---
category: City
created: 2026-09-22
location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
summary: Argentine capital where DINA killed General Carlos Prats in 1974, where the
  FBI's Robert Scherrer kept contact with Operation Condor, and from which ITT ran
  its Latin American press work in 1970.
tags:
- City
- Argentina
- OperationCondor
- DINA
- FBI
updated: 2026-09-22
---

### The Prats Assassination

Four days after the coup of September 11, 1973, the former Chilean army commander [Carlos Prats](/people/carlos-prats/) and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, left for Buenos Aires. Six weeks later [Augusto Pinochet](/people/augusto-pinochet/) sent General Sergio Arellano Stark there on a mission whose first purpose, a [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) source reported, was to "discuss with the Argentine military any information they have regarding the activities of General (retired) Carlos Prats."[^1] [Enrique Arancibia Clavel](/people/enrique-arancibia-clavel/) ran the [DINA](/organizations/dina/) station in the city from 1974, forming "a parallel network of informants in Buenos Aires to supply data on those being pursued."[^2] In late July 1974 Major [Raúl Iturriaga](/people/raúl-iturriaga-neumann/) came "with a bag of cash to hire assassins and to coordinate the operation with the Argentine service, SIDE"; a DINA captain filed a surveillance report with the couple's addresses and a drawing of the entrance to Prats's garage, and four days before the killing the Chilean foreign ministry told its consul it would be "inconvenient" to issue them passports to travel to Brazil.[^1][^3] Prats and Cuthbert were killed on September 30, 1974, by a bomb built by [Michael Townley](/people/michael-townley/), who had come to the city with [Mariana Callejas](/people/mariana-callejas/); [Manuel Contreras](/people/manuel-contreras/) afterward called "the operation in Buenos Aires a complete success."[^1][^4] An Argentine federal court sentenced Arancibia Clavel to life imprisonment in November 2000, and the Chilean courts convicted Contreras, [Pedro Espinoza](/people/pedro-espinoza/), Iturriaga and [José Zara](/people/josé-zara/) in 2010.[^2][^5]

### Condor and the FBI

[Robert Scherrer](/people/robert-scherrer/), the [FBI](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/)'s legal attaché at the embassy from 1972, responsible for the southern cone, obtained the surrender of the Cuban exile [Rolando Otero](/people/rolando-otero/) in 1976 and sent the first written description of [Operation Condor](/programs/operation-condor/) to reach Washington soon after the murder of [Orlando Letelier](/people/orlando-letelier/). Contreras later testified that Scherrer was in "permanent contact" with Condor's representative in Buenos Aires "and received the information that he asked for."[^6][^3] On June 4, 1976, the day the exiled Bolivian president Juan José Torres was found murdered in the city, an intelligence memorandum found "no evidence to support a contention that Southern Cone governments are cooperating in some sort of international Murder Inc."[^3] On August 23 the [State Department](/organizations/state-department/) cabled the embassies in Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago that "government planned and directed assassinations within and outside the territory of Condor members has most serious implications."[^7]

### Other Operations

[Rafael Eitan](/people/rafael-eitan/) took part in the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960.[^8] [Hal Hendrix](/people/hal-hendrix/) worked for [ITT](/organizations/itt-corporation/) from Buenos Aires until mid-1970, with [Robert Berrellez](/people/robert-berrellez/) reporting to him; on September 17, 1970, two weeks after [Salvador Allende](/people/salvador-allende/) won a plurality in Chile, the two recommended paying for a relocation center in Mendoza or Buenos Aires for the families of "key persons involved in the fight."[^9] In 1994 Argentine investigators implicated Iranian officials, among them [Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani](/people/ali-akbar-hashemi-rafsanjani/), in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in the city.[^10]

[^1]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "The Pinochet Regime at 50: The Assassination of General Carlos Prats and Sofía Cuthbert." National Security Archive, October 1, 2024. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2024-10-01/pinochet-regime-50-assassination-general-carlos-prats-and-sofia
[^2]: *Arancibia Clavel, Enrique Lautaro s/homicidio calificado y asociación ilícita y otros,* Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación, Argentina, August 24, 2004.
[^3]: Dinges, John. *The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.* New Press, 2004, pp. 74-77, 90-94, 121-122.
[^4]: Branch, Taylor, and Eugene M. Propper. *Labyrinth.* Viking, 1982, pp. 67-69.
[^5]: Chilean press reports of the 2010 judgments of Judge Alejandro Solís and the Supreme Court, as cited on the José Zara page.
[^6]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row.* McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 130, 237-239.
[^7]: U.S. Department of State, cable 209192, "Operation Condor," August 23, 1976, in National Security Archive, "Operation Condor Verdict: GUILTY!," May 27, 2016.
[^8]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991, ch. 21.
[^9]: Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations. *Multinational Corporations and United States Foreign Policy,* hearings on ITT and Chile, 93rd Cong., 1st sess., 1973. https://archive.org/details/MultinationalCorporationsAndUSForeignPolicyUSSenateHearings
[^10]: "Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani." *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ali-Akbar-Hashemi-Rafsanjani