Operation
Condor was a covert, multinational “black operations” program organized
by six Latin American states (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Paraguay, and Uruguay, later joined by Ecuador and Peru), with
logistical, financial, and intelligence support from Washington.In the
Cold War climate of the 1960s and ’70s, when U.S. leaders and Latin
American militaries regarded popular movements and political dissidents
as “internal enemies,” any methods were considered legitimate in the
“war against subversion.” In fact, many of these new social movements
were indigenous nationalist, leftist, socialist, or radically democratic
forces fighting to represent the voiceless and the marginalized.As
leftist and nationalist leaders won elections throughout Latin America
in the 1960s and early 1970s, and new revolutionary and progressive
movements gained strength, U.S. security strategists feared a
communist-inspired threat to U.S. economic and political interests in
the hemisphere. Local elites similarly feared that their traditional
political dominance and wealth were at risk. Washington poured enormous
resources into the inter-American security system, of which Condor was a
top-secret part, to mobilize and unify the militaries in order to
prevent leftist leaders from taking power and to control and destroy
leftist and popular movements in Latin America. Anticommunism and
“preventing another Cuba” were the national security priorities of the
U.S. in Latin America.The reigning
national security doctrine incorporated counterinsurgency strategies and
concepts such as “hunter-killer” programs and secret, “unconventional”
techniques such as subversion, sabotage, and terrorism to defeat foes.
Much of counterinsurgency doctrine is classified, but scholars have
documented many of its key components. Michael McClintock, for example,
analyzed a classified U.S. Army Special Forces manual of December 1960
Counter-Insurgency Operations, one of the earliest to mention
explicitly, in its section “Terror Operations,” the use of
counterinsurgent terror as a legitimate tactic. He cites other secret
U.S. army special operations handbooks from the 1960s that endorsed
“counterterror,” including assassination and abduction, in certain
situations. One March 1961 article in Military Review stated, “Political
warfare, in short, is warfare…[that] embraces diverse forms of
coercion and violence including strikes and riots, economic sanctions,
subsidies for guerrilla or proxy warfare and, when necessary, kidnapping
or assassination of enemy elites.” In short, “disappearance” was a key
element of counterinsurgency doctrine.
L.J.'s Obsessions 