Tracking The Origins of A State Terror Network
Tracking The Origins of A State Terror Network
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Priest, 1996; 1997). Project X was part of the U.S. Armys Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program, first developed in 1965-1966 at the U.S. Army
Intelligence School at Fort Holabird in Maryland (Office of House Representative Joseph Kennedy, 1997: 6-14). It formed the basis of U.S. intelligence
training in Asia and in Latin America until the late 1970s. Joseph Blair, a
retired major and former Phoenix operative who taught at the School of the
Americas for three years, said that the author of the SOA manuals drew from
intelligence materials used during the Vietnam War that advocated assassination, torture, extortion, and other techniques. President Carter tried to end
such training, but in 1982, under the Reagan administration, Project X manuals were used again to update army manuals and to train new generations of
officers in Central America and elsewhere. The Human Resource Exploitation Manual of 1983 was based on the 1963 KUBARK Counterintelligence
Interrogation Manual of July 1963 (Cohn et al., 1997). According to one U.S.
counterintelligence officer, some Project X materials were based upon lessons drawn from the Phoenix Program, and the army intelligence school
taught a course on Phoenix at the same time as the Project X manuals were
being written (Priest, 1997).
The training manuals provided documented proof that army and CIA
instructors taught Latin American officers methods of torture, including use
of electroshock against prisoners; the use of drugs and hypnosis to induce
psychological regression; the sequential use of sensory deprivation, pain, and
other means in interrogations; assassination methods; and the use of threats
against and abduction of family members to break down prisoner resistance
(see the manuals at www.parascope.com/articles/0397/kubark06.htm and
www.soaw.org/soam.htm; see also Weiner, 1997; McPherson, 1999: 621632; McSherry, 2000).2 The KUBARK [CIA] Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, for example, stated:
Interrogations conducted under compulsion or duress are especially likely to
involve illegality and to entail damaging consequences for KUBARK. Therefore, prior Headquarters approval at the KUDOVE level [code name unidentified by author] must be obtained for the interrogation of any source against his
will and under any of the following circumstances: 1. If bodily harm is to be
inflicted. 2. If medical, chemical, or electrical methods or materials are to be
used to induce acquiescence. 3. [excised].
In the SOA and elsewhere, thousands of Latin American officers were taught
such methods and the doctrine that justified them. Many of these officers
returned to their countries to become key organizers of campaigns of terror
and repression or leaders of coups that imposed national security states in the
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election of Allende. This crime evokes Condor Phase III operations, which
targeted influential persons for neutralization in order to advance the anticommunist crusade. While it apparently involved only Chileans and their U.S.
collaborators, such bilateral coordinationand the methods it employed
may be seen as an antecedent of Condor. The Schneider case provides supporting evidence for the proposition that Condor operations had their roots in
the counterinsurgency doctrines and counterterror operations promoted by
the United States in Chile and elsewhere.
It is highly significant that General PratsChiles next appointed army
commanderwas also seen as an obstacle to the overthrow of Allende, given
the generals constitutionalist commitments. He had been forced to resign in
1973 and had gone into exile in Argentina. One of his assassins was Michael
Townley. According to Townley, members of the right-wing Argentine terrorist group Triple A were also involved. Another assailant was a far-right
Chilean operative named Enrique Arancibia Clavel, who was also reportedly
involved in the earlier Schneider assassination (La Tercera, November 12,
2000) and in Operation Colombo (Bonasso, 2000a; 2000b). In November
2000 an Argentine court found Arancibia Clavel guilty of the Prats
assassination.
Manuel Contreras, the former head of DINA, has long insisted that the
Prats assassination was organized by the CIA and that Townley was a CIA
agent working inside DINA (Bonasso, 2000c). In 2000 he repeated these
claims in media interviews and in testimony for the Prats trial. Contreras said
that early in 2000 he provided FBI investigators numerous incriminating documents showing a CIA role in the assassinations of Prats and of Letelier and
Moffitt in Washington, D.C., crimes attributed to DINA or to Condor. While
clearly Contreras is an expert in deception and lies with transparent motivation to shift blame from DINA, his assertions have never been investigated.
With the killing of Schneider and the exile of Prats, the way was clear for
Pinochets ascension to army commander in chiefand the bloody 1973
coup. With the later murder of Prats in exile, a potential leader of the antiPinochet forces was eliminated, strengthening Pinochets regime and securing the Nixon administrations goal of crushing Allendes experiment with
democratic socialism in Chile.
49
50
Army mainly financed the system); and how very high frequency signals
could be used for military communications to give them greater security and
speed (Committee reports, Conference of Chiefs of Communications, June
1973). U.S. military officers played a prominent role in these conferences.
This communications system appears to have been used for the Condor
network.
Operation Colombo, the psychological warfare operation involving
Chiles DINA, Argentine intelligence officials, and Triple A paramilitaries,
occurred in 1974-1975. The mutilated bodies of 119 missing Chilean leftists,
many of whom were originally detained by Chilean security forces in 1974
and others who had disappeared, were discovered in 1975, mainly in Argentina but also in several other countries. Chilean newspapers printed sensationalist stories blaming deadly vendettas within Chiles Movimiento de la
Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left MovementMIR) and other
leftist groups. Years later, however, secret DINA files were discovered showing that the 119 were disappeared and brought out of Chile as part of a combined Chilean-Argentine security operation called Operation Colombo,
linked to Chilean and Argentine Condor operatives. DINA and the Triple A
had planted the false stories and false identifications of the victims as part of a
psychological-warfare campaign designed to obscure and confuse
(CODEPU, 1994; 1996; Comisin Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliacin de
Chile, 1991: 482-484).
Research conducted in the Paraguayan Archives by the attorney Kathryn J.
Zoglin also substantiates the view that the Condor system emerged long
before 1975. In her studies of the documents, Zoglin found that militaries in
the Southern Cone coordinated their so-called war against subversion and
met to share intelligence from approximately 1973 through 1982. One document she found, dated 1973, was a secret memo notifying Paraguayan officials of the Second Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist Federation, scheduled for May in a Paraguayan city. Delegates from Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, and Uruguay were
invited to this conference. In another meeting report from 1973, Zoglin found
that Brazilian security officials offered Paraguay extensive collaboration,
and all the delegates concluded that the time had come to take offensive
action against communism (Zoglin, 2000: 3). All this information puts early
operations that fit Condors profile, such as the assassinations of Horman and
Teruggi, in a new light.
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53
The Army SOA and the Panama headquarters of the U.S. Army Southern
Command served as the center of the continental anticommunist alliance.
According to one military graduate, The school was always a front for other
special operations, covert operations (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 1997: 31; see also
Fischer, 1997: 189). Another officer, an Argentine navy man whose unit was
organized into kidnap commandos (task forces) in 1972, said that the
repression was part of a plan that responded to the Doctrine of National
Security that had as a base the School of the Americas, directed by the Pentagon in Panama (Ginzberg, 2000).
The second astonishing piece of information was the admission by the
CIA itself in September 2000 that DINA chief Manuel Contreras was a CIA
asset between 1974 and 1977 and that he received an unspecified payment for
his services (CIA, Report to Congress, September 18, 2000, 17). During
these same years Contreras was known as Condor One, the leading organizer and proponent of Operation Condor. The CIA did not divulge this information in 1978, when a federal grand jury indicted Contreras for his role in
the Letelier-Moffitt assassinations. Contreras was sentenced to a prison term
in Chile for this crime and convicted in absentia in Italy for the Leighton
attack. The CIA claims that it did not ask Contreras about Condor until after
the assassinations of Letelier and Moffitt in September 1976. This assertion
is hardly credible, especially given the CIAs admission that it knew of the
precursor to Condor and its assassination plans shortly after the 1973 coup
in Chile. Moreover, the CIA helped to organize and train DINA in 1974, and it
retained Contreras as an asset for a year after the Letelier/Moffitt assassinations. The CIA destroyed its file on Contreras in 1991 (Marquis and Schemo,
2000).
That Contreras was a CIA asset adds more weight to well-founded suspicions that the CIA and U.S. military intelligence forces were secret sponsors
of Condor. Robert White, the former U.S. ambassador, has written the following about CIA assets (2000: 54, emphasis added):
CIA activities in foreign countries are usually described as falling into two categories: clandestine collection of information and covert action. . . . In my
experience, there exists a third category, a hybrid that parades as informationgathering but in reality is a form of covert action. The CIA contends that it has
no choice but to recruit uniformed criminals such as General Manuel Noriega
of Panama and political assassins such as Emmanuel Constant in order to
gather intelligence. This claim is false and self-serving. These tropical gangsters enjoyed profitable contractual arrangements with the CIA not because
they were particularly good sources of information but because they served as
paid agents of influence who promoted actions or policies favored by the
Agency.
54
It seems entirely plausible that as DINA chief and Condor One, Contreras
was an agent of influence for the CIA.
There is substantive new evidence of CIA penetration of and coordination
with the intelligence organizations of the Condor countries. Contreras stated
in 2000, for example, that Pinochet had instructed him to ask the CIA for
assistance in setting up DINA shortly after the 1973 Chilean coup. He had
met with General Vernon Walters, deputy director of the CIA, and in March
1974 the CIA had sent eight agents to Chile to help organize DINAand,
Contreras added, they had tried to assume key leadership positions permanently within DINA (La Tercera, September 21, 2000; Franklin, 2000; Jornal
do Brasil, September 22, 2000). According to Contreras, the Pinochet regime
had refused to accept this level of CIA dominance, but nevertheless the CIA
had worked closely with DINA until it was replaced by the Central Nacional
de Informaciones (National Information Center) in 1977 in the wake of the
Letelier/Moffitt assassinations. The CIA played a similar role in other Latin
American intelligence agencies. For example, the Technical Department for
the Repression of Communism in Paraguay (La Tcnica), the nerve center of
dictator General Alfredo Stroessners repressive apparatus, was originally
organized with U.S. support.
Michael Townleys relationship to the CIA also remains murky. He admitted his role in the Prats, Letelier-Moffitt, and Leighton crimes. He turned
states evidence in the Letelier/Moffitt assassination trial, served a short sentence, and entered the witness protection program. In Chile, Townley had
claimed that he was a CIA operative, and so did the defense attorney of
accused Cuban exiles in the Letelier/Moffitt assassination trial in the United
States. In fact, Townley was interviewed by CIA recruiters in November 1970
(CIA, memo dated March 1978, heading excised) and was judged to be of
operational interest as a possible [phrase excised] of the Directorate of Operations in 1971 (CIA, Security Analysis Group to C/SAF March 6, 1978),
although the memo carefully states that the Office of Security file does not
reflect that Mr. Townley was ever actually used by the Agency. A separate
affidavit states that in February 1971, the Directorate of Operations
requested preliminary security approval to use Mr. Townley in an operational
capacity (CIA General Counsel, affidavit by Robert W. Gambino, November 9, 1978).
Townley also had close ties to the U.S. embassy and to high-ranking foreign service officers, who knew of his ties to the fascist Patria y Libertad
(U.S. Embassy in Ecuador, Second Secretary David H. Stebbing to Arnold
Isaacs, Chief of Chilean Political Affairs, U.S. State Department, October 17,
1973). The years 1970 and 1971 were crucial in Chile, when right-wing
attempts to destabilize Allende were prevalent. Given the CIAs doctrine of
55
CONCLUSION
This article has sought to shed light on several shadowy aspects of Condor,
especially its roots and its links to the U.S. government. The question
remains: why was savage counterterror sanctioned by the foremost Western superpower when the use of such methods violates every principle of law
and human rights upon which the United States is founded?
During the cold war U.S. policy makers framed their strategies in the
developing world as responses to the threat of communist subversion
directed by Moscow. Their real fear, however, seemed to be not guerrillas but
new popular movements in the class-stratified nations of Latin America and
elsewhere that were demanding political and socioeconomic change. As one
1970 CIA report stated, Cooperation among Latin American revolutionary
groups across national boundaries is not extensive. . . . Insurgency movements thus far have remained essentially national in scope. . . . Most revolutionary groups in Latin America have struggled merely to survive (CIA
Directorate of Intelligence, intelligence memorandum, Cooperation among
Latin American Terrorist and Insurgent Groups, no. 1464/70, September 21,
1970). A 1976 CIA memo similarly acknowledged that guerrilla groups in
South America have never posed a direct challenge to any government. Most
of the groups have been too small and weak to engage security forces
directly (CIA, Terrorism in South America, August 9, 1976).
The 1960s and 1970s were a turbulent time in Latin America. The Cuban
revolution occurred in 1959, challenging U.S. hegemony, and throughout the
hemisphere a clamor for political inclusion and social justice was rising from
millions of newly awakened people. Populist, nationalist, and socialist movements emerged that challenged the entrenched privileges of local oligarchies
as well as U.S. political and corporate interests. Nationalist and socialist
leaders ascended to the presidency in the early 1970s in Chile (Allende),
Bolivia (Torres), Argentina (Pern), and Peru (Velasco). In this context, U.S.
national security strategists and their counterparts in Latin America began to
define large parts of Latin Americas civilian populations as potentially or
actually subversive. The new security doctrine of counterrevolution targeted
internal enemies. To paraphrase Charles Tilly, elites were faced by challenges to the prevailing distribution of power and resources (1978: 53), and
56
they turned to repression. Fearful of losing its sphere of influence, Washington seemed to prefer Latin America safely under military rule.
President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger
wanted to punish the Chilean people for electing Allende and send a warning
to other Latin Americans who dared to defy U.S. imperial preferences. As
Nixon put it in a National Security Council meeting of November 6, 1970:
Latin America is not gone, and we want to keep it. . . . If there is any way we
can hurt him [Allende] whether by government or private businessI want
them to know our policy is negative. . . . No impression should be permitted in
Latin America that they can get away with this, that its safe to go this way
(White House Memorandum of Conversation: NSC Meeting-Chile
[NSSM97], 1970, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/2000113/).
As early as the late 1940s, U.S. national security strategists deemed the
use of terror to be effective, and techniques of assassination were taught
in the 1950s, as recently declassified documents on Guatemala have shown
(CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents, Electronic
Briefing Book no. 4, and U.S. Policy in Guatemala, 1966-1986, Electronic
Briefing Book no. 11, National Security Archive, 1997). Moreover, as Jeffrey
A. Sluka has pointed out, the structures, tactics, and technology of state terror have been diffused, in fact aggressively marketed and exported as a form
of military aid to developing countries (2000: 9). As Army Field Manual
31-16 instructed: The Chiefs of Mission and brigade commanders should
encourage the military chiefs of the host countries to adopt organizations
similar to those that have proven to be efficient in countering guerrilla forces
(U.S. Army, 1968). While some officials in the U.S. government were dismayed and outraged by such strategies, as was most of the U.S. public, they
were usually overruled or disregarded. During most of the cold war, the U.S.
national security establishment ranked security interests and anticommunism
above human rights and democracy. The result was that the counterterror
doctrine and special-forces model promoted by the United States were
adopted by militaries worldwide. Some of them went on to torture and murder thousands of their own people. Moreover, the historical record suggests
that a line can be traced from the counterterror doctrine and model to the
development of Operation Condor.
The stamp of approval for Condor provided by U.S. military and intelligence forcesthe legitimation of methods of terror against internal enemies; the use of a major communications network located in a U.S. facility
in Panama; the recruitment of Contreras, Condor One, as a paid CIA asset;
and routine U.S. collaboration with murderous Condor intelligence units in
the Fuentes Alarcn case and many othersundoubtedly encouraged Condor commanders to act with impunity as they planned and committed horrific
57
NOTES
1. Chapter 8, Combatting Terrorism, states: Combatting terrorism involves two sets of
actions to oppose terrorism: antiterrorism (defensive measures) and counterterrorism (offensive
measures). . . . Counterterrorism programs, which will not be addressed here, are classified and
addressed in various national security decision directives, national security directives, and contingency plans (U.S. Army, n.d.).
2. I studied copies of the manuals at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., in
July 1999. Seven Pentagon and CIA manuals were released in 1996 and 1997 after the Baltimore
Sun threatened to sue. They are entitled Handling of Sources, Counterintelligence, Revolutionary War, Guerrillas, and Communist Ideology, Terrorism and the Urban Guerilla, Interrogation, Combat Intelligence, and Analysis I.
3. This anonymous U.S. operative of the Phoenix Program described how he was ordered to
take out a village in Vietnam. His superior told him that we are not to take prisoners, that all of
these people are Communist sympathizers. There were no survivors of this U.S. operation. The
Bob Kerrey case, made public in 2001, seems to be another example of such methods.
4. Vaky concluded that counter-terror is wrong as a counter-insurgency tactic and
expressed the fear that we will stand before history unable to answer the accusations that we
encouraged the Guatemalan Army to do these things.
5. For example, one secret CIA document written by David Phillips urges the Santiago CIA
station to stonewall all the way regarding U.S. involvement with the Schneider operation and
presume . . . absolute denial will be the order of the day even with ambassador and other
Embassy colleagues (CIA, October 28, 1970). See also Warren Christopher, State Department,
to Santiago Embassy, Roger Channel Telegram, Letelier/Moffitt Assassination Case: Contingency Press Guidance on Allegations of CIA Involvement, August 1978, which reproduces a
CIA message received August 29 concerning expected allegations of CIA involvement in
Letelier/Moffitt case. Government officials are instructed to deny any CIA linkage and even
told what to say by the CIA.
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