December 22, 1992 Operation Condor: The Archives of Terror are discovered. The Archives of Terror were found on December 22, 1992, by lawyer and human-rights activist Dr. Martín Almada, and judge, José Agustín Fernández, in a police station in a suburb of Asunción (Lambaré), capital of Paraguay. Fernández was looking for files on a former prisoner. Instead, he found archives describing the fates of thousands of Latin Americans who had been secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This was known as Operation Condor. The terror archives listed 50,000 people murdered, 30,000 people disappeared and 400,000 people imprisoned. They also revealed that other countries such as Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela cooperated, to various degrees, by providing intelligence information that had been requested by the security services of the Southern Cone countries. Some of these countries have used portions of the archives, now in Asuncións Palace of Justice, to prosecute former military officers. Much of the case built against General Pinochet by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón was made using those archives. Dr. Almada, himself a victim of Condor, was twice interviewed by Baltasar Garzón. [The documents] are a mountain of ignominy, of lies, which Stroessner [Paraguays dictator until 1989] used for 40 years to blackmail the Paraguayan people, states Dr. Almada. He wants the UNESCO to list the terror archives as an international cultural site, as this would greatly facilitate access to funding to preserve and protect the documents. In May 2000, a UNESCO mission visited Asunción following a request from the Paraguayan authorities for help in putting these files on the Memory of the World Register, one element of a program aimed at safeguarding and promoting the documentary heritage of humanity to ensure that records are preserved and available for consultation. Operation Condor was a campaign of political repression and terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents, officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. The program was intended to eradicate communist or Soviet influence and ideas, and to suppress active or potential opposition movements against the participating governments. Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. Some estimates are that at least 60,000 deaths can be attributed to Condor, and possibly more. Condors key members were the governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. The United States provided technical support and supplied military aid to the participants until at least 1978, and again after Republican Ronald Reagan became President in 1981. Ecuador and Peru joined later in more peripheral roles. These efforts, such as Operation Charly, supported the local juntas in their anti-communism battle. Although the United States was not a member of the Condor consortium, documentation shows that the United States provided key organizational, financial and technical assistance to the operation. The US government sponsored and collaborated with DINA and with the other intelligence organizations forming the nucleus of Condor. CIA documents show that the agency had close contact with members of the Chilean secret police, DINA, and its chief Manuel Contreras. Contreras was retained as a paid CIA contact until 1977, even as his involvement in the Letelier-Moffit assassination was being revealed. The Paraguayan Archives include official requests to track suspects to and from the U.S. Embassy, the CIA, and FBI. The CIA provided lists of suspects and other intelligence information to the military states. In 1975 the FBI searched for in the US for individuals wanted by DINA. In June 1999, by order of President Bill Clinton, the State Department released thousands of declassified documents revealing for the first time that the CIA and the State and Defense Departments were intimately aware of Condor. A summary of material declassified in 2004 states that: The declassified record shows that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was briefed on Condor and its murder operations on August 5, 1976, in a 14-page report from [Harry] Shlaudeman [Assistant Secretary of State]. Internationally, the Latin generals look like our guys, Shlaudeman cautioned. We are especially identified with Chile. It cannot do us any good. Shlaudeman and his two deputies, William Luers and Hewson Ryan, recommended action. Over the course of three weeks, they drafted a cautiously worded demarche, approved by Kissinger, in which he instructed the U.S. ambassadors in the Southern Cone countries to meet with the respective heads of state about Condor. He instructed them to express our deep concern about rumors of plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad. 5 August 1976 briefing of Henry Kissinger by Harry Shlaudeman, State, National Security Archive Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well aware of the Condor plan. According to the French newspaper LHumanité, the first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-Castro groups, and the right-wing death squad Triple A, set up in Argentina by Juan Perón and Isabel Martínez de Peróns personal secretary José López Rega, and Rodolfo Almirón (arrested in Spain in 2006). On 31 May 2001, French judge Roger Le Loire requested that a summons be served on Henry Kissinger while he was staying at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris. Le Loire wanted to question the statesman as a witness regarding alleged U.S. involvement in Operation Condor and for possible US knowledge concerning the disappearances of five French nationals in Chile during military rule. Kissinger left Paris that evening, and Loires inquiries were directed to the U.S. State Department. In July 2001, the Chilean high court granted investigating judge Juan Guzmán the right to question Kissinger about the 1973 killing of American journalist Charles Horman. (His execution by the Chilean military after the coup was dramatized in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film, Missing.) The judges questions were relayed to Kissinger via diplomatic routes but were not answered. In August 2001, Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba sent a letter rogatory to the US State Department, in accordance with the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), requesting a deposition by Kissinger to aid the judges investigation of Operation Condor. On 10 September 2001, a civil suit was filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court by the family of Gen. René Schneider, murdered former Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, asserting that Kissinger ordered Schneiders murder because he refused to endorse plans for a military coup. Schneider was killed by coup-plotters loyal to General Roberto Viaux in a botched kidnapping attempt. As part of the suit, Schneiders two sons filed for civil damages against Kissinger and then-CIA director Richard Helms for $3 million. On 16 February 2007, a request for the extradition of Kissinger was filed at the Supreme Court of Uruguay on behalf of Bernardo Arnone, a political activist who was kidnapped, tortured and disappeared by the dictatorial regime in 1976.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 18:24:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015