Predatory States

Predatory States PDF Author: J. Patrice McSherry
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742568709
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This powerful study makes a compelling case about the key U.S. role in state terrorism in Latin America during the Cold War. Long hidden from public view, Operation Condor was a military network created in the 1970s to eliminate political opponents of Latin American regimes. Its key members were the anticommunist dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil, later joined by Peru and Ecuador, with covert support from the U.S. government. Drawing on a wealth of testimonies, declassified files, and Latin American primary sources, J. Patrice McSherry examines Operation Condor from numerous vantage points: its secret structures, intelligence networks, covert operations against dissidents, political assassinations worldwide, commanders and operatives, links to the Pentagon and the CIA, and extension to Central America in the 1980s. The author convincingly shows how, using extralegal and terrorist methods, Operation Condor hunted down, seized, and executed political opponents across borders. McSherry argues that Condor functioned within, or parallel to, the structures of the larger inter-American military system led by the United States, and that declassified U.S. documents make clear that U.S. security officers saw Condor as a legitimate and useful 'counterterror' organization. Revealing new details of Condor operations and fresh evidence of links to the U.S. security establishment, this controversial work offers an original analysis of the use of secret, parallel armies in Western counterinsurgency strategies. It will be a clarion call to all readers to consider the long-term consequences of clandestine operations in the name of 'democracy.'

Predatory States

Predatory States PDF Author: J. Patrice McSherry
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742568709
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
This powerful study makes a compelling case about the key U.S. role in state terrorism in Latin America during the Cold War. Long hidden from public view, Operation Condor was a military network created in the 1970s to eliminate political opponents of Latin American regimes. Its key members were the anticommunist dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil, later joined by Peru and Ecuador, with covert support from the U.S. government. Drawing on a wealth of testimonies, declassified files, and Latin American primary sources, J. Patrice McSherry examines Operation Condor from numerous vantage points: its secret structures, intelligence networks, covert operations against dissidents, political assassinations worldwide, commanders and operatives, links to the Pentagon and the CIA, and extension to Central America in the 1980s. The author convincingly shows how, using extralegal and terrorist methods, Operation Condor hunted down, seized, and executed political opponents across borders. McSherry argues that Condor functioned within, or parallel to, the structures of the larger inter-American military system led by the United States, and that declassified U.S. documents make clear that U.S. security officers saw Condor as a legitimate and useful 'counterterror' organization. Revealing new details of Condor operations and fresh evidence of links to the U.S. security establishment, this controversial work offers an original analysis of the use of secret, parallel armies in Western counterinsurgency strategies. It will be a clarion call to all readers to consider the long-term consequences of clandestine operations in the name of 'democracy.'

The Condor Years

The Condor Years PDF Author: John Dinges
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1595589023
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
A “compelling and shocking account” of a brutal campaign of repression in Latin America, based on interviews and previously secret documents (The Miami Herald). Throughout the 1970s, six Latin American governments, led by Chile, formed a military alliance called Operation Condor to carry out kidnappings, torture, and political assassinations across three continents. It was an early “war on terror” initially encouraged by the CIA—which later backfired on the United States. Hailed by Foreign Affairs as “remarkable” and “a major contribution to the historical record,” The Condor Years uncovers the unsettling facts about the secret US relationship with the dictators who created this terrorist organization. Written by award-winning journalist John Dinges and updated to include later developments in the prosecution of Pinochet, the book is a chilling yet dispassionately told history of one of Latin America’s darkest eras. Dinges, himself interrogated in a Chilean torture camp, interviewed participants on both sides and examined thousands of previously secret documents to take the reader inside this underground world of military operatives and diplomats, right-wing spies and left-wing revolutionaries. “Scrupulous, well-documented.” —The Washington Post “Nobody knows what went wrong inside Chile like John Dinges.” —Seymour Hersh

The Condor Trials

The Condor Trials PDF Author: Francesca Lessa
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300265360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Stories of transnational terror and justice illuminate the past and present of South America’s struggles for human rights. Through the voices of survivors, human rights activists, judicial actors, and experts, The Condor Trials unravels the secrets of transnational repression masterminded by South American dictators between 1969 and 1981. Under Operation Condor, the regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay closely monitored hundreds of exiles and kidnapped, tortured, murdered, or forcibly returned them to their countries of origin. This cross-border network designed to silence opposition in exile transformed South America into a borderless zone of terror and impunity. Francesca Lessa shows how, gradually, transnational networks of activists materialized and effectively transcended national borders to achieve justice for the victims of these horrors. Based on extensive fieldwork, archival research, trial ethnography, and over 100 interviews, The Condor Trials explores South America’s past and present and sheds light on ongoing struggles for justice as its societies come to terms with the unparalleled atrocities of their not-so-distant pasts.

Operation Condor

Operation Condor PDF Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781095308110
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "Let's say there were 7,000 or 8,000 people who had to die to win the war against subversion... We couldn't execute them by firing squad. Neither could we take them to court... For that reason, so as not to provoke protests inside and outside the country, the decision was reached that these people should be disappeared." - General Jorge Rafael Videla For much of the 20th century, South American governments in large part lived under a system of military junta governments. The mixture of indigenous peoples, foreign settlers and European colonial superpowers produced cultural and social imbalances into which military forces intervened as a stabilizing influence. The proactive personalities of military heads and the rigid structures of such a hierarchy guaranteed the "strong man" commanding officer an abiding presence in the form of executive dictator. Such leaders often bore the more collaborative title of "President," but the reality was, in most cases, identical. Likewise, the gap between rich and poor was often vast, and a disappearance of the middle class fed a frequent urge for revolution, reenergizing the military's intent to stop it. With no stabilizing center, the ideologies most prevalent in such conflicts alternated between a federal model of industrial and social nationalization and an equally conservative structure under privatized ownership and autocratic rule drawn from the head of a junta government. Whichever belief system was in play for the major industrial nations of the continent, a constant bombardment of foreign influence pushed the people of states such as Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and others, toward overthrow, in one direction or the other. From the left came Stalinist influences from the Soviet Union and Castro's Cuba, while the German World War II model and an anti-communist mindset from the United States worked behind the scenes to upset any movement toward extreme liberalism. The reign of Juan Peron in Argentina became the most iconic such arrangement to the Western observer, but General Augusto Pinochet's 17-year rule over Chile after an American-supported coup in the 1970s proved the most enduring and the most resistant to eradication by subsequent leaders of an opposite bent. Pinochet himself openly bragged, "My library is filled with UN condemnations." By combating Marxists and Communists during the Cold War, Pinochet ensured he would at the very least remain undisturbed by America, even as he carried out policies that would be labeled tyrannical by any objective measurement. As writer Jacob C. Hornberger put it while analyzing appraisals of Pinochet based on political background, "[T]error in the name of fighting terror is a grave criminal offense against humanity no matter what economic philosophy the state terrorist happens to hold." The tacit acceptance of these right-wing dictators across South America was part of an overarching effort known as Operation Condor, consisting mostly of CIA operations that are as infamous and controversial as ever, with a lasting legacy that affects current events such as reactions to the ongoing unrest in Venezuela. Operation Condor: The History of the Notorious Intelligence Operations Supported by the United States to Combat Communists across South America looks at the various intelligence operations and the winding chain of events that brought about conflicts in the region. Along with pictures and a bibliography, you will learn about Operation Condor like never before.

Operation Condor

Operation Condor PDF Author: John Eppler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description


The Feathers of Condor

The Feathers of Condor PDF Author: Fernando López
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443898988
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
On 25 November 1975, representatives of five South American intelligence services held a secret meeting in the city of Santiago, Chile. At the end of the gathering, the participating delegations agreed to launch Operation Condor under the pretext of coordinating counterinsurgency activities, sharing information to combat leftist guerrillas and stopping an alleged advance of Marxism in the region. Condor, however, went much further than mere exchanges of information between neighbours. It was a plan to transnationalize state terrorism beyond South America. This book identifies the reasons why the South American military regimes chose this strategic path at a time when most revolutionary movements in the region were defeated, in the process of leaving behind armed struggle and resuming the political path. One of Condor’s most intriguing features was the level of cooperation achieved by these governments considering the distrust, animosity and historical rivalries between these countries’ armed forces. This book explores these differences and goes further than previous lines of inquiry, which have focused predominantly on the conflict between Latin American leftist guerrillas and the armed forces, to study the contribution made by other actors such as civilian anticommunist figures and organizations, and the activities conducted by politically active exiles and their supporters in numerous countries. This broader approach confirms that the South American dictatorships launched the Condor Plan to systematically eliminate any kind of opposition, especially key figures and groups involved in the denunciation of the regimes’ human rights violations.

When States Kill

When States Kill PDF Author: Cecilia Menjívar
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292778503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Since the early twentieth century, technological transfers from the United States to Latin American countries have involved technologies of violence for social control. As the chapters in this book illustrate, these technological transfers have taken various forms, including the training of Latin American military personnel in surveillance and torture and the provision of political and logistic support for campaigns of state terror. The human cost for Latin America has been enormous—thousands of Latin Americans have been murdered, disappeared, or tortured, and whole communities have been terrorized into silence. Organized by region, the essays in this book address the topic of state-sponsored terrorism in a variety of ways. Most take the perspective that state-directed political violence is a modern development of a regional political structure in which U.S. political interests weigh heavily. Others acknowledge that Latin American states enthusiastically received U.S. support for their campaigns of terror. A few see local culture and history as key factors in the implementation of state campaigns of political violence. Together, all the essays exemplify how technologies of terror have been transferred among various Latin American countries, with particular attention to the role that the United States, as a "strong" state, has played in such transfers.

Rommel's Spy

Rommel's Spy PDF Author: John Eppler
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1473829720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
In 1942, John Eppler was one of two German spies inserted behind British lines in Egypt after an epic crossing of the Western Desert organised by the Hungarian explorer Count László Almásy, Operation ‘Condor’. But this was far from his first adventure. Of German origin but raised since childhood in a wealthy Egyptian family and a convert to Islam, he had travelled widely in the Middle East for German Military Intelligence. The book details German links with Arab nationalists during the War: indeed, one of Eppler’s contacts in Cairo was a young officer called Anwar el-Sadat, later President of Egypt. Before Operation ‘Condor’. Eppler had been the interpreter when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met Hitler in Berlin, and the book gives a full description of this controversial encounter. This story has inspired numerous films, such as Foxhole in Cairo (1960), where John Eppler was played by Adrian Hoven, and more recently Operation ‘Condor’ was referenced in the Oscar-winning The English Patient (1996). This is the genuine, first-hand account of one of the most daring missions of the Second World War.

The Jakarta Method

The Jakarta Method PDF Author: Vincent Bevins
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541724011
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020 BY NPR, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, AND GQ The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- backed by the United States. In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful. In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.

The Pinochet File

The Pinochet File PDF Author: Peter Kornbluh
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595589953
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
Revised and updated: the definitive primary-source history of US involvement in General Pinochet’s Chilean coup—“the evidence is overwhelming” (The New Yorker). Published to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s infamous September 11, 1973, military coup in Chile, this updated edition of The Pinochet File reveals the shocking, formerly secret record of the US government’s complicity with atrocity in a foreign country. The book now completes the file on Pinochet’s story, detailing his multiple indictments between 2004 and his death on December 10, 2006, including the Riggs Bank scandal that revealed how the dictator had illegally squirreled away over $26 million in ill-begotten wealth in secret American bank accounts. When it was first released in hardcover, The Pinochet File contributed to the international campaign to hold Pinochet accountable for murder, torture, and terrorism. A new afterword tells the extraordinary story of Henry Kissinger’s attempt to undercut the book’s reception—efforts that generated a major scandal that led to a high-level resignation at the Council on Foreign Relations, illustrating the continued ability of the book to speak truth to power. “The Pinochet File should be considered the long awaited book of record on U.S. intervention in Chile . . . A crisp compelling narrative, almost a political thriller.” —Los Angeles Times