Conrado Pappalardo
Chief of protocol and fixer to Alfredo Stroessner who in July 1976 pressed the American ambassador for visas on Paraguayan passports for two DINA agents, saying they would report to Vernon Walters of the CIA.
Conrado Pappalardo was chief of protocol to President Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, "the President's all-purpose fixer, factotum, and chief of protocol."1
Walters in Asunción
In June 1976 General Vernon Walters, deputy director of the CIA, flew to Asunción. The agency's station chief had deceived Ambassador George Landau, who had then denied to the Paraguayan government that a certain Paraguayan was a CIA agent and been proved wrong. The agent had been arrested, accused of a plot against Stroessner, and tortured. Walters came to remove the station chief and to persuade the Paraguayans not to kill the agent. Pappalardo received him and arranged his interviews, including one with Stroessner. "At the general's airport farewell, he and Pappalardo exchanged private phone numbers and parted with vigorous abrazos." The agent was still in prison when Walters left in the last week of June.12
The Passports
The next month Pappalardo told Landau that President Augusto Pinochet of Chile had asked Stroessner for Paraguayan passports for two officers of DINA, "Captain Juan Williams and First Lieutenant Alejandro Romeral," that "the Chilean mission had been arranged in Santiago with the CIA and that the two men were to contact General Walters on arrival in Washington." Their stated errand was to investigate companies dealing in Chilean minerals. Stroessner, he said, could not bring himself to refuse Pinochet a favor. Landau gave way "only after repeated phone calls and face-to-face cajoling." He wondered: "Does Pappalardo have some sort of private arrangement worked out with General Walters?" He had the passports photographed page by page and sent the photographs to Walters, and he told Walters that the request appeared to be "the quid pro quo that Paraguay was demanding in exchange for sparing the CIA agent's life." Juan Williams was Michael Townley and Romeral was Armando Fernández Larios.123
Walters replied on August 4 that he "had not made any arrangements with Pappalardo." Assistant Secretary of State Harry Shlaudeman cabled Landau: "If there is still time, and if there is a possibility of turning off this harebrained scheme, you are authorized to go back through Pappalardo to urge that the Chileans be persuaded not, repeat, not to travel." "Over the next few weeks, Landau called Pappalardo ten times, until finally in mid-September the unused passports were delivered." Orlando Letelier was killed in Washington on September 21.24
Pappalardo told Landau that the request had come in a telephone call from Pinochet to Stroessner. American investigators later obtained the telegram in which "Condor One," Manuel Contreras, asked for Paraguayan cooperation, and "concluded, after interviewing Pappalardo, that no such call was made."4
Pastor Coronel
The Americans "knew that Stroessner was the only one powerful enough to throttle" the chief of detectives, Pastor Coronel, "and that the way to reach Stroessner was through Pappalardo. Accordingly, Pappalardo kept hearing that the chief of detectives had gone too far and was an affront to the dignity of Paraguay."1
Sources
- Branch, Taylor, and Eugene M. Propper. Labyrinth. Viking, 1982, pp. 1-8. ↩
- Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. Assassination on Embassy Row. McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 309-311. ↩
- Kornbluh, Peter. The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. New Press, 2003, p. 343. ↩
- Dinges, John. The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents. New Press, 2004, pp. 180, 298-299. ↩
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