also criticized Brazil's Supreme Court over its decision to sentence Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years for his role in a failed coup attempt after he lost the 2022 elections to Lula. Lula reacted to the comments by saying, "In Brazil, we do not accept anyone sticking their nose where it doesn't belong." Meanwhile, in a separate diplomatic dispute over the elections, the Trump administration on Tuesday revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador after Brazil denied visas to two US diplomats on the grounds that Washington was seeking to interfere in Brazil's elections. The US is also upset by what it sees as Brazil stalling on approving President Donald Trump’s nominee to become ambassador in Brasilia. Trump has had a fractious relationship with the Lula administration, which has opposed him on numerous policies, but also because of Trump’s close relationship with Jair Bolsonaro. Trump imposed sanctions on Brazilian officials and tariffs to punish the country for its prosecution of the former president and his allies. As a result, Lula, who was recently confirmed as his party's candidate in the upcoming presidential vote, has increasingly portrayed himself as a defender of Brazilian sovereignty against foreign interference.

Brasilian President Lula To Run Again

Brazilian President Lula to Run Again to ‘Protect Fatherland’ From Foreign Interference BRAZIL Brazil Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva launched his bid for a fourth and final term in the upcoming presidential election over the weekend, casting the election as a choice between national independence and submission to foreign interests. The president, 80, also known as Lula, was officially confirmed as the candidate for the leftist Workers’ Party in October’s elections, in what will be his seventh race for the country’s top job. The election is expected to pit Lula against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently serving a 27-year sentence for attempting a coup after he lost the 2022 elections to Lula. Right-wing political leaders such as Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Argentina’s Javier Milei and US President Donald Trump have expressed support for Bolsonaro’s campaign. In a speech announcing his run, Lula promised to protect Brazil’s reserves of rare earths and other critical minerals from foreign control. “I want to be prepared, so that no one invades this country,” he said. He also warned against foreign interference in the election, particularly by the Trump administration, casting himself as the defender of the fatherland. For the past 18 months, Lula’s popular support has grown as Brazilians have soured on the Bolsonaros after the Trump administration, at their urging, imposed steep tariffs on Brazil and sanctioned its officials to protest the legal proceedings against Jair Bolsonaro. Flávio Bolsonaro has requested the Trump administration delay its new tariffs on Brazil as he believes it will help Lula, a conclusion analysts agree with. More recently, while Lula is still ahead in the polls, the gap has narrowed significantly: One recent poll showed that 46 percent of Brazilian voters support the current president and 45 percent favor Bolsonaro. Other recent polls show Lula ahead by more than 10 percentage points if the Oct. 4 election goes to a second round, to be held on Oct. 25. That would occur if neither candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote. The election, meanwhile, is being closely watched across Latin America, where several countries including Peru, Colombia and Chile have recently ejected left-wing governments in favor of conservative leaders aligned with the US.

Ecuador "Canal Of Death"

Ecuador’s ‘Canal of Death’ Underscores How Its War on Crime Is Flailing ECUADOR Ecuador The canal in the Nueva Prosperina district of Guayaquil on Ecuador’s western coast was built more than a decade ago for agricultural irrigation, forming part of a 45-kilometer aqueduct. It was once a quiet, peaceful, if polluted, waterway in a city once known as the "Pearl of the Pacific." These days, the bodies of more than 100 murder victims thrown into the canal's murky waters have resurfaced – stripped naked or stuffed into burlap sacks, often bound and showing signs of torture and sometimes decapitated. Locally, the waterway has been dubbed the “Canal of Death,” a dumping ground for the bodies of drug runners, their associates and their many unfortunate victims in what has become the most violent neighborhood in the city. The waterway has become a symbol of the massive drug-related crime problem that continues to plague Ecuador, a country that over the past few years has become a haven for cartels seeking to ship their narcotics and other illicit products to Asia, Europe and North America. “(Ecuador has become) a critical link in the global drug trade,” said CNN. As a result, “Ecuador is turning into a war zone.” The consequences of that role are stark. Six Ecuadorian cities were ranked among the top 10 most dangerous in the world in 2025, according to the Mexico-based Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice. Three years ago, Ecuadorans hailed the arrival of President Daniel Noboa, who promised to crack down on crime. But analysts say that his tough-on-crime efforts haven’t been as impactful as Ecuadorans had hoped. “Once one of South America’s safest countries, Ecuador has in under a decade become its most violent, transforming into a hub of the drug trade to Europe,” wrote the International Crisis Group. “President Daniel Noboa’s iron-fist approach brought murder rates down at first, but violence has since soared again and crime continues unabated.” It’s also spreading to regions in Ecuador that had long managed to escape it. And as analysts note, it’s changing Ecuadoran society and its economy. Now, many people are afraid to go out to bars or restaurants or go shopping. It’s now become normal to refrain from greeting people in the street. As a result, businesses are struggling. Attacking the crime issue, meanwhile, is coming with costs. Human rights activists, for instance, have raised concerns about Ecuadoran security forces cracking down on drug gangs, often with the help of American military advisers. Human Rights Watch found that Ecuadoran security forces “tortured four Colombian farm workers during a joint operation with the US,” wrote the Miami Herald. The troops beat them, shocked them with electricity and conducted mock executions without ever charging the workers with a crime. “The two countries’ security relationship is deepening at a moment when both governments have engaged in serious human rights violations fueled by their insistence on framing their confrontations with organized crime groups as a kind of war,” wrote Human Rights Watch. This close cooperation could take a political toll on Noboa, who has pushed his close relationship with US President Donald Trump. Last year, Ecuadoran voters rejected Noboa’s proposal to allow foreign military bases in the country, illustrating their reluctance to allow him to take the alliance with the US military and private contractors too far. Despite that referendum and as the human rights activists’ complaints show, Noboa’s administration is working more closely than ever with US authorities, according to InSight Crime. American officials recently added Chone Killers, an Ecuadorian gang, to the US list of foreign terrorist organizations, freeing up funds, enabling sanctions and giving them authority to help local security forces hunt down its members, InSight Crime added. Meanwhile, Noboa’s administration is insisting that crime rates are falling. But Ecuadorans like Luis of Quevedo, in the agricultural province of Los Ríos, aren’t buying that. He says that he grew up in a peaceful, rural region surrounded by banana, plantain and coffee farms. Now, he and his family fear for their lives: He was kidnapped. So was his elderly father-in-law in a different incident. After paying ransoms, armed men came to their home and began shooting because they said they miscalculated and wanted more money. “We want to think that life goes on as usual,” he told El País. “But we no longer have that peaceful life we ​​once had.”