Operation Condor was a campaign of assassination and intelligence-gathering dubbed as counter-terrorism conducted jointly by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the mid-1970s. The right-wing military governments of these countries, led by dictators as Videla, Pinochet and Stroessner agreed to cooperate in sending teams into other countries, including France, Portugal and the United States to locate, observe and assassinate opponents. They also exchanged cruel torture techniques, like near drowning and playing the sound recordings of victims whe were being tortured to their family. Many people disappeared and were killed without trail. Their targets were terrorists of the leftist guerilla, but also many are thought to be political opponents, family and other innocent people.
One target in September, 1974 was the Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (a.k.a. “Carlos The Jackal”). After his involvement in the murder of the Bolivian ambassador and a Chilean attaché in Paris as well as a Chilean diplomat in the Middle East, Sánchez was located by the Latin Americans in Europe. The American Central Intelligence Agency detected the Condor operation and alerted France and Portugal. They warned Sánchez, allowing him to escape.
Another target was Orlando Letelier, a former member of the Chilean Allende government who was assassinated by a car bomb explosion in Washington, D.C. His American assistant Ronni Moffit also died in the explosion, which took place on September 21, 1976. Michael Townley, a US expatriate with close ties to the Chilean intelligence agency DINA, General Manuel Contreras, former head of the DINA; and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo also formerly of DINA were convicted for the murders.
Operation Condor was supported by the United States, since it feared that the leftish powers in the region would create a second, communist Cuba. It appears that Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State in the Nixon administration, had an important role in the condoning of the operation. CIA documents show that the CIA was closely linked with Contreras up to, and even after, the assassination of Letelier.
In December 1992, much information about Operation Condor came to light when a judge in Paraguay went into a police station in a suburb of Asuncion looking for files on a former political prisoner. Instead he found the "terror archives," as they were called, detailing the fates of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Latin Americans secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. . Some of these countries have since used portions of this archive to prosecute former military officers.
On March 6, 2001, The New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications for Operation Condor. The document, a 1978 cable from Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was discovered by Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University, who has published several articles on Condor. She called the cable "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor."
In the cable, Ambassador White relates a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America." This installation is "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries." White, whose message was sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, is concerned that the US connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. "It would seem advisable," he suggests, "to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest."
The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records released in November, 2000 on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent coup that brought his military regime to power. The release was the fourth and final batch of records released under the Clinton Administration's special Chile Declassification Project.
Operation Condor was also a major British-led operation in southeastern Afghanistan. The operation began on 17 May 2002 when a patrol of the Australian Special Air Service was ambushed. The British 45 Commando then flew in to destroy the guerilla force that had foolishly exposed itself. Followed Snipe, Torii and Anaconda.
Operation Condor was also a French attempt to breakthrough to the besieged French Union forces at Dien Bien Phu. Launched in much-reduced form on 13 April, 1954 the relief columns were delayed by the rugged terrain and was cut up by the surrounding Viet Minh.
