COL. MANUEL CONTRERAS

Virtual Truth Commission

Col. Manuel Contreras, who organized the terror network, had set up the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), the Chilean secret police, two months after the September 1973 coup. CIA station chief Stuart Burton, who arrived in Santiago in May 1974, established a close liaison with Contreras and DINA. U.S. Embassy political officer John Tipton, who at the time was cabling protests of human-rights abuses and coauthoring a dissent channel memorandum that called for more U.S. attention to the issue, told me the CIA and DINA were working together. He said, "I don't believe the CIA set up DINA, but they were in a close relationship. Burton and Contreras used to go on Sunday picnics together with their families. That permeated the whole CIA station."
In August 1975, Contreras had met in Washington with CIA deputy director Vernon A. Walters. Up until then, cooperation between the security services of the Latin American dictators had been informal. There are no declassified documents that prove Walters urged or approved the plan to set up Operation Condor, but the month after meeting with Walters, Contreras asked Pinochet, in a memo obtained by Italian courts, for another $600,000 for "reasons that I consider indispensable," one of which was "the neutralization of the [Chilean] government junta's principal adversaries abroad, especially in Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, the U.S.A. and Italy."
After Contreras' meeting with the military intelligence chiefs of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay in October, the relationship was formalized and a joint information center was established at DINA headquarters.
In March 1976, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), and several other members of Congress visited Chile and met with human-rights defenders there. Miller has now called on President Bill Clinton to release "critical information that will help link Pinochet directly to acts of international terrorism."
Source: Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.

Department of Defense, Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA) Expands Operations and Facilities, April 15, 1975: This heavily excised Intelligence Report from the Defense Attache in Santiago Chile, describes the growth of DINA, the national intelligence arm of the Chilean government and "the sole responsible agency for internal subversive matters." Many of the excised portions provide details about the strained relations between DINA and the Chilean Armed Forces because of DINA's exclusive power. The report states that the head of DINA, Colonel Manuel Contreras, "has reported exclusively to, and received orders only from, President Pinochet." Source: Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive, CHILE: DECLASSIFIED U.S. DOCUMENTS ON PINOCHET AND THE 1973 COUP

Only DINA chief Contreras was sentenced to seven years in prison, for his role in the Letelier bombing. In his defense, Contreras insisted that he was just following Pinochet's orders.... Peter Kornbluh, "The Chile Coup - The U. S. Hand" , October 25, 1998.

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Updated December 5, 1998