Operation Condor

[Magda Hassan]

A historic trial underway in Argentina is set to reveal new details about how Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and '80s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign known as "Operation Condor" involved military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. They worked together to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as terrorists: leftist activists, labor organizers, students, priests, journalists, guerrilla fighters and their families. The campaign was launched by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and evidence shows the CIA and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were complicit from its outset. We're joined by John Dinges, author of "The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents." The book brings together interviews and declassified intelligence records to reconstruct the once-secret events. [includes rush transcript]




Video link here

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: An historic trial that began Tuesday in Argentina is set to reveal new details about how six Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and 1980s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign, known as Operation Condor, involved military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. They worked together to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as terrorists: leftist activists, labor organizers, students, priests, journalists, guerrilla fighters and their families.
The campaign was launched by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and evidence shows the CIA and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were complicit from its outset. At least 25 military generals are facing charges, and more than 500 witnesses are expected to testify during the trial. Last August, an Argentine federal judge issued a formal request to the Obama administration's Justice Department to make Kissinger himself available for questioning. The Obama administration did not respond.
AMY GOODMAN: This trial is taking place in Buenos Aires, the site of a former auto mechanic shop turned torture camp. Argentina is where the greatest number of killings of foreigners was carried out under Operation Condor. All of this comes just weeks after Uruguay's Supreme Court struck down a law that had allowed similar prosecutions in that country.
Well, for more, we're joined by John Dinges, author of The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents. The book brings together interviews and declassified intelligence records to reconstruct the once-secret events. Before that, Dinges was with NPR and worked as a freelance reporter in Latin America. He is currently a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.
John Dinges, welcome to Democracy Now!
JOHN DINGES: Yeah, nice to be here. Thanks.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of this trial that's now underway in Argentina.
JOHN DINGES: Well, there have been several trials, and this goes back to when Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998. That unleashed an avalanche of evidence that went across Europe and led to trials in many placesRome, Paris, Argentina, Chilebut all of them much smaller than this one. This one has 25 people accused. Unfortunatelyor fortunately, who knows?many of the people who were involved in this have already died, they're getting old, of the top leaders. But this is 25 Argentinians and one Uruguayan, all of whom were in military positions, all of whom were involved directly with the actions of Operation Condor.
This is historic in the sense that we're going to hear from 500 witnesses. And really, in the Latin American legal system, it's unusual. It's really only coming to the fore now that you hear witnesses, as opposed to just seeing them give their testimony to judges in a closed room, and then later on people like me might go and read those testimonies, but really it doesn't become public. This is all public. And apparently, a lot of it is being videotaped. So this isthis is the first time that the general public is going to hear the details of this horrible, horrible list of atrocities that killed so many people.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, John, for folks who have never heard of Operation Condor or know little about it, the origins of it, how it began, and the nations or the governments that spearheaded it, could you talk about that?
JOHN DINGES: Well, it is a Chilean invention. Augusto Pinochet had dominated his opposition bythe coup was in 1973; by 1974, there was no internal opposition to speak of. But many of the people who had been part of the previous government, that he had overthrown, had gone overseas. There was a very major, important general who was living in Argentina. Political leaders, for example, Orlando Letelier, the former foreign minister and former ambassador to the United States, somebody who would have lunch with Henry Kissinger, was living in Washington. People were spread around, in Europe and all over Latin America, and Pinochet wanted to go after them. And so he mounted Operation Condor.
And he convinced the other countriesBrazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguayto go along with him, with the argument that there are these guerrilla operations that are a threat to all of them. And there was indeed a guerrilla operation, called the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta, of people who were taking up arms against these governments. And the idea was that they would cooperate in tracking these people down. And they did.
Most of thethe biggest part of the exiles were in Argentina, because Argentina was the last country to give up its civilian government. It wasn't a dictatorship until March of 1976. And this was created in late 1975. So they were all geared up. And when the coup happened in Argentina, they began killing hundreds of people, of these foreigners. And it's interesting that you mentioned the Automotores Orletti. This is that auto repair shop that was used as a torture center, and that's where they kept the international prisoners.
AMY GOODMAN: We, Democracy Now!, went there, visited this shop. I want to read from a declassified record of a CIA briefing that shows that American officials were aware that Latin intelligence services were casting their net wide in Operation Condor. It says, quote, "They are joining forces to eradicate 'subversion' ... a word which increasingly translates into nonviolent dissent from the left and center left."
It goes on to another document that you obtained, John Dinges, that's from the Chilean secret police, known as the DINA. It details the number of dead and disappeared compiled by Argentine intelligence. The cable, sent by DINA's attaché to Buenos Aires, says he's, quote, "sending a list of all the dead," which included the official and unofficial death toll. Between 1975 and mid-'78, he reported, quote, "they count 22,000 between the dead and the disappeared." Talk about the the number of the dead and what the U.S. knew.
JOHN DINGES: Well, let's do the U.S. first. The United States, in this period, the 1970s, was a major sponsor of the military dictatorships that had overthrown some democracies, some faltering civilian governments. Whatever it was, the result was governments, like Videla, like Pinochet, like Banzer in Bolivia, who were killing their citizens with impunity. The United States knew about the mass killing. We had this kind of schizophrenic, Machiavellian attitude toward it. We really don't want these communists to be taking over governments, and we fear that democracy is leading to communist governments. Indeed, a leftist government led by Salvador Allende installed a democratically elected, civilian and revolutionary government in Chile, and that's whyand Pinochet overthrew that government. The United States was deathly fearful that this would spread in Latin America, and so supported the coming of dictatorships.
When they began mass killings, the United States was aware of these mass killings. When theythey learned of Condor shortly after it was created. There's no evidence that they knew about it the day it was created. The earliest evidence is a couple months after it began its operations. But they certainly knew these things were happening. And if you look at the meetings, the transcripts of the meetings between Henry Kissinger and these leaders, both in Argentina and in Chile, where we have the records, what do they say in private? You know, "We support what you are doing. We understand that you have to assert your authority. Try your best to release some prisoners, because I'm under a lot of pressure in Congress, because the Democrats are trying to make me, you know, defend human rights. Do the best you can, but I understand what you're doing."
And in one case, two weeks after Kissinger visited Santiago, there was athe second major meeting of all the Condor countries to discuss Condor. And at that meeting, in June 1976, they approved operations for assassination outside of Latin America. The first assassination that occurred was in Washington, D.C. Orlando Letelier, the former foreign minister, was killed on the streets of Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: This is an astounding story. You wrote a book about it, in fact.
JOHN DINGES: And this isI've written actually two books, one about the assassination, in which I, for the first time, wrote a chapter on the discovery of Operation Condor. I didn't have a lot of detail. In fact, I was misled by the State Department, to a certain extent.
And then, years later, after Pinochet was arrested in London, a flood of documents, including many, many60,000 pages of documents released byordered released by President Clinton, I was able to then, you know, really dig in and understand it from the point of view of the United States. But also, many, many documents were revealed in Latin America. And that is, I think, even more important, because if we just had U.S. documents, it's always subject to: "Well, that's the U.S. view of these things." What was really going on in those Latin American governments
AMY GOODMAN: But explain how Ronhow Orlando Letelier and his assistant, Ronni Moffitt, were killed in the streets of Washington, D.C., in the United States, in 1976.
JOHN DINGES: Pinochet began this operation shortly after that meeting with Kissinger. Within a month, he gave the order approving this. They sent an agent who had been working for DINA for several years named Michael Townley, an American. I don't believe it was any accident that they made an American working for them the hit man on this, because, obviously, as soon as suspicion was cast on them, they said, "Oh, this guy was working for the CIA." And a lot of people like to believe the CIA does all these things. In fact, both the extreme right and the extreme left were saying, "Oh, it was the CIA who did it." There's no evidence that Townley was working for the CIA, but he certainly was working for the Chileans.
He allied with some Cubans up in New Jersey, anti-Castro Cubans. They came down to Washington. TheyTownley crawled under the car, installed a bomb that he had constructed himself. It was run by one of those old beeper devices. They followed the car down Massachusetts Avenue, and at Sheridan Circle, right outside near the Chilean embassy, they pushed the button, killed him. Ronni Moffitt was the wife of Michael Moffitt, who was actually Orlando's assistant. She was sitting in the front seat, and that's why she was killed. Michael survived, and Orlando of course was devastated, died immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: And Townley went to jail for a few years. And then
JOHN DINGES: Townleythe Chileans turned him over. The story of how we solved this case is incredible. The presumption was that the United States is not going to investigate this very strongly. Everybody that thought that was wrong. The FBI didmade an enormous investigation, solved the case, got pictures of the people. And that's the long story that I tell in the book. When they identified the people that had come up to the United States to carry this out, they went down to Chile, asked for the cooperation of the Pinochet government. And Pinochet eventuallythey had two choices: Either they were going to kill Townleyand there's evidence that that was one of their plansor they had to turn him over. And they eventually turned him over. He was taken to the United States, and he began to give testimony. And another flood of information came from Michael Townley. Townley still lives in the United States. He served only five years in prison.
AMY GOODMAN: And then went into witness protection.
JOHN DINGES: And was in witness protection for a while. I understand he's not anymore in witness protection. He lives in the Midwest. And he'she has cooperated. I don't know whether there's any remorse on his part, but he has cooperated with many investigations since his imprisonment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: John, I'd like to ask you about an unusual figure that you talk about in the book and his role in trying to end Operation Condor: Ed Koch, the recently deceased mayor of New York, who was then a young liberal congressman and who began asking all kinds of questions about what was going on and angered our own government. Could you talk about that?
JOHN DINGES: Ed Koch, a beloved figure in this city, and certainly everybody that's dealt with him has had the same experience. And I was reporting this story. He was very cooperative with me. And he came to my book party, so I love him, too.
Ed Koch was a congressman. He spearheaded a bill, an amendment to a bill, to cut off military aid to Uruguay. The Uruguayans were membersthis was 1976. The Uruguayans were members of Operation Condor. And the CIA discoveredand I think the evidence is that they discovered because they werethey talked about it in front of them, that they said they were going to get the Chileans to go up to Washington to kill Koch. And whether that actually was put into action, we don't know. But George Bush, who was head of the CIA at the time, called up Ed Koch and said, "Ed" and it's wonderful to hear Ed Koch tell this story "I've got to tell you something: There's a plot to kill you." And Ed Koch said, "Are you going to provide me protection?" They said, "No, no, no. That's not our job. We're the CIA. We're just telling you, and it's up to you to provide your own protection." Ed Koch didn't know this was Operation Condor. He just thought this was some crazy people from the dictatorship.
Later on, in my investigation, I wasI actually talked to one of the people who was involved in this, one of the Uruguayans, and whoit was a Condor operation. It was kind of a typical one, even though it didn't actually kill anybody, luckily. But it was the modus operandi. In order to cover their tracks, one country would use another country's nationals to do their dirty work in the operations that were planned outside of Latin America. Inside of Latin America, you had a much more systematic and effective way of operating, in which they would just track down each other's dissidents in whatever country they happened to bePeru, Brazil, Uruguay, mainly in Argentina. And then they wouldthe methodology was simple: capture them, kidnap them, torture them, kill them, make their bodies disappear. Very few victims have survived Operation Condor, almost none. It's very difficult to find a survivor.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And yet, today in Latin America, many of the leaders of the new populist governments were folks who had emerged from some of the very groups that Condor was tracking. And Uruguay especially, a former Tupamaro. And throughout the region, those dissidents now are part of the governing apparatus of their countries.
JOHN DINGES: I was in Bolivia just two weeks ago, and I interviewed one of theone of the people in the Ministry of Communications, and a man who's among the many, many, many indigenous people who are in the Morales government. And he described how his father had been a prisoner, had been in Chile as an exile. When the military coup happened, he was imprisoned and kept prisoner for seven months and tortured. And I talked to, in that same office, another person who also had been involved in the Bolivian resistance in the 1980s, going back with the group that had fought together with Che Guevara in the 1960s. His father had been involved with them.
These are revolutionaries, but they are a different brand of revolutionaries. They are as dedicated, I think, but they're not taking up arms. I really believe that they realize that that did not lead to successful revolutions, and so I'm much more optimistic about what's going on with thewith this current group of governments.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, a State Department cable, 1978, beginsthe jacket of your book, says, "Kissinger explained his opinion [that] the Government of Argentina had done an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces." The significance of the judge calling for Kissinger's testimony and the Obama administration not responding?
JOHN DINGES: They have asked for Kissinger to give testimony many times. And in my book, I quote the one time where he actually responded to a petition from France, I believe it was. And he basically denied everything. This is very frustrating. I was able toit was clear to me that, there's no other word for it, these were lies. I mean, the documents say one thing; Kissinger said another thing. And he knew what those documents said. It's notthe United States has never allowed any of its officials to face trial in other countries. We are not a member of the ICC. There's never
AMY GOODMAN: The International Criminal Court.
JOHN DINGES: The International Criminal Court. There's never been any participatethere's never been any trials that have brought Americans in the dock. There was an attempt in Italy; of course, all of those people were gone. The United States, for one reason or another, Democrats and Republicans, protect our own human rights criminals when it's involving human rights crimes outside of the United States. It's just the way it is.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you describe Henry Kissinger in that way, as a human rights criminal?
JOHN DINGES: Yes, absolutely.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the relevance of this history of farming out the battle against terrorism, and so you could have no finger marksno fingerprints of your own involvement to the current war against terrorism in the United States?
JOHN DINGES: Well, I wroteI was writing chapter one, when 9/11 happened, in my house in Washington. And as I finished the bookand I actually end with a reference to 9/11I said this is not something that we're condemned to repeat. And I was making the comparison between the war on terror in the 1970s and the current war on terror that was launched by President Bush. I thought we were going towe had learned the lesson, that you don't imitate the methods of your enemies andor those who had been shown to be human rights criminals. Unfortunately, we crossed that line, I think, many times.
The current discussion about drones, I think, is very frightening, because I'm having a hard time distinguishing between what they did with Operation Condor, low-tech, and what a drone does, because a drone is basically going into somebody else's country, even with the permission of that countryof course, that's what Operation Condor did, in most cases: You track somebody down, and you kill them. Now, the justification is: "Well, they were a criminal. They were a combatant." Well, that may or may not be true, but nobody is determining that except the person that's pulling the trigger.
I just think that this has to be something that we discuss. And maybe trials like this, going back to the '70s, people say, "Well, that was the dictatorships of the 1970s." But the tendency of a state to feel that they can move against their enemies in the most effective way possible is still there, and it is certainly not limited to dictatorships.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, John Dinges, for being with us. John Dinges is author of The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents. Before that, he was with National Public Radio, NPR, worked as a freelance reporter in Latin America, is currently a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/7/ope...d_campaign

[Danny Jarman]

[SUP]Thanks Magda.

Nothing about this on the BBC homepage.

Abu Qatada and a Van Dyck painting are more pressing issues, apparently.
[/SUP]

[Peter Lemkin]

Too bad Kissinger is not in the 'dock'. It was requested of the US that he and some others from CIA and other Agencies be delivered to the Court. The US didn't answer - refused to even say 'no'. :darthvader: The Empire doesn't reply to requests from 'ants'.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Magda Hassan]

There is reason to believe that the Condor network is alive and operating. The secretary of Colonel Manual Contreras, head of DINA, the Chilean secret police highly involved in torture and currently serving 200+ years in a Chilean prison, has escaped from house arrest and is living in Australia. She was smuggled into Argentina by an Australian woman. Presumably using a false passport, supplied by who we don't know yet to travel to Australia as there would be international warrants for her if she used her own Chilean passport anywhere. It has been recently been discovered that some Australian SIS was in Chile helping the US in the 73 coup by paying the truck drivers US currency to go on strike and block the roads. I would be interested to know if there is any official involvement in the importation or protection of participants in the Pinochet dictatorship. Others are investigating this. We will post here and other places as developments become available.

[Jan Klimkowski]

There is reason to believe that the Condor network is alive and operating. The secretary of Colonel Manual Contreras, head of DINA, the Chilean secret police highly involved in torture and currently serving 200+ years in a Chilean prison, has escaped from house arrest and is living in Australia. She was smuggled into Argentina by an Australian woman. Presumably using a false passport, supplied by who we don't know yet to travel to Australia as there would be international warrants for her if she used her own Chilean passport anywhere. It has been recently been discovered that some Australian SIS was in Chile helping the US in the 73 coup by paying the truck drivers US currency to go on strike and block the roads. I would be interested to know if there is any official involvement in the importation or protection of participants in the Pinochet dictatorship. Others are investigating this. We will post here and other places as developments become available.

Condor reborn?

Resurrected?

Or never really killed?

Operación Silencio

Operación Silencio (Operation Silence) was a Chilean operation to impede investigations by Chilean judges by removing witnesses from the country. It started about a year before the "terror archives" were found in Paraguay.

In April 1991 Arturo Sanhueza Ross, linked to the murder of MIR leader Jecar Neghme in 1989, left the country. According to the Rettig Report, Jecar Neghme's death had been carried out by Chilean intelligence agents.[45] In September 1991, Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who killed trade-unionist Tucapel Jiménez, left by plane.[46] In October 1991, Eugenio Berríos, a chemist who had worked with DINA agent Michael Townley, was escorted from Chile to Uruguay by Operation Condor agents in order to avoid testifying in the Letelier case. He used Argentinian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Brazilian passports, raising concerns that Operation Condor was not dead. Berríos was found dead in El Pinar, near Montevideo (Uruguay), in 1995. His body had been so mutilated to make identification by appearance impossible.

In January 2005, Michael Townley, who now lives in the U.S. under the witness protection program, acknowledged links between Chile, DINA, and the detention and torture center Colonia Dignidad.[47] The center was established in 1961 by Paul Schäfer, who was arrested in March 2005 in Buenos Aires and convicted on charges of child rape. Townley informed Interpol about Colonia Dignidad and the Army's Bacteriological Warfare Laboratory. This last laboratory would have replaced the old DINA laboratory on Via Naranja de lo Curro street, where Townley worked with the chemical assassin Eugenio Berríos. The toxin that allegedly killed Christian-Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva may have been made in this new lab in Colonia Dignidad, according to the judge investigating the case.[47]

[Tracy Riddle]

http://m.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/01/ne...-dirty-war

New Memo: Kissinger Gave the "Green Light" for Argentina's Dirty War

By David Corn on Tue. January 14, 2014 12:23 PM PDT

World Economic Forum/Wikimedia Commons

Only a few months ago, Henry Kissinger was dancing with Stephen Colbert in a funny bit on the latter's Comedy Central show. But for years, the former secretary of state has sidestepped judgment for his complicity in horrific human rights abuses abroad, and a new memo has emerged that provides clear evidence that in 1976 Kissinger gave Argentina's neo-fascist military junta the "green light" for the dirty war it was conducting against civilian and militant leftists that resulted in the disappearancethat is, deathsof an estimated 30,000 people.

In April 1977, Patt Derian, a onetime civil rights activist whom President Jimmy Carter had recently appointed assistant secretary of state for human rights, met with the US ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill. A memo recording that conversation has been unearthed by Martin Edwin Andersen, who in 1987 first reported that Kissinger had told the Argentine generals to proceed with their terror campaign against leftists (whom the junta routinely referred to as "terrorists"). The memo notes that Hill told Derian about a meeting Kissinger held with Argentine Foreign Minister Cesar Augusto Guzzetti the previous June. What the two men discussed was revealed in 2004 when the National Security Archive obtained and released the secret memorandum of conversation for that get-together. Guzzetti, according to that document, told Kissinger, "our main problem in Argentina is terrorism." Kissinger replied, "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures." In other words, go ahead with your killing crusade against the leftists.

The new document shows that Kissinger was even more explicit in encouraging the Argentine junta. The memo recounts Hill describing the Kissinger-Guzzetti discussion this way:

The Argentines were very worried that Kissinger would lecture to them on human rights. Guzzetti and Kissinger had a very long breakfast but the Secretary did not raise the subject. Finally Guzzetti did. Kissinger asked how long will it take you (the Argentines) to clean up the problem. Guzzetti replied that it would be done by the end of the year. Kissinger approved.
In other words, Ambassador Hill explained, Kissinger gave the Argentines the green light.

That's a damning statement: a US ambassador saying a secretary of state had egged on a repressive regime that was engaged in a killing spree.
In August 1976, according to the new memo, Hill discussed "the matter personally with Kissinger, on the way back to Washington from a Bohemian Grove meeting in San Francisco." Kissinger, Hill told Derian, confirmed the Guzzetti conversation and informed Hill that he wanted Argentina "to finish its terrorist problem before year end." Kissinger was concerned about new human rights laws passed by the Congress requiring the White House to certify a government was not violating human rights before providing US aid. He was hoping the Argentine generals could wrap up their murderous eradication of the left before the law took effect.

Hill indicated to Derian, according to the new memo, that he believed that Kissinger's message to Guzzetti had prompted the Argentine junta to intensify its dirty war. When he returned to Buenos Aires, the memo notes, Hill "saw that the terrorist death toll had climbed steeply." And the memo reports, "Ambassador Hill said he would tell all of this to the Congress if he were put on the stand under oath. 'I'm not going to lie,' the Ambassador declared."
Hill, who died in 1978, never did testify that Kissinger had urged on the Argentine generals, and the Carter administration reversed policy and made human rights a priority in its relations with Argentina and other nations. As for Kissinger, he skatedand he has been skating ever since, dodging responsibility for dirty deeds in Chile, Bangladesh, East Timor, Cambodia, and elsewhere. Kissinger watchers have known for years that he at least implicitly (though privately) endorsed the Argentine dirty war, but this new memo makes clear he was an enabler for an endeavor that entailed the torture, disappearance, and murder of tens of thousands of people. Next time you see him dancing on television, don't laugh.

[R.K. Locke]

Further evidence to support the claims of John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hitman.


http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/CI...-0018.html




CIA Document Reveals Ecuador Part of Operation Condor


The death of former President Jaime Roldos (4th from R) is being investigated by the office of the attorney general as potentially being part of Operation Condor.

Francisco Herrera Arauz said that Operation Condor worked to protect U.S. interests. | Photo: teleSUR


The office of the attorney general in Ecuador is investigating if the death of former President Jaime Roldos was an assassination of Operation Condor.


A recently declassified CIA document reveals that Ecuador like many countries of the Southern Cone was part of the U.S.-backed Operation Condor plan, which took hold of the region from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.

The document states that Ecuador became part of Operation Condor in 1978, joining dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in endorsing state-sponsored terror to control what was perceived to be the threat of communism and eliminate subversive sectors of society.

Ecuador's office of the attorney general is currently investigating if the 1981 plane crash that killed President Jaime Roldos was part of the plan, as leftist leaders were targeted throughout the region.

Attorney General Galo Chiriboga told the press, "We asked for documents in the United States to be declassified, in particular a CIA document, which establishes that Ecuador was one of the countries where Plan Condor operated. With this information, we are going to examine information of whether the accident which killed President Roldos was in fact an accident or was not an accident."

The three-page CIA document stipulates that Ecuador's intelligence services, along with its army, navy and air force, agreed to gather and share information with other states, monitor telecommunications and engage in psychological warfare as part of the plan. It also outlines Ecuador's relationship with Argentine and Chilean officials who installed telecommunications systems in the country, and offered scholarships and training to the Ecuadorean military.

"They financed an entire network of people to work in their interests. They wanted to destroy communism, and affect the position of sovereignty of Ecuador to break its relations with Cuba. This was not good. This caused us a lot of damage. It is the period that the left experienced the greatest repression," said journalist Francisco Herrera Arauz, who recently coauthored the book "The CIA Against Latin America, Special Case of Ecuador," which examines interventions throughout the period.

The countries of Operation Condor agreed to share information, and work to eliminate leftist groups within their own countries, as well as persecute those seeking refuge abroad. Operation Condor knew no borders, as death squads, infiltrators and extra-judicial killings were rampant throughout the region.

A former member of the revolutionary guerrilla group Alfaro Vive ¡Carajo! Mireya Cardenas spoke to teleSUR English about Operation Condor.

"In our case, the CIA destroyed a structure in one night, it was destroyed in the city of Cuenca. And they assassinated our comrades. There were infiltrators also, who were paid. They were paid over a period of two years, three years, they were paid with dollars, when the currency here was the sucre."

An estimated 60,000 people were killed as a result of Operation Condor by its end in the mid-1980s. Through investigations of the death of President Jaime Roldos, the cases of the Alfaro Vive ¡Carajo! and other affected individuals and groups, Ecuador and the other countries making up this plan are working to uncover the truth of this period and provide justice for those victims of crimes against humanity.

[Magda Hassan]

Historic court case. The first time Condor has been legally proven in court.

Argentina's last military dictator jailed for role in international death squad

Reynaldo Bignone sentenced to 20 years in prison for his part in running Operation Condor in 1970s and 80s




[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/27/argentinas-last-military-dictator-jailed-over-role-in-operation-condor#img-1"]


[/URL] Reynaldo Bignone, former dictator waiting for the verdict of his trial in Buenos Aires. Photograph: Victor R Caivano/AP Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires
Saturday 28 May 2016 08.20 AEST Last modified on Saturday 28 May 2016 19.27 AEST



[URL="https://profile.theguardian.com/save-content?INTCMP=DOTCOM_ARTICLE_SFL&returnUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Fmay%2F27%2Fargentinas-last-military-dictator-jailed-over-role-in-operation-condor&shortUrl=/p/4jn7y&platform=web:Firefox:wide"]
Save for later [/URL]


Argentina's last military dictator, 88-year-old former general Reynaldo Bignone, was today sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in Operation Condor, under which an international death squad was set up by six South American military dictatorships during the 1970s and 80s. The plan allowed death squads from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay to cross into one another's territory to kidnap, torture and kill political opponents who had fled across the border.
Most of the 105 cases of "illegal arrest" followed by death covered by the trial involved foreign nationals 45 Uruguayans, 22 Chileans, 13 Paraguayans and11 Bolivians killed while living in exile in Argentina.
[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/27/argentinas-last-military-dictator-jailed-over-role-in-operation-condor#img-2"]

[/URL]
A boy holds a banner with pictures of some of the 3,000 people killed or disappeared during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship (1973-90). Pinochet faced charges over the deaths of political opponents under Operation Condor. Photograph: Victor Rojas/AFP/Getty Images Persecuted for political reasons in the military regimes in their own countries, many had escaped to Argentina before 1976, when the country became the last of the six nations to fall under a dictatorship. After their arrest, the victims were made to "disappear", usually by being cremated, or thrown drugged but still alive from military planes into the Atlantic Ocean.

Brazil​ ​is in danger of turning the clock back on democracy

Eliane Brum



Read more



"This ruling is important because it is the first time the existence of Operation Condor has been proved in court," said Luz Palmás Zaldúa, lawyer for the Argentinian human rights group Cels (Centre for Social and Legal Studies), which represented the victims' families. "It is also the first time that former members of Condor have been sentenced for forming part of this criminal organisation."
The sentences against 17 former officers on trial were read out by Judge Adrián Grünberg to a courtroom packed with victims' relatives, who sat in stony silence during the lengthy reading.
Bignone, who ruled Argentina in 1982-1983 in the wake of the Falklands war, was found guilty of being part of an illicit association, kidnapping and abusing his powers in the forced disappearance of more than 100 people. The former general is already serving life sentences for multiple human rights violations during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.
Another high-ranking former general, Santiago Riveros, with jurisdiction over Buenos Aires and various clandestine detention centres, was sentenced to 25 years.
[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/27/argentinas-last-military-dictator-jailed-over-role-in-operation-condor#img-3"]

[/URL]
Families of victims sitting in court for the sentencing of former military officers in Buenos Aires. Photograph: Natacha Pisarenko/AP Among other crimes, Riveros was sentenced for a case involving a young Uruguayan couple, María Gatti and Jorge Zaffaroni, who fled to Argentina in 1975. Kidnapped the next year along with their infant child, Mariana, the couple were taken to Automotores Orletti, a detention centre that acted as the headquarters of Operation Condor in Buenos Aires.
The Uruguayan couple were murdered and their one-year-old child was given to Argentinian intelligence officer Miguel Angel Furci to raise as his own. It was only 16 years later, in 1992, that Mariana Zaffaroni was reunited with her biological family. Furci was also among the condemnedon Friday, sentenced to 25 years, on dozens of counts of torture and illegal arrest at the Orletti centre.

Legacy of the junta casts a dark shadow over contemporary writers in Argentina

Read more



Although the role of the US in Condor was not under examination, substantial evidence was produced during the three-year trial concerning Washington's role.
"We obtained documentation, both from declassified files of the US state department and from South American records, showing that the US was aware that Condor was killing people and even provided technical assistance," said Palmás Zaldúa. "There is evidence the CIA provided computers and that Condor members communicated via a US telex service based in Panama."
One US state department document from October 1981 related how Condor members "keep in touch with one another through a US communications installation in the Panama canal zone, which covers all of Latin America".
Although the telex service, dubbed Condortel, was officially meant to be used by South American officers under military training by the US in Panama, the document, a cable from the US embassy in Paraguay to Washington, states that "it is also employed to coordinate intelligence information among the Southern Cone countries". The document adds: "This is the Condor network which all of us have heard about over the last few years."

New revelations regarding the role of the US in Condor could emerge in the near future. "So far we have only seen US state department files," said lawyer Palmás Zaldúa. "We expect to find much more information once Pentagon and CIA files relating to the period of South America's military dictatorships are released."
President Barack Obama promised to release all US files, including military and intelligence records, during his visit to Argentina in March this year. "I believe we have a responsibility to confront the past with honesty and transparency," he said.