General Augusto Pinochet directly ordered the 1976 assassination of a Chilean diplomat who was killed in a car bomb in Washington DC, according top secret US intelligence documents declassified by the Obama administration. The documents ... also show that the former dictator was so concerned with covering up his role in the murder that he planned to assassinate his own head of intelligence, General Manuel Contreras. Orlando Letelier, a former defence and foreign minister under President Salvador Allende, was tortured and incarcerated after Pinochet's 1973 coup. He later fled to the US and worked at the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington DC. Letelier, who had once been Chile's ambassador to the US, was murdered on 21 September 1976 by a car bomb planted under the driver's seat of his vehicle just a mile from the White House. Ronni Moffitt, an American colleague, was also killed in the blast. Letelier's son, Senator Juan Pablo Letelier, confirmed to the Guardian that he had received copies of the newly released documents, which ... include papers from the CIA. Speculation that the CIA was aware of the plot to kill Letelier is based on previously declassified records showing that Manuel Contreras was paid by the CIA before the bombing and was in regular contact with top officials at the spy agency. Contreras, who died in August, always denied responsibility and blamed the CIA for the bombing.