Operation Condor, State Order on Murder.

On the early morning, when the sun had not yet risen over the Andean Mountains, and shrouded in blue mist Santiago de Chile was still soundly asleep, the army and the carabineros left the barracks. The peaceful silence of that fateful day was broken, as the clatter of iron heels filled the streets of most Chilean towns. Soldiers occupied administrative buildings, airports, railway stations, telegraph sites, and banks. According to previously tracked locations they quickly found their ways to active and potential opponents: loyal to the oath military officers, “too clever” professors and their “too curious” students, union leaders, “annoying” journalists, priests and nuns, and other citizens capable of resistance. Everything was done cleanly, quietly, and almost without any traces left behind. That was the day that “Condor” flew high into the skies over Latin America for the first time. What followed – military atrocities, secret prisons, violence, torture, national stadiums turning into temporary concentration camps – became Latin America’s life for several long years.

We will be looking into one of the darkest pages in the history of Latin America written under the guidance of the United States. The political and economic dependence of Latin American countries on the United States has been prospering for near 200 years, which is not indicative of warm neighborly relations and does not correspond to the ideals of just and mutually beneficial cooperation, and Operation Condor is only one chapter in this story.

Operation Condor was the codename given to what was secretly described by South American intelligence agencies in the mid-1970s as the coordinated sharing of intelligence between countries in the region to combat communist subversion. However, this plan was much more than an innocent exchange of information between amicable nations. The hint is in the name of the Operation: condor is one of the largest flying birds that feeds on dead marine animals. The Operation was really a military terror campaign among governments of the following South American states: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay (Peru and Ecuador joined in later on, with a less significant role). Under the banner of anticommunism and in the name of security, the United States nurtured state-sponsored terrorism in Latin America: it financed Operation Condor and trained the military and intelligence forces of participating countries. Supported secretly by Washington, especially the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Condor was responsible for thousands (the number is still disputed) of victims. They were people who opposed the coups and dictatorships in their own countries and included politically-conscious activists of all kinds: unionists, well-known political figures, artists, political party officers, social critics, and guerillas.

Preconditions

Condor spread its wings over Latin America due to various circumstances. As we remember the time frame, it was still the cruel Cold War years, and Washington experienced a fierce sense of anticommunism. At the height of Cold War, communist threats became the most pressing issue for American foreign policymakers. This statement follows logically from the national security doctrine adopted by the United States after the Cuban revolution in January 1959, which was imposed on the entire continent. The strategy that this document defined affirmed the need for a political and military counter-attack against the threat to the national security of Latin American states. The doctrine recognized the spread of socialist ideology on the continent as the main threat. Consequently, the motivation to establish policies in order to maintain the U.S. sphere of influence in Latin America evolved into top-priority.

Worried over history repeating itself – having “another Cuba” in its “backyard” – the United States began overthrowing democratic regimes in Latin America. A series of government takeovers orchestrated by the U.S. between 1950s and 1970s – a destabilizing scenario with the subsequent restoration of order by military forces applied throughout South America – prepared a strong foundation for the emergence of military terror campaign, in which Operation Condor was the culmination. In place of leftist governments, the newly established dictatorships were set to transform the political, economic, and cultural landscapes in their respective countries. In 1954, it was this method that ended democracy in Paraguay, when General Alfredo Stroessner took power and sat on the dictatorial throne; in 1964 the military overthrew the government of Joao Goulart in Brazil; General Hugo Banzer toppled President Juan Jose Torres in Bolivia in 1971; Augusto Pinochet overthrew President Allende of Chile in 1973; General Jorge Rafael Videla seized power in Argentina in 1976. Chile’s coup has a special significance, as it is, in fact, the birthplace of the Operation. Ruthless silencing of opposition began after Pinochet’s military coup against democratically-elected President Allende On September 11, 1973. To this day, Chile commemorates Latin America’s 9/11.4 The Nixon administration had helped sabotage Allende and then supported Pinochet as he dissolved parliament and started a cruel campaign against anyone who repelled the right-wing dictatorship regime: executions, abductions, raids, and arrests of thousands of Chilean citizens. As South American states were plunging into the darkness of military dictatorships one after another, the United States continued to be the monopolistic enterprise for the production of these coups in fear of communist propagation.

Operation’s establishment and enactment

The situation was escalating and the newly authorized governments were becoming more and more aggressive. Maybe the first sign of a possibility of emergence of the Operation was the proposal of a Brazilian General Fortes during the Conference of American Armies in 1973. He proposed “a series of bilateral conferences on intelligence between the heads of communications.” Indeed, the friendly regimes ended up combining their efforts and capabilities of their secret services. The idea of creating a common repressive mechanism was only expressed by General Fortes, but belonged, it seems, to Augusto Pinochet, and rather matured when chiefs of intelligence services sat at the negotiation table. Be that as it may, this integration initiative came from the Chilean secret police DINA with dictators fully aware of such an important undertaking.

On the 25th of November 1975 leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met with Manuel Contreras, chief of the Chilean secret police, in Santiago de Chile, officially establishing Operation Condor. The meeting ended with common commitment to develop and expand the new organization. At that very first meeting, on the agenda were methods of collecting and exchanging information about political groups and their leaders between the special services of the Southern cone. The leaders discussed subsequent bilateral and multilateral negotiations, the issues of implementation of joint operations for the abduction, transportation and elimination of political opponents in the territory of the member states of the consortium were yet to be discussed. Three main activities were outlined. The coordinated repression passed through the following phases:

1. in the first one, a centralized database on suspected “internal enemies” was maintained;

2. in the second one, these people were identified and attacked: tortured, interrogated and, eventually, murdered. The second phase only concerned the regional level;

3. in the third and final phase, Condor was set free to fly far beyond national and continental borders – assassinations were carried out to eliminate persons located in other countries.

Contreras passed away in 2015, he was serving over 500 years sentencing for crimes against humanity. Shortly before his death he gave an interview to a local news channel. He showed no remorse for the techniques his service used to prosecute opponents: “I will only ask for forgiveness from God. From no one else.”

It seems relevant to be noted that the special services of member-states were already skilled in suppressing dissent. They quickly mastered the methods of conducting joint actions, organized exchange of information relating to the movements and plans of the leaders of the opposition groups, party leaders, influential political refugees, and activists of the opposition. People disappeared without a trace – they were grabbed in the streets, at their homes, in shelters for refugees, transported to secret and non-secret prisons, tortured and beaten up until they gave away the necessary information. Argentinian “experts” introduced the infamous “death flights”, when people were drugged and thrown into the waters of Rio de la Plata from a helicopter flying at about one-kilometer height. Such method was very convenient – death was guaranteed and there was no fuss with consequences.

Over the course of the Operation, friendly secret services mastered not only cooperation but also mutual assistance, as in the case of 119 missing Chileans, which was only accidentally made public. Flirting with the world public opinion, Augusto Pinochet lifted the iron curtain over Chile. The international commission on human rights was the first one to be allowed to “crawl” under the curtain and take a peek at what was going on. The commission intended to investigate the facts of the mass murder of the opposition. DINA immediately realized this intention and passed on the documents of the dead activists onto its Argentinian colleagues. At night, they scattered 119 mutilated corpses on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, providing each with an appropriate Chilean document. The next morning, Chilean leading newspapers published materials about the shootout over political differences. This instance only further reveals the magnitude of how military regimes were an active base and sponsors for violent terrorism in the region.

Flights of Condor outside of the region deserve special attention. One of the first assassinations was the murder of Orlando Letelier. On the day of the coup of September 11, 1973, in Chile, he served in the government of Allende as Minister of Defense. Letelier was one of the first government officials to be arrested. The next 8 months he spent in a political prison on the Dawson Island. On September 10, 1974, Letelier was released due to international diplomatic pressure, at the request of the Venezuelan government and immediately moved to Venezuela. Soon after his release, he decided to head to Washington, where he got immediately involved in the work of exposing the military regime. With his direct assistance, a number of major anti-Pinochet actions were carried out, which had a wide international resonance. Naturally, the Chilean military also reacted to these actions. It was decided to silence Orlando Letelier. Forever. On September 21, 1976, this decision was implemented: he was killed in a car explosion.

At this point, the Operation looks like a well thought-through international criminal operation sponsored by allied governments, and went far beyond targeting proponents of communism and feared no borders. Moreover, it targeted and punished individuals based on their political ideology, rather than illegal acts. “They were young, idealistic and democratic. They believed in liberty, justice and equality. Many of them were leftist. As their family we felt proud of that,” confesses Laura Elgeta, who lost her brother to the Operation and was its victim herself.

Assessment of the role of the United States

Although most evidence continues to be fragmentary, heavily censored un unreleased to the public eye, it is now possible to piece together information from various sources to assess Operation Condor as the role of the U.S. And even though the Operation was officially launched in late 1975, up until early 1990s little was known about its dimensions. An extensive wall of secrecy protected any information about it and those responsible for its establishment and implementation were either reluctant to discuss it or downright denied its mere existence. Even today, many of the repressors who are still free and are dying of old age, continue their sadism by not telling the families of the victims what they did to the bodies of their relatives. The few investigations into what happened relied on the testimonies of victims of the repression and their families, but very few victims (understandably) agreed to testify as that would mean revisiting the trauma.

Compelling evidence about Operation Condor emerged in 1992 and 1993 when extensive police and military files were discovered in an office of Paraguay's Interior Ministry called the Technical Department for the Repression of Communism. The discovery was somewhat accidental, as no one could fathom the Operation’s existence and its far-reaching consequences. Martin Almada, a Paraguayan lawyer kidnapped in 1974 and held in custody until 1977, began his campaign to discover information about his own arrest and the death of his wife. This search led him along with other victims to a building with thousands of secret documents. These “Archives of Terror” document the systematized nature of state terror operations and prove that the system known as Condor operated through official government channels. The documents included thousands of surveillance and intelligence reports on the activities of Paraguayans: police booking cards (“fichas”), guerilla movements, social organizations, surveillance photographs, and official communications among military regimes regarding the activities of Latin Americans of different nationalities as well as even some Europeans accused of antigovernment activities or even attitudes. What did Europeans have to do with that? Tens of thousands of Latin Americans forced to flee their countries and/or exiled by the military regimes in the 1970s, developed communities in many foreign countries. These refugees came to play a significant role in helping develop international opposition to the dictatorships, expressed in peaceful solidarity and human rights movements that repelled the crimes of their home countries’ regimes.

So, what was the role of the U.S. in all of this? The “Archives of Terror” also revealed official documents used to request to track suspects to and from the U.S. Embassy, the FBI and the CIA. The CIA provided lists of suspects and other intelligence information to the military states, while the FBI searched for individuals wanted by DINA in the United States in 1975.

In June 1999, the State Department first released thousands of declassified documents. The release happened due to Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón’s investigation of crimes committed under the Condor umbrella. His request to reveal new information on this topic led to the declassification of thousands of U.S. documents. These files have provided evidence of Operation’s broad scope and revealed that the U.S. not only knew of its existence and did nothing to stop it, but also gave organizational and physical support to the program’s participating countries. The documents showed that specifically the CIA and the State and Defense Departments were aware of the Operation. Since then, more documents have been declassified and released, but the U.S. has been rather reluctant and very selective with the files they choose to show to the public. Nevertheless, below is what we know so far, some of the further evidence that emerged over the years.