The Condor Years (49 page)

109
  
Fuentes remained in Villa Grimaldi until January:
When last seen by other prisoners, he was in good spirits and had been given clean clothes for his supposed release. On January 12, he was taken away from Villa Grimaldi and disappeared. There was an erroneous report circulating in human rights circles that he had been killed by being injected with rabies. The story is based on the testimony of Luz Arce, the DINA collaborator. When questioned in detail by the author, Arce corrected the story. She acknowledged the person injected with rabies could not have been Fuentes, because she heard the story before she left Villa Grimaldi in December 1975, and at that time Fuentes was still alive, according to multiple witnesses.

109
  
DINA invitation to Paraguay:
Contreras thank-you letter: September 25, 1975, 22:0152; invitation to Police Chief Britez, October 1975, 22:0153; Britez memo about meeting with Jahn, November 6, 1975, 22:0154; meeting agenda, October 29, 1975, no microfiche numbers on document in author’s possession. The thankyou note and invitation are on Contreras’s personal—and elegant—stationery. They have Contreras’s original signature (Paraguay Archive).

110
  
Osvaldo identity:
Lieutenant Colonel José Osvaldo Riveiro gave a deposition to federal judge Maria Servini on June 17, 2001, and confirmed his military rank and position in Battalion 601 in 1975 and 1976. He denied being “Rawson,” but the court concluded that it had been established that he and Jorge Osvaldo Riveiro Rawson, the person referred to many times in Arancibia’s papers, are one and the same person. The name also appears written with b, as Ribeiro, in secondary sources. The
spelling Riveiro is used in the court testimony, which is signed by Riveiro. The Arancibia documents contain a napkin from a Buenos Aires restaurant, Queen Bess, with the handwritten name “Jorge Osvaldo Riveiro Rawson” and the date August 15, 1975. Document II/184–185 (Arancibia Collection). Intriguingly, the Queen Bess is mentioned in another document obtained by the author as the place Michael Townley used to pick up and drop off messages from his contacts in Buenos Aires.

110
  
Details about JCR:
In two reports, dated August 21 and 27, Arancibia pours out details he has gathered. Some excerpts:

August 21, Memorandum 57-G:

“A hotel bought by the Tupamaros (Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria) is the Hotel Roma.” [Names of those involved follow.]

“The Atlantic Ferry line from Buenos Aires to Colonia [the Uruguayan port across the Plata River Delta] is used as a weekly mail route by the JCR.” (Names of contacts follow.)

“The plot against Chile discovered in June 1975 was coordinated from Switzerland by the JCR after meetings in Paris.” [Names of contacts in Paris, including a post office box number.]

“More information about the Junta Coordinadora will go in the next dispatch. Next week, I will make contact with Major Washington Perdomo Diaz, of the 4th Engineers of Colonia Uruguay, who is charge of the ‘repression of Tupamaros,’ and with the chief of police Jose Do Campo, of Colonia Uruguay. The idea is to coordinate information about the Junta Coordinadora and information exchange in general. All these contacts are clandestine.”

August 27, Memorandum 57-G:

“Revolutionary Coordinating Junta:

“The best information that has been obtained on this guerrilla organization was provided to Colonel Podesta [Argentine], military attache in Paraguay, by the number 2 chief of SIE [Army intelligence service
—Servicio de Inteligencia del Ejército
], Lt. Col. Jorge Osvaldo Rawson. This officer will travel to Santiago at the invitation of DINE [Chilean Army Intelligence Department
—Departamento de Inteligencia del Ejercito
].

“He will be accompanied by his wife. He will make the trip directly from Asunción to Santiago. . . .

[A description of JCR operations in France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland follows.]

“Lt. Col. Osvaldo Rawson, who will be in Santiago from September 2 on, has offered [to provide us] the complete list from Argentine immigrations of all of the Chileans who have entered Argentina after September 11 [date of the 1973 coup in Chile.] This officer has the idea of forming a center for intelligence coordination among Chile-Argentina-Uruguay and Paraguay (Arancibia Collection).

111
Rawson requests:
Arancibia Collection, October 10, 1975, IA/184.

111
  
Contacts with Rawson:
Arancibia Collection, October 3, 1975, II/172; December 23, 1975, II/165.

112
  
Videla statement:
Quoted in
La Opinion
, October 10, 1975 (cited in Seoane).

112
  
Intelligence coordination:
Roberto Viola,
Anexo I (Inteligencia) A la Directiva de Comandante Teneral del Ejercito Nro 404/75 (Lucha Contra la Subversion
), October 28, 1975, 10, which designates the 601 Intelligence Battalion as the center of “reunion” of all other intelligence units; and Jorge Videla,
Directiva del Comandante General de Ejercito Nro 404/75 (Lucha contra la Subversion
), October 28, 1975, 2. The latter refers to SIDE as an “element under functional control” of the army. See also James Blystone, “Organizational Chart of ‘601,’” attached to memo dated February 6, 1980 (Argentina Project).

113
  
Malloco raid:
Interviews with Pascal, Beausire, and another Mirista present, Martin Hernández. DINA director Contreras described the raid in detail in a January 2, 1976, declaration to a Chilean investigating judge. Document in author’s possession.

114
  
Boomerang:
DINA released some details of the purported plan but embellished it as a plot to assassinate President Pinochet and other high government officials. MIR leaders deny such a plan called “Boomerang” existed, as described publicly by DINA. How much of the plan was real and how much was DINA propaganda has been difficult to establish. MIR leaders like Andrés Pascal discounted the plan’s importance, but a contemporary intelligence report found in the Arancibia files indicates that Argentine and Chilean security forces took it seriously. It is unlikely the intelligence agencies were conveying propaganda to one another in secret reports exchanged among themselves. See “Material de Intercambio y Solicitud de Información,” Buenos Aires, August 18, 1976, De: L.F.A./ A: A.D.F. Baires (Arancibia Collection: This document could be found only in González transcription.). See also IA/103, July 23, 1976, which refers to the report. Arancibia also reported earlier in 1975 about a planned MIR, ERP, ELN, Tupamaro offensive “Operativo Altiplano” against Bolivia. Arancibia Collection, February 14, 1975, IB/345–346. The report describes a “summit” meeting of guerrilla leaders in Salta province September 15–18, 1973.

114
  
Captured map:
A copy appeared in
El Mercurio
, November 11, 1975.

115
  
Argentine coordination: El Mercurio
, November 11, 1975. An Arancibia Collection document, August 18, 1976 (transcription by Mónica González), describes two joint operations between October 15 and November 15, involving DINA and the Argentine army and air force in the southern border area of Lonquimay Pass.

115
  
Roundups:
Arancibia Collection document, October 31, 1975, IB/177–178.

115
  
Claudet disappearance:
The Claudet disappearance is under investigation in France. In December 2001, French investigating Judge Roger Le Loire requested the extradition of retired Colonel José Osvaldo Riveiro, to face charges in Claudet’s disappearance. Riveiro was briefly detained in Argentina, then released. There is
another twist to Rawson’s pursuit of Claudet. According to former comrades, Claudet had a girlfriend in Buenos Aires. In 2002, when the case resurfaced because of Judge Le Loire’s extradition request, an Argentine reporter tried to interview the girlfriend. To the reporter’s astonishment, she found that Riveiro was living with the woman who had been Claudet’s girlfriend twenty-six years earlier. The relationship obviously raises the possibility that the woman may have been working as a double agent for Rawson in 1975 and successfully infiltrated the MIR/JCR apparatus in Buenos Aires.

116
  
Telex on Claudet capture:
There are three Arancibia Collection documents on the capture, the memorandum (IA/168–170), a draft telegram (IB/171)—both dated November 17—and the undated telegram as sent by the embassy (IB/172). The transcription is from the draft, which is clearer.

116
  
Cocktail of the 26th:
Arancibia Collection, Memorandum 74-J, November 21, 1975, IA/165–67.

117
  
Carlos Mena:
Documentos del Tribunal de Russell, 1976, p. 327. According to Martín Sivak,
Asesinato de Juan José Torres
, 105, Mena was in Buenos Aires a few days before the assassination of former president Juan José Torres.

118
  
Names of those present at Condor meeting:
Casas, Mena, Fons, Guanes, and Contreras are listed as signatories to the final
“Acta de Clausura”
or Final Resolution (document in author’s possession). Fons, in a telephone interview, said there were at least fifteen officers present, including the unnamed Uruguayan air force officer.

118
  
Chile’s report:
The Condor Agenda says the report was to be presented the morning of November 26, 1975 (“Primera Reunión de Trabajo de Inteligencia Nacional”: Paraguay Archive 22:0155–22:0165). Arancibia refers to the report as a document that has been delivered to 601 operative Rawson, in Memorandum 78-J, December 11, 1975, IA/159–160 (Arancibia Collection).

118
  
U.S. intelligence on JCR plan:
Santiago 1965, March 11, 1976 (Dinges FOIA release). Other U.S. intelligence documents refer explicitly to information obtained from “recent interrogations,” which U.S. officials at the time understood to include savage torture.

118
  
Argentine report: Apendice 1 (Síntesis de su origen y evolución. Doctrina—OPM PRT-ERP y JCR) al Anexo 1 (Inteligencia) a la Directiva del Comandante General del Ejército Nro 404/75 (Lucha contra la subversión
), dated October 28, 1975. This and other intelligence documents were obtained from military sources during the 1986 trials in Argentina, and are archived at the
Centro
de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS). The report quotes Enríquez as comparing the JCR to Lenin’s “Zimmerwald” strategy at the time of the Russian Revolution. I talked to three people present at the meeting: Andrés Pascal, Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, and Luis Efraín Martínez Platero. Their recollections of the decisions taken match the information contained in the intelligence report.

119
  
Paraguay reports:
“Informe No. 64,” October 20, 1975, 21:1578–81; and “Informe No. 65,” October 22, 1975, 21:1558–59, both signed by Guanes (Paraguay
Archive). The October 22 document refers to information received from “the Security aide of the US Embassy in our country, Mr. McWade.” Report titled
“VIIa Conferencia Bilateral de Inteligencia Paraguay-Argentina: Exposición a Cargo de la Delegación del Ejercito Paraguayo, Año 1975”
(internal references date the document as later than July 1975), 46:1344–77 (Paraguay Archive).

119
  
Intercontinental leadership:
Condor Agenda, op. cit.

119
  
CIA assessment of MIR:
CIA (untitled), Directorate of Operations, November 26, 1975 (Chile Project).

120
  
Go to Australia:
Senate Report Activities of Certain Foreign Intelligence Agencies, op. cit., 15.

120
  
Eliminate enemies:
Interview with retired Colonel José Fons, October 2001.

120
  
Party:
Contreras mentioned the location of the party in a published interview. The DINA installation bore the name Cuartel Malloco—no relation to the Malloco farm where the MIR-DINA battle occurred. Chilean investigative reporter Mónica González interviewed an officer present at the party, who told her about the girls and showed her pictures of the party. Author’s interviews with Mónica González, and her article in
La Nación
, November 13, 1992.

121
  
Organization of Condor:
Our knowledge of the structure and operations of Condor, as agreed at the meeting and expanded at two additional meetings in 1976, must be gleaned from a variety of sources, including: the Condor Agenda and Condor Acta, op. cit., the description of FBI agent Robert Scherrer, whose reports and interviews with the author provided the first description of Condor in 1979, and recently declassified documents from the CIA, DIA, and the State Department.

121
  
CIA and FBI participated:
Contreras statement to Chilean Supreme Court, 1979.

121
  
Computers:
Two former CIA officials who served many years in Latin America said in separate interviews that such support was typical of operations they were familiar with and would have been provided through an outside company under contract with the CIA.

122
  
Condor numbers:
Interview with Scherrer; telex message “From Condor 1 To Condor 4,” April 4, 1976 (Paraguay Archive 132:2129), CIA document February 14, 1978 (Chile Project) for Ecuador’s joining, and Chilean document “Secret” April 14, 1978, letter from Colonel Jeronimo Pantoja, chief of CNI (the organization that succeeded DINA in 1977) to deputy minister of foreign affairs, for Peru’s joining Condor.