Operation Condor Declassified: A Case Study in International Terrorism

Marian Schlotterbeck, Yale History Department

PIER Summer Institute July 2009Latin America & the Cold War

Operation Condor coordinated joint-intelligence and repression operations between the military regimes of Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia. Peru and Ecuador later joined the alliance.

Questions for Declassified Documents• What kind of document do you have? Create a short title for the document, including agency of origin

(the creator of the document), recipient(s), date, type of document (e.g. cable, memorandum of conversation, report, etc.), and brief title.

• Briefly summarize the document’s main content. What relevance does the document have for Operation Condor?

• Why do you think this document was created? What purpose do you think it served for its creators?

• What is the relationship between the United States government and Southern Cone military regimes as articulated by this document?

• What reasoning is employed in the document? What weaknesses or biases on the part of the author are revealed?

• How does this document fit into larger narratives about Latin America and the Cold War?

• Did anything in this document surprise you? How did the document challenge your prior understanding of this history? What new questions do you have after reading this document?

Invitation by Chilean Intelligence Chief, Manuel Contreras to Paraguayan General Francisco Britez to attend the first Condor meeting.

Invitation included eleven-page agenda for first Working Meeting of National Intelligence, October 1975.

“Closing Statement of the First Inter-American Meeting of National Intelligence,” Santiago, Chile, November 28, 1975.

KISSINGER TO THE ARGENTINE GENERALS IN 1976:

"IF THERE ARE THINGS THAT HAVE TO BE DONE, YOU SHOULD

DO THEM QUICKLY"

Henry Kissinger Telelphone Conversation [Telcon] with Latin America aide Henry Schlaudeman, June 30, 1976.

U.S. Ambassador in Montevideo, Ernest Siracusa, to Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs,Henry Shlaudeman, “Trends in the Southern Cone,” July 20, 1976.

Department of State, Report on Operation Condor to Henry Kissinger, “ARA Monthly Report (July): The ‘Third World War’ and South America,” August 3, 1976.

Department of State to U.S. Embassies in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil,

and Paraguay, “Operation Condor,”

August 23, 1976.

Intelligence report by FBI legal attache, Robert Scherrer

September 28, 1976

Oral History Interview with Hewson Ryan, April 27, 1988.

Ryan served as deputy to Asst Secretary Harry Shlaudeman

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and

Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/

diplomacy/

http://www.nsarchive.orghttp://www.nsarchive.org

http://foia.state.gov/SearchColls/http://foia.state.gov/SearchColls/Search.aspSearch.asp