Alan McPherson: Letelier was the former Chilean ambassador to the United States, who had served under the Marxist but democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, from 1970 to 1973. By 1973, Letelier had come back to Chile and served as minister with three portfolios in quick succession.

When the Pinochet coup came on September 11, 1973, the junta jailed Letelier, then minister of defense, for a year. In late 1974, Letelier was exiled and ended up in Washington as an activist for the Institute for Policy Studies, a leftist think tank. Pinochet's regime targeted him because he convinced a large Dutch corporation to disinvest from Chile and because he was a potential unifier of Chilean exiles.

We should not forget that the assassination also killed Ronni Moffitt, a 25-year-old US colleague at IPS who happened to be in the car with Letelier.