Argentine Intelligence Agencies

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Argentine Intelligence
Agencies
I. History and Organization
II. The Dirty War
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2009
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Category:Argentine intelligence agencies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Subcategories This category has the following 2 subcategories, out of 2 total.
D [+] Defunct Argentine intelligence agencies (0)
P [+] People of Argentine intelligence agencies (2)
Pages in category "Argentine intelligence agencies" The following 19 pages are in this category, out of 19 total. This list may not
reflect recent changes (learn more).
S cont.
I
C
•
Central de Reunión de
Inteligencia Militar
•
•
•
D
•
•
•
Dirección Nacional de
Inteligencia Criminal
Dirección Nacional de
Inteligencia Estratégica Militar
Dirección de Observaciones
J
Judiciales
•
•
Inteligencia de la Gendarmería
Nacional Argentina
Inteligencia de la Policía Bonaerense
Inteligencia de la Policía Federal
Argentina
Inteligencia de la Policía de Seguridad
Aeroportuaria
Inteligencia de la Prefectura Naval
Argentina
•
•
•
•
•
Servicio Federal de Lucha
contra el Narcotráfico
Servicio de Inteligencia Naval
(Argentina)
Servicio de Inteligencia de la
Fuerza Aérea (Argentina)
Servicio de Inteligencia del
Ejército (Argentina)
Sistema de Inteligencia
Nacional
U
•
E
•
Escuela Nacional de
Inteligencia
Jefatura de Inteligencia del Estado
Mayor Conjunto de las Fuerzas
Armadas
S
F
•
•
Secretaría de Inteligencia
Federal Penitentiary Service
Intelligence
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•
Unidad de Inteligencia
Financiera
Defunct agencies
Central -acional de Inteligencia (C-I)
Central -acional de Inteligencia (ational Intelligence Center, CNI) was one of the many intelligence agencies of Argentina. Its
main mission was to permanently assist and coordinate the functions and operations of all the Argentine intelligence services. The
CNI did not have an official facility, but instead worked on the SIDE building in Buenos Aires. It had delegates from all the Federal
Police, Military, Ministry of Foreign Relations, and Ministry of Economy intelligence services. In 2001, it was merged into the
reorganized Secretaría de Inteligencia, which is now the head and director of the National Intelligence System and does the CNI's job
División de Informaciones
División de Informaciones is a defunct Argentine intelligence agency created by Juan Perón to work within the National
Presidential Office. It's director was Rodolfo Freude. It collaborated in the smuggling of Nazi war criminals to Argentina in what
became known as ODESSA.
Coordinación de Informaciones de Estado (CIDE – 1946- 1956)
Coordinación de Informaciones de Estado (State Intelligence Coordination, CIDE) was the first Argentine civilian intelligence
agency created in 1946 by Juan Perón. It is the predecessor of Secretaría de Informaciones de Estado and the current Secretaría de
Inteligencia
Secretaría de Informaciones de Estado (SIDE – 1956 – 2001)
The Secretaría de Informaciones de Estado (Secretariat of State Information) was an Argentine intelligence agency. Created in 1955
by National Executive Decree No. 776 of January 20 during the government of Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, it was the predecessor of
the Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado.
Rodolfo Freude (1922-2003) was a close advisor of Argentine President Juan Perón and served as his Director of the Information
Division (División de Informaciones). Freude, an Argentine citizen of German descent, is suspected of having organized ODESSA
and helping the smuggling of Nazi officers to Argentina. (Freude is at center in the photo).
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Sistema de Inteligencia -acional (2001)
Sistema de Inteligencia -acional (ational Intelligence System, SIN) is the official denomination of the Argentine national
intelligence community.
Diagram depicting the overall structure of the system
The National Intelligence System consists of the following agencies and its dependencies:
• Secretaría de Inteligencia (Secretariat of Intelligence, S.I)
o Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia (ational Intelligence School, ENI)
o Dirección de Observaciones Judiciales (Directorate of Judicial Surveillance, DOJ)
• Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Criminal (ational Directorate of Criminal Intelligence, DNIC)
• Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Estratégica Militar (ational Directorate of Strategic Military Intelligence, DNIEM)
The National Intelligence System came online with the 2001 Intelligence Reform Law 25.520.
See also
• List of Secretaries of Intelligence Argentine intelligence agencies Secretariat of Intelligence National Intelligence School
• Directorate of Judicial Surveillance National Directorate of Criminal Intelligence National Directorate of Strategic Military
Intelligence
External links (Spanish) Intelligence Reform Law 25.520 (Spanish) Interior Security Law 24.059
LEY DE I-TELIGE-CIA -ACIO-AL Ley 25.520 (27.11.2001)
Bases jurídicas, orgánicas y funcionales del Sistema de Inteligencia de la -ación. Principios generales. Protección de los
derechos y garantías de los habitantes. Organismos de Inteligencia. Política de Inteligencia -acional. Clasificación de la
información. Interceptación y Captación de Comunicaciones. Personal y capacitación. Control parlamentario. Disposiciones
penales. Disposiciones transitorias y complementarias.
Sancionada: Noviembre 27 de 2001.Promulgada: Diciembre 3 de 2001. El Senado y Cámara de Diputados de la Nación Argentina
reunidos en Congreso, etc. sancionan con fuerza de Ley:
Ley de Inteligencia Nacional Título I Principios Generales
ARTICULO 1° — La presente ley tiene por finalidad establecer las bases jurídicas, orgánicas y funcionales del Sistema de
inteligencia de la Nación.
ARTICULO 2° — A los fines de la presente ley y de las actividades reguladas por la misma, se entenderá por: 1. Inteligencia
Nacional a la actividad consistente en la obtención, reunión, sistematización y análisis de la información específica referida a los
hechos, amenazas, riesgos y conflictos que afecten la seguridad exterior e interior de la Nación. 2. Contrainteligencia a la actividad
propia del campo de la inteligencia que se realiza con el propósito de evitar actividades de inteligencia de actores que representen
amenazas o riesgos para la seguridad del Estado Nacional. 3. Inteligencia Criminal a la parte de la Inteligencia referida a las
actividades criminales específicas que, por su naturaleza, magnitud, consecuencias previsibles, peligrosidad o modalidades, afecten la
libertad, la vida, el patrimonio de los habitantes, sus derechos y garantías y las instituciones del sistema representativo, republicano y
federal que establece la Constitución Nacional. 4. Inteligencia Estratégica Militar a la parte de la Inteligencia referida al
conocimiento de las capacidades y debilidades del potencial militar de los países que interesen desde el punto de vista de la defensa
nacional, así como el ambiente geográfico de las áreas estratégicas operacionales determinadas por el planeamiento estratégico
militar. 5. Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional al conjunto de relaciones funcionales de los organismos de inteligencia del Estado
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Nacional, dirigido por la Secretaría de Inteligencia a los efectos de contribuir a la toma de decisiones en materia de seguridad exterior
e interior de la Nación.
Título II Protección de los Derechos y Garantías de los habitantes de la Nación
ARTICULO 3° — El funcionamiento del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional deberá ajustarse estrictamente a las previsiones
contenidas en la primera parte Capítulos I y II de la Constitución Nacional y en las normas legales y reglamentarias vigentes.
ARTICULO 4° — Ningún organismo de inteligencia podrá: 1. Realizar tareas represivas, poseer facultades compulsivas, cumplir,
por sí, funciones policiales ni de investigación criminal, salvo ante requerimiento específico realizado por autoridad judicial
competente en el marco de una causa concreta sometida a su jurisdicción, o que se encuentre, para ello, autorizado por ley. 2.
Obtener información, producir inteligencia o almacenar datos sobre personas, por el solo hecho de su raza, fe religiosa, acciones
privadas, u opinión política, o de adhesión o pertenencia a organizaciones partidarias, sociales, sindicales, comunitarias, cooperativas,
asistenciales, culturales o laborales, así como por la actividad lícita que desarrollen en cualquier esfera de acción. 3. Influir de
cualquier modo en la situación institucional, política, militar, policial, social y económica del país, en su política exterior, en la vida
interna de los partidos políticos legalmente constituidos, en la opinión pública, en personas, en medios de difusión o en asociaciones
o agrupaciones legales de cualquier tipo. 4. Revelar o divulgar cualquier tipo de información adquirida en ejercicio de sus funciones
relativa a cualquier habitante o a personas jurídicas, ya sean públicas o privadas, salvo que mediare orden o dispensa judicial.
ARTICULO 5° — Las comunicaciones telefónicas, postales, de telégrafo o facsímil o cualquier otro sistema de envío de objetos o
transmisión de imágenes, voces o paquetes de datos, así como cualquier tipo de información, archivos, registros y/o documentos
privados o de entrada o lectura no autorizada o no accesible al público, son inviolables en todo el ámbito de la República Argentina,
excepto cuando mediare orden o dispensa judicial en sentido contrario.
Título III Organismos de Inteligencia
ARTICULO 6° — Son organismos del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional: 1. La Secretaría de Inteligencia. 2. La Dirección Nacional
de Inteligencia Criminal. 3. La Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Estratégica Militar.
ARTICULO 7° — La Secretaría de Inteligencia dependiente de la Presidencia de la Nación será el organismo superior del Sistema
de Inteligencia Nacional y tendrá como misión general la dirección del mismo.
ARTICULO 8° — La Secretaría de Inteligencia tendrá como función la producción de Inteligencia Nacional.
ARTICULO 9° — Créase la Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Criminal, dependiente de la Secretaría de Seguridad Interior.
Tendrá como función la producción de Inteligencia Criminal.
ARTICULO 10. — Créase la Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Estratégica Militar dependiente del Ministro de Defensa, de
conformidad con lo establecido en el Artículo 15 de la Ley 23.554. Tendrá como función la producción de Inteligencia Estratégica
Militar. Los organismos de inteligencia de las Fuerzas Armadas tendrán a su cargo la producción de la inteligencia estratégica
operacional y la inteligencia táctica necesarias para el planeamiento y conducción de operaciones militares y de la inteligencia
técnica específica.
ARTICULO 11. — Queda prohibida la creación conformación y funcionamiento de asociaciones, instituciones, redes y grupos de
personas físicas o jurídicas que planifiquen y/o ejecuten funciones y actividades de inteligencia en cualquiera de sus etapas asignadas
por la presente ley a los organismos integrantes del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional.
Título IV Política de Inteligencia Nacional
ARTICULO 12. — El Presidente de la Nación fijará los lineamientos estratégicos y objetivos generales de la política de Inteligencia
Nacional.
ARTICULO 13. — Conforme los lineamientos y objetivos establecidos por el Presidente de la Nación, la Secretaría de Inteligencia
tendrá las siguientes funciones específicas: 1. Formular el Plan de Inteligencia Nacional. 2. Diseñar y ejecutar los programas y
presupuestos de inteligencia inscritos en el Plan de Inteligencia Nacional. 3. Planificar y ejecutar las actividades de obtención y
análisis de la información para la producción de la Inteligencia Nacional y de la Contrainteligencia. 4. Dirigir y articular las
actividades y el funcionamiento del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional, así como también las relaciones con los organismos de
inteligencia de otros Estados. 5. Coordinar las actividades dentro del marco de las leyes 23.554 de Defensa Nacional y 24.059 de
Seguridad Interior con los funcionarios designados por los ministros de las áreas respectivas, cuyo rango no podrá ser inferior al de
Subsecretario de Estado. 6. Requerir a todos los órganos de la Administración Pública Nacional la información necesaria para el
cumplimiento de sus funciones. 7. Requerir la cooperación de los gobiernos provinciales cuando ello fuere necesario para el
desarrollo de sus actividades. 8. Coordinar la confección de la Apreciación de Inteligencia Estratégica Nacional y del consecuente
plan de reunión de información. 9. Elaborar el informe anual de actividades de inteligencia a los efectos de su presentación ante la
Comisión Bicameral de Fiscalización de los Organismos y Actividades de lnteligencia del Congreso de la Nación. A tales efectos, los
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organismos del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional le deberán brindar toda la información correspondiente. 10. Entender en la
formación, capacitación, adiestramiento y actualización del personal perteneciente a la Secretaría de Inteligencia y participar en la
capacitación superior del personal de inteligencia, a través de la Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia. 11. Proporcionar al Ministerio de
Defensa la información e inteligencia que fuere menester para contribuir en la producción de la Inteligencia Estratégica Militar, de
conformidad a lo estipulado sobre la materia en el artículo 15 de la ley 23.554. 12. Proporcionar al Consejo de Seguridad Interior la
información e inteligencia que fuere menester para contribuir en la producción de la inteligencia criminal de conformidad a lo
estipulado sobre la materia en el Artículo 10 inciso e) de la ley 24.059. 13. Celebrar convenios con personas físicas o jurídicas, de
carácter público o privado, que sirvan para el cumplimiento de sus funciones.
ARTICULO 14. — El Presidente de la Nación podrá convocar a un consejo interministerial para el asesoramiento sobre los
lineamientos estratégicos y objetivos generales de la política de Inteligencia Nacional, determinando en cada caso los miembros
participantes en el mismo. / Asimismo, el Presidente de la Nación podrá convocar a participar de dicho Consejo, con carácter
consultivo, a representantes de las Fuerzas Armadas, Fuerzas de Seguridad o de la Policía Federal Argentina, cuando lo considere
pertinente.
ARTICULO 15. — La Secretaría de Inteligencia estará a cargo del Secretario de Inteligencia, quien tendrá rango de ministro y será
designado por el Presidente de la Nación, previa consulta no vinculante con la Comisión Bicameral de Fiscalización de los
Organismos y Actividades de Inteligencia del Congreso de la Nación.
Título V Clasificación de la información
ARTICULO 16. — Las actividades de inteligencia, el personal afectado a las mismas, la documentación y los bancos de datos de los
organismos de inteligencia llevarán la clasificación de seguridad que corresponda en interés de la seguridad interior, la defensa
nacional y las relaciones exteriores de la Nación. / El acceso a dicha información será autorizado en cada caso por el Presidente de la
Nación o el funcionario en quien se delegue expresamente tal facultad, con las excepciones previstas en la presente ley. / La
clasificación sobre las actividades, el personal, la documentación y los bancos de datos referidos en el primer párrafo del presente
artículo se mantendrá aun cuando el conocimiento de las mismas deba ser suministrado a la justicia en el marco de una causa
determinada o sea requerida por la Comisión Bicameral de Fiscalización de los Organismos y Actividades de Inteligencia.
ARTICULO 17. — Los integrantes de los organismos de inteligencia, los legisladores miembros de la Comisión Bicameral de
Fiscalización de los Organismos y Actividades de Inteligencia y el personal afectado a la misma, así como las autoridades judiciales,
funcionarios y personas que por su función o en forma circunstancial accedan al conocimiento de la información mencionada en el
artículo anterior deberán guardar el más estricto secreto y confidencialidad. / La violación de este deber hará pasible a los infractores
de las sanciones previstas en el Libro II Título IX, Capítulo II, artículo 222 y/o 223 del Código Penal de la Nación, según
correspondiere.
Título VI Interceptación y Captación de Comunicaciones
ARTICULO 18. — Cuando en el desarrollo de las actividades de inteligencia o contrainteligencia sea necesario realizar
interceptaciones o captaciones de comunicaciones privadas de cualquier tipo, la Secretaría de Inteligencia deberá solicitar la
pertinente autorización judicial. / Tal autorización deberá formularse por escrito y estar fundada indicando con precisión el o los
números telefónicos o direcciones electrónicas o de cualquier otro medio, cuyas comunicaciones se pretenda interceptar o captar.
ARTICULO 19. — En el caso del artículo anterior, la autorización judicial será requerida por el Secretario de Inteligencia o el
funcionario en quien se delegue expresamente tal facultad, por ante el juez federal penal con competencia, jurisdiccional, a cuyo fin
se tendrá en consideración el domicilio de las personas físicas o jurídicas cuyas comunicaciones van a ser interceptadas o la sede
desde donde se realizaren si se tratare de comunicaciones móviles o satelitales. / Las actuaciones serán reservadas en todas las
instancias. / Los plazos procesales en primera instancia, tanto para las partes como para los tribunales intervinientes, serán de
veinticuatro horas. / La resolución denegatoria será apelable ante la Cámara Federal correspondiente, caso en el cual el recurso
interpuesto deberá ser resuelto por la Sala interviniente dentro de un plazo perentorio de SETENTA Y DOS (72) horas con
habilitación de día y hora, cuando fuere pertinente. / La autorización será concedida por un plazo no mayor de SESENTA (60) días
que caducará automáticamente, salvo que mediare pedido formal del Secretario de lnteligencia o funcionario en quien se haya
delegado tal facultad y fuera otorgada nuevamente por el Juez interviniente, o la Cámara respectiva en caso de denegatoria en
primera instancia. En este caso se podrá extender el plazo por otros SESENTA (60) días como máximo cuando ello fuera
imprescindible para completar la investigación en curso.
ARTICULO 20. — Vencidos los plazos establecidos en el artículo precedente, el juez ordenará la iniciación de la causa
correspondiente o en caso contrario ordenará, a quien estuviere obligado a hacerlo, la destrucción o borrado de los soportes de las
grabaciones, las copias de las intervenciones postales, cablegráficas, de facsímil o cualquier otro elemento que permita acreditar el
resultado de aquéllas.
ARTICULO 21. — Créase en el ámbito de la Secretaría de Inteligencia la Dirección de Observaciones Judiciales (DOJ) que será el
único órgano del Estado encargado de ejecutar las interceptaciones de cualquier tipo autorizadas u ordenadas por la autoridad judicial
competente.
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ARTICULO 22. — Las órdenes judiciales para la interceptación de las comunicaciones telefónicas serán remitidas a la Dirección de
Observaciones Judiciales (DOJ) mediante oficio firmado por el juez, con instrucciones precisas y detalladas para orientar dicha tarea.
/ El juez deberá remitir otro oficio sintético, indicando exclusivamente los números a ser intervenidos, para que la DOJ lo adjunte al
pedido que remitirá a la empresa de servicios telefónicos responsable de ejecutar la derivación de la comunicación. / Los oficios que
remite la DOJ y sus delegaciones del interior a las empresas de servicios telefónicos, deberán ser firmados por el titular de la
Dirección o de la delegación solicitante.
Título VII Personal y capacitación
ARTICULO 23. — Los funcionarios o miembros de un organismo de inteligencia serán ciudadanos nativos, naturalizados o por
opción y mayores de edad que cumplan con las condiciones fijadas en la presente ley y en su reglamentación, y que por su conducta
y vida pública proporcionen adecuadas garantías de respeto a la Constitución Nacional y a las normas legales y reglamentarias
vigentes. / No podrán desempeñarse como funcionarios o miembros de ningún organismo de inteligencia las siguientes personas: 1.
Quienes registren antecedentes por crímenes de guerra, contra la Humanidad o por violación a los derechos humanos, en los archivos
de la Subsecretaría de Derechos Humanos dependiente del Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos o de cualquier otro organismo
o dependencia que pudieren sustituirlos en el futuro. / 2. Quienes se encontraren incluidos en las inhabilitaciones que se establezcan
en los estatutos en los que se encuentre encuadrado el personal de los respectivos organismos de inteligencia.
ARTICULO 24. — El plantel del personal de la Secretaría de Inteligencia estará integrado por: 1. Personal de planta permanente
que revistará en los niveles o categorías que establezcan las normas reglamentarias. / 2. Personal contratado por tiempo determinado
para la prestación de servicios de carácter transitorio o eventual, que revistará en los niveles o categorías que establezcan las normas
reglamentarias. / 3. Personal de Gabinete que será de carácter transitorio y designado por el titular de la Secretaría de Inteligencia,
cuyo número no podrá exceder el 2% de la dotación total del personal de planta permanente de dicha Secretaría y sólo podrá durar en
sus funciones durante la gestión de quien lo haya nombrado. A los efectos, del presente inciso se entiende por Personal de Gabinete a
toda aquella persona contratada por el titular de la Secretaría de Inteligencia para cumplir tareas de asesoramiento.
ARTICULO 25. — Los deberes, derechos, sistema de retribuciones, categorías, régimen disciplinario, previsional y demás
normativas inherentes al régimen laboral del personal alcanzado por la presente ley, se establecerán en los Estatutos Especiales que
serán dictados mediante decreto del Poder Ejecutivo Nacional. / Los Estatutos Especiales serán públicos y se dictarán de acuerdo a
las prescripciones establecidas en la presente ley. / El personal integrante de los organismos del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional
estará encuadrado dentro de los alcances del inciso 4 del artículo 4° de la presente ley. / En cuanto al régimen previsional, las
modificaciones que pudieren producirse sólo regirán para el personal de inteligencia que ingrese a partir de la entrada en vigencia de
los nuevos estatutos.
ARTICULO 26. — La formación y la capacitación del personal de los organismos del Sistema de lnteligencia Nacional deberán: 1.
Desarrollar las actitudes y valores que requiere la formación de personas y funcionarios responsables, con conciencia ética, solidaria,
reflexiva y crítica. 2. Propender a un aprovechamiento integral de los recursos humanos y materiales existentes y asignados. 3.
Incrementar y diversificar las oportunidades de actualización, perfeccionamiento y reconversión para los integrantes de los
organismos del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional. 4. Propender a la formación y capacitación específica en tareas de inteligencia y
vinculadas al derecho, la formación y capacitación científico y técnica general y la formación y capacitación de contenido
humanístico, sociológico y ético.
ARTICULO 27. — La formación y capacitación del personal de la Secretaría de Inteligencia así como también la de los
funcionarios responsables de la formulación, gestión, implementación y control de la política de Inteligencia Nacional estará a cargo
de la Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia dependiente de la Secretaría de Inteligencia. / La Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia será el
instituto superior de capacitación y perfeccionamiento en materia de inteligencia y podrá acceder a sus cursos el personal de los
restantes organismos integrantes del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional. / Asimismo, en las condiciones que fije la reglamentación,
podrá dictar cursos para quienes no integren el Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional. / En su seno se constituirá un Consejo Asesor
Permanente integrado por delegados de todos los organismos miembros del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional, el que deberá ser
consultado sobre los programas curriculares para los cursos de inteligencia y para las actividades de perfeccionamiento.
ARTICULO 28. — La Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia promoverá la formación del personal de acuerdo con los principios de
objetividad, igualdad de oportunidades, mérito y capacidad.
ARTICULO 29. — Los estudios cursados en la Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia podrán ser objeto de convalidación por parte del
Ministerio de Educación de la Nación, conforme a las leyes y reglamentaciones vigentes.
ARTICULO 30. — Para impartir las enseñanzas y cursos relativos a los estudios referidos en el artículo anterior se promoverá la
colaboración institucional de las Universidades Nacionales, del Poder Judicial, del Ministerio Público, de organizaciones no
gubernamentales y de otras instituciones, centros, establecimientos de estudios superiores que, específicamente, interesen a los
referidos fines docentes. / Asimismo, podrán formalizarse convenios con organizaciones no gubernamentales y otras instituciones
públicas o privadas cuya actividad se corresponda con la materia regulada por la presente ley, para la realización de actividades
académicas, investigaciones científicas y similares.
Título VIII Control Parlamentario
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ARTICULO 31. — Créase en el ámbito del Congreso de la Nación la Comisión Bicameral de Fiscalización de los Organismos y
Actividades de Inteligencia.
ARTICULO 32. — Los organismos pertenecientes al Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional serán supervisados por la Comisión
Bicameral, con la finalidad de fiscalizar que su funcionamiento se ajuste estrictamente a las normas constitucionales, legales y
reglamentarias vigentes, verificando la estricta observancia y respeto de las garantías individuales consagradas en la Constitución
Nacional, así como también a los lineamientos estratégicos y objetivos generales de la política de Inteligencia Nacional. / La
Comisión Bicameral tendrá amplias facultades para controlar e investigar de oficio. A su requerimiento, y con los recaudos
establecidos en el art. 16, los organismos del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional deberán suministrar la información o documentación
que la Comisión solicite.
ARTICULO 33. — En lo concerniente a las actividades de inteligencia, el control parlamentario abarcará: 1. La consideración,
análisis y evaluación de la ejecución del Plan de Inteligencia Nacional. 2. La consideración del Informe Anual de las Actividades de
Inteligencia, de carácter secreto, que será elaborado por la Secretaría de Inteligencia y remitido a la Comisión Bicameral dentro de
los diez días de iniciado el período de sesiones ordinarias. 3. La recepción de las explicaciones e informes que se estime convenientes
de acuerdo con lo prescrito en el Artículo 71 de la Constitución Nacional. 4. La elaboración y remisión en forma anual al Poder
Ejecutivo Nacional y al Congreso de la Nación de un informe secreto con los siguientes temas: a. El análisis y evaluación de las
actividades, funcionamiento y organización del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional en función de la ejecución del Plan de Inteligencia
Nacional. b. La descripción del desarrollo de las actividades de fiscalización y control efectuadas por la Comisión Bicameral en
cumplimiento de sus misiones, con la fundamentación correspondiente. c. La formulación de recomendaciones para el mejoramiento
del Funcionamiento del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional. 5.Emitir opinión con relación a todo proyecto legislativo vinculado a las
actividades de inteligencia. 6. La recepción de denuncias formuladas por personas físicas y jurídicas sobre abusos o ilícitos cometidos
en el accionar de los organismos de inteligencia y la investigación de las mismas. 7. El contralor de los planes de estudio empleados
por la Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia para la formación y capacitación del personal.
ARTICULO 34. — La Comisión Bicameral estará facultada para requerir de la Dirección de Observaciones Judiciales (DOJ) de sus
delegaciones en el interior del país y de las empresas que prestan o presten en el futuro servicios telefónicos o de telecomunicaciones
de cualquier tipo en la República Argentina, informes con clasificación de seguridad que contengan el listado de las interceptaciones
y derivaciones que se hayan realizado en un período determinado. / Corresponderá a la Comisión Bicameral cotejar y analizar la
información y controlar que tales oficios hayan respondido a requerimientos judiciales.
ARTICULO 35. — Los organismos integrantes del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional remitirán a la Comisión Bicameral toda norma
interna doctrina reglamentos y estructuras orgánico-funcionales cuando les fuera solicitado.
ARTICULO 36. — Ningún documento público emanado de la Comisión Bicameral podrá revelar datos que puedan perjudicar la
actividad de los organismos de inteligencia o afectar la seguridad interior o la defensa nacional.
ARTICULO 37. — La Comisión Bicameral será competente para supervisar y controlar los "Gastos Reservados" que fueren
asignados a los componentes del Sistema de Inteligencia Nacional. A tales fines podrá realizar cualquier acto que se relacione con su
competencia, en especial: 1. Entender e intervenir en el tratamiento del proyecto de ley de presupuesto nacional que el Poder
Ejecutivo remita al Congreso de la Nación. A tales fines el Poder Ejecutivo enviará toda la documentación que sea necesaria, en
especial: a. Un anexo conteniendo los montos asignados o ejecutados por jurisdicción que tengan el carácter de gastos reservados,
confidenciales, secretos o de acceso limitado o restringido. b. Un anexo con clasificación de seguridad, conteniendo finalidad,
programa u objeto del gasto. 2. Exigir la colaboración de todos los organismos de inteligencia contemplados en la presente ley, los
que estarán obligados a suministrar los datos, antecedentes e informes relacionados con el ejercicio de sus funciones. En aquellos
casos de estricta necesidad, también podrá requerirse fundadamente la documentación a que alude el Artículo 39 de la presente ley. 3.
Controlar que los fondos de carácter reservado hubiesen tenido la finalidad prevista en la asignación presupuestaria. 4. Elaborar
anualmente un informe reservado para su remisión al Congreso de la Nación y al Presidente de la Nación que contenga: a. El análisis
y evaluación de la ejecución de los gastos reservados otorgados a los organismos de inteligencia. b. La descripción del desarrollo de
las actividades de supervisión y control efectuadas por la Comisión Bicameral, así como las recomendaciones que ésta estimare
conveniente formular.
ARTICULO 38. — El Poder Ejecutivo Nacional deberá incluir en la reglamentación de la ley 24.156 de Administración Financiera
y de los Sistemas de Control del Sector Público Nacional una nueva función denominada "Inteligencia" dentro de finalidad
"Servicios de Defensa y Seguridad", donde se agruparán la totalidad de los presupuestos correspondientes a las actividades de
inteligencia, cualquiera fuere la jurisdicción en que se originen.
ARTICULO 39. — Las erogaciones efectuadas durante el ejercicio serán documentadas mediante acta mensual firmada por los
funcionarios responsables del organismo o dependencia correspondiente, que servirá de descargo ante la Contaduría General de la
Nación.
ARTICULO 40. — Los miembros de la Comisión Bicameral así como el personal permanente o eventual asignado a la misma que
hicieran uso indebido de la información a la que tuvieren acceso en ocasión o ejercicio de sus funciones serán considerados incursos
en grave falta a sus deberes y les será aplicable el régimen sancionatorio vigente, sin perjuicio de las responsabilidades que pudieran
caberles por aplicación del Código Penal.
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ARTICULO 41. — La reserva establecida en cualquier otra norma o disposición de carácter general o particular emanada del Poder
Ejecutivo Nacional y/o funcionarios que le dependan con anterioridad a la vigencia de la presente ley no será oponible a la Comisión
Bicameral ni a sus integrantes.
Título IX Disposiciones penales
ARTICULO 42. — Será reprimido con prisión de un mes a dos años e innabilitación especial por doble tiempo, si no resultare otro
delito más severamente penado, el que participando en forma permanente o transitoria de las tareas reguladas en la presente ley,
indebidamente interceptare, captare o desviare comunicaciones telefónicas, postales, de telégrafo o facsímil, o cualquier otro sistema
de envío de objetos o transmisión de imágenes, voces o paquetes de datos, así como cualquier otro tipo de información, archivo,
registros y/o documentos privados o de entrada o lectura no autorizada o no accesible al público que no le estuvieren dirigidos.
ARTICULO 43. — Será reprimido con prisión de tres meses a un año y medio e inhabilitación especial por doble tiempo, si no
resultare otro delito más severamente penado, el que con orden judicial y estando obligado a hacerlo, omitiere destruir o borrar los
soportes de las grabaciones, las copias de las intervenciones postales, cablegráficas, de facsímil o de cualquier otro elemento que
permita acreditar el resultado de las interceptaciones, captaciones o desviaciones.
Título X Disposiciones transitorias y complementarias
ARTICULO 44. — El Poder Ejecutivo nacional procederá a dictar la reglamentación de la presente ley dentro de los 180 días de su
entrada en vigencia, a propuesta de la Secretaría de Inteligencia, la que será remitida para su conocimiento a la Comisión Bicameral
creada por esta ley.
ARTICULO 45. — Deróganse las leyes, "S" 19.373/73, 20.194 y "S" 20.195 y los decretos "S" 1792/73, "S" 1793/73, "S" 4639/73,
"S" 1759/87, "S" 3401/79 y 1536/91 y la resolución 430/2000 del Ministerio de Defensa.
ARTICULO 46. — Dentro de los 365 días de entrada en vigencia de la presente ley, el Poder Ejecutivo Nacional dictará los
Estatutos que reemplazarán a la normativa de la ley "S" 19.373 y reformada por ley "S" 21.705, que quedará entonces derogada.
ARTICULO 47. — Sustitúyase la expresión "Dirección de Inteligencia Interior" del segundo párrafo del Artículo 14 de la ley
24.059 por la de "Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Criminal".
ARTICULO 48. — Sustitúyase la expresión "Dirección de Inteligencia Interior" del primer párrafo del Artículo 16 de la ley 24.059
por la de "Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Criminal".
ARTICULO 49. — Sustitúyase del decreto reglamentario 1273/92 de la ley 24.059 la expresión "Dirección de Inteligencia Interior"
por la de "Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Criminal".
ARTICULO 50. — Modifícase el Título VII y el Artículo 33 de la ley 24.059 los que quedarán redactados de la siguiente manera:
"Título VII: Del control parlamentario de los órganos y actividades de seguridad interior." / "Artículo 33.— Créase una comisión
bicameral de fiscalización de los órganos y actividades de seguridad interior. / Tendrá por misión la supervisión y control de los
organismos y órganos de seguridad interior actualmente existentes, de los creados por la presente ley y de todos los que se creen en el
futuro"
ARTICULO 51. — A partir de la sanción de la presente ley, sustitúyase el nombre de Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado (SIDE),
por el de Secretaría de Inteligencia (SI) y derógase el decreto "S" 416/76.
ARTICULO 52. — Derógase toda norma de carácter público, reservado, secreto, publicada o no publicada, que se oponga a la
presente ley.
ARTICULO 53. — Comuníquese al Poder Ejecutivo.
DADA EN LA SALA DE SESIONES DEL CONGRESO ARGENTINO, EN BUENOS AIRES, A LOS VEINTISIETE DIAS DEL
MES DE NOVIEMBRE DEL AÑO DOS MIL UNO. — REGISTRADO BAJO EL N° 25.520 — RAFAEL PASCUAL. — MARIO
A. LOSADA. — Roberto C. Marafioti. — Juan C. Oyarzún.
Coordinación de Informaciones de Estado (CIDE) – 1946- 1956
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Secretaria de Informaciones de Estado (SIDE) – 1956-2001
Secretaría de Inteligencia (SI) - 2001
Secretaría de Inteligencia (Secretariat of Intelligence, S.I.) is the premier
intelligence agency of the Argentine Republic and head of its National Intelligence
System. Chaired by the Secretary of State Intelligence who is a special member of
the Cabinet of Ministers, the Secretariat of Intelligence is a technical and
operational service charged with the collection and production of intelligence and
counterintelligence in internal and foreign areas, as well as the analysis and
formation of a national intelligence strategy in order to handle state affairs. The
Secretariat is charged with the duty of producing a complete intelligence cycle[1] for
the government. Structurally, S.I. has the biggest intelligence gathering capabilities
in Argentina, as it counts with numerous delegations within Argentina as well as
foreign operational bases and delegations. Under the law, the Secretariat is
subordinated to the Office of the President[2] and is ruled by secret decrees and
laws.[3] Even though the official acronym was renamed to S.I. as the new
intelligence system became active,[4] during most of its history it was called
Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado (Secretariat of State Intelligence, SIDE) and it
still is referred to as SIDE by the public.
History
Creation:
1946
Secretary:
Héctor Icazuriaga
Undersecretary:
Francisco Larcher
Ave. 25 de Mayo 11
Location:
The Secretariat of Intelligence was created in 1946 when Juan Perón's first
Buenos Aires
presidency established it by Executive Decree 337/46 under the denomination of
54 11 4340 2600
Phone:
Coordinación de Informaciones de Estado (State Intelligence Coordination, CIDE).
Its mission was to act as a national intelligence agency to be run by civilian personnel and to handle foreign and domestic intelligence
operations for the federal government. Before CIDE was established, national intelligence was jointly handled by the División de
Informaciones (Information Division, DI) of the Office of the President, and the military intelligence services such as the Servicio de
Inteligencia del Ejército (Army Intelligence Service, SIE) and the Servicio de Inteligencia Naval (aval Intelligence Service, SIN).
Even though throughout Argentina's history military intelligence organs have been involved in handling both internal and external
intelligence, reforms enacted in the last few decades have legally given them a role alongside civilian managed services in the
National Intelligence System.[5] The Secretariat (as it is commonly referred) had its first structural and functional reform in 1956,
under the Pedro Aramburu government when by Executive Decree 776/56 of January 20, CIDE adopted the name Secretaría de
Informaciones de Estado (Secretariat of State Information), and the subsequent famous acronym "SIDE". The newly restructured
agency was closely modeled on the British intelligence system. During Juan Carlos Onganía's government, SIDE was under the
administration of Gral. Señorans, one of the most well regarded Secretaries of Intelligence of all time. During those years, SIDE
started to orchestrate its first complex foreign espionage missions, the staff was increased substantially to about 1,200, and the
knowledge and operational capabilities were dramatically improved. During Señorans administration, many Argentine women began
participating in what was then a male-only field. The Secretariat began appreciating certain advantages of the female sex, especially
when operations required the exploitation of human weaknesses. However, in 1966, Señorans restructured the Secretariat, expelling
900 employees (of about 1,200 total), including all of the female intelligence operatives contracted at the time. It has been noted that
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Señorans had a phobia of females, and would not tolerate women working in administrative positions.[citation needed] In that same year, a
failed kidnapping attempt of the Soviet Consul in Buenos Aires, led the USSR to enact a formal protest, threatening to take the
matters to international organizations.[citation needed] Onganía, against his will, had no other choice but to ask Señorans to resign, the
Secretary in his final statement exposed that "Consul Petrov commands a group of spies of the KGB in Argentina". After Señorans
departure, women regained their positions in the civil intelligence community, but it was at that time, with the onset of the Cold War,
that the CIA began taking special interest in SIDE. The growth of communist groups and guerrillas in Latin America, backed by
Fidel Castro's regime, as well as the special interest the Soviet Union began to take in Latin America, made the American intelligence
community influence what was then thought as an area of minor concern to American interests in the war. The Secretariat of
Intelligence was no exception, the 'communist problem' was made a priority, and surveillance of foreign embassies and delegations
of communist countries became common. Secret law Nº 20.195/73 came into effect on February 28, 1973 during the government of
Gral. Lanusse, literally establishing the mission, functions, personnel, and other important aspects of the agency; it is also known as
the secret decree Nº 1.792/73, dated March 9, 1973. During the de facto government of Jorge Rafael Videla, on May 13, 1976, by
Executive Decree 416 it adopted the name Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado.[4] Under the National Reorganization Process, SIDE
transformed itself into a secret police conducting espionage on guerrilla organizations, labor unions, or any other organization or
person considered subversive, or a supporter of subversive activities. SIDE also took part in coordinating Operation Condor with
other Latin American intelligence services. After the return of democracy in 1983, during Raúl Alfonsín's government, SIDE began
to renew its staff, and to become a civilian intelligence agency who would entirely focus its activities on national interests.[6] In
December 2001, the Intelligence Reform Law was approved,[7] changing the structure, denomination and functions to adapt it to the
new National Intelligence System. On February 2001, during the Fernando de la Rúa government, SIDE was suffering from budget
cuts (reduced by half) and political pressure to renew itself. The staff was reduced by half, 1,300 personnel were laid off. One of the
reasons given for the clean-up were that many staff members had been involved in human rights violations during the National
Reorganization Process. This restructuring included laying off personnel who were past their retiring age according to the agency's
standards, and removing most of the personnel from the return to democracy under the Alfonsín administration. During October
2003, under Nestor Kirchner's government, a crackdown on illegal phone taps, as well as political and ideological espionage was
ordered to Secretary of Intelligence Sergio Acevedo. More than 160 personnel were expelled from the organisation for violations of
regulations. An integral security review was also conducted, later producing a report which stated several security holes and cases of
corruption and theft in the organisation (i.e., theft of food, extraction of gasoline from cars and poor security at facilities.).
Counter-terrorism In the aftermath of the 1992 Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires, SIDE augmented its focus on terrorist
activities in the Triple border region. The lingering threat of another act of Islamic terrorism on Argentine soil, especially against
Jewish entities in Buenos Aires, required the Secretariat to adapt to a previously unknown national security threat. Foreign
intelligence agencies cooperated in the formation on subjects as Islamic terrorism and how to neutralize it. The U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency provided SIDE with extensive training, and experts from all over the world were contracted to teach classes in
the National Intelligence School. SIDE also began instructing its personnel on Persian and Arabic languages and history, and how to
handle operations with people and organizations pertaining to such cultures. After the 1994 AMIA Bombing, SIDE recognized that
Islamic terrorism became an extremely serious threat to national security. A plan codenamed Operation Centaur (Operación
Centauro) to monitor terrorist organizations on the Triple border was orchestrated in cooperation with the CIA, and included phone
taps, mail interceptions, and covert surveillance of many suspects.[8] Its reports detailed the existence and activities of terrorist
organizations in the area, which benefited from the huge black market in Paraguay and served as a financial laundering center for
other organizations abroad. A 1997 report including evidence of such activities was shared with the intelligence agencies of the
United States, Brazil, Paraguay, France and Germany. The Sala Patria group,[9] formed to investigate clues about the AMIA bombing
outside of Argentina, started operating in Paraguay and gave crucial information that led to the capture of many suspected terrorists
and the neutralization of a suspected plan to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Asunción, Paraguay.
Organization SIDE is the head of the National Intelligence System, and also the biggest intelligence agency of Argentina.[10] It
depends on the Office of the President. It reports to the President of Argentina, who is required to set the national intelligence plan
and policy.[7] Besides being an intelligence agency that handles foreign and internal intelligence, it also assists nationwide criminal
investigations,[11] somewhat like the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, SIDE frequently collaborates with the Justice
System. The Secretariat embodies special internal suborganizations that aid its duties. The Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia (ational
Intelligence School, ENI) acts as the main intelligence academy, training and recruiting agents for SIDE, and providing tuition and
assistance for personnel of other intelligence and law enforcement agencies.[12] The ENI also analyzes Argentine intelligence doctrine
and gives specialized intelligence post-graduate formation to students in the country, including courses given over the Internet. In
2001, the Intelligence Reform Law 25.520[13] came into effect, subsequently making significant modifications to SIDE's traditional
internal organization, as well as branching out some of its tasks to other newly created organizations such as the National Directorate
of Criminal Intelligence.[11][14] The President of Argentina is charged to assign the positions of Secretary and Undersecretary of
Intelligence, but restrictions apply on the Secretary of Intelligence's authority to assign his or her own contracted staff to the
organism.[15] The Secretariat itself counts with three Undersecretariats of Interior and Exterior Intelligence, and Apoyo (support).
They are subsequently codenamed A, B and C, or with numbers. In the foreign field, officers are usually disguised with diplomatic
immunity in Argentine embassies and consulates around the world (practice common to the world of espionage). The positions of
'Media consultant', 'Cultural attaché', or 'Tourism consultant' are the most frequently used. The current Secretary of Intelligence is
Héctor Icazuriaga and the Undersecretary is Francisco Larcher, both appointed by President Nestor Kirchner. The third mostimportant position in SIDE is the Director General de Operaciones (General Director of Operations), which administers all
intelligence and covert operations inside and outside the country; legendary secret agent Horacio Antonio Stiusso (Alias: Jaime
Stiles) currently holds the position. Silvia Fornasaro is in charge of the Dirección de Finanzas (Finances Directorate), which handles
all of the Secretariat's accounting and budget balancing.
Objectives The Secretariat's objectives in the functions of intelligence as mandated by law are:
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•
•
•
•
•
Protect the general well being of society, prioritizing the safeguarding of individual and collective rights in a frame of
legality, integrity and objectivity.
Identify and interpret, anticipated and coherently, threats against national territory as well as individual and collective
human security, in function of the nation's vital interests.
Assist the different areas of the national government about the capacities and vulnerabilities of the different actors -in the
national and international spectrum- who might prevent the attainment of national objectives, thus collaborating in the
process of decision making.
Identify acts and processes that could be taken advantage of as "opportunities" in function of national interests.
Promote and strengthen the relations with the greater possible number of foreign agencies and/or intelligence services, in
order to create fluid channels of information exchange and intelligence.
Other more specific objectives of the Secretariat:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Formulate the National Intelligence Plan (as mandated by Law 25.250)[7]
Coordinate the functional relations with the different members of the National Intelligence System.
Collaborate with other areas of the government providing information and intelligence in order to detect and neutralize
potentials terrorist acts.
Produce information in time and opportunity on important actors, events and processes of the regional, continental and
world-wide frame with incidence on the country.
Elaborate hypothesis international terrorism, drug trafficking, traffic of arms, etc., in the world-wide, continental and
regional frames
Carry out intelligence in the regional scope to forecast of important processes.
Respond to the requirements of the Bilateral Commission on Control of Intelligence Organisms and Activities of the
National Congress (as per Law 25.520)[7]
Elaborated prospective scenarios in the international spectrum and evaluate its impact on the country.
Collaborate with the Justice system providing information necessary to fight crimes such as smuggling, organized crime,
money laundering, fiscal evasion, etc.
Assist different investigations authorized or ordered by competent judicial authorities referred from crimes such as
extortions, kidnappings, smuggling, drug trafficking, piracy of information technology material, falsification of money, etc.
Plan and execute programs of qualification, training and improvement for the personnel of the Secretariat of Intelligence,
the National Intelligence System, as well as for civil employees of other areas of the National Government.
Expand the bonds with public and private studies centers and NGOs, both in the national and international scope.
Subjects of interest The Secretariat's main interest points are the following:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
International terrorism, including the terrorist attacks against the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) and the
Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires.
Religious fundamentalism.
Organized crime, including mafias, drug trafficking, arms trafficking and identity falsification.
Evolution of integration developments (North American Free Trade Agreement, Mercosur, Free Trade Area of the
Americas, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, European Union, etc) and analysis of international economic negotiations
regarding free market.
Legal and illegal migrations and development of Indians of the Western Hemisphere.
Proliferation of massive destruction weapons (nuclear, chemical, biological).
Ecological problems that can be considered potential risks for national security.
National and foreign advances in scientific areas.
Evolution of the official policies on national defense and security.
Current situation in the South Atlantic, including Argentine Antarctica and the Falkland Islands.
Analysis of political situations in major Latin American and European countries with the purpose of identifying instability,
conflicts and crises which may cause a direct or indirect repercussion on national interests.
Structure Internally composed of three Subsecretarías (Undersecretariats): Interior, Exterior (Foreign), and Apoyo (Support). all of
its divisions have specific identification numbers assigned.
•
Subsecretaría de Inteligencia Interior (Undersecretariat of Interior Intelligence) (8): responsible for production and
dissemination of intelligence in internal areas. For this purpose, it is subdivided into several Direcciones (Directorates)
which are in charge of specific political, economic and social factors.
o Dirección de Inteligencia Interior (Directorate of Interior Intelligence): responsible for searching and collecting
of information on national affairs, for which task it has technical, operational and management areas.
o Dirección de Reunión Interior (Directorate of Internal Collection): responsible for the collection and diffusion of
intelligence corresponding to the internal areas. For the achievement of its mission it is subdivided in
Departments assigned to specific political, economic and social issues.
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o
o
o
Dirección de Observaciones Judiciales (Directorate of Judicial Surveillance) (84): responsible for carrying out
telephone, mail, and other communication interceptions mandated by judicial officers.
Dirección de Contrainteligencia (Directorate of Counterintelligence) (85): responsible for counterintelligence
and counterespionage activities. It has intelligence and technical-operational areas which carry out specific
duties.
Dirección de Comunicación Social (Directorate of Social Communication): responsible for the analysis and
collection of public information (i.e: mass media).
•
Subsecretaría de Inteligencia Exterior (Undersecretariat of Foreign Intelligence) (3): responsible of the collection and
production of intelligence on foreign areas.
o Dirección de Reunión Exterior (Directorate of Foreign Collection): responsible for the collection and diffusion
of intelligence on facts and/or processes pertaining to foreign affairs. It comprises different areas with different
technical and operational targets. It is responsible for the liaison with foreign services (i.e: intelligence delegates
in foreign countries).
o Dirección de Inteligencia Exterior (Directorate of Foreign Intelligence) (32): responsible for the production of
state intelligence on the foreign area. For this purpose, it has specific areas analyzing different issues and the
continental and global frame by country/country by country/in each country.
International Political, Economical and Social Processes.
Transnational Crime and International Terrorism (34)[9]
Processes of the Proliferation of Weapons of Massive Destruction.
•
Subsecretaría de Apoyo de Inteligencia (Undersecretariat of Support Intelligence): responsible for logistical support, staff,
communications and data-processing centers of the Secretariat. In order to achieve this it has several directorates in charge
of these specific areas.
Facilities The Secretariat is a nationwide intelligence agency, and has delegations and bases in most provinces of Argentina, as well
as representations in most important countries. Reports state that SIDE has about 24 operation bases around the world. Its main
building is located in Ave. 25 de Mayo 11 (with a backdoor access through Ave. Leandro N. Alem 10), at the heart of Downtown
Buenos Aires, near to the Presidential Palace and Plaza de Mayo. Although the central base is the 25 de Mayo building and annexes,
many buildings, known as bases or operation centers, are spread throughout the city of Buenos Aires. The main building was built in
1929 by architect Alejandro Bustillo, for the original proprietary Federico L. Martínez de Hoz. Inaugurated in 1930, was originally
used as a housing called "Martinez de Hoz Building". In 1940 the federal government bought it. Valued at US$1,607,022, its street
surface is 413 square meters, inside it is 5430 square meters; and it has ten floors, the fifth floor being the Secretary of Intelligence's
office, and the tenth floor the special operations division. Security on the facility is meticulously strict, the whole building is covered
with dark tinted windows, and when a person approaches the door, guards inquire the visitor for his or her name and the reason of
visit. Once they are approved to enter, they must go through a metal detector and be accompanied throughout the visit by a staff
member who will guide the visitor through the building and provide the necessary magnetic card to access restricted areas. Two
annexes in Ave. 25 de Mayo are internally connected to the main facility thus extending the Secretariat's offices. Surveillance around
the whole surroundings of the Presidential Palace and Plaza de Mayo is tight for obvious reasons. In the late 1960s, there was a
serious incident when members of Montoneros breached the building and stayed inside for a whole weekend, taking objects, folders,
and other sensitive material. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the tenth floor of the Correo Central building was provided to the
Secretariat to be used for mail interception.
Official list of the Secretariat's facilities
-ame
Location
Details
Constructed: 1931. Style: Art deco. Street surface: 285 m2. Internal
surface: 6.000 m2. Estimated monetary value: U$S 2.049.256.
Backdoor access: Ave. Leandro N. Alem 14.
First annex
Ave. 25 de Mayo 33
Second annex
Constructed: 1965. Street surface: 364 m2. Internal surface: 6.000 m2.
Ave. 25 de Mayo
Estimated monetary value: U$S 2.049.256. Backdoor access: Ave.
35/37
Leandro N. Alem.
Pasaje Barolo
Ave.
de
1366/70/80
Estados
Unidos
Counterintelligence)
Billinghurst
Intelligence)
base
base
(22,
Transnational
Crime
International Terrorism[9] (34)
Mayo
Offices on the 8th floor. Annex of the Counterintelligence directorate.
(85, Ave. Estados Unidos Constructed: 1967. Modified: 1983. Street surface: 838 m2. Internal
3057
surface: 1.568 m2. Estimated monetary value: U$S 121.812.
Interior Ave.
2484
Billinghurst
Street surface: 1.266 m2. Estimated monetary value: U$S 164.468.
and Ave. Coronel Díaz Constructed: 1981. Street surface: 314 m2. Internal surface: 794 m2.
2079
Estimated monetary value: U$S 311.459.
Directorate of Judicial Surveillance Ave. de los Incas
Internal surface: 2.500 m2. Estimated monetary value: U$S 1.577.443.
(84)
3834
National Intelligence School
Ave. Libertad 1235
Constructed: 1922. Parking lot added in 1970. Small rooms, wooden
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floors. Style: Academic. Street surface: 2.515 m2. Internal surface:
3.775 m2. Estimated monetary value: U$S $724.178.
Aeropuerto Ministro Pistarini (Ezeiza International Airport)
and Aeroparque Jorge Newbery (Buenos Aires Domestic Surveillance bases depending from the counterintelligence directorate.
Airport)
Chubut delegation
Hipolito
Yrigoyen
Province of Chubut
1126, Trelew
Mendoza delegation
Montevideo
Mendoza
Santa Cruz delegation
Urquiza
Gallegos
80,
531,
Rio
Province of Mendoza
Province of Santa Cruz
ote: all addresses are in Buenos Aires unless otherwise specified.
Location
Province
Ave. de Mayo 1370. 6th floor; 133th office Buenos Aires.
Einstein 55, Nueva Pompeya
Buenos Aires.
Coronel Cetz 68, San Isidro
Province of Buenos Aires.
España 2953, PB (lower floor), Olavarría
Juan Zufriategui 4352, Villa Martelli
Alvear 66, Córdoba
Province of Córdoba
Infrastructure Communications in the agency are a crucial infrastructure and policy issue. For the southern bases in Patagonia,
communications is provided by the Servicios y Tecnologia S.R.L. (SyT) company. The rest of SIDE's communications, phone tapping
abilities, data transfer, etc. are handled by Telecom and Telefónica of Argentina, Movistar, Nextel, CTI Móvil, and Compañía de
Radiocomuncaciones Móviles, S.A. Data processing computers for SIDE are provided by Bull.[16] In 2001, under Secretary of
Intelligence Fernando De Santibañes, the Secretariat began a major upgrade of its computer infrastructure.
Personnel Recent reports (since the Secretariat does not declare the exact amount of personnel it embodies) state that about 2.500 to
3.000 agents are currently working both inside and outside of Argentina for the Secretariat.[17] Only the Secretary and the
Undersecretary of Intelligence are public functionaries, the rest of SIDE personnel must act and work secretly, as stated by the
Intelligence Reform Law 25.520. About 80% of the personnel works in areas depending of the Interior Undersecretariat, and the
remaining on the Exterior and Support Undersecretariats. According to the agent's rank, they get paid from 1.800 to 2.678 Argentine
Pesos a month; directors, reach $3.000 ARS. Delegates abroad are inserted in the frame of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, but
receive monthly salaries by the Secretariat. Their job mainly consists of producing reports on current events of interests in the
country they are stationed in, as well as establishing links with the local intelligence services.
Recruitment Citizens are recruited into SIDE using a well-known and widely used method by worldwide intelligence agencies
during the Cold War. The procedure was simple, recruiting students from national universities based on an assessment of their
character, behavior and intelligence. The method was first used during the Onganía government, under the command of Secretary of
Intelligence Gral. Señorans, who himself said "a person who enters at 20 years of age having studied in an university, should be an
excellent professional at 30 years of age". During the process of recruitment, experts focused on four essential points when assessing
their targets:
•
•
•
•
Language and expressivity.
Discretion in the way they dress.
A meticulous way of life.
Possession of personal life experiences allowing them to adapt their personality to different situations.
When the student accepted the invitation to join SIDE, he was sent to be trained in the National Intelligence School. Nevertheless,
not all spies where chosen from universities; it was common that experienced agents recommended people they dealt with their
personal life, and who they thought were apt to develop a career in the world of intelligence. Spies recruited that way were classified
as "confidents", they received a monthly pay while their abilities to carry out espionage activities were being tested. Once a confident
proved that they could be trusted they were promoted to the "contracted collaborators" category. In those cases, agents were targets
of specific controls, an "ambiental" surveillance on them done by the counter-intelligence division. If agents met their superiors
expectations, they signed a temporary work contract which was renewable periodically. In the "confident" career, the third step was
denominated "temporary personnel" (Personal Temporario, in Spanish), as soon as they reached that stage, they were allowed to take
courses in the National Intelligence School. Finally, after two years of being assigned as temporary personnel, they were reassigned
as permanent "civil personnel" (PC, in Spanish). There was not a specified period of time between the steps of a "confident" and
"civil personnel", there were cases of people who took 15 years before they were fully integrated. Today SIDE is rumored to be a
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"very closed family", one which nobody enters without a recommendation. Interviews with agents state that "the first rule is to forget
your name", and that new personnel are baptized with a fake identity.
Associates 'Associates' are companies used for support in covert operations, known cases detailed by Argentine justice include
masquerade companies such as: Tecnit, CF COM, OSGRA S.R.L, Tiumayú S.A, AMSUD S.A, EMCOSUD S.A, IDIS (Instituto de
Investigaciones y Servicios) S.R.L, and Canteras Brandsen S.R.L. Apparently all of them are run by SIDE personnel, and are used for
covert operations inside of Argentina, and as well to set up agents in foreign countries. One known example is that of an agent acting
as a broker of EMCOSUD in Santiago de Chile.
Culture The Secretary and Undersecretary of Intelligence are referred as "Señor Cinco" (Mr. Five) and "Señor Ocho" (Mr. Eight)
respectively, because of the location of their offices, the fifth and eight floor of the 25 de Mayo building. Other aliases include "Señor
Tres" (Mr. Three) for the Undersecretary of Foreign Intelligence and "Señor Nueve" (Mr. ine) for the Undersecretary of Logistics.
Cafeterias in buildings of the Secretariat are referred to as "casinos". Although unconfirmed, the name "Señor Cinco" is alleged to the
1956 restructuring of SIDE, closely modelled on the British MI6 whose first director was Captain Sir George Mansfield SmithCumming. Often dropping the "Smith", Cumming used his initial "C" as a codename which was also used by all subsequent directors
of MI6. The name "Señor Cinco" was allegedly adapted from it. The main building in Ave. 25 de Mayo is referred to as "Central".
Agents working for SIDE call the Secretariat simply as "La Casa" (The House). Foreign personnel whose function is to act as a link
between their agency and SIDE are referred as "COI". Also, spies are sometimes referred by politicians as "Servis", meaning
somebody pertaining to "The Service" (in English). The official mascot of SIDE is the Fox (Zorro). Among SIDE personnel the
Dirección de Observaciones Judiciales (Directorate of Judicial Surveillance, DOJ) is referred to as "Ojota" (Sandal); furthermore,
"Ojota" implies "Ojo" (Eye).
-umbers An interesting and sometimes confusing fact about the Secretariat's internal organization is the use of a specially structured
sequence of numbers to refer to different internal divisions. For example, the Undersecretariat of Interior Intelligence is numbered '8',
and its dependencies, such as the Directorates of Counterintelligence and Judicial Surveillance are numbered '84' and '85'
respectively. The same case applies for the Undersecretariat of Exterior Intelligence, or '3', its divisions go from '32' for the
Directorate of Foreign Intelligence to '34' for the Division of Transnational Crime and International Terrorism. Even though it is still
hard to discern how exactly SIDE's number sequence is structured because of the lack of an official explanation, it is known that
single numbers used to refer to a certain director, '3', '5', '8', '9'. Sometimes the numbers represent their location in the 25 de Mayo
buildings.
Public media and fiction As with most intelligence agencies, the Secretariat only makes public statements when dealing with
national issues or scandals. For the Secretariat, the AMIA investigation, the Sofía Fijman incident, and the participation in the Senate
Brives scandal were the most notorious episodes of media attention. During the AMIA investigation, Claudio Lifschitz, a judicial
employee involved in the investigation wrote a book about his experiences and theories that the Secretariat knew beforehand about
the bombing and could not stop it.[18] In 2005, Tiempo de Valientes, a comedy made by Damián Szifron dealt with the age old rivalry
between the Secretariat and the Federal Police. The Secretariat had a major role in the film's plot, it was portrayed as containing very
sinister and corrupt individuals for the most part. In the end, the movie vindicates the role of intelligence in the national
government.[19] In the American ABC TV show Alias, Nadia Santos (Mía Maestro) is an ex-SIDE agent who now works for the CIA.
'Argentine intelligence' has been referenced several times in the show.
Publications Every three months, SIDE publishes an official magazine through the National Intelligence School. Books dedicated to
the Secretariat's history and scandals include Los sospechosos de siempre: Historia del espionaje en la Argentina[20] by Jorge
Boimvaser. The book was to be published in 1995, but then Secretary of Intelligence Hugo Anzorreguy allegedly made a monetary
deal with its author and Editorial Planeta to hold off on the book's publication. The book was finally published in 2001, and actually
is one of the most complete sources of information about historical SIDE facts, even though it elegantly evades a clear definition of
its inner structure. In July 2006, SIDE: La Argentina secreta by Gerardo Young was published. Young's book is aimed towards more
personal aspects of the Secretariat, such as its most famous members, internal rules, and details about its management and operations.
Historical operations
Dirty War Main article: Dirty War The SIDE played a role during the Dirty War and participated to Operation Condor, the
international network of South American intelligence agencies. A secret detention camp for Operation Condor in Buenos Aires,
known as Automotores Orletti (also known as Tactical Operations Centre 18), functioned under the orders of SIDE from 1976 to
1979. One of the most important operations carried out by SIDE was the planning of a triple assassination attempt in Europe with the
collaboration of the Chilean DINA, and the Uruguayan intelligence service. The objective was to murder, if possible at the same
time, three special personalities living in Paris, France: Isabel Allende (daughter of Salvador Allende, Chile), Rodolfo Matarollo
(member of the ERP, Argentina), and Enrique Erro (ex-senator, Uruguay), all of them opposed the South American defacto regimes,
and well known dissidents. The idea was originally suggested by DINA director Manuel Contreras, and was planned out in the
Billinghurst base in Buenos Aires, previous approval of Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla. The assassinations were to be carried
with 9 mm or 22 caliber guns brought to France via Argentine diplomatic carriage. The operation failed due to the Argentine
Ambassador in Paris's reluctance to give the bag to the agents without first revealing what was in it.
Operation Marylin When Héctor José Cámpora assumed the presidency of Argentina on May 25, 1973, Cuba sent a wave of
diplomats and official delegates to Argentina, proposing that was the time to resume cultural interchanges with the Argentine
government. However, the Argentine intelligence services, under the hood of the anti-communist paranoia that covered much of the
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western hemisphere those days, distrusted the real motives for the influx of the Cubans. It was then that an analyst in the Secretariat
discovered a human weakness in the Cuban delegates: their extreme sensitivity for blonde women that stood out. The 'La Biela' café
bar in the neighbourhood of Recoleta was a common place for the Cubans to be spotted hunting for their female counterparts by
SIDE agents. The Secretariat orchestrated a plan to infiltrate, assess and obtain information as fast as can be possible. In this
operation, the main actors would be blonde women, SIDE began recruiting capable women in known 'hot' spots of the city, some of
them managed by people closely connected with the Secretariat. Three women were cited for an interview in downtown Buenos
Aires, proposed a job opportunity that involved establishing a solid and stable link with the Cuban delegates, all accepted. They
would be paid almost the same money they earned at their previous jobs, plus a few honoraries for the services provided. During a
week, the agents were taught basic intelligence theories and practices, they observed photographs of the Cubans they were going to
'mark', and they had time to elaborate complex backstories for their supposed identities. The director in charge of Operation Marylin
selected divorced women with children on purpose, so they would not raise any suspicions in their families or targets. The three
females claimed to work doing 'sales' for a living, allowing them to be available at many hours in which to be in direct contact with
the Cubans. Finally, after a subtle approximation scene played out in the 'La Biela' café bar, two of the Cuban delegates fell for the
trap, but the third one apparently was not interested in establishing relations. After six weeks of observations and wire-taps (the spies
made sure to plant the Cuban's rooms with microphones), the Cuban embassy unexpectedly ordered its delegates to return to La
Habana. SIDE did not obtain any relevant information about their suspicions that the Cubans were assisting and supporting Argentine
leftists groups, but the agency realised that women are a very useful tool in the espionage world. All three females that participated in
the operation were offered permanent jobs in SIDE; only once accepted, the rest went back to the Buenos Aires night scene.
Operation Marylin proved that using women to exploit weaknesses in men was a feasible and convenient method of extracting
information, and observating both foreign and internal adversaries of Argentina. Although the real insertion of females into the
Argentine espionage community started in the mid-1960s, during the 70s, one of Argentina's most agitated eras, the women of SIDE
started playing a crucial role in its operations.
Operation Veinte Años On October 28, 1995, Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, Argentina's most wanted terrorist, was captured in the little
town of Tepoztlán, 60 miles away Mexico City, and flown back to Argentina in a plane rented by SIDE. Merlo had been involved in
numerous criminal, activities during the 1970s and 1980's, most notably the assassination of Anastasio Somoza Debayle on
September 17 in Paraguay, and for orchestrating the 1989 attack on the La Tablada military barracks by the MTP group. Merlo, who
claims it was a kidnapping orchestrated by SIDE,[21] had traveled to Mexico to meet with Mexican politicians of the PRD, who were
cooperating in an international push to free the guerrillas responsible for the La Tablada attack who were, and still are, serving prison
term in Argentine jails. Merlo arrived in the Mexican capital with a fake Uruguayan passport, where he soon realized that the
Mexican security forces were following him. He thought they were just doing basic surveillance on him to see if he was doing any
illegal activity in Mexican territory. On Saturday, October 28th, he spotted three Argentine-looking men in Tepoztlán Square, "one of
which -he said- looked like he was from the Argentine intelligence service or the police". Merlo was driving a friend's truck, after
spotting the Argentines, he tried to lose his entourage of followers by driving into the town of Cuatula. A few minutes later, Merlo
claims he was stopped, surrounded, and shot several times until he put his hands out the truck's destroyed window. Merlo goes on to
claim that the Mexican security services handcuffed him, and made him face the Argentine, who nodded silently (affirming that he
was who they were looking for). Merlo was taken into the Mexican Migrations Department, where he claims was interrogated three
times by SIDE agents. The last time they interrogated him, they asked if he was Gorriarán Merlo, he answered back "yes", and
simultaneously asked for asylum. (Mexico has a tradition for giving asylum to politically prosecuted people in other Latin American
countries). One of the Mexican police man told them that there was "receptiveness" about his request, but at five in the morning,
Mexican authorities took him to the airport and put in him in SIDE's plane, where the same SIDE agent from Tepoztlán and the
interrogation was present. The operation was carried out by the Sala Patria[9] group of the Secretariat.[22] Gorrarián Merlo served
prison time in Argentina for his crimes, and was later pardoned in 2003 by President Eduardo Duhalde.
AMIA investigation Judicial reports during the investigation have displayed sufficient evidence of SIDE's involvement in the AMIA
case investigation. In 2003, President Néstor Kirchner signed a decree that opened all SIDE's files (about 15,000) and allowed the exSecretary of Intelligence, Hugo Anzorreguy, and many intelligence personnel involved in the case (including Horacio Antonio
Stiusso, Patricio Miguel Finnen, and Alejandro Brousson) to be available to declare in the investigation about Judge Galeano's
mishandling during his job as official judge of the case.[9] Several critics blame SIDE for failing to stall the attack on the AMIA as the
warnings of an impeding attack on Argentine soil were received. Judicial evidence presented during the AMIA investigation show
that the Argentine Embassy in Beirut, the Brazilian Intelligence Service, and the Argentine Consulate in Milan warned SIDE about
the attack on the Jewish organization.
Operation Cabildo Juan José Galeano, the judge in charge of the AMIA Bombing investigation, asked Hugo Anzorreguy to help
him advance the investigation by bribing a key witness who refused to testify, Carlos Telledín. The Secretariat provided 400
thousand dollars so he would change his testimony, thus forcing progress on a case that had been stuck for two years. SIDE explicitly
participated in the operation to give the money to Telledín's wife, Ana Boragni in a Lloyds Bank located on Ave. Cabildo in Buenos
Aires. The public importance about this operation is that it explicitly implied SIDE working to orchestrate a cover-up in the AMIA
case. The operation was described thoroughly by SIDE agents who testified later on, during President Néstor Kirchner's push for
truth and new leads on the case.
Surveillance of foreign embassies During the 1960s, SIDE set up constant surveillance on embassies from the Eastern bloc as well
as other communist nations in Buenos Aires. During the investigation of the AMIA case, then counter-intelligence operations
director Horacio Antonio Stiusso, was asked about why SIDE had been tapping the phone lines and setting bugs in the embassies of
Iran and Cuba in Buenos Aires. Stiusso alleged that those tasks were simply counter-intelligence operations and had no relationship
with the AMIA case. Nevertheless, in 1998, Argentina fired many Iranian diplomats on the basis of "phone taps" that provided
evidence Iran was involved in the AMIA bombing.
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Sofía Fijman incident In the late 1990s, an employee of the Secretariat in charge of the National Intelligence School's security was
convicted for murder. For more information see the School's incidents.
Operation Ciprés In the late nineties, Nasrim Mokhtari an Iranian prostitute and hairdresser, who was believed to be involved with
an Iranian support group that helped carry out the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in 1992, and the AMIA building in 1994, was
tricked by the Secretariat into coming back to Argentina from Europe. The information on her involvement came from Wilson Dos
Santos, a suspect in the AMIA case. Dos Santos was a Brazilian taxi boy and thief who did a significant amount of smuggling in the
Triple Frontier. Mokhtari had a romantic relationship with Dos Santos in Buenos Aires, and claims he knew about the plot to bomb
the AMIA building through her connection in the Buenos Aires islamic community. It is suspected that Dos Santos worked, or works
for the Brazilian Intelligence Service, or the Brazilian Police. Furthermore, a few weeks before the bombing, Dos Santos entered the
Argentine, Israeli, and Brazilian consulates in Milán, Italy, to warn about the upcoming attacks. There was no trace of him until he
was captured in Switzerland years later, holding 8 passports, and extradited to Argentina on charges of false testimony, of which he is
currently serving prison time. When Dos Santos was declared for the Argentine justice ministry, even though there were weak points
in his statements, he named Mokhtari and alleged she knew about the bombings (he later testified that he warned the consulates on
information he got from her). The Argentine justice system, needing new leads because of all the pressure that put on them to solve
both bombings, ordered SIDE to find Mokhtari and bring her back to Argentina for interrogation. A plan codenamed Operation
Ciprés was orchestrated to locate her in Europe and bring her back to Argentina. Once located in Switzerland, she was conned into
coming back to Argentina by SIDE agents, who posed as meat businessmen who proposed her a job as a translator to do business
with Iran. The operation was carried out by the Sala Patria[9] group, and it has been said that the operation cost the Secretariat about
half a million dollars, which included locating her, paying costs, agents and buying information in Cyprus, France, Belgium and
Switzerland. The French intelligence service also helped SIDE locate Mokhtari in while she was living in Paris, France. Mokthari
was on an Air France flight to Montevideo, Uruguay, that made a stop in Buenos Aires. When she got off to change planes, she was
arrested by a special counter-terrorism team of the Federal Police. Mokhtari was eventually let free, there were no sufficient proofs to
incriminate her in anything, or even being involved in the Iranian support group that carried out the AMIA bombing.[23] A restriction
on leaving the country was imposed on her, and later lifted, but Nasrim Mokhtari had already lost her contacts in Paris, had no
money, and become a publicly known 'international terrorist'. The Secretariat declined to provide sufficient accommodations for
Mokhtari to stay in Argentina, and Iran did not want her in its territory because of the sufficient international problems she brought to
them with Iran being blamed in participating in the AMIA bombing. She currently is hospitalized at a mental institution in Buenos
Aires.[24]
Breakdown of CIA relations In January 2001, Página/12 newspaper published an article[25] on the Secretariat's troubled relations
with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Along with the article was a photo and personal details of Ross Newland, then
CIA Station Chief in Buenos Aires, who was expected to become head of the Latin American division in the CIA. Official reports
say that the CIA wanted SIDE to investigate the operations of the Russian Mafia and ex-KGB agents who had just arrived in
Argentina. The reasons were that the Russian Mafia was using Argentina as an intermediate country for smuggling illegal aliens to
the U.S. At the time, Argentines did not require visas for tourist visits to the United States, and obtaining Argentine citizenship had
recently been relatively easy. Other reasons to investigate the recently arrived ex-KGB and Russian Mafia was that many ex-CIA and
ex-FBI personnel had private security businesses in Argentina and in many other Latin American countries. The arrival of the
Russian gang in Argentina put their businesses at risk of competition. A few months before, Newland, a 50 year old who loved living
in Buenos Aires[26] accused SIDE of following him and fellow CIA operatives in Argentina, as well as doing audio surveillance on
them. Information leaked out that Patricio Finnen and Alejandro Brousson, two old notorious important staff members of the
Secretariat, were responsible for carrying out the operation from the Billinghurst base. The Americans were not the only ones
affected by the Secretariat's peculiar attention, the Israeli Mossad and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). American
reports state that the Secretariat never helped the CIA on its requests, instead, the U.S. alleged that SIDE helped the "newcomers"
insert themselves in the market by selling them information. The CIA became furious since they had historically contributed funds
for SIDE to do their operations, and SIDE was indirectly helping the Russians in their smuggling operation. They expected the
Secretaria to be on their side, and to make the 'Russian problem' a government issue, therefore putting pressure on the Russians. The
head of the Secretariat's counter-intelligence service at the time, retired Major Alejandro Broussoun, an ex military servicemen from
the Argentine Army Engineers Corps, and an ex-follower of the ultra-nationalist right wing Carapintadas organization in the 1980s
and 1990s, was blamed by the CIA for the leak of their station chief on the popular newspaper. The United States investigation into
the incident with SIDE, revealed that the picture and information of Ross Newland was given to the newspaper by the Secretariat
itself. Meanwhile, SIDE tried to repair relations by explaining the scandal through another theory. At the end of the scandal, with
Ross Newland's identity uncovered, and the episode becoming a major embarrassment for the U.S. and Argentina in the worldwide
intelligence community, the CIA removed its Station Chief from Argentina, and said they were going to permanently move their
offices to Montevideo, Uruguay because of their problems working together with SIDE. Also, as a result of this, the head of the SIDE
counter-intelligence service, retired Major Alejandro Brousson was expelled because of the American diplomatic pressure to punish
the responsible of an act they considered "a violation of game rules" (in the intelligence community, that is). The scandal not only put
a stain in the CIA's relations with SIDE, but also made the Americans distrust the Argentine intelligence community which they had
come to collaborate extensively during the Carlos Menem administration.
Bribes in the Senate In 2001, the National Executive Power (Poder Ejecutivo acional, PEN) under President Fernando de la Rúa
used the Secretariat's reserved funds to orchestrate the bribery of several senators in the Argentine Congress. The motive behind the
operation was to assure the promotion of the new labor reform law that the De La Rúa was promoting. When it became known to the
public the level of involvement of the Executive Branch a national scandal broke out, and De La Rúa's administration took heavy
criticism. The Secretariat was then under the command of banker Fernando de Santibañes, a close friend of then President De La
Rúa, who promised to make sweeping changes to the Secretariat of Intelligence. The opposition parties in Argentina, specially during
the government of Carlos Menem, saw SIDE as a political tool and promised sweeping reforms if it won the 1999 presidential
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elections. After the details participation of SIDE in scandal became publicly known, then President Fernando de la Rúa asked then
Secretary of Intelligence, Fernando De Santibañes to resign. He is currently charged with participating in the Senate bribes case.
Recently more details were described about the operation by Pontacuarto, the participation of SIDE was so deep to even include
visits of people involved with the bribes to the main SIDE headquarters.
Assassination of Piqueteros The Justice system and the press blame the Secretariat participating in the organization of events on
2002 that led to the deaths of Darío Santillán and Maximiliano Kosteki, two piqueteros that were protesting in the Pueyrredón Bridge
in Buenos Aires. Both men were shot in the back by Buenos Aires Police's officers armed with shotguns. Months before the tragedy,
the Secretariat had produced intelligence reports that the Piqueteros' assemblies and protests were being attended by the Colombian
extremist group FARC.[27] Furthermore, minutes before the assassinations, there were three phone calls, between Alfredo Fanchiotti,
a policeman involved in the incident, and the Undersecretary of Intelligence, at the time, Oscar Rodríguez.[27] During the trial, police
officers involved in the scene that day, declared that a man from SIDE approached them and told them that "Today there will be
incidents", furthermore incriminating the Secretariat on the assassinations. Carlos Soria, then Secretary of State Intelligence, later
declared that "democracy works in order, we needed to establish order", making the public theory that the assassinations were
orchestrated by SIDE to psychologically reduce the Piqueteros movements motivation and their influence in Argentine society. The
assassinations, which sparked outrage by Piquetero groups, made then interim President Eduardo Duhalde to call for elections earlier
than planned, and since then, the federal government has established a non-repressive policy towards the Piqueteros. In 2005,
President Néstor Kirchner, signed a decree that released all of the Secretariats's files about the tragedy to the public, and made some
SIDE staff and agents available for questioning if necessary.[28] The files released don't include any relevant information in them.
Nobody in SIDE has yet been charged with participating in the case. On the second anniversary of the assassinations, protesters and
piqueteros marched towards the Billinghurst base were the phone calls originated and proceeded to deface the property and manifest
public outrage towards the organization.[29] It was the first time ever people protested at one of SIDE's facilities.
References
1.
2.
3.
4.
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6.
7.
8.
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15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
^ The Intelligence Cycle, Central Intelligence Agency. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ Office of the President, President of Argentina. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ In 2005, the Senate of Argentina abolished secret laws, it is not clear how it has affected the Secretariat.
^ a b Article 51 of the Intelligence Reform Law 25.520 renames SIDE (Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado) to S.I.
(Secretaría de Inteligencia) and abolishes secret decree 416/76.
^ Intelligence Reform Law 25.520 also created the National Directorate of Strategic Military Intelligence, charged with the
coordination of all the Argentine Armed Forces military intelligence services.
^ Argentina's intelligence after ten years of democracy, Federation of American Scientists. URL accessed on April 23,
2006.
^ a b c d Intelligence Reform Law 25.520 created the National Intelligence System.
^ The Latin Connection, The Jamestown Foundation. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ a b c d e f Sala Patria was a covert operations group depending of the Undersecretariat of Foreign Intelligence. Two
famous staff members named by the Argentine press frequently, Alejandro Brousson and Patricio Miguel Finnen led this
group. Sala Patria was first assigned to capture Enrique Gorriarán Merlo and then leading the AMIA investigation on
foreign soil. The group was also involved in famous operations such as the Nasrim Mokhtari fiasco, and the Telledin
bribes. The group was recently dissolved, both Patricio Miguel Finnen and Alejandro Brousson no longer work for SIDE,
and the group now became a division known as "Division 34: Transnational Crime and International Terrorism". It is
important to note that "Sala" is a group of people from many divisions of the organization put together to work on a
specific operation, i.e., Sala Independencia, created to work on the investigation of the Israeli embassy bombing.
^ Executive and legislative oversight of the intelligence system in Argentina, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of
Armed Forces. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ a b Intelligence Reform Law 25.520 created the National Directorate of Criminal Intelligence, charged with the
coordination of internal criminal intelligence from the security forces.
^ National Decree 1536/1991, President of Argentina. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ Intelligence Reform Law 25.520, Argentine National Congress. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ The Intelligence Reform Law 25.520 also established new legislations regarding the Directorate of Judicial Surveillance,
to make the organization more efficient and transparent.
^ Article 24 of the Intelligence Reform Law 25.520 approved in 2001, mandates that no more than 2% of the Secretariat's
personnel can be appointed by the current Secretary of Intelligence, and such personnel must exit the organization when the
Secretary of Intelligence that appointed them ends his term. Furthermore, such agents contracted by the Secretary are
classified as "assessoring personnel" and are included in the Cabinet of Personnel.
^ Bull, company's official website. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ El Gobierno pasa a controlar las tareas de inteligencia militar, Clarín. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ AMIA: un testigo apuntó a la SIDE, Clarín. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ Tiempo de valientes at the Internet Movie Database. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ Los sospechosos de siempre: Historia del espionaje en la Argentina, Jorge Boimvaser. URL accessed on February 7,
2006.
^ Gorrarián Merlo's narration of the story of his kidnapping was published in a Página/12 newspaper interview.
^ Toranzo, Rodrigo 08-10-03, Government of Argentina. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ adie quiere correr con los gastos de la iraní, Clarín. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ De terrorista internacional a internada en el Moyano, Página/12. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ El continuismo de la SIDE, Página/12. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
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26.
27.
28.
29.
See also
^ La CIA traslada a su agente local, Página/12. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ a b The politicians responsible for the massacre, MasacreAvellaneda.org. URL accessed on August 25, 2006.
^ National Decree 538/2005, President of Argentina. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
^ Escrache a la SIDE, Indymedia. URL accessed on April 23, 2006.
National Intelligence System
Directorate of Judicial Surveillance
National Directorate of Criminal Intelligence
National Directorate of Strategic Military Intelligence
List of Secretaries of Intelligence
Argentine intelligence agencies
External links
• (Spanish) Official website, now defunct
• (Spanish) (English) Archive of the defunct website
• (Spanish) Intelligence Reform Law 25.520
• (Spanish) Interior Security Law 24.059
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Secretaría de Inteligencia is at coordinates
58°22′14″W34.607°S 58.3706°W
34°36′25″S 58°22′14″W34.607°S 58.3706°WCoordinates:
34°36′25″S
First public director of intelligence Rodolfo Freude (far left), with Juan Perón and Eva Perón.
Former Secretary of Intelligence, Fernando de Santibañes Ross Newland, ex-CIA Station Chief Buenos Aires Nasrim Mokhtari, false
suspect. Entrance plaque at 25 de Mayo 11
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The Secretariat's main building in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Medals given out by the Secretariat. The inscription says: "Office of the
President, SIDE".
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List of Argentine Secretaries of Intelligence
Took
office
Left
office
-ame
Agency
1946
Unknown Rodolfo Freude
División de Informaciones
1955
1958
Gral. Juan Constantino Quaranta
Coordinación de Informaciones de Estado/Secretaría de Informaciones de
Estado
1958
1962
Navy Captain Juan Carlos
Varela
Secretaría de Informaciones de Estado
1963
1966
Merado Gallardo Valdés
1966
1967
Gral. Marcelo Levingston
1967
1970
Gral. Eduardo Argentino
Señorans
1971
1973
Gral. Carlos Alberto Martínez
1976
1977
Gral. Otto Carlos Paladino
1977
1983
Div. Gral. Carlos Alberto
Martínez
1983
1989
Roberto Pena
1986
1989
Facundo Suárez
1989
1990
Juan Bautista Yofre
1990
1999
Hugo Anzorreguy
1999
1999
Jorge de la Rúa
1999
2001
Fernando De Santibañes
2001
2002
Carlos Becerra
Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado/Secretaría de Inteligencia
2001
2001
Carlos Sargnese
2002
2002
Carlos Ernesto Soria
2002
2003
Miguel Ángel Toma
2003
2003
Sergio Acevedo
2003
Incumbent Héctor Icazuriaga
Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado
Subsecretaries
Took office Left office
-ame
Agency
1990
1999
Admiral Juan Carlos Anchezar Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado/Secretaría de Inteligencia
2001
2002
Darío Richarte
Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado/Secretaría de Inteligencia
2002
2003
Oscar Rodriguez
2003
Incumbent Francisco Larcher
See also
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Secretariat of Intelligence
Argentine intelligence agencies
National Intelligence System
Directorate of Judicial Surveillance
National Directorate of Criminal Intelligence
National Directorate of Strategic Military Intelligence
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Escuela -acional de Inteligencia (E-I)
Escuela -acional de Inteligencia (ational Intelligence School, ENI) is the
national intelligence academy of the Argentine Republic. It depends of the
Secretaría de Inteligencia, the main intelligence agency; and it is a depending
suborganization of the National Intelligence System.
History The School was created on January 24, 1967 by Executive Decree N°
17/1967. It was initially established in the fifth floor of a traditional building
located on Diagonal Norte and San Martín avenues in Buenos Aires. On June 5th
of that same year it instructed its first class to personnel of the Secretariat of
Intelligence. In 1982, the school was moved to the building on Ave. Libertad 1235,
where it functions today. Since 1992, it established students exchange with foreign
countries, strengthening the links with many foreign intelligence agencies.
Organization
Escuela -acional de Inteligencia
Motto:
¨De Omni Re Scibili¨
English:
"From every knowable
thing"
January 24, 1967
Silvia Beatriz
Director:
Cucovaz
Ave. Libertad 1235
Location:
Buenos Aires
54 114811Phone/FAX:
1041/44930
http://www.eni.gov.ar
Website:
Creation:
Mission Its mission is the instruction and recruitment of the Secretariat of
Intelligence's personnel with a specialized technical and humanistic formation, the
analysis and study of the national intelligence doctrine and providing of online courses and long-distance teaching for agents who
belong to the Secretariat and other Argentine intelligence or security organisms. Graduating from the ENI awards a title and diploma
certified by the National University of La Plata, Buenos Aires.
Facilities The School's main building, a big belle époque academic-style mansion, is located on Calle Libertad 1235 in Buenos Aires.
Estimated to be worth about US$724,178, it was built in 1922 and a parking lot was added in 1970. It has small rooms and wooden
floors, a street surface of 2,515 m2 and an internal surface of 3,775 m2. The ENI mansion is protected by a heavy 5,000 kilogram
steel gate and a constant surveillance through a closed circuit television (CCTV) system that records all activity around the building.
The School also has a library of 7,000 volumes, and through its webpage it offers online courses to all regions and provinces of
Argentina.
Director Mrs. Silvia Beatriz Cucovaz de Arroche is the current director; having a geographical sciences degree, is considered a
highly-experienced and valuable woman with a long history in the Secretaría de Inteligencia. Mrs. Cucovaz was also a professor at
the Faculty of History and the Geographical Sciences School of the University of Salvador, at the Faculty of Business of the
University of Buenos Aires, and at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Mar de la Plata. Her previous jobs in SIDE
included being the intelligence delegate in the Argentine Embassy in Germany (Bonn), the Director of Foreign Intelligence, the Chief
of Strategic Affairs, the Advisor of the Secretary of Intelligence, and an ENI professor. She has participated in many conferences of
international organizations, most notoriously serving as Chairman of arms and explosives experts at the United Nations disarmament
area. In Argentina, she is also Counselor of the Council of International Relations (CARI) and member of its International Security
Committee. Cucovaz wrote many dossiers and books such as "El rol de los servicios de Icia en el campo de la contraproliferación"
and "Croatia as a stabilizing factor for peace in Europe; proceedings from an International Symposium".
Seal The ENI seal (Escudo) is a Spanish-style coat of arms, composed of a chess board, symbol of strategy; a triangle, representing
straightness; and a fox, which signifies the force of intelligence. The white colour represents the virtues of obedience and firmness;
the black represents honesty; and the green symbolizes an oath to service. The ENI motto appears in latin words: "De Omni Re
Scibili", which means "From every knowable thing".
Staff and materials During the 1960s, teachers in the ENI were mainly retired military officials who specialized in the intelligence
service, or exceptionally, in the infantry branch. The materials taught were completely written in Argentina, usually by the military.
Recruitment and training Citizens that are recruited for SIDE (see SIDE's recruitment procedures), are expected to go through the
ENI's screening and training program before becoming a part of the organism. During the 1960s, the basic courses that were taught
by the school included specific materials that no agent with a pretension of passing could fail. Teachers taught normal subjects on the
matter of espionage, such as the ability to open any kind of lock they could encounter with very basic tools. Photography, distant
following of subjects, infiltration, and even lip reading formed part of the menu of basic knowledges taught. Establishing a well
known method used by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, agents that passed all the exams could move on to the final steps of
their training, which included: shooting practice, weapons handling, and personal defense. Students in the ENI, are not only taught
basic theories, skills and techniques about intelligence and SIDE, but also the developing of their "instinct" is heavily promoted.
During "class", there are several "immediate reaction" tests. For example, these tests can be hidden in a simple routine, such as
making students do a simple task, like working with a document. When the student least expects it, a simulation of a small fire break
out begins, which helps evaluate a student's response capability under spontaneous and stressful situations. Students must be fully
aware and attentive to their teachers and the material they are being taught. By being attentive it means remembering and analyzing
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any detail that could alter the routine of the classroom, like a phone call received by a professor to his/her cellphone, or if he or she
suddenly coughs strongly. After the bell rings, without notice, students are usually interrogated about the previous circumstances,
therefore evaluating a number of "correct answers". That is, seeing how attentive to details they were, and their capability to
remember, analyze and discern all kinds of information, acts, things said, etc. The second level of teaching is not reachable without
first passing a whole set of psychological and physical examinations. Afterwards, the program becomes more complex, that means
that the assignments become more technical, with subjects like Electronic Intelligence, where students are submerged into the art of
phone tapping and the other uses of electronics in the intelligence world. If a student gets good grades, then he or she can become a
part of SIDE.
Magazine SIDE publishes every three months a magazine called "La Revista de la Escuela Nacional de Inteligencia" ("The
Magazine of the ational Intelligence School") about the studies and works of Argentines and foreigners on the subject of
intelligence.
Contact Available phone and fax numbers: 4752-4001, 4812-4930 (FAX), 4812-9230, 4812-4577, 4813-6132, 4813-2947, 48137736, 4811-1041/42/43/44/45, 4811-44930, 4812-9230 (FAX).
Sofía Fijman incident Sofía Fijman was a 75 year old, middle-class, Argentine woman who fed cats that inhabited the garden of the
ENI building. On February 26th of 1998, she was killed by Ricardo Dáttoli (a SIDE agent who was in charge of the ENI's security)
who closed the 5,000 kilogram steel gate while she was feeding the cats through it. Fijman's hand became trapped in the gate,
subsequently dragging her and causing a fatal injury to her head. Allegations by Fijman's domestic employee state that Dáttoli told
her "We are going to kill you, and the cats", as he warned her not to feed the cats anymore. Ricardo Dáttoli, an agent who got paid
1,700 Argentine Pesos (US$1,700 at that time) for working six days a month doing a 36 hour surveillance shift and then resting for
five days, claimed that he activated the door opening mechanism (when no car was going in or out, and Fijman was feeding the cats)
because he fell and accidentally pushed the switch. He described the incident stating that he fell and accidentally activated the
mechanism because his shoe laces were untied. When Dáttoli activated the gates to open, and trapped Fijman's hand by doing so, an
Australian tourist couple was passing by Libertad Avenue. The man tried to stop the gate, he uses physical force and calls for help,
but finally the gate overpowers him and kills the woman. During that time, Dáttoli did not activate the button to make the gate close
and free the woman, even though there was a button for it. Even though Dáttoli could see what was happening through the video
surveillance system, he did not do anything to avoid further damage to Fijman. The judicial investigation stated that the video of the
incident has "edited parts", and that the part where Fijman receives the fatal wound has been erased. Since the incident, the ENI
moved all its guards to other units or facilities and has changed its gate mechanism to a manual opening and closing procedure rather
than a fully-automatic one. The investigation reported that 8 cameras and 16 monitors were focused on the ENI's entrance. Dáttoli
and his accomplices were watching from the inside of the Mansion, and did nothing to stop the incident. Dáttoli has been sentenced
to 10 years in prison for premeditated murder.
References
• Revista HOMBRE 2004 archives
• Sofía Fijman incident
• Boimvaser, Jorge (2000). Los sospechosos de siempre: Historia del espionaje en la Argentina. Editorial Planeta. ISBN
9504906885. http://www.boimvaser.com.ar.
See also
• Secretariat of Intelligence
• Argentine intelligence agencies
• National Intelligence System
• Directorate of Judicial Surveillance
• National Directorate of Criminal Intelligence
• National Directorate of Strategic Military Intelligence
External links
• (Spanish) Official website
• (Spanish) Intelligence Reform Law 25.520
• (Spanish) Interior Security Law 24.059
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Dirección -acional de Inteligencia Estratégica Militar
Dirección -acional de Inteligencia Estratégica Militar (ational Directorate of Strategic Military Intelligence, DNIEM) is an
Argentine intelligence agency part of the National Intelligence System, created by the 2001 Intelligence Reform Law 25.520. It is
structurally dependent of the Ministry of Defense. Director The current director is Carlos Aníbal Aguilar, by decree D 1624/2005.
Function Its main mission is to produce strategic military intelligence and analysis. The intelligence services of the Argentine Armed
Forces (see this list) have the job of producing strategic operational and tactical intelligence for the planning and conduction of
military operations as well as the national strategic intelligence plan. External links (Spanish) Intelligence Reform Law 25.520
(Spanish) Interior Security Law 24.059
Jefatura de Inteligencia del Estado Mayor Conjunto de las Fuerzas Armadas (J2) is an Argentine federal agency in charge of controlling all the military intelligence services. The name J-2 refers to Jefatura 2, the
official denomination assigned to military intelligence divisions of each branch. External links Official website
Servicio de Inteligencia -aval (SI-) is the intelligence agency of the Argentine Navy. It is part of J-2 and of
the General Staff of the Navy, and its current director is Vice Admiral IM (Infantería de Marina) Enrique Salvador Olmedo.
Servicio de Inteligencia de la Fuerza Aérea (SIFA) is the intelligence agency of the Argentine Air
Force. It is part of J-2 and it's current director is Commodore García.
Servicio de Inteligencia del Ejército (SIE) is the Argentine Army's intelligence agency. It is a division of
J-2 and reports to the Army's Jefatura II (the General Staff's intelligence service). The Service is composite of 11 Intelligence
Companies, 30 Independent Intelligence Platoons, 1 Intelligence Support Group, 1 Military Intelligence Collector Centre, 3 Division
Intelligence Collection Centre, and 2 Combat Army Intelligence Detachment (601 & 602), two units of special intelligence
operations.
Central de Reunión de Inteligencia Militar
The Central de Inteligencia Militar (Military Intelligence
Center, CIM) is an Argentine intelligence agency in charge of permanently assisting and coordinating the functions and operations of
all Army intelligence services.
Army Intelligence Units
Unit
Command
Place
Province
1st Intelligence Company
I Armored Brigade
Tandil
Buenos Aires
2nd Intelligence Company
II Armored Brigade
Santa Fe
Santa Fe
3th Intelligence Company
III Jungle Brigade
Resistencia
Chaco
IV Parachute Brigade
Córdoba
Córdoba
V Mechanized Brigade Salta
Salta
VI Mountain Brigade
Neuquén
Neuquén
VIII Mountain Brigade Mendoza
Mendoza
IX Mechanized Brigade Comodoro Rivadavia Chubut
X Mechanized Brigade Santa Rosa
La Pampa
XI Mechanized Brigade Río Gallegos
Santa Cruz
XII Jungle Brigade
Posadas
Misiones
121st Division Intelligence Collection Centre II Army Corp
Curuzú Cuatiá
Corrientes
141st Division Intelligence Collection Centre III Army Corp
Córdoba
Córdoba
181st Division Intelligence Collection Centre V Army Corp
Bahía Blanca
Buenos Aires
Military Intelligence Centre
J-II Army
Campo de Mayo
Buenos Aires
601st Combat Army Intelligence Detachment J-II Army
Campo de Mayo
Buenos Aires
602nd Combat Army Intelligence Detachment J-II Army
Holmberg
Córdoba
Intelligence Support Group
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
J-II Army
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Comisión de la Tropa Técnica de Inteligencia "San Juan Apóstol y Evangelista"
Caballería), el 14
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Dirección -acional de Inteligencia Criminal
Dirección -acional de Inteligencia Criminal (ational Directorate of Criminal Intelligence, DNIC) it is an Argentine intelligence
agency part of the National Intelligence System. It depends of the Secretaría de Seguridad Interior (Secretariat of Interior Security),
which itself depends of the Ministry of Interior; the DNIC is not a division of the SIDE, which has its own Directorate of Interior
Intelligence. Creation The Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Criminal (ational Directorate of Criminal Intelligence, DNIC) was
initially created by the 1992 Interior Security Law 24.059 as Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia Interior (ational Directorate of
Interior Intelligence, DNII). In December of 2001, as the new Intelligence Reform Law 25.520 passed, the National Intelligence
System was created, and Article 47/48 renamed the old DNII to its current name. At the time of the writing of the 1992 Interior
Security Law 24.059, the National Aeronautical Police (Policía Aeronáutica acional, PNA) was controlled by the Argentine Air
Force, therefore, the handling of its information was done by military intelligence. In 2005, after the Southern Winds Narcobags
Scandal, President Néstor Kirchner dissolved the PNA, and created a civil organism similar to the National Gendarmerie and the
Naval Prefecture, the Airport Security Police (Policía de Seguridad Aeroportuaria, PSA). DNIC also handles intelligence from the
mentioned organism that has inherited from the military-controlled PNA. Function Its mission, as detailed on Article 16 of the 1992
Interior Security Law 24.059, is to be a federal agency within the Ministry of Interior to strategically coordinate and direct the
functions and operations of the intelligence services of the Federal Police, the National Gendarmerie, and the Naval Prefecture.
External links (Spanish) Intelligence Reform Law 25.520 (Spanish) Interior Security Law 24.059
Dirección de Observaciones Judiciales
Dirección de Observaciones Judiciales (Directorate of Judicial Surveillance, DOJ) is an Argentine intelligence service responsible
for intercepting communications as required by judicial officers. It is part of the Secretaría de Inteligencia, the main intelligence
agency; and is a subagency of the National Intelligence System. It is known as "Division 84" or "Ojota" inside SIDE. ("O-Jota" is the
Spanish pronunciation of the letters OJ.) Building The DOJ is located in a tall, nondescript building on Ave. de los Incas 3834, in
Buenos Aires. The building has an internal surface of 27,000 square feet (2,500 m2) and an estimated monetary value of US$
1,577,443. Before moving into its own building it operated out of Telecom Argentina´s Belgrano facility. Mishandling allegations
During the past few years, there have been allegations of budget mishandlings and phone interventions without a judicial request and
authorization; and about SIDE's counterintelligence service also having the capability to intercept communications.
External links (Spanish) Intelligence Reform Law 25.520
A SIDE employee performs maintenanceFacade of the DOJ building in Buenos Aires.
Servicio Federal de Lucha contra el -arcotráfico
The Servicio Federal de Lucha contra el -arcotráfico (Federal Counternarcotics Service, SEFECONAR) is an Argentine
intelligence agency with special police tasks closelly modelled on the American DEA. It was created through the Executive Decree
N° 717 of April 18, 1991, and it is currently under the jurisdiction of the Sedronar.[citation needed] A matter of controversy, its existence
has not been acknowledged by the Menem administration. See also Argentine Federal Police Argentine Federal Police Intelligence
Interior Security System National Intelligence System National Directorate of Criminal Intelligence
Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera
Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera (Financial Intelligence Unit) is the intelligence agency of the Argentine Ministry of Economy.
Inteligencia de la Policía Federal Argentina
Inteligencia de la Policía Federal Argentina (Argentine Federal Police Intelligence) is the intelligence agency of the Policía
Federal Argentina, and it is controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. Its US counterpart would the FBI, whereas the state intelligence
agency SIDE can be compared with the CIA.
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Inteligencia de la Gendarmería -acional Argentina
Inteligencia de la Gendarmería -acional Argentina (Argentine ational Gendarmerie Intelligence) is the intelligence service of
the Argentine National Gendarmerie, commonly referred as SIGN (Servicio de Inteligencia de la Gendarmería acional, National
Gendarmerie Intelligence Service) inside of the Intelligence Secretariat.
Inteligencia de la Prefectura -aval Argentina
Inteligencia de la Prefectura -aval Argentina (Argentine aval Prefecture Intelligence) is the intelligence agency of the Argentine
Naval Prefecture.
Inteligencia de la Policía de Seguridad Aeroportuaria
Inteligencia de la Policía de Seguridad Aeroportuaria (Airport Security Police Intelligence) is the intelligence agency of the
Policía de Seguridad Aeroportuaria of Argentina.
Federal Penitentiary Service Intelligence
Inteligencia del Servicio Penitenciario Federal (Federal Penitentiary Service Intelligence) is the intelligence agency of the
Federal Penitentiary Service of Argentina, and it is controlled by the Ministry of Justice.
Inteligencia de la Policía Bonaerense
Inteligencia de la Policía Bonaerense (Buenos Aires Police Intelligence) is an internal intelligence agency of Argentina. It is the
intelligence service of the police of Buenos Aires Province, and it is controlled by the Ministry of the Interior
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II. LA GUERRA
SUCIA
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Dirty War
Poster by the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo NGO with photos of the disappeared
The Dirty War (Spanish: Guerra Sucia) refers to the state-sponsored violence against Argentine citizenry from roughly 1976 to
1983 carried out primarily by Jorge Rafael Videla's military government. The exact chronology of the repression is still debated, as
trade unionists were targeted for assassination as early as 1973; Isabel Martínez de Perón's "annihilation decrees" of 1975, during
Operativo Independencia, have also been suggested as the origin of The Dirty War. By the late sixties and early seventies, military
and police officers were being kidnapped and killed in leftist terrorist actions almost weekly.[1] Retired Rear Admiral Emilio Berriso
was killed by guerrillas on 27 December 1972, and retired Rear Admiral Hermes Quijada was gunned down in Buenos Aires on 30
April 1973.[2] In 1973, as Juan Perón returned from exile, the Ezeiza massacre marked the end of the alliance between left- and rightwing factions of Peronism. Several guerrilla groups emerged, the largest and most active of which was the People's Revolutionary
Army (ERP). After Perón's death in 1974, the government was left in the hands of his widow, Isabel Martínez de Perón, who signed a
number of decrees empowering the military and the police to "annihilate" left-wing subversion. Martínez de Perón was ousted in
1976. Starting that year, the juntas led by Videla until 1981, and then by Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, were responsible for
the illegal arrest, torture, killing or forced disappearance of thousands of people, primarily trade-unionists, students and activists.
Videla's dictatorship referred to its systematized persecution of the Argentine citizenry as the "National Reorganization Process". Up
to 30,000 people "disappeared" during this time.[3] Argentine security forces and death squads worked hand in hand with other South
American dictatorships in the frame of Operation Condor. An Argentine court would later condemn the government's crimes as
crimes against humanity and "genocide".[4]
Origin of the term The term "Dirty War" originates in the military junta itself, which claimed that a war, albeit with "different"
methods (including the large-scale application of torture), was necessary to maintain social order and eradicate political subversives.
This explanation has been questioned in court and by human rights NGOs, as it suggests that a "civil war" was going on, thereby
implying justification for the killings. Thus, during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, public prosecutor Julio Strassera suggested that the
term "Dirty War" was a "euphemism to try to conceal gang activities" as though they were legitimate military activities.[5] Although
the junta claimed its objective to be the eradication of guerrilla activity, the repression struck mostly the general population, and
specifically all political opposition, trade unionists (half of the victims), students, and other civilians. Many others were forced to go
into exile, and many remain in exile today (despite the return of democracy in 1983). It was made clear during the Trial of the Juntas
that the guerrillas, despite the use of the term "war", were not in a position to pose a real threat, and could not be considered a
belligerent: "The subversives had not taken control of any part of the national territory; they had not obtained recognition of interior
or anterior belligerency, they were not massively supported by any foreign power, and they lacked the population's support."[6] Thus,
crimes committed during this time may not be covered under the laws of war (jus in bello), which shields soldiery of inferior rank
from prosecution for acts committed under military or state orders. The program of extermination of dissidents was termed
"genocide" by a court of law, for the first time in the official treatment of illegal crimes of the dictatorship, during the 2006 trial of
Miguel Etchecolatz, a former senior official of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police.[4]
The return of Peronism Ever since former army officer Juan Perón was ousted from the presidency by a coup in 1955 (Revolución
Libertadora), military hostility to Peronism had dominated Argentine politics. The 1963 Aramburu decree had gone as far as
prohibiting the use of Perón's name, and when General Lanusse, who had seized power in 1971, called for elections in 1973 and
authorized the return of political parties, Perón — who had been invited back from exile — was debarred from seeking office. This
led to the May 1973 election of Peronist Héctor José Cámpora, a moderate and left-wing Peronist elected as Perón's "personal
delegate", circumventing the law that forbid Perón running for office. Peronism has been difficult to define according to traditional
political classifications, and different periods must be distinguished. A populist and nationalist movement, it has sometimes been
accused of Fascist tendencies; Perón's admiration for Benito Mussolini is often cited in support of that assertion. Argentina became a
popular country of exile for ex-Nazis who entered clandestinity after World War II and fled using various ratlines. However, this has
been strongly disputed by others, inside and outside the Peronist movement, and it might as well be compared with Gaullism in
France, which at first succeeded in creating in the immediate post-war period a large coalition from the left-wing (excluding only
Communists) to the right-wing, before turning itself into a more conservative movement in the 1960s-70s.[clarification needed] The absence
of Perón himself, who spent 20 years in exile in Franquist Spain, is central to understanding Peronism, as his name was often invoked
nostalgically by Argentines in all walks of life in protest of societal ills. Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina from 1946 to her death in
1952, was warmly remembered by the working class, although she was despised by the "national bourgeoisie". Thus, the left-wing
and Catholic Montoneros supported Perón as well as, at its end, the Fascist-leaning and strongly anti-Semitic Movimiento
acionalista Tacuara, one of Argentine's first guerrilla movements. Following nearly two decades of weak civilian governments,
economic decline, and military interventionism, Perón returned from exile on 20 June 1973 as the country was becoming engulfed in
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immense financial, social and political disorder. The months preceding his return were marked by important social movements, as in
the rest of South America, and in particular of the Southern Cone before the repression of the 1970s. Thus, during Héctor Cámpora's
first months of government (May-July 1973), approximatively 600 social conflicts, strikes and factory occupations had taken place.[7]
Time Magazine of 14 January 1974 estimated that 60 percent of foreign businessmen left Argentina during 1973, prompted by the
kidnapping of 170 businessmen that year.[8] On several occasions, business executives involved in industrial disputes with militant
workers, learned that their homes hade been set on fire by the Montoneros.[9] Upon Perón's arrival at Buenos Aires Airport, snipers
(including members of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, or Triple A) opened fire on the crowds of left-wing Peronist
sympathizers. Known as the Ezeiza massacre, this event marked the split between left-wing and right-wing factions of Peronism.
Perón was re-elected in 1973, backed by a broad coalition that ranged from trade unionists in the center to fascists on the right
(including members of the neofascist Movimiento acionalista Tacuara) and socialists like the Montoneros led by Mario Firmenich
on the left. Following the Ezeiza massacre, and Perón's denouncing of "bearded immature idealists", Perón sided with the Peronist
right-wing, the trade-unionist bureaucracy and Radical Civic Union of Ricardo Balbín, Héctor José Cámpora's unsuccessful rival at
the May 1973 elections. The Montoneros were finally expelled from the Justicialist Party by Perón in May 1974. However, the
Montoneros waited until after the death of Perón in July 1974 to react, with the exception of the assassination of José Ignacio Rucci,
the right-wing Peronist Secretary General of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) on 25 September 1973, and some other
military actions. They would then claim the "social revolutionary vision of authentic Peronism" and start guerrilla operations against
Isabel Perón's government, who represented the Peronist right-wing. A main aim of the Montoneros was to push authorities into
repression, even severe repression, in the belief that in the end it would prove self defeating.
Isabel Martínez de Perón's government Perón died on 1 July 1974, and was replaced by his vice-president and third wife, Isabel
Martínez de Perón, who ruled Argentina until her March 1976 overthrow by the militaries. The 1985 CONADEP human rights
commission counted 458 assassinations from 1973 to 1975 in its report unca Más (Never Again): 19 in 1973, 50 in 1974 and 359 in
1975, carried out by paramilitary groups, who acted mostly under the José López Rega's Triple A death squad (according to
Argenpress, at least 25 trade-unionists were assassinated in 1974[10]). The Triple A had been created by José López Rega and Rodolfo
Almirón (arrested in Spain in 2006 and extradited to Argentina in 2008). López Rega was successively Minister of Social Welfare
under Héctor José Cámpora, Raúl Alberto Lastiri, Perón and Isabel Perón and private secretary of the last two. Furthermore, after the
1980 police arrest of Licio Gelli, head of Propaganda Due (aka P2), a masonesque lodge involved in Italy's strategy of tension, in a
villa in the French Côte d'Azur, it was discovered that Isabel Perón's Minister for Social Affairs, López Rega, had also been a
member of this lodge. One of the first terror attacks of the Triple A targeted Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen with a car bomb on 21
November 1973, which seriously injured him. A few days earlier, Solari Yrigoyen had criticized in the Senate the reform of laws
concerning workers' trade-unions, which aimed at tightening the control of the trade-union bureaucracy on the workers' movement. A
few days before the bombing, a leading representative of the trade-unionist bureaucracy, Lorenzo Miguel, had qualified Solari
Yrigoyen as "public enemy number one." The Triple A also assassinated Silvio Frondizi, brother of former president Arturo Frondizi,
in September 1974, etc. However, the repression of the social movements had already started before the attempt on Yrigoyen's life:
on 17 July 1973, the CGT section in Salta was closed, while the CGT, SMATA and Luz y Fuerza in Córdoba were victims of armed
attacks. Agustín Tosco, Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza, successfully dissimulated him avoiding his arrestation, and entered
clandestinity until his death on 5 November 1975.[10] Trade-unionists were also targeted by the repression in 1973: Carlos Bache was
assassinated on 21 August 1973; Enrique Damiano, of the Taxis Trade-Union of Córdoba, on 3 October; Juan Avila, also of Córdoba,
the following day; Pablo Fredes, on 30 October in Buenos Aires; Adrián Sánchez, on 8 November 1973 in the Province of Jujuy.
Assassinations of trade-unionists, lawyers, etc. continued and increased in 1974 and 1975, while the most combative trade-unions
were closed and their leaders arrested. In August 1974, Isabel Peron's government took out the right of trade-unionist representation
of the Federación Gráfica Bonaerense, and its Secretary General Raimundo Ongaro arrested in October 1974.[10] During the same
month of August 1974, the SMATA Córdoba trade-union, in conflict with the company Ika Renault, was closed by the national
direction of trade-unions, and the majority of its leaders and activists arrested. Most of them, including its Secretary General René
Salamanca, were assassinated during the 1976–83 dictatorship. Atilio López, General Secretary of the CGT of Córdoba and former
Vice-Governor of the Province, was assassinated in Buenos Aires on 16 September 1974.[10] On 16 September 1974 about 40 bombs
explosions occurred throughout Argentina, most being Montoneros bombs [11] directed against foreign conglomerates and ceremonies
commemorating the military revolt which ended Juan Peron's first term as president. Targets included three Ford showrooms;
Peugeot and IKA-Renault showrooms; Goodyear and Firestone tire distributors, Riker and Eli pharmaceutical laboratories, Union
carbide Battery Company, Bank of Boston and Chase Manhattan Bank branches, Xerox Corporation; and Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola
bottling companies. In all, 83 servicemen and policemen were killed in terrorist incidents, between 1973 and 1974.[12] The ERP
publicly remained in the forefront. ERP guerrilla activity took the form of attacks on military outposts, police stations and convoys.
In 1971, 57 policemen were killed, and in 1972 another 38 policemen were gunned down.[13] On 19 January 1974 70-90 ERP men
attacked the barracks at Azul, killing the Commanding Officer of the 10th 'Húsares de Pueyrredon' Armoured Cavalry Regiment,
Colonel Camilo Arturo Gay and his wife, Hilda Irma Casaux de Gay and capturing the Commanding Officer of the 1st Artillery
Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Roberto Ibarzabal. The guerrillas, dressed as soldiers, held the barracks for seven hours.[14] In
another case, the famous ERP "Compañía Ramón Rosa Jiménez" — about 300 strong and a first class unit — struck the 17th
Airborne Infantry Regiment in Catamarca and the Argentine Army's Villa Maria explosives factory in Cordoba. The attack involved
some 90 guerrillas and supporters of the "Compañía Ramón Rosa Jiménez" who on 10 August, with the guerrillas dressed in Army
fatigues attempted to simultaneously raid the factory and parachute unit. In the aftermath, 2 policemen were killed and several ERP
guerrillas were executed after having been captured. In 10 years of guerrilla operations (1969–79) there were 1,501 killings, 1.748
kidnappings, 5,215 bombings and 45 major attacks on military units blamed on leftist guerrillas.[15]
"Annihilation decrees" Main article: Operativo Independencia Meanwhile, the Guevarist People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), led
by Roberto Santucho and inspired by Che Guevara's foco theory, began a rural insurgency in the province of Tucumán, in the
mountainous northwest of Argentina. It started the campaign with no more than 100 men and women and ended with about 300 in
the mountains, which the Argentine Army managed to control. On 5 January 1975, an Airforce C-47 transport plane was downed
near the Monteros mountains, apparently shot down by Guerrillas. All thirteen on board were killed. The military believed a SA-7
shoulder-fired missile struck an engine. In response, Ítalo Luder, President of the National Assembly who acted as interim President
substituting himself to Isabel Perón who was ill for a short period, signed in February 1975 the secret presidential decree 261, which
ordered the army to neutralize and/or annihilate the insurgency in Tucumán, the smallest province of Argentina. In contravention of
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the Constitution, Operativo Independencia gave power to the Armed Forces to "execute all military operations necessary for the
effects of neutralizing or annihilating the action of subversive elements acting in the Province of Tucumán."[16][17] Santucho had
declared a 620-mile (1,000 km) "liberated zone" in Tucuman and demanded Soviet-backed protection for its borders as well as
proper treatment of captured guerrillas as prisoners of war.[18] The Fifth Brigade, then consisting of the 19th, 20th and 29th Mountain
Infantry Regiments[19] and commanded by Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas received the order to move to Famailla in the foothills of
the Monteros mountains on 8 February 1975. While fighting the guerrilla in the jungle, Vilas concentrated on uprooting the ERP
support network in the towns, using state terror tactics later adopted nation-wide, as well as a civic action campaign. The Argentine
security forces used techniques no different from their US and French counterparts. By July 1975, anti-guerrilla commandos were
mounting search-and-destroy missions in the mountains. Army forces discovered Santucho's base camp in August, then raided the
ERP urban headquarters in September. Most of the Compania del Monte's general staff was killed in October and was dispersed by
the end of the year. While the leadership of the movement was mostly eradicated, many of the ERP soldiers and sympathizers were
taken into custody as political prisoners. Efforts to restrain the rural guerrilla activity to Tucumán, however, remained unsuccessful
despite the use of troop-transport helicopters. In early October the 5th Brigade suffered a major blow at the hands of Montoneros,
when over one-hundred--perhaps several hundred[20] --Montoneros guerrillas and milicianos where involved in the most elaborate
operation in the so-called "Dirty War", which involved the hijacking of a civilian airliner taking over the provincial airport, attacking
the 29th Infantry Regiment which had retired to barracks at Formosa province and capturing its cache of arms, and finally escaping
by air. Once the operation was over, they made good their escape towards a remote area in Santa Fe province. The aircraft, a Boeing
737, eventually landed on a crop field not far from the city of Rafaela. In the aftermath, 12 soldiers and 2 policemen were killed and
several wounded. The sophistication of the operation, and the hideouts they used, suggest several hundred guerrillas and their
supporters were involved. The Argentines have admitted to 43 troops killed in action in Tucuman although this figure does not take
into account police and Gendarmerie troops. By December 1975 the Argentine military could, with some justification claim that it
was winning the 'Dirty War', but it was dismayed to find no evidence of overall victory. On 23 December 1975 several hundred ERP
fighters with the help of hundreds of their underground supporters staged an all-out battle with the 601st Arsenal Battalion nine miles
(14 km) from Buenos Aires. 85 guerrillas, seven army troops and three policemen were killed. In addition 20 civilians were killed in
the crossfire. It was a development which the army officers, together with certain elements of the airforce, could not tolerate, and one
which was to have far-reaching ramnifications. On 30 December a bomb exploded at the headquarters of the Argentine Army in
Buenos Aires, injuring at least six officers of senior-rank. The credibility of the government was now destroyed and the strategy of
attrition was bankrupt. The Montoneros had even successfully utilized divers in underwater infiltrations and blowed the pier were the
Argentine destroyer ARA Santísima Trinidad was being built, on August 22, 1975. The ship effectively was partially sunk. By mid1975, the country was a stage for widespread violence. Extreme right-wing death squads used their hunt for far-left guerrillas as a
pretext to exterminate any and all ideological opponents on the left and as a cover for common crimes. Assassinations and
kidnappings by the Peronist Montoneros and the ERP contributed to the general climate of fear. In July, there was a general strike.
On 6 July 1975, the government, presided temporarily by Italo Luder from the Peronist party, issued three decrees to combat the
guerrillas. The decrees 2770, 2771 and 2772 created a Defense Council headed by the president and including his ministers and the
chiefs of the armed forces.[21][22][23] It was given the command of the national and provincial police and correctional facilities and its
mission was to "annihilate … subversive elements throughout the country". Military control was thus generalized to all of the
country. These "annihilation decrees" are the source of the charges against her which led to Isabel Perón's arrest in Madrid more than
thirty years later, in January 2007. The country was then divided into five military zones through a 28 October 1975 military
directive of "Struggle Against Subversion". As had been done during the 1957 Battle of Algiers (quadrillage), each zone was divided
in subzones and areas, with its corresponding military responsibles. General Antonio Domingo Bussi replaced in December 1975
Acdel Vidas as responsible of the military operations.
20 March 1975 raid in Santa Fe Isabel Perón's government ordered a raid on 20 March 1975, which involved 4,000 military and
police officers, in Villa Constitución, Santa Fe, in response to various trade-unionist conflicts. Many citizens and 150 activists and
trade-unionists leaders were arrested, while the Unión Obrera Metalúrgica's subsidiary in Villa Constitución was closed down with
the agreement of the trade-unions' national direction, headed by Lorenzo Miguel.[10] Repression affected trade-unionists of large
firms, such as Ford, Fiat, Renault, Mercedes Benz, Peugeot, etc., and was sometimes carried on with support from the firm's
executives and from the trade-unionist bureaucracy. José Rodríguez, for example, has been accused of being involved in the
"disappearance" of Mercedes Benz workers during the dictatorship. He was the same trade-unionist leader who in 1974 closed down
SMATA's section in Córdoba — and who is today General Secretary of SMATA.[10]
The military's rise to power Main article: 1976 Argentine coup By the end of 1975, a total of 137 servicemen and police had been
killed that year by terrorism.[12] Conservatives, including some among the wealthy elite, encouraged the army, which prepared to take
control by making lists of people who should be "dealt with" after the planned coup. In 1975, President Isabel Perón, under pressure
from the military establishment, appointed Jorge Rafael Videla commander-in-chief of the Argentine Army. "As many people as
necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will again be secure", Videla declared in 1975 in support of the death squads. He
was one of the military heads of the coup d'état that overthrew Isabel Perón on 24 March 1976. In her place, a military junta was
installed, which was headed by Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera (also a member of the P2 freemasonry lodge), who stepped out in
September 1978, General Orlando Agosti and Videla himself. In the week preceding the military coup, the Montoneros killed 13
policemen as part of its Third ational Military Campaign.[24] During 1976, Videla himself narrowly escaped an assassination
attempt in which a time bomb planted in the reviewing stand at the vast Campo de Mayo barracks blew out a metre-wide hole at the
exact spot where he had been standing. The junta, which dubbed itself "National Reorganization Process", systematized the
repression, in particular through the way of "forced disappearances" (desaparecidos), which made it very difficult, as in Augusto
Pinochet's Chile, to depose courtsuits as the bodies were never found. The Generals organized a nation-wide system, from national
scale to local scale, to track down so-called "subversives." Physicians and psychiatrists were also used by the state in the
interrogation and torture sessions. Argentine newspaper La Opinión, founded by future "desaparecido" Jacobo Timerman, wrote on
31 December 1976 that the Argentine "guerrilla" has suffered losses of 4000, and that the Montoneros had lost 80% of their leaders.
The Buenos Aires Herald, on its side, estimated the victims in 1976 to be 1,100 dead. A clandestine newspaper added that "there is
one dead each five hours, and one bomb each three hours." According to Argentine journalist Stella Calloni, author of the classic Los
años del lobo, all of these numbers may be correct.[25] In all, 293 servicemen and policemen were killed in terrorist incidents between
1975 and 1976.[12] This generalization of state terror tactics has been explained in part by the information received by the Argentine
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militaries in the infamous School of Americas and also by French instructors from the secret services, who taught them "counterinsurgency" tactics first experimented during the Algerian War (1954-62).[10][26] In 1976 there was a successful series of Montoneros
bomb attacks in which the general commanding the Federal Police, Cesáreo Cardozo was killed. Lieutenant-General Jorge Videla
himself narrowly escaped three Montoneros assassination attempts between February 1976 and April 1977. The Montoneros also
conducted an assassination attempt against Navy Commandant Admiral Emilio E. Massera. In an underwater mining attack on the
Itati yacht of the Argentine Navy, the luxury craft was badly damaged by the explosives but Massera escaped unscathed. As pressure
mounted on the Montoneros, the urban guerrillas struck back. On 2 July 1976 a Claymore shrapnel mine exploded at the headquarters
of the Federal Police in west Buenos Aires during a secret meeting of the police leadership, killing 21 and mutilating a further 60.[27]
On 12 September 1976 a car bomb destroyed a bus filled with police officers in Rosario, killing 11 policemen and injuring at least
50.[28] On 17 October a bomb blast in an Army Club Cinema in downtown Buenos Aires killed 11 and wounded about 50 officers
and their families. On 15 December, another bomb planted in a Defense Ministry movie hall killed at least 14 and injured 30[27]
officers and their families. On the one-year anniversary of launching a coup to oust President Isabel Perón, 124 soldiers and police
had been killed in incidents involving guerrillas[29] in what the military referred to as, "the Dirty War". In 1976 there had been plans
to send great part of the Uruguayan MLN Tupamaros, the Chilean Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) and the Bolivian
Revolutionary Army (ELN) to fight alongside the ERP and Montoneros in Argentina, but the plans did failed to materialize due to
the military coup. [30] Furthermore, by 1976 Operation Condor, which had already centralized information from South American
intelligence agencies for years, was at its height. Chilean exiles in Argentina were threatened again, and had to go into hiding or seek
refuge in a third country. Chilean General Carlos Prats had already been assassinated by the Chilean DINA in Buenos Aires in 1974,
with the help of former CIA agent Michael Townley and DINA agent Enrique Arancibia. Cuban diplomats were also assassinated in
Buenos Aires in the infamous Automotores Orletti torture center, one of the 300 clandestine prisons of the dictatorship, managed by
the Grupo de Tareas 18, headed by Aníbal Gordon, previously convicted for armed robbery, and answered directly to the General
Commandant of the SIDE, Otto Paladino. Automotores Orletti was the main base of foreign intelligence services involved in
Operation Condor. One of the survivors, José Luis Bertazzo, who was detained for two months there, identified Chileans,
Uruguayans, Paraguayans and Bolivians among the prisoners. These captives were interrogated by agents from their own countries. It
is there that 19 year-old daughter-in-law of the poet Juan Gelman was tortured (along with his son), before being transported to
Montevideo, where she delivered a baby which was immediately taken from her by the Uruguayan authorities.[25] According to John
Dinges's Los años del Cóndor, Chilean MIR prisoners in Orletti center told José Luis Bertazzo that they had seen two Cuban
diplomats, 22 years-old Jesús Cejas Arias, and 26 years-old Crescencio Galañega, tortured by Gordon's group and interrogated by a
man who specially came one day from Miami to interrogate them. The two Cuban diplomats, charged with the protection of the
Cuban embassador to Argentina, Emilio Aragonés, had been kidnapped on 9 August 1976, in the intersection between Calle
Arribeños and Virrey del Pino, by 40 armed SIDE agents who blocked off all sides of the street with their Ford Falcons, the cars used
by the security forces during the dictatorship. According to John Dinges, the FBI as well as the CIA were informed of their
abduction. In his book Dinges published a cable sent by Robert Scherrer, an FBI agent in Buenos Aires on 22 September 1976, where
he mentions in passing that former CIA agent Michael Townley, later convicted of the assassination on 21 September 1976 of former
Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., had also taken part to the interrogation of the two Cubans. Former head of
the DINA confirmed to Argentine federal judge María Servini de Cubría on 22 December 1999, in Santiago de Chile, the presence of
Michael Townley and Cuban Guillermo Novo Sampoll in the Orletti center. The two men travelled from Chile to Argentina on 11
August 1976, and "cooperated in the torture and assassination of the two Cuban diplomats." Anti-Castro Cuban terrorist Luis Posada
Carriles also boasted in his autobiography, "Los caminos del guerrero", of the murder of the two young men.[25] According to the
"terror archives" discovered in Paraguay in 1992, 50,000 persons were murdered in the frame of Condor, 30,000 "disappeared"
(desaparecidos) and 400,000 incarcerated.[31][32]
False flag actions by SIDE agents During a 1981 interview whose contents were revealed by documents declassified by the CIA in
2000, former CIA and DINA agent Michael Townley explained that Ignacio Novo Sampol, member of CORU anti-Castro
organization, had agreed to commit the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the kidnapping, in Buenos Aires, of a president of a Dutch
bank. The abduction, organized by civilian SIDE agents, the Argentine intelligence agency, was to obtain a ransom. Townley said
that Novo Sampol had provided $6,000 from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, forwarded to the civilian SIDE agents to pay for the
preparation expenses of the kidnapping. After returning to the US, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper, used to print
pamphlets in the name of "Grupo Rojo" (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organization, which was to claim
credit for the sequestration of the Dutch banker. Townley declared that the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and Córdoba in
relation with false flag bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents, which had as aim to accredit the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo.
However, the SIDE agents procrastinated too much, and the kidnapping finally was not carried out.[33]
Human rights violations from 1976 to 1983 In 1976, one of the generals predicted, ";We are going to have to kill 50,000 people:
25,000 subversives, 20,000 sympathizers, and we will make 5,000 mistakes."[citation needed] The National Commission on the
Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) researched and recorded, case by case, the "disappearance" of about 9,000 persons, though it
was made clear that many more could exist; today, the most commonly accepted estimate by human rights organizations places the
number at 30,000. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International were gravely concerned by the state's use of 'disappearances'
and periodical use of extrajudicial killings against the supposed 'subversives'. Most victims were not armed guerrilla fighters, whose
organizations were virtually liquidated, but anyone believed to be associated with activist groups, including trade-union members,
students (including very young students, for example in September 1976 during the Night of the Pencils, an operation directed by
Ramón Camps, General and head of the Bonaerense, the Buenos Aires Provincial Police, from April 1976 to December 1977[5]) and
people thought to hold left-wing views (for example French nuns Leonie Duquet and Alice Domon, kidnapped by Alfredo Astiz).
Ramón Camps told Clarín, in 1984, that he had used torture as a method of interrogation and orchestrated 5,000 forced
disappearances, and justified the appropriation of newborns from their imprisoned mothers "because subversive parents will raise
subversive children".[34] Many of the "disappeared" were pushed out of planes and into the Río de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean to
drown. This form of disappearance, theorized by Luis Maria Mendia, former chief of naval operations in 1976-77 who is today
before the court for his role in the ESMA case, was termed vuelos de la muerte ("death flights"). These individuals which suddenly
vanished are called los desaparecidos meaning "the missing ones" or "vanishing ones." This term often refers to the 30,000
Argentines that went missing. Tomás Di Toffino, Deputy Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza de Córdoba, was kidnapped on 28
November 1976 and executed in a military camp in Córdoba on 28 February 1977, in a "military ceremony" presided by General
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Luciano Benjamín Menéndez.[10] In December 1976, 22 political prisoners were tortured and executed during the Massacre of
Margarita Belén, in the military Chaco Province, for which Videla would be found guilty of homicide during the 1985 Trial of the
Juntas, as well as Cristino Nicolaides, junta leader Leopoldo Galtieri and Santa Fe Provincial Police chief Wenceslao Ceniquel. The
same year, fifty anonymous persons were illegally executed by a firing-squad in Cordoba[35] Organizations closely associated with
state terrorism included the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), the Batallón de Inteligencia 601 of the military unit, the
Naval Mechanics School (ESMA), and the Secretaría de Inteligencia (SIDE). SIDE cooperated with DINA, its Chilean counter-part,
and other South American intelligence units in Operation Condor. Relatives of the victims uncovered evidence that some children
taken from their mothers soon after birth were being raised as the adopted children of military men, as in the case of Silvia Quintela.
For three decades, the Grand-Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group founded in 1977, has been demanding the return of these
kidnapped children, estimated to number as many as five hundred. 77 of the kidnapped children have been located so far.[36] In 1977,
Videla told British journalists: "I emphatically deny that there are concentration camps in Argentina, or military establishments in
which people are held longer than is absolutely necessary in this ... fight against subversion". Yet, there are people such as Alicia
Partnoy, who was tortured and has written her story in "The Little School", who claim otherwise. In September 1977, General
Albano Harguindeguy, minister of the interior, admitted that in May of that year 5,618 PEN detenidos-desaparecidos were being
held in detention camps throughout Argentina.[37] The Montoneros tried to disrupt the World Cup Soccer Tournament beind hoisted
in Argentina in 1978 by launching a number of bomb attacks.[38] In late 1979, the Montoneros launched a "strategic counteroffensive"
in Argentina, and lost more than one-hundred killed.[39] The exiled Montoneros had been sent back to Argentina after receiving
special forces training in terrorist camps in the Middle East.[40] In 1980, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Catholic human rights activist who
had organized the Servicio de Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice Service) and suffered torture while held without trial for 14 months in
a Buenos Aires concentration camp, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the defense of human rights in Argentina.
In 1981 Videla retired and General Roberto Eduardo Viola replaced him, but nine months later, Viola stepped down for health
reasons, and General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri took the post. Democracy returned with Raúl Alfonsín, who created the National
Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) on 15 December 1983. Under Alfonsín, Congress would then pass the
Ley de Punto Final and Ley de Obediencia Debida as amnesty laws, overturned in June 2005 by the Supreme Court.
The disappeared held under State of Siege Powers (PE-) By the time of the coup on 24 March 1976, the number of detainees
held under Poder Ejecutivo Nacional (PEN) stood at least 5,182.[41] Some 18,000 suspects were detained in Argentina by the end of
1977 and it is estimated that some 3,000 deaths occurred in the Navy Engineering School (ESMA) alone.[42] They were held
incommunicado in inhuman conditions and brutally tortured. Some like senator Hipolito Solari Yrigoyen were detenidosdesaparecidos.[43] On 10 November 1977, colonel Ricardo Flouret and captain Eduardo Andujar, representing the interior ministry,
explained to Amnesty International that many of the disappeared were in fact guerrillas who had simply gone underground or had
fled the country.[44] By refusing to acknowledge the existence of what was later established to be at least 340 concentration camps
throughout the country they also denied the existence of their occupants, some 30,000 are estimated to have passed through the
camps. The total number of people who were illegally incarecerated for long periods was 8,625.[45] Among them was future President
Carlos Saul Menem, who between 1976 and 1981 had been a political prisoner.[46] US President Jimmy Carter offered to accept
3,000 PEN detainees, as long as they had no terrorist background.[47] Some 8,600 PEN detainees were eventually released under
international pressure. Of these 4,029 were held in illegal detention centres for less than a year, 2,296 for one to three years, 1,172 for
three to five years, 668 for five to seven years, and 431 for seven to nine years. Of these detenidos-desaparecidos 157 were murdered
after being released from detention.[48] In one frank memo, written in 1977, an official at the Foreign Ministry issued the following
warning: Our situation presents certain aspects which are without doubt difficult to defend if they are analyzed from the point of view
of international law. These are: the delays incurred before foreign consuls can visit detainees of foreign nationality. (This
contravenes article 34 of the Convention of Vienna.) The fact that those detained under Executive Power (PE) are denied the right
to legal advise or defense. The complete lack of information of persons detained under PE. The fact that PE detainees are not
processed for long periods of time. The fact that there are no charges against detainees... [49]
Invasion of the Falklands (Malvinas) Main article: Falklands War In 1982, the Argentine military invaded the British-controlled
Falkland Islands, in a desperate attempt to gather the population around this war, lifting patriotic spirit. The junta was quickly
defeated by the British, led by Margaret Thatcher, who retook the islands. It seems that the junta, so sure of the US support, thought
that Great Britain would not attack for so little. However, the U.S. sided with the British who quickly defeated the Argentines. The
loss of the war led to the resignation of Galtieri on June 17 of the same year and a third (and last) junta was placed in power under a
new president, Reynaldo Bignone. The defeat accelerated the end of the junta rule and restored the democracy in Argentina. After
losing the Falklands War to the United Kingdom in 1982, mounting public opposition to the junta led to its voluntarily relinquishing
power in 1983. Raul Alfonsin's civilian government took control of the country on December 10, 1983. Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri
Castelli, along with other members of the former junta, was arrested in late 1983 and charged in a military court with human rights
violations during the Dirty War, and with mismanagement of the Falklands war.
Anti-Communism Further information: Operation Charly The junta's mission was allegedly to defend against international
communism. Indeed, the "ideological war" doctrine of the Argentine military focused on eliminating the supposed social base of
insurgency, as much as targeting actual guerrillas. Associated with other South American dictatorships in Operation Condor, they
also worked closely with the Asian-based World Anti-Communist League and its Latin American affiliate, the Confederación
Anticomunista Latinoamericana. In 1980, the Argentine military helped Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, Stefano Delle Chiaie and
major drug lords mount the bloody Cocaine Coup of Luis García Meza Tejada in neighboring Bolivia. They hired 70 foreign agents
for this task,[50] which was managed in particular by the 601st Intelligence Batallion headed by General Guillermo Suárez Mason.
After having been trained by the French military, the Argentine Armed Forces would train their counterparts, in Nicaragua, but also
El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, in the frame of Operation Charly. From 1977 to 1984, after the Falklands War, the Argentine
Armed Forces exported counter-insurgency tactics, including the systemic use of torture, death squads and disappearances. Special
force units, such as Batallón de Inteligencia 601, headed in 1979 by Colonel Jorge Alberto Muzzio, trained the Nicaraguan Contras
in the 1980s, in particular in Lepaterique base. Following the release of classified documents and an interview with Duane Clarridge,
former CIA responsible for those operations, the Clarín showed that with the election of President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the CIA
was blocked from engaging in the special warfare it had previously delivered against opponents. In conformity with the National
Security Doctrine, the Argentine militaries then did the work the most conservative North-American elements wanted to achieve,
while they pressured the US to be more active in counter-revolutionary activities. And finally, they submitted themselves to
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Washington's control following the access of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1981.[51] Many Chilean and Uruguayan exiles in
Argentina were murdered there by Argentine security forces (including high-profile figures such as General Carlos Prats in Buenos
Aires in 1974). Central Intelligence Agency documents released in 2002 show that Argentina's brutal policies were known and
tolerated by the United States State Department, led by Henry Kissinger under Gerald Ford's presidency, and that the Argentine
military knew the U.S. supported the repression.[52] Since the end of the dictatorship, some former military, politicians and journalists
have tried to justify these crimes as either regrettable or simply inevitable "excesses" brought about by the nature of the enemy (that
is, the insurgency), which employed the same tactics. Critics have coined the phrase "theory of the two demons" to qualify the
alleged thesis that views the forces of law of the national state and the radical subversive groups as morally comparable entities.
Opponents of this theory talk of a deliberate strategy of tension.
US involvement
7 August 1979 US embassy in Argentina Memorandum of the conversation with "Jorge Contreras," director of Task Force 7 of the
"Reunion Central" section of the 601 Army Intelligence Unit, which gathered members from all parts of the Argentine Armed
Forces. Subject: "Nuts and Bolts of the Government's Repression of Terrorism-Subversion." Original document on the National
Security Archives' website. According to the National Security Archive, the junta led by Jorge Rafael Videla believed it had US
approval for its all-out assault on the left in the name of "national security doctrine". The US Embassy in Buenos Aires complained
to Washington that the Argentine officers were "euphoric" over signals from high-ranking US officials, including Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger.[52] The Reagan administration whose first term began in 1981, however, asserted that Carter had weakened US
diplomatic relationships with Cold War allies, and reversed the previous administration's official condemnation of the junta's human
rights practices. The re-establishment of diplomatic ties allowed for CIA collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service in
training and arming the Nicaraguan Contras against the Sandinista government. The 601 Intelligence Battalion, for example, trained
Contras at Lepaterique base, in Honduras.
The "French Connection" Further information: Torture during the Algerian War French journalist Marie-Monique Robin has
found in the archives of the Quai d'Orsay, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, the original document proving that a 1959
agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires initiated a "permanent French military mission", formed of veterans who had fought in
the Algerian War, and which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Armed Forces. It was continued until
1981, date of the election of socialist François Mitterrand.[53] She showed how Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's government secretly
collaborated with Videla's junta in Argentina and with Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile.[54] The first Argentine officers, among
whom Alcides Lopez Aufranc, went to Paris to study for two years at the Ecole de Guerre military school in 1957, two years before
the Cuban Revolution and when no Argentine guerrilla existed.[53] "In practice, declared Robin to Página/12, the arrival of the
French in Argentina led to a massive extension of intelligence services and of the use of torture as the primary weapon of the antisubversive war in the concept of modern warfare." The annihilation decrees signed by Isabel Peron had been inspired by French
texts. During the Battle of Algiers, the police forces were put under the authority of the Army, and in particular of the paratroopers,
who generalized interrogation sessions, systematically using torture and then disappearances. 30,000 persons disappeared in Algeria.
Reynaldo Bignone, named President of the Argentinian junta in July 1982, declared in her film: "The March 1976 order of battle is a
copy of the Algerian battle."[53] The same statements were issued by Generals Albano Harguindeguy, Videla's Interior Minister, and
Diaz Bessone, former Minister of Planification and ideologue of the junta.[55] The French military would transmit to their Argentine
counterparts the notion of "internal enemy" and the use of torture, death squads and "quadrillages". Green members of parliament
Noël Mamère, Martine Billard and Yves Cochet filed on 10 September 2003 a request for the constitution of a Parliamentary
Commission on the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984" before the Foreign
Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by Edouard Balladur (UMP). Apart from Le Monde, French newspapers
remained silent on that request.[56] However, UMP deputy Roland Blum, in charge of the Commission, refused to hear MarieMonique Robin, and published in December 2003 a 12-page report qualified by Robin as the summum of bad faith. It claimed that no
agreement had been signed, despite the agreement found by Robin in the Quai d'Orsay[57][58] When Minister of Foreign Affairs
Dominique de Villepin traveled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that no cooperation between France and the military regimes
had occurred.[59] Reporter Marie-Monique Robin thus declared to L'Humanité newspaper: "French have systematized a military
technique in urban environment which would be copied and pasted to Latin American dictatorships.".[60] The methods employed
during the 1957 Battle of Algiers were systematized and exported to the War School in Buenos Aires.[53] Roger Trinquier's famous
book on counter-insurgency had a very strong influence in South America. She declared being shocked to learn that the DST French
intelligence agency communicated to the DINA the name of the refugees who returned to Chile (Operation Retorno). All of these
Chileans have been killed. "Of course, this puts in cause the French government, and Giscard d'Estaing, then President of the
Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, on one hand, received with open arms the
political refugees, and, on the other hand, collaborated with the dictatorships."[60] Marie-Monique Robin also demonstrated ties
between the French far right and Argentina since the 1930s, in particular through the Catholic fundamentalist organization Cité
catholique, created by Jean Ousset, a former secretary of Charles Maurras, the founder of the royalist Action française movement,
who was awarded the Francisque under Vichy (1940–4). La Cité edited a review, Le Verbe, which influenced militaries during the
Algerian War, notably by justifying the use of torture. At the end of the 1950s, the Cité catholique installed itself in Argentina and
organized their cells in the Army. It greatly expanded itself during the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía, in particular in
Biblioteca Virtual
1969.[53] The key figure of the Cité catholique was priest Georges Grasset, who became Videla's personal confessor and had been the
spiritual guide of the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) pro-French Algeria terrorist movement founded in Franquist Spain. This
Catholic fundamentalist current in the Argentine Army explains, according to Robin, the importance and length of the FrenchArgentine cooperation. In Buenos Aires, Georges Grasset maintained links with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of Society of
St. Pius X in 1970 and excommunicated in 1988. The Society of Pius-X has four monasteries in Argentina, the largest one in La
Reja. There, a French priest declared to Marie-Monique Robin: "To save the soul of a Communist priest, one must kill him." There,
she met Luis Roldan, former Under Secretary of Cult under Carlos Menem, President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999, who was
presented by Dominique Lagneau, the priest in charge of the monastery, as "Mr. Cité catholique in Argentina". Bruno Genta and Juan
Carlos Goyeneche represent this ideology.[53] Antonio Caggiano, archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1959 to 1975 wrote in 1961 a
prologue to Jean Ousset's Spanish version of Le Marxisme-léninisme. Caggiano explained that "Marxism is the negation of Christ
and his Church" and spoke of a Marxist conspiracy to take over the world, for which it was necessary to "prepare for the decisive
battle". Together with President Arturo Frondizi (Radical Civic Union, UCR), he inaugurated the first course on counterrevolutionary warfare in the Higher Military College (Frondizi was eventually overthrown for being "tolerant of Communism"). By
1963, cadets at the (then infamously well-known) Navy Mechanics School started receiving counter-insurgency classes aided by the
film The Battle of Algiers, which showed the methods used by the French Army in Algeria. Caggiano, the military chaplain at the
time, introduced the film approvingly and added a religiously oriented commentary to it. On 2 July 1966, four days after President
Arturo Umberto Illia was removed from office and replaced by the dictator Juan Carlos Onganía, Caggiano declared: "We are at a
sort of dawn, in which, thanks to God, we all sense that the country is again headed for greatness." Argentine Admiral Luis Maria
Mendia, who had theorized the practice of "death flights", testified in January 2007, before the Argentine judges, that a French
intelligence "agent", Bertrand de Perseval, had participated in the abduction of the two French nuns, Léonie Duquet and Alice
Domont. Perseval, who lives today in Thailand, denied any links with the abduction, but did admit being a former member of the
OAS, and having escaped for Argentina after the March 1962 Evian Accords putting an end to the Algerian War (1954-62).
Referring to Marie Monique Robin's film documentary titled The Death Squads — the French School (Les escadrons de la mort –
l'école française), Luis Maria Mendia asked before the Argentine Court that former French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing,
former French premier Pierre Messmer, former French embassador to Buenos Aires Françoise de la Gosse, and all officials in place
in the French embassy in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1983 be convoked before the court.[61] Besides this "French connection",
he has also charged former head of state Isabel Peron and former ministers Carlos Ruckauf and Antonio Cafiero, whom had signed
the "anti-subversion decrees" before Videla's 1976 coup d'état. According to ESMA survivor Graciela Dalo, this is another tactic
which pretends that these crimes were legitimate as the 1987 Obediencia Debida Act claimed them to be and that they also obeyed to
Isabel Peron's "anti-subversion decrees" (which, if true, would give them a formal appearance of legality, despite torture being
forbidden by the Argentine Constitution)[62] Alfredo Astiz also referred before the courts to the "French connexion".[63] When
Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin traveled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that no cooperation between
France and the military regimes had occurred.[59]
Truth commission and trials The junta relinquished power in 1983. After democratic elections, president elect Raúl Alfonsín
created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in December 1983, led by writer Ernesto Sábato, to
collect evidence about the Dirty War crimes. The gruesome details, including documentation of the disappearance of nearly 9,000
people, shocked the world. Jorge Rafael Videla, head of the junta, was among the generals convicted of human rights crimes,
including forced disappearances, torture, murders and kidnappings. President Alfonsín ordered that the nine members of the military
junta be judicially charged, during the 1983 Trial of the Juntas, together with guerrilla leaders Mario Firmenich, Fernando Vaca
Narvaja, Rodolfo Galimberti, Roberto Perdía, and Enrique Gorriarán Merlo. Some claimed that Alfonsín's government was positing
the "theory of the two demons", morally equating violent political subversion with state terrorism. In the Prologue to the unca Más
report ("Never Again"), Ernesto Sábato wrote: "From the moment of their abduction, the victims lost all rights. Deprived of all
communication with the outside world, held in unknown places, subjected to barbaric tortures, kept ignorant of their immediate or
ultimate fate, they risked being either thrown into a river or the sea, weighted down with blocks of cement, or burned to ashes. They
were not mere objects, however, and still possessed all the human attributes: they could feel pain, could remember a mother, child or
spouse, could feel infinite shame at being raped in public. .."[35] In 1985, Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment at the military
prison of Magdalena. However, on 29 December 1990, President Carlos Menem pardoned Videla and other convicted generals. In
1998, Videla received a prison sentence for his role in the kidnapping of eleven children during the regime and for the forgery of the
children's identity documents (the "stolen babies", kidnapped from the parents arrested, and raised by military families). Videla is
currently serving this sentence under house arrest. Some viewed the pardons as a pragmatic decision of national reconciliation that
sought to please the military and thus prevent further uprisings. Others condemned it as unconstitutional, noting that the
constitutionally acknowledged right of the president to pardon does not extend to those who have not yet been convicted — which
was the situation in the case of some military officials. Others yet consider that this presidential privilege is inappropriate for modern
times, a relic of monarchic rule that should be abolished. Ironically, dictator Videla was de facto incapable of leaving his house, since
every time he went out in public he risked insults or assault. At one time, the street was painted with enormous arrows pointing to his
house, and the words: 30,000 disappeared, assassin on the loose.[citation needed] Foreign governments whose citizens were victims of the
Dirty War (which included citizens of Czechoslovakia,[64] Italy,[65] Sweden,[66] Finland,[67] Germany,[68] the United States,[69] the
United Kingdom,[70] Paraguay,[71] Bolivia,[72] Spain,[73] Chile[73] Uruguay,[73] Peru,[74] and several other nations) are pressing
individual cases against the former military regime. France has sought the extradition of Captain Alfredo Astiz for the kidnapping
and murder of its nationals, among them nuns Leonie Duquet and Alice Domon. Adolfo Scilingo, a former Argentine naval officer,
was convicted in Spain, on 19 April 2005, to 640 years on charges of crimes against humanity. At the end of 2005, during the
presidency of Néstor Kirchner, the Ley de Punto Final and Ley de Obediencia Debida were declared void by congress, but those
already pardoned cannot be prosecuted again for the same crimes. Since 2006, 24 March is a public holiday in Argentina, the Day of
Remembrance for Truth and Justice; that year, on the 30th anniversary of the coup, a multitude filled the streets calling to remember
what happened during the military government, and pray it never to happen again. In 2006, the first trials since the repeal of the
"Pardon Laws" began. Miguel Etchecolatz, the police commissioner of the province of Buenos Aries in the 1970s, was the first to
face trial for illegal detention, torture and homicide. He was found guilty of six counts of murder, six counts of unlawful
imprisonment, and seven counts of torture. A witness in Etchecolatz's trial, Jorge Julio López, went missing hours before he was
going to give testimony.[75] Furthermore, several former Ford Argentine workers have deposed a suit against the U.S.-based
Biblioteca Virtual
company, alleging that the local managers worked with the security forces to detain union members on the premises and torture them.
The civil suit against Ford Motor Company and Ford Argentina also calls for four former company executives and a retired military
officer to be questioned.[76] According to Pedro Norberto Troiani, one of the plaintiffs, 25 employees were detained in this plant
located 40 miles (60 km) from Buenos Aires. Ford has been accused since 1998 of involvement in state repression, but has denied the
claims. According to several documents, army personnel arrived at the plant on the day of the military coup, 24 March 1976, and
disappearances immediately started. In October 2002, DaimlerChrysler had also announced an external investigation into the claims,
made by Amnesty International, that 14 union activists had been handed over to Argentina's military during the Dirty War.[77] There
has been a long-running debate in Argentina over the issue of amnesty for officials of the Dirty War. A form of amnesty was
controversially adopted as law after the reinstatement of democratic rule and the trials of the top military leaders of the juntas in
1984, during Raúl Alfonsín's presidency (1983–1989), but it has remained unpopular. In June 2005, the Supreme Court overturned
the amnesty laws, called Ley de Punto Final ("Full Stop Law") and of Ley de Obediencia Debida ("Law of Due Obedience"),
opening the door for prosecutions of former junta officials.[78] The Punto Final law had been voted on 24 December 1986, under
Alfonsín's presidency, and extinguished any charges for human rights violations for all acts preceding 12 December 1983.[79]
Continuing controversies In 2001, Jorge Zorreguieta, a civilian who was former Undersecretary of Agriculture in the Videla
regime, became the focus of attention when his daughter Máxima became engaged to the Crown Prince of the Netherlands. The
significance of his potential connection to the Dutch Royal Family, and his possible presence at a royal wedding was hotly debated
for several months. Zorreguieta claimed that, as a civilian, he was unaware of the Dirty War while he was a cabinet minister.
Professor Baud, who on request of the Dutch government did an inquiry in the involvement of Zorreguieta, concluded that would it
have been unlikely for a person in such a powerful position in the government to be unaware of the Dirty War.[80] Formal charges
have never been brought against him, but he was banned from attending the royal wedding which was held in Amsterdam on 2
February 2002. Under Nestor Kirchner's term as president, the Argentine Congress revoked a pair of longstanding amnesty laws that
had protected hundreds of officers, regardless of rank, from prosecution for the kidnapping, torture and killing of guerrillas and
critics of the military regime. Throughout her presidency, Cristina Kirchner has vigorously maintained her prosecution of the military
officers responsible for the disappearances. The effort to prosecute junior officers has divided Argentine politicians, former
lieutenant-colonel Aldo Rico, a conservative opposition leader and Falklands/Malvinas War hero among those arguing that it is
counterproductive to "return to the past." "The subversive terrorists committed their killings in a systematic manner" federal
legislator Nora Ginzburg, who represents the 677 affidavits concerning civilians and servicemen killed in leftist terrorist acts, wrote
in an article published in Nueva Provincia newspaper. "They posessed a military structure, specific units, and had their flag and
shield", wrote Ginzburg.[81]
Casualty estimates According to the unca Más report issued by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons
(CONADEP) in 1984, about 9,000 people were "disappeared" between 1976 and 1983. According to a secret cable from DINA
(Chilean secret police) in Buenos Aires, an estimate by the Argentine 601st Intelligence Battalion in mid-July 1978, which started
counting victims in 1975, gave the figure of 22,000 persons — this document was first published by John Dinges in 2004.[82]
Estimates by human rights organizations estimate up to 30,000. The Montoneros admitted losing 5,000 guerrillas killed,[83] and the
ERP admitted the loss of another 5,000 of their own guerrillas killed.[84] By comparison, Argentine security forces cite 775 deaths of
their own. There is no agreement on the actual number of detenidos-desaparecidos. The Asamblea por los Derechos Humanos
(APDH) estimated the number of disappeared as 12,261, which included "definitive dissapearances" and PEN detainee survivors of
the clandestine detention centres spread throughout Argentina.[85] The total figure of official prisoners was 8,625 and of these PEN
detainees 157 were killed after being released from detention.[48] Between 1969 and 1979 left-wing guerrillas accounted for 3,249
kidnappings and murders. CONADEP also recorded 458 assassinations (attributed to the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance) and
about 600 forced disappearances during the period of democratic rule between 1973 and 1976.[10][86]
Participation of the Catholic Church On 15 April 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Argentine
cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, accusing him of conspiring with the junta in 1976 to kidnap two Jesuit priests. So far, no hard evidence has
been presented linking the cardinal to this crime. It is known that the cardinal was the superior figure in the Society of Jesus of
Argentina during 1976 and had asked the two priests to leave their pastoral work following conflict within the Society over how to
respond to the new military dictatorship, with some priests advocating a violent overthrow. Bergoglio's spokesman has flatly denied
the allegations.[87] It should be noted that Bergoglio was a key figure in securing the priests' release following their abduction by an
Argentine navy squad, as he pressured Navy Chief of Staff Emilio Eduardo Massera.[citation needed] The complaint was filed as the
Roman Catholic Conclave prepared to convene to select a new pope, likely as a means of protesting Bergoglio's candidacy. The
papacy went to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Furthermore, the former chaplain of the Buenos Aires Province Police while it was under
the command of General Ramón Camps, Christian von Wernich, was first accused of collaborating in the torture of political
prisoners during the Trial of the Juntas in 1985.[88] A judge ordered again his arrest in 2003, and he was indicted on charges of coauthorship of homicide, illegal restraints and acts of torture (including the kidnapping of Jacobo Timerman, the editor of La
Opinión). Surviving victims declared that von Wernich questioned them under torture, subjected them to fake executions, and, under
the guise of counseling, urged them to confess. [89] [90] On 9 October 2007, the court found him guilty of complicity in seven
homicides, 42 kidnappings, and 32 instances of torture, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. [91][92]
Books
• Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Editor Robert J. Cox, by David Cox (2008).
• The Ministry of Special Cases, by Nathan Englander (2007), novel.
• La Historia Official (English: The Official Story), by Nicolás Márquez (2006), revisionist critique
• Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, by Paul H. Lewis (2001).
• God's Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s by M. Patricia Marchak (1999).
• A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, by Marguerite Feitlowitz (1999).
• Una sola muerte numerosa (English: A Single, umberless Death), by Nora Strejilevich (1997).
• The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, by Horacio Verbitsky (1996).
• Argentina's Lost Patrol: Armed Struggle, 1969–1979, by María José Moyano (1995).
• Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the "Dirty War", by Martin Edwin Anderson (1993).
Biblioteca Virtual
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Argentina's "Dirty War": An Intellectual Biography, by Donald C. Hodges (1991).
Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United ations, by Iain Guest (1990).
The Little School: Tales of Disappearance & Survival in Argentina, by Alicia Partnoy (1989).
Argentina, 1943–1987: The ational Revolution and Resistance, by Donald C. Hodges (1988).
Soldiers of Perón: Argentina's Montoneros, by Richard Gillespie (1982).
Guerrilla warfare in Argentina and Colombia, 1974–1982, by Bynum E. Weathers, Jr. (1982).
Prisoner without a ame, Cell without a umber, by Jacobo Timerman (1981).
Guerrilla politics in Argentina, by Kenneth F. Johnson (1975).
Film
•
•
•
•
•
•
Cautiva (2003). Directed by Gaston Biraben. Movie related to the "stolen babies" case
Imagining Argentina (2003). Directed by Christopher Hampton.
The Official Story (1985). Directed by Luis Puenzo. Movie related to the "stolen babies" case
Kamchatka (2002). Directed by Marcelo Piñeyro.
The Disappeared (2007). Directed by Peter Sanders.[93]
Los Escuadrones De La Muerte (the Death Squadron, Escadrons de la mort), l'école française, by Marie-Monique Robin
(book and film)[94]
See also
•
•
•
•
-otes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Amnesty law
Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic
Command responsibility
Films depicting Latin American military dictatorships
•
•
•
Jorge Eduardo Acosta
Maria Eugenia Sampallo
Operation Gladio
^ "Child Survival: Anthropological Perspectives on the Treatment and Maltreatment of Children, Nancy Scheper-Hughes,
p.
228,
Springer,
1987".
Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=JAz4lv4QLZMC&pg=PA228&lpg=PA228&dq=by+the+late+sixties+and+early+seventie
s+high+ranking+members+of+the+military&source=bl&ots=qZCfECCb1C&sig=G7Dzxzr6YOElMF8c0d_cL3Dups&hl=en&ei=_YmzScn4B4KqsAOH3tWSAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result.
Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
^ "Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina , Paul H. Lewis, p. 73, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002".
Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=NtZ3EvNYxjYC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=admiral+hermes+killed+erp+argentina&so
urce=bl&ots=Wd9uksFegj&sig=Qaxt3hPCgacDjJorvLqMIfh6D20&hl=en&ei=OIyzSf7GGYnOtQOkufBz&sa=X&oi=boo
k_result&resnum=1&ct=result. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
^ PBS News Hour, 16 Oct. 1997, et al. Argentina Death Toll, Twentieth Century Atlas
^ a b La Nación, 19 September 2006. Condenaron a Etchecolatz a reclusión perpetua.
^ a b Julio Strassera's prosecution during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas (Juicio a las Juntas Militares)
^ Desaparecidos.org, documents of the Trial of the Juntas. El Estado de necesidad.
^ Hugo Moreno, Le désastre argentin. Péronisme, politique et violence sociale (1930–2001), Editions Syllepses, Paris,
2005, p. 109 (French)
^ "The Argentina Reader: History, Culture, Politics, Gabriela Nouzeilles & Graciela R. Montaldo, p. 382, Duke University
Press,
2002".
Books.google.co.uk.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Y0_u5aLUT8YC&pg=PA382&lpg=PA382&dq=plaza+san+isidro+montoneros+argen
tina&source=bl&ots=KnPpRlImR7&sig=9JyajPMExj8EDawDeE1Wf5rI2t4&hl=en&ei=LJ68SYTiKZmQsQP5uPBD&sa
=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
^
"Ibid.,
p.
382".
Books.google.co.uk.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Y0_u5aLUT8YC&pg=PA382&lpg=PA382&dq=plaza+san+isidro+montoneros+argen
tina&source=bl&ots=KnPpRlImR7&sig=9JyajPMExj8EDawDeE1Wf5rI2t4&hl=en&ei=LJ68SYTiKZmQsQP5uPBD&sa
=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
^ a b c d e f g h i Argenpress, 10 April 2006. Represión en Argentina y memoria larga.
^ International Terrorism: A Chronology (1974 Supplement) By Brian M. Jenkins and Janera A. Johnson
^ a b c "State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights, Thomas C. Wright, p. 102,
Rowman
&
Littlefield,
2007".
Books.google.co.uk.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ztjV7GVNeiAC&pg=PA102&dq=137+in+1975,+and+the+number+peaked+at+156+i
n+1976. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
^ "Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, Paul H. Lewis, p. 53, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002".
Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=NtZ3EvNYxjYC&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=another+38+policemen+were+killed+durin
g+1972&source=bl&ots=Wd9uksDdmg&sig=kqMHR9PcQg55iQImjxZTHJ4eLU&hl=en&ei=PYSzSafYDpK2sAPltMhy&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
^ "Latin America's Wars: The Age of the Professional Soldier, 1900-2001 , Robert L. Scheina, p. 297, Brassey's, 2003".
Books.google.co.uk.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1RGRWilHbtQC&pg=PA299&dq=since+juan+peron%27s+death+the+guerrillas+had
+committed+300+murders#PPA297,M1. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
^ Cronica de La Subversion en La Argentina (Revised & Updated, 1983).
^ Spanish: el commando general del Ejército procederá a ejecutar todas las operaciones militares que sean necesarias a
efectos de neutralizar o aniquilar el accionar de los elementos subversivos que actúan en la provincia de Tucumán
Biblioteca Virtual
17. ^ Decree No. 261/75. NuncaMas.org, Decretos de aniquilamiento.
18. ^ Facts on File, p. 126, 1975
19. ^ Adrian J. English , Armed Forces of Latin America: Their Histories, Development, Present Strength, and Military
Potential, Janes Information Group, 1984, p. 33.
20. ^ "Terrorism in Context, Martha Crenshaw, p. 236, Penn State Press, 1995". Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=9nFyZaZGthgC&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236&dq=perhaps+several+hundred+montoneros&s
ource=bl&ots=nS1oUdmih1&sig=2JQIlP0Jvget7uNo6lU4amIp-kE&hl=en&ei=Bi7SfnKDJSgM6yfsZMI&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
24. ^ Lewis, Paul. (2002). Guerrillas and Generals: the Dirty War in Argentina, page 125, Greenwood Publishing Group.
25. ^ a b c Automotores Orletti el taller asesino del Cóndor, Juventud Rebelde, 3 January 2006 (mirrored on El Correo.eu.org
(Spanish)/(French)
26. ^ Marie-Monique Robin, 2004. Escadrons de la mort, l'école française. 453 pages. La Découverte ISBN 2707141631;
Spanish transl., 2005: Los Escuadrones De La Muerte/ the Death Squadron, de Marie-Monique Robin. 539 pages.
Sudamericana. ISBN 950072684X
27. ^ a b "Encyclopedia of modern worldwide extremists and extremist groups, Stephen E. Atkins, p. 202, Greenwood
Publishing Group, 2004". Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=b8k4rEPvq_8C&pg=PA202&dq=federal+police+montoneros+bombing. Retrieved on
2009-04-04.
28. ^ "Una "Travesura" de los "Jovenes Idealistas"". Ar.geocities.com. http://ar.geocities.com/ciudadanosalerta/terrorismo/1209-1976.html. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
29. ^ Monday, Apr. 11, 1977 (1977-04-11). "Hope from a Clockwork Coup-TIME, 11 April 1977". Time.com.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,918823,00.html?iid=chix-sphere. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
30. ^ "of Gross Human Rights Violations by State and State-sponsored Actors in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina: 19601990, Wolfgang S. Heinz & Hugo Frühling, pages 236-237,Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1999". Books.google.co.in.
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=E1YZy_xhQoC&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236&dq=plans+to+unite+the+guerrillas+in+argentina&source=bl&ots=sXdwRpNeGT&sig=S
mP3wIQwSvrkpMspbMi9X36QgSY&hl=en&ei=BtyrSbejDYKOsQPW_YzZDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=
result#PPA236,M1Determinants. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
31. ^ Martín Almada, "Paraguay: The Forgotten Prison, the Exiled Country"
32. ^ Stella Calloni. Los Archivos del Horror del Operativo Cóndor. freely available on Equipo Nizkor's website, here [1]
(Spanish)
33. ^ Visit by Guillermo Novo Sampol to Chile in 1976, 1 and 2, on the National Security Archive website
34. ^ Terra Actualidad, 18 March 2006. Ramón Camps: el peor de todos.
35. ^ a b The Victims: Abducted, Tortured, Vanished (list of victims) (English)/(Spanish)
36. ^ Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo's website (English)
37. ^ "Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements, Susan Eckstein & Manuel A. Garretón Merino, p. 244,
University of California Press, 2001". Books.google.co.uk.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=V0o7_lLFOMwC&pg=PA244&dq=In+September+1977,+General+Albano+Harguind
eguy,+minister+of+the+interior. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
38. ^ "Authoritarian regimes in Latin America: Dictators, Despots, and Tyrants, Paul H. Lewis, p. 221, Rowman & Littlefield,
2005". Books.google.co.uk. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LAvwYXm4TsC&pg=PA221&dq=the+montoneros+tried+to+disrupt+the+world+cup. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
39. ^ "When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror, Cecilia Menjívar & Néstor Rodriguez, p. 317,
University of Texas Press, 2005". Google.co.uk.
http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=wBzJPtLs6KIC&pg=PA317&dq=montoneros+launched+a+counteroffensive.
40. ^ "Lo que sabía el 601". Pagina12.com.ar. http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-9327-2002-08-25.html. Retrieved
on 2009-04-04.
41. ^ "Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations, Iain Guest, page 19,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990". Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=lq_i3wpmBWUC&pg=PA19&dq=stood+at+at+least+5,182. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
42. ^ Beckett, William & Pimlott, John. (1985). Armed Forces & Modern Counter-insurgency, page 122, Technology &
Engineering
43. ^ "Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements, Susan Eckstein & Manuel Antonio Garretón Merino,
page 244, University of California Press, 2001". Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=V0o7_lLFOMwC&pg=PA244&dq=Hipolito+Yrigoyen+were+detained+disappeared.
44. ^ "Spanish and Latin American Transitions to Democracy, Carlos H. Waisman & Raanan Rein, page 195, Sussex
Academic Press, 2006". Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=P7NCRh25xT0C&pg=PA195&dq=representing+the+interior+ministry,+explained+to+A
mnesty+International. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
45. ^ "Political Injustice: Authoritarianism and the Rule of Law in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, Anthony W. Pereira, page 134,
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005". Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=iTb1QNYILZAC&pg=PA134&dq=The+total+number+of+people+who+were+incarcerat
ed+for+long+periods+was+8,625. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
Biblioteca Virtual
46. ^ "The Handbook of Reparations: The International Center for Transitional Justice, Pablo De Greiff, page 28, Oxford
University Press, 2006". Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=sg38_E8hNQIC&pg=PA28&dq=Menem,+who+between+1976+and+1981+had+been+a+
political+prisoner. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=lq_i3wpmBWUC&pg=PA498&dq=3,000+PEN+detainees. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
48. ^ a b "Political Injustice: Authoritarianism and the Rule of Law in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, Anthony W. Pereira, page
134, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005". Books.google.ca.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=iTb1QNYILZAC&pg=PA134&dq=5182+prisoners+were+held+under+pen. Retrieved on
2009-04-04.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=lq_i3wpmBWUC&pg=PA100&dq=pen+behind+the+dirty+war. Retrieved on 2009-0404.
50. ^ Hearing of Stefano Delle Chiaie on 22 July 1997 before the Italian Parliamentary Commission on Terrorism headed by
senator Giovanni Pellegrino (Italian)
51. ^ Los secretos de la guerra sucia continental de la dictadura, El Clarin, March 24, 2006 (Spanish)
52. ^ a b Argentine Military Believed U.S. Gave Go-Ahead for Dirty War, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book
No. 73 — Part II, CIA classified documents released in 2002.
53. ^ a b c d e f Argentine – Escadrons de la mort : l’école française, interview with Marie-Monique Robin published by RISAL,
October 22, 2004 available in French & Spanish (“Los métodos de Argel se aplicaron aquí”, Página/12, October 13, 2004
54. ^ Conclusion of Marie-Monique Robin's Escadrons de la mort, l'école française (French)
55. ^ Torture : l’école française, Marie-Monique Robin, interview first published by Rouge, September 2005 (French)
56. ^ MM. Giscard d'Estaing et Messmer pourraient être entendus sur l'aide aux dictatures sud-américaines, Le Monde, 25
September 2003 (French)
57. ^ « Série B. Amérique 1952–1963. Sous-série : Argentine, n° 74. Cotes : 18.6.1. mars 52-août 63 ».
58. ^ Rapport Fait Au Nom de La Commission des Affaires Étrangères Sur La Proposition de Résolution (n° 1060), tendant à
la création d'une commission d'enquête sur le rôle de la France dans le soutien aux régimes militaires d'Amérique latine
entre 1973 et 1984, par M. Roland BLUM, French National Assembly (French)
59. ^ a b Argentine : M. de Villepin défend les firmes françaises, Le Monde, February 5, 2003 (French)
60. ^ a b L’exportation de la torture, interview with Marie-Monique Robin in L'Humanité, 30 August 2003 (French)
61. ^ Disparitions : un ancien agent français mis en cause, Le Figaro, 6 February 2007 (French)
62. ^ “Impartí órdenes que fueron cumplidas”, Página/12, February 2, 2007 (Spanish)
63. ^ Astiz llevó sus chicanas a los tribunales, Página/12, January 25, 2007 (Spanish)
64. ^ "Desaparecidos". Translate.google.com.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/d/dornak/&sa=X&oi=tra
nslate&resnum=3&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dp.%2Bcarlos%2Bdor%25C3%25B1ak%26hl%3Den. Retrieved on
2009-04-04.
65. ^ "Desaparecidos". Desaparecidos. http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/m/moretti/. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
66. ^ "Jorge Acosta and the murder of Dagmar Hagelin". Yendor.com. http://www.yendor.com/vanished/junta/acosta.html.
67. ^ "Desaparacidos". Desaparecidos.org. http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/h/hietala/. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
68. ^ Admservice. "Argentina rejects 'Dirty War' extradition requests". Latinamericanstudies.org.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/argentina/extradition.htm. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
69. ^ "Desaparecidos". Desaparecidos. http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/o/olsonc/eng.html. Retrieved on 2009-0404.
70. ^ "Desaparecidos". Translate.google.com.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/f/fleury/&sa=X&oi=trans
late&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dwalter%2Bkenneth%2Bfleury%2Bargentina%26hl%3Den. Retrieved
on 2009-04-04.
71. ^ "Desparacidos". Desaparecidos.org. http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/m/todos/medinag.html. Retrieved on
2009-04-04.
72. ^ "Desaparecidos". Desaparecidos. http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/j/jordanj/. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
73. ^ a b c "Desaparecidos". Desaparecidos. http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/eng.html. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
74. ^ "Desaparecidos". Desaparecidos. http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/m/todos/monzone.html. Retrieved on 200904-04.
75. ^ Naomi Klein. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Macmillan, 2007 ISBN 0805079831,
9780805079838. pp. 100-102
76. ^ Ford sued over Argentine abuses, BBC ews, 24 February 2006
77. ^ Argentina checks Ford's 'military ties', BBC ews, 6 November 2002
78. ^ Law 23492 (Ley de Punto Final).
79. ^ BBC News, 15 June 2005. Argentine amnesty laws scrapped.
80. ^ Human rights: Zorreguieta vs.humanrights, March 2001
81. ^ Piden que el Estado indemnice a víctimas de las guerrillas, La Nueva Provincia, March 9, 2008 (Spanish)
82. ^ Mid-July 1978 - (Argentine Military Intelligence Estimates 22,000 people Dead or Disappeared, page A-8), National
Security Archive
83. ^ El ex líder de los Montoneros entona un «mea culpa» parcial de su pasado, El Mundo, May 4, 1995
Biblioteca Virtual
84. ^ "A 32 años de la caída en combate de Mario Roberto Santucho y la Dirección Histórica del PRT-ERP". Cedema.org.
http://www.cedema.org/ver.php?id=2713. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
85. ^ "Searching for life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina, Rita Arditti , p.
44, University of California Press, 1999". Books.google.co.uk. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=upf0Y0NE54C&pg=PA44&dq=the+total+figure+was+highly+contested+the+apdh. Retrieved on 2009-04-04.
86. ^ L'ancienne présidente argentine Isabel Peron arrêtée à Madrid, à la demande de Buenos Aires, Le Monde, January 13,
2007 (French)
87. ^ Argentine cardinal accused in 1976 kidnaps, Globe and Mail, April 16, 2005
88. ^ Nuncamas.org. Testimony of Cristian Federico von Wernich during the Trial of the Juntas (8 May 1985). (Spanish)
89. ^ The Catholic Voice, 9 January 2006. Argentine priest arraigned for human rights abuses.
90. ^ La Capital (Rosario), 8 March 2006. Von Wernich seguirá en prisión y será sometido a juicio oral. (Spanish)
91. ^ BBC News, 10 September 2007. 'Dirty War' priest gets life term.
92. ^ El Clarín, 9 October 2007. Reclusión perpetua para Von Wernich. (Spanish)
93. ^ http://www.thedisappearedmovie.com
94. ^ http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/2926696/ ISBN 950072684X
External links
• Proyecto Desaparecidos/Project Disappeared
• War Diary of Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas
• 1984 Report of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons
• Old Ideas in New Discourses: "The War Against Terrorism" and Collective Memory in Uruguay and Argentina
• Consortium article
• Information from the Vanished Gallery
• (Spanish) 24 de marzo — Del horror a la esperanza — Official website of the Memorial Day, with timeline and resources
Memorial to the Dirty War in a park in Buenos Aires. Photos of French nuns Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon. Alfredo Astiz has
been convicted for their "disappearance", while Luis Maria Mendia has been indicted for them. A former illegal detention center in
the headquarters of the provincial police of Santa Fe, in Rosario, now a memorial.
Military zones of Argentina, 1975–83
Biblioteca Virtual
Batallón de Inteligencia 601
August 7, 1979 US embassy in Argentina Memorandum of the conversation with "Jorge Contreras," director of Task Force 7 of the
"Reunion Central" section of the 601 Army Intelligence Unit, which gathered members from all parts of the Argentine Armed Forces
. Subject: "Nuts and Bolts of the Government's Repression of Terrorism-Subversion. Original document on the National Security
Archives' website. According to the National Security Archive, the junta led by Jorge Rafael Videla believed it had United States'
approval for its all-out assault on the left in the name of "national security doctrine". The U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires complained
to Washington that the Argentine officers were "euphoric" over signals from high-ranking U.S. officials, including Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger [1].
The Batallón de Inteligencia 601 (601st Intelligence Battalion) was a special military intelligence service of the Argentine Army
active in the Dirty War and Operation Condor. It was under the orders of Guillermo Suárez Mason and ultimately reported to junta
leader Leopoldo Galtieri [2]. The unit participated to Luis García Meza Tejada's Cocaine Coup in Bolivia in 1980 and trained Contra
units in Lepaterique base (Honduras) in the 1980s. It also trained members of the Hondurian Batallion 316. In June 1980, Peru was
known to have collaborated with members of the group in the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of a group of Montoneros living
in exile in Lima.
References
1. ^ ARGENTINE MILITARY BELIEVED U.S. GAVE GO-AHEAD FOR DIRTY WAR, National Security Archive
Electronic Briefing Book No. 73 - Part II, CIA classified documents released in 2002
2. ^ New Documents Describe Key Death Squad Under Former Army Chief Galtieri, National Security Archive
See also
• Dirty War
• Operation Charly
• Operation Condor
• Argentine Army
• Army Intelligence Service
• Agustín Feced
External links (Spanish)(English) Declassified US Department of State files
Biblioteca Virtual
ESMA
Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada, main entrance.
The -avy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics (in Spanish, Escuela de Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada, previously
Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada), commonly referred to by its abbreviation ESMA, is a facility of the Argentine Navy
that was employed as an illegal detention center during the dictatorial rule of the National Reorganization Process (1976–1983). The
original ESMA was a complex located on Libertador Avenue, in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, in the barrio of Nuñez. It
was the seat of Task Unit 3.3.2 - Unidad de Tareas 3.3.2,[1] charged with multiple instances of forced disappearance, torture and
illegal execution, as well as appropriation of children born from imprisoned mothers who became esmas followed by identity forgery
and/or illegal adoption. ESMA was the largest detention center of its kind in times of the Dirty War. The seat of the Mechanics
School in Buenos Aires was turned into a museum by law of the National Congress on 5 August 2004, which named it the Space for
Memory and for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. The new facilities of the ESMA are located in the Puerto Belgrano
Naval Base, 28 km from the city of Bahía Blanca.
Human rights violations Almost 5,000 people were taken and held in the ESMA, and more than 90% of those were murdered.
Executions were usually announced as transferences to common prisons. The prisoners were taken to the basement, sedated, and then
killed: some by firing squad (their bodies to be cremated in the nearby sports field), others in "death flights", flown over the Río de la
Plata and dumped from the airplanes while unconscious.
Functions and authorities The Mechanics School worked as a detention center from the very start of the dictatorship. On the day of
the coup d'état (24 March 1976) there were several people kidnapped by the Armed Forces. The officers in charge were under strict
orders not to reveal their identities or military affiliation when capturing prisoners. Task Force 3.2.2 was in charge of the city of
Buenos Aires proper and the northern part of the metropolitan area (Gran Buenos Aires). It was led by Counter Admiral Rubén
Jacinto Chamorro and Captain Carlos Acosta Ambone, and among its ranks there were also Jorge Eduardo Acosta, Alfredo Astiz,
Ricardo Miguel Cavallo and Adolfo Scilingo. Its chaplain during 1977 was Father Alberto Ángel Zanchetta. The group was
ultimately (between 1976 and 1978) under the orders of Navy Commander-in-Chief Emilio Eduardo Massera. Massera was
reportedly present during the gathering of the task group, gave an opening speech for the officers, and personally participated in the
first illegal detentions.
Layout The internal layout and conditions of the ESMA has been partly preserved, partly reconstructed from former prisoners'
testimonies. Task Force 3.3.2 occupied the Officers' Casino, which had three floors plus a basement and a large attic. Detainees were
held in the basement, the attic and the third floor. The basement was the entry to ESMA for the new prisoners, who were taken there
for questioning under torture. It included an infirmary and a photographic laboratory. Its layout was modified in October 1977 and
then again in December 1978, in preparation for the upcoming visit of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the
Organization of American States. The ground floor was called Dorado, and hosted the intelligence and planning area, the officers'
dining room, a conference room, and a meeting room. The first and second floors were occupied by the officers' rooms, to which the
prisoners had no access. The area termed Capucha (literally "hood") took up the right-hand side of the attic. It was L-shaped, and had
a number of narrow cells (called camarotes, i. e. "cabins") lit only by small casement windows, each containing a mattress for the
prisoner. El Pañol, on the left-hand side of the attic, was the storage room for goods taken from the homes of detainees (furniture,
utensils, clothes, etc.). Around the end of 1977 part of the Pañol was dedicated to La Pecera. La Pecera was a series of small offices,
plus a press archive and a library, under the supervision of closed circuit TV surveillance cameras. Some of the prisoners stayed there
part of the day. Capuchita was a second attic for prisoners, similar to Capucha, but with even worse living conditions. It included
two torture rooms. It was lent to the Navy's Intelligence Service, the Army and the Air Force for them to keep and torture their
prisoners apart from the others. The Task Force also employed it when Capucha was too crowded.
References
1. ^ http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/arg/doc/perren1.html While most English language sources refer to the unit as a 'task
force', the attached Spanish webpage gives what appears to the proper name of the unit, named according to U.S. navy task
force numbering systems.
• unca Más, report of CONADEP. ESMA.
Biblioteca Virtual
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (“Triple A”)
The Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Spanish: Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, usually known as Triple A or AAA) was a
far-right death squad active in Argentina during the mid-1970s, particularly active under Isabel Perón's rule (1974-1976). It later
became linked to the military junta led by Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1983) and played a prominent role in the "Dirty War".
According to a 1983 ew York Times article, at the time of the group's founding, Argentina saw a growing number of terrorist attacks
by left-wing groups[1], and harsh repression of political dissidents on the part of the military, paramilitary and police forces.
However, according to the 1985 Juicio a las Juntas trial, by 1976 both the ERP and the Montoneros had been dismantled, and so there
was no real insurgency to legitimize the so-called "Dirty War."
Clandestinely led by José López Rega, Minister of Social Welfare and personal secretary of Juan Domingo Perón, it enforced the
repression against the Peronist left-wing. Rodolfo Almirón, arrested in Spain in 2006, was also an important figure of the Triple A, in
charge of López Rega and Isabel Perón's personal security. SIDE agent Anibal Gordon was allegedly also another important member
of the Triple A, although he always denied it [2]. Despite its name, the AAA acted against a wide range of government opponents, not
just communists.
Creation The Triple A was organized by José López Rega and Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine federal police, during
the brief interim presidency of Raúl Lastiri in 1973. López Rega, a devotee of occultism and self-styled divinator, became a powerful
force in the Peronist movement, exerting great influence over Perón at the time, and his wife Isabel Martínez de Perón, who assumed
the presidency upon Perón's sudden death on 1 July 1974. To support the group, López Rega drew on funds from the Ministry of
Social Welfare, which he controlled.[3] Some of the members of the Triple A had taken part in the Peronist 1973 Ezeiza massacre,
when snipers shot on left-wing Peronists on the day Perón came back from exile, thus leading to the definitive separation between
left and right-wing Peronists. Judge Baltazar Garzón's investigations demonstrated that Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie had
also worked with the Triple A, and was present on the day of Peron's return to Argentina. Delle Chiaie also worked with the Chilean
DINA and for Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer.[4]
Victims The group first came to national attention on 21 November 1973 when it unsuccessfully tried to murder Argentine Senator
Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen by means of a car bomb. The AAA went on to kill 1,122 people, according to an appendix to the 1983
CONADEP report[5], including suspected Montoneros and ERP leftist guerrillas and their sympathizers, as well as judges, police
chiefs, and social activists. In total, it is suspected of having killed more than 1500 people.[6] The group is strongly suspected in the
1974 murder of Jesuit Carlos Mugica, a friend of Mario Firmenich, Montoneros's founder.[5] Other people targeted include Silvio
Frondizi, brother of former president Arturo Frondizi, former-vice director of the police Julio Troxler, defender of political prisoners
Alfredo Curutchet, and former vice-governor of Córdoba, Atilio López. The CONADEP commission on human rights violations has
proven the Triple A's execution of 19 homicides in 1973, 50 in 1974 and 359 in 1975, while its involvement in several others
hundreds is also suspected. One of the most often cited estimates counts 220 terrorist attacks from July to September 1974, which
killed 60 and heavily injured 44, as well as 20 kidnappings[7] Federal judge Norberto Oyarbide, who signed the extradition demand
against former leader of the AAA Rodolfo Almirón, qualified in December 2006 the Triple A's crimes as human rights violations and
the "beginning of the systematic process directed by the state apparatus" during the dictatorship.[6][8] Death threats caused many
people to leave Argentina. Amongst many well-known and respected people who left are mathematician Manuel Sadosky, artists
Héctor Alterio, Luis Brandoni and Nacha Guevara, politicians José Ber Gelbard, lawyer and politician Héctor Sandler, and actor
Norman Briski.[9] The AAA was known to have strong backing from the military and Army Commander-in-Chief Jorge Rafael
Videla, who came to power as President following the 1976 coup d'état.
• Murder of Rodolfo David Ortega Peña on July 31, 1974[8]
• Murder of Raúl Laguzzidel on September 5, 1974[8]
• Murder of Alfredo Alberto Pérez Curutchet on September 10, 1974[8]
• Kidnapping of Daniel Banfi, Luis Latrónica and Guillermo Jabif on September 12, 1974[8]
• Murder of Julio Tomás Troxler on September 20, 1974[8]
• Murder of Domingo Devincenti on November 6, 1974[8]
• Murder of Luis Ángel Mendiburu and Silvio Frondizi on September 27, 1974[8]
• Murder of Carlos Ernensto Laham and Pedro Leopoldo Barraza on October 13, 1974.[8]
Others Fifteen former AAA members (including Rodolfo Almirón, who later became Manuel Fraga's chief of personal security)
participated in the Montejurra 1976 shooting of two left-wing Carlist members in Spain, along with Italian neofascist Stefano Delle
Chiaie and Jean Pierre Cherid, former member of the OAS and then of the GAL death squad.[10][9] Former Triple A member José
María Boccardo also participated with Jean Pierre Cherid and others in the 1978 assassination of Argala, the etarra who had
participated in the 1973 assassination of Franco's Prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco.[11]
See also
• 601 Intelligence Battalion
• Dirty War
• Montejurra
• Manuel Sadosky and Héctor Alterio both were threatened by the AAA.
• Rodolfo Almirón, leader of the group wanted for various murders (arrested in 2006)
References
1. ^ "Ex-Argentine Security Chief Arrested". New York Times. 1983-11-12.
2. ^ Quién fue Aníbal Gordon, El Clarin (Spanish)
Biblioteca Virtual
3.
^ Un juez argentino ordena capturar al ex jefe de la 'Triple A', que vive en Valencia, El Mundo, December 20, 2006
(Spanish)
4. ^ "Las Relaciones secretas entre Pinochet, Franco y la P2 - Conspiración para matar". Equipo Nizkor. 1999-02-04.
http://www.derechos.org/sorin/doc/p2.html. (Spanish)
5. ^ a b "Rights: Argentina Renews Hunt for 'Triple A' Death Squad". IPS. 2007-02-23.
6. ^ a b Justicia argentina condenó delitos de la Triple A, Agencia Pulsar, 27/12/2006, URL accessed on January 4, 2007
(Spanish)
7. ^ González Jansen, Ignacio (1986), La Triple A, Buenos Aires, Contrapunto. (Spanish)
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Prisión para el ex policía argentino Rodolfo Almirón por su pertenencia a la Triple A, EFE — El Mundo,
December 29, 2006 — URL accessed on January 4, 2007 (Spanish)
9. ^ a b Rodolfo Almirón, de la Triple A al Montejurra, PDF (Spanish)
10. ^ MONTEJURRA: LA OPERACIÓN RECONQUISTA Y EL ACTA FUNDACIONAL DE LAS TRAMAS
ANTITERRORISTAS. Fuente "INTERIOR" Por Santiago Belloch (Spanish)
11. ^ «Yo maté al asesino de Carrero Blanco», El Mundo, December 21, 2003 (Spanish) (English account of El Mundo article)
External links
• "El 'jefe' de la Triple A vive en un arrabal de Valencia", El Mundo, Félix Martínez y Nando García (Spanish)
• "El Debut del Terror: La Triple A", Pablo Mendelevich (Spanish)
Biblioteca Virtual
Operation Charly
Buildings used by the School of the Americas in Panama.
Operation Charly (Spanish: Operación Charly) was the code-name of the covert operation headed by the Argentine military, with
the agreement of the Pentagon, to extend to Central America the illegal methods of repression used in the so-called "Dirty War" in
Argentina. It lasted from 1977 to 1984. These methods themselves had been taught to the Argentine military first by the French
military, drawing on the experience of the 1957 Battle of Algiers, and then by their US counterparts [1][2]. Following the release of
classified documents and an interview with Duane Clarridge, former CIA responsible for those operations, Clarín newspaper showed
that with the election of President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the CIA was blocked from engaging in the special warfare it had previously
delivered against opponents. In conformity with the National Security Doctrine, the Argentine militaries then did the work the most
conservative North American elements wanted to achieve, while they pressured the US to be more active in counter-revolutionary
activities. And finally, they submitted themselves to Washington's control following the access of Ronald Reagan to the presidency
in 1981 [3]. Activities were taken up by the Pentagon following the defeat of the Argentine Armed Forces during the Falklands War
(March-June 1982).
The exportation of the "Argentine" method to Central America From 1977 to 1984, after the Falklands War, the Argentine
Armed Forces exported counter-insurgency tactics, including the systemic use of torture, death squads and "disappearances" — a US
embassy cable spoke of the "tactics of disappearance" [3]. Special force units, such as Batallón de Inteligencia 601, headed in 1979 by
Colonel Jorge Alberto Muzzio, trained the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, in particular in Lepaterique base [4]. The plans were
designed by General Carlos Alberto Martínez, head of the SIDE and Videla's man in the intelligence services, along with General
Viola and General Valín [3]. Starting in 1979, the military junta actively participated to the "dirty war" carried out in Central Amercia,
Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The Argentine military carried out covert operations that the CIA could not
manage under the Carter (democratic) administration which had succeeded Gerald Ford, a Republican. Along with the more
conservative sectors of US society, they began to proclaim that the United States had let for themselves the continent confronted to
the "Communist threat" and that they had to take up the lead [3]. Operation Charly was executed by a group of militaries who had
already taken part in Operation Condor, which had started as soon as 1973 and concerned an international cooperation between
intelligence agencies to permit greater repression of the left-wing opposition. US journalist Martha Honey documented the
exportation of "social control techniques" which the Argentine army had "brutally perfected" in Argentina to Central American
countries [5]. The Argentine intelligence services created a secret network inside the intelligence agencies (the same method was used
in Operation Gladio) to transfer the $19 millions provided by the CIA [3]. In 1979, the Sandinista Front overthrew the Somoza
dictatorship. In November 1979, General Roberto Viola, president of the Argentine junta, exposed before the 13th Conference of
American Armies in Bogotá the Latin American plan of state terrorism [3]. However, it was most of all General Leopoldo Galtieri
who, in resonance with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, compromised the Argentine military in the continental "Dirty War", in
the strategic frame decided by the White House. ew York Times journalist Leslie Gelb explained that "with this pact, Argentine
would be responsible, with funds from orth American intelligence, of attacking the flux of equipment which was transiting
icaragua to El Salvador and Guatemala [6]". The US were to provide money and equipment, while Argentina sent military
instructors, and Honduras provided the use of its territory for training of the Contras and attack bases against the Sandinistas. Starting
in 1979, the Argentine military established covert military centers in Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and
Nicaragua. Among others examples, the death squads which began to act in Honduras in 1980 were attributed to the importation of
the "Argentine method" [7]. A memorandum of the United States National Security Council of 15 February 1980, given by Robert
Pastor to Zbigniew Brzezinski, David Aaron and Henry Owen stated that: "The moment has come to insure that this government [US
government] moves itself in an efficient manner to resolve the problems of El Salvador and Honduras." The document proposed to
divide the left-wing, neutralize the right-wing coup d'état and arm a more moderate civilian and military government [3]. In July 1980,
the Grupo de Tareas Exterior (GTE, External Operations Group) headed by Guillermo Suárez Mason, of the 601 Intelligence
Battalion, took part in the Cocaine Coup of Luis García Meza in Bolivia, with the assistance of the Italian terrorist Stefano Delle
Chiaie and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The Argentine secret services hired 70 foreign agents to assist in the coup [8] [3]. The
cocaine trade helped fund the covert operations [3]. Contacts were made between US intelligence and Argentine intelligence on 16
June 1980, and the main theme of discussions concerned Bolivia, as well as the kidnapping of Montoneros in Lima (Peru) [3]. End of
October 1980, Jimmy Carter authorized the creation of a CIA covert program of assistance to the Sandinistas' opposition, sending a
million dollars to fund them. The CIA also collaborated with the 601 Intelligence Battalion, which had organized a base in Florida [3].
In the middle of the 1980s, former CIA deputy director Vernon Walters and the Contra leader Francisco Aguirre met with Viola,
Davico and Valín to coordinate actions in Central America [3].
Leopoldo Galtieri's take-over and complete alignment with Washington The "Dirty War" in Central America and US support
internally strengthened General Galtieri's position. In December 1981, Galtieri in a palace revolution, replaced General Viola, who
Biblioteca Virtual
was, as Videla, suspected because of the good relationship maintained until now by the military junta with the Soviet Union. A few
days before assuming power, Galtieri exposed in a speech in Miami the Argentine government's decision to constitute itself as an
unconditional ally of the US in the "world struggle against Communism": "Argentina and the United States will march together in
the ideological war which is starting in the world" [sic] [9]. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan assumed power in January 1981, with
Alexander Haig as Secretary of State and Harry Shlaudeman as ambassador in Buenos Aires. John Negroponte was nominated
ambassador in Honduras. The same month, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) initiated a large-scale military
offensive supported by the Sandinistas. A 26 February 1981 document sent by Vernon Walters, former CIA director, to Al Haig
described with precisions the US knowledge of the covert operations. Argentine military officer transferred to the Contras
approximatively 50 000 dollars gathered by the drug trade in Bolivia [3]. In the beginning of 1982, the United States and the
Argentine junta planned the creation of a large Latin American military force, which would be directed by an Argentine officer, with
the initial aim of landing in El Salvador and push the revolutionaries to Honduras to exterminate them, and then to invade Nicaragua
and topple the Sandinista regime. The operation would have been protected by a remodelling of the Inter-American Treaty of
Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR). A few months later, assuming support of the United States and in an attempt to revive internal
support, Galtieri invaded the Falkland Islands, starting the Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas/Guerra del Atlántico
Sur) on April 2, 1982 against the United Kingdom, headed by Margaret Thatcher, who was very close to Reagan [3]. Washington,
however, did nothing to prevent London from vigorously reacting to the Argentine military's belligerous inclinations. During the
Falkland War, the Argentine agent Francés García (alias of Estanislao Valdéz), who had been the repressor of the Campito detention
center in Argentina, was kidnapped by Sandinistas groups in Costa Rica, where he was based. He then appeared on a TV video,
explaining with loads of details the Argentine and US covert operations in Costa Rica. US journalist Martha Honey report that García
was qualified by the North Americans, with a certain admiration, of having a "completely criminal gorrilla mentality." [10]. Although
the invasion of the Falkland Islands and the subsequent return to civilian rule in 1983 put an end to Argentine operations in Central
America, the "dirty war" continued well into the 1990s, with hundreds of thousands being "disappeared." The Reagan administration
took over the covert operations. Furthermore, according to the NGO Equipo izkor, if the Argentine mission in Honduras, for
instance (where 150 officers were present end of 1981 [11], training members of the Batallion 316, in various bases, including
Lepaterique), was downgraded after the Falklands War, Argentine officers remained active in Honduras until 1984, some of them
until 1986 [11], well after the 1983 election of Raúl Alfonsín. In June 1983, the NGO Americas Watch visited Honduras and stated in
its report that "The General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, head of the Hondurian military staff, has publicly defended the use of the
Argentine method to confront the subversive threat in Latin America. As a matter of fact, Alvarez is responsible of having brought to
Honduras the first Argentine military instructors, when he was commandant of the Fuerza de Seguridad Pública (Fusep [Public
Security Force]). [3]" Ariel Armony, president of the Goldfarb Center in the Colby College, noted in Clarin that "it would be more
appropriate to speak of a dirty war at a continental level than isolated conflicts at a national scale," and that "in this war the
distinction between combatants and civilian population were erased, while national frontiers were subordinated to "ideological
frontiers" of the East-West conflict." In particular, the Argentine military was not satisfied with "annihilating" the opposition in the
country, but repealed any distinction between internal and external policy [3].
See also
• Dirty War
• United States-Latin American relations
References
1. ^ Argentine - Escadrons de la mort : l’école française, interview with Marie-Monique Robin published by RISAL, October
22, 2004 available in French & Spanish (“Los métodos de Argel se aplicaron aquí”, Página/12, October 13, 2004
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Los secretos de la guerra sucia continental de la dictadura, El Clarin, March 24, 2006 (Spanish)
4. ^ Capítulos desconocidos de los mercenarios chilenos en Honduras camino de Iraq, La ación, September 25, 2005 - URL
accessed on February 14, 2007 (Spanish)
5. ^ Honey, Martha (1994). Hostile acts: US policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s. p. 244.
6. ^ ew York Times, April 8, 1983
7. ^ Noam Chomsky (January 18, 2006). "“War on Terror”" (pdf). Amnesty International Annual Lecture. Hosted by Trinity
College. 7. http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20060118.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-09-08.
8. ^
"Hearing
before
the
Italian
Parliamentary
Commission
on
Terrorism".
22
July
1997.
http://www.parlamento.it/bicam/terror/stenografici/steno26.htm. of Stefano Delle Chiaie, headed by senator Giovanni
Pellegrino (Italian)
9. ^ Miami Herald, December 2, 1981
10. ^ Honey, Hostile Acts, p. 246
11. ^ a b Equipo Nizkor, LA APARICION DE OSAMENTAS EN UNA ANTIGUA BASE MILITAR DE LA CIA EN
HONDURAS REABRE LA PARTICIPACION ARGENTINO-NORTEAMERICANA EN ESE PAIS., Margen (Spanish)
Bibliography
• Armony, Ariel C. (1999), La Argentina, los Estados Unidos y la Cruzada Anti-Comunista en América Central, 1977–1984,
Quilmes: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. ISBN.
• Bardini, Roberto: "Los militares de EEUU y Argentina en América Central y las Malvinas", en Argenpress. La política en
la semana (1 de febrero de 2003): 2003.
• Bardini, Roberto (1988), Monjes, mercenarios y mercaderes, libro del autor de este trabajo, México : Alpa Corral. ISBN.
• Butazzoni, Fernando: "La historia secreta de un doble asesinato", en Marcha. Montevideo (1 de junio de 2005): 2005.
• Honey, Martha (1994). The Argentines: the first cut-outs in Washington's dirty war. Gainesville, Fl: University Press of
Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1250-3.
• Maechling, Charles: "The Argentine pariah", en Foreign Policy. Invierno 1981–1982(45): 1981. pp 69–83.
• Seoane, María: "Los secretos de la guerra sucia continental de la dictadura", en Clarín. Especiales: A 30 años de la noche
más larga (24 de marzo de 2006): 2006.
Biblioteca Virtual
Operation Condor
Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor), was a campaign of political repressions involving assassination and intelligence
operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. The program
aimed to eradicate left-wing and socialist influence and ideas and to control active or potential opposition movements against the
usually conservative governments. Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation
Condor will likely never be known, but it is reported to have caused over sixty thousand victims[1], possibly even more.[2][3][4]
Condor's key members were the right-wing military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, with
Ecuador and Peru joining later in more peripheral roles.[5] These nations were ruled by dictators such as Jorge Rafael Videla, Augusto
Pinochet, Ernesto Geisel, Hugo Banzer, and Alfredo Stroessner. The United States provided some communications services for the
operation and it has been suggested that the country was more deeply involved.
History
The Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the Argentine Jorge Rafael Videla, in 1978
On 25 November 1975, leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met, with
Manuel Contreras, chief of DINA (the Chilean secret police), in Santiago de Chile, officially creating the Plan Condor [6]. However,
cooperation between various security services, in the aim of "eliminating Marxist subversion", previously existed before this meeting
and Pinochet's coup d'état. Thus, during the Xth Conference of American Armies held in Caracas on September 3, 1973, Brazilian
General Breno Borges Fortes, head of the Brazilian army, proposed to "extend the exchange of information" between various
services in order to "struggle against subversion".[7] Furthermore, in March 1974, representatives of the police forces of Chile,
Uruguay and Bolivia met with Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine Federal Police and co-founder of the Triple A death
squad, to implement cooperation guidelines in order to destroy the "subversive" threat represented by the presence of thousands of
political exilees in Argentina [7]. In August 1974 the corpses of the first victims of Condor, Bolivian refugees, were found in garbage
dumps in Buenos Aires [7]. According to French journalist Marie-Monique Robin, author of Escadrons de la mort, l'école française
(2004, Death Squads, The French School), the paternity of Operation Condor is to be attributed to General Rivero, intelligence
officer of the Argentine Armed Forces and former student of the French.[8] Operation Condor, which took place in the context of the
Cold War, had the tacit approval of the United States. In 1968, U.S. General Robert W. Porter stated that "In order to facilitate the
coordinated employment of internal security forces within and among Latin American countries, we are...endeavoring to foster interservice and regional cooperation by assisting in the organization of integrated command and control centers; the establishment of
common operating procedures; and the conduct of joint and combined training exercises." Condor was one of the fruits of this effort.
The targets were officially leftist guerrillas (such as the MIR, the Montoneros or the ERP, the Tupamaros, etc.) but in fact included
all kinds of political opponents, including their families and others, as reported by the Valech Commission. The Argentine "Dirty
War", for example, which resulted in approximatively 30,000 victims according to most estimates, targeted many trade-unionists,
relatives of activists, etc. From 1976 onwards, the Chilean DINA and its Argentine counterpart, SIDE, were its front-line troops. The
infamous "death flights", theorized in Argentina by Luis María Mendía — and also used during the Algerian War (1954–1962) by
French forces — were widely used, in order to make the corpses, and therefore evidence, disappear. There were also many cases of
child abduction. On December 22, 1992 a significant amount of information about Operation Condor came to light when José
Fernández, a Paraguayan judge, visited a police station in the Lambaré suburb of Asunción to look for files on a former political
prisoner. Instead he found what became known as the "terror archives", detailing the fates of thousands of Latin Americans secretly
kidnapped, tortured and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Some of these
countries have since used portions of this archive to prosecute former military officers. The archives counted 50,000 persons
murdered, 30,000 "desaparecidos" and 400,000 incarcerated.[9] According to these archives other countries such as Peru cooperated
to varying extents by providing intelligence information in response to requests from the security services of the Southern Cone
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countries. Even though Peru was not at the secret November 1975 meeting in Santiago de Chile there is evidence of its involvement.
For instance, in June 1980, Peru was known to have been collaborating with Argentine agents of 601 Intelligence Battalion in the
kidnapping, torture and disappearance of a group of Montoneros living in exile in Lima.[10] The "terror archives" also revealed
Colombia's and Venezuela's greater or lesser degree of cooperation (Luis Posada Carriles was probably at the meeting that ordered
Orlando Letelier's car bombing). It has been alleged that a Colombian paramilitary organization known as Alianza Americana
Anticomunista may have cooperated with Operation Condor. Brazil signed the agreement later (June 1976), and refused to engage in
actions outside Latin America. Mexico, together with Costa Rica, Canada, France, the U.K., Spain and Sweden received many people
fleeing from the terror regimes. Operation Condor officially ended with the ousting of the Argentine dictatorship in 1983, although
the killings continued for some time after that[citation needed].
-otable cases and prosecution
Argentina Main article: Dirty War The Argentine Dirty War was carried on simultaneously with and overlapping Operation Condor.
The Argentine SIDE cooperated with the Chilean DINA in numerous cases of desaparecidos. Chilean General Carlos Prats,
Uruguayan former MPs Zelmar Michelini, Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz and the ex-president of Bolivia, Juan José Torres, were assassinated
in the Argentine capital. The SIDE also assisted Bolivian general Luis Garcia Meza Tejada's Cocaine Coup in Bolivia, with the help
of Gladio operative Stefano Delle Chiaie and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie (see also Operation Charly). The Madres de la Plaza
de Mayo, a group of mothers who had lost their children to the dictatorship, started demonstrating each Sunday on Plaza de Mayo
from April 1977, in front of the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, the seat of the government, to reclaim their children from the junta.
The Mothers continue their struggle for justice to this day (2007). The National Commission for Forced Disappearances
(CONADEP), led by writer Ernesto Sabato, was created in 1983. Two years later, the Juicio a las Juntas (Trial of the Juntas) largely
succeeded in proving the crimes of the various juntas which had formed the self-styled National Reorganization Process. Most of the
top officers who were tried were sentenced to life imprisonment: Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Eduardo Massera, Roberto Eduardo
Viola, Armando Lambruschini, Raúl Agosti, Rubén Graffigna, Leopoldo Galtieri, Jorge Anaya and Basilio Lami Dozo. However,
Raúl Alfonsín's government passed two amnesty laws protecting military officers involved in human rights abuses: the 1986 Ley de
Punto Final (law of closure) and the 1987 Ley de Obediencia Debida (law of due obedience). President Carlos Menem then pardoned
the leaders of the junta in 1989–1990. Following continuous protests by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and other associations, the
amnesty laws were repealed by the Argentine Supreme Court nearly twenty years later, in June 2005. In Argentina DINA's civil
agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, prosecuted for crimes against humanity in 2004, was condemned to life imprisonment for his part in
General Prat's murder.[11] In 2003, federal judge Maria Servini de Cubria requested the extradition from Chile of Mariana Callejas,
who was Michael Townley's wife (himself a U.S. expatriate and DINA agent), and Cristoph Willikie, a retired colonel from the
Chilean army—all three of them are accused of this murder. Chilean appeal court judge Nibaldo Segura refused extradition in July
2005 on the grounds that they had already been prosecuted in Chile. [2] It has been claimed that Italian terrorist Stefano Delle
Chiaie—also an operative of Gladio "stay-behind" secret NATO paramilitary organization—was involved in the murder of General
Prats. He and fellow extremist Vincenzo Vinciguerra testified in Rome in December 1995 before judge María Servini de Cubría that
DINA agents Enrique Arancibia Clavel and Michael Townley were directly involved in this assassination. [3]
Brazil In Brazil, president Fernando Henrique Cardoso ordered in 2000 the release of some military files concerning Operation
Condor.[12] Italian attorney general Giancarlo Capaldo, who is investigating the disappearances of Italian citizens, probably by a
mixture of Argentine, Chilean, Paraguayan and Brazilian military, accused 11 Brazilians of involvement. However, according to the
official statement, "they could not confirm nor deny that Argentine, Brazilian, Paraguayan and Chilean militaries will be submitted to
a trial before December."[13] As of August 2006, nobody in Brazil has been convicted of human rights violations during the 21 years
of military dictatorship there. On April 26, 2000 former governor of Rio de Janeiro Leonel Brizola alleged that ex-presidents of
Brazil João Goulart and Juscelino Kubitschek were assassinated as part of Operation Condor, and requested the opening of
investigations on their deaths. Goulart died of a heart attack and Kubitschek a car accident.[14][15]
The Kidnapping of the Uruguayans The Condor Operation expanded the covered-up repression from Uruguay to Brazil in an event
that happened in November 1978 and later known as "o Sequestro dos Uruguaios´, that is, "the Kidnapping of the Uruguayans". On
that occasion, under consent of the Brazilian military regime, high officers of the Uruguayan army secretly crossed the frontier,
heading to Porto Alegre, capital of the State of Rio Grande do Sul. There they kidnapped a militant couple of the Uruguayan political
opposition, Universindo Rodriguez and Lilian Celiberti, along with her two children, Camilo and Francesca, 8 and 3 years old. The
illegal operation failed when two Brazilian journalists – the reporter Luiz Cláudio Cunha and the photographer Joao Baptista Scalco,
from Veja Magazine, were warned by an anonymous phone call about the disappearance of the Uruguayan couple. The two
journalists decided to check the information and headed to the appointed address: an apartment in the borough of Menino Deus in
Porto Alegre [16]. There, they were mistakenly taken as other members of the Uruguayan opposition by the armed men who had
arrested Lilian. Universindo and the children had already been clandestinely taken to Uruguay [17]. The unexpected arrival of the
journalists disclosed the secret operation which had to be suddenly suspended. Lillian was then taken back to Montevideo. The
failure of the operation avoided the murder of the four Uruguayans. The news of a political kidnapping made headlines in the
Brazilian press and became an international scandal which embarrassed the military governments of Brazil and Uruguay. A few days
after, the children were taken to their maternal grandparents in Montevideo. Universindo as well as Lilian were imprisoned and
tortured in Brazil and then taken to military prisons in Uruguay where they remained during the next five years. After the Uruguayan
re-democratization in 1984, the couple was released and then confirmed all the details of the kidnapping.[18] In 1980, two inspectors
of DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order, an official police branch in charge of the political repression during the military
regime) were convicted by the Brazilian Justice as the armed men who had arrested the journalists in Lilian's apartment in Porto
Alegre. They were João Augusto da Rosa and Orandir Portassi Lucas (a former football player of Brazilian teams known as Didi
Pedalada), both identified later as participants in the kidnapping operation by the reporters and the Uruguayan couple — which surely
confirmed the involvement of the Brazilian Government in the Condor Operation. In 1991, through the initiative of Governor Pedro
Simon, the State of Rio Grande do Sul officially recognized the kidnapping of the Uruguayans and compensated them for this,
inspiring the democratic government of the President Luis Alberto Lacalle in Uruguay to do the same a year later [19]. Police officer
Pedro Seelig, the head of the DOPS at the time of the kidnapping, was identified by the Uruguayan couple as the man in charge of
the operation in Porto Alegre. When Seelig was denounced to the Brazilian Justice, Universindo and Lílian were in prison in
Uruguay and they were prevented from testifying against him. The Brazilian policeman was then cleared of all charges due to alleged
lack of evidences. Lilian and Universindo's later testimony also proved that four officers of the secret Uruguayan Counter-
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information Division – two majors and two captains – took part in the operation under consent of the Brazilian authorities[20]. One of
these officers, Captain Glauco Yanonne, was himself responsible for torturing Universindo Dias in the DOPS headquarters in Porto
Alegre [21]. Even though Universindo and Lilian recognized the Uruguayan military men who had arrested and tortured them, not a
single one of them was prosecuted by the Justice in Montevideo. This was due to the Law of Impunity which guaranteed amnesty to
all Uruguayan people involved in political repression. The investigative journalism of the Veja Magazine awarded Cunha and Scalco
with the 1979 Esso Prize, the most important prize of the Brazilian Press [22]. Hugo Cores, a former Uruguayan political prisoner who
was living in São Paulo at the time of the kidnapping and was the author of the anonymous phone call to Cunha, spoke the following
to the Brazilian press in 1993: "All the Uruguayans kidnapped abroad, around 180 people, are missing to this day. The only ones who
managed to survive are Lilian, her children, and Universindo"[23]. The kidnapping of the Uruguayans in Porto Alegre entered into
history as the only failure with international repercussion in the whole Operation Condor, among several hundreds of clandestine
actions from the Latin America Southern Cone dictatorships, who were responsible for thousands of killed and missing people in the
period between 1975 and 1985. Analyzing the political repression in the region during that decade, the Brazilian journalist Nilson
Mariano estimates the number of killed and missing people as: 297 in Uruguay, 366 in Brazil, 2,000 in Paraguay, 3,196 in Chile and
30,000 in Argentina[24]. The so-called "Terror Files" (Portuguese: "Arquivos do Terror") – a whole set of 60,000 documents,
weighting 4 tons and making 593,000 microfilmed pages which were discovered by a former Paraguayan political prisoner Marti
Almada, in Lambare, Paraguay, in 1992 - provides even higher numbers: the total result of Southern Cone Operation Condor had left
up to 50,000 killed, 30,000 missing and 400,000 arrested[25].
Chile When Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998 in response to Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón's request for his
extradition to Spain, information concerning Condor was revealed. One of the lawyers who asked for his extradition talked about an
attempt to assassinate Carlos Altamirano, leader of the Chilean Socialist Party: it was claimed that Pinochet met Italian terrorist
Stefano Delle Chiaie during Franco's funeral in Madrid in 1975 in order to have Altamirano murdered.[26] But as with Bernardo
Leighton, who was shot in Rome in 1975 after a meeting the same year in Madrid between Stefano Delle Chiaie, former CIA agent
Michael Townley and anti-Castrist Virgilio Paz Romero, the plan ultimately failed. Chilean judge Juan Guzmán Tapia eventually
established a precedent concerning the crime of "permanent kidnapping": since the bodies of victims kidnapped and presumably
murdered could not be found, he deemed that the kidnapping was deemed to continue, rather than to have occurred so long ago that
the perpetrators were protected by an amnesty decreed in 1978 or by the Chilean statute of limitations. Ironically, the perpetrators'
success in hiding evidence of their crimes frustrated their attempts to escape from justice.
General Carlos Prats General Carlos Prats and his wife were killed by the Chilean DINA on September 30, 1974 by a car bombing
in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they lived in exile. In Chile the judge investigating this case, Alejandro Solís, definitively
terminated the prosecution of Pinochet for this particular case after the Chilean Supreme court rejected a demand to revoke his
immunity from prosecution in January 2005. The leaders of DINA, including chief Manuel Contreras, ex-chief of operation and
retired general Raúl Itturiaga Neuman, his brother Roger Itturiaga, and ex-brigadeers Pedro Espinoza Bravo and José Zara, are
accused in Chile of this assassination. DINA agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel has been convicted in Argentina for the murder.
Bernardo Leighton Bernardo Leighton and his wife were severely injured by gunshots on October 5, 1976 while in exile in Rome.
According to the National Security Archive and Italian attorney general Giovanni Salvi, in charge of former DINA head Manuel
Contreras' prosecution, Stefano Delle Chiaie met with Michael Townley and Virgilio Paz Romero in Madrid in 1975 to plan the
murder of Bernardo Leighton with the help of Franco's secret police.[27]
Orlando Letelier Another target was Orlando Letelier, a former minister of the Chilean Allende government who was assassinated
by a car bomb explosion in Washington, D.C. on September 21, 1976. His assistant, Ronni Moffitt, a U.S. citizen, also died in the
explosion. Michael Townley, General Manuel Contreras, former head of the DINA, and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, also
formerly of DINA, were convicted for the murders. In 1978, Chile agreed to hand over Townley to the US, in order to reduce the
tension about Letelier's murder. Townley, however, was freed under the witness protection program. The US is still waiting for
Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza to be extradited. In an article published 17 December 2004 in the Los Angeles Times,
Francisco Letelier, the son of Orlando Letelier, wrote that his father's assassination was part of Operation Condor, described as "an
intelligence-sharing network used by six South American dictators of that era to eliminate dissidents." Augusto Pinochet has been
accused of being a participant in Operation Condor. Francisco Letelier declared, "My father's murder was part of Condor." Michael
Townley has accused Pinochet of being responsible for Orlando Letelier's death. Townley confessed that he had hired five antiCastro Cuban exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard, after consultations with the terrorist organization
CORU's leadership, including Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans
José Dionisio "Bloodbath" Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll.[28][29]
According to the Miami Herald, Luis Posada Carriles was at this meeting that decided on Letelier's death and also about the Cubana
Flight 455 bombing.
Operación Silencio Operación Silencio (Operation Silence) was an operation to impede investigations by Chilean judges by
removing witnesses from the country, starting about a year before the "terror archives" were found in Paraguay. In April 1991 Arturo
Sanhueza Ross, linked to the murder of MIR leader Jecar Neghme in 1989, left the country. According to the Rettig Report, Jecar
Neghme's death was carried out by Chilean intelligence agents [30]. In September 1991 Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who killed tradeunionist Tucapel Jiménez, flew away.[31] In October 1991 Eugenio Berríos, a chemist who had worked with DINA agent Michael
Townley, was escorted from Chile to Uruguay by Operation Condor agents, in order to escape testifying in the Letelier case. He used
Argentinian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Brazilian passports, raising concerns that Operation Condor was not dead. In 1995 Berríos
was found dead in El Pinar, near Montevideo (Uruguay), his murderers having tried to make the identification of his body
impossible. In January 2005, Michael Townley, who now lives in the USA under the witness protection program, acknowledged to
agents of Interpol Chile links between DINA and the detention and torture center Colonia Dignidad, [4] which was founded in 1961
by Paul Schäfer, a Nazi, arrested in March 2005 in Buenos Aires, and since convicted on charges of child rape. Townley also
revealed information about Colonia Dignidad and the Army's Bacteriological Warfare Laboratory. This last laboratory would have
replaced the old DINA's laboratory on Via Naranja de lo Curro street, where Michael Townley worked with the chemical assassin
Eugenio Berríos. The toxin that allegedly killed Christian-Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva may have been made in this new lab in
Colonia Dignidad, according to the judge investigating the case.
U.S. Congressman Edward Koch In February 2004 John Dinges, a reporter, published The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His
Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press, 2004). In this book he reveals how Uruguayan military officials
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threatened to assassinate US Congressman Edward Koch (later Mayor of New York City) in mid-1976. In late July 1976, the CIA
station chief in Montevideo received information about it, but recommended that the Agency take no action because the Uruguayan
officers (among them Colonel José Fons, who was at the November 1975 secret meeting in Santiago, Chile, and Major José Nino
Gavazzo, who headed a team of intelligence officers working in Argentina in 1976, where he was responsible for more than 100
Uruguayans' deaths) had been drinking when the threat was made. In an interview for the book, Koch said that George H.W. Bush,
CIA's director at the time, informed him in October 1976 — more than two months afterward, and after Orlando Letelier's murder —
that "his sponsorship of legislation to cut off US military assistance to Uruguay on human rights grounds had provoked secret police
officials to 'put a contract out for you'". In mid-October 1976, Koch wrote to the Justice Department asking for FBI protection. None
was provided for him. In late 1976, Colonel Fons and Major Gavazzo were assigned to prominent diplomatic posts in Washington,
DC, but the State Department forced the Uruguayan government to withdraw their appointments, with the public explanation that
"Fons and Gavazzo could be the objects of unpleasant publicity." Koch only became aware of the connections between the threats in
2001.[32]
Other cases The Chilean leader of the MIR, Edgardo Enríquez, was "disappeared" in Argentina, as well as another MIR leader,
Jorge Fuentes; Alexei Jaccard, Chilean and Swiss, Ricardo Ramírez and a support network to the Communist party dismantled in
Argentina in 1977. Cases of repression against German, Spanish, Peruvians citizens and Jewish people were also reported. The
assassinations of former Bolivian president Juan José Torres and former Uruguayan deputies Héctor Gutiérrez and Zelmar Michelini
in Buenos Aires in 1976 was also part of Condor. The DINA entered into contact even with Croatian terrorists, Italian neofascists
and the Shah's SAVAK to locate and assassinate dissidents.[33] Operation Condor was at its peak in 1976. Chilean exiles in Argentina
were threatened again, and again had to go underground or into exile. Chilean General Carlos Prats had already been assassinated by
the Chilean DINA in Buenos Aires in 1974, with the help of former CIA agent Michael Townley. Cuban diplomats were also
assassinated in Buenos Aires in the infamous Automotores Orletti torture center, one of the 300 clandestine prisons of the
dictatorship. These centers were managed by the Grupo de Tareas 18 headed by convicted armed robber Aníbal Gordon, who
reported directly to General Commandant of the SIDE Otto Paladino. Automotores Orletti was the main base of foreign intelligence
services involved in Operation Condor. One of the survivors, José Luis Bertazzo, who was detained there for two months, identified
Chilean, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Bolivian prisoners who were interrogated by agents from their own countries. It is there that the
19-year-old daughter-in-law of poet Juan Gelman was tortured with her husband, before being transported to Montevideo where she
delivered a baby which was immediately stolen by Uruguayan military officers.[34] According to John Dinges's book Los años del
Cóndor Chilean MIR prisoners in the Orletti center told José Luis Bertazzo that they had seen two Cuban diplomats, 22-year-old
Jesús Cejas Arias, and 26-year-old Crescencio Galañega, tortured by Gordon's group and interrogated by a man who travelled from
Miami to interrogate them. The two Cuban diplomats, charged with the protection of Cuban ambassador to Argentina Emilio
Aragonés, had been kidnapped on August 9, 1976 at the corner of calle Arribeños and Virrey del Pino by 40 armed SIDE agents who
blocked the street with their Ford Falcons, the cars used by the security forces during the dictatorship. According to Dinges the FBI
and the CIA were informed of their arrest. He quotes a cable sent by FBI agent in Buenos Aires Robert Scherrer on September 22,
1976 in which he mentioned in passing that Michael Townley, later convicted for the assassination on September 21, 1976 of former
Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C., had taken part to the interrogatories of the two Cubans. The former head of
the DINA confirmed to Argentine federal judge María Servini de Cubría in Santiago de Chile on December 22, 1999 that Michael
Townley and Cuban Guillermo Novo Sampoll were present in the Orletti center, having travelled from Chile to Argentina on August
11, 1976, and "cooperated in the torture and assassination of the two Cuban diplomats." Anti-Castro Cuban terrorist Luis Posada
Carriles also boasted in his autobiography, "Los caminos del guerrero", of the murder of the two young men.[34]
U.S. involvement Further information: U.S. intervention in Chile CIA documents show that the CIA had close contact with
members of the Chilean secret police, DINA, and its chief Manuel Contreras. Some have alleged that the CIA's one-time payment to
Contreras is proof that the U.S. approved of Operation Condor and military repression within Chile. The CIA's official documents
state that at one time some members of the intelligence community recommended making Contreras into a paid contact because of
his closeness to Pinochet; the plan was rejected based on Contreras' poor human rights record, but the single payment was made due
to miscommunication.[35] A 1978 cable from the US ambassador to Paraguay, Robert White, to the Secretary of State Cyrus Vance,
was published on March 6, 2001 by the ew York Times. The document was released in November 2000 by the Clinton
administration under the Chile Declassification Project. In the cable Ambassador White reported a conversation with General
Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who informed him that the South American intelligence chiefs
involved in Condor "[kept] in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which
cover[ed] all of Latin America". According to Davalos, this installation was "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information
among the southern cone countries". Robert White feared that the US connection to Condor might be publicly revealed at a time
when the assassination in the U.S.A. of Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Moffitt was being
investigated. White cabled that "it would seem advisable to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest."
The "information exchange" (via telex) included torture techniques (e.g. near-drowning, and playing recordings of victims who were
being tortured to their families).[citation needed] This demonstrates that the US facilitated communications for Operation Condor, and has
been called by J. Patrice McSherry (Long Island Univ.) "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military
and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor."[36] It has been argued that while the
US was not a key member, it "provided organizational, intelligence, financial and technological assistance to the operation."[5]
Material declassified in 2004 states that "The declassified record shows that Secretary Kissinger was briefed on Condor and its
'murder operations' on August 5, 1976, in a 14-page report from Shlaudeman. 'Internationally, the Latin generals look like our guys,'
Shlaudeman cautioned. 'We are especially identified with Chile. It cannot do us any good.' Shlaudeman and his two deputies,
William Luers and Hewson Ryan, recommended action. Over the course of three weeks, they drafted a cautiously worded demarche,
approved by Kissinger, in which he instructed the U.S. ambassadors in the Southern Cone countries to meet with the respective heads
of state about Condor. He instructed them to express 'our deep concern' about 'rumors' of 'plans for the assassination of subversives,
politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad.'"[6] Ultimately, the
demarche was never delivered. Kornbluh and Dinges suggest that the decision not to send Kissinger's order was due to a cable sent
by Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman to his deputy in D.C which states "you can simply instruct the Ambassadors to take no
further action, noting that there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor
scheme."[37]McSherry, adds, "According to [U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay Robert] White, instructions from a secretary of state
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cannot be ignored unless there is a countermanding order received via a secret (CIA) backchannel." [38] Kornbluh and Dinges
conclude that "The paper trail is clear: the State Department and the CIA had enough intelligence to take concrete steps to thwart
Condor assassination planning. Those steps were initiated but never implemented." Shlaudeman's deputy Hewson Ryan later
acknowledged in an oral history interview that the State Department was "remiss" in its handling of the case. "We knew fairly early
on that the governments of the Southern Cone countries were planning, or at least talking about, some assassinations abroad in the
summer of 1976. ... Whether if we had gone in, we might have prevented this, I don't know," he stated in reference to the LetelierMoffitt bombing. "But we didn't."
Henry Kissinger Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was closely involved diplomatically
with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well aware of the Condor plan. According to the French newspaper L'Humanité,
the first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-Castro groups, fascist movements such as the Triple A set up
in Argentina by Juan Perón and Isabel Martínez de Perón's "personal secretary" José López Rega, and Rodolfo Almirón (arrested in
Spain in 2006).[39] On May 31, 2001, French judge Roger Le Loire requested that a summons be served on Henry Kissinger while he
was staying at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris. Loire wanted to question Kissinger as a witness for alleged U.S. involvement in Operation
Condor and for possible US knowledge concerning the "disappearances" of 5 French nationals in Chile during military rule.
Kissinger left Paris that evening, and Loire's inquiries were directed to the U.S. State Department.[40] In July 2001, the Chilean high
court granted investigating judge Juan Guzmán the right to question Kissinger about the 1973 killing of American journalist Charles
Horman, whose execution at the hands of the Chilean military following the coup was dramatized in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film,
Missing. The judge’s questions were relayed to Kissinger via diplomatic routes but were not answered. [41] In August 2001, Argentine
Judge Rodolfo Canicoba sent a letter rogatory to the US State Department, in accordance with the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty
(MLAT), requesting a deposition by Kissinger to aid the judge's investigation of Operation Condor.[42] On September 10, 2001, a
civil suit was filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court by the family of Gen. René Schneider, murdered former Commander-inChief of the Chilean Army, asserting that Kissinger ordered Schneider's murder because he refused to endorse plans for a military
coup. Schneider was killed by coup-plotters loyal to General Roberto Viaux in a botched kidnapping attempt, but U.S. involvement
with the plot is disputed, as declassified transcripts show that Nixon and Kissinger had ordered the coup "turned off" a week before
the killing, fearing that Viaux had no chance. As part of the suit, Schneider’s two sons are attempting to sue Kissinger and then-CIA
director Richard Helms for $3 million.[43] [44] [45] On September 11, 2001, the 28th anniversary of the Pinochet coup, Chilean human
rights lawyers filed a criminal case against Kissinger along with Augusto Pinochet, former Bolivian general and president Hugo
Banzer, former Argentine general and dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, and former Paraguayan president Alfredo Stroessner for alleged
involvement in Operation Condor. The case was brought on behalf of some fifteen victims of Operation Condor, ten of whom were
Chilean.[citation needed] In late 2001, the Brazilian government canceled an invitation for Kissinger to speak in São Paulo because it
could not guarantee his immunity from judicial action.[citation needed] On February 16, 2007, a request for the extradition of Kissinger
was filed at the Supreme Court of Uruguay on behalf of Bernardo Arnone, a political activist who was kidnapped, tortured and
disappeared by the dictatorial regime in 1976.[46]
The "French connection" French journalist Marie-Monique Robin found in the archives of the Quai d'Orsay, the French Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, the original document proving that a 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires set up a "permanent French
military mission" of officers who had fought in the Algerian War, and which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the
Argentine Army. It continued until socialist François Mitterrand was elected President of France in 1981.[47] She showed how Valéry
Giscard d'Estaing's government secretly collaborated with Videla's junta in Argentina and with Augusto Pinochet's regime in
Chile.[48]. The first Argentine officers, among them Alcides Lopez Aufranc, went to Paris to attend two-year courses at the Ecole de
Guerre military school in 1957, two years before the Cuban Revolution and when no Argentine guerrilla movement existed.[47] "In
practice", said Robin to Página/12, "the arrival of the French in Argentina led to a massive extension of intelligence services and of
the use of torture as the primary weapon of anti-subversive war in the concept of modern warfare." The annihilation decrees signed
by Isabel Peron had been inspired by French texts. During the Battle of Algiers, police forces were put under the authority of the
Army, and in particular of the paratroopers, who generalized interrogation sessions, systematically using torture and then
disappearances. On September 10, 2003, French Green Party deputies Noël Mamère, Martine Billard and Yves Cochet petitioned for
the constitution of a Parliamentary Commission on the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973
to 1984" before the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by Edouard Balladur. The only newspaper to
report this was Le Monde.[49] However, Deputy Roland Blum, in charge of the Commission, refused to hear Marie-Monique Robin,
and in December 2003 published a 12-page report described by Robin as being in the utmost bad faith. It claimed that no agreement
had been signed, despite the agreement found by Robin in the Quai d'Orsay[50][51] When French Minister of Foreign Affairs
Dominique de Villepin traveled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that there had been no cooperation between France and the
military regimes.[52] Reporter Marie-Monique Robin said to L'Humanité newspaper: "The French have systematized a military
technique in the urban environment which would be copied and passed to Latin American dictatorships."[8]. The methods employed
during the 1957 Battle of Algiers were systematized and exported to the War School in Buenos Aires.[47] Roger Trinquier's famous
book on counter-insurgency had a very strong influence in South America. Robin said that she was shocked to learn that the French
intelligence agency Direction de surveillance du territoire (DST) communicated to the DINA the names of refugees who returned to
Chile (Operation Retorno), all of whom were killed. "Of course, this puts the French government in the dock, and Giscard d'Estaing,
then President of the Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, at the same time
received political refugees with open arms, and collaborated with the dictatorships."[8] Marie-Monique Robin also showed ties
between the French far right and Argentina since the 1930s, in particular through the Roman Catholic fundamentalist organization
Cité catholique created by Jean Ousset, a former secretary of Charles Maurras (founder of the royalist Action française movement).
La Cité published a review, Le Verbe, which influenced military officers during the Algerian War, notably by justifying their use of
torture. At the end of the 1950s, the Cité catholique established itself in Argentina and set up cells in the Army. It greatly expanded
during the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía, in particular in 1969.[47] The key figure of the Cité catholique was priest
Georges Grasset, who became Videla's personal confessor and had been the spiritual guide of the Organisation de l'armée secrète
(OAS) pro-French Algeria terrorist movement founded in Franquist Spain. This Catholic fundamentalist current in the Argentine
Army explains, according to Robin, the importance and duration of Franco-Argentine cooperation. In Buenos Aires, Georges Grasset
maintained links with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St. Pius X in 1970 and excommunicated in 1988. The
Society of Pius-X has four monasteries in Argentina, the largest in La Reja. There, a French priest declared to Marie-Monique Robin:
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"to save the soul of a Communist priest, one must kill him." There she met Luis Roldan, former Under Secretary of Religion under
Carlos Menem (President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999), who was presented by Dominique Lagneau, the priest in charge of the
monastery, as "Mr. Cité catholique in Argentina". Bruno Genta and Juan Carlos Goyeneche represent this ideology.[47] Argentine
Admiral Luis Maria Mendia, who had theorized the practice of "death flights", testified in January 2007 before Argentine judges that
a French intelligence "agent", Bertrand de Perseval, had participated in the abduction of two French nuns, Léonie Duquet and Alice
Domont, who were later murdered. Perseval, who lives today in Thailand, denied any links with the abduction but admitted being a
former member of the OAS, and having escaped for Argentina after the March 1962 Evian Accords that ended the Algerian War
(1954-62). Referring to Marie Monique Robin's film documentary titled The Death Squads - the French School (Les escadrons de la
mort - l'école française), Luis Maria Mendia asked of the Argentine Court that former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing,
former French premier Pierre Messmer, former French ambassador to Buenos Aires François de la Gorce, and all officials in place in
the French embassy in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1983 be called before the court.[53] Besides this "French connection" he has
also accused former head of state Isabel Peron and former ministers Carlos Ruckauf and Antonio Cafiero, who had signed the "antisubversion decrees" before Videla's 1976 coup d'état. According to ESMA survivor Graciela Daleo, this is another tactic which
claims that these crimes were legitimised by the 1987 Obediencia Debida law, and that they were also covered by Isabel Peron's
"anti-subversion decrees" (which, if true, would give them a veneer of legality, despite torture being forbidden by the Argentine
Constitution)[54] Alfredo Astiz also referred before the courts to the "French connection".[55]
Legal actions Chilean judge Juan Guzman, who had arraigned Pinochet at his return to Chile after his arrest in London, started
procedures against some 30 torturers, including former head of the DINA Manuel Contreras, for the disappearance of 20 Chilean
victims of the Condor plan.[39] In Argentina the CONADEP human rights commission led by writer Ernesto Sabato investigated
human rights abuses during the "Dirty War", and the 1985 Trial of the Juntas found top officers who ran the military governments
guilty of acts of state terrorism. However, the amnesty laws (Ley de Obediencia Debida and Ley de Punto Final) put an end to the
trials until the amnesties themselves were repealed by the Argentine Supreme Court in 2003. Criminals such as Alfredo Astiz,
sentenced in absentia in France for the disappearance of the two French nuns Alice Domont and Léonie Duquet will now have to
answer for their involvement in Condor. Chilean Enrique Arancibia Clavel was condemned in Argentina for the assassination of
Carlos Prats and of his wife. Former Uruguayan president Juan María Bordaberry, his minister of Foreign Affairs and six military
officers, responsible for the disappearance in Argentina in 1976 of opponents to the Uruguayan regime, were arrested in 2006. On 3
August, 2007 General Raúl Iturriaga, former head of DINA, was captured in the Chilean town of Viña del Mar on the Pacific
coast[56]. He had previously been a fugitive from a five-year jail term, after being sentenced for the kidnapping of Luis Dagoberto San
Martin, a 21-year-old opponent of Pinochet. Martín had been captured in 1974 and taken to a DINA detention centre, from which he
"disappeared." Iturriaga was also wanted in Argentina for the assassination of General Prats [56]. According to French newspaper
L'Humanité "in most of those countries legal action against the authors of crimes of 'lese-humanity' from the 1970s to 1990 owes
more to flaws in the amnesty laws than to a real will of the governments in power, which, on the contrary, wave the flag of 'national
reconciliation'. It is sad to say that two of the pillars of the Condor Operation, Alfredo Stroessner and Augusto Pinochet, never paid
for their crimes and died without ever answering charges about the 'disappeared' - who continue to haunt the memory of people who
had been crushed by fascist brutality."[39].
See also
• Dirty War
• Amnesty Law
• Films depicting Latin American military dictatorships
South American intelligence agencies
• DINA
• DIM
• SNI
• SIDE
Some participants in Operation Condor
• Stefano Delle Chiaie, Italian terrorist, also an operative for Gladio "stay-behind" NATO clandestine structure
• Michael Townley, US expatriate, DINA agent involved in Orlando Letelier's 1976 murder in Washington D.C.
• Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban anti-Castro terrorist who participated in Operation Condor and worked for the Venezuelan
DISIP (currently in the US)
• Virgilio Paz Romero, who participated to Orlando Letelier's 1976 assassination and the attack against Bernardo Leighton in
Rome[57]
• Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (aka Triple A)
• Italian secret services
Prominent victims of Operation Condor A few well-known victims of Operation Condor:
• Martín Almada, educator in Paraguay, arrested in 1974 and tortured for three years
• Víctor Olea Alegría, member of the Socialist Party, arrested on September 11, 1974 and "disappeared" (head of DINA
Manuel Contreras was convicted in 2002 for this crime)
• General Carlos Prats, who immediately preceded Pinochet at the head of the Chilean army, assassinated in Buenos Aires in
1974
• William Beausire, businessman with dual British and Chilean nationality, abducted in transit in Buenos Aires airport in
November 1974, taken to the Villa Grimaldi torture centre in Chile and never seen since[7].
• Bernardo Leighton, Christian-Democrat who narrowly escaped murder in Rome in 1975 organized by Italian terrorist
Stefano Delle Chiaie
• Carlos Altamirano, leader of the Chilean Socialist Party, targeted for murder by Pinochet in 1975
Biblioteca Virtual
Attempted assassination against Emilio Aragonés, the Cuban ambassador in Buenos Aires, in 1975, organized by leader of
the CORU, Orlando Bosch
• Sheila Cassidy, British physician, arrested in Chile in 1975 and tortured for medical treatment to an opponent of the
regime.
• Volodia Teitelboim, member of the Communist Party of Chile, targeted for murder alongside Carlos Altamirano, in
Mexico in 1976
• "Disappearance" of two Cuban diplomats in Argentina, Crecencio Galañega Hernández and Jesús Cejas Arias who
transited through Orletti detention center in Buenos Aires (August 9, 1976 - see Lista de centros clandestinos de detención
(Argentina)); both were questionned by the SIDE and the DINA, with the knowledge of the FBI and the CIA[58]
• Andrés Pascal Allende, nephew of Salvador Allende and president of the MIR, escaped assassination attempt in Costa Rica
in March 1976
• Orlando Letelier, murdered in 1976 in Washington D.C. with his assistant Ronnie Moffitt
• US Congressman Edward Koch, who became aware in 2001 of relations between 1970s threats on his life and Operation
Condor
• Christian-Democrat and president of Chile from 1964 to 1970 Eduardo Frei Montalva, who may have been poisoned in the
early 1980s according to current investigations
• former Bolivian president Juan José Torres, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1976
• Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, former Uruguayan deputy, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1976
• Zelmar Michelini, former Uruguayan deputy, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1976
• Carmelo Soria, Spanish diplomat, civil servant of the CEPAL (a United Nations organism), assassinated on July 21, 1976
• Jorge Zaffaroni and Maria Emilia Islas de Zaffaroni, maybe members of the Tupamaros, "disappeared" in Buenos Aires on
September 29, 1976, kidnapped by the Batallón de Inteligencia 601, who handed them out to the Uruguayan OCOAS
(Organismo Coordinador de Operaciones Anti-Subversivas)[59]
• Dagmar Ingrid Hagelin, 17-year-old Swedish girl shot in the back by Alfredo Astiz in 1977 and later murdered
• Poet Juan Gelman's son and daughter-in-law (whose baby was stolen by the Uruguayan militaries)
Archives and reports
• National Security Archives, a NGO which publicizes the few CIA documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act
• "Terror archives", discovered in 1992 in Paraguay, which permitted opening of prosecution cases against former or active
militaries involved in Operation Condor
• Rettig Report
• Valech Report
• Memoriaviva (Complete list of Victims, Torture Centres and Criminals - in Spanish)
Detention and torture centers
• Colonia Dignidad, a bizarre and secretive German enclave in activity until 2005, put under state administration end of 2005
• Esmeralda (BE-43)
• Estadio Nacional de Chile
• Villa Grimaldi
Other operations and strategies related to Condor
• Operation Colombo, for which Augusto Pinochet was being judged at the time of his death
• Caravan of Death, carried on a few weeks after the 1973 coup
Fictional references
• Don Winslow's 2005 book The Power of the Dog is based on the actions and some of the consequences of Operation
Condor.
• In DC Comics, the father of the superheroine Fire was a key figure in Operation Condor.[60]
• Nathan Englander's powerful novel The Ministry of Special Cases is set in Buenos Aires in the early 1970s. Its main
characters are Kaddish and Lillian, a Jewish couple whose son Pato is disappeared shortly after the Videla junta takes
power. Faber and Faber, London, 2007.
o Robert Redford http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073802/
Bibliography
• Stella Calloni, Los años del lobo and Operación Cóndor: Pacto Criminal, Editorial Ciencias Sociales', La Habana, 2006.
• John Dinges, "The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents" (The New Press,
2004)
• Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New Press).
• Marie-Monique Robin, Escadrons de la mort, l'école française ("Death Squads, the French School"). Book and film
documentary (French, transl. in Spanish, Sudamericana, 2002).
• J. Patrice McSherry, "Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America" (Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, 2005)
• Nilson, Cezar Mariano; Operación Cóndor. Terrorismo de Estado en el cono Sur. Lholé-Lumen; Buenos Aires, 1998.
o Paredes, Alejandro. La Operación Cóndor y la guerra fría. . Universum. [online]. 2004, vol.19, no.1, p.122-137.
ISSN 0718-2376.
• Gutiérrez Contreras, J.C. y Villegas Díaz, Myrna. Derechos Humanos y Desaparecidos en Dictaduras Militares, KO'AGA
ROÑE'ETA se.vii (1999) - Previamente publicado en "Derecho penal: Implicaciones Internacionales", Publicación del IX
Congreso Universitario de Derecho Penal, Universidad de Salamanca. Edit. Colex, Madrid, Marzo de 1999
•
Biblioteca Virtual
Informe de la Comisión acional sobre prisión política y tortura. Santiago de Chile, Ministerio del Interior – Comisión
Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura, 2005.
Footnotes and references
1. ^ Victor Flores Olea. "Editoriales - El Universal - 10 de abril 2006 : Operacion Condor". El Universal (Mexico).
http://www.el-universal.com.mx/editoriales/34023.html. Retrieved on 2009-03-24.
2. ^
"Centro
de
Documentación
y
Archivo
para
la
Defensa
de
los
Derechos
Humanos".
http://www.pj.gov.py/cdya/index.html. Retrieved on 2007-06-25.
3. ^ J. Patrice McSherry (2002). "Tracking the Origins of a State Terror Network: Operation Condor". Latin American
Perspectives 29 (1): 36–60.
4. ^
"2006:
el
ocaso
de
los
“cóndores
mayores”".
La
Nación.
2007-12-13.
http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20061212/pags/20061212213006.html. Retrieved on 2007-06-25.
5. ^ "Predatory States. Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America/When States Kill. Latin America, the U.S., and
Technologies of Terror". http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200610/ai_n17195860. Retrieved on 2007-10-24.
6. ^ Condor legacy haunts South America, BBC, June 8, 2005 (English)
7. ^ a b c Abramovici, Pierre (May 2001). "OPERATION CONDOR EXPLAINED — Latin America: the 30 years’ dirty war"
(in English). Le Monde diplomatique. http://mondediplo.com/2001/08/12condor. Retrieved on 2006-12-15. (free access in
French and in Portuguese)
8. ^ a b c L’exportation de la torture, interview with Marie-Monique Robin in L'Humanité, August 30, 2003 (French)
9. ^ Martín Almada, "Paraguay: The Forgotten Prison, the Exiled Country"
10. ^ "Peru: Socio de Condor". http://www.johndinges.com/condor/documents/Peru%20and%20Condor.htm. Retrieved on
2006-12-15.
11. ^ Gotkine, Elliott (24 August, 2004). "Vital rights ruling in Argentina" (in English). BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3596316.stm. Retrieved on 2006-12-15.
12. ^
"Brazil
looks
into
Operation
Condor"
(in
English).
BBC.
18
May,
2000.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/753436.stm. Retrieved on 2006-12-15.
13. ^ Radiobras Brazilian state website (Portuguese)
14. ^ Brasil examina su pasado represivo en la Operación Cóndor, El Mostrador, 11 May 2000
15. ^ Operación Cóndor: presión de Brizola sobre la Argentina, El Clarín, 6 May 2000
16. ^ CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio. Sucesso de investigação. In: Fernando Molica (ed.) 10 reportagens que abalaram a ditadura. São
Paulo: Record, 2005, pp. 117-248. Also see the following issues of VEJA magazine: Oct. 20, 1978; Nov. 29, 1978; Dec.
27, 1978; Jan. 17, 1979; Feb. 15, 1979; Jul. 18, 1979; Oct. 24, 1979; and Jun. 11, 1980
17. ^ CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio. Por que sou testemunha de acusação deste seqüestro. Playboy, No. 52, Nov. 1979, pp. 127-131 e
164-168
18. ^ FERRI, Omar. Seqüestro no Cone Sul. O caso Lílian e Universino. Porto Alegre: Mercado Aberto, 1981.
19. ^ CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio. O seqüestro de Lilian e Universindo - 15 anos depois. A farsa desvendada. Zero Hora, Caderno
Especial, Nov. 22, 1993, 8 p. Also see O Seqüestro dos Uruguaios - 15 anos depois. RBS Documento. Video produced and
presented by RBS TV, Porto Alegre, November 1993
20. ^ BOCCIA PAZ, Alfredo et al. En los sótanos de los generales. Los documentos ocultos del Operativo Condor, Assunção,
Paraguai: Expolibro, 2002, pp. 219-222
21. ^ CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio, Glauco Yanonne. Torturador ganhou um Nobel. Zero Hora, Caderno Especial, Nov. 22, 1993, p.
6.
22. ^ PRÊMIO ESSO DE JORNALISMO, see http://www.premioesso.com.br/site/premio_principal/index.aspx?year=1979
(Portuguese)
23. ^ CUNHA, Luiz Cláudio. Morre o homem que salvou Lílian Celiberti. Zero Hora, Dec. 10, 2006
24. ^ MARIANO, Nilson. As Garras do Condor . São Paulo: Vozes, 2003, p. 234.
25. ^ (10) BOCCIA PAZ, Alfredo et al., op. cit., pp. 229-263; DINGES, John. Os anos do Condor. Uma década de terrorismo
internacional no Cone Sul, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2005, pp. 347-353. For further information on the 'Arquivos
do Terror', see http://www.unesco.org./webworld/paraguay/documentos.html
26. ^ Las Relaciones Secretas entre Pinochet, Franco y la P2 - Conspiracion para matar, Equipo Nizkor, February 4, 1999
(Spanish)
27. ^ "Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 1970-1976" (in English). National
Security Archive. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm. Retrieved on 2006-12-15.
28. ^ Landau, Saul (20-21 August, 2005). "Terrorism Then and Now" (in English). CounterPunch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau08202005.html. Retrieved on 2006-12-15.
29. ^ Allard, Jean-Guy (26 March, 2003). "WHILE CHILE DETAINS CONTRERAS... Posada and his accomplices, active
collaborators
of
Pinochet’s
fascist
police"
(in
English).
Granma.
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/mar03/mier26/12posada.html. Retrieved on 2006-12-15.
30. ^ Neghme Cristi Jecar Antonio, Memoria Viva, (Spanish)
31. ^ Sanhueza, Jorge Molina (25 September 2005). "El coronel que le pena al ejército" (in Spanish). La Nación.
http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20050924/pags/20050924223646.html. Retrieved on 2006-12-15.
32. ^ "Ed Koch Threatened with Assassination in 1976" (in English). National Security Archive. 18 February 2004.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB112/index.htm. Retrieved on 2006-12-15.
33. ^ Los crímenes de la Operación Cóndor, La Tercera, 2001. (Spanish)
34. ^ a b Automotores Orletti el taller asesino del Cóndor, Juventud Rebelde, January 3 2006 (mirrored on El Correo.eu.org
(Spanish)/(French)
35. ^ "CIA Activities in Chile" (in English). CIA. 18 September 2000. https://www.odci.gov/cia/reports/chile/index.html#10.
•
Biblioteca Virtual
36. ^ "Operation Condor: Cable Suggests U.S. Role" (in English). National Security Archive. 6 March 2001.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010306/. Retrieved on 2006-12-15.
37. ^ Peter Kornbluh; John Dinges (10 June 2004). "Kornbluh / Dinges Letter to Foreign Affairs". The National Security
Archive. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/index.htm.
38. ^ J. Patrice McSherry (Spring 2005). "The Undead Ghost of Operation Condor". Logos: a journal of modern society &
culture. Logosonline. http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/mcsherry.htm. Retrieved on 2007-06-26.
39. ^ a b c Latin America in the 1970s: "Operation Condor", an International Organization for Kidnapping Opponents,
L'Humanité in English, December 2, 2006, transl. January 1, 2007
40. ^ Henry Kissinger rattrapé au Ritz, à Paris, par les fantômes du plan Condor, Le Monde, May 29, 2001 (French) (mirrored
here)
41. ^ [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/pinochet/Story/0,11993,735920,00.html Kissinger may face extradition to Chile], The
Guardian, June 12, 2002
42. ^ "Argentina", written at New York, Washington, London, Brussels, Human Rights Watch World Report 2002, Human
Rights Watch, 2002, <http://hrw.org/wr2k2/americas1.html>. Retrieved on 2006-12-15
43. ^ [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1536547.stm Kissinger accused over Chile plot], BBC ews, September 11,
2001
44. ^ [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,550375,00.html Kissinger sued over Chile death ], The Guardian,
September 12, 2001
45. ^ [ http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/briefs/2005/0responses/2005-0743.resp.html Schneider v. Kissinger ], U.S. Department of
Justice, June 28, 2005
46. ^ Piden extraditar a Kissinger por Operación Condor, in: La Jornada, 2007-02-16 (in Spanish)[1]
47. ^ a b c d e Argentine - Escadrons de la mort : l’école française, interview with Marie-Monique Robin published by RISAL,
October 22, 2004 available in French & Spanish (“Los métodos de Argel se aplicaron aquí”, Página/12, October 13, 2004
49. ^ MM. Giscard d'Estaing et Messmer pourraient être entendus sur l'aide aux dictatures sud-américaines, Le Monde,
September 25, 2003 (French)
50. ^ « Série B. Amérique 1952-1963. Sous-série : Argentine, n° 74. Cotes : 18.6.1. mars 52-août 63 ».
51. ^ RAPPORT FAIT AU NOM DE LA COMMISSION DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES SUR LA PROPOSITION DE
RÉSOLUTION (n° 1060), tendant à la création d'une commission d'enquête sur le rôle de la France dans le soutien aux
régimes militaires d'Amérique latine entre 1973 et 1984, PAR M. ROLAND BLUM, French National Assembly (French)
52. ^ Argentine : M. de Villepin défend les firmes françaises, Le Monde, February 5, 2003 (French)
53. ^ Disparitions : un ancien agent français mis en cause, Le Figaro, February 6, 2007 (French)
54. ^ “Impartí órdenes que fueron cumplidas”, Página/12, February 2, 2007 (Spanish)
55. ^ Astiz llevó sus chicanas a los tribunales, Página/12, January 25, 2007 (Spanish)
56. ^ a b Claudia Lagos and Patrick J. McDonneln Pinochet-era general is caught, Los Angeles Times, August 3, 2007 (English)
57. ^ Declassified documents available on the National Security Archive website
58. ^ Document dated September 22, 1976, sent by Robert Scherer from the FBI to the US embassy in Buenos Aires, with a
copy of a SIDE document concerning the interrogation. In his memoirs, Cuban Luis Posada Carriles qualifies these
murders as "successes" in the "struggle against communism". See Proyecto Desaparecidos: Notas: Operación Cóndor
Archives, (Spanish), October 31, 2006 (Retrieved on December 12, 2006)
59. ^ SIDE cable, National Security Archive
60. ^ Rucka, Greg, Defilippis, Nunzio, Weir, Christina (w), Scott, Steve (p), Massengill, Nathan (i). Checkmate. vol. 2, #1112. (March, 2007). DC Comics.
External links
• Operation Condor on Nizkor's website
• Memoriaviva (Complete list of Victims, Torture Centres and Criminals - in Spanish)
• Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America, by J. Patrice McSherry (Rowman & Littlefield,
2005) [8]
• The Condor Years - How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents
• Ed Koch Threatened with Assassination in 1976
• Plan Condor on Disinfopedia
• Nacimiento del Operativo Cóndor, article in Spanish by Dr Martín Almada on how the enquiry of his case led to the
discover of the Lambaré files.
• Operation Condor - John Dinges John Dinges is a reporter, author of several books about Operation Condor. He has
worked as a correspondent for the Washington Post in South America and is the former director of NPR.
Biblioteca Virtual
Ley de Punto Final
A poster calling for a demonstration against the passing of the law.
Ley de Punto Final (Spanish, roughly translated Full Stop Law) was a law passed by the National Congress of Argentina after the
end of the military dictatorship of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (which started with a coup d'état in 1976 and ended in
1983). Formally, this law is referred to by number (Law No. 23492), like all others in Argentine legislation, but Ley de Punto Final is
the only designation in common use, even in official speeches. [1] The law dictates the end of investigation and prosecution against
people accused of political violence during the dictatorship, up to the restoration of democratic rule on 10 December 1983. It was
passed on 24 December 1986, after only a 3-week debate. Its text is very short; it has seven articles. Article No. 5 excepts from the
application of the law the cases of identity forgery and forced disappearance of minors. The Ley de Punto Final was extremely
controversial in its time and afterwards. It was proposed by the Radical administration of President Raúl Alfonsín as a means to stop
the escalation of trials against military and others, after the Trial of the Juntas had dealt with the top of the military hierarchies. In the
Chamber of Deputies, 114 deputies voted for the law, 17 against, and 2 abstained; in the Senate, 25 senators voted for, and 10
against. This law had a complement in the Ley de Obediencia Debida (Law of Due Obedience), which exempted subordinates from
accusation when they were carrying out orders. These two laws were repealed by the National Congress in 2003, and then definitely
voided as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Justice on 14 June 2005. This allowed for the re-opening of cases that involved
crimes against humanity. The first of such cases, which involved the former Buenos Aires Provincial Police second-in-command
Miguel Etchecolatz, ended in September 2006 and laid down jurisprudence by acknowledging that the dictatorship's state terrorism
was a form of genocide. [2] [3]
See also
• Amnesty law
• Juicio a las Juntas
• Ley de Obediencia Debida
• Carapintadas
References
1. ^ Law 23492 - Full text of the Ley de Punto Final.
2. ^ BBC News, 13 August 2003. Argentina overturns amnesty laws.
3. ^ BBC News, 21 August 2003. Argentina scraps amnesty laws.
Biblioteca Virtual
Ley de Obediencia Debida
Ley de Obediencia Debida (Spanish, Law of Due Obedience) was a law passed by the National Congress of Argentina after the end
of the military dictatorship of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (which started with a coup d'état in 1976 and ended in 1983).
Formally, this law is referred to by number (Law No. 23521), like all others in Argentine legislation, but Ley de Obediencia Debida
is the only designation in common use, even in official speeches. [1] The law was passed on 4 June 1987. It dictates that it must be
assumed, without admitting proof to the contrary, that all officers and their subordinates including common personnel of the Armed
Forces, the Police, the Penitentiary Service and other security agencies cannot be legally punished by crimes committed during the
dictatorship as they were acting out of due obedience, that is, obeying orders from their superiors (in this case, the heads of the
military government, who had already been tried in the Trial of the Juntas). This law was passed one year after the Ley de Punto
Final in order to contain the discontent of the Armed Forces. It effectively exempted military personnel under the rank of Colonel
from responsibility for their crimes, which included forced disappearances, illegal detentions, torture and murders. Its text is rather
short, with only 7 articles, the second of which contains an exception (the law does not apply to cases of rape, disappearance or
identity forgery of minors, or extensive appropriation of real estate). The Ley de Obediencia Debida and the Ley de Punto Final were
repealed by the National Congress in August 2003, which allowed for the re-opening of cases that involved crimes against humanity.
The first of such cases, which involved the former Buenos Aires Provincial Police second-in-command Miguel Etchecolatz, ended in
September 2006 and laid down jurisprudence by acknowledging that the dictatorship's state terrorism was a form of genocide. [2] [3]
See also
• Amnesty law
• Juicio a las Juntas
• Ley de Punto Final
• Carapintadas
References
1. ^ Law 23521 - Full text of the Ley de Obediencia Debida.
2. ^ BBC News, 13 August 2003. Argentina overturns amnesty laws.
3. ^ BBC News, 21 August 2003. Argentina scraps amnesty laws.
March of the Memorial Day, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the coup d'etat and the disappeared.
Biblioteca Virtual
Carapintadas
One of the Amphibious Commandos after the fall of Stanley's Government House, Falklands, 1982, with painted face to improve
Camouflage.
The Carapintadas (English: Painted Faces) were a group of mutineers in the Argentine Army, who took part in uprisings during the
presidency of Raúl Alfonsín in Argentina. In December 1986, the Ley de Punto Final (Full Stop Law) was introduced. This law set a
60-day deadline for the victims of the country's Dirty War to file complaints against members of the military and police suspected of
human rights abuses. On April 15, 1987, military personnel headed by Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Rico staged a series of barrack
uprisings demanding that the trials of those not exempted under the law be aborted. The mutineers were all seized, but only two
arrested. The Carapintadas revolted again under Rico's command in January 1988 in Monte Caseros. They surrendered a few days
later and 300 of the mutineers were arrested. Another uprising took place in on December of that year, when members of the Albatros
special unit, led by Mohamed Alí Seineldín, took control of the military barracks in Villa Martelli. They were later followed by
around 1,000 troops of the three armed forces. The mutineers surrendered days later, but only Seineldín and Major Hugo Abete were
arrested. Several of the mutineers demands were conceded by the government. On October 1989, president elect Carlos Menem
signed a pardon for a number of detained military men; including 39 held by events during the military government, and 164
Carapintadas. In spite of this, on December 3, 1990 Seineldin again staged an uprising, which ended with several deaths and 300
arrested. A few days later, Menem signed the pardon for all the most important people convicted for misdeeds during the Dirty War.
See also 1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment
External links
• Military Uprisings
• "Un ataque que sorprendió a toda la dirigencia política" Clarín (Spanish)
• "Asalto al cuartel de La Tablada" (Spanish)
"
1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment
The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this
message until the dispute is resolved. (December 2007)
The 1989 attack on La Tablada was an assault on the military barracks located in La Tablada, in the province of Buenos Aires,
Argentina, by 40 members of the terrorist Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP), headed by former ERP leader Enrique Gorriarán
Merlo. 39 people were killed and 60 injured during the take-over of the barracks by the Army. The MTP has said that the assault was
made in order to prevent a coup prepared for the end of January 1989 by the Carapintadas, a group of far-right militaries opposed to
the investigations concerning the "Dirty War", while the official military report states that it was the MTP who planned to "take
power." Given a life sentence and imprisoned, as fellow comrades, in high security quarters, Gorriarán Merlo was finally freed in
2003.[1][2]
The January 1989 attack On 23 January 1989, a group of approximatively 40 members of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All
for the Motherland Movement, "MTP", founded in 1986 by former ERP leader Enrique Gorriarán Merlo) attacked the Third
Mechanized Infantry Regiment barracks in La Tablada (Regimiento de Infantería Mecanizada º 3, RIM3). They entered the
barracks with a Coca-Cola truck and several cars. According to the Clarín, three different versions about the attack exist.[3] Ten days
before the assault, lawyer Jorge Baños and MTP member had declared in a conference that the Carapintadas were planning a coup
for the end of January. The Carapintadas were members of the Armed Forces that had rebelled against the national government three
times in 1987 and 1988, protesting the investigations on human rights abuses during the "National Reorganization Process" (19761983). This has remained to this day the MTP's version, held in particular by Gorriarán Merlo who claimed that the MTP was
fulfilling the constitutional obligation of "bear[ing] arms in defense of the fatherland and of [the] Constitution".[4][5] The official
report on the attack by head of the Army Francisco Gassino claimed in contrary that it was the MTP, formed of several former ERP
members, that had planned a coup. A last version claims that the MTP was victim of a manipulation by intelligence services. The
Argentine Army, assisted by the Policía Bonaerense (a total of 3,600 personnel) was called on to counterattack, and undiscriminately
Biblioteca Virtual
used white phosphorus (WP). In this case, it had the effect of completely burning the barracks and of carbonizing corpses.[6][7][3]
Thirty-nine people were killed and sixty injured during the attack (the majority because of conventional bombings). Nine were
military personnel, two were police officers and the twenty-eight remaining were members of the MTP.[8][9] The following day
President Raúl Alfonsín (UCR, 1983-89) visited the site, protected by commandos of Cara pintadas, along with federal judge of
Morón, Gerardo Larrambebere, who is today member of the court judging the 1994 AMIA bombing.
Human rights violations At least two MTP members reported as killed, among whom Claudia Deleis, are suspected of having been
"executed" after surrendering, and there was evidence that at least three others were "disappeared" after being captured. In all, nine
are thought to have been killed after capture. Five corpses were never identified. In addition, prisoners were allegedly tortured
immediately after capture, and then again while in custody of the Federal Police and the Penitentiary Service. Retired sergent José
Almada, who had participated in the capture of the MTP members, declared in 2004 that Iván Ruiz and José Díaz had been tortured.
According to sergent Almada, they referred to two persons who were not members of their brigade, and most probably SIDE agents.
He identified one of them as Jorge Varando, chief of security of HSBC during the December 20, 2001 events. Furthermore, sergent
Almada declared that he had clearly heard a radio conversation ordering to kill two of the captured prisoners. He also said that
adjuvant sergent Esquivel, killed during the attack, had been in fact shot by the Army itself, after trying to get to his brother who had
been taken prisoner. Sergent Almada explicitly denounced the OEA report done by Jorge Varando and General Arrillaga, the highest
official in charge of the repression, which aimed at disguising adjuvant sergent Esquivel's suspicious death.[10] José Almada said that
he had tried to inform his hierarchy about these human rights violations, in accordance with article 194 of the Military Justice Code,
but that they ignored him. He notably tried to inform General Martín Balza. He also informed head of Argentine Army, General
Bonifacio Cáceres, also telling him about his concerns that his neighbours were insulting him, saying that they were responsible of
new cases of desaparecidos. Moreover, in his complaint before justice, he also said he had informed former head of the Army
Ricardo Brinzoni. After Cáceres's retirement in 1989, colonel Gasquet threatened José Almada of 40 days of arrest — he was finally
given two days of arrest on charges of wearing a beard, and then sent him to Paraná, Entre Ríos. Later, he was again sentenced to 30
days of arrest, confined to Crespo near Paraná and finally forced to retire. He has claimed that to this day he is still being
"persecuted."[10]
Convictions Twenty surviving members of the MTP were later convicted and given sentences ranging from 10 years to life
imprisonment. They were judged under the Ley de Defensa de la Democracia (Defense of the Democracy Act) which deprive them
of a right to appeal and to a new trial.[8] Enrique Gorriarán Merlo was given a life sentence, and his ex-wife, Ana María Sívori, was
sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment. During the oral and public trial, Gorriarán put in question the legitimity of the process and
objected the circumstances of his capture in the suburbs of Mexico in October 1995, which he called a "kidnapping" (secuestro). He
was charged of being co-author of qualified illicit association, rebellion, usurpation, homicide with aggravated circumstances ,
aggravated illegal privation of freedom and reiterated injuries. His ex-wife Sívori was charged of co-author of qualified illicit
association, and secondary participant to offenses of rebellion, doubly aggravated homicide, tentative of homicide, aggravated thief,
reiterated injuries and co-author of the use of false identity documents. Most of those convicted in the attacks were placed in a
maximum security cell block on the eighteenth floor of the Caseros prison in Buenos Aires.[11][12] Finally, President Fernando de la
Rúa (Alliance for Work, Justice and Education, 1999-2001) commuted the prison sentences. And two days before Néstor Kirchner's
access to his functions, Interim President Eduardo Duhalde (member of the Justicialist Party) freed Gorriarán Merlo, on May 23,
2003, after 14 years of prison in high security quarters, who declared that it was "an act of justice.[3]"
References
1. ^ Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos. Informe Nº 55/97 - Caso 11.137.
2. ^ Human Rights Watch. 1989 Argentina report.
3. ^ a b c El Clarín. El ataque a La Tablada, la última aventura de la guerrilla argentina, January 23, 2004 (Spanish)
4. ^ Taringa!. Copamiento al cuartel de La Tablada (Spanish)
5. ^ Constitution of the Argentine Nation, Article 21. "Every Argentine citizen is obliged to bear arms in defense of the
fatherland and of this Constitution…"
6. ^ E/CN.4/2001/NGO/98, United ations, January 12, 2001 - URL accessed on February 9, 2007 (Spanish)
7. ^ ANSA cable quoted by RaiNews24: Alcune testimonianze sull'uso militare del fosforo bianco (Italian).
8. ^ a b La Historia Pensada. Asalto al cuartel General Belgrano (La Tablada). September 17, 2006 (Spanish).
9. ^ Página/12, January 23, 1999. Los puntos oscuros del asalto a La Tablada (Spanish).
10. ^ a b Página/12. “Mi verdad sobre La Tablada es irrefutable”, February 20, 2004 (Spanish)
11. ^ Seguimiento de la investigación criminal sobre el ataque al cuartel del Regimiento de Infantería Mecanizada III de La
Tablada.
12. ^ Amnesty International. Argentina: bringing the law into line with international obligations — a challenge for the
legislators.
See also
• History of Argentina
• Carapintadas
• Enrique Gorriarán Merlo
• Argentine Army
• White phosphorus (weapon)
Biblioteca Virtual
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
For the documentary film, see The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.
The white shawl of the Mothers, painted on the ground in Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires. The mothers with President Néstor
Kirchner.
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Spanish: Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo) is an association of Argentine mothers whose
children "disappeared" during the Dirty War, the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.
Origins of the movement The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo is a unique organization of Argentine women who have become human
rights activists in order to achieve a common goal. For over three decades, the Mothers have fought for the right to re-unite with their
abducted children. In protests, they wear white head scarves with their children's names embroidered, to symbolize the blankets of
the lost kids. The name of the organization comes from the Plaza de Mayo in central Buenos Aires, where the bereaved mothers and
grandmothers first gathered. They gather every Thursday afternoon for a half hour walk around the plaza. The Mothers' association
was formed by women who had met each other in the course of trying to find their missing sons and daughters, who were abducted
by agents of the Argentine government during the years known as the Dirty War (1976–1983), many of whom were then tortured and
killed. The 14 founders of the association, Azucena Villaflor de De Vincenti, Berta Braverman, Haydée García Buelas, María Adela
Gard de Antokoletz, Julia Gard, María Mercedes Gard and Cándida Gard (4 sisters), Delicia González, Pepa Noia, Mirta Baravalle,
Kety Neuhaus, Raquel Arcushin, Sra. De Caimi, started the demonstrations on the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Casa Rosada
presidential palace, on 30 April 1977. Villaflor had been searching for one of her sons and her daughter-in-law for six months. She
was taken to the ESMA concentration camp on 10 December 1978. The military has admitted that over 9,000 of those kidnapped are
still unaccounted for, but the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo say that the number is closer to 30,000, 500 of those given to military
related families and the remaining number dead. The numbers are hard to determine due to the secrecy surrounding the abductions.
Three of the founders of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have also "disappeared". After the fall of the military regime, a civilian
government commission put the number of disappeared at close to 11,000. In January 2005 the body of French nun Leonie Duquet, a
supporter of the organization, was exhumed, without an established identity. Duquet's disappearance had caused international outrage
towards the Argentine military government. DNA tests concluded, on August 30 of that year, that the body exhumed in January was
that of Duquet. Azucena Villaflor's remains, together with those of two other pioneer Mothers, Esther Careaga and María Eugenia
Bianco, were also identified by a forensics team in mid-2005. Villaflor's ashes were buried at the foot of the May Pyramid in the
Plaza on 8 December 2005. The Mothers' association seek to keep the memory and spirit of their disappeared children alive, through
the creation of an independent university, bookstore, library and cultural centre. Through these projects, subsidised and free
education, health and other facilities are offered to the public and students, promoting the revolutionary ideals of many of their
children. This has made their headquarters an important focal point for progressive leaders visiting Buenos Aires, including Hugo
Chavez, Tabare Vazquez, and Brazil's Lula.
Divisions and radicalization In later years, the association grew and became more persistent, demanding answers from the
government as to where their missing children were. After the military gave up its authority to a civilian government in 1983, the
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have pressed the new government to help find answers to the kidnappings that took place in the Dirty
War years. In 1986, the Mothers association split into two factions. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – Founding Line focuses on
legislation to help in recovering remains and bringing ex-officials to justice. The Mothers also have identified 256 missing children
that have been adopted. Seven of these children have died. 31 of these children's cases have been or are being dealt with and the
remaining number are currently unable to be found. In the course of their struggle, most part of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
began to see themselves as inheritors of their children's dreams and responsible for carrying forward their children's work, even to the
adopting the radical agenda embraced by some of their disappeared sons and daughters. As a result, the Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo Association faction led by Hebe de Bonafini takes a more political approach. This group does not doubt the fact that their
children disappeared, and they are aware that the majority of them faced torture and most of them were ultimately murdered.
Nevertheless, they are refusing any help offered by the government as compensation for their children's absence. Many still maintain
that they will not recognize the deaths until the government admits its fault and its connection to the Dirty War and its systematically
forced disappearances. A scholar of the movement, Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, wrote that the association faction wants "a
complete transformation of Argentine political culture" and "envisions a socialist system free of the domination of special interests."
The Mothers association is backed by younger militants who openly support a Cuban-style revolution in Argentina. On the wake of
the September 11, 2001 attacks, Bonafini defended the actions of the airline hijackers calling them "courageous", stating that many
people "had been avenged", and connecting their ideals with the cause of the guerrilla groups in 1970s' Argentina. [3]. Speaking for
the Mothers, she also rejected the investigations of the alleged Iranian involvement in the AMIA Bombing (the 1994 terrorist attack
Biblioteca Virtual
on the AMIA Jewish community center), denouncing the Argentine government was manipulating them to serve U.S. interests. [4].
The Mothers have published a book[1] with a compilation of Saddam Hussein's writings, among others forms of support to the
Baathist regime in Iraq [5] [6]
Final March of Resistance On 26 January 2006, members of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo Association made their final annual
March of Resistance around the Plaza de Mayo, saying no more such marches are needed because they do not perceive the current
government as hostile or indifferent to the fate of the Dirty War missing. Their weekly Thursday marches will continue, however, in
pursuit of action on other social causes. And the Founding Line faction will continue both the Thursday marches and the annual
marches. Today, despite having faced a crippled economy, Argentina is considered the 3rd most democratic country in Latin
America (Lagos, 134). Argentina is an example of how peaceful activism may be able to bring about public awareness, but that
democracy does not work in a political system rife with corruption and "mafioso" tactics.
Significance of voice The public and collaborative nature of the activism engaged in by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo is in stark
contrast and opposition to the oppression and silence of the government. Many victims dealt with the stress by “retreating into private
worlds and turning inward. As they became separated from each other, their lives were controlled by the terror that influenced every
thought, action and feeling”(Arditti 82). The response of isolation by these individuals allowed the government to maintain a level of
control through fear. When the Mothers began to talk to each other and tell their stories this represented a major break in the habits of
isolation. These discussions did not only combat the desired silence and isolation of the government. Rather, stories of other mothers
and grandmothers served as inspiration for other women to begin searching for their missing children and helped to grow the
movement. The visibility and consistency of the women located in the central business district of Buenos Aires, which is the financial
and political capital of Argentina, and in some cases South America. They moved into a physically male dominated space and
ultimately redefined the meaning of an open social space. Furthermore, many of these women were coming to the urban business
districts of Buenos Aires from rural parts of Argentina. The Mothers’ movement represented connections between various spheres of
life that remained isolated under the dictatorship. It represented connections between the public and private, domestic and public,
rural and urban. The voices of the Mothers and Grandmothers have been recorded in many books, magazines, websites and other
publications. The continued exposure of the stories of these families, told by the matriarchs of the family, helps to extend the critical
public nature of the movement through time and space. Recording these dialogues is critical for awareness of injustices in the future.
Not only will there always be a record of the human rights violations that occurred in Argentina’s Dirty War, but there will also be a
record of the power of group communication and collaboration.
The Mothers' movement and other social movements Furthermore, it maintained a sense of a feminist movement that is in
contrast with some traditional understandings of the feminist movement in other countries. Some consider the feminist movement to
represent the need for women to move into the roles of society traditionally occupied by men. The Mothers and Grandmothers,
however, aided in the expansion of the feminist movement to embrace the values of motherhood. The traditional role of the woman
in Argentina was in the household. She was the mother: the nurturer, the protector, the educator of the family and the children. As the
Mothers came together in the Plaza de Mayo they were moving their role into the public eye. The women took responsibility for
dealing with their grief by taking any actions they could. Women began to gain experience in organizing and political processes.
However, the group was not interested in “challenging the gender system and the sexual division of labor, the …[Mothers] were
committed to the preservation of life; and they demanded the right as “traditional” women to secure the survival of their families”
(Arditti 80). As Rita Arditti says in her book: “In… [joining together], the Mothers were creating a new form of political
participation, outside the traditional party structures and based on the values of love and caring. Motherhood allowed them to build a
bond and shape a movement without men.” (Arditti 80). Men were quietly involved in support of the movement. Their quiet support
further allowed the women to move into the public arena. Through this process, the women “transformed themselves from
‘traditional’ women defined by their relationships with men (mothers, wives, daughters) into public protesters working on behalf of
the whole society” (Arditti 97). Not only did the Mothers and Grandmothers, somewhat inadvertently, participate in what some
would call a feminist movement, the Mothers and Grandmothers also received support received from groups across the world
fighting for social justice. This helped to transform the actions of the Mothers and Grandmothers working to search for their lost
family into a broader fight against human rights violations. In Rita Arditti’s “Searching For Life” she quotes a woman, Nélida de
Navajas: “One of the most beautiful things that came out of my work with the Grandmothers was learning that there was so much
interest and solidarity from people in other parts of the world. It was an extraordinarily positive experience. We have had support
from the women’s movement, from the CHA [Comité Homosexual Argentino], even the transsexual groups” (Arditti 93). The
implications of the actions of the Mothers extend beyond the need for the Mothers to find their lost children. It has since been
revealed that many of the children who were kidnapped that survived were given to and raised by military families within the
government. The Mothers and Grandmothers were acting in response to their need to find their children. However, when the truth
about the family history of these adopted children becomes public, many of these children were devastated that their past was not
what they thought it was.
Support of leftist guerrillas
The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message
until the dispute is resolved. (April 2008)
On a speech on December 3, 2007, Hebe de Bonafini said "We are brothers of the FARC". FARC is a leftist guerrilla group that, for
the last 40 years, has fought a civil war against the Government of Colombia. Bonafini's antipathy toward the Colombian government
(and sympathy with the FARC) is partly due to the historic similarities between the human rights abuses of the Colombian state (both
in recent times and over the past three decades and the crimes committed by Argentina's former dictatorship (1976-1983). During the
same speech, she blamed the government of Colombia and its president, Álvaro Uribe, for the difficulties in the Humanitarian
exchange affair[2].
Response from the music world The cause of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo was immortalized both in the Sting song They
Dance Alone and in the U2 song Mothers of the Disappeared. At an Amnesty International concert in Buenos Aires in 1988 and in a
concert in Buenos Aires in 1998, the Mothers appeared on stage with Sting and years later U2 to dance with Sting and Peter Gabriel
and during the U2 concert to announce their children's names to the crowd as the song was performed. Singer and activist Joan Baez
prominently featured the Mothers in her 1981 documentary There But for Fortune.
Biblioteca Virtual
The Grandmothers Main article: Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Spanish:
Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo) is an organization who has the aim of finding the stolen babies, whose mothers were
killed, during the "Dirty War". Its president is Estela B. de Carlotto.
Awards and prizes
• In 1992, all members of the Mothers' association were awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
• In 1999, the organization was awarded the United Nations Prize for Peace Education.
• On 10 December 2003, the Grandmothers' president, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, was awarded the United Nations Prize in
the Field of Human Rights.
Cultural references In 2008, an opera entitled Las Madres de la Plaza premiered in Leffler Chapel at Elizabethtown College in
Pennsylvania, telling the story of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. It was written by a collaboration of students, staff, and faculty of
the school, headed up by James Haines and John Rohrkemper.
References
1. ^ Suleiman, Nestor Antonio (comp.), Saddam Hussein. Revolución y resistencia en Iraq. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Madres
de Plaza de Mayo, 2006, ISBN 987-1231-15-6 [1][2]
2. ^ http://www.madres.org/asp/contenido.asp?clave=2609
Further reading
• Mothers of the Disappeared, by Jo Fisher (1989).
• Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard (1994).
• Circle of Love Over Death: Testimonies of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, by Matilde Mellibovsky, trans. by Maria &
Matthew Proser (1997).
• Searching for Life, by Rita Arditti (1999).
• A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the legacies of torture, by Marguerite Feitlowitz (1998)
• Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza De Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina, by Rita Arditti
(1999).
• Página/12, 9 December 2005. Las cenizas de Azucena, junto a la Pirámide (Spanish).
See also
• The Official Story, a movie related to the "stolen babies" case
• Cautiva, another movie related to the "stolen babies" case
• Maria Eugenia Sampallo
• Women in Black
• Black Sash
• Tiananmen Mothers
• Saturday Mothers
• Films depicting Latin American military dictatorships
External links
• (Spanish) Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo
• (Spanish) Madres de Plaza de Mayo – Línea Fundadora
• (English) Asociación Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo
• (Spanish) Proyecto Desaparecidos
• International Committee Against Disappearances
Biblioteca Virtual
-ational Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CO-ADEP)
The -ational Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Spanish: Comisión (acional sobre la Desaparición de Personas,
CONADEP) was an Argentine organization created by President Raúl Alfonsín on 15 December 1983, shortly after his inauguration,
to investigate the fate of the desaparecidos (victims of forced disappearance) and other human rights violations (see: Dirty War)
performed during the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process between 1976 and 1983. The research of
the investigation commission was documented in the unca Más (Never Again) report, delivered to Alfonsín on 20 September 1984,
which opened the doors to the trial of the military juntas of the dictatorship. CONADEP recorded, case by case, the forced
disappearance of about 9,000 persons from 1976 to 1983, although it noted that the actual number could be higher (estimates by
human rights organizations usually place it at 30,000 persons). The report also stated that about 600 people were "disappeared" and
458 were assassinated (by death squads such as the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance) during the Peronist governments from 1973
to 1976.[1] [2]
CONADEP's members were:
• Ernesto Sábato (President)
• Ricardo Colombres
• René Favaloro
• Hilario Fernández Long
• Carlos T. Gattinoni
• Gregorio Klimovsky
• Marshall Meyer
• Jaime F. de Nevares
• Eduardo Rabossi
• Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazú
• Santiago Marcelino López (1)
• Hugo Diógenes Piucill (1)
• Horacio Hugo Huarte (1)
(1) designated by the Chamber of Deputies.
Five secretaries were also named:
• Graciela Fernández Meijide: Depositions
• Daniel Salvador: Documentation and Data Processing
• Raúl Aragón: Procedures
• Alberto Mansur: Legal Affairs
• Leopoldo Silgueira: Administrative
Endnotes
1. ^ L'ancienne présidente argentine Isabel Peron arrêtée à Madrid, à la demande de Buenos Aires, Le Monde, January 13,
2007 (French).
2. ^ Argenpress, 10 April 2006. Represión en Argentina y memoria larga[dead link].
See also List of truth and reconciliation commissions
External links (English) The unca Más (Never Again) CONADEP Report
Biblioteca Virtual
Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo
The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Spanish: Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo) is a human rights organization
with the aim of finding the babies stolen during de Argentine dictatorship known as Dirty War (1976-1983). Its president is Estela B.
de Carlotto. It was founded in 1977 to locate children kidnapped during the repression and return them to their biological families.
The work of the Grandmothers, assisted by scientist Mary-Claire King, has led to the location of over 10 percent of the estimated 500
children kidnapped or born in detention during the military era [1]. In 1998, the identity of 256 missing babies were documented. Of
those, however, only 56 children were ever located and seven of them had died. The Grandmothers' work led to the creation of the
Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and the establishment of a National Genetic Data Bank. Aided by recent breakthroughs in
genetic testing, the Grandmothers succeeded in returning 31 children to their biological families, while 13 others were raised jointly
by their adoptive and biological families; the remaining cases are bogged down in court custody battles [2]. The stolen babies were
part of a systematic plan in the frame of the "Dirty War" [1]. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR), this was justified by the junta by the following reasoning: "The anguish generated in the rest of the surviving family
because of the absence of the disappeared would develop, after a few years, into a new generation of subversive or potentially
subversive elements, thereby not permitting an effective end to the Dirty War." [2]. As an off-shoot of the Silvia Quintela case, former
dictator Jorge Videla was put to house-arrest on charges of kidnappings.
References
1. ^ a b Juan Ignacio Irigaray, Los santos inocentes, El Mundo, 11 June 1998 (Spanish)
2. ^ a b Marta Gurvich, Argentina's Dapper, in Consortium ews, August 19, 1998 (English)
See also
• Madres de Plaza de Mayo
• Dirty War (Argentina)
• National Reorganization Process
• ESMA
• The Official Story, a movie related to the "stolen babies" case
• Cautiva, another movie related to the "stolen babies" case
External links
• Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (sitio oficial)
• Abuelas recuperó el nieto número 88, Télem, 2 de julio de 2007
• Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo recuperaron al nieto número 82, Clarín, 15 de febrero de 2006
• 30 Años, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo
Sculpture at the ESMA's fence in memory of the dissapered mothers and the babies they had in that clandestine center during the last
dictatorship (1976-1983). The names written on the pregnated woman image are those of the babies who were born there. Estela de
Carlotto, president of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo with former Argentine president Néstor Kirchner
Biblioteca Virtual

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