The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents

301 Pages·2004·1.94 MB·English

by  John Dinges

THE CONDOR YEARS
Also by John Dinges
Assassination on Embassy Row (with Saul Landau)
Our Man in Panama: The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega
THE CONDOR YEARS
How Pinochet and His Allies Brought
Terrorism to Three Continents
John Dinges
© 2004 by John Dinges
Afterword © 2005 by John Dinges
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.
Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to:
Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2004
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York
Extract from Pablo Neruda’s “Vienen los pájaros” from Canto General is reprinted by permission of
Fundación Pablo Neruda, © 1950 by Pablo Neruda and Fundación Pablo Neruda
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Dinges, John, 1941–
The Condor years : how Pinochet and his allies brought terrorism to three continents /
John Dinges.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-5955-8902-6
1. Chile—Politics and government—1973–1988. 2. Southern Cone of South America—Politics and
government. 3. Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto. 4. Operaciân Cândor (South American countersubversion
association) 5. Chile. Direcciân de Inteligencia Nacional. 6. State-sponsored terrorism—History—20th
century. 7. Victims of state-sponsored terrorism—History—20th century. 8. Chile—Relations—Foreign
countries. 9. United States—Military policy. I. Title
F3100.D565 2004
327.1283'009'047—dc22 2003060265
The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing
houses currently dominating the book publishing industry.
The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in
innovative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently
profitable.
www.thenewpress.com
Composition by dix!
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
For Carolina, my companion in those years and these
Y sobre las plumas carnivoras
volaba encima del mundo
el condor, rey asesino
—P N “V P Canto General
ABLO ERUDA, FROM IENEN LOS AJAROS” IN
CONTENTS
A Note on Sources and Acknowledgments
1. The First War on Terrorism
2. Meeting in Santiago
3. Tilting at Windmills
4. Revolution in the Counterrevolution
5. Agents in Argentina
6. Mission in Paraguay
7. The Condor System
8. “The Old Man Doesn’t Want to Die”
9. Death in Argentina
10. Green Light, Red Light
11. A Preventable Assassination
12. Kissinger and Argentina’s “Terrorist Problem”
13. Ed Koch and Condor’s Endgame
14. The Pursuit of Justice and U.S. Accountability
Afterword: A Dictator’s Decline
Bibliography
Notes
Index
A NOTE ON SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is in large part underground history. It covers roughly the period
1973–1980, when military dictatorships ruled in most of South America. I have
sought out the principal actors—the security forces, the armed leftist groups, and
U.S. officials—who went to great lengths to keep their activities secret from the
public at the time. Many of those directly involved, especially among the
opponents of the military governments, are dead. Many others among the
military and even among former U.S. officials continue to conceal what they did.
But it was not an impervious group, and I was able to interview or obtain
testimony from more than 200 people among those who participated in the
events of the period. The second major source of new authoritative information
is the plethora of contemporary secret documents that have been discovered,
confiscated, officially declassified or otherwise made available in recent years.
I have tried to bring together the documents and the interviews to achieve a
laminate of maximum strength in reconstructing the once secret events. Often
those interviewed were able to refresh their memories with the documents, but
most crucially the contemporary documents provided a factual spine that could
not be changed by faulty or self-interested memories. When there was conflict
between the documents and memories a quarter century later, I usually gave
greater authority to the documents.
Four collections of documents are used most extensively: The U.S.
government, by executive order during the Clinton administration, declassified
approximately 24,000 documents about Chile and 4,000 about Argentina for the
period of the military governments, the latter containing a significant number of
documents concerning events in Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. An
immense cache of files from Paraguay’s intelligence police were discovered in
Paraguay in 1992 and are stored in an archive in Asunción. Finally, I obtained
copies of the secret correspondence between Chile’s intelligence agency, DINA,
and the agency’s undercover operative in Buenos Aires, numbering
approximately 2,400 pages. In addition I received about 2,000 pages of
declassified files from U.S. agencies in response to my requests under the
Freedom of Information Act.
A word must be said about the secrecy of intelligence documents. Secret
documents often have a special aura because they may provide an insider’s view
of events or reveal actions that have never been made public. But secrecy does
not inoculate them against inaccuracy and they are only as factual as the
reporting and sourcing that went into them. Whenever possible, therefore, I have
attempted to independently confirm events described in the intelligence
documents. The fact that these documents have been kept secret for all these
years, however, does tell us one important thing: it is highly unlikely the drafters
of the intelligence reports were manipulating facts or crafting lies to deceive the
public. They were exchanging with each other and with allied intelligence
agencies their best information on unfolding events. The documents are
therefore a reliable roadmap of what the intelligence officials and their superiors
believed at the time to be an accurate version of the facts.
The secret documents demonstrate, for example, that the intelligence agencies
were preoccupied with an alliance of leftist armed groups called the JCR and this
perceived threat was a major factor in the creation of the military’s own alliance,
Operation Condor. In reality, the military capability of the leftist groups never
presented a serious threat to the dictatorships, and in hindsight the military’s
portrayal of the threat seems exaggerated. But it is undeniable that the military
services gave high credence to the information they were exchanging in secret
among themselves.
Detailed notes, particularly regarding documentary sources, are arranged by
page and chapter at the end. A keyword is provided to identify the passage to
which a note refers. Direct quotation from a conversation is based on the
recollection of at least one of the parties to the conversation.
With regard to names of Latin Americans, who use the last names of both
their fathers and mothers, I will include both last names in first reference.
Thereafter only the patronymic will be used. For example I use Andrés Pascal
Allende on first reference, and Andrés Pascal or Pascal thereafter. In some
exceptional cases I will continue to refer to the person using both last names,
usually because the person is known publicly in that way.