View source for Operation Condor

{{Short description|US-backed repression campaign in South America}}
{{Other uses}}
{{very long|date=May 2025}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2025}}
{{Infobox operational plan
| name          = Operation Condor
| partof        = the [[Cold War]]
| image         = Operation Condor participants.svg
| caption       = {{leftlegend|#008100|Main active members (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay)}}{{leftlegend|#71c934|Sporadic member (Peru)}}{{leftlegend|#000081|Collaborator and financier (United States)}}
| date          = 1975–1983
| scope         = 
| type          = [[Covert operation]]
| location      = South America
| planned_by    = {{plainlist|
* '''Members:'''
* {{flagdeco|Argentina|1861}} [[National Reorganization Process|Argentina]]
* {{flagdeco|Bolivia}} [[History of Bolivia (1964–1982)|Bolivia]]
* {{flagdeco|Brazil|1968}} [[Military dictatorship in Brazil|Brazil]]
* {{flagdeco|Chile}} [[Military dictatorship of Chile|Chile]]
* {{flagdeco|Ecuador}} [[History of Ecuador (1960–1979)|Ecuador]]
* {{flagdeco|Paraguay|1954}} [[Dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner|Paraguay]]
* {{flagdeco|Peru}} [[Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces of Peru|Peru]]
* {{flagdeco|Uruguay}} [[Civic-military dictatorship of Uruguay|Uruguay]]
* '''Supported:'''
* {{flag|United States}}{{sfn|McSherry|2010|p=107}}{{sfn|McSherry|2010|p=111}}<ref name="GregGrandin2011">[[Greg Grandin]] (2011). ''[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo11643711.html The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190729004206/http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo11643711.html |date=29 July 2019 }}''. [[University of Chicago Press]]. [https://books.google.com/books?id=6FivSpNY2fkC&pg=PA75 p. 75] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122160245/https://books.google.com/books?id=6FivSpNY2fkC&pg=PA75 |date=22 January 2023 }}. {{ISBN|9780226306902}}.</ref><ref name="p. 223">Walter L. Hixson (2009). ''[http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300119121 The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160124224407/http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300119121 |date=24 January 2016 }}''. [[Yale University Press]]. [https://books.google.com/books?id=DNId6HxkzQwC&pg=PA223 p. 223]. {{ISBN|0300151314}}.</ref>
* {{flag|France|1974}} (alleged, denied)
}}
| commanded_by  = 
| target        = Political dissidents (including [[socialists]] and [[communists]])
| executed_by   = Intelligence agencies of participating countries
| outcome       = Concluded after the fall of the Argentinean military junta in 1983
| casualties    = 60,000–80,000 suspected leftist sympathizers killed<ref name="Bevins2020">{{cite book |last1=Bevins |first1=Vincent|author-link=Vincent Bevins |title= [[The Jakarta Method]]: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World|pages=266–267 |date=2020 |publisher= [[PublicAffairs]] |isbn= 978-1-5417-4240-6}}</ref><br />400–500 killed in cross-border operations<ref name="Bevins2020" /><br />400,000+ political prisoners<ref name="cja" />
| fatalities    = 
| injuries      = 
}}
'''Operation Condor''' ({{langx|es|link=yes|Operación Cóndor}}; {{langx|pt|Operação Condor}}) was a campaign of [[political repression]] by the [[right-wing dictatorship]]s of the [[Southern Cone]] of South America,<ref name="operationcondorbegins" /><ref name="falklandsendscondor" /> involving [[intelligence operations]], [[coups]], and assassinations of left-wing sympathizers in South America. Operation Condor formally existed from 1975 to 1983.<ref name=juntafalls>{{Cite web|title=Argentine dictator Videla dies in prison at age 87 – National {{!}} Globalnews.ca|url=https://globalnews.ca/news/570913/argentine-dictator-videla-dies-in-prison-at-age-87/|access-date=8 October 2021|website=Global News|language=en-US|archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008150220/https://globalnews.ca/news/570913/argentine-dictator-videla-dies-in-prison-at-age-87/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=operationcondorbegins>{{cite news|url=https://www.cels.org.ar/especiales/plancondor/en/#una-asociacion-ilicita-para-reprimir-opositores|title=Operation Condor|publisher=[[Center for Legal and Social Studies|CELS]]|accessdate=25 November 2023|archive-date=26 November 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231126021133/https://www.cels.org.ar/especiales/plancondor/en/#una-asociacion-ilicita-para-reprimir-opositores|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=falklandsendscondor>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/03/operation-condor-the-illegal-state-network-that-terrorised-south-america|title=Operation Condor: the cold war conspiracy that terrorised South America|first=Giles|last=Tremlett|work=The Guardian|date=3 September 2020|accessdate=25 November 2023|archive-date=3 September 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200903053002/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/03/operation-condor-the-illegal-state-network-that-terrorised-south-america|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Bevins |first1=Vincent|author-link=Vincent Bevins |title= [[The Jakarta Method]]: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World|pages=200–206 |date=2020 |publisher= [[PublicAffairs]] |isbn= 978-1-5417-4240-6}}</ref><ref name=":9">{{cite book|author=Good, Aaron |title=American Exception|location = New York|publisher=Skyhorse Publishing |year=2022|pages=231–232, 237|isbn=978-1510769137}}</ref> Condor was formally created in November 1975, when Chilean dictator [[Augusto Pinochet]]'s spy chief, [[Manuel Contreras]], invited 50 intelligence officers from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay to the Army War Academy in Santiago, Chile.<ref name="operationcondorbegins" /><ref name="falklandsendscondor" /><ref>{{Cite web|last=Conde|first=Arturo|title=New movie explores global complicity in Argentina's 'dirty war'|date=10 September 2021|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/new-movie-explores-global-complicity-argentinas-dirty-war-rcna1964|access-date=6 October 2021|publisher=NBC News|language=en|archive-date=6 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211006151528/https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/new-movie-explores-global-complicity-argentinas-dirty-war-rcna1964|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=":6" /> The operation was backed by the [[United States]], which financed the covert operations.<ref name="McSherry20022">{{Cite journal |author=J. Patrice McSherry |author-link=J. Patrice McSherry |year=2002 |title=Tracking the Origins of a State Terror Network: Operation Condor |journal=Latin American Perspectives |volume=29 |issue=1 |pages=36–60 |doi=10.1177/0094582X0202900103 |s2cid=145129079}}</ref><ref name="Bevins 3052">{{cite book |last1=Bevins |first1=Vincent |author-link=Vincent Bevins |title=[[The Jakarta Method]]: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World |date=2020 |publisher=[[PublicAffairs]] |isbn=978-1-5417-4240-6 |page=305}}</ref><ref name=":9"/><ref name=":6" /> France is alleged to have collaborated but has denied involvement.<ref name=":5" /><ref name="Robin" /> The operation ended with the fall of the [[National Reorganization Process|Argentine junta]] in 1983.<ref name="juntafalls" />

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,<ref name="Bevins2020" /> with up to 9,000 of these in Argentina. This collaboration had a devastating impact on countries like Argentina, where Condor exacerbated existing political violence and contributed to the country's "[[Dirty War]]" that left an estimated 30,000 people dead or disappeared.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Argentine Military Believed U.S. Gave Go-ahead for Dirty War |url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB73/index3.htm |access-date=23 April 2024 |website=nsarchive2.gwu.edu}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Silva|first=Darío|date=7 February 2020<!-- 02:00  -->|title=¿Cuántos desaparecidos dejó la dictadura? La duda que alimenta la grieta argentina|url=https://www.perfil.com/noticias/politica/cuantas-personas-desaparecieron-en-la-dictadura-la-duda-que-divide-a-los-argentinos.phtml|access-date=13 February 2023|work=Perfil|language=es|location=Argentina|archive-date=14 February 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230214024220/https://www.perfil.com/noticias/politica/cuantas-personas-desaparecieron-en-la-dictadura-la-duda-que-divide-a-los-argentinos.phtml|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>[[Larry Rohter]] (24 January 2014). [http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/exposing-the-legacy-of-operation-condor/ Exposing the Legacy of Operation Condor] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191001112328/http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/exposing-the-legacy-of-operation-condor/ |date=1 October 2019 }}. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved 26 August 2015.</ref> Others estimate the toll at 50,000 killed, 30,000 disappeared, and 400,000 imprisoned.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Calloni |first=Stella |title=Los Archivos del Horror del Operativo Cóndor. |url=https://www.derechos.org/nizkor/doc/condor/calloni.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240326145923/https://www.derechos.org/nizkor/doc/condor/calloni.html |archive-date=26 March 2024 |access-date=8 May 2024 |website=www.derechos.org}}</ref><ref name="cja">{{cite web|title=Chile|url=https://cja.org/where-we-work/chile/|publisher=[[Center for Justice and Accountability]]|access-date=18 February 2018|archive-date=21 February 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180221103835/http://cja.org/where-we-work/chile/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Bevins 305">{{cite book |last1=Bevins |first1=Vincent|author-link=Vincent Bevins |title= [[The Jakarta Method]]: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World|page=305 |date=2020 |publisher= [[PublicAffairs]] |isbn= 978-1-5417-4240-6}}</ref> An investigative commission, relying on the [[Archives of Terror]], among other sources, allowed for the identification of 20,090 victims of the Paraguayan [[Alfredo Stroessner|Stroessner]] regime, including 59 who were extrajudicially executed and 336 who were forcibly disappeared.<ref>{{cite web |access-date=25 April 2024 |author=Comisión de Verdad y Justicia |date=2008 |title=Informe Final Comisión de Verdad y Justicia |url=https://www.derechoshumanos.net/lesahumanidad/informes/paraguay/Informe_Comision_Verdad_y_Justicia_Paraguay_Conclusiones_y_Recomendaciones.pdf}}<!-- auto-translated from French by Module:CS1 translator --> Version also available [https://www.codehupy.org.py/verdadyjusticia/ here]</ref> According to a database by Francesca Lessa of the University of Oxford, at least 805 cases of transnational human rights violations resulting from Operation Condor have been identified, including 382 cases of illegal detentions and torture and 367 murders and disappearances.<ref name="Database on South America's Transnational Human Rights Violations">{{Cite web |last=Lessa |first=Francesca |title=Database on South America's Transnational Human Rights Violations |url=https://sites.google.com/view/operationcondorjustice/database |access-date=8 May 2024 |website=sites.google.com |language=en-US}}</ref> American political scientist [[J. Patrice McSherry]] estimated between 400 and 500 killed in cross border operations.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bevins |first=Vincent |author-link=Vincent Bevins |title=[[The Jakarta Method]]: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World |publisher=[[PublicAffairs]] |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-5417-4240-6 |pages=227}}</ref><ref name="McSherry2002">{{Cite journal| title = Tracking the Origins of a State Terror Network: Operation Condor | author=J. Patrice McSherry | year = 2002 | journal=Latin American Perspectives | volume = 29 | issue = 1 | pages = 36–60| doi = 10.1177/0094582X0202900103| s2cid=145129079 | author-link=J. Patrice McSherry }}</ref> She further stated that of those who "had gone into exile" and were "kidnapped, tortured and killed in allied countries or illegally transferred to their home countries to be executed ... hundreds, or thousands, of such persons – the number still has not been finally determined – were abducted, tortured, and murdered in Condor operations".{{sfn|McSherry|2010|pp=107–124}}

Victims included dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests, monks and nuns, students and teachers, intellectuals, and suspected guerrillas such as prominent union leader [[Marcelo Santuray]] in Argentina{{citation needed|date=June 2025}} or journalist [[Carlos Prats]] in Chile. Condor operatives participated in tactics such as [[death flights]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Operación Cóndor en el Archivo del Terror |url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB239d/index.htm |access-date=23 April 2024 |website=nsarchive2.gwu.edu}}</ref><ref name="McSherry2002" /> In Chile, anyone suspected of being a communist sympathizer could become regarded as a terrorist by Pinochet's government and targeted by Operation Condor.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Dinges |first=John |title=The Condor years: how Pinochet and his allies brought terrorism to three continents |date=2004 |publisher=New Press |isbn=978-1-56584-764-4 |location=New York}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=April 2025}} Condor's initial members were the governments of [[Argentina]], [[Bolivia]], Chile, [[Paraguay]], and [[Uruguay]]; Brazil signed the agreement later on. [[Ecuador]] and [[Peru]] later joined the operation in a more peripheral role.{{sfn|McSherry|2005|p=4}}{{sfn|McSherry|2010|p=108}} However, a letter which was written by renowned [[Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional|DINA]] assassin [[Michael Townley]] in 1976 noted the existence of a network of individual Southern Cone secret polices known as ''Red Condor''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/30799-document-3-townley-papers-relato-de-sucesos-en-la-muerte-de-orlando-letelier-el-21|title=Townley Papers, "Relato de Sucesos en la Muerte de Orlando Letelier el 21 de Septiembre, 1976 [Report of Events in the Death of Orlando Letelier, September 21, 1976]," March 14, 1976|first=Michael|last=Townley|publisher=National Security Archive|date=25 November 2023|access-date=26 November 2023|archive-date=25 November 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231125161454/https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/30799-document-3-townley-papers-relato-de-sucesos-en-la-muerte-de-orlando-letelier-el-21|url-status=live}}</ref> Declassified documents revealed that US intelligence agencies had intimate knowledge of Operation Condor through inside sources and monitored the operation.<ref name=":2" />{{Page needed|date=April 2025}}

With tensions between Chile and Argentina rising and Argentina severely weakened as a result of Argentina's loss in the [[Falklands War]] to the British military, the Argentine junta fell in 1983.  The ramifications led to more South American dictatorships falling.<ref name="falklandsendscondor" /> The fall of the Argentine junta has been regarded as marking the end of Operation Condor.<ref name="juntafalls" /> J. Patrice McSherry has argued that aspects of Operation Condor fit the definition of [[state terrorism]].<ref name="McSherry20022"/>

==Antecedents==
{{Operation Condor|background}}
Operation Condor, which took place in the context of the [[Cold War]], had the tacit approval and material support of the United States.{{clarify|date=May 2019}} In 1968, U.S. General [[Robert W. Porter Jr.]] stated that: {{blockquote|to facilitate the coordinated employment of internal security forces within and among Latin American countries, we are ... endeavoring to foster inter-service and regional cooperation by assisting in the organization of integrated command and control centers; the establishment of common operating procedures; and the conduct of joint and combined training exercises.<ref>[[Jan Knippers Black]] (1977), "United States Penetration of Brazil". Manchester University Press. ISBN O-7190-0699-6. Pag 211: [https://books.google.com/books?id=O2a7AAAAIAAJ&dq=in+order+to+facilitate+the+coordinated+employment+of+internal+security+forces+within+and+among+Latin+American+countries,+we+are...+endeavoring+to+foster+inter-service+and+regional+cooperation+by+assisting+in+the+organization+of+integrated+command+and+control+centers;+the+establishment+of+common+operating+procedures;+and+the+conduct+of+joint+and+combined+training+exercises&pg=PA211] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407113832/https://books.google.com/books?id=O2a7AAAAIAAJ&dq=in+order+to+facilitate+the+coordinated+employment+of+internal+security+forces+within+and+among+Latin+American+countries,+we+are...+endeavoring+to+foster+inter-service+and+regional+cooperation+by+assisting+in+the+organization+of+integrated+command+and+control+centers;+the+establishment+of+common+operating+procedures;+and+the+conduct+of+joint+and+combined+training+exercises&pg=PA211 |date=7 April 2023 }}</ref>}}

According to American historian J. Patrice McSherry, based on formerly secret [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] documents from 1976, in the 1960s and early 1970s plans were developed among international security officials at the U.S. Army [[Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation|School of the Americas]] and the Conference of American Armies to deal with perceived threats in South America from political dissidents. A declassified CIA document dated 23 June 1976 explains that "in early 1974, security officials from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia met in Buenos Aires to prepare coordinated actions against subversive targets".{{sfn|McSherry|2005|p=78}} According to the CIA, Operation Condor was a cooperative mission enabled by Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia.<ref>{{Cite web |date=March 25, 1977 |title=OPERATION CONDOR - 1977/03/25 |url=https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/05861527 |website=Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room |publisher=Department of State}}</ref> The cooperation between the countries for intelligence and security services had existed from as early as February 1974 to late May 1976 when it was formalized.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

Members of Condor coordinated their activities with one another, established a special network for communication, and constructed various types of training. Some of which included psychological warfare.<ref>{{Cite web |date=22 August 1978 |title=Classified Reading Material re "CONDOR" |url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/780822cia.pdf |access-date=24 September 2024}}</ref>

The program was developed following a series of military ''coups d'état'' in South America:
* General [[Alfredo Stroessner]] [[1954 Paraguayan coup d'état|took control]] of Paraguay in 1954.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|date=3 September 2020|title=Operation Condor: the cold war conspiracy that terrorized South America|url=http://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/03/operation-condor-the-illegal-state-network-that-terrorised-south-america|access-date=6 October 2021|website=the Guardian|language=en|archive-date=17 February 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230217174143/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/03/operation-condor-the-illegal-state-network-that-terrorised-south-america|url-status=live}}</ref>
* The Brazilian military [[1964 Brazilian coup d'état|overthrew]] president [[João Goulart]] in 1964.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Paulo Freire's Ideas Are Just as Powerful Today as Ever|url=https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/paulo-freires-ideas-are-just-as-powerful-today-as-ever|access-date=8 October 2021|website=jacobinmag.com|archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008135117/https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/paulo-freires-ideas-are-just-as-powerful-today-as-ever|url-status=live}}</ref>
* General [[Hugo Banzer]] [[1971 Bolivian coup d'état|took power]] in Bolivia in 1971 through a series of coups.<ref>{{Cite news|date=5 March 2009|title=Hidden cells reveal Bolivia's dark past|language=en-GB|url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7925694.stm|access-date=8 October 2021|archive-date=10 March 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090310105027/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7925694.stm|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=A Coup in Bolivia, Yet Again|url=https://jacobinmag.com/2019/11/coup-bolivia-history-evo-morales-jeanine-anez|access-date=8 October 2021|website=jacobinmag.com|archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008135640/https://jacobinmag.com/2019/11/coup-bolivia-history-evo-morales-jeanine-anez|url-status=live}}</ref>
* A [[Civic-military dictatorship of Uruguay|civic-military dictatorship]] [[1973 Uruguayan coup d'état|seized power]] in Uruguay on 27 June 1973.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Garces|first=Raul O.|date=18 June 2011|title=Former Uruguayan dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry dies|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/former-uruguayan-dictator-juan-maria-bordaberry-dies/2011/07/17/gIQAX54RKI_story.html|access-date=8 October 2021|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|archive-date=27 August 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110827055503/http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/former-uruguayan-dictator-juan-maria-bordaberry-dies/2011/07/17/gIQAX54RKI_story.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Goff|first=Francesca Lessa, Pierre-Louis Le|title=A silent anniversary in Uruguay?|url=https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/6/27/a-silent-anniversary-in-uruguay|access-date=8 October 2021|website=aljazeera.com|archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008143327/https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/6/27/a-silent-anniversary-in-uruguay|url-status=live}}</ref>
* Chilean armed forces commanded by General [[Augusto Pinochet]] bombed the [[La Moneda Palace|presidential palace]] in Chile on 11 September 1973, [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|overthrowing]] democratically elected but unconstitutionally declared president [[Salvador Allende]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Chilean president Salvador Allende dies in coup|url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/allende-dies-in-coup|access-date=8 October 2021|website=HISTORY|date=9 February 2010 |archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008144023/https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/allende-dies-in-coup|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=7 September 2013|title=Chilean coup: 40 years ago I watched Pinochet crush a democratic dream|url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/07/chile-coup-pinochet-allende|access-date=8 October 2021|website=the Guardian|archive-date=17 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211017052110/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/07/chile-coup-pinochet-allende|url-status=live}}</ref>
* General [[Francisco Morales Bermúdez]] took control of Peru after a [[Tacnazo|successful coup]] in 1975.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}
* The Ecuadorian military overthrew dictator [[Guillermo Rodríguez (politician)|Guillermo Rodríguez]] in 1976.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}
* A [[National Reorganization Process|military junta]] headed by General [[Jorge Rafael Videla]] [[1976 Argentine coup d'état|seized power]] in Argentina on 24 March 1976.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Bernstein|first=Adam|date=17 May 2013|title=Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentine junta leader, dies at 87|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/jorge-rafael-videla-argentine-junta-leader-dies-at-87/2013/05/17/f22ae8d0-2f5c-11e2-a30e-5ca76eeec857_story.html|access-date=8 October 2021|archive-date=10 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210410204418/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/jorge-rafael-videla-argentine-junta-leader-dies-at-87/2013/05/17/f22ae8d0-2f5c-11e2-a30e-5ca76eeec857_story.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

American journalist [[A. J. Langguth]] states in a 1978 book that the organization of the first meetings between Argentine and Uruguayan security officials, concerning the watching (and subsequent disappearance or assassination) of political refugees in these countries, can be attributed to coordination by the CIA, and that the CIA also acted as an intermediary in meetings between Argentine, Brazilian, and Uruguayan [[death squad]]s.<ref>A.J. Languth, ''[[Hidden Terrors]]'', Pantheon Books, New York, 1978</ref>

The [[National Security Archive]] reported, "Founded by the Pinochet regime in November 1975, Operation Condor was the codename for a formal Southern Cone collaboration that included transnational secret intelligence activities, kidnapping, torture, disappearance and assassination, according to the National Security Archive's documentary evidence from U.S., Paraguayan, Argentine, and Chilean files".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/|title=OPERATION CONDOR ON TRIAL: LEGAL PROCEEDINGS ON LATIN AMERICAN RENDITION AND ASSASSINATION PROGRAM OPEN IN BUENOS AIRES|website=nsarchive2.gwu.edu|access-date=12 April 2019|archive-date=17 March 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180317232021/https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/|url-status=live}}</ref> Under this codename mission, several people were killed. As the report stated, "Prominent victims of Condor include two former Uruguayan legislators and a former Bolivian president, [[Juan José Torres]], murdered in Buenos Aires, a former Chilean Minister of the Interior, [[Bernardo Leighton]], as well as former Chilean ambassador [[Orlando Letelier]] and his 26-year old American colleague, [[Assassination of Orlando Letelier|Ronni Moffitt]], assassinated by a car bomb in downtown Washington D.C".<ref name=":0" />

== History ==
{{Anti-communism|History}}
Cooperation among various security services had existed prior to the creation of Operation Condor, with the aim of "eliminating Marxist subversion". During the Conference of American Armies held in [[Caracas]] on 3 September 1973, Brazilian General Breno Borges Fortes, head of the Brazilian army, proposed to "extend the exchange of information" between various services to "struggle against subversion".<ref name=Abramovici>{{Cite news|last=Abramovici|first=Pierre|title=OPERATION CONDOR EXPLAINED&nbsp;— Latin America: the 30 years' dirty war|work=[[Le Monde diplomatique]]|date=May 2001|url=http://mondediplo.com/2001/08/12condor|access-date=15 December 2006|archive-date=19 January 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120119104346/http://mondediplo.com/2001/08/12condor|url-status=live}} ([https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2001/05/ABRAMOVICI/15179 free access in French] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140311045009/http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2001/05/ABRAMOVICI/15179 |date=11 March 2014 }} and [http://diplo.uol.com.br/2001-05,a137 in Portuguese] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070819030323/http://diplo.uol.com.br/2001-05%2Ca137 |date=19 August 2007 }})</ref>

In March 1974, representatives of the police forces of Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia met with Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the [[Policía Federal Argentina|Argentine Federal Police]] and co-founder of the [[Argentine Anticommunist Alliance|Triple A]] death squad, to implement cooperation guidelines. Their goal was to destroy the "subversive" threat represented by the presence of thousands of political exiles in Argentina.<ref name="Abramovici" /> In August 1974, the corpses of Bolivian refugees were found in garbage dumps in Buenos Aires.<ref name="Abramovici" /> In 2007, McSherry also confirmed the abduction and torture during this period of Chilean and Uruguayan refugees who were living in Buenos Aires, based on newly declassified CIA documents dated June 1976.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Londoño|first=Ernesto|date=12 April 2019|title=Declassified U.S. Documents Reveal Details About Argentina's Dictatorship|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/world/americas/argentina-dictatorship-cia-documents.html|access-date=8 October 2021|issn=0362-4331|archive-date=28 June 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200628021324/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/world/americas/argentina-dictatorship-cia-documents.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

On 25 November 1975, General Augusto Pinochet's 60th birthday, leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met with [[Manuel Contreras]], chief of [[Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional|DINA]] (the Chilean secret police), in Santiago de Chile, officially creating the Plan Condor.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3720724.stm|title=Condor legacy haunts South America|access-date=3 January 2020|work=[[BBC]]|first=Robert|last=Plummer|date=8 June 2005|archive-date=24 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200124081233/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3720724.stm|url-status=live}}</ref> According to French journalist [[Marie-Monique Robin]], author of {{Lang|fr|Escadrons de la mort, l'école française}} (2004, ''Death Squads, The French School''), General Rivero, intelligence officer of the [[Argentine Armed Forces]] and former student of the [[French military|French]], developed the concept of Operation Condor.<ref name="Robin">[http://www.humanite.presse.fr/journal/2003-08-30/2003-08-30-377887 "L'exportation de la torture" (The exporting of torture)], interview with [[Marie-Monique Robin]], in ''[[L'Humanité]]'', 30 August 2003 {{in lang|fr}} {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050705132223/http://www.humanite.presse.fr/journal/2003-08-30/2003-08-30-377887|date=5 July 2005}}</ref>

Based on the governments' perception of threats, officially the targets were armed groups (such as the [[Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)|MIR]], the [[Montoneros]] or the [[People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina)|ERP]], the [[Tupamaros]], etc.), but the governments broadened their attacks against all kinds of political opponents, including their families and others, as reported by the [[Valech Report|Valech Commission]]. The Argentine "[[Dirty War]]", for example, which resulted in approximately 30,000 victims according to most estimates, kidnapped, tortured and killed many trade-unionists, relatives of activists, social activists such as founders of the [[Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo]], nuns, university professors, etc.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Blakemore|first=Erin|title=30,000 People Were 'Disappeared' in Argentina's Dirty War. These Women Never Stopped Looking|url=https://www.history.com/news/mothers-plaza-de-mayo-disappeared-children-dirty-war-argentina|access-date=8 October 2021|website=HISTORY|date=7 March 2019 |language=en|archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008145403/https://www.history.com/news/mothers-plaza-de-mayo-disappeared-children-dirty-war-argentina|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=The dirty truth of Argentina's Dirty War|url=https://www.mtc.com.au/discover-more/mtc-now/the-dirty-truth-of-argentinas-dirty-war/|access-date=8 October 2021|website=mtc.com.au|language=en|archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008145653/https://www.mtc.com.au/discover-more/mtc-now/the-dirty-truth-of-argentinas-dirty-war/|url-status=live}}</ref>

From 1976 onwards, the Chilean DINA and its Argentine counterpart, [[Secretariat of Intelligence|SIDE]], were the operation's front-line troops. The infamous "[[death flights]]", theorized in Argentina by [[Luis María Mendía]] – and previously used during the [[Algerian War]] (1954–1962) by French forces – were widely used. Government forces took victims by plane or helicopter out to sea, dropping them to their deaths in planned disappearances. It was said that from this military bombardment that OPR-33 infrastructure located in Argentina was destroyed. In May 1976, members of Plan Condor met in Santiago, Chile, at which the participating countries discussed "long-range cooperation... [that] went well beyond information exchange" and were given code names. In July, the CIA gathered intelligence that members of Plan Condor had the intention of striking "against leaders of indigenous terrorist groups residing abroad".<ref>{{Cite web|last=Trigona|first=Marie|date=7 February 2007|title=Argentina: Death Flight Confession|url=https://upsidedownworld.org/news-briefs/news-briefs-news-briefs/argentina-death-flight-confession/|access-date=8 October 2021|website=Upside Down World|language=en-US|archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008145928/https://upsidedownworld.org/news-briefs/news-briefs-news-briefs/argentina-death-flight-confession/|url-status=live}}</ref>

In June 1976, U.S. Secretary of State [[Henry Kissinger]] received a Briefing Memorandum from the State Department's [[Bureau of Intelligence and Research]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Briefing Memorandum from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research |url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve11p2/d46 |website=State Department Office of the Historian |access-date=29 April 2024}}</ref> The briefing concluded that evidence supported Argentina's state security forces taking part in extrajudicial killings. However, there was not sufficient evidence to show that other South American governments (Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) were running a targeted assassination program. "There is no evidence to support a contention that Southern Cone governments are cooperating in some sort of international "Murder Inc." aimed at leftist political exiles resident in one of their countries". However, in Argentina, "assassinations are the work of right-wingers, some of whom are security personnel. Argentine President Videla probably does not condone or encourage what is happening, but neither does he appear capable of stopping it".

This conclusion was somewhat contradicted in a report written from Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America [[Harry W. Shlaudeman]] to [[Henry Kissinger]] on 3 August 1976, it was reported that the military regimes in South America were coming together to join forces for security reasons. They were concerned about the spread of Marxism and the implications that this could have on their grasp on power. This new force operated in other member's countries in secrecy. Their goal: to seek and kill terrorists of the "Revolutionary Coordinating Committee" in their own countries and in Europe.<ref name="nsarchive.gwu.edu">{{Cite web|url=http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/0000A02E.pdf|title=The Third World War and South America|access-date=19 March 2017|archive-date=19 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170719114329/http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/0000A02E.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> Shlaudeman expressed concern that the "siege mentality" that permeated the members of Operation Condor could lead to a larger chasm between the military and civilian institutions in the region. He was also fearful that this could lead to increasing isolation of these countries from developed Western nations. He believed that there was justification to some of their fears, noting that Uruguayan Foreign Minister Blanco's use of the term "Third World War" seemed intended to justify harsh and sweeping "wartime" measures, and emphasizing the international and institutional aspect, thereby justifying the exercise of powers outside national borders. Yet he felt that by reacting too strongly these countries could engender a strong terrorist counter reaction similar to the PLO in Israel.<ref name="nsarchive.gwu.edu" /> In a report later that month dated 30 August, sent to Kissinger, Shlaudeman expresses repeated concern that assassinations' could seriously damage these countries international reputation, which were U.S. allies. In this memo to Kissinger, Shlaudeman says: "What we are trying to head off is a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Department of State, Action Memorandum for Kissinger, "Operation Condor," SECRET, August 30, 1976 {{!}} National Security Archive |url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/30309-document-31-department-state-action-memorandum-kissinger-operation-condor-secret |access-date=5 May 2024 |website=nsarchive.gwu.edu}}</ref> One month later in September, there is evidence that there was disagreement between Kissinger and the State Department over telling these nations to discontinue assassinations'.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Department of State, Cable, "Actions Taken," CONFIDENTIAL, September 16, 1976 {{!}} National Security Archive |url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/30310-document-32-department-state-cable-actions-taken-confidential-september-16-1976 |access-date=5 May 2024 |website=nsarchive.gwu.edu}}</ref>

U.S. documents dated 17 April 1977, listed both Chile and Argentina as active in using communications media for the purpose of broadcasting propaganda. The objective of the propaganda had two purposes. The first purpose was to defuse/counter criticism of the governments involved by foreign media and the second was to cultivate national pride in the local populace. One propaganda piece created by Chile entitled, "Chile after Allende", was distributed amongst the governments acting under Condor. However, the document notes only that Uruguay and Argentina were the only two countries to acknowledge the agreement. Paraguay's government was listed only as using the local press, "Patria", as its main propaganda producer. A meeting that was to have taken place in March 1977, discussing "Psychological warfare techniques against terrorists and leftist extremists", was canceled due to the restructuring of the intelligence services of both Argentina and Paraguay.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000345186.pdf|title=CIA document|access-date=13 April 2021|archive-date=13 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210413101648/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000345186.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

In late 1977, due to unusual storms, numerous corpses washed up on beaches south of Buenos Aires, producing evidence of some of the government's victims. There were also hundreds of cases of babies and children being taken from mothers in prison who had been kidnapped and later disappeared; the children were handed over in illegal adoptions to families and associates of the regime.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cij.gov.ar/nota-9856-Difundieron-los-fundamentos-de-la-condena-a-Jorge-Rafael-Videla-a-50-a-os-de-prisi-n-por-el-robo-de-beb-s.html|title=Sentencia complete de la causa ''Plan Sistemático de Apropiación de Menores''|author=Tribunal Oral en lo Criminal Federal nro. 6 de la Capital Federal|access-date=7 December 2018|archive-date=7 December 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181207145540/http://www.cij.gov.ar/nota-9856-Difundieron-los-fundamentos-de-la-condena-a-Jorge-Rafael-Videla-a-50-a-os-de-prisi-n-por-el-robo-de-beb-s.html|url-status=live}}</ref> The CIA also reported that Operation Condor countries took very well to the idea of working together, and developed their own communications network and combined training initiatives in areas such as psychological warfare.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/780822cia.pdf|title=A Brief Look at "Operation Condor"|access-date=10 April 2017|archive-date=19 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170719114329/http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/780822cia.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

A 2016 declassified CIA report dated 9 May 1977, titled "Counterterrorism in the Southern Cone", underscored one "aspect of the program involving Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina envisages illegal operations outside Latin America against exiled terrorists, particularly in Europe". "The military-controlled governments of the Southern Cone", the document read, "all consider themselves targets of international Marxism". The document highlighted Condor's fundamental characteristic, constituting as part of a long tried "regional approach" to pacifying "subversion", came to fruition in early 1974 when "security officials from all of the member countries, except Brazil, agreed to establish liaison channels and to facilitate the movement of security officers on government business from one country to the other". One of Condor's "initial aims" was the "exchange of information on the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (RCJ), an organization...of terrorist groups from Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay" whose "representatives" in Europe were "believed to have been involved in the assassinations in Paris of the Bolivian ambassador to France last May and an Uruguayan military attache in 1974". The CIA report noted that the fundamental mission of Condor was the liquidation of "top-level terrorist leaders" as well as non-terrorist targets including "Uruguayan opposition politician Wilson Ferreira, if he should travel to Europe, and some leaders of Amnesty International". Condor was also seen by the CIA to be "engaged in non-violent activities, including psychological warfare and a propaganda campaign" that used the reach of the media to "publicize crimes and atrocities committed by terrorists". Additionally, in an appeal to "national pride and the national conscience", Condor called for the citizenry comprising its member nations to "report anything out of the ordinary in their neighborhoods".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=3238658-2-CIA-Report-Counterterrorism-in-the-Southern|title=The National Security Archive|website=nsarchive2.gwu.edu|access-date=8 July 2019|archive-date=24 September 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200924150536/https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=3238658-2-CIA-Report-Counterterrorism-in-the-Southern|url-status=live}}</ref> However, Chile and Argentina relations eventually came to a head in 1978 when both nations fell out over their maritime frontiers in the [[Beagle conflict|Beagle Channel Operation]].<ref name=falklandsendscondor />

=== Revelations about Condor ===
{{Main|Archives of Terror}}
[[File:Jorge Rafael Videla (2).jpg|thumb|[[Jorge Rafael Videla]]]]

The dictatorships and their intelligence services were responsible for tens of thousands of killed and missing people in the period between 1975 and 1985. Analyzing the political repression in the region during that decade, Brazilian journalist Nilson Mariano estimates the number of killed and missing people as 2,000 in Paraguay; 3,196 in Chile; 297 in Uruguay; 366 in Brazil; and 30,000 in Argentina.<ref>MARIANO, Nilson. ''As Garras do Condor'', São Paulo: Vozes, 2003, p. 234.</ref> Estimates of numbers of killed and disappeared by member countries during the period of operation are 7,000–30,000 in Argentina, 3,000–10,000 in Chile, 116–546 in Bolivia, 434–1,000 in Brazil, 200–400 in Paraguay and 123–215 in Uruguay. While many sources combine these numbers into a single death toll attributable to Operation Condor, killings directly linked to Condor's cross-border military and intelligence cooperation between South American dictatorships are only a small subset of the total. McSherry, for example, estimated in 2002 that at least 402 individuals were killed or "disappeared" in Condor operations: "Some 132 Uruguayans (127 in Argentina, 3 in Chile, and 2 in Paraguay), 72 Bolivians (36 in Chile, 36 in Argentina), 119 Chileans, 51 Paraguayans (in Argentina), 16 Brazilians (9 in Argentina and 7 in Chile), and at least 12 Argentines in Brazil". McSherry added that "some 200 persons passed through Automotores Orletti, the key Condor detention center in Argentina", and cautioned that "these figures are likely underestimates".<ref name=McSherry2002/>{{rp|p. 39}} In 2009, McSherry offered a range of "hundreds, or thousands&nbsp;... murdered in Condor operations", acknowledging that "the number still has not been finally determined".{{sfn|McSherry|2010|p=107}}

On 22 December 1992, torture victim [[Martín Almada]] and José Agustín Fernández, a Paraguayan judge, visited a police station in the [[Lambaré]] suburb of [[Asunción]] to look for files on a former political prisoner. They found what became known as the "Archives of Terror" (Portuguese: ''Arquivos do Terror''), documenting the fates of thousands of Latin American political prisoners, who were secretly kidnapped, tortured and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. The archives held a total of 60,000 documents, weighing 4 tons and comprising 593,000 microfilmed pages.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20001017104950/http://www.unesco.org/webworld/paraguay/documentos.html Paraguay: "Terror Archives"], UNESCO website</ref> Southern Cone Operation Condor resulted in up to 50,000 killed; 30,000 "disappeared"; and 400,000 arrested and imprisoned.<ref>(10) BOCCIA PAZ, Alfredo et al., op. cit., pp. 229–263; DINGES, John. ''Os anos do Condor. Uma década de terrorismo internacional no Cone Sul,'' São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2005, pp. 347–353. For further information on the 'Arquivos do Terror', see [https://web.archive.org/web/20001017104950/http://www.unesco.org/webworld/paraguay/documentos.html], UNESCO website</ref><ref name="Bevins 305" /><ref>{{Cite news|last=Castillo|first=Mariano|title=Trial over terrifying 'Operation Condor' under way|publisher=CNN|date=5 March 2013|url=http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/05/world/americas/argentina-operation-condor-trial/index.html|access-date=24 February 2016|archive-date=6 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160206170702/http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/05/world/americas/argentina-operation-condor-trial/index.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Some of these countries have relied on evidence in the archives to prosecute former military officers.<ref name="watts">{{Cite news|last=Watts|first=Simon|title=How Paraguay's 'Archive of Terror' put Operation Condor in focus|publisher=BBC|date=21 August 2012|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20774985|access-date=21 December 2012|archive-date=22 December 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121222064534/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20774985|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="almada">[[Martín Almada]], ''Paraguay: The Forgotten Prison, the Exiled Country''</ref> A higher number of 90,000 killed has been put forth by La Federación Latinoamericana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos (FEDEFAM).<ref name="Bevins 305" />

In September 1976, Orlando Letelier, a Chilean diplomat working in Washington D.C. was killed in a car bombing. The United States did not seem to have knowledge of this murder previously. Intelligence gathered that some Americans were threatened by Condor, but the US found it difficult to accept that their ally would plan to commit acts of terror on American soil.<ref name=":2" />{{Page needed|date=April 2025}}

According to these archives, other countries, such as Peru, cooperated by providing intelligence information in response to requests from the security services of the Southern Cone nations. While Peru had no representatives at the secret November 1975 meeting in Santiago de Chile, there is evidence of its involvement. For instance, as late as June 1980, Peru was known to have collaborated with Argentine agents of [[Batallón de Inteligencia 601|601 Intelligence Battalion]] in the kidnapping, torture and "disappearance" of a group of [[Montoneros]] living in exile in [[Lima]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Peru: Socio de Condor|url=http://www.johndinges.com/condor/documents/Peru%20and%20Condor.htm|access-date=15 December 2006|archive-date=15 December 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061215185608/http://johndinges.com/condor/documents/Peru%20and%20Condor.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Brazil signed the agreement later (June 1976), but refused to engage in actions outside Latin America.<ref name="watts" />

Mexico, along with Costa Rica, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Sweden, received many people fleeing as refugees from the terror regimes. The third phase of Operation Condor included plans to assassinate and take other measures against opponents of the military dictatorships in other countries, such as France, Portugal, the United States, Italy and Mexico. These plans were carried out in cases such as the [[Assassination of Orlando Letelier|assassination]] of [[Orlando Letelier]] and Ronni Karpen Moffitt in the United States. An undetermined number of foreigners were also arrested and tortured, including citizens of Spain, the UK, France and the United States.<ref>{{cite web|title=Operation Condor: A criminal conspiracy to forcibly disappear people|publisher=Centro de estudios legales y sociales|url=http://www.cels.org.ar/especiales/plancondor/en/#una-asociacion-ilicita-para-reprimir-opositores|quote=The document explains that this third, extremely secret, phase of Operation Condor "involves the formation of special teams from member countries who are to travel anywhere in the world to non-member countries to carry out sanctions up to assassination against terrorists or supporters of terrorist organizations from 'Operation Condor' member countries. For example, should a terrorist or a supporter of a terrorist organization from a member country of 'Operation Condor' be located in a European country, a special team from 'Operation Condor' would be dispatched to locate and surveil the target. When the location and surveillance operation has terminated, a second team from 'Operation Condor' would be dispatched to carry out the actual sanction against the target. Special teams would be issued false documentation from member countries of 'Operation Condor' and may be composed exclusively of individuals from one member nation of 'Operation Condor' or may be composed of a mixed group from various 'Operation Condor' member nations. (The) European countries specifically mentioned for possible operations under the third phase of 'Operation Condor' were France and Portugal."|access-date=23 July 2019|archive-date=2 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200802132325/http://www.cels.org.ar/especiales/plancondor/en/#una-asociacion-ilicita-para-reprimir-opositores|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|date=24 July 2000|title=Pulling Back the Veil on Condor|url=https://www.thenation.com/article/pulling-back-veil-condor/|work=The Nation|location=|quote=The newly declassified documents–in Paraguay as well as the United States–are helping to reveal a wide range of Condor operations, which included assassination plans or attempts (some of them aborted) in the United States, Portugal, France, Italy and Mexico, and the arrest and torture of an undetermined number of foreigners, including citizens of Spain, Britain, France and the United States.|access-date=23 July 2019|archive-date=23 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190723224620/https://www.thenation.com/article/pulling-back-veil-condor/|url-status=dead}}</ref> Condor officially ended when Argentina ousted the military dictatorship in 1983 (following its defeat in the [[Falklands War]]) and restored democracy.<ref name=juntafalls /> Disunity was also shown when Chile provided some military support to the U.K. during the Falklands War as well.<ref name=falklandsendscondor />

Historian John Coatsworth argued that the number of victims of US-backed violence in Latin America from 1960 to 1990, vastly exceeded the number of people killed in the Eastern Bloc over the same period of time.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bevins |first1=Vincent|author-link=Vincent Bevins |title= [[The Jakarta Method|The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World]]|date=2020 |publisher= [[PublicAffairs]]|page=228 |isbn= 978-1541742406|quote=Using numbers compiled by the US-funded Freedom House Organization, historian John Coatsworth concluded that from 1960 to 1990, the number of victims of US-backed violence in Latin America "vastly exceeded" the number of people killed in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc over the same period of time.}}</ref>

== Notable cases and prosecutions ==

=== Argentina ===
{{Main|Dirty War}}
[[File:Graffiti in Buenos Aires 2011, demanding trial for junta.jpg|thumb|Graffiti in [[Buenos Aires]], demanding justice for victims of the civic-military dictatorship of Argentina]]The civic-military dictatorship of Argentina existed from 1976 to 1983 by the military juntas under Operation Condor. Within this period, the Intelligence Service of the United States reported "Chile as being the Center of its operation".<ref>Defense Intelligence Agency, "Special Operations Forces," SECRET, Report on Operation Condor, 1 October 1976, declassified by CIA, <nowiki>https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/19761001%20Special%20Operations%20Forces%20small.pdf</nowiki></ref> Whereas the operation members included Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. Countries who were most enthused about the course of the Operation were Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. On 20 September 1976, the Director of the Argentina Army Intelligence Service met "his Chilean counterpart in Santiago to deliberate on their next actions about the fundamental aims of the ‘condor.’”<ref>Defense Intelligence Agency, "Special Operations Forces," SECRET, Report on Operation Condor, 1 October 1976, declassified by CIA, <nowiki>https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/19761001%20Special%20Operations%20Forces%20small.pdf</nowiki></ref> &nbsp; Following the meeting, and between the period of 24 to 27 September that same year, a joint coalition from the members of the Argentina States Secretaries for Information (SIDE), and the &nbsp;Uruguayan Military Intelligence Service worked to carry out an operation against the OPR-33, the Uruguay Terrorist organization in Buenos Aires. During this operation, the SIDE reported the destruction and elimination of the "entire OPR-33 infrastructure in Argentina".<ref>Defense Intelligence Agency, "Special Operations Forces," SECRET, Report on Operation Condor, 1 October 1976, declassified by CIA, <nowiki>https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/19761001%20Special%20Operations%20Forces%20small.pdf</nowiki></ref>

As part of the effort to carry out effective mechanisms to locate, identify, haunt, and assassinate their victims, the member countries proposed the establishment of some secret team of special agents. The member countries never mind endorsing forgery and criminality as they agreed to provide "false documentation" as cover for their special agent, who themselves were either "individuals from one member nation or of patrons from various member nations".<ref>Defense Intelligence Agency, "Special Operations Forces," SECRET, Report on Operation Condor, 1 October 1976, declassified by CIA, <nowiki>https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/19761001%20Special%20Operations%20Forces%20small.pdf</nowiki></ref> Apparently, such a "Special team" operated in Argentina, whose members were drawn from the Argentina Army Intelligence Service and the State Secretariat for Information.<ref>Defense Intelligence Agency, "Special Operations Forces," SECRET, Report on Operation Condor, 1 October 1976, declassified by CIA, <nowiki>https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/19761001%20Special%20Operations%20Forces%20small.pdf</nowiki></ref>

The Argentine [[Secretaría de Inteligencia|SIDE]] cooperated with the Chilean DINA in numerous cases of ''[[Detenido desaparecido|desaparecidos]]''. They assassinated Chilean General [[Carlos Prats]], former Uruguayan MPs [[Zelmar Michelini]] and [[Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz]], as well as the ex-president of Bolivia, [[Juan José Torres]], in Buenos Aires. The SIDE also assisted Bolivian general [[Luis García Meza Tejada]]'s ''Cocaine Coup'' in Bolivia, with the help of the Italian [[Operation Gladio|Gladio]] operative [[Stefano Delle Chiaie]] and Nazi war criminal [[Klaus Barbie]] (see also [[Operation Charly]]). Recently, since the opening of confidential archives, it has been discovered that there were operative units composed of Italians, used at ESMA for the repression of groups of Italian Montoneros. This unit called "Shadow Group" was led by [[Gaetano Saya]] at the time Officer of the Italian stay behind next – [[Operation Gladio]]. In April 1977, the ''[[Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo|Madres de la Plaza de Mayo]]'', a group of mothers whose children had disappeared, started demonstrating each Thursday in front of the ''[[Casa Rosada]]'' on the plaza. They were seeking to learn the location and fates of their children. The disappearance in December 1977 of two French nuns and several founders of the [[Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo]] gained international attention. Authorities later identified their remains among the bodies washed up on beaches in December 1977 south of Buenos Aires, victims of [[Death flights#Dirty War in Argentina|death flights]].<ref>{{cite news|last=Valente|first=Marcela|date=8 July 2005|title=ARGENTINA: Remains of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Identified|url=http://www.ipsnews.net/2005/07/argentina-remains-of-mothers-of-plaza-de-mayo-identified/|work=[[Inter Press Service]]|access-date=14 August 2018|archive-date=14 August 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180814165957/http://www.ipsnews.net/2005/07/argentina-remains-of-mothers-of-plaza-de-mayo-identified/|url-status=live}}</ref> Other members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo continued the struggle for [[justice]] in the ensuing decades.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

In 1980, Regional Security Officer James Blystone had met with an Argentine Intelligence Source. In the declassified memo, Blystone had asked about the disappearance for two [[Montoneros]] that had plans to travel from Mexico to Brazil to meet with other Montoneros. The Argentine Intelligence Source had explained that they had been taken and interrogated, and later contacted their Mexican and Brazilian counterparts for approval to conduct an operation to capture the other Montoneros that were expecting their arrival. Once they were under custody, they had used fake documents to check into their hotel to impersonate their presence and not alert any other Montoneros of their capture. They were imprisoned at [[Campo de Mayo]].<ref name=":8">{{Cite web |title=Conversation with Argentine Intelligence Source |url=http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/800407dos.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170719114332/http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/800407dos.pdf |archive-date=19 July 2017 |access-date=14 April 2017}}</ref> It was also confirmed in this memo that if a Montonero was captured and investigated to later find that they weren't a "full fledged member or combantant" they would be allowed limited freedom and able to contact their families periodically, so long as they leave the country and agree to not contact their family for months after their initial release.<ref name=":8" />

After democracy was restored in Argentina in 1983, the government set up the [[Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas|National Commission for Forced Disappearances]] (CONADEP), led by writer [[Ernesto Sabato]]. It collected testimony from hundreds of witnesses about victims of the regime and known abuses, documenting hundreds of secret prisons and [[Detention Centers in the Dirty War|detention centers]], and identifying leaders of the torture and death squads. Two years later, the ''[[Juicio a las Juntas]]'' (Trial of the Juntas) largely succeeded in proving the crimes of the top officers of the various ''juntas'' that had formed the self-styled [[National Reorganization Process]]. Most of the top officers put on trial were convicted and sentenced to [[life imprisonment]], including [[Jorge Rafael Videla]], [[Emilio Eduardo Massera]], [[Roberto Eduardo Viola]], [[Armando Lambruschini]], [[Raúl Agosti]], [[Rubén Graffigna]], [[Leopoldo Galtieri]], [[Jorge Anaya]] and [[Basilio Lami Dozo]].{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

Under pressure from the military following these trials, [[Raúl Alfonsín]]'s government passed two [[amnesty law]]s protecting military officers involved in human rights abuses: the 1986 ''[[Ley de Punto Final]]'' (''law of closure'') and the 1987 ''[[Ley de Obediencia Debida]]'' (''law of due obedience)'', ending prosecution of crimes committed during the Dirty War. In 1989–1990, President [[Carlos Menem]] [[pardon]]ed the leaders of the ''junta'' who were serving sentences in what he said was an attempt at healing and reconciliation.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

In the late 1990s, due to attacks on American nationals in Argentina and revelations about CIA<ref name=McSherry1999NACLA>{{cite journal|last1=McSherry|first1=J Patrice|title=Cross-Border Terrorism: Operation Condor|journal=NACLA Report on the Americas|date=1999|volume=32|issue=6|pages=34–35|doi=10.1080/10714839.1999.11725641}}</ref> funding of the Argentine military, and after an explicit 1990 Congressional prohibition, U.S. President [[Bill Clinton]] ordered the declassification of thousands of State Department documents related to U.S.-Argentine activities going back to 1954. These documents revealed U.S. complicity in the Dirty War and Operation Condor.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

Following continuous protests by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and other human rights groups, in 2003 the Argentine Congress, counting on President Nestor Kirchner and the ruling majority on both chambers full support, repealed the amnesty laws. The [[Supreme Court of Argentina|Argentine Supreme Court]] under separate review declared them unconstitutional in June 2005. The court's ruling enabled the government to renew the prosecution of crimes committed during the Dirty War.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

[[File:Bandera de los Desaparecidos - Día de la Memoria.jpg|thumb|Flag with images of those who [[forced disappearance|disappeared]] during a demonstration in [[Buenos Aires]] to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the [[1976 Argentine coup d'état|1976 coup]] in Argentina]]
DINA civil agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, who was prosecuted in Argentina for [[crimes against humanity]] in 2004, was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the murder of General Prats.<ref>{{Cite news
  | last =Gotkine
  | first =Elliott
  | title =Vital rights ruling in Argentina
  | publisher =BBC
  | date =24 August 2004
  | url =https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3596316.stm
  | access-date =15 December 2006
  | archive-date =7 January 2009
  | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20090107090814/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3596316.stm
  | url-status =live
  }}</ref> It has been claimed that suspected Italian terrorist [[Stefano Delle Chiaie]] was involved in the murder as well. He and fellow extremist [[Vincenzo Vinciguerra]] testified in Rome in December 1995 before federal judge [[María Servini de Cubría]] that DINA agents Clavel and [[Michael Townley]] were directly involved in this assassination.<ref>[http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2000/05/22/mun6.html] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110422190743/http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2000/05/22/mun6.html|date=22 April 2011}}, ''Jornada'', 22 May 2000</ref> In 2003, Judge Servini de Cubría requested that Mariana Callejas (Michael Townley's wife) and Cristoph Willikie, a retired colonel from the Chilean army, be extradited, as they were accused of also being involved in the murder. Chilean appeals court judge Nibaldo Segura refused extradition in July 2005 on the grounds that they had already been prosecuted in Chile.<ref>[https://archive.today/20060404100951/http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/antialone.html?page=http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/site/artic/20050330/pags/20050330114755.html], ''Cooperativa'', 30 March 2005</ref>

On 5 March 2013, twenty-five former high-ranking military officers from Argentina and Uruguay went on trial in Buenos Aires, charged with conspiracy to "kidnap, disappear, torture and kill" 171 political opponents during the 1970s and 1980s. Among the defendants are former Argentine "presidents" [[Jorge Videla]] and [[Reynaldo Bignone]], from the period of ''[[El Proceso]].'' Prosecutors are basing their case in part on U.S. documents declassified in the 1990s and later, and obtained by the non-governmental organization, the [[National Security Archive]], based at [[George Washington University]] in Washington, DC.<ref>National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 416, 8 March 2013. See http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/ {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130311154435/http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/ |date=11 March 2013 }}</ref>

On 27 May 2016, fifteen ex-military officials were found guilty. Reynaldo Bignone received a sentence of 20 years in jail. Fourteen of the remaining 16 defendants got eight to 25 years. Two were found not guilty.<ref>{{Cite news
  | title=Argentine court finds 15 guilty in Operation Condor conspiracy
  | publisher=[[Reuters]]
  | date=28 May 2016
  | url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-rights-idUSKCN0YJ01Z
  | access-date=2 July 2017
  | archive-date=7 July 2020
  | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200707161111/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-rights-idUSKCN0YJ01Z
  | url-status=live
  }}</ref> Luz Palmás Zaldúa, a lawyer representing victims' families, contends that "this ruling is important because it is the first time the existence of Operation Condor has been proved in court. It is also the first time that former members of Condor have been sentenced for forming part of this criminal organization".<ref>{{Cite news
  | title = Argentina's last military dictator jailed for role in international death squad
  | work = The Guardian
  | date = 27 May 2016
  | url = https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/27/argentinas-last-military-dictator-jailed-over-role-in-operation-condor
  | access-date = 12 December 2016
  | archive-date = 28 May 2016
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160528152742/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/27/argentinas-last-military-dictator-jailed-over-role-in-operation-condor
  | url-status = live
  }}</ref>

=== Bolivia ===
In 2009, Bolivian president [[Evo Morales]] discovered the "horror chambers" underneath Bolivia's Department of the Interior. Contractors excavated the basement and uncovered blocked hallways to discover cells "where around 2,000 political prisoners were held and tortured during the 1971–1978 military rule under General [[Hugo Banzer]]". Deputy Interior Minister Marcos Farfan described his own time in the prison, where he was placed in a flooded cell, electrified from the ground, needled under his fingernails, and shocked via his genitals and teeth to extract information about Che Guevara. Nazi leader [[Klaus Barbie]] was Banzer's advisor in the methods of torture. Evidence in 1999 linked these torture chambers to Operation Condor.<ref>{{Cite news |date=5 March 2009 |title=Hidden cells reveal Bolivia's dark past |url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7925694.stm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090310105027/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7925694.stm |archive-date=10 March 2009 |access-date=23 October 2023 |language=en-GB}}</ref>

Barbie's long-term presence in Bolivia, and his role as advisor to Hugo Banzer, can be traced back to Barbie's relationship with US intelligence at the end of World War II. Historians writing for the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) established that the U.S. Army Intelligence [[Counterintelligence Corps]] had recruited Barbie for intelligence work in West Germany in April 1947, before facilitating his escape to South America "via a '[[Ratlines (World War II)|ratline]]' operating through Italy".<ref name=":7">{{Cite web |date=15 August 2016 |title=Analysis of the IRR File of Klaus Barbie |url=https://www.archives.gov/iwg/research-papers/barbie-irr-file.html |access-date=3 May 2024 |website=National Archives |language=en}}</ref> Barbie's cooperation with American intelligence was confirmed in a U.S. High Commission for Germany (HICOG) letter to New York Senator Jacob Javits. The letter established that "Barbie was arrested by the United States Occupation Forces in Germany and his wartime activities were investigated. He was released when the results of this investigation proved inconclusive...From 1948 to 1951 Barbie was, as were many other Germans, an informant for the United States Occupation forces".<ref name=":7" /> Once in Bolivia, Barbie adopted the pseudonym "Klaus Altman", and lived in La Paz under the cover of working for the [[Gehlen Organization]]-affiliated MEREX A.G. company, which facilitated arms deals with anti-communist Third World governments. Barbie's identity was revealed in the early 1970s, but he was not extradited to France to stand trial for war crimes until 1983. During his trial, his relationship with US intelligence became more public. Allan Ryan, Director of the Office of Special Investigations, concluded in a 1983 memorandum that "officers of the United States government were directly responsible for protecting a person wanted by the government of France on criminal charges and in arranging his escape from the law".<ref>Allan A. Ryan (August 1983). Klaus Barbie and the United States government- A Report to the Attorney General of the United States (Report). Justice Department, U.S Government.</ref>

=== Brazil ===
President [[Fernando Henrique Cardoso]] ordered the release of some military files concerning Operation Condor in 2000.<ref>{{Cite news
  | title =Brazil looks into Operation Condor
  | publisher =BBC
  | date =18 May 2000
  | url =https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/753436.stm
  | access-date =15 December 2006
  | archive-date =6 January 2009
  | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20090106224020/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/753436.stm
  | url-status =live
  }}</ref>
There are documents that prove that, on that year [[attorney general]] Giancarlo Capaldo, an Italian magistrate, investigated the "disappearances" of Italian nationals in Latin America, likely due to actions of Argentine, Paraguayan, Chilean and Brazilian military personnel who tortured and murdered Italian citizens during the military dictatorships in Latin America. In the case of Brazilians accused of murder, [[kidnapping]] and [[torture]], there was a list with the names of eleven Brazilians in addition to many high-ranking military personnel from other countries involved in the operation.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

In the words of the Magistrate, on 26 October 2000, "[...] I can neither confirm nor deny because until December Argentine, Brazilian, Paraguayan and Chilean militaries [military personnel] will be subject to criminal trial..."<ref>[http://www.radiobras.gov.br/anteriores/2000/sinopses_2610.htm Radiobras- Brazilian state website] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050414175746/http://www.radiobras.gov.br/anteriores/2000/sinopses_2610.htm |date=14 April 2005 }} {{in lang|pt}}</ref>

According to an official statement by the Italian government, it was unclear whether the government would prosecute the accused military officers or not, {{as of|2021|November}}, nobody in Brazil had been convicted of human rights violations for actions committed under the [[History of Brazil (1964–1985)|21 years of military dictatorship]] because of the [[Amnesty Law#Brazil|Amnesty Law]] has secured both governmental officials and leftist guerrillas over their crimes.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

==== Kidnapping of Uruguayans ====
The Condor Operation expanded its clandestine repression from Uruguay to Brazil in November 1978, in an event later known as ''"o Sequestro dos Uruguaios",'' or "the [[Detenido desaparecido|Kidnapping]] of the Uruguayans".<ref>{{cite web|last=Cunha|first=Luis Claudio|title=Negada Negada indenização contra autor do livro Operação Condor: O Sequestro dos|url=http://www.direitolegal.org/tribunais-estaduais/negada-indenizacao-contra-autor-do-livro-operacao-condor-o-sequestro-dos-uruguaios/|publisher=Direito Legal|language=pt|date=30 May 2011|access-date=14 June 2011|archive-date=14 September 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180914213728/http://www.direitolegal.org/tribunais-estaduais/negada-indenizacao-contra-autor-do-livro-operacao-condor-o-sequestro-dos-uruguaios/|url-status=dead}}</ref> With the consent of the Brazilian military regime, senior officers of the Uruguayan army secretly crossed the border and entered [[Porto Alegre]], capital of the State of [[Rio Grande do Sul]]. There they kidnapped Universindo Rodriguez and [[Lilián Celiberti]], an activist Uruguayan couple of the political opposition, along with her two children, Camilo and Francesca, five and three years old.<ref>{{cite web
  | title =Lilian Celiberti de Casariego v. Uruguay, CCPR/C/13/D/56/1979, UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), 29 July 1981
  | publisher =UN Human Rights Committee (HRC)
  | date =29 July 1981
  | url =http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4028af854.html
  | access-date =6 June 2011
  | archive-date =18 October 2012
  | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20121018173114/http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4028af854.html
  | url-status =live
  }}</ref>

[[File:Lilian Celiberti 2010.jpg|thumb|Lilian Celiberti during a speech in the [[World Social Forum]]. [[Porto Alegre]], 2010]]

The illegal operation failed because two Brazilian journalists, reporter Luiz Cláudio Cunha and photographer João Baptista Scalco from ''[[Veja (magazine)|Veja]]'' magazine, had been warned by an anonymous phone call that the Uruguayan couple had been "disappeared". To check on the information, the two journalists went to the given address: an apartment in Porto Alegre.<ref>CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio. "Sucesso de investigação", In: Fernando Molica (ed.) ''10 reportagens que abalaram a ditadura'', São Paulo: Record, 2005, pp. 117–248. Also see the following issues of ''VEJA'' magazine: 20 October 1978; 29 November 1978; 27 December 1978; 17 January 1979; 15 February 1979; 18 July 1979; 24 October 1979; and 11 June 1980</ref> When they arrived, the journalists were at first taken to be other political opposition members by the armed men who had arrested Celiberti, and they were arrested in turn. Universindo Rodriguez and the children had already been clandestinely taken to Uruguay.<ref>CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio. "Por que sou testemunha de acusação deste seqüestro", ''Playboy'', No. 52, Nov. 1979, pp. 127–131 e 164–168</ref>

When their identities were made clear, the journalists had exposed the secret operation by their presence. It was suspended. The exposure of the operation is believed to have prevented the murder of the couple and their two young children, as the news of the political kidnapping of Uruguayan nationals in Brazil made headlines in the Brazilian press. It became an international scandal. The military governments of both Brazil and Uruguay were embarrassed. A few days later, officials arranged for the Celibertis' children to be taken to their maternal grandparents in Montevideo. After Rodriguez and Celiberti were imprisoned and tortured in Brazil, they were taken to military prisons in Uruguay, and detained for the next five years. When democracy was restored in Uruguay in 1984, the couple were released. They confirmed all the published details of their kidnapping.<ref>FERRI, Omar. ''Seqüestro no Cone Sul. O caso Lílian e Universino'', Porto Alegre: Mercado Aberto, 1981.</ref>

In 1980, Brazilian courts convicted two inspectors of DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order, an official police branch in charge of the political repression during the military regime) for having arrested the journalists in Lilian's apartment in Porto Alegre. They were João Augusto da Rosa and Orandir Portassi Lucas. The reporters and the Uruguayans had identified them as taking part in the kidnapping. This event confirmed the direct involvement of the Brazilian government in the Condor Operation.<ref>CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio, Operação Condor. O sequestro dos uruguaios. Uma operação dos tempos da ditadura. Porto Alegre: L±, 2008.</ref> In 1991, Governor [[Pedro Simon]] arranged for the state of [[Rio Grande do Sul]] to officially recognize the kidnapping of the Uruguayans and gave them financial compensation. The democratic government of President [[Luis Alberto Lacalle]] in Uruguay was inspired to do the same a year later.<ref>CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio. "O seqüestro de Lilian e Universindo – 15 anos depois. A farsa desvendada" ("The kidnapping of Lilian and Universindo – 15 years later. The scam unraveled"), ''Zero Hora'', Caderno Especial, 22 November 1993, p. 8. Also see ''O Seqüestro dos Uruguaios – 15 anos depois'' (The Kidnapping of the Uruguayans – 15 Years Later), RBS Documento, 1993. Video produced and presented by RBS TV, Porto Alegre, November 1993</ref><ref>CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio, Operação Condor. O sequestro dos uruguaios. Uma reportagem dos tempos da ditadura. Porto Alegre: L±, 2008.</ref>

Police officer Pedro Seelig, the head of the DOPS at the time of the kidnapping, was identified by the Uruguayan couple as the man in charge of the operation in Porto Alegre. While Seelig stood trial in Brazil, Universindo and Lílian remained in prison in Uruguay and were prevented from testifying. The Brazilian policeman was acquitted for lack of evidence. Lilian and Universindo's later testimony revealed that four officers of the secret Uruguayan Counter-information Division—two majors and two captains—took part in the operation with the consent of Brazilian authorities.<ref>BOCCIA PAZ, Alfredo et al. ''En los sótanos de los generales. Los documentos ocultos del Operativo Condor,'' Assunção, Paraguai: Expolibro, 2002, pp. 219–222</ref> Captain Glauco Yanonne, was personally responsible for torturing Universindo Rodriquez in the DOPS headquarters in Porto Alegre.<ref>CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio, Glauco Yanonne. "Torturador ganhou um Nobel", ''Zero Hora'', Caderno Especial, 22 November 1993, p. 6.</ref> Although Universindo and Lilian identified the Uruguayan military men who had arrested and tortured them, not one was prosecuted in Montevideo. The Law of Immunity, passed in 1986, provided amnesty to Uruguayan citizens who had committed acts of political repression and human rights abuses under the dictatorship.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Truth and Justice in Uruguay |url=https://nacla.org/article/truth-and-justice-uruguay |access-date=18 September 2023 |website=NACLA |language=en |archive-date=2 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231102194948/https://nacla.org/article/truth-and-justice-uruguay |url-status=live }}</ref>

The 1979 Esso Prize, regarded as the most important prize of the Brazilian press, was awarded to Cunha and Scalco for their investigative journalism of the case.<ref>PRÊMIO ESSO DE JORNALISMO, see [https://web.archive.org/web/20060827092316/http://www.premioesso.com.br/site/premio_principal/index.aspx?year=1979] {{in lang|pt}}</ref> Hugo Cores, a former Uruguayan political prisoner, was the one who had called Cunha in warning. In 1993, he told the Brazilian press: "All the Uruguayans kidnapped abroad, around 180 people, are missing to this day. The only ones who managed to survive are Lilian, her children, and Universindo".<ref>CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio. "Morre o homem que salvou Lílian Celiberti", ''Zero Hora'', 10 December 2006</ref>

==== Alleged assassination of João Goulart ====
After being overthrown, [[João Goulart]] was the first Brazilian president to die in exile. He died of an alleged heart attack in his sleep in [[Mercedes, Buenos Aires|Mercedes]], Argentina, on 6 December 1976. Because an [[autopsy]] was never performed, the true cause of his death remains unknown.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

On 26 April 2000, former governor of Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul [[Leonel Brizola]], Goulart's brother-in-law, alleged that former presidents Goulart and [[Juscelino Kubitschek]] (who died in a car accident) were assassinated as part of Operation Condor. He asked for investigations to be opened into their deaths.<ref>[http://www1.elmostrador.cl/modulos/noticias/constructor/noticia_impresion.asp?id_noticia=3317 "Brasil examina su pasado represivo en la Operación Cóndor"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930020821/http://www1.elmostrador.cl/modulos/noticias/constructor/noticia_impresion.asp?id_noticia=3317 |date=30 September 2007 }}, ''[[El Mostrador]]'', 11 May 2000</ref><ref>[http://www.clarin.com/diario/2000/05/06/i-03702.htm "Operación Cóndor: presión de Brizola sobre la Argentina"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013124136/http://www.clarin.com/diario/2000/05/06/i-03702.htm |date=13 October 2007 }}, ''[[Clarín (Argentine newspaper)|El Clarín]]'', 6 May 2000</ref>

On 27 January 2008, the newspaper ''[[Folha de S.Paulo]]'' printed a story with a statement from Mario Neira Barreiro, a former intelligence service member under Uruguay's dictatorship. Barreiro said that Goulart was poisoned, confirming Brizola's allegations. Barreiro also said that the order to assassinate Goulart came from [[Sérgio Paranhos Fleury]], head of the Departamento de Ordem Política e Social (Department of Political and Social Order) and the [[licence to kill (concept)|licence to kill]] came from president [[Ernesto Geisel]].<ref>[http://www.cartamaior.com.br/templates/materiaMostrar.cfm?materia_id=15129 Há fortes indícios de que Jango foi assassinado com conhecimento de Geisel] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110702182424/http://www.cartamaior.com.br/templates/materiaMostrar.cfm?materia_id=15129 |date=2 July 2011 }}. Carta Maior. Retrieved on 24 May 2014.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u367282.shtml|title=Goulart foi morto a pedido do Brasil, diz ex-agente uruguaio|website=www1.folha.uol.com.br|access-date=8 July 2019|archive-date=29 January 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080129193605/https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u367282.shtml|url-status=live}}</ref> In July 2008, a special commission of the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul, Goulart's home state, concluded that "the evidence that Jango [Goulart] was willfully assassinated, with knowledge of the Geisel government, is strong".<ref>[http://www.cartamaior.com.br/templates/materiaMostrar.cfm?materia_id=15129 "Há fortes indícios de que Jango foi assassinado com conhecimento de Geisel"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110702182424/http://www.cartamaior.com.br/templates/materiaMostrar.cfm?materia_id=15129 |date=2 July 2011 }}, ''Carta Maior'', 17 July 2008.</ref>

In March 2009, the magazine ''[[CartaCapital]]'' published previously unreleased documents of the [[National Intelligence Service of Brazil|National Information Service]] created by an undercover agent who was present at Goulart's properties in Uruguay. This revelation reinforces the theory that the former president was poisoned. The Goulart family has not yet identified who could be the "B Agent", as he is referred to in the documents. The agent acted as a close friend to Goulart, and described in detail an argument during the former president's 56th birthday party with his son because of a fight between two employees.<ref>{{Cite web|date=29 January 2008|title=Ex Brazilian president Goulart poisoned in 1976?|url=https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2008/01/ex-brazilian-pr.html|access-date=8 October 2021|website=LA Times Blogs – La Plaza|language=en-US|archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008150952/https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2008/01/ex-brazilian-pr.html|url-status=live}}</ref> As a result of the story, the Human Rights Commission of the [[Chamber of Deputies of Brazil|Chamber of Deputies]] decided to investigate Goulart's death.<ref>FORTES, Leandro. "[http://www.cartacapital.com.br/app/materia.jsp?a=2&a2=8&i=3772 Corrêa à luz do dia – A revista serve de base para outras decisões] {{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}," ''CartaCapital,'' 3 April 2009</ref>

Later, ''CartaCapital'' published an interview with Goulart's widow, [[Maria Teresa Fontela Goulart]], revealing documents from the Uruguayan government detailing her complaints that her family had been monitored. The Uruguayan government was monitoring Goulart's travel, his business, and his political activities. These files were from 1965, a year after the coup in Brazil, and suggest that he could have been deliberately attacked. The Movement for Justice and Human Rights and the President João Goulart Institute have requested a document referring to the Uruguayan Interior Ministry saying that "serious and responsible Brazilian sources" talked about an "alleged plot against the former Brazilian president".{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

Tests carried out by forensic experts in Brazil on Goulart's exhumed remains revealed no evidence of poison. The autopsy concluded that his death was likely due to natural causes.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2 December 2014 |title=Brazilian ex-President Joao Goulart 'not poisoned' |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-30287633 |access-date=8 May 2024 |work=BBC News |language=en-GB}}</ref>  Despite the findings from the forensic analysis, Brazil's National Truth Commission is persisting with its investigation into the circumstances surrounding Goulart's demise.  Allegations suggested that Goulart's medication for a heart condition had been swapped with poison by Uruguayan secret agents acting on behalf of the Brazilian dictatorship.<ref>{{Cite web |date=22 August 2013 |title=The body of Brazil's former president João Goulart to be exhumed |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-body-of-brazil-s-former-president-joao-goulart-to-be-exhumed-over-claims-of-assassination-8780876.html |access-date=8 May 2024 |website=The Independent |language=en}}</ref>  Goulart's body was exhumed for examination to address suspicions of foul play, within the larger framework of Operation Condor which targeted opposition activists.<ref>{{Cite web |date=13 November 2013 |title=Remains of late President Joao Goulart are exhumed |url=https://apnews.com/article/27e00e488ee24bfd9b6660a50b22a5f4 |access-date=8 May 2024 |website=AP News |language=en-US}}</ref>

=== Chile ===
{{See also|Human rights abuses in Chile under Augusto Pinochet}}
[[File:Parque por la paz Villa Grimaldi.jpg|thumb|Disappeared people in art at Parque por la Paz at [[Villa Grimaldi]] in [[Santiago de Chile]]]]

When [[Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet|Augusto Pinochet was arrested]] in London in 1998 in response to Spanish magistrate [[Baltasar Garzón]]'s request for his [[extradition]] to Spain, additional information concerning Condor was revealed. One of the lawyers seeking his extradition said there had been an attempt to assassinate [[Carlos Altamirano]], leader of the [[Chilean Socialist Party]]. He said that Pinochet met Italian neo-fascist terrorist [[Stefano Delle Chiaie]] during [[Francisco Franco]]'s funeral in Madrid in 1975 and arranged to have Altamirano murdered.<ref>[http://www.derechos.org/sorin/doc/p2.html "Las Relaciones Secretas entre Pinochet, Franco y la P2 – Conspiracion para matar"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927223309/http://www.derechos.org/sorin/doc/p2.html |date=27 September 2007 }}, ''[[Equipo Nizkor]],'' 4 February 1999 {{in lang|es}}</ref> The plan failed. Chilean judge [[Juan Guzmán Tapia]] eventually established a precedent concerning the crime of "[[Detenido desaparecido|permanent kidnapping]]": since the bodies of victims kidnapped and presumably murdered could not be found, he deemed that the kidnapping was thought to continue, rather than to have occurred so long ago that the perpetrators were protected by an amnesty decreed in 1978 or by the Chilean [[statute of limitations]]. In November 2015, the Chilean government acknowledged that [[Pablo Neruda]] might have been murdered by members of Pinochet's regime.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/06/chile-admits-pablo-neruda-might-have-been-murdered-by-pinochet-regime|title=Chile admits Pablo Neruda might have been murdered by Pinochet regime|newspaper=The Guardian|date=6 November 2015|agency=Associated Press|access-date=12 December 2016|archive-date=10 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201110154030/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/06/chile-admits-pablo-neruda-might-have-been-murdered-by-pinochet-regime|url-status=live}}</ref>

==== General Carlos Prats ====
General [[Carlos Prats]] and his wife, [[Sofía Cuthbert]] were killed by a car bomb on 30 September 1974, in Buenos Aires, where they lived in exile. The Chilean DINA has been held responsible. In Chile, Judge Alejandro Solís terminated the prosecution of Pinochet in January 2005 after the [[Chilean Supreme court]] rejected his demand to revoke Pinochet's immunity from prosecution (as chief of state). The leaders of DINA, including chief [[Manuel Contreras]], ex-chief of operations and retired general Raúl Itturiaga Neuman, his brother Roger Itturiaga, and ex-brigadiers Pedro Espinoza Bravo and José Zara, were charged in Chile with this assassination. DINA agent [[Enrique Arancibia Clavel]] has been convicted in Argentina for the murder.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

==== Bernardo Leighton ====
[[Bernardo Leighton]] and his wife were severely injured by a failed assassination attempt on 6 October 1975, after settling in exile in Italy. The pistol attack left Bernardo Leighton seriously injured and his wife, Anita Fresno, permanently disabled. According to declassified documents in the [[National Security Archive]] and Italian attorney general Giovanni Salvi, who led the prosecution of former DINA head Manuel Contreras, Stefano Delle Chiaie met with Michael Townley and [[Virgilio Paz Romero]] in Madrid in 1975 to plan the murder of Bernardo Leighton with the help of Francisco Franco's secret police.<ref>{{cite web|title=Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 1970–1976|publisher=[[National Security Archive]]|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm|access-date=15 December 2006|archive-date=13 October 1999|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19991013083035/http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1999, the secretary of the [[United States National Security Council|National Security Council]] (NSC), [[Glyn T. Davies]], declared that the declassified documents established the responsibility of [[Pinochet government]] in carrying out the assassination of Bernardo Leighton, as well as Orlando Letelier and General Carlos Prats.<ref>[[El País]], "EEUU culpa al "régimen" de Pinochet por los atentados contra Prats, Leighton y Letelier". Madrid, 8 July 1999 [https://elpais.com/diario/1999/07/08/internacional/931384811_850215.html] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200909045326/https://elpais.com/diario/1999/07/08/internacional/931384811_850215.html|date=9 September 2020}}</ref> a failed assassination attempt on 6 October 1975.

==== Orlando Letelier ====
{{Main|Assassination of Orlando Letelier}}
[[File:Orlando Letelier, Washingron DC, 1976 (de Marcelo Montecino).jpg|thumb|[[Orlando Letelier|Letelier in 1976]]]]

On 21 September 1976, Orlando Letelier, an exiled Chilean diplomat was killed in a car bombing in Washington D.C. Evidence from uncovered documents suggests that his murder was ordered as part of Operation Condor and that the US was not aware of the plot against him.<ref name=":2" />{{Page needed|date=April 2025}}

In December 2004, Francisco Letelier, the son of [[Orlando Letelier]], wrote in an OpEd column in the ''Los Angeles Times'' that his father's assassination was part of Operation Condor, which he described as "an intelligence-sharing network used by six South American dictators of that era to eliminate dissidents".<ref>Francisco Letelier, "Operation Condor and my father's death", ''Los Angeles Times'', 17 December 2004</ref>

[[Michael Townley]] has accused Pinochet of being responsible for Letelier's death. Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cuban exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to [[Jean-Guy Allard]], after consultations with the terrorist organization [[Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations|CORU]]'s leadership, including [[Luis Posada Carriles]] and [[Orlando Bosch]], those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Allard|first=Jean-Guy|title=WHILE CHILE DETAINS CONTRERAS ... Posada and his accomplices, active collaborators of Pinochet's fascist police|work=[[Granma (newspaper)|Granma]]|date=26 March 2003|url=http://www.granma.cu/ingles/mar03/mier26/12posada.html|access-date=15 December 2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060612222833/http://www.granma.cu/ingles/mar03/mier26/12posada.html|archive-date=12 June 2006}}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=December 2021}} According to the ''[[Miami Herald]]'', Luis Posada Carriles was at this meeting, which decided on Letelier's death and also the [[Cubana Flight 455]] bombing.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

==== Caso Quemados ====
In July 1986, photographer [[Rodrigo Rojas de Negri]] was burned alive and [[Carmen Gloria Quintana]] suffered serious burns during a street protests against Pinochet. The two's case became known as ''Caso Quemados'' ("The Burned Case") and the case received attention in the United States because Rojas had fled to the US after the 1973 coup.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB523-Los-Quemados-Chiles-Pinochet-Covered-up-Human-Rights-Atrocity/|title=Los Quemados: Chile's Pinochet Covered up Human Rights Atrocity|last=Kornbluh|first=Peter|date=31 July 2015|website=National Security Archive|access-date=9 April 2019|archive-date=24 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170824225625/https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB523-Los-Quemados-Chiles-Pinochet-Covered-up-Human-Rights-Atrocity/|url-status=live}}</ref> A document by the U.S. [[United States Department of State|State Department]] highlights that the Chilean army deliberately set both Rojas and Quintana on fire.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB523-Los-Quemados-Chiles-Pinochet-Covered-up-Human-Rights-Atrocity/rojas1.pdf|title=Case of Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri|date=8 July 1986|website=National Security Archive|access-date=9 April 2019|archive-date=25 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170825003609/https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB523-Los-Quemados-Chiles-Pinochet-Covered-up-Human-Rights-Atrocity/rojas1.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> Pinochet, on the other hand, accused both Rojas and Quintana of being terrorists who were set ablaze by their own Molotov cocktails.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB523-Los-Quemados-Chiles-Pinochet-Covered-up-Human-Rights-Atrocity/rojas5.pdf|title=Presidential Evening Reading: Likely Involvement of Chilean Army in Rojas Killing|date=14 July 1986|website=National Security Archive|access-date=9 April 2019|archive-date=25 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170825003608/https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB523-Los-Quemados-Chiles-Pinochet-Covered-up-Human-Rights-Atrocity/rojas5.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> According to National Security Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh, Pinochet's reaction to the attack and death of Rojas "contributed to Reagan's decision to withdraw support for the regime and press for a return to civilian rule".<ref name=":1" />

==== Operación Silencio ====
[[File:La Segunda, 1975-07-25, 'Exterminados como Ratas'.jpg|thumb|Cover of ''[[La Segunda]]'', 25 July 1975, in regards to the murder of [[Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)|MIR]] operatives in Argentina. Main header reads "Exterminated like mice"]]

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.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

In April 1991, Arturo Sanhueza Ross, linked to the murder of [[Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)|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.<ref>[http://www.memoriaviva.com/Ejecutados/Ejecutados%20N/nehgme_cristi_jecar_antonio.htm Neghme Cristi Jecar Antonio] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070823160857/http://www.memoriaviva.com/Ejecutados/Ejecutados%20N/nehgme_cristi_jecar_antonio.htm |date=23 August 2007 }}, ''Memoria Viva'', {{in lang|es}}</ref> In September 1991, Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who killed trade-unionist Tucapel Jiménez, left by plane.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Sanhueza|first=Jorge Molina|title=El coronel que le pena al ejército|language=es|work=[[La Nación (Chile)|La Nación]]|date=25 September 2005|url=http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20050924/pags/20050924223646.html|access-date=15 December 2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070312003922/http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20050924/pags/20050924223646.html|archive-date=12 March 2007}}</ref> 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 to avoid testifying in the Letelier case. He used Argentine, 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 as to make identification by appearance impossible.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

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 [[Villa Baviera|Colonia Dignidad]].<ref name="dignidad">[https://archive.today/20060404100951/http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/antialone.html?page=http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/site/artic/20050330/pags/20050330114755.html Redireccionando]. Cooperativa.cl. Retrieved on 24 May 2014.</ref> 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 Democratic Party (Chile)|Christian-Democrat]] [[Eduardo Frei Montalva]] may have been made in this new lab in Colonia Dignidad, according to the judge investigating the case.<ref name="dignidad" /> In 2013, a Brazilian-Uruguayan-Argentine collaborative documentary, ''Dossiê Jango'', implicated the same lab in the alleged poisoning of [[João Goulart]], Brazil's deposed president.<ref>Paulo Henrique Fontenelle, "Dossiê Jango", 2013. <{{cite web |url=http://www.assistirnovelaonline.com.br/2013/07/dossie-jango-dublado-online.html |title=Assistirnovelaonline.com.br&nbsp;-&nbsp;assistirnovelaonline Resources and Information |access-date=3 October 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131005004359/http://www.assistirnovelaonline.com.br/2013/07/dossie-jango-dublado-online.html |archive-date=5 October 2013 }}></ref>

==== U.S. Congressman Edward Koch ====
In February 2004, reporter [[John Dinges]] published ''The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents''. He revealed that Uruguayan military officials threatened to assassinate U.S. Congressman [[Edward Koch]] (later Mayor of New York City) in mid-1976. In late July 1976, the CIA station chief in Montevideo had received information about it. Based on learning that the men were drinking at the time, he recommended that the CIA take no action. The Uruguayan officers included Colonel José Fons, who was at the November 1975 secret meeting in Santiago, Chile; and Major José Nino Gavazzo, who headed a team of intelligence officers working in Argentina in 1976 and was responsible for the death of more than 100 Uruguayans.<ref name="National Security Archive">{{cite web|title=Ed Koch Threatened with Assassination in 1976|publisher=[[National Security Archive]]|date=18 February 2004|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB112/index.htm|access-date=15 December 2006|archive-date=21 February 2004|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040221061643/http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB112/index.htm|url-status=live}}</ref>

Interviewed in the early 21st century by Dinges, Koch said that [[George H. W. Bush]], then CIA director, informed him in October 1976 that "his sponsorship of legislation to cut off U.S. military assistance to Uruguay on human rights grounds had provoked secret police officials to 'put a contract out for you'".<ref name="dinges">John Dinges, ''The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents''</ref> In mid-October 1976, Koch wrote to the Justice Department asking for FBI protection, but none was provided.<ref name="dinges" /> (This was more than two months after the meeting and after [[Orlando Letelier]]'s murder in Washington.) In late 1976, Colonel Fons and Major Gavazzo were assigned to prominent diplomatic posts in Washington, D.C. The State Department forced the Uruguayan government to withdraw their appointments, with the public explanation that "Fons and Gavazzo could be the objects of unpleasant publicity".<ref name="National Security Archive" /> Koch learned about the connections between the threats and the post appointments only in 2001.<ref name="National Security Archive" />

=== Paraguay ===
The United States backed [[Alfredo Stroessner]]'s anti-communist military dictatorship<ref name="p. 223" /> and played a "critical supporting role" in the domestic affairs of Stroessner's Paraguay.<ref>{{cite journal |last1= Mora|first1=Frank O.|date=1998 |title=The Forgotten Relationship: United States-Paraguay Relations, 1937–89|journal=[[Journal of Contemporary History]]|volume= 33|issue=3 |pages=451–473 |jstor=261125}}</ref> For instance, when Stroessner established a special branch of the secret police, subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs – the National Directorate of Technical Affairs (Dirección Nacional de Asuntos Técnicos, DNAT), U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thierry was sent to help set up the organization and find recruits, ultimately settling on [[Antonio Campos Alum]] as head of this organization (nicknamed ''La Technica'') which would carry out disappearances and torture in Paraguay.<ref name="kstatecollegian.com">{{cite news|url=http://www.kstatecollegian.com/2006/10/11/exiled-professor-advocates-equality-democracy/|title=Exiled professor advocates equality, democracy|first=Jonas|last=Hogg|work=The Collegian|date=11 October 2006|access-date=2 July 2014|archive-date=14 July 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714152057/http://www.kstatecollegian.com/2006/10/11/exiled-professor-advocates-equality-democracy/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="motherearthtravel.com">{{cite web|url=http://motherearthtravel.com/history/paraguay/history-7.htm|title=History of Paraguay, The Stronato|work=motherearthtravel.com|access-date=2 July 2014|archive-date=9 January 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090109160255/http://motherearthtravel.com/history/paraguay/history-7.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> Another branch, the Department of Investigations of the Metropolitan Police (Departamento de Investigaciones de la Policía de la Capital, DIPC), headed by [[Pastor Coronel]], interrogated their captives in tubs of human vomit and excrement<ref>{{cite news |last=Schemo |first=Diana Jean |date=1999 |title=Files in Paraguay Detail Atrocities of U.S. Allies |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/11/world/files-in-paraguay-detail-atrocities-of-us-allies.html |work=The New York Times |access-date=13 August 2018 |archive-date=13 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180813105245/https://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/11/world/files-in-paraguay-detail-atrocities-of-us-allies.html |url-status=live }}</ref> and shocked them in the rectum with electric cattle prods. They dismembered the Communist Party Secretary, Miguel Ángel Soler, alive with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened on the phone.<ref>Gimlette, John (2005). At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay. Vintage Books. {{ISBN|1400078520}}</ref><ref>[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1526487/General-Alfredo-Stroessner.html General Alfredo Stroessner] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160707085526/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1526487/General-Alfredo-Stroessner.html |date=7 July 2016 }}. ''The Telegraph'', 17 August 2006. Retrieved 20 January 2017</ref><ref>{{cite book |last= Green |first=W. John |date=2015|title=A History of Political Murder in Latin America: Killing the Messengers of Change |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yCazCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA266|publisher=[[SUNY Press]] |page=266 |isbn=978-1-4384-5663-8|quote=Stroessner reportedly listened on the phone as the secretary of the Paraguayan communist party was ripped apart with a chainsaw.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Whitehead |first=Anne |date=1998 |title=Paradise Mislaid: In Search of the Australian Tribe of Paraguay|publisher=[[University of Queensland Press]]|page= 554|isbn=978-0-7022-2651-9|quote=According to testimony submitted by Amnesty International to the Paraguayan Supreme Court in 1979, Miguel Angel Solar, Secretary of the Parguayan Communist Party, was methodically taken apart, dismembered alive by chainsaw.}}</ref> Stroessner demanded the tapes of detainees screaming in pain to be played to their family members.<ref>[[Simon Sebag Montefiore]]. ''History's Monsters.'' Metro Books, 2008. p. 271. {{ISBN|1435109376}}</ref>

In a report to Kissinger, Harry Shlaudeman described Paraguay's militaristic state as a "nineteenth-century military regime that looks good on the cartoon page". Shlaudeman's judgments adopted a tone of paternalism, but was correct in noting that Paraguay's "backwardness" was leading it toward the fate of its neighbors. Although the United States viewed conflict from a global and ideological perspective, many decolonized nations defined national security threats in terms of neighboring nations and longstanding ethnic or regional feuds. Shlaudeman notes the incredible resilience that Paraguay showed against the superior military might of its neighbors during the [[Chaco War]]. From the perspective of the government in Paraguay, the victory against its neighbors over the course of several decades justified the lack of development in the nation. The report further states that the political traditions in Paraguay were anything but democratic. This reality, combined with a fear of leftist dissent in neighboring nations, led the government to focus on the containment of political opposition instead of on the development of its economic and political institutions. An ideological fear of its neighbors compelled them to protect its sovereignty. Therefore, the fight against radical, leftist movements within and without the country motivated many policymakers to act in the interest of security.<ref name="nsarchive.gwu.edu" /> In 2020, French writer [[Pablo Daniel Magee]] published the book ''Opération Condor'' prefaced by [[Costa Gavras]]. The book follows the life of Paraguayan victim of the Condor Operation [[Martín Almada]].{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

=== Peru ===
[[File:F. Morales Bermúdez.jpg|thumb|The Peruvian dictator [[Francisco Morales Bermúdez]] was part of Operation Condor]]
The Peruvian legislator [[Javier Diez Canseco]] declared that he and twelve colleagues (Justiniano Apaza Ordóñez, Hugo Blanco, Genaro Ledesma Izquieta, Valentín Pacho, Ricardo Letts, César Lévano, Ricardo Napurí, José Luis Alvarado Bravo, Alfonso Baella Tuesta, Guillermo Faura Gaig, José Arce Larco, and Humberto Damonte), all prominent opponents of the dictatorship of [[Francisco Morales Bermúdez]], were kidnapped in Peru, expatriated in 1978 and handed over to the Argentine armed forces in the city of [[Jujuy]]. Diez Canseco added that there is declassified documentation of the CIA and cable information which account for the links of the Morales Bermúdez government with Operation Condor.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.diariolaprimeraperu.com/online/politica/morales-si-estuvo-en-plan-condor_104690.html|title=Morales sí estuvo en Plan Cóndor|access-date=26 April 2016|last=Liza Jaramillo|first=Víctor|date=4 February 2012|website=Diario La Primera|language=es|archive-date=9 May 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160509014604/http://www.diariolaprimeraperu.com/online/politica/morales-si-estuvo-en-plan-condor_104690.html|url-status=usurped}}</ref>

=== Uruguay ===
{{Main|Civic-military dictatorship of Uruguay}}
As per usual with [[Southern Cone]] 1970s dictatorships, [[Juan María Bordaberry]] proclaimed himself a dictator and banned the rest of political parties.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://revista.fder.edu.uy/index.php/rfd/article/download/556/840 |title=La dictadura cívico-militar en Uruguay (1973–1985): aproximación a su periodización y caracterización a la luz de algunas teorizaciones sobre el autoritarismo |author1=José Miguel Busquets |first2=Andrea |last2=Delbono |date=27 September 2016 |journal=Revista de la Facultad de Derecho |number=41 |pages=61–102 |doi=10.22187/rfd201624 |doi-access=free |access-date=16 November 2019 |archive-date=5 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200805234833/https://revista.fder.edu.uy/index.php/rfd/article/download/556/840 |url-status=live }}</ref> The ''de facto'' [[Civic-military dictatorship of Uruguay|government spanned from 1973 to 1985]], in which period a considerable number of people were murdered, tortured, illegally detained and imprisoned, kidnapped and forced into disappearance, in the purported defence against [[subversion]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.presidencia.gub.uy/noticias/archivo/2003/abril/Informe_final.doc|title=Informe final de la Comisión para la Paz (2003)|date=2 June 2008|access-date=16 November 2019|archive-date=2 June 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080602192052/http://www.presidencia.gub.uy/noticias/archivo/2003/abril/Informe_final.doc|url-status=bot: unknown}}</ref> Prior to the [[1973 Uruguayan coup d'état|1973 coup d'état]], the [[CIA]] had acted as a consultant to the [[law enforcement]] agencies in the country.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/world/americas/argentina-dictatorship-cia-documents.html|title=Declassified U.S. Documents Reveal Details About Argentina's Dictatorship|first=Ernesto|last=Londoño|newspaper=The New York Times|date=12 April 2019|access-date=16 November 2019|archive-date=28 June 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200628021324/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/world/americas/argentina-dictatorship-cia-documents.html|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Dan Mitrione]], the best known example of such cooperation, had trained civilian police in [[counterinsurgency]] at the [[Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation#School of the Americas|School of the Americas]] in Panama, known as the [[Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation]] after 2000.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2005-08-11/news/finding-gary-part-2/1 |title=New Times (Broward-Palm Beach, FL, 11 de agosto de 2005) |access-date=16 November 2019 |archive-date=22 July 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120722025455/http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2005-08-11/news/finding-gary-part-2/1/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>[http://www.clarin.com/diario/2001/09/02/i-03101.htm "Dan Mitrione, un maestro de la tortura"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210411191859/http://www.clarin.com/diario/2001/09/02/i-03101.htm |date=11 April 2021 }}, ''[[Clarín (Argentine newspaper)|Clarín]]'', 2 de septiembre de 2001</ref>

=== Other cases ===
Edgardo Enríquez, Chilean leader of the [[Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)|MIR]], "disappeared" in Argentina, as did the MIR leader Jorge Fuentes. Alexei Jaccard and Ricardo Ramírez were "disappeared", and a support network to the Communist party was dismantled in Argentina in 1977. Cases of repression in the country against German, Spanish, Peruvian, and Jewish people were also reported. The assassinations of former Bolivian president [[Juan José Torres]] and former Uruguayan deputies Héctor Gutiérrez and Zelmar Michelini in Buenos Aires in 1976 were also part of Condor. The DINA contacted Croatian terrorists (i.e., [[Ustashe]] émigrés and descendants), Italian neo-fascists, and the Shah's [[SAVAK]] to locate and assassinate dissidents in exile.<ref>[http://docs.tercera.cl/especiales/2001/condor/datos/dato02.htm Los crímenes de la Operación Cóndor] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080413142911/http://docs.tercera.cl/especiales/2001/condor/datos/dato02.htm |date=13 April 2008 }}, ''[[La Tercera]]'', 2001. {{in lang|es}}</ref>

According to reports in 2006, resulting from trials of top officials in Argentina, Operation Condor was at its peak in 1976 when Chilean exiles in Argentina were threatened; many went underground or into exile again in other countries. Chilean General Carlos Prats had been assassinated by DINA in Buenos Aires in 1974, with the help of former CIA agent Michael Townley. Cuban diplomats were assassinated in Buenos Aires in the ''Automotores Orletti'' torture center, one of the 300 clandestine prisons of the dictatorship. These centers were managed by the ''Grupo de Tareas 18'', headed by former police officer and intelligence agent [[Aníbal Gordon]], earlier convicted of armed robbery, who reported directly to General Commandant of the [[SIDE]], Otto Paladino.<ref name="Elcorreo">[http://www.elcorreo.eu.org/esp/article.php3?id_article=6378 "Automotores Orletti el taller asesino del Cóndor"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070516034522/http://www.elcorreo.eu.org/esp/article.php3?id_article=6378|date=16 May 2007}}, ''[[Juventud Rebelde]]'', 3 January 2006 (mirrored on ''El Correo.eu.org'') {{in lang|es|fr}}</ref>

''Automotores Orletti'' was the main base of foreign intelligence services involved in Operation Condor. José Luis Bertazzo, a survivor of kidnapping and torture who was detained there for two months, identified Chilean, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Bolivian nationals held as prisoners and who were interrogated by agents from their own countries. The 19-year-old daughter-in-law of poet [[Juan Gelman]] was tortured here along with her husband, before being transported to a Montevideo prison. There she delivered a baby which was immediately stolen by Uruguayan military officers and placed for illegal adoption with friends of the regime.<ref name="Elcorreo" /> Decades later, President [[Jorge Batlle]] ordered an investigation and finally, [[Macarena Gelman]] was found and recovered her identity.

According to Dinges' book ''Los años del Cóndor'' (The Years of the Condor), Chilean [[Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)|MIR]] prisoners in the Orletti center told José Luis Bertazzo that they had seen two Cuban diplomats, 22-year-old Jesús Cejas Arias and 26-year-old Crescencio Galañega, tortured by Gordon's group. They were interrogated by a man who had travelled from Miami to interrogate them. The Cuban nationals had been responsible for protection of Cuban ambassador to Argentina, Emilio Aragonés. They were kidnapped on 9 August 1976, at the corner of calle Arribeños and Virrey del Pino, by 40 armed SIDE agents, who blocked the street with their [[Ford Falcon (Argentina)|Ford Falcons]]. (These were the car models used by the security forces during the dictatorship.)<ref name="Elcorreo" />

According to Dinges, the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] and the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] were informed of their arrest. He quotes a cable sent from Buenos Aires by FBI agent [[Robert Scherrer]] on 22 September 1976, in which he mentioned that Michael Townley, later convicted for the assassination of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., had taken part in the interrogations of the two Cubans. On 22 December 1999, the former head of the DINA confirmed to Argentine federal judge María Servini de Cubría in Santiago de Chile that Michael Townley and Cuban [[Guillermo Novo Sampoll]] were present in the Orletti center. They had travelled from Chile to Argentina on 11 August 1976 and "cooperated in the torture and assassination of the two Cuban diplomats". Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-[[Fidel Castro|Castro]] Cuban terrorist, boasted in his autobiography, ''Los Caminos Del Guerrero'' (The Roads of the Warrior), of the murder of the two young men.<ref name="Elcorreo" />

=== Prominent victims ===
* [[Martín Almada]], educator in Paraguay, arrested in 1974 and tortured for three years
* [[Víctor Olea Alegría]], member of the [[Socialist Party (Chile)|Socialist Party]], arrested on 11 September 1974 and "disappeared" (Manuel Contreras, head of DINA, was convicted in 2002 for this crime)
* [[William Beausire|Guillermo Roberto Beausire Alonso]] (Anglicised as William Beausire), [[British Chileans|British-Chilean]] commercial engineer, abducted at [[Ministro Pistarini International Airport]] on 2 November 1974.<ref name="UN">{{cite book |author1=UN. Commission on Human Rights. Expert on the Question of the Fate of Missing and Disappeared Persons in Chile |title=Case reports on missing persons in Chile / prepared by the Expert on the Question of the Fate of Missing and Disappeared Persons in Chile appointed pursuant to resolution 11 (XXXV) of the Commission on Human Rights. |date=1980 |location=Geneva |pages=49&ndash;54 |url=https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/10902?v=pdf |access-date=21 April 2025 |language=English |chapter=Case Report No. 8}}</ref><ref name="Ortiz">{{cite book |editor1-last=Ortiz Rojas |editor1-first=María Luisa |editor2-last=Sandoval Osorio |editor2-first=Marcela Paz |title=Operación Cóndor : Historias personales, memorias compartidas |date=2015 |publisher=Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos |location=Santiago de Chile |isbn=978-956-9144-33-2 |pages=39&ndash;41 |url=https://sitiosdememoria.uy/sites/default/files/2020-01/1550098682LIBROOPERACIONCONDORWEB.pdf |access-date=20 April 2025 |language=Spanish |chapter=Guillermo Roberto Beausire Alonso}}</ref><ref name="Memoria">{{cite web |last1=Memoria Viva |title=Beausire Alonso Guillermo Roberto |url=https://memoriaviva.com/nuevaweb/detenidos-desaparecidos/desaparecidos-b/beausire-alonso-guillermo-roberto/ |website=Memoria Viva |publisher=Proyecto Internacional de Derechos Humanos |access-date=15 April 2025 |location=London |language=Spanish |date=2023}}</ref> Returned to Chile, Beausire was held in various [[Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional|DINA]] torture and detention centres before his [[Enforced disappearances in Chile|enforced disappearance]] on 2 July 1975.<ref name=UN/><ref name=Ortiz/><ref name=Memoria/>
* [[Volodia Teitelboim]], member of the [[Communist Party of Chile]], targeted for murder in Mexico with Carlos Altamirano in Mexico in 1976
* [[Juan José Torres]], former socialist president of Bolivia, was kidnapped and assassinated by right-wing death squads in June 1976.
* "Disappearance" of two Cuban diplomats in Argentina, Crecencio Galañega Hernández and Jesús Cejas Arias, who transited through Orletti detention center in Buenos Aires (9 August 1976 – see ''[[:es:Lista de centros clandestinos de detención (Argentina)|Lista de centros clandestinos de detención (Argentina)]]''); both were questioned by the SIDE and the DINA, with the knowledge of the FBI and the CIA<ref>Document dated 22 September 1976, sent by Robert Scherer from the FBI to the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires, with a copy of a SIDE document concerning the interrogation. In his memoirs, Cuban [[Luis Posada Carriles]] qualifies these murders as "successes" in the "struggle against communism". See [http://www.desaparecidos.org/bbs/archives/cat_operacion_condor.html Proyecto Desaparecidos: Notas: Operación Cóndor Archives] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070717075919/http://www.desaparecidos.org/bbs/archives/cat_operacion_condor.html |date=17 July 2007 }}, {{in lang|es}}, 31 October 2006 (Retrieved on 12 December 2006)</ref>
* [[Andrés Pascal Allende]], nephew of [[Salvador Allende]] and secretary general of the [[Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)|MIR]], escaped an assassination attempt in Costa Rica in March 1976
* [[Carmelo Soria]], Spanish diplomat, civil servant of the [[CEPAL]] (a UN organization), assassinated on 21 July 1976
* Jorge Zaffaroni and [[María Emilia Islas]], possible members of the [[Tupamaros]], "disappeared" in Buenos Aires on 29 September 1976, kidnapped by the [[Batallón de Inteligencia 601]], who transferred them to the Uruguayan OCOAS (''Organismo Coordinador de Operaciones Anti-Subversivas'')<ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/19760928%20Entregados%20a%20OCOAS.pdf SIDE cable] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061213023124/http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/19760928%20Entregados%20a%20OCOAS.pdf |date=13 December 2006 }}, [[National Security Archive]]</ref>
* [[Dagmar Hagelin]], 17-year-old Swedish national kidnapped in 1977 and shot in the back by [[Alfredo Astiz]] as she tried to escape; later "disappeared"
* Poet [[Juan Gelman]]'s son and daughter-in-law – imprisoned; their baby, born in prison, was taken by the Uruguayan military and illegally placed for adoption by a regime ally
* Journalist [[Vladimir Herzog]], [[History of the Jews in Croatia|Jew-Croatian]] naturalized [[Brazilians|Brazilian]], accused of being part of the (then clandestine) [[Communist Party of Brazil]] by [[Military dictatorship in Brazil|Brazilian military regime]], and arrested, tortured and killed on the premises of [[DOI-CODI]] in [[São Paulo]]

== U.S. involvement ==
{{Further|U.S. intervention in Chile}}
{{Further|Dirty War#United States involvement with the junta}}
{{blockquote|Operation Condor also had the covert support of the US government. Washington provided Condor with military intelligence and training, financial assistance, advanced computers, sophisticated tracking technology, and access to the continental telecommunications system housed in the Panama Canal Zone.|[[J. Patrice McSherry]]{{sfn|McSherry|2010}}}}

The United States documentation shows that the United States provided key organizational, financial and technical assistance to the operation into the 1980s.<ref name="GregGrandin2011" /><ref name="p. 223" /><ref name=McSherry2002/>

In a United States Department of State briefing for Henry Kissinger, then the Secretary of State, dated 3 August 1976 written by Harry Shlaudeman and entitled the "Third World War and South America", the long-term dangers of a right-wing bloc and their initial policy recommendations were considered.<ref name=":0" /> The briefing was a summary of Southern Cone security forces. It stated that the operation was an effort of six countries in the southern cone of Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay) to win the "Third-World-War" by wiping out "subversion" through transnational secret intelligence activities, kidnapping, torture, disappearance and assassination. The report opens by considering the cohesiveness felt by the six nations of the Southern Cone. It was the assumption of the Shlaudeman's briefing that the countries in the Southern Cone perceived themselves as "the last bastion of Christian civilization" and thus they consider the efforts against communism as justified as the "Israeli actions against Palestinian terrorists". Shlaudeman warns Kissinger that in the long term the "Third World War" would put those six countries in an ambiguous position because they are trapped on either side by "international Marxism and its terrorist exponents", and on the other by "the hostility of uncomprehending industrial democracies misled by the Marxist propaganda".<ref>Schlaudeman, Harry. "The "Third World War" and South America." Unclassified Department of State (July 1976): n. pag. Web. <http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor05.pdf {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170309083603/http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor05.pdf |date=9 March 2017 }}>.</ref> The report recommended that U.S. policy towards Operation Condor should emphasize the differences between the five countries at every opportunity, to depoliticize human rights, to oppose rhetorical exaggerations of the "Third-World-War" type, and bring the potential bloc-members back-into our cognitive universe through systematic exchanges.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/|title=OPERATION CONDOR ON TRIAL: LEGAL PROCEEDINGS ON LATIN AMERICAN RENDITION AND ASSASSINATION PROGRAM OPEN IN BUENOS AIRES|website=nsarchive.gwu.edu|access-date=11 April 2017|archive-date=19 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170719113337/http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/|url-status=live}}</ref> According to the final statement, these suggestions were part of an attempt to convince the nations involved that the Third World War is not desirable.<ref>{{Cite web |date=3 August 1976 |title=Department of State, Report to Kissinger, SECRET, "The Third World War and South America," August 3, 1976. |url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/docs/0000A02E.pdf}}</ref>

Based on 1976 CIA documents stated that from 1960 to the early 1970s, the plans were developed among international security officials at the US Army [[School of the Americas]] and the Conference of American Armies to deal with political dissidents in South America. A declassified CIA document dated 23 June 1976, explains that "in early 1974, security officials from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia met in Buenos Aires to prepare coordinated actions against subversive targets".{{sfn|McSherry|2005}} US officials were aware of what was going on.<ref name=":4"/>

Additionally, as of a September 1976, the Defense Intelligence Agency reported that US intelligence services were quite aware of the infrastructure and goals of Operation Condor. They realized that "Operation Condor" was the code name given for intelligence collection on "leftists", Communists, Peronists or Marxists in the Southern Cone Area. The intelligence services were aware that it was security cooperation among several South American countries' intelligence services (such as Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia) with Chile as the epicenter of the operation. The DIA noted that Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile were already fervently conducting operations, mainly in Argentina, against leftist targets.<ref>Osorio, Carlos. "Operation Condor on Trial." The National Security Archive. N.p., 8 March 2013. Web. 11 May 2017.</ref> Members of SIDE were also operating with Uruguayan military Intelligence officers in an operation carried out against the Uruguayan terrorist organization, the [[OPR-33]]. The report also noted that a large volume of U.S. currency was seized during the combined operation.<ref name=NSAEBB185>{{Cite web|url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/|title=Home &#124; National Security Archive|website=nsarchive.gwu.edu|access-date=2 June 2023|archive-date=26 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200126154545/https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/|url-status=live}}</ref>

The third point of the report demonstrates the United States' understanding of Operation Condor's more nefarious operations. The report notes, "the formation of special teams from member countries who are to carry out operations to include assassinations against terrorist or supporters of terrorist organizations". This report goes more in detail about how operation of the special teams would be carried out. As an example of a special team, the special team organized in Argentina was made up of members of the Argentina Army Intelligence Service and the State Secretariat for Information. The report also highlighted the fact that these special teams were intelligence service agents rather than military personnel, however these teams did operate in structures reminiscent of U.S. special forces teams. Mentioning specifically a medic (doctor) and demolition expert.<ref name="NSAEBB185" /> The State Department briefing for Kissinger mentioned awareness of Operation Condor's plans to conduct possible operations in France and Portugal – a matter that would prove to be extremely controversial later in Condor's history.<ref name="NSAEBB185" />

The US government sponsored and collaborated with DINA (Directorate of National Intelligence), as well as 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]].<ref name="CIA Activities in Chile">{{cite web
  | title =CIA Activities in Chile
  | publisher =[[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]
  | date =18 September 2000
  | url =https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/chile/#10
  | access-date =14 September 2014
  | archive-date =29 June 2015
  | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20150629130149/https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/chile/#10
  | url-status =dead
  }}</ref> Contreras was retained as a paid CIA contact until 1977, even as his involvement in the Letelier-Moffit assassination was being revealed.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

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 in the US for individuals wanted by DINA.<ref>Weiner (1999). J. Patrice McSherry notes; "In the Paraguayan Archives, I found correspondence documenting similar coordination in other cases."</ref>

In a February 1976 telecom from the embassy in Buenos Aires to the State Department, intelligence noted the United States possessed awareness of the coming Argentine coup. The ambassador wrote that the Chief of the North American desk of the Foreign Ministry revealed that he had been asked by the "Military Planning Group" to prepare a report and recommendations for how the "future military government can avoid or minimize the sort of problems the Chilean and Uruguayan governments are having with the US over human rights issue". The Chief also specifically stated that "they" (whether he is referring to the CIA or the future military government in Argentina, or both) will face resistance if they were to begin assassinating and executing individuals. This being true, the ambassador explains the military coup will "intend to carry forward an all-out war on the terrorists and that some executions would therefore probably be necessary". This signals that the US also was aware of the planning of human rights violations before they occurred and did not step in to prevent them, despite being entangled in the region's politics already. The last comment confirms this: "It is encouraging to note that the Argentine military are aware of the problem and are already focusing on ways to avoid letting human rights issues become an irritant in US-Argentine Relations".<ref>{{cite web|title=Communication From Ambassador Hill for ARA Acting Assistant Secretary|url=http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/19760216%20Military%20Take%20Cognizance%20of%20Human%20Rights%20Issue%2000009FF0.pdf|website=National Security Archive|access-date=30 January 2017|archive-date=1 November 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161101052519/http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/19760216%20Military%20Take%20Cognizance%20of%20Human%20Rights%20Issue%2000009FF0.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

Regarding the ongoing human rights abuses by the Argentine junta, Professor Ruth Blakeley writes that Kissinger "explicitly expressed his support for the repression of political opponents".<ref>{{cite book|last=Blakeley|first=Ruth|date=2009|title=State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South|url=http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415462402/|publisher=[[Routledge]]|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=rft8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA96 96]|isbn=978-0-415-68617-4|access-date=19 July 2018|archive-date=14 June 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150614055306/http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415462402/|url-status=live}}</ref> On 5 October 1976 [[Henry Kissinger]] met with Argentina's foreign finister and said:

{{blockquote|Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better ... The human rights problem is a growing one. Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help.|source = [[Henry Kissinger]], U.S. Secretary of State, 5 October 1976 record of conversation<ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/index.htm The Dirty War in Argentina] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031223085626/http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/index.htm |date=23 December 2003 }}, National Security Archive, George Washington University, Retrieved 6 August 2010.</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Borger|first=Julian|date=27 August 2004|title=Kissinger backed dirty war against left in Argentina|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/28/argentina.julianborger|work=[[The Guardian]]|access-date=14 August 2018|archive-date=29 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190829141341/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/28/argentina.julianborger|url-status=live}}</ref>}}

Ultimately, the [[démarche]] was never delivered. Kornbluh and Dinges suggest that the decision not to send Kissinger's order was due to Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman's sending a cable to his deputy in D.C which states "you can simply instruct the Ambassadors to take no further action, noting that there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme".<ref name=kornblughanddinges>{{cite web
|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/index.htm
|title=Kornbluh / Dinges Letter to Foreign Affairs
|first1=Peter
|last1=Kornbluh
|first2=John
|last2=Dinges
|date=10 June 2004
|publisher=The National Security Archive
|access-date=17 June 2007
|archive-date=1 March 2015
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150301182451/http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/index.htm
|url-status=live
}}</ref> McSherry adds, "According to [U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay Robert] White, instructions from a secretary of state cannot be ignored unless there is a countermanding order received via a secret (CIA) backchannel".<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/mcsherry.htm
|title=The Undead Ghost of Operation Condor
|access-date=26 June 2007
|author=J. Patrice McSherry
|date=Spring 2005
|work=Logos: a journal of modern society & culture
|publisher=Logosonline
|archive-date=28 October 2005
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051028134824/http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/mcsherry.htm
|url-status=dead
}}</ref>

A 1978 cable from the US ambassador to Paraguay, Robert White, to the Secretary of State Cyrus Vance revealed that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "[kept] in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which cover[ed] all of Latin America".<ref name="nsarchive.gwu.edu" />

General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, the chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, informed Ambassador White that this US communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone was "employed to coordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". McSherry describes these cables as "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".<ref name="McSherry2002" /> An Argentine military source also told a U.S. Embassy contact that the CIA was privy to Condor and had played a key role in setting up computerized links among the intelligence and operations units of the six Condor states.<ref name=":4" />

[[Patricia M. Derian]], the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs from 1977 to 1981, said of Kissinger's role in giving the green light to the junta's repression: "It sickened me that with an imperial wave of his hand, an American could sentence people to death".<ref>{{cite news|last=Andersen|first=Martin Edwin|date=4 March 2016|title=How Much Did the US Know About the Kidnapping, Torture, and Murder of Over 20,000 People in Argentina?|url=https://www.thenation.com/article/how-much-did-the-us-know-about-the-kidnapping-torture-and-murder-of-over-20000-people-in-argentina/|work=[[The Nation]]|location=|access-date=14 August 2018|archive-date=12 June 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612185244/https://www.thenation.com/article/how-much-did-the-us-know-about-the-kidnapping-torture-and-murder-of-over-20000-people-in-argentina/|url-status=dead}}</ref> During the Carter administration, Kissinger congratulated the Argentine military for "wiping out terrorism", and visited the country as a guest of Jorge Videla during the 1978 World Cup. US diplomats feared that this would hinder the Carter Administration's efforts to end the killings by the Argentine junta.<ref name=":6">{{cite news|last= Goñi|first= Uki|title= Kissinger hindered US effort to end mass killings in Argentina, according to files|date= 9 August 2016|work= [[The Guardian]]|url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/henry-kissinger-mass-killings-argentina-declassified-files|access-date= 14 August 2018|archive-date= 7 August 2018|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20180807001501/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/henry-kissinger-mass-killings-argentina-declassified-files|url-status= live}}</ref>

=== Declassification and reflection ===

In June 1999, by order of President [[Bill Clinton]], the State Department released thousands of declassified documents<ref>See foia.state.gov.</ref> revealing for the first time that the CIA and the State and Defense Departments were intimately aware of Condor. One DOD intelligence report dated 1 October 1976, noted that Latin American military officers bragged about it to their U.S. counterparts. The same report described Condor's "joint counterinsurgency operations" that aimed to "eliminate Marxist terrorist activities"; Argentina, it noted, created a special Condor team "structured much like a U.S. Special Forces Team".<ref>DOD Intelligence Information Report, number 6 804 0334 76.</ref> A summary of material declassified in 2004 stated that:

{{blockquote|The declassified record shows that Secretary of State [[Henry Kissinger]] was briefed on Condor and its "murder operations" on 5 August 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."|source=5 August 1976 briefing of Henry Kissinger by Harry Shlaudeman, State, National Security Archive<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/index.htm|title=Chile and Operation Condor|website=nsarchive2.gwu.edu|access-date=20 August 2021|archive-date=7 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210907221916/https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/index.htm|url-status=live}}</ref>}}

Kornbluh and Dinges conclude that "The paper trail is clear: the State Department and the CIA had enough intelligence to take concrete steps to thwart the Condor assassination planning. Those steps were initiated but never implemented". Shlaudeman's deputy Hewson Ryan later acknowledged in an oral history interview that the State Department was "remiss" in its handling of the case. "We knew fairly early on that the governments of the Southern Cone countries were planning, or at least talking about, some assassinations abroad in the summer of 1976. ... Whether if we had gone in, we might have prevented this, I don't know", he stated in reference to the Letelier-Moffitt bombing. "But we didn't".<ref name="kornblughanddinges" />

Other declassified documents further demonstrate the level of knowledge the CIA and State Department had about Condor. In a  comprehensive intelligence report from 1 October 1976, the Department of Defense Intelligence stated which Southern Cone countries were participating in the operation, noting that Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile were the most "enthusiastic" about providing intelligence. The document also detailed a joint operation between Uruguayan intelligence agents and Argentine State Secretariat members that targeted a section of the Uruguayan group, [[Partido por la Victoria del Pueblo|OPR-33]], in Argentina. The prospect of the operation Condor having the possibility to result in assassinations is noted as well, showing that the U.S. aware of this outcome.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/|title=OPERATION CONDOR ON TRIAL: LEGAL PROCEEDINGS ON LATIN AMERICAN RENDITION AND ASSASSINATION PROGRAM OPEN IN BUENOS AIRES|website=nsarchive2.gwu.edu|access-date=12 April 2024|archive-date=17 March 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180317232021/https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/|url-status=live}}</ref>

A CIA document described Condor as "a counter-terrorism organization" and noted that the Condor countries had a specialized telecommunications system called "CONDORTEL".<ref name="ciatelecom">CIA document dated 14 February 1978, at foia.state.gov [https://web.archive.org/web/20150216225830/http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010306/condor.pdf Archived]</ref> A 1978 cable from the US ambassador to Paraguay, [[Robert White (ambassador)|Robert White]], to the Secretary of State [[Cyrus Vance]], was published on 6 March 2001 by ''[[The New York Times]]''. The document was released in November 2000 by the [[Clinton administration]] under the Chile Declassification Project. White reported a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who informed him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "[kept] in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the [[Panama Canal Zone]] which cover[ed] all of Latin America".<ref name="ciatelecom" />

Davalos reportedly said that the installation was "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". The US feared that the connection to Condor might be publicly revealed at a time when the assassination in the U.S. of Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier and his American assistant [[Ronni Moffitt]] was being investigated. White cabled Vance that "it would seem advisable to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest".<ref name="ciatelecom" /> McSherry describes such cables as "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".<ref>{{cite web
  | title =Operation Condor: Cable Suggests U.S. Role
  | publisher =[[National Security Archive]]
  | date =6 March 2001
  | url =http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010306/
  | access-date =15 December 2006
  | archive-date =27 February 2015
  | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20150227063606/http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010306/
  | url-status =live
  }}</ref> In addition, an Argentine military source told a U.S. Embassy contact that the CIA was privy to Condor and had played a key role in setting up computerized links among the intelligence and operations units of the six Condor states.<ref>Landau (1988: 119); (whose? personal ? correspondence with J. Patrick McSherry, 13 February 1999.</ref>

=== Role of Henry Kissinger ===
[[File:Reunión Pinochet - Kissinger.jpg|thumb|Chilean dictator [[Augusto Pinochet]] shaking hands with [[Henry Kissinger]] in 1976]]
[[Henry Kissinger]], [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]] in the [[Richard Nixon|Nixon]] and [[Gerald Ford|Ford]] administrations, was well aware of the Condor plan and was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments. He was Jorge Videla's personal guest to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, after his tenure as Secretary of State concluded.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/henry-kissinger-mass-killings-argentina-declassified-files|title=Kissinger hindered US effort to end mass killings in Argentina, according to files|last=Goñi|first=Uki|date=9 August 2016|work=The Guardian|access-date=13 April 2019|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077|archive-date=7 August 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180807001501/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/henry-kissinger-mass-killings-argentina-declassified-files|url-status=live}}</ref> According to the French newspaper {{lang|fr|[[L'Humanité]]}}, the first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-[[Fidel Castro|Castro]] groups, and the right-wing [[death squad]] [[Argentine Anticommunist Alliance|Triple A]], set up in Argentina by [[Juan Perón|Juan]] and [[Isabel Perón]]'s "personal secretary" [[José López Rega]], and [[Rodolfo Almirón]] (arrested in Spain in 2006).<ref name="Huma">{{Cite web|date=10 February 2007|title=Latin America in the 1970s: "Operation Condor", an International Organization for Kidnapping Opponents – L'Humanité in English|url=http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/article478.html|access-date=17 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070210102730/http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/article478.html|archive-date=10 February 2007}}</ref>

Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State at the time, was deeply involved in Operation Condor plans.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}} He was well aware of the movement to illegally remove or assassinate leftist and assumed communists, to push forward a dictatorship. CIA documents declassified in 2023 reveal Kissinger's involvement with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.<ref>{{cite web |date=3 November 2020 |title=Allende and Chile: 'Bring Him Down' |url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2020-11-06/allende-inauguration-50th-anniversary |access-date=30 August 2023 |publisher=National Security Archive |via=The George Washington University}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=8 August 2023 |title=Chile's Coup at 50: Kissinger Briefed Nixon on Failed 1970 CIA Plot to Block Allende Presidency |url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2023-08-08/chiles-coup-50-kissinger-briefed-nixon-failed-1970-cia-plot-block |access-date=30 August 2023 |publisher=National Security Archive |via=The George Washington University}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Wilkinson |first=Tracy |date=29 August 2023 |title=Previously classified documents released by U.S. show knowledge of 1973 Chile coup |url=https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-08-29/us-releases-chile-coup-documents |access-date=30 August 2023 |website=Los Angeles Times}}</ref> On 8 June 1976, Kissinger met privately with Pinochet. Their conversation was documented. Prior to this meeting, Kissinger had been briefed about the ongoing crisis of human rights violations under Pinochet's rule in Chile, as well as the observations of Chile as a tyrannical state. Kissinger claimed to be 'sympathetic' to what they were doing in Chile. He argued that the Chilean government was fighting the Communists and the propaganda of the communist media. While recognizing the human rights issues that needed to be addressed to avoid legislative restrictions, Kissinger assured Pinochet that they were on the same team, "you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government which was going communist". Kissinger recognized that the US could not openly assist a human rights violation, but would not undermine Pinochet.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, "U.S.-Chilean Relations," [Kissinger conversation with Pinochet], SECRET, June 8, 1976 {{!}} National Security Archive |url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/30304-document-18-department-state-memorandum-conversation-us-chilean-relations-kissinger |access-date=4 May 2024 |website=nsarchive.gwu.edu}}</ref>

In New York on 7 October 1976, Henry Kissinger met with the Argentine foreign minister, Cesar Guzetti. They discussed the current regime and the eradication of the left. Kissinger was not against the oppressive regime. The declassified document shows the willingness of Kissinger to assist Guzetti and the Argentine dictatorship removing leftists. When referring to the humanitarian crisis, Kissinger acknowledges the 'civil war' and the humanitarian issues within Argentina, while expressing to Guzetti that the government needs to move fast in the removal of supposed communists, "the quicker you succeed the better".<ref>{{Cite web |title=State Department, memorandum of conversation, "Secretary's Meeting with Argentine Foreign Minister Guzzetti," SECRET, October 7, 1976 {{!}} National Security Archive |url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/30307-document-22-state-department-memorandum-conversation-secretarys-meeting-argentine |access-date=4 May 2024 |website=nsarchive.gwu.edu}}</ref>

On 31 May 2001, French judge Roger Le Loire requested that a summons be served on Kissinger while he was staying at the [[Hôtel Ritz Paris|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 Loire's inquiries were directed to the U.S. State Department.<ref name="KissingerParis">[http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=707548 "Henry Kissinger rattrapé au Ritz, à Paris, par les fantômes du plan Condor"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071017124802/http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=707548 |date=17 October 2007 }}, ''[[Le Monde]]'', 29 May 2001 {{in lang|fr}} ([http://lists.peacelink.it/latina/msg01151.html mirrored here])</ref>

In July 2001, the Chilean high court granted investigating judge [[Juan Guzmán Tapia|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 (1982 film)|Missing]]''. The judge's questions were relayed to Kissinger via diplomatic routes but were not answered.<ref name="KissingerChile">[https://www.theguardian.com/pinochet/Story/0,11993,735920,00.html "Kissinger may face extradition to Chile"], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 12 June 2002</ref>

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 judge's investigation of Operation Condor.<ref>{{Cite book
 | year=2002
 | chapter=Argentina
 | title=Human Rights Watch World Report 2002
 | publisher=[[Human Rights Watch]]
 | place=New York, Washington, London, Brussels
 | chapter-url=http://hrw.org/wr2k2/americas1.html
 | access-date=15 December 2006
 | archive-date=15 December 2006
 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061215170223/https://www.hrw.org/wr2k2/americas1.html
 | url-status=live
 }}</ref> In 2002, the editors of ''The New York Times'' defended Henry Kissinger, arguing that he should be given a pass for his role in Condor and other dirty works because "the world was polarised, and fighting communism involved hard choices and messy compromises".<ref>[https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/uk/2000/newsmakers/1952981.stm "Henry Kissinger: Haunted by his past"]  BBC News, 26 April 2002</ref>

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.<ref>''Piden extraditar a Kissinger por Operación Condor'', in ''La Jornada'', 16 February 2007 {{in lang|es}} [http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2007/02/16/piden-aptura-y-extradicion-de-kissinger-por-operacion-condor Piden, "Aptura y extradicion de kissinger por operacion condor"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070219030709/http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2007/02/16/piden-aptura-y-extradicion-de-kissinger-por-operacion-condor |date=19 February 2007 }}, ''Jornada''</ref>

It was discovered in 2010 that Kissinger canceled a warning against the international assassination of political opponents that was to be issued to some of the countries participating in Operation Condor.<ref>{{cite news|title=Cable Ties Kissinger to Chile Scandal|url=https://archive.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/04/10/cable_ties_kissinger_to_chile_controversy/|quote=The next day, on Sept. 21, 1976, agents of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet planted a car bomb and exploded it on a Washington, D.C., street, killing both former Ambassador Orlando Letelier, and an American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Letelier was one of the most outspoken critics of the Pinochet government.|agency=[[Associated Press]]|work=[[The Boston Globe]]|date=8 October 2021|access-date=8 October 2021|archive-date=29 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211029193151/http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/04/10/cable_ties_kissinger_to_chile_controversy/|url-status=live}}</ref>

== "French connection" ==
French journalist [[Marie-Monique Robin]] found in the archives of the [[Quai d'Orsay]], the French [[Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development (France)|Ministry of Foreign Affairs]], the original document proving that a 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires set up a "permanent French military mission" of officers to Argentina who had fought in the [[Algerian War]].<ref>"Série B. Amérique 1952–1963. Sous-série : Argentine, n° 74. Cotes : 18.6.1. mars 52-août 63".</ref> It was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Army. It continued until [[François Mitterrand]] was elected President of France in 1981.<ref name="Pagina12">[http://risal.collectifs.net/article.php3?id_article=1153 Argentine – "Escadrons de la mort : l'école française"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230531161610/https://risal.collectifs.net/article.php3?id_article=1153 |date=31 May 2023 }}, interview with Marie-Monique Robin published by RISAL, 22 October 2004 available in French & Spanish ([http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/espectaculos/6-42243-2004-10-13.html "Los métodos de Argel se aplicaron aquí"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404224854/https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/espectaculos/6-42243-2004-10-13.html |date=4 April 2023 }}), ''[[Página/12]]'', 13 October 2004</ref>

In 1957, Argentine officers, among them Alcides Lopez Aufranc, went to Paris to attend two-year courses at the [[École Militaire|École de Guerre]] military school, two years before the [[Cuban Revolution]], and before the rise of anti-government guerrilla movements in Argentina.<ref name="Pagina12" /> "In practice", said Robin to ''[[Página/12]]'', "the arrival of the French in Argentina led to a massive extension of intelligence services and of the use of [[torture]] as the primary weapon of anti-[[subversive]] war in the concept of modern warfare".<ref name="Pagina12" /> The "annihilation decrees" signed by [[Isabel Perón]] were inspired by earlier French documents.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Buenos Aires Times {{!}} 'Isabelita' Perón turns 90, ostracised in Madrid|url=https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/argentinas-forgotten-president-isabelita-turns-90-ostracised-in-madrid.phtml|access-date=8 October 2021|website=batimes.com.ar|date=6 February 2021 |archive-date=8 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008153035/https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/argentinas-forgotten-president-isabelita-turns-90-ostracised-in-madrid.phtml|url-status=live}}</ref>

During the [[Battle of Algiers (1957)|Battle of Algiers]], police forces were put under the authority of the French Army, and in particular of the [[paratrooper]]s. They systematically used torture during interrogations and also began to "disappear" suspects, as part of a program of intimidation. [[Reynaldo Bignone]], named President of the Argentine junta in July 1982, said, "The March 1976 order of battle is a copy of the Algerian battle".<ref name="Pagina12" />

On 10 September 2003, French Green Party deputies [[Noël Mamère]], [[Martine Billard]] and [[Yves Cochet]] petitioned for a Parliamentary Commission to be established to examine the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984" before the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by [[Édouard Balladur]]. The only newspaper to report this was {{lang|fr|[[Le Monde]]}}.<ref>{{Cite web|date=13 October 2007|title=LeMonde.fr : MM. Giscard d'Estaing et Messmer pourraient être entendus sur l'aide aux dictatures sud-américaines|website=[[Le Monde]]|url=http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=820135|access-date=23 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013144338/http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=820135|archive-date=13 October 2007}}</ref> Deputy [[Roland Blum]], in charge of the commission, refused to allow Marie-Monique Robin to testify. The government's report in December 2003 was described by Robin as being in the utmost bad faith. It claimed that no agreement had ever been signed on this issue between France and Argentina.<ref>[http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/rapports/r1295.asp RAPPORT FAIT AU NOM DE LA COMMISSION DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES SUR LA PROPOSITION DE RÉSOLUTION (n° 1060), tendant à la création d'une commission d'enquête sur le rôle de la France dans le soutien aux régimes militaires d'Amérique latine entre 1973 et 1984, PAR M. ROLAND BLUM] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040225084833/http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/rapports/r1295.asp |date=25 February 2004 }}, [[French National Assembly]] {{in lang|fr}}</ref>

When French Minister of Foreign Affairs [[Dominique de Villepin]] traveled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that there had been no cooperation between France and the military regimes.<ref name=":5">{{Cite web|date=30 October 2007|title=LeMonde.fr : Argentine : M. de Villepin défend les firmes françaises|website=[[Le Monde]]|url=http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=838522|access-date=23 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071030183340/http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=838522|archive-date=30 October 2007}}</ref>

Reporter Marie-Monique Robin said to {{lang|fr|[[L'Humanité]]}} newspaper: "The French have systematized a military technique in the urban environment which would be copied and passed to Latin American dictatorships".<ref name="Robin" /> The methods employed during the 1957 Battle of Algiers were systematized and exported to the War School in Buenos Aires.<ref name="Pagina12" /> [[Roger Trinquier]]'s famous book on [[counter-insurgency]] had a very strong influence in South America. Robin said that she was shocked to learn that the French intelligence agency [[Direction de surveillance du territoire]] (DST) communicated to the DINA the names of refugees who returned to Chile (Operation Retorno), all of whom were killed. "Of course, this puts the French government in the dock, and [[Valéry Giscard d'Estaing|Giscard d'Estaing]], then President of the Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, at the same time received political refugees with open arms, and collaborated with the dictatorships".<ref name="Robin" />

Marie-Monique Robin also showed ties between the French far right and Argentina since the 1930s, in particular through the [[Catholic fundamentalist|Roman Catholic fundamentalist]] organization ''[[Cité catholique]]'' created by [[Jean Ousset]], a former secretary of [[Charles Maurras]] (founder of the royalist ''[[Action Française]]'' movement). ''La Cité'' published a review, ''Le Verbe'', which influenced military officers during the Algerian War, notably by justifying their use of torture. At the end of the 1950s, the ''Cité catholique'' established groups in Argentina and set up cells in the Army. It was greatly expanded during the government of General [[Juan Carlos Onganía]], in particular in 1969.<ref name="Pagina12" />

The key figure of the ''Cité catholique'' was priest Georges Grasset, who became Videla's personal confessor. He had been the spiritual guide of the [[Organisation armée secrète]] (OAS), a pro-French Algeria terrorist movement founded in [[Francoist Spain]]. Robin says that this Catholic fundamentalist current in the Argentine Army contributed to the importance and duration of Franco-Argentine cooperation. In Buenos Aires, Georges Grasset maintained links with Archbishop [[Marcel Lefebvre]], founder of the [[Society of St. Pius X]] in 1970. He was excommunicated in 1988. The Society of Pius-X has four monasteries in Argentina, the largest in La Reja. A French priest there said to Marie-Monique Robin: "to save the soul of a Communist priest, one must kill him". [[Luis Roldan]], former Under Secretary of Religion under [[Carlos Menem]] (President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999), was presented to her by Dominique Lagneau, the priest in charge of the monastery, and described as "Mr. Cité catholique in Argentina". [[Jordan Bruno Genta|Bruno Genta]] and [[Juan Carlos Goyeneche]] represent this ideology.<ref name="Pagina12" />

Argentine Admiral [[Luis María Mendía]], who had theorized the practice of "death flights", testified in January 2007 before Argentine judges that a French intelligence "agent", Bertrand de Perseval, had participated in the abduction of two French nuns, [[Léonie Duquet]] and [[Alice Domon]], who were later murdered. Perseval, who lives today in Thailand, denied any links with the abduction. He has admitted being a former member of the [[Organisation de l'armée secrète|OAS]], and having escaped for Argentina after the March 1962 [[Évian Accords]] that ended the [[Algerian War]] (1954–62). Referring to Marie Monique Robin's film documentary titled ''The Death Squads – the French School'' (''Les escadrons de la mort – l'école française''), Luis María Mendía asked of the Argentine Court that former French president [[Valéry Giscard d'Estaing]], former French premier [[Pierre Messmer]], former French ambassador to Buenos Aires François de la Gorce, and all officials in place in the French embassy in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1983 be called before the court.<ref>{{Cite web|date=8 February 2007|title=Disparitions: un ancien agent français mis en cause|url=http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070206.FIG000000202_disparitions_un_ancien_agent_francais_mis_en_cause.html|url-status=live|access-date=23 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070208002938/http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070206.FIG000000202_disparitions_un_ancien_agent_francais_mis_en_cause.html|archive-date=8 February 2007}}</ref>

Besides this "French connection", he has also accused former head of state [[Isabel Perón]] and former ministers [[Carlos Ruckauf]] and [[Antonio Cafiero]], who had signed the "anti-subversion decrees" before Videla's 1976 coup d'état. According to [[Navy Petty-Officers School|ESMA]] survivor Graciela Daleo, this tactic tries to claim that the crimes were legitimised by Isabel Perón's "anti-subversion decrees". She notes that torture is forbidden by the Argentine Constitution.<ref name="P12">[http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-79898-2007-02-02.html "Impartí órdenes que fueron cumplidas"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191226195627/https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-79898-2007-02-02.html |date=26 December 2019 }}, ''[[Página/12]]'', 2 February 2007 {{in lang|es}}</ref> [[Alfredo Astiz]], a marine known as the "Blond Angel of Death" because of his torture, also referred to the "French connection" at his trial.<ref>[http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-79537-2007-01-25.html Astiz llevó sus chicanas a los tribunales] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803051644/https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-79537-2007-01-25.html |date=3 August 2020 }}, ''[[Página/12]]'', 25 January 2007 {{in lang|es}}</ref>

== Europe ==
As showed in a declassified CIA document,<ref>"Italian court jails 24 over South American Operation Condor". The Guardian, 8 July 2019 [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/08/italian-court-jails-24-over-south-american-operation-condor] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200530052324/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/08/italian-court-jails-24-over-south-american-operation-condor|date=30 May 2020}}</ref> in 1977 intelligence agencies from Britain, France and West Germany looked into using the tactics employed in Operation Condor against leftwing "subversives" in their own countries. The agencies sent representatives to the Condor organization secretariat in Buenos Aires in September 1977 to discuss how to establish an "anti-subversion organization similar to Condor", where the agencies would pool their resources into a single organization. The intention was for the agencies to act in a coordinated fashion against subversives within member countries in Europe.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Goñi |first1=Uki |title=European spies sought lessons from dictators' brutal 'Operation Condor' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/15/operation-condor-european-spies-dictators-cia-documents |access-date=22 April 2019 |work=The Guardian |date=16 April 2019 |archive-date=22 April 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190422111741/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/15/operation-condor-european-spies-dictators-cia-documents |url-status=live }}</ref>

== Legal actions ==

=== Italy ===
In December 2000, the Italian Justice began the trial of eleven Brazilians, all military and police. They were accused of the disappearance of three Argentines of Italian descent. The Brazilians were active in Operation Condor. Due to the secrecy of justice, the results of the trials and the punishments of the criminals, if any, were not reported.<ref>{{cite web|title=Cliping de Notícias da EBC|url=http://www.ebc.com.br/anteriores/2000/sinopses_2610.htm|publisher=Empresa Brasileira de Notícias|access-date=8 October 2017|date=26 October 2000|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110807055641/http://www.ebc.com.br/anteriores/2000/sinopses_2610.htm|archive-date=7 August 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref> In December 2007, they were enacted by Italian authorities, preventive arrests of several people involved, including the deceased [[João Figueiredo]] (former president) and Octávio Aguiar de Medeiros (former head of the [[National Intelligence Service of Brazil|SNI]]).<ref>{{cite journal|title=Morre o general Octávio Medeiros, ex-chefe do SNI|journal=Terra|url=http://noticias.terra.com.br/brasil/noticias/0,,OI656150-EI306,00-Morre+o+general+Octavio+Medeiros+exchefe+do+SNI.html|access-date=29 November 2021|archive-date=4 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304002007/http://noticias.terra.com.br/brasil/noticias/0,,OI656150-EI306,00-Morre+o+general+Octavio+Medeiros+exchefe+do+SNI.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>[http://veja.abril.com.br/291207/p_030.shtml Justiça que vem de fora.] ''[[Veja (magazine)|Veja]]''. 29 December 2007.{{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111125153423/http://veja.abril.com.br/291207/p_030.shtml |date=25 November 2011 }}</ref>

In July 2019, in a landmark ruling, the Italian courts sentenced former Peruvian dictator Morales Bermudez to life imprisonment, together with former Prime Minister [[Pedro Richter Prada]] and General Germán Ruíz Figueroa, for the disappearance of Italian citizens.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://elcomercio.pe/politica/italia-confirma-cadena-perpetua-morales-bermudez-plan-condor-noticia-653470|title=Italia confirma cadena perpetua para Morales Bermúdez por plan Cóndor|access-date=8 July 2019|last=EFE|date=8 July 2019|newspaper=El Comercio Perú|language=es|archive-date=8 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190708195722/https://elcomercio.pe/politica/italia-confirma-cadena-perpetua-morales-bermudez-plan-condor-noticia-653470|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Argentina ===
In Argentina, the [[CONADEP]] human rights commission of 1983, led by writer [[Ernesto Sabato]] and [[René Favaloro]] among other respected personalities, investigated human rights abuses during the dictatorship. The 1985 [[Trial of the Juntas]] convicted top officers who ran the military governments for acts of [[state terrorism]]. The amnesty laws ([[Ley de Obediencia Debida]] and [[Ley de Punto Final]]) of 1985–1986 stopped the trials until 2003, when the Congress repealed them, and in 2005 the [[Argentine Supreme Court]] ruled they were unconstitutional.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Chavez|first1=Lydia |date=10 December 1985|title=ARGENTINE COURT FINDS FIVE GUILTY FOR JUNTA ROLES |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/10/world/argentine-court-finds-five-guilty-for-junta-roles.html|access-date=15 October 2021|issn=0362-4331 |work=The New York Times |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150524165417/https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/10/world/argentine-court-finds-five-guilty-for-junta-roles.html |archive-date=24 May 2015 |language=en-US |url-status=live}}</ref>

Chilean [[Enrique Arancibia Clavel]] was convicted and sentenced in Argentina for the assassination of [[Carlos Prats]] and of his wife; in a 2011 court verdict, life terms were handed down to [[Alfredo Astiz]], [[Jorge Eduardo Acosta|Jorge Acosta]], Antonio Pernias, and [[Ricardo Cavallo]].<ref>{{Cite news|last=Mccaughan|first=Michael|title=Killer of exiled Chilean general sentenced by Argentine court|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/killer-of-exiled-chilean-general-sentenced-by-argentine-court-1.1117103|access-date=15 October 2021|newspaper=The Irish Times|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220801193946/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/killer-of-exiled-chilean-general-sentenced-by-argentine-court-1.1117103 |archive-date=1 August 2022|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |title=ESMA: a symbol of state terror |date=2 December 2017 |newspaper=Buenos Aires Times |url=https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/esma-a-symbol-of-state-terror.phtml |access-date=15 October 2021 }}</ref> In 2016, [[Reynaldo Bignone]], Santiago Riveros and twelve others were convicted.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Argentina's last military dictator jailed for role in international death squad |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/27/argentinas-last-military-dictator-jailed-over-role-in-operation-condor |newspaper=The Guardian |date=27 May 2016 |last1=Goñi |first1=Uki |access-date=12 December 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=27 May 2016 |url=https://www.dagbladet.no/2016/05/28/nyheter/drap/vold/politikk/44370700/ |title=20 års fengsel for argentinsk eksdiktator |access-date=5 June 2016 |language=no}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Gilbert |first=Jonathan |title=Argentine Court Confirms a Deadly Legacy of Dictatorships |date=28 May 2016 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/world/americas/argentine-court-confirms-a-deadly-legacy-of-dictatorships.html |newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref>

Most of the Junta's members are in prison for [[genocide]] and [[crimes against humanity]].<ref>{{Cite news|date=30 November 2017|title=Argentina: Former military officials convicted for crimes against humanity|language=en-GB|work=[[BBC News]]|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42175752|access-date=15 October 2021}}</ref>

Former military officers from Argentina and Uruguay went on trial in 2013 in Buenos Aires for their human rights abuses in Operation Condor. The cross-border conspiracy of dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s to "eradicate 'subversion,' a word which increasingly translated into non-violent dissent from the left and center left". These prosecutions were enabled by massive releases of formerly classified documents to the national Security Archive which were then used as evidence against the accused. "The documents are very useful in establishing a comprehensive analytical framework of what Operation Condor was", said Pablo Enrique Ouvina, the lead prosecutor in the case. Of the 171 Condor victims cited in the indictments, approximately forty-two survived and one hundred twenty others were killed and/or disappeared. "Condor was a latter day rendition, torture and assassination program", noted Carlos Osorio, who directs the Archive's Southern Cone Documentation project. "Holding these officials accountable for the multinational crimes of Condor", he said, "cannot help but set a precedent for more recent abuses of a similar nature".<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/|title=OPERATION CONDOR ON TRIAL: LEGAL PROCEEDINGS ON LATIN AMERICAN RENDITION AND ASSASSINATION PROGRAM OPEN IN BUENOS AIRES|website=nsarchive2.gwu.edu|access-date=9 May 2019|archive-date=17 March 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180317232021/https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB416/|url-status=live}}</ref>

The victims of Operation Condor included former Bolivian president [[Juan José Torres|Juan Torres]], who was murdered in Buenos Aires in 1976.<ref name=":3" />

=== Chile ===
Chilean judge [[Juan Guzmán Tapia|Juan Guzmán]]—who arraigned Pinochet upon his return to Chile after being arrested in London—started prosecution of some 30 torturers, including ex-DINA head [[Manuel Contreras]], for the disappearance of 20 Chilean victims of the Condor plan.<ref name="Huma" />

On 3 August 2007, General [[Raúl Iturriaga]], another former head of DINA, was captured in the Chilean city of [[Viña del Mar]] on the Pacific coast.<ref name=LAT>Claudia Lagos and Patrick J. McDonneln [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-chile3aug03,0,1144327.story?coll=la-home-world Pinochet-era general is caught], ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', 3 August 2007</ref> He had previously been a fugitive from a five-year jail term, after being sentenced for the kidnapping of Luis Dagoberto San Martin, a 21-year-old opponent of Pinochet. Martín was captured in 1974 and taken to a DINA detention center, from which he "disappeared". Iturriaga was also wanted in Argentina for the assassination of General Prats.<ref name="LAT" />

According to French newspaper ''[[L'Humanité]]:''

<blockquote>in most of those countries legal action against the authors of crimes of "lese-humanity" from the 1970s to 1990 owes more to flaws in the amnesty laws than to a real will of the governments in power, which, on the contrary, wave the flag of "national reconciliation". It is sad to say that two of the pillars of the Condor Operation, [[Alfredo Stroessner]] and Augusto Pinochet, never paid for their crimes and died without ever answering charges about the "disappeared" – who continue to haunt the memory of people who had been crushed by fascist brutality.<ref name="Huma" /></blockquote>Among the Chilean victims of Operation Condor were former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 26-year-old American colleague Ronni Moffitt who were assassinated by a car bomb in downtown Washington D.C. in 1976.<ref name=":3" />

=== Uruguay ===
Former Uruguayan president [[Juan María Bordaberry]], his minister of Foreign Affairs and six military officers, responsible for the disappearance in Argentina in 1976 of opponents to the [[Civic-military dictatorship of Uruguay|Uruguayan regime]], were arrested in 2006 and placed under house arrest in 2007. In 2010, Bordaberry was convicted of violating the constitution, nine counts of "forced disappearance" and two counts of political homicide and sentenced to 30 years.<ref>{{cite news|last=Klein|first=Dario|date=11 February 2010|title=Former Uruguayan president sentenced to 30 years|url=http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/11/uruguay.expresident.sentenced/index.html|publisher=CNN|access-date=14 August 2018|archive-date=14 August 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180814170358/http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/11/uruguay.expresident.sentenced/index.html|url-status=live}}</ref> In 2016, ex-Uruguayan Colonel Manuel Cordero was convicted in the lengthy Buenos Aires trial (he was the only non-Argentine defendant) and sentenced to 25 years.<ref>{{cite news |title=Operation Condor: Former Argentine junta leader jailed |date=28 May 2016 |newspaper=[[BBC News]] |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36403909}}</ref>

Prominent Uruguayan victims of Operation Condor included two former legislators.<ref name=":3" />

== Legacy ==
The political scientist [[J. Patrice McSherry]] has argued that parts of Operation Condor fit the definition of [[state terrorism]].<ref name="McSherry20022" />

=== Fictional references ===
* [[Don Winslow]]'s 2005 book ''[[The Power of the Dog (Winslow novel)|The Power of the Dog]]'' is based on the actions and some of the consequences of Operation Condor.
* [[Nathan Englander]]'s novel, ''The Ministry of Special Cases'' (2007), is set in Buenos Aires in the early 1970s. Its main characters are Kaddish and Lillian, a Jewish couple whose son Pato is "disappeared" shortly after the [[Jorge Rafael Videla|Videla]] junta takes power.
* [http://www.worldcat.org/title/hacia-que-patrias-del-silencio-memorias-de-un-desaparecido/oclc/252890233?referer=&ht=edition ''Memorias de un desaparecido / Memoirs of a Disappeared''] (1996)
* In [[DC Comics]], the father of the superheroine [[Fire (DC Comics)|Fire]] was a key figure in Operation Condor.<ref>{{Cite comic |date=March 2007 |title=[[Checkmate (comics)|Checkmate]] |issue=11–12 |volume=2 |publisher=[[DC Comics]] |writer=[[Greg Rucka|Rucka, Greg]], [[Nunzio DeFilippis|DeFilippis, Nunzio]], [[Christina Weir|Weir, Christina]] |penciller=Scott, Steve |inker=Massengill, Nathan}}</ref>
* In the criminal series ''[[Numb3rs]]'' episode "Assassin", Operation Condor becomes a main point of focus.
* [[Colm Tóibín]]'s novel, ''[[The Story of the Night]]'' (1996) follows a gay Argentine man's account of aiding the CIA's political influence shortly after the fall of the military junta government.

== See also ==
* [[Dirty War|Dirty War (Argentina)]]
* [[Mexican Dirty War|Dirty War (Mexico)]]
* [[Military dictatorship in Brazil]]
* [[Operation Charly]]
* [[Operation Gladio]]
* [[Central American crisis]]
* [[Anti-communist mass killings]]
* [[United States atrocity crimes]]
* [[United States and state terrorism]]
* [[Guatemalan Civil War#Foreign support and involvement|U.S. role in Guatemalan Civil War]]
* [[Contras#U.S. military and financial assistance|U.S. support of Contras]]
* [[Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966#Foreign involvement|U.S. role in Indonesian Communist Purge]]
* [[Indonesian occupation of East Timor#United States|U.S. role in Invasion of East Timor]]
* [[1981 Spanish coup d'état attempt]]
* [[1982 Spanish coup d'état attempt]]
* ''[[The War on Democracy]]'' (documentary)
* [[Domino theory]]
* [[Monroe Doctrine]]
* [[Safari Club]]
* [[Alianza Anticomunista Argentina]] (aka ''Triple A'')
* [[SISMI]] (Italian secret services)
* [[National Security Archives]], a United States NGO which publicizes CIA documents obtained under [[Freedom of Information Act (United States)|Freedom of Information Act]]
* ''[[Forgotten (2013 film)|Forgotten]]''
* [[:es:Santiago Riveros|Santiago Riveros]]
* [[:es:Antonio Pernías|Antonio Pernías]]
* [[Right-wing dictatorship]]
* [[The Secret in Their Eyes]], 2009 [[Argentina|Argentinian]] movie on the rape and murder of Liliana Colotto de Morales in the [[National Reorganization Process|Argentinian military regime]], [[82nd Academy Awards|2009 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film]]'s winnner
* [[I'm Still Here (2024 film)|I'm Still Here]], 2024 [[Brazil|Brazilian]] movie on the arrest, torture and disappearance of the deputy [[Rubens Paiva]] in the [[Military dictatorship in Brazil|Brazilian military regime]], [[97th Academy Awards|2024 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film]]'s winner

=== Detention and torture centers ===
* [[Esmeralda (BE-43)]]
* [[Estadio Nacional de Chile]]
* [[Villa Baviera]]

=== Other operations and strategies related to Condor ===
* [[Operation Colombo]], for which Augusto Pinochet was being tried at the time of his death
* [[Caravan of Death]], carried on a few weeks after the 1973 coup in Chile

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Bibliography==

* {{cite book |last=Bevins |first=Vincent|author-link=Vincent Bevins |title= [[The Jakarta Method|The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World]] |date=2020 |publisher= [[PublicAffairs]] |isbn= 978-1541742406}}
* Blakeley, Ruth (2009). [http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415462402/ ''State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South''.] [[Routledge]]. {{ISBN|0415686172}}. [https://web.archive.org/web/20150614055306/http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415462402/ Archived.]
* [[Stella Calloni]] (2006). [https://condor-atlanta.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/5-Condor-Los-anos-del-lobo-Operacion-Condor.pdf ''Los años del lobo'' (''The Years of the Wolf'')] and [http://www.elperroylarana.gob.ve/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/operacion_condor_pacto_criminal1.pdf ''Operación Cóndor: Pacto Criminal'' (''Operation Condor: Criminal Pact'').] La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales.
* Luiz Cláudio Cunha (2008). [https://archive.org/download/LuizClaudioCunha2017OperacionCondorElSecuestroDeLosUruguayos/Luiz%20Claudio%20Cunha%20-%202017%20-%20Operacion%20Condor%20-%20El%20secuestro%20de%20los%20uruguayos.pdf ''Operação Condor. O sequestro dos uruuguaios. Uma reportagem dos tempos da ditadura''.] Porto Alegre: L±.
* [[John Dinges]] (2004). [https://archive.org/details/condoryearshowpi00ding ''The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents''.] [[The New Press]]. {{ISBN|1565849779}}.
* Gutiérrez Contreras, J.C. y Villegas Díaz, Myrna (1999). [http://www.derechos.org/koaga/vii/contreras.html ''Derechos Humanos y Desaparecidos en Dictaduras Militares'' (''Human Rights and the Disappeared of the Military Dictatorships'').] ''KO'AGA ROÑE'ETA'', se.vii. Previamente publicado en ''Derecho penal: Implicaciones Internacionales'', Publicación del IX Congreso Universitario de Derecho Penal, Universidad de Salamanca. Edit. Colex, Madrid. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070927223927/http://www.derechos.org/koaga/vii/contreras.html Archived.]
* [[Peter Kornbluh]] (2007). [https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB239d/index.htm "Rendition in the Southern Cone: Operation Condor Documents Revealed From Paraguayan 'Archive of Terror'."] [[The National Security Archive]].
* [[Peter Kornbluh]] (2013). ''[[The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability]]''. [[The New Press]]. {{ISBN|1595589120}}.
* {{cite book|last1=McSherry|first1=J. Patrice|author-link1=J. Patrice McSherry|title=Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America|publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]]|location=Lanham, Maryland|year=2005|isbn=978-0742536876|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tSDg6xa4z2YC}}
* {{cite book |author-link=J. Patrice McSherry |last=McSherry |first=J. Patrice |date=2010 |chapter=Industrial Repression' and Operation Condor in Latin America |editor-last1=Esparza |editor-first1=Marcia |editor-last2=Huttenbach |editor-first2=Henry R. |editor-last3=Feierstein |editor-first3=Daniel |url=https://www.routledge.com/State-Violence-and-Genocide-in-Latin-America-The-Cold-War-Years/Esparza-Huttenbach-Feierstein/p/book/9780415496377 |title=State Violence and Genocide in Latin America: The Cold War Years |series=[[Critical Terrorism Studies]] |location=Abingdon-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0415496377 |archive-date=19 July 2018 |access-date=30 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180719232658/https://www.routledge.com/State-Violence-and-Genocide-in-Latin-America-The-Cold-War-Years/Esparza-Huttenbach-Feierstein/p/book/9780415496377 |url-status=bot: unknown }}
* [[Cecilia Menjívar]] and Néstor Rodríguez, eds. (2005). [http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/menwhe ''When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror''.] [[University of Texas Press]]. {{ISBN|0292706790}}. [https://web.archive.org/web/20151104004407/http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/menwhe Archived.]
* Nilson, Cezar Mariano (1998). ''Operación Cóndor. Terrorismo de Estado en el cono Sur'' (''Operation Condor in the Southern Cone''). Buenos Aires: Lholé-Lumen.
* Paredes, Alejandro (2004). [http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-23762004000100007&lng=es&nrm=iso ''La Operación Cóndor y la guerra fría'' (''Operation Condor and the Cold War'').] ''Universum'' [online], vol. 19, no. 1, pp.&nbsp;122–137. {{ISSN|0718-2376}}. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070929095252/http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-23762004000100007&lng=es&nrm=iso Archived.]
* [[Marie-Monique Robin]] (2002). [https://ia800502.us.archive.org/12/items/EscadronsDeLaMort_201610/Escadrons%20de%20la%20mort.pdf ''Escadrons de la mort, l'école française'' (''Death Squads, the French School'').] Book and documentary film (French, transl. in Spanish). [[Sudamericana]].
* [[Valech Report|''Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre prisión política y tortura'' (''Report of the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture'')]]. (2005). Santiago de Chile, Ministerio del Interior. [[Valech Report|Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura]]. [http://www.derechoshumanos.net/paises/America/derechos-humanos-Chile/informes-comisiones/Informe-Comision-Valech.pdf PDF.]

== External links ==
* [http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/doc/condor/ Operation Condor] on [[Equipo Nizkor|Nizkor]]'s website (in Spanish)
* [http://www.memoriaviva.com/ Memoriaviva], a complete list of victims, torture centers and criminals (in Spanish)
* [https://archive.org/details/OperationCondorFBI FBI file] at [[Internet Archive]]
* [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/14/RVGVQ5DN7N1.DTL The Condor Years – How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents]
* [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB112/ Ed Koch Threatened with Assassination in 1976]
* [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20774985 How Paraguay's 'Archive of Terror' put Operation Condor in focus]. ''[[BBC]]'', 22 December 2012.
* [http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/7/operation_condor_trial_tackles_coordinated_campaign Operation Condor Trial Tackles Coordinated Campaign by Latin American Dictatorships to Kill Leftists], March 2013 video report by ''[[Democracy Now!]]''
* [https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/0305/Argentina-begins-prosecution-of-military-era-human-rights-abuses Argentina begins prosecution of military-era human rights abuses]. ''[[Christian Science Monitor]].'' 5 March 2013.
* [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/jul/07/operation-condor-south-america-joao-pina-photographer-in-pictures Fight of the Condor: uncovering South America's shame – in pictures]. ''[[The Guardian]]''. 7 July 2016.
* [https://www.intel.gov/index.php/argentina-declassification-project The United States Declassification Project on Argentina]
* [https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/11/operation-condor-cia-latin-america-repression-torture The CIA's Secret Global War Against the Left]. ''[[Jacobin (magazine)|Jacobin]]''. 30 November 2020.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFl0qie_1go Operation Condor: All Major Missions and Events &#91;1968–1989&#93;]

{{Cold War}}
{{United States intervention in Latin America}}
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[[Category:Operation Condor| ]]
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