Chile and Operation Condor. The refusal by Foreign Affairs to print Kenneth Maxwell's response to William D.
Rogers' letter ("Crisis Prevention," March/April 2004 issue) is not only unjust to Maxwell but, more importantly, to the truth regarding an egregious act of international terrorism that took place on the streets of Washington D.C. As the authors of two books that document what Henry Kissinger's office knew and what it did and didn't do about the network of Southern Cone secret police operatives known as Operation Condor, we believe that the Rogers letter should not be allowed to stand uncorrected. The focus of the Rogers letter is on the September 21, 1976, car-bombing on Massachusetts Avenue, carried out by agents of Gen. Pinochet's DINA, that took the lives of former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Rogers dismisses Maxwell's assertion that "this was a tragedy that might have been prevented" and scoffs: "by whom, one might ask?
" Chile and Operation Condor. The refusal by Foreign Affairs to print Kenneth Maxwell's response to William D.
Rogers' letter ("Crisis Prevention," March/April 2004 issue) is not only unjust to Maxwell but, more importantly, to the truth regarding an egregious act of international terrorism that took place on the streets of Washington D.C. As the authors of two books that document what Henry Kissinger's office knew and what it did and didn't do about the network of Southern Cone secret police operatives known as Operation Condor, we believe that the Rogers letter should not be allowed to stand uncorrected. The focus of the Rogers letter is on the September 21, 1976, car-bombing on Massachusetts Avenue, carried out by agents of Gen. Pinochet's DINA, that took the lives of former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Rogers dismisses Maxwell's assertion that "this was a tragedy that might have been prevented" and scoffs: "by whom, one might ask?
" Kissinger cable heightens suspicions about 1976 Operation Condor killings. A newly declassified document has added to long-standing questions about whether Henry Kissinger, while secretary of State, halted a U.S. plan to curb a secret program of international assassinations by South American dictators.
The document, a set of instructions cabled from Kissinger to his top Latin American deputy, ended efforts by U.S. diplomats to warn the governments of Chile, Uruguay and Argentina against involvement in the covert plan known as Operation Condor, according to Peter Kornbluh, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a private research organization that uncovered the document and made it public Saturday.
In the cable, dated Sept. 16, 1976, Kissinger rejected delivering a proposed warning to the government of Uruguay about Condor operations and ordered that "no further action be taken on this matter" by the State Department. "The instructions were never rescinded," Kissinger said in his statement. The Letelier bombing occurred the next day. Condor legacy haunts South America. Of all the unresolved issues from the dark days of military rule in Latin America, Operation Condor is among the most sinister.
As many as six South American regimes took part in the joint campaign to hunt down and kill their left-wing opponents. Although the conspiracy now dates back nearly 30 years, the consequences continue to cast a shadow over the present-day governments of the region. A Chilean court has now ruled that former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet is not mentally fit to be prosecuted over the operation. But two other ex-leaders in the region are still being pursued by judges on related charges, as efforts continue to find out exactly who was responsible. Operation Condor was founded in secret and remained a mystery until after democracy had returned to South America. According to documents later discovered in Paraguay, it was established at a military intelligence meeting in Chile on 25 November 1975 - Gen Pinochet's 60th birthday. Murder plots Terror archives. OPERATION CONDOR.