Orlando Letelier was a Chilean economist, politician, and diplomat under Salvador Allende who was assassinated by fascists via car bomb on this day in 1976, in Washington D.C. Despite personally ordering the killing, Pinochet was never charged.

In 1973, after President Allende was ousted in a CIA-backed coup and fascist Augusto Pinochet came into power, Letelier (1932 - 1976) fled to the U.S. and accepted various academic positions in Washington D.C.

In 1976, agents of Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the secret police of the Pinochet government, assassinated Letelier and his colleague Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C. with a car bomb. These agents had been working in collaboration with members of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, a U.S.-sponsored anti-Castro militant group.

According to John Dinges, author of "The Condor Years", documents released in 2015 revealed a 1978 CIA report that proved they had knowledge Pinochet ordered the murders. A State Department document also refers to eight separate CIA reports from around the same date. Pinochet, who died in 2006, was never charged for these crimes.