This evening's music features New Orleans guitarist and singer Snooks Eaglin.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

Former Pinochet Officer, Investigated for Torture and Murder, Taught at Pentagon

'His hiring undermines our moral authority on both human rights and in the war on terror,' says former intelligence officer

A former member of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's brutal regime taught at the Pentagon's top university for 13 years, despite repeated complaints from his colleagues about his past as a torturer and murderer of political dissidents in the South American nation.

Jaime Garcia Covarrubias is charged in Santiago with leading the executions of seven people in 1973 following a U.S.-backed coup, allegations which the U.S. State and Defense Departments were aware of when they renewed his visa and allowed him to keep teaching at the National Defense University's William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, according to a McClatchy investigation.

At Firedoglake, investigative journalist Kevin Gosztola writes:

Attention to Covarrubias' employment at the National Defense University (NDU) comes just after State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki maintained during a press briefing the US has a "long-standing policy" to not support coups. She suggested the U.S. "does not support political transitions by nonconstitutional means." They must be "peaceful and legal."

Garcia Covarrubias has been in Chile since January 2014, after an investigative judge ordered him to return to his home country for the duration of the inquiry into his role in the 1973 killings and the extent of his involvement in the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) spy agency.

The Real Story Behind the Republicans’ Iran Letter

The “open letter” from Senator Tom Cotton and 46 other Republican Senators to the leadership of Iran, which even Republicans themselves admit was aimed at encouraging Iranian opponents of the nuclear negotiations to argue that the United States cannot be counted on to keep the bargain, has created a new political firestorm. It has been harshly denounced by Democratic loyalists as “stunning” and “appalling”, and critics have accused the signers of the letter of being “treasonous” for allegedly violating a law forbidding citizens from negotiating with a foreign power.

But the response to the letter has primarily distracted public attention from the real issue it raises: how the big funders of the Likud Party in Israel control Congressional actions on Iran.

The infamous letter is a ham-handed effort by Republican supporters of the Netanyahu government to blow up the nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran. ... What Cotton and his Republican colleagues were doing was not negotiating with a foreign government but trying to influence the outcome of negotiations in the interest of a foreign government. The premise of the Senate Republican reflected in the letter – that Iran must not be allowed to have any enrichment capacity whatever – did not appear spontaneously. The views that Cotton and the other Republicans have espoused on Iran were the product of assiduous lobbying by Israeli agents of influence using the inducement of promises of election funding and the threat of support for the members’ opponents in future elections.

AIPAC apparently supported the letter, but there may be more to the story. Senator Cotton Just happens to be a protégé of neoconservative political kingpin Bill Kristol, whose Emergency Committee on Israel gave him nearly a million dollars late in his 2014 Senate campaign and guaranteed that Cotton would have the support of the four biggest funders of major anti-Iran organizations. ... So the real story behind the letter from Cotton and his Republican colleagues is how the enforcers of Likudist policy on Iran used an ambitious young Republican politician to try to provoke a breakdown in the Iran nuclear negotiations. The issue it raises is a far more serious issue than the Logan Act, but thus far major news organizations have steered clear of that story.

German officials: U.S. statements of Russian involvement in the Ukraine "dangerous propaganda"

A diplomatic divide between the United States and Germany over the extent of Russian military involvement in Ukraine and how to respond to it threatens to hinder hopes of providing greater support to the beleaguered nation. ...

German officials, including some in Merkel’s office, have recently referred to U.S. statements of Russian involvement in the Ukraine fighting as “dangerous propaganda,” and the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel went so far as to ask: “Do the Americans want to sabotage the European mediation attempts in Ukraine led by Chancellor Merkel?”

All sides agree that Russia is supporting the separatists, something a NATO official stressed in responding to German frustrations, saying that there’s “broad agreement on the overall situation.”

But Germans and other Europeans are concerned that U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove – the NATO supreme allied commander, Europe – and Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for Europe, have been exaggerating the extent of Russian involvement in the conflict.

Numerous German news reports also have noted a vast difference between the number of Russian troops that European NATO members have estimated are in Ukraine’s conflicted Donbas region and what American NATO commanders have announced. It’s 600, according to the Europeans, versus the 12,000 to 20,000 estimated by U.S. commanders.

Line 61, the Oil Pipeline That Will Dwarf Keystone XL

Many Americans have heard of the Keystone XL pipeline. Few have heard of Line 61.

Operated by Canadian energy firm Enbridge, Line 61 currently runs 560,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day between Superior, Wisconsin — where it connects to some of Enbridge's Canadian oil lines — and Pontiac, Illinois. This year, however, Enbridge hopes to continue the expansion of the line's capacity until it can eventually carry up to 1.2 million barrels per day — a 30 percent higher capacity than Keystone.

Last month, President Barack Obama vetoed a bill approving construction of Keystone in order to allow a lengthy State Department review to be completed. But because Line 61 doesn't cross an international border, it doesn't require the same kind of approval.

In many respects, the intense focus on Keystone — from both proponents and opponents — is symbolic. Canadian tar sands oil will be extracted and transported to the US whether or not Keystone's construction is approved. For starters, oil trains are able to transport oil when pipelines are unavailable. (While the size of the average pipeline spill is much greater than an oil train spill — pipelines transport far more oil — trains tend to have accidents more often. In the past month, four oil trains have derailed in Canada and the US.) Second and more significantly, there are pipeline alternatives to Keystone that are proposed or already exist. Like Line 61.

But despite the fact that Line 61 is poised to dwarf Keystone, and despite the fact it carries the same tar sands crude oil — it's been linked to increased pipeline corrosiveness due to the higher temperatures at which it's transported — Line 61 has received almost no national news coverage.

Also of interest:

Nuland’s Mastery of Ukraine Propaganda

Bank Stress Test Results at 4:30 Today: Will the Fed Whistle Past the Graveyard?