Forty years ago, an assassin's bomb exploded under a car driving on Sheridan Circle, at the heart of Washington's Embassy Row. The blast killed Orlando Letelier, a 44-year-old former Chilean diplomat and an enemy of the country's military dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Also killed was Letelier's 25-year-old colleague Ronni Moffitt. The man responsible for orchestrating the attack? A hired hit man named Michael Townley.
The conspicuous murders, which evidence showed were ordered by Pinochet's government, became infamous. But if a journalist or historian interested in talking to the perpetrator of that bloody crime (or a killer seeking vengeance) tried to locate him today, they would discover it to be a nearly impossible task -- and that is by design. He is one of thousands of people given a new life and new identity under the U.S. Marshal Service's storied, but little-known Witness Security Program, or WITSEC for short....
