America’s Spies Won’t Let Trump Shield MBS

To contextualize the Central Intelligence Agency’s claim that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, it’s worth remembering the last time the CIA blamed the leader of a U.S. ally for personally ordering the assassination of a critic.

On Sept. 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean minister then working at a Washington think tank, was blown up in his car, along with an American colleague. A group of right-wing Cuban extremists had planted the bomb, but on whose instruction? The first investigation assigned the responsibility to Chilean intelligence agents, including a close ally of the dictator Augusto Pinochet. Since the general was regarded as an important bulwark against the spread of communism in Latin America, senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, were eager that no blame be placed on him.