RIGHTS-LATIN AMERICA:
‘Operation Condor’ Was
No Mystery to Washington
By Ángel Páez
LIMA, (IPS) - The
intelligence services of
Peru and Argentina kept
Washington informed in
real time about a 1980
joint clandestine
operation in which four
alleged members of
Argentina’s Montoneros
guerrilla movement were
"disappeared," according
to documents
declassified in the
United States.
The incident forms part
of the case opened in
December by Italian
Judge Luisianna Figliola,
who issued arrest
warrants for those
responsible for this and
other actions carried
out in the framework of
Operation Condor, a
coordinated plan among
the military governments
that ruled Argentina,
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Paraguay and Uruguay in
the 1970s and 1980s,
aimed at tracking down,
capturing, torturing and
eliminating left-wing
opponents.
Townsend B. Friedman,
political officer at the
U.S. Embassy in Buenos
Aires, revealed in a
secret Aug. 19, 1980
memo to Claus Ruser, the
ambassador’s number two
man, details about the
operation involving the
supposed Montoneros in
Lima, and the fatal
outcome.
In that memo, which has
now been declassified
thanks to the efforts of
the National Security
Archive, an independent
Washington-based
non-governmental
research institute,
Friedman told his
superior that an
Argentine intelligence
official had provided
them with details of the
Lima operation on Jun.
16, 1980.
The date is key: the
joint action by the
Batallón 601, a special
Argentine army
intelligence unit, and
Peru’s Army Intelligence
Service (SIE) was
recorded four days
earlier, and the
purported Montoneros
were turned over by
Peruvian agents on Jun.
17 to Bolivian military
personnel, in the
presence of agents from
Argentina.
The documents show that
the U.S. government was
fully aware of what was
happening, at the time
it was occurring, and
that it knew ahead of
time that the alleged
Montoneros would be
killed.
"A member of an
Argentine intelligence
service who has been
quite reliable in these
matters told the (U.S.)
Embassy that the four
individuals were
apprehended in Peru,
that they were still
being held there but
that they would be
expelled to Bolivia from
where they would be
handed over to
Argentina; once in
Argentina they would be
interrogated and then
disappeared," Friedman
reported to Ruser.
The capture in Lima and
forced disappearance of
Noemí Gianetti de
Molfino, a member of the
Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo Argentine human
rights group, María Inés
Raverta and Julio César
Ramírez was planned by
Batallón 601 after the
seizure in Argentina of
Federico Frías, who was
going to take part in
Lima in a meeting with
high-level members of
the Montoneros, the
armed branch of the
leftist wing of
Argentina’s Peronist
party.
After he was brutally
tortured, Frías was
taken by his captors to
Peru, where he had
agreed to tell them the
names and addresses of
supposed guerrillas,
according to the
testimony of a former
Peruvian agent who took
part in the operation,
which appears in the
book "Muerte en el
Pentagonito" (Death in
the Little Pentagon: The
Secret Killing Fields of
the Peruvian Army) by
journalist Ricardo Uceda.
According to the
declassified Aug. 19,
1980 memo, the U.S.
ambassador to Argentina
at the time, Harry W.
Shlaudeman, spoke of the
case of the supposed "Montoneros"
with General Pedro
Richter, at the time
prime minister, minister
of war and commander of
the Peruvian army.
"Peruvian Prime Minister
Richter Prada told
Ambassador Shlaudeman in
July (1980, a month
after the kidnappings)
that the Argentines had
been expelled to Bolivia
and that he believed the
Bolivians had probably
handed them over to the
Argentines," Friedman
told Ruser.
"In addition, (Richter)
revealed to Ambassador
Shlaudeman that he had
been in personal touch
with Argentine Army
Commander (Leopoldo
Fortunato) Galtieri on
the matter.
"Galtieri had informed
Richter that there could
be ‘an interesting
development’ in the case
early the week of July
14. Richter suggested to
Ambassador Shlaudeman
that Galtieri’s comment
might foreshadow a live
appearance of the three
Montoneros who the
Peruvians claimed they
handed over to the
Bolivians," the memo
adds.
The "interesting
development" came to
light on Jul. 21, 1980,
when the murdered body
of Gianetti de Molfino,
one of the women
kidnapped in Lima, was
found in a hotel in
Madrid. Nothing was ever
heard of again about
Raverta, Ramírez or
Frías. The general, who
is now dead, became the
head of Argentina’s
military junta in
November of the
following year.
Shlaudeman had close
ties with the Peruvian
dictatorship of General
Francisco Morales
Bermúdez (1975-1980), as
confirmed by the
declassified documents.
When the alleged
Montoneros were abducted
in Lima, he was already
in Buenos Aires.
The path followed by
Shlaudeman’s career is
particularly
interesting. He was U.S.
State Department Deputy
Chief of Mission in
Chile from 1969 to 1973,
during which time the
coup d’etat that
overthrew socialist
president Salvador
Allende (1970-1973),
ushering in a 17-year
dictatorship, was being
planned.
He then served as State
Department Deputy
Assistant Secretary for
Inter-American Affairs,
from 1973 to 1975, under
President Richard Nixon;
in 1977 he was appointed
ambassador to Peru; and
in 1980 he became
ambassador to Argentina,
a post he held until
1983, when democracy was
restored in that
country.
In 1992, he received the
Presidential Medal of
Freedom from George
Bush, the current U.S.
president’s father.
The June 1980 operation
in Lima was neither the
first nor the only one
carried out as the
result of coordination
between the de facto
military regimes of Peru
and Argentina --
something that
Shlaudeman was clearly
aware of.
According to another
declassified secret
document, dated Jul. 11,
1977, Shlaudeman
reported the Apr. 12,
1977 kidnapping of
Argentine citizen Carlos
Alberto Maguid, who had
been granted political
asylum in Peru, to then
U.S. Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance.
Shlaudeman told Vance
that a United Nations
High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR)
official, Lone Hogel,
had informed him that
Maguid had been seized
by members of the
Peruvian military in
coordination with agents
from Argentina.
The Peruvian government,
"in the persons of the
minister of the Interior
(General Luis Cisneros
Vizquerra) and the son
of president Morales
Bermúdez, has denied
that any agency of the
(government) was
responsible for his
disappearance,"
Shlaudeman wrote, before
stating that Hogel had
accurate information on
the case.
"Hogel said that it was
her personal opinion,
based on anonymous but
apparently
well-documented letters,
that Maguid was arrested
by the Servicio de
Inteligencia Nacional
(SIN)," perhaps at the
urging of the Argentine
government, and that he
was being held somewhere
in Peru, Shlaudeman
wrote to Vance.
The cases of Maguid, as
well as those of
Gianetti de Molfino,
Raverta, Ramírez and
Frías, were not isolated
ones, but formed part of
a coordinated strategy
by the military
intelligence services of
the South American
dictatorships. This is
made clear by a joint
Jun. 25, 1980 report by
the U.S. embassies in
Argentina and Peru,
drafted a week after the
kidnapping of Gianetti
de Molfino and the
others in Lima.
"This incident is not
unique. In recent years
there have been several
similar cases that
attest to a high degree
of cooperation among the
intelligence and
security agencies of the
southern South American
countries and to their
tendency to resort to
illegal means in
treating suspected
subversives," says the
document.
Nevertheless, U.S.
authorities continue to
deny that they were
aware of the coordinated
criminal activities
committed under
Operation Condor.
In 2005, J. Patrice
McSherry, a political
science professor at
Long Island University
in New York, published a
revealing document in
her book "Predatory
States: Operation Condor
and Covert War in Latin
America".
The document was a
declassified memo by
James Blystone, a former
regional security
officer (RSO) in the
U.S. embassy in
Argentina, in which he
reported to his
superiors that an
Argentine intelligence
source had informed him
of the kidnapping of
four "Montoneros" in
Lima, and had told him
that they would be
"disappeared."
"Clearly, the RSO (Blystone)
had been briefed on a
top-secret Condor
operation involving the
intelligence services of
three separate countries
(Argentina, Bolivia and
Peru); he was accepted
as a trusted member of
Condor's inner circle,"
wrote McSherry.
Blystone wasted no time
responding. In January
2006, he published his
version of the events in
the "Foreign Service
Journal", in an article
titled "The Domino
Effect of Improper
Declassification".
"During the time that I
was in Argentina
(1978-1980)…I stumbled
onto the fact that the
Argentine security
services were carrying
out some operations in
neighbouring countries.
But I do not recall ever
hearing the term
‘Operation Condor’ used,
either there (Buenos
Aires) or in Santiago,
by any of my contacts or
embassy colleagues," the
former foreign service
officer wrote.
But Blystone could have
asked Shlaudeman, who
was perfectly well
informed of Operation
Condor, as shown, for
example, by an Aug. 30,
1976 report he sent from
Chile to then secretary
of state Henry Kissinger
on the characteristics
and scope of the
coordination between
intelligence and
security agencies in the
Southern Cone region.
There is also the Oct.
8, 1976 declassified
briefing from Shlaudeman
to Kissinger in which he
reports on a meeting
with Colonel Manuel
Contreras, the powerful
chief of the now
dissolved National
Directorate of
Intelligence (DINA) --
the Chilean
dictatorship’s secret
police -- and the true
head of Operation
Condor.
"As expected, Contreras
denied that Operation
Condor has any other
purpose than the
exchange of
intelligence," says the
cable.
But the U.S. government
knew that Contreras was
lying. "Operation
Condor" had already
taken off on its death
flight. |
