TOWNLEY, From Al whose specialty happens to be remote control bombs to assassinate Pinoch- et's exiled political opponents, a man who travels with his wife (also a The Assassin DINA agent) on his missions of death and sends souveniors to his children. A variety of persons who have spo- Mystery Still Swirls About ken with him since his arrest in the Key Letelier Trial Witness Letelier case say that he also contin- - ues to consider himself a loyal DINA 2 — 14 officer and follower of Pinochet. By John Dinges alit' Kenneth Brederneler A friend who knew Townley and his WashIntnon Pan Stet writers family in the early 19130s said he has He. is the confessed hit man in the violent bom- trouble conceiving that today's Town- bing assassination of former Chilean Ambassador ley is the same person he first met in Orlando Letelier, a man described by a fa-:end as a a Methodist church youth group in "romantic counter-revolutionary." An American Chile. youth, born in Waterloo, Iowa, he joined the clan- "He demonstrated to me the type of destine world of a foreign country's secret police, characteristics you associate with a giving it an almost fanatical commitment. high-achiever, a very personable He now has been linked, through his own court young man. I would have expected testimony or the statements of investigators, to as- - him to have become a lawyer, perhaps sassination plots in four countries to "eliminate" an electronics engineer," the friend the most prominent of exile leaders opposing the said. current Chilean military dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Townley? Is the biggest enigma In At the same time, people who have known him for the puzzling framework of intrigue years recall his days as a youthful church leader in surrounding the Sept. 21, 1976, assassi- Chile, a talented boy who seemed destined, if not nation of Letelier and Ronni K. Mof- for greatness, at least for a successful upper middle- fitt, a colleague of his at the Institute class life. for Policy Studies. His willingness to Still, as the tangled life of Michael Vernon Town- describe the crime he committed and ley unfolds in a U.S. court here, he seems like a implicate the three Cubans while ref- half-finished painting: The broad outlines of his life, using to answer a question about his are clear, but the finished portrait is still a mystery, activities with the Chilean secret po- Part soldier of fortune for the Chilean secret po- lice has become the principal contro- lice, part anti-Communist fanatic whose Nietzschean versy in the Letelier trial, as it heads ethics condone murder, part duty-bound follower of into • its third week. Judge Parker is orders who still refers to the Chilean secret police expected to rule today whether Town- as "my service," part concerned family man—all ley can invoke the 5th Amendment phrases describe Townley. right against self-incrimination for ac- tions in Chile. Townley's appearance last week as the chief U.S. witness in the trial of three anti-Castro Cuban ex Defense attorneys for the three Cu- iles charged in connection with the Letelier murder bans contend Townley is not a loyal DINA agent at all, but a CIA "mole" has raised many quetions: who infiltrated DINA and carried out Is he or was he ever an agent for the CIA? Was the Letelier assassination as a CIA op- he a double agent, a "mole" planted by the CIA in eration and then framed the Cubans. the Chilean secret police, once known as DINA? Is The attorneys have not supplied any he a pawn in a scheme to extricate Pinochet from a evidence to support this allegation. crisis that has threatened to topple his regime? And what of the larger political implications of the as The mystery about Townley begins sassination along Washington's Embassy Row In with that fact that be was born in September, 1976—the most brazen act of interna- Waterloo, Iowa. How did he turn up tional terrorism ever carried out here. 30 years later as a trusted secret po- A dozen years ago, one might have felt comforta- lice electronics expert in Chile? ble sitting next to Townley at a church service. U.S.' Townley was on the witness stand District Court Judge Barrington D. Parker point- last week because last April the U. S. edly said last week that someone would not feel at government identified him as a sus- ease in church with Townley. pect in the murder and asked—using Parker, a jury of seven women and five men and considerable diplomatic arm-twisting a transfixed, packed courtroom audience had beard —the Chilean government to expel the 36-year-old DINA. agent describe in excruciating him. detail how he had carried out the assassination on Inexplicably—if Townley really was the orders of DLNA. a Chilean agent and acting on secret From Townley's testimony emerges the figure at police orders in killing Letelier—the a mild-mannered, well-spoken electronics technician Chilean authorities arrested Townley, and turned him over in handcuffs to See TOWNLEY, A7, Col. 1 FBI agents aboard a jet flight to the United States. From interviews with people In Chile and the U. S. who knew Town- ley—some as friends, some as com- rades in militant right-wing groups, and one who was a fellow DINA agent —a complex and contradictory picture Monday, January 22, 1979 !HE WASHENTGTON POST emerges. Townley's acquaintances had little negative to say about the man, "Likea- ble," "genius," "sincere," "gave the Allende put rad:a stations under state impression of a Mormon missionary," "harsh and cold" were some of the de- control, Townley's "Radio Liberation" scriptions heard. broadcast virulent antigovernment messages and songs—some written by Townie3r's youth was conventional Mariana Townley. He evaded the ef- though troubled. He was 14 when his forts by military intelligence assigned father, Vernon Townley, became head by Allende to locate the illegal trans- of Ford Motor Co. operations in Chile mitter. in 1957 and moved his family to Santi- ago. Towley was recruited by the most violence-prone of the opposition Active in the American communi- groups, Fatherland and liberty, for ty's Methodist Church youth group, other operations, including one that but net particularly religious, Michael resulted in 'a man's death. Townley as a teen-ager was considered to be so- was identified as having participated ciable and a natural leader. in that operation and for the first The Townleys' life style in Chile re- time, in June 1973, was labeled a CIA flected their affluence and he was agent by a leftist newspaper. In fact, sent to the exclusive St. George's High School, run by the American Holy Cross order. Though obviously intelligent, he had trouble with Span- ish at first and dropped out without a high school diploma. A counselor described Townley's home life as tense and unhappy under the domination of his father. Before he was 20, in defiance of his parents, Townley married Mariana Callejas, a twice-divorced, unpublished writer 10 years his senior. She had two small children. Townley, who became a Townley bragged to friends at the stock salesman, began to consider him- time that he had CIA contacts. self as much Chilean as American. He fled Chile by crossing the Andes For a number of years in Chile he Mountains on foot. Within a few earned a comfoitable living as a sue: months the Chilean military answered cessful salesman of mutual fund the pleas of the right-wing groups and stocks from the later controversial overthrow the Allende government in Bernie CarafeId firm, Investors Over- a bloody coup on Sept. 11, 1973. seas Services. Townley had a num- Townley spent several months back bered Swiss sank account in the U.S. and then was recruited The first sign of Townley's later into DINA after his return to Chile by double life appeared after he moved Lt. Col. Pedro Espiriosa, the same mil- his family to Miami in 1987. There the itary intelligence officer who unsuc- stock salesman's conservative suits cessfully had Searched for Townley's were rtplaced by jeans and boots as clandestine transmitter in October be began to work as an auto mechanic 1972. in Miami's Little Havana. According to informed sources, the His friends were anti-Castro exiles and beneath the blue-collar exterior, his knowledge of electronics grew -increasingly sophisticated. To his neighbors, he was ,apolitical. At a time when the leftist government of president Salvador Allende was elected in Chile In 1970 and many Chi- lean rightists emigrated to flee what head of DINA, then Col. Juan Manuel was seen as a coming' social revolu- Contreras Sepulveda, provided the tion. Townley moved his family back Townleys with a sprawling, rundown to Chile. mansion in the Locurro district of Before he left, Townley testified Santiago. The sources said Townley last week, he contacted the CIA office installed a high-powered VHF radio in Miami and offered his services In transmitter in the house, using it to Chile. The CIA, while once seeking to keep in contact with his DINA subor- use Townley in an "operational capac- dinates working around the city in ity," says its records do not reflect cars. whether it ever used Townley as an From his recruitment in 1974 to his agent. Townley said he never worked expulsion from Chile last year, Town- for the CIA. ley has linked himself or has been Once In Chile, Townley won his linked by various investigators to a stripes as an anti-marsist "freedom chilling list of assassinations as well .