The dead are saints. Most of the time, however, the dead are not saints. Orlando Letelier, assassinated 40 years ago in Washington D.C. on the orders of the Pinochet regime, was not a hero. A former political prisoner, exile, brave opponent, and martyr. A human being, like everyone else.

Showing glimpses of the humanity of the former Chilean ambassador to the U.S. (1971-1973) and former minister under Salvador Allende is one of the many merits of the classic book Assassination on Embassy Row (1980) by Saul Landau and John Dinges (Asesinato en Washington: El caso Letelier).

It is, without a doubt, the best investigation into the case. Currently, it can only be found on used book websites. A true political thriller that leaves you breathless.

Rereading the book, with the focus on Orlando, the man, is revealing.

On the day of the military coup—September 11, 1973—Letelier could not enter the Ministry of Defense, which he headed. He was detained and later transferred to Dawson Island, in the Strait of Magellan. A lonely island a five-hour boat ride from Punta Arenas.

He was there with other high-ranking officials from Salvador Allende’s government, and they endured, for better or worse, Antarctic temperatures and winds reaching 120 kilometers per hour. He came to weigh 59 kilos at 1.82 meters tall.

After a month, letters and photos from family members began to arrive at the concentration camp. The detainees waited for them anxiously. Letelier, on the other hand, did not even want to see them. He would have preferred not to receive them.

They distracted and saddened him. “Survive” was his mantra; he repeated it day and night. He had to focus only on himself. Nostalgia was useless. Without a doubt, he was the most pragmatic person in the entire camp.

In Washington, the life of the exile Orlando Letelier—44 years old in 1976—was not glamorous. He lived in a simple chalet in a good neighborhood in the Washington suburbs, but with four children and as an employee of an NGO, the money barely stretched. They lived with just enough.

He felt fear; he knew he was being spied on. As the most active organizer of the Chilean opposition to the military regime abroad, he was stepping on toes. Although he never imagined they would place a bomb under his blue Chevrolet Chevelle in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue.

Pinochet’s secret police, the DINA, had already begun the hunting season for its international targets. Letelier was just one, but he was the one making the most noise and was the best connected internationally. He knew how to pull the strings of political power and had the intelligence to ensure the voice of the Chilean exile was heard in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America.

He had little time to be with his four sons when they were children. The number of trips he made to promote his cause prevented it. At that time, however, a father like Letelier was the norm.

Letelier was attractive, but in Washington, the abundance of Aryan, tall, and thick-haired men made this almost bald lawyer go unnoticed.

The man had a vice. He was a compulsive smoker who would go through up to three packs of cigarettes a day. An insomniac, he managed to sleep up to five hours a night. The rest of the time, he smoked.

Free of tension, he was a charming and sophisticated conversationalist. He possessed charm and wit, the book says.

Part of the 13 years he lived in Washington before his exile, he worked at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). This experience was his great capital in the Northern Hemisphere. He was a Latino, but with such a thorough knowledge and understanding of Americans that—as ambassador during the UP—he maintained a dialogue with Washington until the end, when Richard Nixon’s government opted to support the military coup in Chile.

He never lost respect or contacts within the government.

In 1974, after the semi-polar life on Dawson, Letelier passed through the Ritoque detention camp and went into exile in Venezuela, thanks to his compadre Diego Arias, governor of Caracas, who pressured the Chilean regime.

The Letelier family, however, took months to join him. He was alone in the tropical country. At a party, a beautiful Venezuelan millionaire approached him. She was a very refined woman. “Caridad” was the pseudonym chosen by Landau and Dinges to refer to her.

Letelier was fragile. Venezuela was far away, he had been on the verge of dying from cold and starvation, and he remained lonely in exile. How to stop him?

The intense affair with Caridad—the book’s authors describe—extended and caused him and his wife, Isabel Morel, to separate when the entire family reunited in Washington. Settled in a tiny bachelor apartment near his office at Sheridan Circle, Letelier had not managed to stop seeing the other woman, despite having promised his wife he would.

At the end of his days, in September 1976, they were together and reconciled with Isabel.

One of those accused in the crime against Letelier, which occurred on September 21, 1976, was DINA agent Captain Armando Fernández Larios. He flew to the U.S. with the attractive Liliana Walker, whose real name was Mónica Luisa Lagos and who was a prostitute.

She—who worked for the DINA—was to approach Letelier in some public place in Washington to extract information. The plan stated that she had to seduce him. “Although that plan didn’t happen that way, the DINA’s idea was because Letelier—says journalist Dinges—had a reputation as a womanizer. We didn’t write it that way in the book, but I remember it well. They must have investigated him.”

Orlando Letelier’s weaknesses are almost absent from Assassination on Embassy Row, says John Dinges. “We created a favorable and expressly non-inquisitive portrait of Orlando. Saul Landau (the co-author, deceased) was his friend and colleague.” But the finesse in showing a less-than-ideal face of a martyr is appreciated.

Orlando Letelier was clearly not a saint, nor was he a hero, but he had humanity to spare.

by Andrea Lagos A.

Source: quepasa.cl, September 16, 2016

Journalists and Alejandro Hales convinced Mónica Lagos to speak. After corroborating the identity of this key DINA agent in the assassination of Orlando Letelier, photographing her passport, and taking her to a hotel, the newspaper printed the front page with one of the most remembered journalistic scoops of its time.

After noon on Tuesday, April 16, 1990, the general editor and the national editor of La Época, accompanied by Alejandro Hales, entered Mónica Lagos’s house on Calle Amapolas. This time, the person who opened the door was a man of about 33 years old, who introduced himself as the woman’s brother.

She had changed her clothes. She wore a different hairstyle and was wearing makeup.

–“Don Alejandro, do you remember me?”

Alejandro Hales looked at her closely, trying to recall her face.

Mónica Lagos reminded him of the name of a woman who had committed suicide some time ago.

–“Of course, of course. Now I remember,” said Hales.

The journalists proposed that Mónica Lagos speak alone with Alejandro Hales. Whatever she told him would be protected by the lawyer’s professional privilege. Almost an hour later, when the editors returned, the woman began to answer questions.

She admitted her trip with Fernández Larios to the United States in August 1976 to prepare for the assassination of Orlando Letelier, acknowledged her relationship with the DINA, and provided names and circumstances.

Before leaving, Hales recommended that she tell the truth. She would unload a burden carried for many years, find support from other people, and feel safer...

In the months prior, the woman’s house had been visited by suspicious people, according to the family, and throughout the 80s, Mónica had been virtually abandoned by her bosses and friends in the DINA. She had no jobs or income, lived in a state of semi-confinement, and was aware that her life did not have much of a future.

That afternoon, Mónica Lagos narrated at length to Manuel Salazar her participation in the Letelier case.

In the preparation of the attack on Letelier, so-called pre-operational intelligence had to be carried out. It was necessary to locate the target’s home and workplace, observe, record habits, routines, and customs, identify friendships, make sketches of movements, and other details. For that task, the DINA chose Lieutenant Armando Fernández Larios.

Colonel Pedro Espinoza, in charge of the mission, proposed to Manuel Contreras that they also send a female agent to Washington to collaborate in tracking Letelier and even, possibly, lure Letelier into a fleeting love affair that would yield good dividends. He proposed Mónica Lagos Aguirre, whom both knew closely.

The DINA’s team of female agents was in charge of Major Rolf Wenderoth and Carabineros Major Viviana Palmira Almuna Guzmán. They worked in the counterintelligence department, under the command of Major Vianel Valdivieso, a personal friend of the DINA director.

The young and attractive women operated in various places, including two apartments, one on Calle San Antonio, between Huérfanos and Merced; the other, on Calle Seminario, at the entrance to the Providencia commune. In both places, they held special parties for DINA bosses or brought in important public figures to obtain information.

Luisa Lagos, 23 years old in 1976, blonde with green eyes, had a body that was hard to ignore; toned legs, sinuous hips, generous breasts, and a flirtatious gaze were her main attractions. She had been a dancer on Televisión Nacional and in the group Onda Brava, a quartet that enlivened the nights at the Carrera and Crillón hotels.

At the beginning of 1975, she met Vianel Valdivieso, who proposed that she collaborate with the DINA, and she accepted. The young woman had also been a student of Lieutenant Fernández in the shooting classes he taught at the DINA intelligence school, in a facility located in the Cajón del Maipo.

On August 25, 1976, under the false identities of Armando Faúndez and Liliana Walker Martínez, the couple traveled to New York. On September 8, Michael Townley followed them; in one of his jacket pockets, he carried a small bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume that contained sarin gas.

On September 9, Fernández Larios and Townley met at Kennedy Airport. In a few minutes, the former related everything he had been able to find out about Letelier and gave the American several maps and plans. Shortly after, Fernández and Mónica Lagos returned to Santiago.

A journalistic mission

Around 5:00 p.m., the neighborhood on Calle Amapola could no longer contain its curiosity. The cars that had arrived at the scene, the movement of people, radios, and cell phones were too much for a peaceful area.

Someone called the Carabineros. A van with four officers commanded by a sergeant stopped next to the La Época car. The police approached with pistols drawn and wearing bulletproof vests.

The sergeant asked for identification. He consulted his unit, returned the credentials, and asked what they were doing there.

–“Journalistic mission,” replied Juan Gonzalo Rocha, laconically.

–“And where is the news here?” asked the policeman.

–“Closer than you think and further than I would like,” replied Rocha, remembering an old peasant saying from his father.

The policeman withdrew with his men.

They could not wait any longer. Mónica Lagos understood that at any moment the area would be filled with journalists, police, and who knows how many other people. She was willing to speak, to tell her story and her personal nightmare in detail, but under certain security conditions. She feared her former DINA bosses.

She would speak; but outside the home. The newspaper’s general management and administrative management provided the solution: a discreet and safe place.

The general manager himself, Pablo Berwart, traveled to Calle Amapolas to help with the operation. Mónica Lagos’s brother, Luis, decided to accompany her.

After 7:00 p.m., Berwart, Salazar, and the woman boarded Luis Lagos’s taxi. Behind them, a gray Nissan car departed with two other men from La Época.

A race against fear had begun.

Both vehicles headed to downtown Santiago. No one followed them. They stopped in a parking lot located at Diagonal Paraguay and Portugal, next to a gas station.

The group entered one of the buildings, climbed the stairs, and entered a two-room apartment. Very soon, enough provisions for two days would arrive at the location.

That night, Mónica Lagos continued with her story. She agreed to have her passport photographed, wrote the name "Liliana Walker" on a business card to facilitate a possible handwriting analysis from the United States, and asked that in this first dramatic instance she be called Luisa (her first name), with the futile hope that her neighbors would not recognize her.

Neither she nor anyone could suspect at that moment that the United States would have no interest in her. That same night, officials from the embassy in Santiago received information about what was happening, but they did not make any move.

On Amapolas, the vigil of the La Época mobile unit continued that Monday night, the 16th. Around 8:00 p.m., a second police van arrived, this time from the 18th Precinct of Los Guindos. The officers repeated the procedure of the first, and left.

At 10:00 p.m., a nervous neighbor approached the reporter Juan Gonzalo Rocha.

–“You are from Investigations, aren’t you?” he asked. And, without waiting for a word, he answered himself:

–“No, I know what you are. Don’t tell me anything.”

Rocha, aware that it is a crime to impersonate officials, tried to be evasive:

–“Do you have a problem?”

–“No, clean as a whistle.”

–“Then don’t worry. We are honorable people.”

–“The thing is, my wife is hysterical. The children can’t sleep.”

–“Go in peace. Tonight you will sleep protected.”

The neighbor left, very comforted. Three hours later, he returned. Rocha spoke to him first:

–“You have the look of someone coming to offer us a coffee.”

–“Indeed. That is what I came to do.”

The neighbor left and shortly after returned with his wife, his children, and the nanny, in a caravan, with mugs of coffee, plus four fried-egg sandwiches.

–“I know you can’t come into the house, right?” expressed the kind lady.

–“That’s life,” replied Rocha, gratefully.

The reporter spent the whole night there, although it was no longer necessary. At 6:00 a.m., he called to ask for instructions. "Go to sleep," they told him.

Shortly after Mónica Lagos’s departure, and given the imminence of the publication of the journalistic scoop, she asked that her family also be taken out of the house, at least for a day. The newspaper provided vehicles for the entire group: her parents, two sisters, and four minors, including her 8-year-old daughter, Paula.

They left for a downtown hotel on Calle Estado. But they were not at peace. Their regular and peaceful life had begun to change abruptly.

After midnight, the presses of the company where La Época was printed, on Avenida Pajaritos, began to roll. The newspaper’s trucks left in the early morning with the bundles to travel the country, carrying the biggest news scoop of recent years: "I am Liliana Walker."

The raw truth

At 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday the 17th, Mónica Lagos turned on a radio to listen to El Diario de Cooperativa. Sergio Campos’s voice insistently repeated the La Época scoop. The woman became uneasy. Her brother went out to buy the newspaper.

Upon seeing the front page of the morning paper, Mónica Lagos shuddered and had for the first time a clear notion of what she was facing. It was the truth, the raw truth, hidden for so long.

What followed was a whirlwind, a frantic flight from the ghosts of the past and shadowy threats. The publicity of the case was good protection, but more was still needed, much more: official protection.

After 9:00 a.m., the family announced that they did not want to stay at the hotel and that they preferred to move to the house of some relatives. Once again, the group was transported out of the center.

In La Moneda, there was also unease. Salazar received a call from the Ministry of the Interior. They asked him to go to the seat of government as discreetly as possible.

–“Enter through the Plaza de la Constitución parking lots. We will be waiting for you. It’s full of journalists here,” they asked him.

The national editor of La Época was taken to the offices of the Minister of the Interior, Enrique Krauss, who was waiting for him with lawyer Luis Toro, head of the Legal Division. The minister wanted to know firsthand what was happening with the sought-after Liliana Walker.

He listened attentively and asked almost no questions.

–“I have asked Lucho Toro to take charge of whatever needs to be done. He has my full confidence and the authority to proceed as he deems appropriate,” said Krauss.

Salazar left the government palace after agreeing with Toro on a visit to the apartment where Mónica Lagos was staying in the vicinity of the San Borja towers.

That morning, the impact of the revelation was felt in all areas of national events. Journalists from all local media and international news agencies tried in vain to obtain any information that would lead them to Liliana Walker’s whereabouts.

Then the most diverse rumors began to circulate.

In the afternoon, Salazar took Luis Toro and Eduardo Vío Grossi, a lawyer for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the apartment where Mónica Lagos was staying with her brother and Alejandro Hoppe, a photographer for La Época. Both were investigating the case at different levels.

For two hours, Mónica Lagos went into detail about her work at the DINA and her various trips abroad. She also showed the passport with which she had traveled to the United States in 1978.

First formal interview

That night, Mónica Lagos agreed to give her first interview to Salazar, formulated as such and authorized to be published in exactly the same terms as it appeared in La Época on Wednesday, April 18.

While this was happening, Mónica Lagos’s family had indicated that they could not stay at their relatives’ house. The support team had moved them to another apartment in the vicinity of Parque Bustamante.

But the situation was reaching a crisis point again: the place was too small for nearly a dozen people. It was already the night of Tuesday the 17th. Mónica Lagos became impatient. She rejected another offer for a safer place, but for her alone, and asked to be together with everyone: parents, siblings, nephews, and her daughter Paula.

For the third time that day, the entire support team arranged by the administrative manager, Rodolfo Raventos, was mobilized. Now they would head to a discreet place in the Vitacura commune.

by Manuel Salazar Salvo

Source: interferencia.cl, April 23, 2020

A detailed account of the use of prostitutes by Pinochet’s secret police emerges from an alleged confession by “Liliana Walker,” the key woman in the Letelier case, contained in the latest documents released by the United States regarding the crime against the former minister of Allende.

Unpublished details about DINA operations emerged from documents declassified by the United States Department of State regarding the Letelier case and the enigmatic woman—key to the crime against the former minister—who used the alias “Liliana Walker.” Behind her story lies the portrait of one of the DINA’s most perverse techniques: the use of high-end prostitutes as part of its “anti-subversive” methods.

Within an unprecedented document stored for years by the United States, which contains an alleged confession by “Liliana Walker,” there even appear details about a setup orchestrated by Augusto Pinochet’s secret police, which sought to implicate Henry Kissinger, the powerful U.S. Secretary of State, in a sex scandal in Chile.

In this regard, the journalist who finally discovered the real identity of “Liliana Walker,” Manuel Salazar, and who has also exhaustively investigated the DINA, points out that “Contreras knew perfectly well the importance of beautiful women in intelligence work.

He made the decision to assemble the female brigade himself.” Likewise, he explains that at the beginning, “he chose Ingrid Olderock to select and train them,” although later “some intelligence officers from the Navy and the Army joined the training,” who trained these women in Rocas de Santo Domingo and subsequently at the Intelligence School that the DINA created in Cajón del Maipo.

“Once in service,” adds Salazar, “they operated in various apartments in the city center and in Providencia. Several of them lived in the Torres San Borja. They also worked in expensive hotels and frequented some nightclubs in the uptown area.”

The context

To understand the context of the whole story, it is necessary to go back to April 1990, the date on which declassified cable C05883323 was issued, in which it is reported that Arturo Román, then editor of La Tercera, told the press attaché of the U.S.

Embassy in Santiago that an individual had approached him on April 4 of that year, offering to reveal the identity of “Liliana Walker,” adding that he also possessed a “confession” from her, 47 pages long.

“The information that Román made known is very similar to the story that Clemente Ponce gave to political officers on several occasions (although the document that Ponce gave to the embassy is 26 pages long),” the text notes, without giving further details about who Ponce was.

Said cable also indicates that Ponce visited the embassy on several occasions, including March 30, 1990, the date on which he asked about the response to an offer from Walker to “cooperate” with the investigation into the crime, “in exchange for payment and asylum.”

Walker’s confession

The 26-page document delivered by Ponce to the Americans, and which is alluded to in the previous cable, is dated March 1988. It is a typewritten text in Spanish, signed by a certain “Mónica Lagos Ledesma” (a name that differs from “Mónica Luisa Lagos,” with which Liliana Walker was identified by the newspaper La Epoca on April 17, 1990), who described herself as being of “medium height, weight 52 kg, blonde hair, round face, blue eyes, fair complexion, with a large skeleton (shoulders) and approximate anatomical measurements of 92-58-90.” Regarding her personality, she said that around 1975 and 1976 she was “of variable character, with bouts of joy to sadness with great ease, vehement, somewhat frivolous, very much influenced by my zodiac sign, easily passionate.”

Likewise, she acknowledged, “I have always liked to live with the greatest comforts, superior to the real possibilities I have had, without caring about the means to achieve the goods that I ardently desire.”

“As an intelligence operation, the OAS thing was horrendous. The only significant thing was a big party and a scandalous drinking bout at a club on Gran Avenida, in which delegates, ministry officials, security forces, and us participated.

All of the above was done premeditatedly to link Mr. Kissinger to scandalous behavior. Informed of what could happen, or at least instructed, Mr. Kissinger and his wife did not attend the party on Gran Avenida.”

It was in the midst of all this that “at a party of some friends I met an Army officer, who suggested that he would get me a job at Pesquera Arauco, where I would have to be a ‘companion’ (that is what I was told at the beginning) and that for that reason I would be paid fees as an employee of that company.”

The promise was fulfilled and, according to her version, at the fishing company she remained under the command of someone she identified as a former military man named Huber Fuchs. “When I was needed, they would call me on the phone and I had to go to the most varied public places,” she related, adding that “along with the fees for being a companion, if I had any information of interest to Mr.

Fuchs, I was given a ‘tip’ higher than my fees,” adding that “each call meant at least $3,500 for me,” a small fortune for the time.

In the confession, she said that at the end of 1975 she had realized “the sincere love I felt for Pato Walker,” alluding to an alleged musician of that name (who is not the current parliamentarian), whose surname she would later use to create the character of “Liliana Walker” and travel to the United States together with DINA officer Arturo Fernández Larios, prior to the crime against the former minister of Allende.

Likewise, she relates that around the same dates she found out that something very important would happen: “The OAS conference in Santiago, the one where I think Mr. Kissinger came. The latter had repercussions on my definitive access to prostitution and operational action in the DINA.”

According to her account, “it is very important for the understanding of access to DINA operations to describe the world of prostitution that I lived in, the prelude to everything, I repeat, to absolutely everything.”

The luxury apartments

According to the text, along with the formal work she had as an escort paid by Pesquera Arauco, she began to work in other venues, somehow managed by the DINA. As she describes, “the biggest ‘whorehouse’ that has ever existed in the history of Chile was on Marcoleta Street, the pimp was called Memo,” a venue that according to her was frequented by Army officers.

Likewise, she detailed that “the apartments where we met were three. The first is or was located on Mosqueto almost next to the Maistral restaurant; there we carried out our work and many times we obtained interesting information.”

The second apartment was at San Antonio and Merced, above the Café Dante, and was run by a woman named Carmen, who according to “Liliana Walker” also frequented the offices of Pesquera Arauco, as well as the offices of Colonel Jerónimo Pantoja (a DINA officer).

The woman stated that in the San Antonio apartment “one earned double, since the owner asserted the existence of interesting information; even when it did not exist, it was invented and the DINA ‘tip’ would come out.”

The third apartment she frequently went to was at Tenderini and Moneda, on the ninth floor, in front of the old offices of La Tercera, a place where “I established myself as an excellent worker and my services were permanently requested by officers attached to the DINA.” According to the confession, several of the prostitutes who frequented that apartment were from the secret police, but “the greatest of the curiosities of this environment was that one of the few women who went and was not DINA, claimed in turn to be the wife of a well-known cocaine trafficker, expelled from the country, who hated the government.” Faced with this, she expressed that it could have been “a double agent or what we in the DINA knew existed, a control agent, of counterintelligence.”

The OAS and Kissinger

In June 1976, the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) was held in Santiago, the organizer of which was a man very close to the regime: the late businessman Ricardo Claro, who took care of preparing a private meeting between the dictator Augusto Pinochet and the then-Secretary of State of the United States, the all-powerful Henry Kissinger, who would attend the OAS assembly.

Said meeting was more than key for Pinochet, who since the previous year had been feeling the pressure of the United Nations and the United States regarding Human Rights very strongly, which in 1975 had led the regime to commit the blunder of sending Manuel Contreras to Washington to defend the dictatorship and its Human Rights policy.

The meeting between Pinochet and Kissinger finally took place on June 8, 1976, and a transcript remained of it, which was declassified years later. Both shared their impressions regarding communism and Kissinger praised the then-president, pointing out to him that “in the United States, as you know, we feel sympathy for what you are trying to do here.

I think the previous government was heading in the direction of communism. We want your government to do well.” Despite that declaration of love, Kissinger did not ignore what was happening in the Congress of his country, “regarding the issue of Human Rights.

As you know, Congress is now debating possible restrictions on aid to Chile. We oppose them,” after which he told him that that afternoon he would speak about Human Rights before the assembly and that he would not directly attack Chile.

Pinochet breathed a sigh of relief. At that moment, only four months remained until the crime against former minister Letelier at Sheridan Circle, very close to the White House, and the dictator responded to Kissinger with a message that, seen in the light of time and events, is incriminating regarding it: “We are returning to institutionalism step by step, but we are being constantly attacked by the Christian Democrats.

They have a strong voice in Washington, not in the Pentagon, but they do have access to Congress. Gabriel Valdés has access. Letelier too.” After that, he stressed again that, along with Radomiro Tomic, “Letelier has access to Congress. We know they are providing false information.”

Although Kissinger evidently backed Pinochet, in parallel an intelligence operation was being planned that had the objective of discrediting him, according to the account of “Liliana Walker,” who pointed out that “it was offered to me that, on the occasion of the OAS conference, I organize a group of friends-agents to become intimate with the main delegates and obtain from them the greatest possible information regarding Chile.

We had to, also, with the greatest tact and discretion, leave the idea that Colonel Contreras was an excellent person, of great capacity and with power superior to that which the President had.”

Always according to that document, “in this operation, the one of greatest importance that had been entrusted to me, I tried to apply all the knowledge I had acquired; I selected the friends, preferably those who were freer, and I included my sister,” she noted.

However, things did not turn out as planned, nor did the main target fall for the DINA’s trick: “As an intelligence operation, the OAS thing was horrendous. The only significant thing was a big party and a scandalous drinking bout at a club on Gran Avenida, in which delegates, ministry officials, security forces, and us participated.

All of the above was done premeditatedly to link Mr. Kissinger to scandalous behavior. Informed of what could happen, or at least instructed, Mr. Kissinger and his wife did not attend the party on Gran Avenida.”

Colonel Espinoza

After some time, “Liliana Walker” related that she began to strengthen her relationship with the second man in the DINA, the retired Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, “whom I managed to attract quite a bit, generating certain obligations of mine as a woman toward him.” Always according to the document delivered to the U.S., when Espinoza commissioned her to travel to the United States together with Fernández Larios, the former warned the latter that although they should pass themselves off as a normal couple and sleep together, “I will be informed of everything that happens, and if you touch a finger of hers I will kill you.”

Already on the plane with Fernández, he asked her what she knew about Orlando Letelier and “began to tell me background information on the political life of Letelier. In summary, he was a communist with good contacts in the United States, who was harming the Chilean government.

He was such a scoundrel that his Chilean nationality would soon be taken away from him for life. In short, he was a traitor to Chile.”

Despite this, when she managed to meet him in Washington she had a very different impression, as she remembered him as “an attractive, manly man and (who) gave the sensation of a great gentleman.” Certainly, the initial objective was to seduce him, with the aim of obtaining intelligence information regarding his habits and customs, but she did not succeed.

On the contrary, the one who did try to become intimate with her in the United States was Fernández Larios, despite the warning that his superior had given him: “He told me that he did not understand a man like Espinoza, who sent the woman he loves to participate in a crime. There I knew that what it was about was murdering Orlando Letelier.”

After the attack, she relates that “I had a vacation period paid for by the DINA” and that the organization had removed her from her “old tasks,” to which she only returned “when the pocket was weak.”

However, at the beginning of 1978, the pressure from the American justice system to achieve the extradition of Contreras and Michael Townley (the material author of the attack) was already about to burst.

In that context, Espinoza summoned the woman one day and told her: “I have excellent news for you, which will give you great peace of mind. Do you remember that your passport was made in agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

Well, the person in charge of the ministry, I know for a fact, no longer lives,” the text specifies, in allusion to the Foreign Ministry official Carlos Guillermo Osorio, whom Michael Townley would confess had been murdered for knowing too much.

Unfortunately, he was not the only one, because as “Liliana Walker” herself would say: “I don’t know for a fact, but there was talk of more than 10 direct murders.”

The decline

Although for several years she continued to be an employee of the CNI, “Liliana Walker” stated in her account that in the end “the CNI was no longer paying me anything” and that “even in the downtown apartments, which had found out about my previous activities, they started to deny me the possibility of working, until they flat out kicked me out.” Faced with this, she pointed out that “I joined the sordid world of prostitution, at another level, where it was essential to consume alcohol, drugs, and perform all kinds of madness,” for which she began to work in a cabaret on Miraflores Street.

“Today I think about how risky that activity was for me, since I cannot guarantee if, in the midst of the effects of the drinks or the drugs, I would have said things that would compromise me. Apparently, the above happened, because approximately in the winter of 1984 a client arrived at the place who was looking for me.

We shared several drinks, he inquired about my real identity, in an absolutely indifferent way, and when it was already late he invited me to spend the night together. I accepted. From that acceptance to September 1985, there is very little that I remember. I can report with absolute seriousness that I was in the psychiatric hospital, in a vegetative state,” she asserted.

Regarding her written confession, she said that “I have the absolute certainty that for the security services (FBI) and the intelligence agencies (CIA) I possess important information, which would collaborate with the clarification of Orlando’s crime,” adding that for that “it would be fundamental to establish certain agreements with the American authorities, that grant me some immunities and above all a new identity.”

Certainly, that never happened. “Liliana Walker” only came out of her anonymity in April 1990, when Manuel Salazar, then national editor of the newspaper La Epoca, interviewed her and published a historic headline that read “I am Liliana Walker.”

The double agent

Before that, however, a man who identified himself as Marco A. Linares Baseden arrived on June 10, 1988, at the U.S. Embassy, saying he knew who “Liliana Walker” was and where she was. He also delivered a photo of her, in which she was identified as “Mónica.”

According to the version that Linares gave at that moment, contained in the declassified cable C05883350, his only motivation was to help a friend named “Raúl,” linked to the Radical Party, who at that time had a house in Melipilla, where “Liliana Walker” had supposedly been living.

However, the only “Raúl” that appears in the recently declassified information appears in cable C05883473, in which a conversation held on November 9, 1976, by the political officer of the U.S. Embassy, Félix Vargas, with Pablo Keller, “youth leader” of the Radical Left Party (PIR), and a secretary identified as María Inés Ramírez, who was brought before Vargas by Keller, is recounted.

According to Ramírez’s account, her husband, who at that time worked at the “Solución” financial company, was “a very good friend of the DINA agent Raúl Baden,” who had supposedly traveled to Vancouver (Canada) a week before the attack against the former minister.

From there, according to Baden, he was to travel by car to Washington, together with a “superior” from the government and like Townley, Fernández, and “Walker,” “Baden mentioned that he would travel with a passport with a false name.”

According to her, at the end of October she met him again, but Baden changed the version. He told her that he had been traveling, but between Mexico and Argentina. She described the subject as “tall, muscular, with slightly reddish hair. He is of German descent.”

Perhaps the most singular thing, however, is that “she declared that Baden belonged to the GAP (Personal Friends Group), Allende’s bodyguards. He was arrested briefly after the coup, but released soon with a new job.

Baden is obsessed with material things and money. María Inés said of him that he is a man without principles and morals, a mercenary who sells himself to the highest bidder.” by Carlos Basso

Source: elmostrador.cl, September 18, 2015

The true story of how Liliana Walker was found

Following the information provided by a confidential informant, journalists from the newspaper La Época managed in 1990 to locate the residence of the DINA agent involved in the preparations to assassinate Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976.

At 2:00 PM on Sunday, April 15, 1990, one of the La Época vehicles cautiously approached the corner of Amapolas and Montenegro streets, in the southeastern sector of the Providencia commune, very close to Ñuñoa.

The moment had arrived to begin the final approach to the residence of Luisa Mónica Lagos Aguirre, the true identity of Liliana Walker Martínez, the disappeared DINA agent involved in the preparations to assassinate Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976.

Several weeks earlier, a confidential source—whose identity remains protected by professional secrecy—had contacted the newspaper's national editor, journalist Manuel Salazar (now a writer for INTERFERENCIA), to provide him with some data regarding the mysterious woman.

The following day, the journalist went in the morning, carrying a red folder as identification, to the side of the Quinta Normal park, where he met with the informant. The informant handed him a file containing part of Liliana Walker's history. After reviewing it in a few minutes, Salazar concluded that the data included therein was sufficient to initiate an investigation.

Hours later, the director of La Época, Emilio Filippi; the general editor, Ascanio Cavallo; and Salazar agreed to create a small investigation team to verify the data received and begin a new search for the woman, a key protagonist in the preparations to assassinate President Salvador Allende's former foreign minister in the capital of the United States.

The newspaper had already gathered abundant material on the mysterious Liliana Walker and was the first to reveal the only composite sketch of the woman, published on February 4, 1989.

Salazar, who led the investigation, turned to a series of sources that allowed him, within a few days, to confirm several of the background details provided and to begin reconstructing the most important episodes of Liliana Walker's life.

Very soon, the core group of reporters working on the subject learned of the tumultuous life Walker had led in her youth and her time as a dancer on television and in various nightclubs in the capital.

They also learned of her romantic ties and her entry into a secret group of female DINA agents, used to obtain information from important men in various spheres of influence in Santiago during those years.

Diplomats, businessmen, bankers, high-ranking military officers, foreign visitors, and international officials, among others, were victims of the attractive women who were part of that DINA structure, which had at its disposal very discreet apartments in various sectors of the city center and the capital's upper-class neighborhoods.

The journalists' inquiries were carried out with extreme care. None of the people consulted knew what the men and women of La Época were looking for.

By the beginning of April, they had almost no doubts. Everything indicated that the woman being sought, Mónica Lagos Aguirre, was indeed the agent Liliana Walker.

Preparations were then initiated to approach the woman, and the risks involved in the operation were anticipated. Filippi decided to add the general manager, Pablo Berwart, and the production manager, Rodolfo Raventós, to the original team so they could take charge of logistics. When everything seemed ready, Salazar was ordered to begin the final part of the task.

The decisive moment

The Amapolas neighborhood was very quiet. The weekly routine was almost as peaceful as that of a province, and on Sundays, there was no movement other than a few visitors and family lunches. That April 15, the autumn chill kept almost everyone in their homes. Nothing in the tree-lined streets, no one in the gardens or at the doors.

Salazar, photographer Alejandro Hoppe, and journalist Juan Gonzalo Rocha had already been monitoring the area for 48 hours, where a house was located at the end of a passageway, surrounded by seven other two-story dwellings.

The national editor of La Época got out of the car and headed to the house: Amapolas 4338 C. A medium-height gate closed with a chain and padlock separated the property from the passageway. The window curtains were half-closed, and a small dog came out to greet the intruder.

The journalist pressed the doorbell and waited. A window opened on the second floor, and a young man of about 18, dark-haired, asked: -What do you want? -Good afternoon. Is Mónica Lagos there? -Who is asking? -I would like to speak with her. It is something important. -One moment.

A few seconds later, the young man opened the house door and approached the gate. -What would it be about? -Look, it is something important that I would like to talk to her about... -But tell me what it is about. -It is about a trip she took to the United States. Truly, it is something that will interest her... Please tell her... -Who are you?

The journalist took out a card and handed it to the young man. -Wait a moment.

He entered the house with the card in his hand. A few seconds later, he came out. -She is not here. -Please tell her it is very important that I speak with her. It is of vital importance... -She is not here. I am alone with my grandmother, who just finished lunch. -Can I speak with your grandmother?

The young man hesitated for a moment.

-Please do not insist. Mónica is not here. -Can I wait for her? -I don't know how long she will be. Come back tomorrow. -But... -Come back tomorrow, okay?

And he walked away toward the house.

The young man had taken too little time to go into the house and come out with the answer. He had said he was alone with his grandmother and that she was lying down. It was evident that someone else was there and had refused.

Close surveillance

A decision had to be made. That afternoon, Juan Gonzalo Rocha received the strangest order of his 30-year career in journalism: he had to maintain strict surveillance on an unknown house, inhabited by unknown people, for unknown purposes. He would be accompanied by Francisco Barrenechea, a photojournalist.

The car remained parked in front of the passageway all day. A girl approached Rocha at dusk. -Tell me who you are; I won't tell anyone.

The journalists responded with evasions. It is almost certain that she believed they were police officers.

The entire Sunday passed, and Monday morning. Mónica Lagos did not arrive. No one arrived. It seemed evident that the woman was inside.

At dawn on Monday, Salazar resumed the surveillance. Shortly after 9:00 AM, a woman of about 60 years old left the house. She was carrying a bag for bread. Salazar approached her and addressed her. -Good morning, ma'am.

You are Mónica Lagos's mother. -Yes, sir... -Since yesterday, I have been trying to speak with her. It is something important... -What could it be? -It is about a trip she took to the United States. We believe she is Liliana Walker, who worked for the DINA... -Who are you? -I am a journalist from the newspaper La Época.

Tears appeared in the woman's blue eyes.

-Why don't we go inside the house? She has been very ill; she has tried to commit suicide several times, she cut her veins... We have had to sell the car and other things. We only have the house left...

The woman had Salazar enter the front garden. As he prepared to cross the threshold of the house, another woman stopped him. -Who is it, Mom? What does he want?...

She was very nervous. The mother tried to explain, but the woman insisted. -No, no. Go away. Go away, please. Mom, close the door... We don't want... -Please, let me speak with her. It is very important to know if she is who we believe she is—argued the journalist.

The woman became increasingly agitated. The mother was trembling. Suddenly, a voice was heard from an interior room on the first floor. -I am going to come out, but we are going to talk outside.

"Come into the house"

A blonde woman, thin, with her hair tied in a bun, wearing blue denim overalls and with eyes framed by thick lines of mascara, confronted the journalist. -What do you want? Who are you? Can I see your credentials?... -We believe you are Liliana Walker, the woman who accompanied Captain Armando Fernández Larios on a trip to the United States in the days prior to the assassination of Orlando Letelier... -You are mistaken...

I... -We know that you left for the United States from the Posada El Salvador (at Eliodoro Yáñez and José Miguel Infante), that you lived there with a man named Charly Walker, that you took his last name, that you used...

From inside, the other woman asked for the tone of voice to be lowered.

-Better come into the house, so the neighbors don't hear—she said.

The group entered the living room, but everyone remained standing. The dialogue continued for several minutes. -You are afraid, aren't you? —the journalist said suddenly—. If you are distrustful, tell me who you could trust, and I will bring them here.

Mónica Lagos hesitated. She thought for a minute and said: -Alejandro Hales. Can you bring Mr. Alejandro Hales? -We can try. Give me two hours.

The journalist left the house and, through the rudimentary cell phone he was using, notified Ascanio Cavallo that contact had been made.

A few minutes later, the general editor left the newspaper's newsroom heading to the office of lawyer Alejandro Hales.

by Manuel Salazar Salvo

Source: interferencia.cl, April 22, 2020

The Chilean setup to implicate Kissinger in a sex scandal

Unpublished details about DINA operations emerge from documents declassified by the United States Department of State regarding the Letelier case and the enigmatic woman—key to the crime against the former foreign minister—who used the alias "Liliana Walker," behind whose story appears the portrait of one of the most perverse techniques of the DINA: the use of high-end prostitutes as part of its "anti-subversive" methods.

Amidst an unprecedented document stored for years by the United States, which contains an alleged confession by "Liliana Walker," there even appear details about a setup orchestrated by the secret police of Augusto Pinochet, which sought to implicate Henry Kissinger, the powerful U.S. Secretary of State, in a sex scandal in Chile.

In this regard, the journalist who finally discovered the real identity of "Liliana Walker," Manuel Salazar, and who has also exhaustively investigated the DINA, points out that "Contreras knew perfectly well the importance of beautiful women in intelligence work.

The decision to set up the female brigade was taken by him alone." Likewise, he explains that at the beginning, "he chose Ingrid Olderock to select and train them," although later "some intelligence officers from the Navy and the Army joined the training," who trained these women in Rocas de Santo Domingo and subsequently at the Intelligence School that the DINA created in Cajón del Maipo.

"Once in service—adds Salazar—they operated in various apartments in the city center and Providencia. Several of them lived in the Torres San Borja. They also worked in expensive hotels and frequented some nightclubs in the upper-class neighborhoods."

The context

To understand the context of the whole story, it is necessary to go to April 1990, the date on which the declassified cable C05883323 was issued, in which it is recounted that Arturo Román, at that time editor of La Tercera, told the press attaché of the U.S.

Embassy in Santiago that an individual had approached him on April 4 of that year, offering to reveal the identity of "Liliana Walker," adding that he also possessed a "confession" of hers, 47 pages long.

"The information that Román made known is very similar to the story that Clemente Ponce gave to political officers on several occasions (although the document that Ponce gave to the embassy is 26 pages long)," the text notes, without giving further details about who Ponce was.

Said cable also indicates that Ponce visited the embassy on several occasions, including March 30, 1990, the date on which he asked about the response to an offer from Walker to "cooperate" with the investigation into the crime, "in exchange for payment and asylum."

The confession of Walker

The 26-page document delivered by Ponce to the Americans, and which is alluded to in the previous cable, is dated March 1988. It is a typewritten text in Spanish, signed by a certain "Mónica Lagos Ledesma" (a name that differs from "Mónica Luisa Lagos," with which Liliana Walker was identified by the newspaper La Época on April 17, 1990), who described herself as being of "medium height, weight 52 kg, blonde hair, round face, blue eyes, fair complexion, with a large frame (shoulders) and approximate anatomical measurements of 92-58-90." Regarding her personality, she said that around 1975 and 1976 she was "of variable character, with bouts of joy to sadness with great ease, vehement, somewhat frivolous, very influenced by my zodiac sign, easily passionate."

Likewise, she acknowledged "I have always liked to live with the greatest comforts, superior to the real possibilities I have had, without caring about the means to achieve the goods that I ardently crave."

It was in the midst of all this that "at a party of some friends, I met an Army officer, who suggested that he would get me a job at Pesquera Arauco, where I would have to be an 'escort' (that is what I was told at the beginning) and that for that, I would be paid fees as an employee of that company."

The promise was fulfilled, and according to her version, at the fishing company, she was under the command of someone she identified as a former military man named Huber Fuchs. "When I was needed, they would call me on the phone, and I had to go to the most varied public places," she recounted, adding that "along with the fees for being an escort, if I had any information of interest to Mr.

Fuchs, I was given a 'tip' higher than my fees" and that "each call meant at least $3,500 for me," a small fortune for the time.

In the confession, she said that at the end of 1975, she had realized "the sincere love I felt for Pato Walker," alluding to an alleged musician of that name (who is not the current parliamentarian), whose last name she would later use to create the character of "Liliana Walker" and travel to the United States together with DINA officer Arturo Fernández Larios, prior to the crime against Allende's former foreign minister.

Likewise, she relates that around the same dates, she found out that something very important would happen: "The OAS conference in Santiago, the one where I think Mr. Kissinger came. The latter had repercussions on my definitive access to prostitution and operational action in the DINA."

According to her account, "it is very important for the understanding of access to DINA operations to describe the world of prostitution that I lived in, the prelude to everything, I repeat, to absolutely everything."

The luxury apartments

According to the text, along with the formal work she had as an escort paid by Pesquera Arauco, she began to work in other premises, somehow managed by the DINA. As she describes, "the biggest 'whorehouse' that has ever existed in the history of Chile was on Marcoleta Street; they called the pimp Memo," a place that, according to her, was frequented by Army officers.

Likewise, she detailed that "the apartments where we met were three. The first is or was located on Mosqueto, almost next to the Maistral restaurant; there we carried out our work, and many times we obtained interesting information."

The second apartment was at San Antonio and Merced, above the Dante café, and was run by a woman named Carmen, who, according to "Liliana Walker," also frequented the offices of Pesquera Arauco, as well as the offices of Colonel Jerónimo Pantoja (a DINA officer).

The woman stated that in the San Antonio apartment, "you earned double, since the owner asserted the existence of interesting information; even when it did not exist, it was invented, and the DINA 'tip' came out."

The third apartment she frequently went to was at Tenderini and Moneda, on the ninth floor, across from the old offices of La Tercera, a place where "I established myself as an excellent worker, and my services were permanently requested by officers attached to the DINA." According to the confession, several of the prostitutes who frequented that apartment were from the secret police, but "the greatest of the curiosities of this environment was that one of the few women who went and was not DINA, claimed in turn to be the wife of a well-known cocaine trafficker, expelled from the country, who hated the government." Faced with this, she expressed that it could have been "a double agent or what we in the DINA knew existed, a control agent, of counterintelligence."

The OAS and Kissinger

In June 1976, the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) was held in Santiago, the organizer of which was a man very close to the regime: the late businessman Ricardo Claro, who took care of preparing a private meeting between the dictator Augusto Pinochet and the then-Secretary of State of the United States, the all-powerful Henry Kissinger, who would attend the OAS assembly.

Said meeting was more than key for Pinochet, who since the previous year had been feeling the pressure from the United Nations and the United States regarding Human Rights very strongly, which in 1975 had led the regime to commit the blunder of sending Manuel Contreras to Washington to defend the dictatorship and its Human Rights policy.

The meeting between Pinochet and Kissinger finally took place on June 8, 1976, and a transcript of it remained, which was declassified years later. Both shared their impressions regarding communism, and Kissinger praised the then-president, pointing out to him that "in the United States, as you know, we sympathize with what you are trying to do here.

I think the previous government was heading in the direction of communism. We want your government to do well."

Despite that declaration of love, Kissinger did not ignore what was happening in the Congress of his country, "regarding the issue of Human Rights. As you know, Congress is now debating possible restrictions on aid to Chile. We oppose them," after which he told him that that afternoon he would speak about Human Rights before the assembly and that he would not directly attack Chile.

Pinochet breathed a sigh of relief. At that moment, only four months remained until the crime against former foreign minister Letelier at Sheridan Circle, very close to the White House, and the dictator responded to Kissinger with a message that, seen in the light of time and events, is incriminating regarding it: "We are returning to institutionalism step by step, but we are being constantly attacked by the Christian Democrats.

They have a strong voice in Washington, not in the Pentagon, but they do have access to Congress. Gabriel Valdés has access. Letelier also." After that, he stressed again that, along with Radomiro Tomic, "Letelier has access to Congress. We know they are providing false information."

Although Kissinger evidently backed Pinochet, in parallel, an intelligence operation was being planned that had the objective of discrediting him, according to the account of "Liliana Walker," who pointed out that "it was offered to me that, on the occasion of the OAS conference, I organize a group of friends-agents to become intimate with the main delegates and obtain from them the greatest possible information regarding Chile.

We had to, also, with the greatest tact and discretion, leave the idea that Colonel Contreras was an excellent person, of great capacity and with power superior to that which the President had."

Always according to that document, "in this operation, the one of greatest importance that had been entrusted to me, I tried to apply all the knowledge I had acquired; I selected the friends, preferably those who were freer, and I included my sister," she noted.

However, things did not turn out as planned, nor did the main target fall for the DINA's trick: "As an intelligence operation, the OAS thing was horrendous. The only significant thing was a big party and a scandalous drinking bout at a club on Gran Avenida, in which delegates, ministry officials, security forces, and us participated.

All of the above was done premeditatedly to link Mr. Kissinger with scandalous attitudes. Informed of what could happen, or at least instructed, Mr. Kissinger and his wife did not attend the party on Gran Avenida."

Colonel Espinoza

After some time, "Liliana Walker" related that she began to strengthen her relationship with the second man in the DINA, retired Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, "whom I managed to attract quite a bit, generating certain obligations of mine as a woman toward him." Always according to the document delivered to the U.S., when Espinoza ordered her to travel to the United States together with Fernández Larios, the former warned the latter that although they should pose as a normal couple and sleep together, "I will be informed of everything that happens, and if you touch a finger of hers, I will kill you."

Already on the plane with Fernández, he asked her what she knew about Orlando Letelier and "began to tell me background information on the political life of Letelier. In summary, he was a communist with good contacts in the United States, who was harming the Chilean government.

He was such a scoundrel that soon his Chilean nationality would be taken away for life. In short, he was a traitor to Chile."

Despite this, when she managed to meet him in Washington, she had a very different impression, as she remembered him as "an attractive, manly man, and (who) gave the sensation of a great gentleman." Certainly, the initial objective was to seduce him, with the aim of obtaining intelligence information regarding his habits and customs, but she did not succeed.

On the contrary, the one who did try to become intimate with her in the United States was Fernández Larios, despite the warning his superior had given him: "He told me that he did not understand a man like Espinoza, who sent the woman he loves to participate in a crime. There I knew that what it was about was assassinating Orlando Letelier."

After the attack, she relates that "I had a vacation period paid for by the DINA" and that the organization had retired her from her "old tasks," to which she only returned "when the pocket was weak."

However, at the beginning of 1978, the pressure from the American justice system to achieve the extradition of Contreras and Michael Townley (the material author of the attack) was already about to burst.

In that context, Espinoza summoned the woman one day and told her: "I have excellent news for you, which will give great peace of mind. Do you remember that your passport was made in agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

Well, the person in charge of the ministry, I know for a fact, no longer lives," the text specifies, in allusion to the foreign ministry official Carlos Guillermo Osorio, whom Michael Townley would confess had been murdered for knowing too much.

Unfortunately, he was not the only one, because as "Liliana Walker" herself would say: "I cannot verify it, but there was talk of more than 10 direct assassinations."

The decline

Although for several years she continued to be an employee of the CNI, "Liliana Walker" stated in her account that in the end "the CNI was no longer paying me anything" and that "even in the apartments in the center, which had found out about my previous activities, they started to deny me the possibility of working, until they flat out fired me." Faced with this, she pointed out that "I joined the sordid world of prostitution, on another level, where it was essential to consume alcohol, drugs, and perform all kinds of madness," for which she began to work in a cabaret on Miraflores Street.

"Today I think about how risky that activity was for me, since I cannot guarantee if, in the midst of the effects of drinks or drugs, I would have said things that would compromise me. Apparently, the above happened, because approximately in the winter of 1984, a client arrived at the place who was looking for me.

We shared several drinks, he inquired about my real identity, in an absolutely indifferent way, and when it was already late, he invited me to spend the night together. I accepted. From that acceptance to September 1985, there is very little that I remember. I can report with absolute seriousness that I was in a psychiatric hospital, in a vegetative state," she asserted.

Regarding her written confession, she said that "I have the absolute certainty that for the security services (FBI) and the intelligence agencies (CIA), I possess important information, which would collaborate with the clarification of Orlando's crime," adding that for that, "it would be fundamental to establish certain agreements with the American authorities, which grant me some immunities and above all a new identity."

Certainly, that never happened. "Liliana Walker" only left her anonymity in April 1990, when Manuel Salazar, then national editor of the newspaper La Época, interviewed her and published a historic headline that read "I am Liliana Walker."

The double agent

Before all of what was related, however, a man who identified himself as Marco A. Linares Baseden arrived on June 10, 1988, at the U.S. Embassy, saying he knew who "Liliana Walker" was and where she was. In addition, he delivered a photo of her, in which she was identified as "Mónica."

According to the version that Linares delivered at that moment, contained in the declassified cable C05883350, his only motivation was to help a friend named "Raúl," linked to the Radical Party, who at that time had a house in Melipilla, where "Liliana Walker" had allegedly been living.

However, the only "Raúl" who appears in the recently declassified information appears in cable C05883473, in which a conversation held on November 9, 1976, by the political officer of the U.S. Embassy, Félix Vargas, with Pablo Keller, "youth leader" of the Left Radical Party (PIR), and a secretary identified as María Inés Ramírez, who was brought before Vargas by Keller, is recounted.

According to Ramírez's account, her husband, who at that time worked at the "Solución" financial company, was "a very good friend of the DINA agent Raúl Baden," who had allegedly traveled to Vancouver (Canada) a week before the attack against the former foreign minister.

From there, according to Baden, he was to travel by car to Washington, together with a "superior" from the government, and like Townley, Fernández, and "Walker," "Baden mentioned that he would travel with a passport with a false name."

According to her, at the end of October, she met him again, but Baden changed the version. He told her that he had been traveling, but between Mexico and Argentina. She described the subject as "tall, muscular, with slightly reddish hair. He is of German descent."

Perhaps the most singular thing, however, is that "she stated that Baden belonged to the GAP (Group of Personal Friends), Allende's bodyguards. He was arrested briefly after the coup, but released soon with a new job. Baden is obsessed with material things and money. María Inés said of him that he is a man without principles and morals, a mercenary who sells himself to the highest bidder."

Her new identity

This text was published in 2015 in El Mostrador. Subsequent to that, information emerged indicating that Mónica Lagos changed her name to Paula Anik Kaister de Dior. Despite the surnames, her birth certificate shows that she is Mónica Luisa Lagos Aguirre, given that her parents are Francisco Arturo Lagos Cofré and Edelmira Mercedes Aguirre.

Lagos/Kaister is, in turn, the mother of Paula Pavic Kaister, who is married to the former tennis player Marcelo Ríos Mayorga.

by Carlos Basso

Source: helpwithdiy.com, January 22, 2020