Sheridan Circle
Sheridan Circle is a traffic circle in the Washington, D.C. area known as Embassy Row. It is named for General Philip Sheridan, noted Union General of the American Civil War and later General of the US Army. An equestrian statue of Sheridan designed by Gutzon Borglum stands on a low platform in the grassy center of the Circle.
A number of embassies ring Sheridan Circle, including the former Turkish chancery and the Romanian embassy on the southern side, and the Embassy of Pakistan to the northwest.
Looking back along Massachusetts Avenue one sees Dupont Circle in the distance; in the other direction, the avenue rises toward a bridge over Rock Creek Park.
On September 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier, who had been foreign minister in the ousted Allende government of Chile, was killed in a car bombing, along with colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt. The bombing was blamed on Chilean DINA agents. Michael Townley, a DINA U.S. expatriate among those convicted for the crime, confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cubans exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard, after consultations with the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU) leadership, including Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio "Bloodbath" Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll [1][2]. According to the Miami Herald, Luis Posada Carriles was at this meeting that decided on Letelier's death and also about the Cubana bombing two weeks later.
Letelier and Moffitt are commemorated with a small plaque embedded in the grass along the curb where they died, near the Irish and Romanian embassies.
Maps and aerial photos
- Hybrid satellite image/street map from WikiMapia
See also
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