The Condor Years (52 page)

184
  
Respect for Popper:
The author also must acknowledge a debt of respect and gratitude. In 1977, Popper and Boyatt intervened to prevent the Pinochet regime from executing a decree of expulsion from Chile against the author. I later learned from Chilean officials that the expulsion was ordered by Contreras because of my writing on DINA—much of which at that time was under a pseudonym or without a byline. That an order by Contreras was countermanded was an early sign that Contreras’s hold on power was weakening.

186
  
Meeting in Santiago:
Interview with Thomas Boyatt. Popper’s cable, dated August 24, 1976, bore the identifying number “Santiago 8210” and was in reply to “State 209192,” the designation on Kissinger’s cable. The numbers become indispensable guides to the paper trail about Operation Condor and the Letelier assassination in the coming weeks.

187
  
Bolivia response:
Stedman conveyed Bolivia’s request for intelligence in La Paz 3657, “High level Bolivian Concern about World-wide Communist advances and implications for the Southern Cone of South America,” May 11, 1976 (Dinges FOIA Release). “Minister [of Interior Colonel Juan Pereda] indicated that he and the president [Hugo Banzer] hope that Washington will provide a global analysis from the U.S. point of view of the actions and plans of world Communism based on our intelligence. The minister also hopes that Bolivia can receive an expanded
flow of information on world communism actions and plans.” Stedman recommended that State should provide the information “from INR or others within the U.S. intelligence community.” Stedman’s response to Kissinger’s authorization is La Paz 6758, August 26, 1976 (Chile Project).

188
  
Approach to Stroessner:
Author’s interview with George W. Landau, September 26, 2001. Landau was named ambassador to Chile in late 1977 and presided over the arduous negotiations leading to the expulsion of DINA agent Michael Townley, whose testimony led to the indictment of Contreras, Espinoza, Fernández Larios, and five Cuban exiles charged with assisting Townley in the Letelier bombing. On the passport episode, he said, “I must say that neither the Department nor I had any inkling that this whole episode was connected to the Letelier murder. Because they wouldn’t have sent me to Chile, that would not have made great sense to send me to Chile. They didn’t know, and I didn’t know. This was the interesting thing. It came as a great surprise to us.”

188
  
Embassies actions on Kissinger instruction:
Author’s interviews with DCM Maxwell Chaplin and political counselor Wayne Smith for Argentina, DCM James C. Haahr for Montevideo.

189
  
Siracusa meeting with Méndez:
Montevideo 3451, September 15, 1976, “Meeting with President Aparicio Méndez” (Dinges FOIA Release). Hill meeting with Videla: Buenos Aires 6276, September 24, 1976, “Ambassador Discusses U.S.-Argentine Relations with President Videla” (Argentina Project).

189
  
“Take no further action”:
San Jose 4526. This document, a key part of the investigation of U.S. actions regarding Operation Condor, has not been included in any of the collections of declassified documents and was not provided in response to any of the authors of more than 60 FOIA requests. It was discovered by National Security Archive senior analyst Carlos Osorio in a search in State Department microfilm archives of past FOIA releases. Apparently, the document was declassified in 1991, as the sole release to an unidentified researcher who requested documents on Henry Kissinger and Operation Condor. William Luers, in several interviews, said he has no memory of the cable exchange. His cable, referenced as State 231654, remains classified.

190
  
Cuban exile terrorism:
For a list of terrorist actions, by CNM, Omega 7, Zero, CORU, and other Cuban groups operating at this time, see Dinges and Landau, 240 and 252n.

192
  
CIA and Bush actions:
CIA, Memorandum to DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] August 23, 1976 [sic]; CIA Memorandum, “Contacts with Justice Department Officials Concerning Letelier Murder,” October 12, 1976 (Chile Project).

193
  
CIA points to Pinochet:
CIA Directorate of Operations cable 314/02794-76, October 6, 1976 (Chile Project). This document had been released to the Letelier family in 1980, but all references to the source’s statements about Pinochet and Chilean involvement in the murder were redacted.

193
  
Martyr theory stories:
See Dinges and Landau, 243–44. Stories propounding
the theory included
Washington Post
, November 1;
Newsweek
, October 11;
New York Times
, October 12. The martyr theory as an explanation for leftists killing Letelier was suggested in a State Department cable to Secretary Kissinger, who was traveling abroad, recounting a meeting with Chilean Ambassador Manuel Trucco. State 234417, “Exdis for the Secretary through Habib from ARA-Luers,” September 22, 1976.

195
  
Scherrer knowledge of Condor:
Author’s interviews in 1979; Condor cable dated September 28, 1976, the text of which was first published in Dinges and Landau, in 1980, declassified as of March 1981, when a copy is published in “U.S. Economic Sanctions Against Chile,” Hearing of Interamerican Affairs Subcommittee, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, March 10, 1981, 63 ff.

196
  
Condor connection post-assassination:
Briefing Memorandum, Shlaudeman to Habib, “Operation Condor,” September 25, 1976 (Chile Project and FOIA release to writer Lucy Komisar, which contains material redacted in the Chile Project release). In plainer English, the memo means that CIA had already distributed Condor material to FBI at the time of the original CIA reports. It should not be read to mean that the CIA called attention to Condor and its possible relevance after the assassination. Whatever CIA dissemination there may have been before the assassination, the FBI officials in charge of the case said they first learned about Condor from Scherrer’s report, not from the CIA.

196
  
Reinstatement of démarche:
State 246107, October 4, 1976 (Chile Project). The reference numbers in the cable are important: State 209192 is Kissinger’s démarche order August 23, and Santiago 8210 is Popper’s request for instructions August 24.

196
  
Contreras denial:
Hinchey Report, 17.

197
  
Dickens appalled:
Interview with Robert Scherrer, 1989. Dickens died in the late 1980s.

197
  
Hewson Ryan interview:
The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, interviewed by Richard Nethercut, April 27, 1988.

202
  
Hill démarche on human rights:
Buenos Aires 3462, May 25, 1976, “Request for Instructions.” State 129048, May 25, 1976, “Proposed Démarche on Human Rights” (Argentina Project).

202
  
Guzzetti dismisses concerns:
Buenos Aires 6130, September 20, 1976, “Other aspects of September 17 Conversation with Foreign Minister” (Argentina Project). Kissinger’s conversation with Guzzetti in Santiago was first reported by Martin Edwin Andersen, “Kissinger and the Dirty War,”
The Nation
, October 31, 1987. Andersen’s article was based on a memo by Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Patricia Derian, who was told the story by Hill during a visit to Argentina in March 1977. In response to Andersen’s article, William Rogers, a close associate of Kissinger’s who served as assistant secretary for Latin America before Shlaudeman, cast doubt on the story by claiming—inaccurately—that Hill had never reported his concern about the Guzzetti-Kissinger conversation to the State
Department. In a letter prepared for Kissinger and sent to
The Nation
, Rogers writes: “Hill never told us during the last six months of 1976, while he was working the human rights issue so energetically, that you had misled Guzzetti, or that the junta was under a dangerously misguided impression about your attitude.”

204
  
Guzzetti euphoric:
“Foreign Minister Guzzetti euphoric over visit to United States,” Buenos Aires 6871, October 19, 1976 (Argentina Project).

204
  
Shlaudeman response:
State 262786, October 22, 1976, “Guzzetti’s Visit to the U.S.” (Argentina Project). There is a further wrinkle to this exchange. I found another version of the same cable, with a different concluding paragraph. The alternate version, released to an Argentine court in response to a request under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), instructs Hill to persevere in his representations. “We will continue to impress on Argentina representatives here, as we expect you to do there, that the USG regards most seriously Argentina’s international commitments to protect and promote fundamental human rights.” About Kissinger’s views, this version says that Hill should tell Guzzetti to read a recent speech on human rights given by Kissinger to the Synagogue Council of America. No explanation for the radically differing versions could be learned.

207
  
Cuban embassy support:
Cuban officials consulted by the author denied the embassy was supporting guerrilla groups in any way. A variety of other sources with direct information said there is no question that such support occurred. The sources include former Tupamaros and ERP activists in Argentina at the time, who specified that the support was not for guerrilla activity but only to help militants escape. The leftist sources confirmed information from intelligence sources. Biedma’s wife said that a Cuban embassy official “Angel” helped her and her son leave Argentina shortly before the family’s house was raided by a AAA squad in May 1975.

208
  
CIA cable on JCR:
Western Hemisphere Brief CI-WHB 76-097, June 1976 (date obtained from reference in cable to killing in Paris of Bolivian ambassador Joaquin Zenteno “last month”) (Dinges FOIA Release).

209
  
Cubans’ kidnapping:
Interview with Carlos Alzugaray, Cuban consul in Argentina at the time of the arrests. Interview in 1979 with Robert Scherrer. Townley’s trip to Buenos Aires on August 12 is confirmed by his passport in the name of Kenneth Enyart. Townley had other Cuban related business as well. He was meeting with Enrique Arancibia Clavel to coordinate the extortion-kidnapping of a Dutch banker to get money for the anti-Castro leader Guillermo Novo and his group, the Cuban Nationalist Movement, which the following month would assist him in carrying out the Letelier assassination in Washington, D.C. See Propper and Branch, op. cit., 321–33. A Miami Cuban exile group with ties to Novo’s Cuban Nationalist Movement eventually claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of the Cuban diplomats—an obviously untrue claim that echoed the similar claim in the Leighton assassination attempt.

209
  
CIA report on Biedma:
CIA, Directorate of Operations, “Argentina-Cuba: Castro Support for Local Subversion?,” September 22, 1976 (Dinges FOIA Release).

210
  
Homero Tobar Aviles:
My investigation involved piecing together information from activists in Chile, Argentina, Cuba, and Bolivia who had contact with Mauro/ Tobar. The young revolutionary was a “sergeant” in charge of an ERP guerrilla unit when he was captured.

210
  
Uruguayan team:
The group of officers also used the name OCOA,
Organismo Coordinador de Operaciones Antisubversivas.
Those identified by prisoners, in addition to Gavazzo, were Juan Manuel Cordero, Jorge Silveira, and Hugo Campos Hermida. Gavazzo and Cordero were seen by multiple witnesses and have not denied their participation in Argentina operations. Silveira and Campos Hermida, a police commissioner then assigned to narcotics duty, have denied they were in Argentina. Campos Hermida was identified by two prisoners, Washington Perez and Maria del Carmen Martínez. Campos Hermida was the only one of those accused to testified before the 1985 parliamentary commission. He presented alibi evidence that he was in Uruguay and on a trip to the United States during some of the time he was alleged to be in Argentina. In a long interview with the author, he described the Argentine operations in considerable detail, and said he learned about them from an army officer who told him he had used Campos Hermida’s identity in interrogating prisoners at Orletti. Campos Hermida’s story, while clearly self-serving, contained many concrete leads of major importance to a serious judicial investigation of the Uruguayan Condor activities in Argentina. He said in the interview he was willing to provide information to a judicial investigation, but no such investigation existed in Uruguay until after his death in November 2001.

210
  
Uruguayan SID:
Testimony in 1985 to
Comisión Investigadora sobre Situación de Personas Desaparecidas, Camara de Representantes del Uruguay
, of Julio Cesar Barboza Pla, a soldier assigned to SID in 1976, who identified the respective roles of Gavazzo, Fons and other officials participating in SID operations in 1976.

210
  
Uruguayan major:
Buenos Aires 4378, July 2, 1976, says that kidnapped refugees after release said they “recognized and could name Uruguayan security officials (plural) who are active in Buenos Aires in joint operations . . .” (Argentina Project). Buenos Aires 4844, July 23, 1976, cites an “Argentine Army source reference to a Uruguayan Army major assigned to the Uruguayan military intelligence service ‘who has been in Buenos Aires for the past several weeks cooperating with Argentine security forces in anti terrorist operations’ ” (Dinges FOIA Release). Thus, according to these documents, the United States had information and identities of Uruguayan officers working in Argentine at the time of the string of murders and kidnappings.