Koch Says Uruguayans Plotted to Kill Him

Associated Press ^ | March 26, 2004 | George Gedda

[AntiGuv]

WASHINGTON - It was a phone call Ed Koch will never forget. In 1976, then-Rep. Koch, the future mayor of New York City, says he was informed by CIA Director George H. W. Bush that he was the target of an assassination plot.

Koch had earned the wrath of Uruguay's military government by pushing legislation to cut off $3 million in military aid to the South American country.

"I was scared to death," Koch recalled Friday in an interview. "How would you feel if the director of the CIA said there was a contract out on your life."

Koch, who knew Bush from the CIA director's days as a Texas congressman, asked whether he could count on the agency to provide protection.

"We don't provide protection," Bush replied, according to Koch's account.

"What should I do, George?"

"Be careful."

Koch commented on an account of the plot that appears in a new book, "The Condor Years," by Latin America expert and Columbia University professor John Dinges.

The spokesman for the Uruguayan Embassy was not on duty Friday. The embassy receptionist said there was no one else available to respond to press questions.

The book says Koch felt a military aid cutoff was warranted because of the country's large prison population and documented instances of torture.

At the time, many South American countries were run by military dictators, six of which — Uruguay and Chile included — formed a secret anti-communist alliance that pursued enemies at home and abroad. The pact was known as "Operation Condor."

Dinges wrote that the CIA station chief in Montevideo, Fred Latrash, learned of the plot from two Uruguayan intelligence officers during a July 1976 cocktail party.

The CIA did not take the threat seriously because, as Latrash reported, the Uruguayans were drinking heavily, Dinges reported. The agency dismissed their remarks as "alcohol-induced bravado."

The agency its threat assessment after the September 1976 car-bombing assassination in Washington of Orlando Letelier, a well-known Chilean leftist opposed to the military government of Chilean President Augusto Pinochet.

Letelier had held several prominent positions during the Marxist government of deposed President Salvador Allende. Investigators traced the killing to the Chilean intelligence agency.

Koch recalled that a few weeks after Letelier's death, he received word of the assassination threat from Bush.

Turned down by police, too, when he asked for protection, Koch said he was anxious when traveling through his neighborhood.

An apparent turning point occurred later in the year when the Uruguayan government offered appointments in Washington to the two intelligence officers who had talked about the plot.

Based on Latrash's information, the State Department blocked the appointments.

Koch said he was not sure whether the department's intervention was decisive, but he became convinced he was no longer a target.

How did he know?

"If they hadn't called it off, they would have killed me," Koch said.

[rogueleader]

That's one way to go bald in a hurry.