Argentines face trial for Condor deaths

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

Argentines face trial for Condor deaths
June 3, 2010 - 7:09AM
AFP

Six Argentine ex-military officials are facing trial after being accused of human rights abuses and the deaths of 65 people under a secret plan by several South American dictatorships in the 1970s.Observers hope the trial will finally shed light on the shadowy Operation Condor to repress dissidents across the region.

And they are hoping to unlock the secrets of the infamous Automotores Orletti torture centre in Buenos Aires, one of several clandestine prisons used by the military dictatorship.

"This trial is even more important since the clandestine centre was used by intelligence services of other Latin American countries, and people from those countries were detained there," said human rights lawyer Rodolfo Yanzon, who is representing the plaintiffs.

~snip~
Operation Condor was a co-ordinated repression by right-wing South American dictatorships in the 1970s against left-wing activists that was carried out with US assistance. The countries that participated included Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay.

Read more: http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/argentines-face-trial-for-condor-deaths-20100603-x06t.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Kissinger's 1976 Cable Sheds More Light on 'Operation Condor'

Kissinger's 1976 Cable Sheds More Light on 'Operation Condor'
1 month ago

On the morning of Sept. 21, 1976, former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and two young colleagues drove to work in the scenic Washington neighborhood known as Embassy Row. As Letelier's Chevrolet Chevelle passed the residency of the Chilean ambassador and rounded Sheridan Circle, a bomb placed under the driver's seat by agents of the Chilean secret police detonated. Letelier, a vocal critic of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, died at the scene. His 26-year-old colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, bled to death from a shard of metal that struck her jugular vein. Her husband, Michael Moffitt, was blown out the back window of the vehicle and survived.

Now, a newly declassified cable from then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sheds more light on the action, and lack of action, taken by the U.S. government in the days leading up to that act of international terrorism in the capital city of the United States.

Five days before the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, Kissinger called off a planned warning to Pinochet and other South American military leaders against orchestrating "a series of international murders" of their opponents around the globe.

The secretary "has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter," stated a September 16, 1976 cable sent from Africa, where Kissinger was traveling, to his Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, Harry Shlaudeman back in Washington. Using identical language, Shlaudeman passed on these instructions four days later to his deputy to be transmitted to U.S. ambassadors in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

That communication was obtained by The National Security Archive, a public interest research center specializing in the Freedom of Information Act and declassified documentation on U.S. foreign policy. The document and others previously obtained under the FOIA by the Archive have reopened a 34-year-old controversy about what Kissinger's office and the CIA knew about "Operation Condor" -- a clandestine rendition and assassination program among the Latin American military regimes led by Pinochet's Chile.
The Kissinger communique, for the first time, ties the former secretary of state to a decision to withdraw a warning to Chile and its co-conspirators against international political assassination. But the documents offer few clues that would explain why Kissinger called off diplomatic pressure that, if delivered in a timely fashion, might have deterred the Washington, D.C., car bombing.

More:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/10/kissingers-1976-cable-reopens-controversy-over-operation-condo/

[HuckleB]

2. K & R.

[Solly Mack]

3. k/r

[Judi Lynn]

4. Operation Condor:Cable Suggests U.S. Role

http://www.gwu.edu/.nyud.net:8090/news/20010306/top.gif

March 6, 2001

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 among South American intelligence chiefs who were working together to eliminate left-wing opposition groups in their countries as part of a covert program known as 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 U.S. connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt who were killed by a car bomb in Washington, D.C. "It would seem advisable," he suggests, "to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in U.S. interest."

The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records released last November 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 "tranche" of records released under the Clinton Administration's special Chile Declassification Project.

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010306/

http://ecx.images-amazon.com.nyud.net:8090/images/I/518MKTFDEXL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

[L. Coyote]

5. No Operation CONDOR thread complete w/o this compilation link:

George Bush Sr. May Face Charges: Conspiring to Kidnap and Murder Political Activists
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2459135

[Judi Lynn]

7. People who don't know about it can get a real education from that thread,

saving them so much time.

It's one to keep for future reference, for sure.

[Soylent Brice]

6. K&R

[The abyss]

8. Recommend

Good posting Judi!

[Judi Lynn]

9. Chile starts investigating Pinochet era political murders

Source: Agence France-Presse

Chile starts investigating Pinochet era political murders
Santiago, Jun 2 (AFP)

Chilean authorities has started investigating the first 100 lawsuits filed for political murders during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

A victims' families association said more than 1,000 cases would begin to be investigated in the next five months.Judge Mario Carrozas said received the first 100 cases on Tuesday and that he could possibly seek help from additional judges."Morally, we have a mandate to see reparations made to victims," Alicia Lira, the head of the relatives' group, told AFP.

Pinochet's 1973-1990 military regime is blamed for some 3,000 deaths and disappearances in a "dirty war" against the left.Pinochet died in December 2006 at a military hospital in Santiago, at the age of 91, after evading repeated attempts to bring him to trial.
Two weeks before his death, Pinochet took responsibility for actions committed under his rule, but never apologized for the suffering he caused.

Read more: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/73126/chile-starts-investigating-pinochet-era.html

[Judi Lynn]

10. Chile's El Mercurio celebrates 110th anniversary (worked for CIA under Nixon)

Wednesday, June 2nd 2010 - 22:44 UTC
Chile's El Mercurio celebrates 110th anniversary

Chile’s most widely distributed newspaper, El Mercurio, has celebrated a birthday. On June 1, the daily celebrated 110 years. The paper’s staff met this week to celebrate the event.

El Mercurio’s director Cristian Zegers, who has held the position for the last four years, explained that in the world of news, longevity does not necessarily guarantee popularity. He said that the success of the paper has not been due to luck or situational factors – rather, it came down to pure hard work.

El Mercurio has a readership of 145, 000 Chileans every week.

Zeegers made no mention of the millions of dollars El Mercurio received from the CIA during the Allende years, nor the soft loans the newspaper received from the Pinochet dictatorship when the Chilean economy bottomed out in the 1980s.

Those who attended the celebration received a copy of the very first El Mercurio, which came out on June 1, 1900.

More:
http://en.mercopress.com/2010/06/02/chile-s-el-mercurio-celebrates-110th-anniversary

[FarLeftFist]

11. Too bad Milton Friedman is no longer alive to serve jail time.