--- alias: - CNM - Movimiento Nacionalista Cubano category: Paramilitary created: 2026-09-21 location: New Jersey summary: Cuban exile group in New Jersey whose leaders supplied the men who helped the Chilean secret police agent Michael Townley kill Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976. tags: - Organization - CubanNationalistMovement - CubanExiles - DINA - OperationCondor - LetelierAssassination - Terrorism updated: 2026-09-21 --- The Cuban Nationalist Movement was an anti-Castro exile organization based in [New Jersey](/places/new-jersey/), whose leaders in the 1970s included [Guillermo Novo](/people/guillermo-novo/). The Chilean secret police, [DINA](/organizations/dina/), used it as the "Cuban group" in the assassination of [Orlando Letelier](/people/orlando-letelier/) and [Ronni Moffitt](/people/ronni-moffitt/) on September 21, 1976.[^1][^2] In December 1964 Guillermo Novo fired a bazooka at the [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations/) building while [Che Guevara](/people/che-guevara/) was speaking there. In December 1974 the movement's leader, [Felipe Rivero](/people/felipe-rivero/), sent Novo and [Jose Dionisio Suarez](/people/jose-dionisio-suarez/) to [Chile](/places/chile/) "to pay homage to Pinochet," and they entered the country with [Orlando Bosch](/people/orlando-bosch/). Suarez, a former officer of the revolutionary army, was called "Charco de Sangre," pool of blood, for his part in its executions. When [Michael Townley](/people/michael-townley/) first approached them at a Union City motel, Novo, Suarez, and Armando Santana "drew guns and ordered the couple to sit down," searched the luggage, and found an American passport in the name Kenneth Enyart and a Chilean identity card in the name Andres Wilson. "Finally, Novo put away his pistol and extended his hand."[^3] The movement was founded by Felipe Rivero, its "ideological chief" and the author of its thesis "La guerra por los caminos del mundo," with the Novo brothers. By May 1977 the Washington grand jury investigating the murder of Orlando Letelier had summoned fifteen Cuban exiles, at least seven of them members, including the three founders, [Alvin Ross](/people/alvin-ross/), Suárez, and Armando López Estrada of the [Brigade 2506](/organizations/brigade-2506/) veterans' association.[^4] ### The Letelier Operation Michael Townley testified that in the summer of 1976 DINA assigned him to go to the [United States](/places/united-states/) and arrange the murder, and told him to get in touch with the movement. The orders of Colonel [Pedro Espinoza](/people/pedro-espinoza/), as Townley recorded them in 1978, were to "contact the Cuban group to eliminate him, or use SARIN gas, or orchestrate an accident." He arrived on September 9 and the next day met Novo, Alvin Ross, [Virgilio Paz](/people/virgilio-paz/), José Dionisio Suárez, and other members in a hotel room in New Jersey. Novo told him the following day that the movement would cooperate but insisted that Townley take part himself. Townley, Paz, and Suárez went to Washington and built the bomb, and Townley fixed it under the driver's seat at midnight on September 18. It was set off by remote control at Sheridan Circle.[^1][^2] Townley told the Chilean prosecutor in 1978 that early in 1975 DINA had asked him about Bosch, Novo, and Suárez and he had advised against contact, and that at a meeting with the movement's directorate in September 1976, at which he believed Alvin Ross was present, "they asked some specific questions, such as: 'What can you give us in Chile.' We need a quiet place, preferably in the countryside, to have our 'sick' people, to train. Weapons or war material were not discussed at all. I did not commit to anything and only offered to pass the request up through regular channels."[^5] [Raúl Iturriaga Neumann](/people/raúl-iturriaga-neumann/), head of DINA's exterior department, testified in 1978 that a group linked to the movement had presented him in Santiago with "a well-drafted, printed and illustrated pamphlet containing a kind of draft proposal for future relations between them and Chile," including "a headquarters in Chile and Chile's recognition of the Cuban Government in exile," which "did not materialize." A memorandum to Contreras, apparently from Washington and written after the second Carter-Ford debate of October 1976, reported that "some friends from over there tell me again that the FBI reached the conclusion that the perpetrators of the attack on Letelier were 4 members of Brigade 2506," naming Roberto Carvallo, Carlos Pascual, Vicente Vásquez, and Guillermo Novo, who "would have been deceived and paid by a Castro agent."[^6] ### Trials Novo and Ross were convicted in 1979 of murder, murder of a foreign official, and conspiracy, and Novo's brother [Ignacio Novo](/people/ignacio-novo/) of lying to the grand jury. Part of the evidence came from jailhouse informants working with the government. One of them, [Sherman Kaminsky](/people/sherman-kaminsky/), testified that Ross "told me that he was involved in the murder of Orlando Letelier together with generals in DINA, Sepulveda, Michael Townley, and other members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement in this country." In 1980 the Supreme Court held such testimony inadmissible in United States v. Henry, and the court of appeals reversed the convictions of Novo and Ross and ordered a new trial. It reversed Ignacio Novo's for the failure to try him separately.[^1] At the retrial in May 1981 the defense undertook to prove "that Townley and DINA alone plotted to kill Letelier." Townley, the government's witness, admitted that he had lied to a Chilean military investigator and had given [El Mercurio](/organizations/el-mercurio/) a false statement that he had nothing to do with the killing. Paz and Suárez were not tried with them.[^7] [^1]: United States v. Novo Sampol, 636 F.2d 621 (D.C. Cir. 1980). [^2]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "The Pinochet Dictatorship Declassified: Confessions of a DINA Hit Man," National Security Archive, November 22, 2023. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2023-11-22/pinochet-dictatorship-declassified-confessions-dina-hit-man [^3]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 147-151, 240. [^4]: Marina, Gloria. "Citan a Felipe Rivero en el caso Letelier," *El Miami Herald,* May 3, 1977, scan at latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/Rivero-Letelier.pdf [^5]: Fiscalía Militar Ad-Hoc, Santiago, causa 192-78 (fiscal Héctor Orozco), as reproduced in *Proceso contra Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda y Pedro Espinoza Bravo,* ministro instructor Adolfo Bañados, tomo 1, scan at https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Causa-Contreras-Espinoza-1991.pdf. Quotations translated from the Spanish, declaración of Michael Vernon Townley Welch, March 29, 1978. [^6]: Fiscalía Militar Ad-Hoc, Santiago, causa 192-78, as reproduced in *Proceso contra Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda y Pedro Espinoza Bravo,* ministro instructor Adolfo Bañados, tomo 1, scan at https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Causa-Contreras-Espinoza-1991.pdf. Quotations translated from the Spanish, declaración of Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, April 1, 1978; memorandum "Caso Letelier" to Colonel Manuel Contreras, signature read as Gregorio Amunátegui, undated, with reference to the second Carter-Ford debate. [^7]: Kiernan, Laura A. "Townley Admits Lying to Chilean Questioners," *The Washington Post,* May 17, 1981, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000606730006-5.