The Condor Years (46 page)

33
    
Fax from London:
Garzón’s actions and thinking are described in Pilar Urbano,
Garzón-El hombre que veía amanecer
(Madrid, 2000), 515–19.

36
  
“That communist Garcés”:
Cf. Urbano, 519, which renders this statement as “that communist Garzón.” Indeed, Garzón was told by the interpreter, in the presence of several other people, that Pinochet had named him. She corrected herself, however, after she learned there was another person with a similar name, Garcés, whom Pinochet was much more likely to know and accuse of Communist associations. All descriptions and statements are based on the recollections of one of those present.

38
  
U.S. sides with Chile: Washington Post
, December 6, 1998, quoting Albright statement made a few days earlier. Albright’s statement about prosecutions of Yugoslavs and Rwandans illustrated the “victor’s justice” line of demarcation the United States was hoping to preserve: Prosecutions in international tribunals for atrocities by those countries’ officials were among the important advances in human rights jurisprudence. Yet they were much closer to traditional “victor’s justice” restrictions
in that the Yugoslav government was not a U.S. ally in the Cold War, and the accused Rwandan government was on the losing side of a civil war. In June 1999, the State Department restated the U.S. position with a nod to the British proceedings, which had reaffirmed Pinochet’s extradition. “We’re committed to the principles of accountability and justice and we strongly condemn the abuses of the Pinochet regime when it was in power. We respect the British judicial process, which is underway and continues. We also believe it’s important, consistent with the principle of accountability, to support countries like Chile that, over a sustained period of time, have made significant efforts to strengthen democracy and promote reconciliation and the rule of law.” State Department briefing, June 13, 1999.

38
  
Marathon meeting:
An account of the meeting was provided by Morton Halperin, of the National Security Council staff, who was present.

43
  
Proved them right:
Castro strongly supported Allende’s movement, spending several weeks in Chile in 1971, but he considered the Allende revolution an exception and did not waver from his commitment to armed struggle. At a 1970 ceremony honoring Lenin in Havana, he said, “Cuba has never denied, nor will it ever deny, support to the revolutionary movement. . . . Revolutionaries like Che willing to struggle to the final consequences, willing to fight to die—they will always be able to count on Cuba’s help.” See State 48656, March 16, 1973, document released to author in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, hereafter Dinges FOIA Release.

43
  
“Non-commissioned officers”:
Speech by Enríquez, July 12, 1973, in Caupolican Theater, quoted by Mónica González,
La Conjura: Los mil y un dias del golpe
(Santiago: Ediciones B Grupo Zeta, 2000), 203.

44
  
“Central force”:
Interview with Andrés Pascal, June 22, 2000.

44
  
Pinochet had come late:
This is the main thrust of González,
La Conjura
, op. cit., a thoroughly documented book based on interviews with officers who began the coup plotting long before Pinochet was a participant in the plans.

45
  
Concentration camp population:
Confidential report (mimeographed) of the Committee for Peace (COPACHI), no. 778, ca 1975,
“Servicios de inteligencia del gobierno militar.”
From dates mentioned, the document appears to have been prepared no later than early 1975.

46
  
Counterinsurgency training:
CIA DO, Western Hemisphere Brief, October 3, 1973 (Chile Project).

46
  
Brazilian training:
CIA DI, September 6, 1974 (Chile Project): “. . . it is known that the security services have been sending officers to Brazil for intelligence training and that Brazilian officers were in Chile as advisors during the first months of the junta government.” Brazil’s military intelligence had been helping their Chile intelligence counterparts “in the efforts to remove Allende,” according to a U.S. intelligence officer who was serving in the region.

46
  
“Although the CIA did not instigate . . .”:
Hinchey Report, 5.

46
  
U.S. support before the coup: Covert Action in Chile 1963–1973: Staff Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities
, U.S. Senate, December 18, 1975 (hereafter Church Committee Report). The report contains other details about this period, including the compilation of “arrest lists”—presumably of leftists to be rounded up in the event of a coup:

47
  
CIA discussion of coup support:
CIA Director of Operations, documents dated November 3, 1971, November 9, 1971, November 12, 1971, and December 1, 1971 (Chile Project), provide a fascinating and rarely seen window into the CIA’s covert action planning process. The latter two are cited in the text.

48
  
CIA activity:
Hinchey Report, 2, 5. The report’s hedging is not directly related to the point being made here, but should be included for completeness: The first sentence continues: “. . . but did not assist Pinochet to assume the Presidency. In fact, many CIA officers shared broader US reservations about Pinochet’s single-minded pursuit of power.” The Church Committee Report made a similar point: “After the coup, the CIA renewed liaison relations with the Chilean government’s security and intelligence forces, relations which had been disrupted during the Allende period. Concern was expressed within the CIA that liaison with such organizations would lay the Agency open to charges of aiding political repression; officials acknowledged that, while most of CIA’s support to the various Chilean forces would be designed to assist them in controlling subversion from abroad, the support could be adaptable to the control of internal subversion as well.”

49
  
War Academy: La Conjura
, 409–410, 431–33. Mónica González described the makeup of the War Academy planning group based on interviews with military sources in Chile, many of whom are named in her book. Several young officers who were students at the Academy, including Raul Wenderoth, Raul Eduardo
Iturriaga Neumann, and Armando Fernández Larios, would became Contreras’s chief subordinates in DINA’s foreign operations, which reached full fruition in Operation Condor.

49
  
Best and brightest:
Interview with retired Colonel Lloyd Gracey, who served in the U.S. Embassy milgroup, the military advisory group.

50
  
“Best moments . . .”:
Luis Mattini, e-mail of March 27, 2002.

51
  
JCR training and early meetings:
Interviews with Andrés Pascal and Tupamaro leader Luis Efraín Martínez Platero, October 2001. The military trainers were often the veteran Tupamaros, who had gained experience on the ground during years of urban guerrilla activity in Uruguay.

51
  
Creation of the JCR:
Interviews with Andrés Pascal, Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, Luis Efraín Martinez Platero, and Luis Mattini (whose real name is Arnol Kremer). Very little has been written about the JCR. Argentine sociologist Horacio Vennera, who is writing a PhD thesis on the history of the JCR provided a rare copy of the first issue of the JCR magazine,
Che Guevara: Junta de Coordinación Revolucionario.
The men listed all participated in some or all of the early founding meetings. Memories differ about what was decided at each meeting, but there is general agreement that the JCR was formed before the Chilean coup and was already holding regular meetings, which two sources said took place as often as every two weeks.

52
  
JCR’s continental role:
Interviews with Gorriarán, Mattini, and Pascal. The ideological underpinnings of the organization and its role as the Latin American or “Fifth International” was explained by Luis Mattini and Gorriarán. See also Luis Mattini,
Hombres y Mujeres del PRT-ERP
(La Pasión Militante) (Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Campaña, 1990), 159. Mattini said in an interview that Santucho never used the term “Fifth International” in referring to the JCR, but he saw it as replacing the overly centralized Third and Fourth Internationals for Latin America.

53
  
JCR declaration:
Published in the clandestine newspaper
El Tupamaro: Organo del Movimiento de Liberación nacional
, Tupamaros, March 1974. The first issue of
Che Guevara
, the official JCR press organ, appeared in Spanish in November 1974 and reprinted the JCR declaration and call to arms.

54
  
We were in diapers:
Interview with René Valenzuela.

56
  
Castro statements:
Interview with Martínez Platero, October 2001.

58
  
Samuelson kidnapping:
Exxon produced a full internal report of the kidnapping negotiations, see
Wall Street Journal
, December 2, 1983. Other negotiation details, including chess playing, are from interviews with ERP leaders involved: Luis Mattini and Enrique Gorriarán. Exxon avoided dealing with the Argentine police in negotiating the ransom. See declassified cable, Buenos Aires 1949, and memo by Legal Attaché Robert Scherrer, March 15, 1976 (Dinges FOIA release).

58
  
Kidnappings and ransom amounts:
Interview with Enrique Gorriarán. The Firestone executive was John Thompson, kidnapped in July 1973, just following the Buenos
Aires meeting creating the JCR. ERP had profited minimally from two previous kidnappings, Oberdan Sallustro of FIAT (who was killed in a police-ERP shootout in March 1972 before ransom could be paid) and Stanley Silvestre, the British consul in Buenos Aires, kidnapped and released in 1971.

58
  
Azul attack:
FBIS (Foreign Broadcast Information Service), January 20, 1974. See also Mattini, 255, 274; Paul H. Lewis,
Guerrillas and Generals: The “Dirty War” in Argentina
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002), 92. Mattini says Gorriarán was criticized inside ERP for his conduct of the retreat and removed as top military commander.

59
  
Clandestine press conference:
Interview with Mattini, Gorriarán, and two journalists who were present,
Buenos Aires Herald
reporter Andrew Graham-Yool and
New York Times
reporter Jonathan Kandel.
New York Times
, February 15, 1974. Two other EPR guerillas spoke at the press conference, Domingo Menna and Juan Manuel Carrizo, in charge of propaganda and logistics, respectively.

59
  
Money changer:
Gorriarán Merlo identified the money changer as the owner of the Liberty Hotel, Benjamin Taub. Taub’s son, Guillermo Luis Taub, who was arrested with his father on money trafficking charges, confirmed the handling of the Samuelson ransom in an interview with journalist Miriam Lewin as part of a joint investigation with the author.

59
  
JCR millions:
Interviews with Mattini, Martínez Platero, and Pascal. Several U.S. documents speak of the JCR war chest, notably State 128058 and Santiago 1965, May 25, 1976 (Dinges FOIA Release). The disbursement lead to at least one major dispute. MIR was in the most immediate and urgent need, and the task of smuggling the cash into Chile fell to Tupamaro leaders William Whitelaw and Lucas Mansilla (who used the nom de guerre “Marcelo”). The Uruguayans, with a decade of underground experience, had mastered the tradecraft of cross-border smuggling of men and money. Gorriarán said $1 million was sent, but it never arrived. To this day, the dispute over the missing cash remains a point of contention between the survivors of MIR and Tupamaros. The story accepted by Tupamaros is that Marcelo spent the money on weapons and other infrastructure in Argentina. With such enormous sums circulating in the guerrilla underground, strict accounting was impossible.

60
  
Tucumán campaign:
Martin Edwin Andersen,
Dossier Secreto: Argentina’s Desaparecidos and the Myth of the “Dirty War”
(Westview, 1993), 127–130; and Lewis, 98–100.

61
  
Covert support of Christian Democrats:
Hinchey Report, 8. “Frei’s victory on 4 September 1964 was a milestone in the CIA’s Chilean election effort.” The Church Committee Report also has abundant detail on the funding of the Christian Democrats.