The Condor Years (50 page)

122
  
Encrypting machines:
See Gerardo Irusta,
Espionaje y servicios secretos en Bolivia
(La Paz, 1995, no publisher listed), 301. Irusta’s source, Interior ministry official Juan Carlos Fortun, provided copies of coded and decoded telexes from Condortel. Fortun said his boss told him, “It was a machine specially manufactured for the ‘Condor System’ by the Logistics Department of the American Central Intelligence Agency.”

123
  
Radio system:
Asunción 4451 (quoted in State 205779, October 20, 1978) (Chile Project). Colonel (R) Lloyd Gracey, who served in the U.S. military training
group in Argentina, confirmed the existence of the radio system and its use by officers. He did not know if it had been used for Condor communications, but said the U.S. military allowed users to transmit in code, which would have made such use possible.

123
  
Military attachés:
Letter from Contreras to Foreign Minister, October 3, 1974, Chilean Foreign Ministry documents in author’s possession.

127
  
Alliance:
Townley testimony to Salvi, November 24, 1992, 36, 42.

128
  
Pinochet contact with Italian fascists:
Testimony of Stefano Delle Chiaie, Appeals Court of Rome, December 5, 1995, to Judge Salvi; testimony of Vincenzo Vinciguerra, December 5, 1995, Appeals Court of Rome. Venciguerra said, “Prince Borghese, in his international contacts, going to meet, to interview and visit Pinochet, accomplished the contact of Delle Chiaie [with Chile]. . . . When he [Delle Chiaie] went to Chile, he participated in meetings at the highest level in DINA.”

129
  
Resentment against Altamirano:
Townley testimony to Salvi, November 24, 1992, 26.

130
  
DINA Exterior Department and Europe missions:
Townley testimony to Salvi, November 24, 1992, and July 1993. Testimony to Judge Servini of Carlos Labarca, a DINA driver, in Servini Evidence. Author’s interview with Carlos Altamirano, December 2001.

131
  
Townley instructions:
Townley testimony to Salvi, July 1993; and in sentencing, September 25, 1995. Delle Chiaie on payroll, passport: testimony of Carlos Labarca, and Townley testimony to Salvi.

132
  
Reproach:
Vinciguerra testimony to Salvi. Townley acknowledged his preference for such a weapon but said he didn’t remember the conversation with Vinciguerra.

132
  
Celebration in Frankfurt:
Testimony in Servini Evidence from Wolf Von Arnswaldt, a Chilean Airlines employee and DINA collaborator based in Frankfurt.

132
  
1995 trial:
Townley testified May 19, 1995.

132
  
Pinochet gave the order:
Vinciguerra testimony to Salvi, 21. Other details of Townley’s European operations can be found in Townley’s testimony to Judge Salvi, November 24, 1993, and July 9, 1994. See also Dinges and Landau, op. cit., 160–61.

133
  
$5,000 payment:
Statement by Judge Salvi in Servini Evidence, based on his interview with Vinciguerra, who was present in the meeting with Pinochet.

133
  
Pinochet’s meetings with terrorists:
Interview with one of Pinochet’s civilian aides. Townley, in statements to U.S. investigators, provided the first information about Pinochet’s meeting with Delle Chiaie in Madrid. Contreras confirmed it in testimony in Chile in 1997.

133
  
Townley’s lament:
Townley testimony to Salvi.

136
  
Massera visit:
Buenos Aires 1751, March 16, 1976, document among collection of approximately 4,000 State Department documents released in September 2002 in accordance with an order dating from two years before from Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright. Hereafter Argentina Project. Argentina eventually hired the public relations firm Burston and Marsteller.

136
  
Coup report:
State 72468, March 25, 1976 (Argentina Project).

138
  
U.S. officials attacked:
Honorary consul John Egan was killed by Montoneros, and U.S. Information Agency official Alfred Laun was wounded by an ERP commando. Defense Attaché Col. Samuel Stapleton was evacuated after receiving repeated death threats. In August 1976, Battalion 601 captured documents and several ERP operatives, who revealed under torture that they had deeply infiltrated the Army base where the U.S. military group was headquartered and had targeted Lt. Col. Lloyd Gracey, the officer assigned to intelligence training, for assassination. Buenos Aires 5082, August 4, 1976, “Targeting of and collection of Information by ERP on USMILGP Members” (Dinges FOIA Release).

140
  
Arancibia talks of the “right” and “left” methods.
He uses the term
“por derecha y por izquierda”
in two documents, December 11, 1975, IA/159, and July 7, 1978, V/238 (Arancibia Collection). U.S. intelligence document: William H. Hallman, Memorandum: “Nuts and Bolts of the Government’s Repression of Terrorism-Subversion,” August 7, 1979 (Argentina Project).

140
  
List of killed and disappeared:
National Commission on the Disappeared (
Comisión Nacional de Desaparición de Personas
)—CONADEP—also known as the Sábato Commission. Major findings were published in a book,
Nunca Mas: The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared
(New York: Farrar Straus Giraux, 1986). The Spanish edition, with the same name, was published in Buenos Aires in 1984. The book does not include the list of names of disappeared. I obtained an updated list in digital form with the help of Carlos Libenson, of the human rights research group Nunca Mas.

140
  
Battalion 601 total:
Arancibia Collection document V/238, ca July 1978, part of a larger document containing lists of people kidnapped in 1975.

140
  
“General consensus”:
Buenos Aires 2528, April 16, 1976; Buenos Aires 2288, April 6, 1976 (Argentina Collection). Press reports for the first month after the coup reported sporadic violence and few deaths.

141
  
DINA letter:
Luis Gutiérrez to L.F. Alemparte, December 23, 1975 (Arancibia Collection II/165). The letter names, in addition to Enríquez, Fernando Alarcón Ovando, “Daniel”—the code name for Claudet, who was already dead—and Ruy Mauro Marini, the number-two man in MIR, who was thought to be traveling to Argentina to meet with Enríquez.

142
  
Santucho speech:
Mattini, op. cit.

143
  
CIA report on Enríquez:
National Intelligence Daily, June 23, 1976, Directorate of Intelligence (Chile Collection). The report also says “Argentina has handed over to Chilean authorities a Brazilian political exile wanted by Santiago,” an apparent reference to Enríquez’s Brazilian colleague Regina Marcondes.

143
  
Enríquez capture:
Description of meeting is in Mattini, op. cit., 446–53. Cables on
Enríquez death: Santiago 4325, May 7, 1976; Buenos Aires 3047, May 7, 1976, and CIA Directorate of Operations, “Sec Sit Per DINA,” May 20, 1976 (Chile and Argentina Projects, Dinges FOIA Releases); CNVR report, Vol. 2, p. 596. Condor telex: interview with Luz Arce. Evidence of Enríquez presence in Chile is summarized in the CNVR report and in greater detail in a court filing by Enríquez family to the Interamerican Human Rights Commission, October 28, 1998.

144
  
UNHCR briefing:
Buenos Aires 3766, June 7, 1976 (Argentina Collection).

146
  
Uruguayan transition conversations:
Vegh Villegas revealed the conversations in testimony on October 25, 1985, to the
Comisión Investigadora Sobre Sequestro y Asesinato Perpetrados Contra los ex Legisladores Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz y Zelmar Michelini
, quoted in the Uruguayan magazine
Postdata
, May 17, 1996. Michelini’s statement to his daughter, Margarita, is from the same magazine.

146
  
Planned visit to United States:
Referred to in
La Opinión
in stories about Michelini’s death. See also Buenos Aires 2425, Montevideo 1165 and State 82853 (Argentina Project).

146
  
Taub money trafficking:
See Chapter 4, note p. 267, for transactions with ERP. For transactions with federal police, interview with Leandro Sánchez Reisse. Taub also employed several police officers in his exchange business, according to court documents.

147
  
Murder of Michelini and others:
Testimony of witnesses, including the statement attributed to Gabriela, is compiled in court records in the Camara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal de la Capital Federal (Buenos Aires) in connection with the unsuccessful attempt in 1987 to extradite officers suspected of ordering and carrying out the killings.

148
  
Uruguayan role in murders:
Campos said the liaison officer, a major who was a protégé (
“ahijado”
) of Álvarez, carried the message directly to General Videla. Another source, former Colonel Fons, said Uruguayan intelligence, SID, knew Michelini was helping Tupamaros escape Argentina.

148
  
Campos Hermida was interviewed:
Interview was at his office in Montevideo, October 12, 2001. He died after an operation for lung cancer on November 24.

149
  
Trimarchi involvement:
Interview with Leandro Sanchez Reisse, a civilian employee of Intelligence Battalion 601 between 1976 and 1980. He said he did not know the killings described to him by Trimarchi related to the Michelini murder until I pointed out the similarities between his story and the facts of the case, especially the details about the car, the radio call, and the bodies in the trunk. There is a difference in one detail: according to the police report, three bodies were found in the trunk, not two, as Sánchez Reisse remembers Trimarchi saying. Sánchez Reisse later worked as an FBI and DEA informant and testified in 1987 before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations. He said his activities in 601 did not involve violence, although he knew many of the police and military personnel carrying out
such operations. He was jailed for several years on charges of participating in a kidnapping for extortion, but in 2003 was exonerated by an Argentine federal court.

152
  
Torres political and military organizing:
Interview with Rubén Sánchez in 1996 by Martín Sivak, who provided a transcript to the author. Sivak notes that other Bolivians disputed Sanchez’s story that Torres was planning to enter Bolivia clandestinely. However, as Torres’s chief aide and the head of his operations in Bolivia, Sánchez would have been directly informed of these clandestine plans. Other accounts also support the fact that Sánchez was plotting against Banzer. See Irusta, 327–32. Quote from colleague, Sivak, 26.

152
  
Mena’s promotion:
Irusta, 337. Sivak, 105, says Mena was in Buenos Aires at the time of the Torres assassination.

152
  
Rutila’s torture:
Irusta, 346.

153
  
Stedman cables:
La Paz 3254, May 9, 1976, and La Paz 3657, May 11, 1976 (Dinges FOIA Releases). In an earlier cable, La Paz 2779, April 7, 1976, Stedman reported on a series of raids on ELN safe houses in La Paz and Cochabamba, including a raid on April 2, the day Graciela Rutila and her daughter were captured (Dinges, FOIA release).

154
  
International Brigade: Liberation
interview with International Brigade spokesman is reported in Paris 14243, May 13, 1976, and Paris 19795, July 7, 1976 (Dinges, FOIA Release). The spokesman said the gun used to kill Zenteno was also used in the attack on Captain Bartolome García Plata, the assistant military attaché of the Spanish embassy. García Plata survived the attack. According to the cable, French police established that the guns used in the two attacks “were of similar make.”

154
  
Theories of Torres and Zenteno killings:
Martínez de Hoz statement is in Buenos Aires 3664, June 3, 1976 (Dinges FOIA Release). The CIA initially portrayed Torres’s murder as “eye for an eye” retaliation for the assassination of Zenteno in Paris, in Senate Report on Activities of Certain Foreign Intelligence Agencies. The author and other investigators lean to the view that both Zenteno and Torres were killed for the same reason: to eliminate them as rivals to Banzer. Cf. Sivak, 131–158; James M. Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra,
Revolution and Reaction: Bolivia, 1964–1985
(New Brunswick, 1988), 95.

154
  
Hill cable on murders:
Buenos Aires 3664, “Body of Ex-Bolivian President Torres Found,” June 3, 1976 (Argentina Project).

157
  
CIA-Kissinger dispute:
“Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: Interim Report of the (Senate) Select Committee on Intelligence Activities,” 225–27. Kissinger said in an interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth of PBS’s
The News Hour
, “As far as we were concerned and the White House, the thing ended on October 15th.” The CIA points to a series of documents after that date in which the coup preparations are continuing with CIA help, including the delivery of the submachine guns to one group only a few hours before a second group carried out the fatal kidnapping. Leaders of both groups, General Camilo Valenzuela and retired General Roberto Viaux, were convicted by a Chilean military court for the
coup activity, which found they were working together throughout the coup plotting. Moreover, a machine gun found at the site of the kidnapping was of the same type as those provided to the plotters, although the committee investigators said they were not able to determine if it was one of the weapons supplied by the CIA. The CIA recovered all three guns and dumped them in the ocean, making it impossible to know anything about the guns except what the CIA officers said. See Seymour Hersh,
The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House
(New York: Summit, 1983), 293.