The Info Web

#OperationCondor

28 entries

People (19)

  • Augusto Pinochet Augusto Pinochet was Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army who, with CIA backing, led the September 11, 1973 coup against President Salvador Allende and governed Chile as dictator until 1990; his regime participated in Operation Condor, a CIA-coordinated transnational assassination program targeting leftists across Latin America.
  • Bernardo Leighton Founder of Chile's Christian Democratic Party and former interior minister, exiled in Rome, who was shot with his wife on October 6, 1975, by Italian fascists engaged by DINA's agent Michael Townley.
  • Carlos Prats Commander of the Chilean army under Salvador Allende, who recommended Augusto Pinochet as his successor and was killed with his wife by a secret police car bomb in Buenos Aires on September 30, 1974.
  • 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.
  • David Popper US ambassador to Chile from 1974 to 1977 whose human rights approaches drew Kissinger's marginalia, and who in August 1976 advised against warning Pinochet about Condor, proposing that the CIA raise it with Contreras instead.
  • Enrique Arancibia Clavel DINA's Buenos Aires station chief from 1974 to 1978, who prepared the ground for Townley's bomb under Carlos Prats's car, received a life sentence in Argentina in 2000, and was stabbed to death on parole.
  • Harry Shlaudeman Assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs who warned Kissinger of Operation Condor's assassination plans on August 3, 1976, received Landau's cable on the DINA passports, and saw no warning delivered before Letelier died.
  • Joao Goulart The Brazilian president whose moderate nationalist reform program was destroyed by the 1964 US-backed military coup, having been targeted by a destabilization operation coordinated by the CIA, State Department, AIFLD, and the Rockefeller network beginning shortly after Kennedy's assassination.
  • José Zara DINA exterior department officer sentenced to fifteen years for the Prats murders, released from Punta Peuco on August 25, 2025, rearrested within two days for the killing of Ronni Moffitt, and convicted in June 2026.
  • Manuel Contreras Chief of the Chilean secret police DINA, in contact with the CIA from 1974 to 1977 and paid by it once in 1975, who said he had Orlando Letelier killed on Pinochet's orders.
  • Michael Townley American-born assassin for the Chilean secret police who killed Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires and Orlando Letelier in Washington with car bombs, made sarin in his basement, served five years, and lives under witness protection.
  • Orlando Letelier Former Chilean foreign minister killed with his colleague Ronni Moffitt by a car bomb in Washington on September 21, 1976, on orders the CIA later concluded came personally from Augusto Pinochet.
  • Pastor Coronel Chief of detectives of Stroessner's Paraguay, classed by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Class I narcotics violator, whose interrogations of captured revolutionaries were attended by foreign military attachés.
  • Pedro Espinoza Operations director of DINA, indicted in Washington for the Letelier murder in 1978, named by Michael Townley as the man who asked for the killing of General Prats, and convicted in the Horman case.
  • Raúl Iturriaga Neumann DINA officer who carried cash to Buenos Aires for the Prats killing in 1974, set Townley on Bernardo Leighton in 1975, and by 2026 held sentences of 500 years, the last for Ronni Moffitt.
  • Robert Scherrer FBI legal attaché in Buenos Aires who after the Letelier murder cabled Washington the first description of Operation Condor and its assassination phase, and later sold counterterrorism advice with the case's prosecutors.
  • Ronni Moffitt Institute for Policy Studies fundraiser, aged 25, killed with Orlando Letelier by DINA's car bomb in Washington on September 21, 1976, for whose death a Chilean judge convicted three DINA officers in June 2026.
  • Stefano Delle Chiaie Founder of Avanguardia Nazionale, fugitive from Italy from 1970 through Spain, Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia, who arranged the 1975 shooting of Bernardo Leighton for DINA and was received by Pinochet in Madrid.
  • William Luers Deputy assistant secretary of state who drafted the August 1976 cable warning the Condor governments against assassination abroad, pressed for its delivery, and was told on September 20 to take no further action.

Organizations (3)

  • Cuban Nationalist Movement Cuban exile group in New Jersey whose leaders supplied the men who helped the Chilean secret police agent Michael Townley kill Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976.
  • DINA Pinochet's secret police under Manuel Contreras, 1974 to 1977, which killed Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires and Orlando Letelier in Washington while its director was in liaison with, and once paid by, the CIA.
  • Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria Alliance of the Tupamaros, the Chilean MIR, the Bolivian ELN, and the Argentine ERP, formed in 1973 on Che Guevara's model of coordinating juntas, whose members were the first targets of Operation Condor.

Places (6)

  • Argentina Argentina under its military dictatorship (1976-1983) was a central participant in Operation Condor and conducted its own Dirty War against domestic leftists, killing an estimated 9,000-30,000 people; it was also a refuge for Nazi war criminals and a node in CIA-backed anti-communist operations throughout Latin America.
  • Brazil Brazil under its military dictatorship (1964-1985) participated in Operation Condor and was a refuge for Nazi war criminals including Josef Mengele; the CIA supported the 1964 coup and the subsequent military government that operated death squads and maintained the DOPS secret police.
  • Buenos Aires 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.
  • Paraguay Paraguay under dictator Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989) was a hub for Operation Condor's cross-border assassination networks, a refuge for Nazi war criminals including Josef Mengele, and a CIA client state whose intelligence services participated in the coordinated Latin American repression documented throughout this vault.
  • Santiago Santiago is the capital of Chile and the site of the September 11, 1973 CIA-backed coup that installed Augusto Pinochet, including the bombing of La Moneda presidential palace; it was subsequently the operational base for DINA and the founding location of Operation Condor.
  • Uruguay Uruguay under its military dictatorship (1973-1985) was a founding Operation Condor participant whose intelligence service coordinated the cross-border tracking and killing of Uruguayan political opponents who had fled to Argentina and elsewhere; the Tupamaro guerrilla movement that prompted the dictatorship had itself been used as a CIA training case study.