Nixon and Operation Condor
* What: Coordinated assassinations of dissidents by the dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay, assisted and supported by Nixon and Kissinger.
* There was also an Operation Condor plot to assassinate then-Congressman Ed Koch, later the Mayor of New York City, and murders inside the US, such as killing Orlando Letelier on Embassy Row in Washington DC.
* The Body Count: 36,000-60,000 murders of dissidents in the southern cone of Latin America, including sometimes those who fled to other countries. This included assassination inside the US.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* Many scholars argue the wave of repression in Latin America began with Kennedy's Alliance For Progress. AFP included programs for military training and cooperation between the US and Latin America's dictatorship, starting in the early 1960s. AFP was primarily economic aid, but it insisted upon central control. During Nixon's administration AFP was abandoned.
* The School of the Americas, today renamed WHINSEC or Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, is in Fort Benning, Georgia. Beginning in 1961, it trained military officers of many Latin American nations, including future dictators. As late as the 1990s, the curriculum included the use of torture. WHINSEC states today their curriculum includes human rights issues.
* Henry Kissinger, who personally knew of and permitted the murder of dissident Orlando Letelier. Kissinger stated the US government approval of all political murders by telling Argentina's dictatorship in 1976, “Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed...The quicker you succeed the better...The human rights problem is a growing one...We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before [the US] Congress gets back, the better." *
* Ford continued Operation Condor during his time in office. Jimmy Carter ended the US's part in Operation Condor. Reagan began Condor again almost immediately upon taking office. Condor only ended because of Argentina's defeat in the Falklands War and the fall of its dictatorship in 1983. Reagan's support for dictatorships continued to the end of his time in office, including sanction of state terrorism and outright genocide. (See Section One.)
* Argentina's series of military dictatorships began under Juan Peron, who led a populist movement with elements of both left wing unionism and right wing fascism. Peron was overthrown in 1955, and the military ruled either directly or through civilian front men until Peron returned in 1973. He died a year later, and direct military dictatorship returned. A small number of Peronist guerillas became the excuse for the so called Dirty War. It was not a war at all. The guerillas were wiped out in a short time, but the reign of repression lasted until 1983, after the failed Falklands War. Up to 30,000 were killed by these dictatorships.
* Bolivia's military dictatorship of Hugo Banzer began in 1971 and lasted until 1978. The elected President Juan Jose Torres was a left leaning army officer of mostly Indian ancestry. He was overthrown in 1971, fled, and was murdered under Operation Condor in 1976. All parties were banned, universities were closed, and several thousand Bolivians murdered or fled.
* Brazil's military dictatorship began in 1964, and by 1968 had absolute power, barring all parties, dissent, and even cultural movements. There was a small guerilla resistance, but the dictatorship mostly targeted dissidents. The regime did not leave power until the 1980s, partly due to Jimmy Carter's human rights policy. (See Section Eight.)
* Chile's military dictatorship came to power directly as a result of Nixon's efforts. Socialist Salvador Allende was legally elected in 1970, and Nixon immediately conspired with the CIA and phone company AT&T to overthrow him with a blockade, strikes, paid agitators, until finally a military coup brought him down. Agosto Pinochet's dictatorship killed at least 2,000 and tortured at least 27,000. Because of popular protests. Pinochet allowed a heavily rigged election in 1988. To his surprise he was still defeated. Fearing a popular uprising, he quit the presidency, but stayed head of the army and an honorary congressman to avoid prosecution. He was then tried in Spain but still avoided punishment due to claimed (likely feigned) ill health. He died unpunished.
* Paraguay's military dictatorship tradition began with independence. Most civilian presidents were removed by force. Alfredo Stroessner was the longest ruling dictator, from 1954 to 1989. Paraguay became notorious as a refuge for drug dealers and war criminals. Stroessner was finally overthrown by another General, Andres Rodriguez, who was also his best friend. Rodriguez ended the dictatorship and stepped down after elections.
* Uruguay's military dictatorship began in 1973, but President Jorge Pacheco had limited civil rights starting in 1968 because of a guerilla uprising. Uruguay did not become a democracy until 1984.
* In 1974, military leaders within dictatorships met to discuss their mutual problem. Dissidents were often fleeing from their home countries to find refuge in neighboring nations. They devised a plan to assist each other in tracking down dissidents, even carrying out assassinations or torture on another nation's behalf. But this was not the start of Condor.
* As early as 1968, US General Robert Porter urged, "In order to facilitate the coordinated employment of internal security forces within and among Latin American countries, we [US military and intelligence] 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." This was a call for a coordinated plan to use each others secret police to aid each other in tracking down dissidents.
* The plan was deadly effective. From beginning to end, these dictatorships killed tens of thousands of dissidents in the name of national security or fighting Communism. But there was not even a remote chance any of these national governments would be overthrown by Communists. In all cases, the list of targets was enormously wide, made up mostly of peaceful dissidents and groups a dictatorship just did not like. Folk singer Victor Jara was tortured and murdered by Chile's dictatorship, his body dumped in a slum. Brazil's leading lyricist of tropicalismo music, Torquato Neto, committed suicide after torture and forced “psychiatric care.” Neither was even remotely a military threat. Both were targeted purely for their political beliefs and for their art criticizing their governments.
* To be truly effective, assassinations were carried out across international boundaries. Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife were killed in Buenes Aires, Argentina by car bomb. Leaders of MIR, a Chilean guerilla group, were also assassinated in Argentina. Chilean secret police hired Croatian and Italian fascists and the Shah of Iran's secret police to kill targets for them. The niece of Juan Gelman, an Argentinian poet, was kidnapped and murdered by Uruguayan secret police.
* This happened in the US as well, with the knowledge of US Presidents and US intelligence. Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier was killed in Washington DC by Cuban-American terrorists, CORU, led by Orlando Bosh and Luis Posada Carriles. (See Section Five.) New York Congressman Ed Koch, later Mayor of New York, was targeted by Uruguayan secret police in retaliation for his proposing to cut off military aid to the dictatorship. Koch asked for FBI protection and got none.
* Nixon, Kissinger, and US intelligence knew about Operation Condor early on, and collaborated with them. US intelligence provided a secure communications network for Condor, centered in the Panama Canal Zone. The two most central nations involved in Condor were Argentina and Chile. Chile's head of the secret police, Miguel Contreras, was on the CIA's payroll until 1977. Paraguay's secret police also sent requests to track down dissidents to the CIA, FBI, and US embassy, and received requests from them as well. The FBI also helped track down people wanted by Chile's secret police. Argentina created a team for Condor modeled on US Special Forces.
* Kissinger's office knew about Letelier's murder in advance, but sent orders to US Ambassadors to “take no action” about Condor only a day before the bomb killed him. Argentinian, Chilean, French, and Uruguayan authorities have all tried to question or subpoena Kissinger about his role in Condor. Kissinger has also long been accused of ordering the murder of General Rene Schneider of Chile for refusing to overthrow the elected President, Salvador Allende. It was in Chile that Nixon and Kissinger played the biggest role in Condor, for the dictatorship would never have existed without their direct orders. Strangely enough, Kissinger does not deny considering the overthrow of Chile's government. His defense is that he changed his mind about doing it.
* In Chile, Socialist leader Allende was elected in a coalition that included some Communists. This was not unusual, and in no cases did it result in a Communist state. Similar coalitions were also elected multiple times in France and Italy. In Chile's case, AT&T played a large role in the government's overthrow since it feared losing profits should the phone company become government run. AT&T financed “destabilizing” Chile's government with tens of millions, as did the CIA.
* The Church Committee of the US Congress concluded the CIA was not directly involved in the coup itself. But Congress was only looking at if the CIA gave direct orders to the military, not the fact of years of efforts to weaken the government and openly hoping for an overthrow. Once Allende was overthrown, US money flooded back in. Chile had increased access to credit. The blockade was lifted. Strikes ended, not just because they were no longer being paid to strike, but because unions were outlawed by the dictatorship and union leaders imprisoned or executed. What Nixon and the CIA did was roughly equivalent to telling professional killers how much you wanted someone dead and leaving money on the table, but not directly handing them the money or saying the words, “Kill him.”
* Using anti-Communism as a pretext, five nations were terrorized by brutal military dictatorships for decades. But in none of these nations were there armed Communists with a realistic chance of overthrowing the government. In none of these nations were there any evidence of ties to the Soviet Union. In none of these nations were there any large movements with ties to Cuba. In fact, most movements were distinctly non-Communist. In Argentina, the largest armed rebels were left wing Peronists. In Chile, the government's main targets were unions, journalists, and church groups. In Brazil, the government spent much of its efforts attacking the sixties counterculture. In Bolivia, Condor killed dissidents in the MNR, a reformist party with some leftists but no Communists. Only in Uruguay were the Tupamaro guerillas Marxists.
* Condor has become a byword for repression in Latin America, a reminder that sums up in one word most of what Latin Americans do not like about the US government. Today most of Latin America is divided between two groups of leftists. There are the Bolivarians, revolutionary socialists in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and some island nations. Then there are “moderate” leftists almost everywhere else. Only in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico can one find rightist conservative parties dominant. For all the deaths, all Condor and Nixon did was delay Latin America's swing to the left, and Condor may have actually pushed more Latin Americans to the left. Condor is yet more evidence of both Nixon's brutal nature, and his and Kissinger's incompetence.