The Condor Years (23 page)

Another DINA team was working in Paris. It included familiar names: Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Espinoza and Lieutenant Armando Fernández Larios, who would later participate in the Letelier assassination. That team also traveled to Madrid, Germany, and Rome. Some of the assignments involved arms sales and propaganda operations, in addition to espionage and surveillance of dissidents.

There was an element of spy versus spy. At least three European intelligence
agencies—French, West German, and East German—knew of the presence of DINA’s operatives in Europe. East Germany’s Stasi service developed accurate advance information about assassination plans against General Prats in 1974, and against Altamirano later. Several assassination attempts against Altamirano appear to have been averted by quick action of the French intelligence service, DST. Twice, DST agents placed Carlos Altamirano under special round-the-clock protection during visits to Paris and told him that teams of assassins had been detected. In another instance, DST agents detained three DINA agents at Orly Airport and refused them entry to France. Altamirano, who resided in East Berlin, said he depended for his safety on the protection and advice of his friends in the Communist intelligence service. Traveling almost constantly at the time, Altamirano frequently changed his travel plans at the last minute, seldom staying in the same hotel or house two nights in a row.

The DINA missions had done little more than make the European exiles nervous. One of the DINA agents had a near-miss: he located Altamirano and approached him with his weapon, but lost his nerve and failed to fire, according to Townley. Frustrated at the lack of success, Townley called DINA headquarters in Chile for more instructions, asking for “Luis Gutiérrez,” which meant his call was for the officer in charge of the Exterior Department, Iturriaga.

Iturriaga added a new name to Townley’s hit list: Bernardo Leighton, the grandfatherly Christian Democrat who was working in Rome to forge an alliance between his party and the remnants of Allende’s forces. Iturriaga followed up with detailed instructions in a letter that arrived via a Chilean Airlines pilot. Iturriaga ordered Townley to drive to Rome and make contact with DINA’s most important Italian asset: Stefano Delle Chiaie, the terrorist known as “Alfa,” who had been on DINA’s payroll for a year. Iturriaga’s instructions were “very clear and precise,” Townley said in later testimony: he was to enlist Delle Chiaie’s organization in an operation to kill Leighton.

Delle Chiaie was on the Italian police “most wanted” lists because of his alleged involvement in a series of terrorist bombings, including the Milan bank assault. Nevertheless he operated boldly in Rome, from a comfortable apartment on Via Sartoria. He was using a false passport, in the name of Alfredo di Stefano, that had been provided by DINA. The apartment where he received Townley, Mariana, and Paz was a gathering place for members of his group,
Avanguardia Nazionale.
Other DINA team members also had been recent guests in the same Rome apartment.

Stefano Delle Chiaie was an intense fireplug of a man, his colorless eyes framed by a broad forehead and thick black mustache. Like Contreras, Delle Chiaie had the commanding presence that sparked Townley’s admiration. They had dinner. Delle Chiaie was full of ideas and ready for action. He had the men, experience, and determination to give Pinochet some return on his investment in the Italian fascist groups. He gave Townley some advice. Forget about exiles like Altamirano, he said. They are too well protected, and the risk is too great. Leighton was a better, and easier target. The widely respected elder statesman of the Christian Democratic Party, Leighton had been a vice president in Chile and moved easily in the international circles of the conservative Christian Democratic movement, which was the ruling party in Italy and Germany. Not only was he trying to unite Chileans against Pinochet, he was working hard to create consensus among the Europe’s conservative Christian Democrats and leftist Social Democrats to oppose Latin American dictatorships like Pinochet’s.

Even more so than killing a leftist bogeyman like Altamirano, the death of a revered figure like Leighton would strike terror in the hearts of exiles everywhere and demonstrate not only DINA’s international power but its utter ruth-lessness. Leighton lived in Rome with his wife, Anita Fresno, with no apparent security. A former Chilean labor leader living in Frankfurt had been spying on Leighton for DINA and had provided Leighton’s address in Rome and information about his activities. After several meetings, Delle Chiaie informed Townley that
Avanguardia Nazionale
would provide the men and weapons to carry out the assassination.

Townley cleared the plan with Iturriaga and gave Alfa the go-ahead. Delle Chiaie organized the operation with a fascist comrade, Pier Luigi Concutelli, who was to be the shooter. Another member of Delle Chiaie’s group, Guilio Crescenzi, was sent to find a gun and brought back a nine-millimeter Beretta pistol.

A few days later, October 6, Concutelli was waiting on the quiet Via Aurelia, near the Vatican, where the Leightons had an apartment. Just after 8
P.M.
, Bernardo Leighton and Anita got off a bus and walked arm in arm, returning from a late-afternoon shopping trip. Concutelli crossed the street toward
them, passed them, then pulled the gun and shot Leighton in the back of the head. His wife spun around, and a second bullet caught her in the side, passed through her chest, and nicked her spine. The assassin looked at his victims crumpled on the sidewalk, then ran, neglecting to deliver further shots.

The Leightons both survived. Bernardo miraculously recovered fully from the bullet that passed completely through his skull, exiting above his left ear. Anita Fresno was never able to walk normally because of the spinal injury. Townley would later reproach the Italians for not using a .22 pistol, the weapon of choice for professional close-in work.

Townley and the Italians celebrated with dinner at Delle Chiaie’s apartment, thinking that the Leightons were dead. Then they got in their rented car and drove north to join other DINA operatives in Frankfurt, where there were further congratulations all around—tempered by learning of the Leighton’s survival. Still, the shootings had the desired effect. Leighton, though recovering quickly, was never active politically again. Exiles were on notice that even Europe was not safe.

The blatant assassination attempt remained unsolved for more than a decade. When Townley was arrested in connection with the Letelier case, it was assumed from his travel documents that he was involved. But the identities of the assassins were not established until a crusading judge, Giovanni Salvi, took up the case in the 1980s, and started a dogged ten-year investigation.

In a deposition in Salvi’s investigation, one of the members of Delle Chiaie’s group, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, linked the assassination to Pinochet:

The quid pro quos for doing DINA’s wet work were not lavish. The Cuban Paz was allowed to give secret details of the Leighton attack to his comrades in Miami, who put out a press release claiming credit. DINA eventually paid the
Italians $5,000, described as a loan that was never repaid. But the main benefit, in the logic of underground right-wing terrorists, was association with Pinochet’s Chile and the stamp of special status that that conferred.

Pinochet did not shy away from expressing open gratitude to his terrorist allies. A few weeks after the Leighton attack, on November 20, 1975, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died after thirty-six years in power. Pinochet flew to Madrid to pay his respects to his own anti-Communist hero and role model. DINA accompanied him in force: Contreras commandeered an entire airplane for his most important staff officers, including almost the entire Exterior Department. The DINA group numbered at least fifty, almost as many as all the other Chilean government officials combined.

Contreras arranged for Delle Chiaie to come to Madrid with several of his Avanguardia Nazionale comrades. Fresh from committing the Leighton attack, an act of terrorism that had dominated the European papers for weeks, Delle Chiaie was given a private audience with Pinochet in his hotel room. Contreras also presented Delle Chiaie with the $5,000 payment.

According to one of Pinochet’s civilian staff, Contreras also arranged for Pinochet to meet with others described as “patriots”—Croatian terrorists and extremists from other parts of Europe. The staffer said he had to outmaneuver Contreras to prevent one of the meetings from taking place in a public hotel salon in front of photographers.

In retaliation, during a drinking session at the hotel later that day, a DINA officer grabbed the staffer and put a gun to his head. To Contreras, the officer said, “Whenever you give the word, my colonel. We’ll wrap him up in that rug and get him out of here without a trace.” It was the kind of thing that passed for horseplay in DINA.

The regal funeral ended, Pinochet, Contreras, and his DINA officers flew back to Chile, just two days before the gathering, on November 26, of the intelligence chiefs convened for the creation of Operation Condor. Delle Chiaie, two other Italians from his group, and Paz arrived about the same time in Chile, where they functioned as a DINA operational cell.

Townley lamented that he was overworked from his many missions. “It was a period of much physical and mental activity, with some days or weeks with no activity at all. When I returned to Chile in 1975, at the end of the year, I found myself in very, very deteriorated physical condition and extraordinarily tired. And I weighed almost 40 kilos less than I weigh now.”

With the creation of Condor, there were now two networks in operation to defeat the military governments’ leftist enemies. Their areas of operations were the United States, Europe, and Latin America. In the early months of 1976, the focus shifted to the new Condor apparatus and to a concerted campaign against perceived enemies still residing in Latin America.

The agreement to form Condor was most likely entered into behind the back of the struggling government of Isabel Perón in Argentina. In late 1975 and early 1976 the civilian regime trembled on the verge of disintegration, ceding more and more autonomy to the military. The creation of the Condor alliance was one of the first steps in the military strategy to deal a death blow to the political chaos and terrorism that, in the military’s view, Peronism had brought to Argentina. On Condor’s map of future action, Argentina was to be the first and largest arena for multicountry operation.

In March 1976, coup plotting was an almost open secret. Admiral Emilio Massera, chief of the navy, had coffee with U.S. ambassador Robert Hill on March 16 to prepare the ground for the inevitable. Speaking in conditional phrases, Massera informed the ambassador the coup was coming. “He said that it was no secret that the military might have to step into the political vacuum very soon,” Hill reported in a cable to Washington a few hours later. The military had a clear choice between military intervention and “total chaos leading to the destruction of the Argentine state,” both because of the incompetence of the presidency of Isabel Perón and the “terrorist” threat. Somewhat incongruously,
Massera asked Hill for help in hiring a Washington-based public relations firm to help shape the new military government’s image in the United States. Massera promised, according to Hill’s report, that the “military intervention if it comes, will not follow the lines of the Pinochet takeover in Chile. Rather, he [Massera] said, they will try to proceed within the law with full respect for human rights.”

Time was short. “Political counselor and I had the distinct impression Admiral Massera was talking about a coup that will probably come within the next few days, possibly even before the weekend,” Hill reported.

The meeting was on a Tuesday. Exactly one week later, U.S. Army Colonel Lloyd Gracey, a military intelligence trainer, was about to leave his office at Army Command Headquarters at Campo de Mayo. An Argentine officer he considered one of his most reliable sources came in his office and closed the door. “Lloyd, tonight there will be a coup against Isabelita,” he said. The advance information was intended, Gracey felt, to give the United States a chance to express objections, if there were any. The country team—ambassador, political counselor, CIA and DIA chiefs—met and cabled Washington. No reservations were expressed. Within twelve hours the coup was a reality. U.S. recognition of the military government was immediate.

True to Massera’s promise, the coup avoided the Pinochet model. There were no bombings, no mass shootings, no bodies in the streets on the day of the coup. It was described as a total, efficient, and airtight takeover of all centers of power. And to judge by what was known publicly, it was virtually bloodless. A dispassionate intelligence summary of the coup signaled the U.S. attitude in a cable to all embassies in Latin America the following day.