Operation Condor

Operation Condor (Spanish: Operacion Condor) was a clandestine program of political repression and intelligence cooperation established in November 1975 among the military intelligence services of six South American nations: Chile (led by Augusto Pinochet's DINA), Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil. The program was facilitated by the Central Intelligence Agency, which provided communications infrastructure, training, and operational support. Condor coordinated the identification, tracking, interrogation, and assassination of left-wing political opponents - including those who had fled across borders seeking refuge - resulting in an estimated 60,000 deaths across the participant countries.¹

Founding and Structure

The founding meeting occurred in Santiago, Chile, in November 1975, organized by Chilean DINA chief Manuel Contreras under CIA Station Chief Theodore Shackley's authority. Representatives of the intelligence services of all six founding members attended. The operational structure was divided into three phases:

• Phase I (Condor I): Exchange of intelligence on political opponents among member states
• Phase II (Condor II): Cross-border kidnapping and assassination operations to eliminate opponents who had fled to other member states
• Phase III (Condor III): Operations in Europe and North America against high-profile political figures and exiles

The communications network (called Condortel) was established through a secure telex system connected through U.S. military telecommunications infrastructure in the Panama Canal Zone and later through equipment provided directly by the CIA.²

CIA Support

The CIA's material support for Condor is documented through declassified State Department and CIA documents, the findings of the Church Committee (1975-1976), and the subsequent Hinchey Report (2000). Michael Townley, an American in Chile whom the CIA had name-traced in 1970 and, by its account, turned away, was a DINA operative who participated in multiple Condor assassinations, including the 1976 car bombing in Washington, D.C. of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt - carried out by DINA with Townley's direct participation on American soil. Townley pleaded guilty in the United States and served time before being placed in witness protection.¹

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was told of the arrangement by the Argentine foreign minister, César Guzzetti, on June 10, 1976, during the OAS meeting in Santiago that coincided with the second Condor conference. Guzzetti said Argentina wanted "to integrate with our neighbors, all of them: Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil" against terrorism. Kissinger answered: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures." "We want you to succeed. We do not want to harass you. I will do what I can." On August 23, after Harry Shlaudeman's warning that the governments had "established Operation Condor to find and kill terrorists," the department cabled its ambassadors in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Santiago that "government planned and directed assassinations within and outside the territory of Condor members has most serious implications which we must face squarely and rapidly," and told them to see the heads of state. The ambassadors balked. On September 16 Kissinger "instructed that no further action be taken on this matter." The instruction went out on September 20. Letelier was killed on September 21.²³⁴

Major Operations

Documented Condor operations include:

• September 30, 1974: Car bombing of exiled Chilean Army General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires (Argentina)
• September 21, 1976: Car bombing of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. (United States)
• October 1975: Assassination of Uruguayan former legislators Zelmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz in Buenos Aires
• Multiple kidnappings of opponents across Condor member states

The "Caravan of Death" - DINA special army unit executions across Chile in October 1973 - predated Condor's formal establishment but represented the same operational logic.¹

Santiago, November 1975

At the founding conference on November 26, 1975, Manuel Contreras "outlined his proposal for three phases of what he called 'effective coordination.'" The first was a coordinating center in Chile "similar to that which Interpol has in Paris, but dedicated to subversion." His paper went on: "We recommend the utilization of liaison resources outside the countries of the System, especially those that are outside the continent, to obtain information on Subversion." Contreras "would later say publicly that both the CIA and the FBI knew about this intelligence data bank, contributed information to it, and sought information from it." The third phase, "surveillance and assassination outside Latin America," "stunned even some of this group of hardened intelligence veterans."⁵

Washington, 1976

A memorandum of June 4, 1976, the day Juan José Torres was found dead in Buenos Aires, weighed the "existence of an intergovernmental assassination program" and found "no evidence to support a contention that Southern Cone governments are cooperating in some sort of international Murder Inc." On June 8 Henry Kissinger met Pinochet in his office in Santiago. The transcript was withheld until 1998. Pinochet's aide summarized: "He asked a lot, but offered little." When Ambassador David Popper had raised human rights with the junta, Kissinger wrote on the cable: "Tell Popper to cut out the political science lectures." On August 3 Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman sent Kissinger "The Third World War and South America," on the assassination plans. The warning to the governments that followed had not been carried through when Letelier was killed seven weeks later.⁶

A CIA paper prepared for a later meeting with Ambassador David Popper records that "in early October, after consulting with Ambassador Popper," the station chief "confronted the Chilean head of DINA, Colonel Manuel Contreras, with U.S. knowledge of Condor's existence. Colonel Contreras denied that our information of Condor was accurate and refused to admit that one of its objectives was to operate against terrorists in Europe. Recent clandestinely acquired information indicates that plans for Condor are continuing."⁷

The Scherrer Cable

The first description of the system to reach Washington in writing came from the FBI's legal attaché in Buenos Aires, Robert Scherrer, soon after the murder of Orlando Letelier. "Operation Condor is the code name for the collection, exchange and storage of intelligence data concerning leftists, communists and Marxists which was recently established between the cooperating services in South America," he cabled. "Chile is the center for Operation Condor." It continued: "A third and more secret phase of Operation Condor involves the formation of special teams from member countries to travel anywhere in the world to non-member countries to carry out sanctions, [including] assassinations." His source had heard that operations of the third phase were under consideration for Portugal and France, and "had reason to believe Letelier may have been the first victim." Scherrer learned that Manuel Contreras, "Condor One," had "personally provided the inspiration and organizational impetus," that the system had begun to function late in 1975, and that Chile had provided much of the money.⁸

Discovery and Documentation

The "Condor Archive" - approximately 700,000 documents from Paraguay's secret police found in a police station in Lambare in December 1992 by human rights lawyer Martin Almada - provided the most comprehensive documentary proof of Condor's operations and the detailed records of cross-border intelligence sharing. The documents were preserved as the "Archive of Terror" and are recognized by UNESCO.²