ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
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SPECIAL EDITION
November 4, 1999
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BUSH, PINOCHET & OPERATION CONDOR
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CONTENTS
1. iF MAGAZINE [US]: Bush & the Condor Mystery.
2. THE GUARDIAN [London]: UN Urged to Save Vital Archives of Pinochet's Terror.
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iF MAGAZINE
The Consortium For Independent Journalism
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- September/October 1999 -
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BUSH & THE CONDOR MYSTERY
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By Robert Parry
- October 5, 1999 -
http://www.consortiumnews.com/100599b.html
Newly released U.S. government documents reveal that George Bush's CIA knew
more about Chile's role in an international assassination ring, code-named
Condor, than Bush and the agency disclosed to FBI agents investigating a
Condor terrorist bombing in Washington, D.C., in 1976.
On June 30, the Clinton administration released several documents about
Operation Condor in response to demands from American researchers and
requests from Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, who is seeking to extradite
Chile's former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and put him on trial for
crimes against humanity.
The new documents suggest that the CIA and its then-director, George Bush,
withheld information that could have helped the FBI in its investigation of
a terrorist car-bombing in Washington that killed Chilean dissident Orlando
Letelier and American co-worker Ronni Moffitt on Sept. 21, 1976.
The records show U.S. intelligence was well aware that Pinochet's
government in Chile had organized seven South American military
dictatorships into Operation Condor, a cross-border assassination ring to
hunt down leftists. But instead of sharing that information with federal
criminal investigators, Bush's CIA withheld it -- and even diverted
suspicion away from Pinochet's junta.
According to the new documents, the CIA was aware that the seven Condor
nations were plotting international assassinations in the weeks before the
Letelier-Moffitt car-bombing. The CIA issued a series of internal reports
about Condor activities and cited the possibility of "government planned
and directed assassinations within and outside the territory of Condor
members."
That knowledge prompted meetings between Condor-nation leaders and U.S.
ambassadors who advised that cross-border assassinations could "exacerbate
public world criticism."
Bush's CIA was to make a "parallel approach" to Chile's intelligence
service, DINA, but the results were not disclosed. [For details on the new
documents, see Peter Kornbluh's "Chile Declassified" article in The Nation,
Aug. 9/16, 1999.]
The Clinton administration refused to release information about what was
said at those U.S.-Condor meetings on the grounds that the 23-year-old
Letelier-Moffitt murder case is still active.
That decision likely means that the actions of the CIA and the extent of
Bush's personal involvement in Operation Condor will remain secret for the
foreseeable future.
Bush's role on the periphery of this double homicide has been known -- but
not clarified -- for more than two decades.
Prior to the Letelier-Moffitt bombing, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay
alerted Bush that two DINA agents were seeking to penetrate the United
States with visas using false names.
Supposedly, the agents were headed to CIA headquarters for meetings.
Bush referred the matter to his deputy, Gen. Vernon Walters, who disavowed
knowledge of any planned meetings. The visas were canceled, but one of the
DINA agents, Michael Townley, simply altered his plans and entered the
United States anyway.
Working with anti-Castro Cubans, Townley then traveled to Washington,
planted a bomb under Letelier's car and exploded it as the car traveled
down Embassy Row, one of the most tightly guarded areas of Washington. The
bomb killed Letelier, a persistent critic of the Pinochet government, along
with Moffitt who was riding to work with him.
That night, Sen. James Abourezk, a Letelier friend, found himself sitting
near Bush at a state dinner at the Jordanian Embassy. Distraught about the
murders, Abourezk asked the CIA director to commit the spy agency in the
effort "to find the bastards who killed" Letelier. Bush vowed to help and
added, obliquely, "we are not without assets in Chile."
But Bush's CIA offered little assistance to the murder investigation,
despite the CIA's knowledge of the mysterious DINA mission and of Condor's
assassination plans. "Nothing the agency gave us helped us break this
case," said federal prosecutor Eugene Propper. The first evidence about
Operation Condor came not from the CIA but from FBI agents in South
America.
Rather than assist the probe, Bush's CIA appears to have gone to some
lengths to help DINA divert attention away from the real assassins. The CIA
leaked an analysis to Newsweek that "the Chilean secret police were not
involved [in the Letelier-Moffitt car-bombing]. The agency reached its
decision because the bomb was too crude to be the work of experts and
because the murder, coming while Chilean rulers were wooing U.S. support,
could only damage the Santiago regime." [Newsweek, Oct. 11, 1976]
Despite the CIA's analysis, federal prosecutors eventually established that
DINA had carried out the murders. After complex negotiations, Townley was
extradited to the United States and served a prison term for his role in
the killings.
Despite suspicions that Pinochet masterminded the terrorist attack, the
U.S. government made no known effort to bring the dictator to justice.
Last fall, when Pinochet went to England for back surgery, however, Spanish
judge Garzon persuaded British authorities to arrest the aging general.
Since then, Pinochet has battled requests for his extradition to Spain and
has enlisted the support of influential world leaders.
One of the advocates for Pinochet's freedom has been George Bush, the
former CIA director and later president. In his letter to the British
government, Bush called the case against the former dictator "a travesty of
justice" and urged that Pinochet be sent home to Chile "as soon as
possible."
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*****
AFIB EDITOR'S NOTE: Although Argentine journalist Stella Calloni first
broke the story of the existence of Operation Condor's "Horror Archives" in
1994, "mainstream" media chose to ignore potentially explosive -- and
embarassing -- revelations of U.S. government complicity in South America's
"dirty wars." For background see: Stella Calloni, "The Horror Archives of
Operation Condor," Covert Action Quarterly, Washington, D.C., Number 50,
Fall 1994, http://www.covertaction.org/
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UN URGED TO SAVE VITAL ARCHIVES OF PINOCHET'S TERROR
Documents could hold key to prosecution of ex-dictator
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THE GUARDIAN
International News
Thursday, 4 November 1999
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,99462,00.html
Jon Henley in Paris
Five tons of archives that could hold the key to a successful prosecution
of the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, may be lost unless action
is taken fast to place them under international protection, a leading human
rights lawyer said yesterday.
Martin Almada, a Paraguayan lawyer and former political prisoner,
discovered the so-called "archives of terror" and has handed parts of them
to European judges investigating charges of genocide, torture and terrorism
against General Pinochet.
But he said vital evidence was disappearing because the archives are
unguarded.
"These documents are freely accessible every working day from 7am to midday
to researchers, but also to any eventual saboteurs," he said.
"Some have already disappeared, like a booklet on how to keep torture
victims alive. But it's impossible to tell how much has gone, because only
about 5% of the archives have been studied."
The 700,000 files, stored on the eighth floor of the supreme court in the
Paraguayan capital, Asuncion, provide a detailed history of Operation
Condor, the top secret organisation set up by Chile, Argentina, Paraguay,
Uruguay, Bolivia and Brazil in the mid-1970s to track down and eliminate
political opponents.
The Spanish judge behind the arrest of Gen Pinochet, who has twice
interviewed Mr Almada and received copies of several of his documents, said
yesterday he also had enough evidence to charge members of Argentina's
former military government with "dirty war" atrocities and seek their
arrests.
Judge Baltasar Garzon accused 12 former junta members - including the
former military president, Leopoldo Galtieri - and more than 80 other
military officers of genocide, torture and terrorism during the 1976-83
dictatorship, and issued international arrest warrants for them.
Some of Mr Almada's documents were also cited by a French investigating
magistrate, Roger Le Loire, in a recent formal request to the Chilean
authorities to interview 56 people there. They included the alleged
torturers and murderers of five French nationals who "disappeared" during
the bloody political repression of the Pinochet regime.
"These documents are a motherlode," said Peter Kornbluh of the US National
Security Archives in Washington. "They are the first full archive of
political repression ever discovered. There is some extraordinary material
in them on Operation Condor - some of it highly relevant to the Pinochet
proceedings - and it needs to be protected."
Among the documents is a letter from the former head of the Chilean secret
police, Manuel Contreras, asking Gen Pinochet for $600,000 to help him
"neutralise the enemies of the junta abroad, particularly in Mexico,
Argentina, Costa Rica, the United States, France and Italy."
The files also contain documents from the naturalisation process in
Paraguay of the notorious Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele, and 10,000
photographs of political detainees of many different nationalities and
1,888 identity papers of people now listed as "missing".
Mr Almada told the French daily Libération that the archives, which he
discovered nearly eight years ago in a disused torture chamber outside
Asuncion, showed that "Pinochet wanted to create an organisation similar to
Interpol, except for hunting down and exterminating dissidents".
He said he was now so worried about the conditions in which they were being
kept that he had asked the UN to take them under its protection. He was
begging European universities and NGOs to "send as many researchers and
students as they can to examine them, photocopy them, microfilm them -
anything to ensure they are safe."
Sophie Thonon, a lawyer for the family of one French victim, said she had
seen several of Mr Almada's documents. "They prove beyond any doubt the
extremely close collaboration, under the command of Chile, between all the
repressive forces and agencies of the Latin American dictatorships of that
period," she said.
"They also show beyond doubt what Contreras has always said - that Pinochet
was the man who really ran the Chilean secret police, and hence Condor, and
that he met him every morning to discuss all these many individual cases.
The line of responsibility through to Pinochet is completely clear."
Gen Pinochet is appealing against a London magistrate's ruling last month
that he could be extradited to Spain.
Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 1999
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