Operation Condor

For other uses of Operation Condor, please see Operation Condor (disambiguation)

Background and US involvement

In December 1992, much information about Operation Condor came to light when José Fernandez, a judge in Paraguay went into a police station in a suburb of Asunción looking for files on a former political prisoner. Instead he found the "terror archives", as they were called, detailing the fates of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Latin Americans secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Some of these countries have since used portions of this archive to prosecute former military officers.

Related Topics:
José Fernandez - Asunción - Terror archives

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On March 6, 2001, the New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications for Operation Condor.

Related Topics:
March 6 - 2001 - New York Times

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The document, a 1978 cable from Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was discovered by Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University, who has published several articles on Operation Condor. She called the cable "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor."

Related Topics:
1978 - Robert E. White - J. Patrice McSherry - Long Island University

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In the cable, Ambassador White relates a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America". This installation is "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". White, whose message was sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was concerned that the US connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. "It would seem advisable," he suggests, "to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest."

Related Topics:
Alejandro Fretes Davalos - South American - Intelligence - Panama Canal - Secretary of State - Cyrus Vance

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The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records released in November 2000 on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent coup that brought his military regime to power. The release was the fourth and final batch of records released under the Clinton Administration's special Chile Declassification Project.

Related Topics:
Pinochet - Violent coup - Clinton Administration - Chile Declassification Project

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In february 2004, John Dinges, a journalist, publish "The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents" (The New Press, 2004). In this book, he reveals how military officials of Uruguay threatened to assassinate US Congressman Edward Koch in mid-1976. In late July 1976, the CIA station chief in Montevideo received information about it, but recommanded that the Agency take no action because the uruguayan officers (among which colonel Jose Fons, who was at the november 1975 secret meeting in Santiago, Chile, and major Jose Nino Gavazzo, who headed a team of intelligence officers working in Argentina in 1976, where he was responsible for more than 100 Uruguayan's deaths) had been drinking when the threat was made. In an interview for the book, Koch said that George Herbert Walker Bush, CIA's director at the time, informed in in october 1976 - more than two months afterward, and after Orlando Letelier's murder - that his sponsorship of legislation to cut off US military assistance to Uruguay on human rights grounds had provoked secret police officials to "put a contract out for you". In mid October 1976, Koch wrote to the Justice Departement asking for FBI protection. None was provided for him. Koch became aware of the connections between the threat on his life and operation Condor in 2001. However, in late 1976, colonel Fons and major Gavazzo were assigned to prominent diplomatic posts in Washington DC, but the State Department force the Uruguayan government to withdraw their appointments, with the public explanation that "Fons and Gavazzo could be the objects of unpleasant publicity..." http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB112/index.htm

Related Topics:
John Dinges - Edward Koch - Jose Fons - Jose Nino Gavazzo - George Herbert Walker Bush - CIA

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