ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN News * Analysis * Research * Action _______________________________ SPECIAL EDITION November 4, 1999 * * * ______________________________________________________________________________ BUSH, PINOCHET & OPERATION CONDOR ______________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1. iF MAGAZINE [US]: Bush & the Condor Mystery. 2. THE GUARDIAN [London]: UN Urged to Save Vital Archives of Pinochet's Terror. * * * iF MAGAZINE The Consortium For Independent Journalism Suite 102-231 2200 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA 22201 Web: http://www.consortiumnews.com Tel: (703) 920-1580 E-mail: ifmagazine@aol.com - September/October 1999 - ----- ____________________________________________________________________ BUSH & THE CONDOR MYSTERY ____________________________________________________________________ By Robert Parry - October 5, 1999 - http://www.consortiumnews.com/100599b.html Newly released U.S. government documents reveal that George Bush's CIA knew more about Chile's role in an international assassination ring, code-named Condor, than Bush and the agency disclosed to FBI agents investigating a Condor terrorist bombing in Washington, D.C., in 1976. On June 30, the Clinton administration released several documents about Operation Condor in response to demands from American researchers and requests from Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, who is seeking to extradite Chile's former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and put him on trial for crimes against humanity. The new documents suggest that the CIA and its then-director, George Bush, withheld information that could have helped the FBI in its investigation of a terrorist car-bombing in Washington that killed Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier and American co-worker Ronni Moffitt on Sept. 21, 1976. The records show U.S. intelligence was well aware that Pinochet's government in Chile had organized seven South American military dictatorships into Operation Condor, a cross-border assassination ring to hunt down leftists. But instead of sharing that information with federal criminal investigators, Bush's CIA withheld it -- and even diverted suspicion away from Pinochet's junta. According to the new documents, the CIA was aware that the seven Condor nations were plotting international assassinations in the weeks before the Letelier-Moffitt car-bombing. The CIA issued a series of internal reports about Condor activities and cited the possibility of "government planned and directed assassinations within and outside the territory of Condor members." That knowledge prompted meetings between Condor-nation leaders and U.S. ambassadors who advised that cross-border assassinations could "exacerbate public world criticism." Bush's CIA was to make a "parallel approach" to Chile's intelligence service, DINA, but the results were not disclosed. [For details on the new documents, see Peter Kornbluh's "Chile Declassified" article in The Nation, Aug. 9/16, 1999.] The Clinton administration refused to release information about what was said at those U.S.-Condor meetings on the grounds that the 23-year-old Letelier-Moffitt murder case is still active. That decision likely means that the actions of the CIA and the extent of Bush's personal involvement in Operation Condor will remain secret for the foreseeable future. Bush's role on the periphery of this double homicide has been known -- but not clarified -- for more than two decades. Prior to the Letelier-Moffitt bombing, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay alerted Bush that two DINA agents were seeking to penetrate the United States with visas using false names. Supposedly, the agents were headed to CIA headquarters for meetings. Bush referred the matter to his deputy, Gen. Vernon Walters, who disavowed knowledge of any planned meetings. The visas were canceled, but one of the DINA agents, Michael Townley, simply altered his plans and entered the United States anyway. Working with anti-Castro Cubans, Townley then traveled to Washington, planted a bomb under Letelier's car and exploded it as the car traveled down Embassy Row, one of the most tightly guarded areas of Washington. The bomb killed Letelier, a persistent critic of the Pinochet government, along with Moffitt who was riding to work with him. That night, Sen. James Abourezk, a Letelier friend, found himself sitting near Bush at a state dinner at the Jordanian Embassy. Distraught about the murders, Abourezk asked the CIA director to commit the spy agency in the effort "to find the bastards who killed" Letelier. Bush vowed to help and added, obliquely, "we are not without assets in Chile." But Bush's CIA offered little assistance to the murder investigation, despite the CIA's knowledge of the mysterious DINA mission and of Condor's assassination plans. "Nothing the agency gave us helped us break this case," said federal prosecutor Eugene Propper. The first evidence about Operation Condor came not from the CIA but from FBI agents in South America. Rather than assist the probe, Bush's CIA appears to have gone to some lengths to help DINA divert attention away from the real assassins. The CIA leaked an analysis to Newsweek that "the Chilean secret police were not involved [in the Letelier-Moffitt car-bombing]. The agency reached its decision because the bomb was too crude to be the work of experts and because the murder, coming while Chilean rulers were wooing U.S. support, could only damage the Santiago regime." [Newsweek, Oct. 11, 1976] Despite the CIA's analysis, federal prosecutors eventually established that DINA had carried out the murders. After complex negotiations, Townley was extradited to the United States and served a prison term for his role in the killings. Despite suspicions that Pinochet masterminded the terrorist attack, the U.S. government made no known effort to bring the dictator to justice. Last fall, when Pinochet went to England for back surgery, however, Spanish judge Garzon persuaded British authorities to arrest the aging general. Since then, Pinochet has battled requests for his extradition to Spain and has enlisted the support of influential world leaders. One of the advocates for Pinochet's freedom has been George Bush, the former CIA director and later president. In his letter to the British government, Bush called the case against the former dictator "a travesty of justice" and urged that Pinochet be sent home to Chile "as soon as possible." iF MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS Consortiumnews.com is a free Web. But we urge those who wish to support our investigative journalism to subscribe to our print publication, iF Magazine, for only $25 a year (six issues) or buy Robert Parry's new book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' for $19.95. Or get both one year of iF and the book for a package price of $35. Orders can be placed with Visa/Mastercard by calling 1-800-738-1812 or 703-920-1802. Or by check to The Media Consortium, Suite 102-231, 2200 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201. Add $15 for non-U.S. orders. ***** AFIB EDITOR'S NOTE: Although Argentine journalist Stella Calloni first broke the story of the existence of Operation Condor's "Horror Archives" in 1994, "mainstream" media chose to ignore potentially explosive -- and embarassing -- revelations of U.S. government complicity in South America's "dirty wars." For background see: Stella Calloni, "The Horror Archives of Operation Condor," Covert Action Quarterly, Washington, D.C., Number 50, Fall 1994, http://www.covertaction.org/ ____________________________________________________________________ UN URGED TO SAVE VITAL ARCHIVES OF PINOCHET'S TERROR Documents could hold key to prosecution of ex-dictator ____________________________________________________________________ THE GUARDIAN International News Thursday, 4 November 1999 http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,99462,00.html Jon Henley in Paris Five tons of archives that could hold the key to a successful prosecution of the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, may be lost unless action is taken fast to place them under international protection, a leading human rights lawyer said yesterday. Martin Almada, a Paraguayan lawyer and former political prisoner, discovered the so-called "archives of terror" and has handed parts of them to European judges investigating charges of genocide, torture and terrorism against General Pinochet. But he said vital evidence was disappearing because the archives are unguarded. "These documents are freely accessible every working day from 7am to midday to researchers, but also to any eventual saboteurs," he said. "Some have already disappeared, like a booklet on how to keep torture victims alive. But it's impossible to tell how much has gone, because only about 5% of the archives have been studied." The 700,000 files, stored on the eighth floor of the supreme court in the Paraguayan capital, Asuncion, provide a detailed history of Operation Condor, the top secret organisation set up by Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Brazil in the mid-1970s to track down and eliminate political opponents. The Spanish judge behind the arrest of Gen Pinochet, who has twice interviewed Mr Almada and received copies of several of his documents, said yesterday he also had enough evidence to charge members of Argentina's former military government with "dirty war" atrocities and seek their arrests. Judge Baltasar Garzon accused 12 former junta members - including the former military president, Leopoldo Galtieri - and more than 80 other military officers of genocide, torture and terrorism during the 1976-83 dictatorship, and issued international arrest warrants for them. Some of Mr Almada's documents were also cited by a French investigating magistrate, Roger Le Loire, in a recent formal request to the Chilean authorities to interview 56 people there. They included the alleged torturers and murderers of five French nationals who "disappeared" during the bloody political repression of the Pinochet regime. "These documents are a motherlode," said Peter Kornbluh of the US National Security Archives in Washington. "They are the first full archive of political repression ever discovered. There is some extraordinary material in them on Operation Condor - some of it highly relevant to the Pinochet proceedings - and it needs to be protected." Among the documents is a letter from the former head of the Chilean secret police, Manuel Contreras, asking Gen Pinochet for $600,000 to help him "neutralise the enemies of the junta abroad, particularly in Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, the United States, France and Italy." The files also contain documents from the naturalisation process in Paraguay of the notorious Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele, and 10,000 photographs of political detainees of many different nationalities and 1,888 identity papers of people now listed as "missing". Mr Almada told the French daily Libération that the archives, which he discovered nearly eight years ago in a disused torture chamber outside Asuncion, showed that "Pinochet wanted to create an organisation similar to Interpol, except for hunting down and exterminating dissidents". He said he was now so worried about the conditions in which they were being kept that he had asked the UN to take them under its protection. He was begging European universities and NGOs to "send as many researchers and students as they can to examine them, photocopy them, microfilm them - anything to ensure they are safe." Sophie Thonon, a lawyer for the family of one French victim, said she had seen several of Mr Almada's documents. "They prove beyond any doubt the extremely close collaboration, under the command of Chile, between all the repressive forces and agencies of the Latin American dictatorships of that period," she said. "They also show beyond doubt what Contreras has always said - that Pinochet was the man who really ran the Chilean secret police, and hence Condor, and that he met him every morning to discuss all these many individual cases. The line of responsibility through to Pinochet is completely clear." Gen Pinochet is appealing against a London magistrate's ruling last month that he could be extradited to Spain. 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