Operation Condor Trial Tackles Coordinated Campaign to Kill Leftists - Obama Not Cooperating

[Coyotl]

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/7/operation_condor_trial_tackles_coordinated_campaign

A historic trial underway in Argentina is set to reveal new details about how Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and '80s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign known as "Operation Condor" involved military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. They worked together to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as terrorists: leftist activists, labor organizers, students, priests, journalists, guerrilla fighters and their families. The campaign was launched by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and evidence shows the CIA and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were complicit from its outset. We're joined by John Dinges, author of "The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents." The book brings together interviews and declassified intelligence records to reconstruct the once-secret events

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George Bush Sr. May Face Charges: Conspiring to Kidnap and Murder Political Activists
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2459135

2007: Kissinger's extradition to Uruguay sought over Operation Condor
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2781263

[KoKo]

1. That was fascinating report on DN....

Last edited Fri Mar 8, 2013, 12:17 PM - Edit history (1)

K&R!

[Coyotl]

4. This will gain traction as the trial proceeds, and the US will be forced to deal with the issue

in some way. I suspect Obama and Holder are siding with Kissinger and Bush because they have to protect a complicit US government.

Never forget, Obama is America's number one lawyer first. Attorney-client privilege, you know!!

[DevonRex]

7. Another

possibility- protection of current assets. Those assets are often the sons or daughters of people who could be exposed (but aren't) by us for something they did decades before. Even grandchildren and so on. Since those times in those countries, one hell of an intelligence network has been built in SA by us and a couple of our allies in particular.

[whatchamacallit]

8. You should share your creative musings with the state department

I'm sure they'd appreciate ideas.

[Judi Lynn]

13. They are very aware of their history in the Americas. n/t

[Coyotl]

2. Operation Condor" Was No Mystery to Washington

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/OperCondor_NoMystery_US.html
by Ángel Páez
www.ipsnews.net/, January 12, 2008

The intelligence services of Peru and Argentina kept Washington informed in real time about a 1980 joint clandestine operation in which four alleged members of Argentina's Montoneros guerrilla movement were "disappeared," according to documents declassified in the United States.
The incident forms part of the case opened in December by Italian Judge Luisianna Figliola, who issued arrest warrants for those responsible for this and other actions carried out in the framework of Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing, torturing and eliminating left-wing opponents.
Townsend B. Friedman, political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, revealed in a secret Aug. 19, 1980 memo to Claus Ruser, the ambassador's number two man, details about the operation involving the supposed Montoneros in Lima, and the fatal outcome.
In that memo, which has now been declassified thanks to the efforts of the National Security Archive, an independent Washington-based non-governmental research institute, Friedman told his superior that an Argentine intelligence official had provided them with details of the Lima operation on Jun. 16, 1980.
The date is key: the joint action by the Batallón 601, a special Argentine army intelligence unit, and Peru's Army Intelligence Service (SIE) was recorded four days earlier, and the purported Montoneros were turned over by Peruvian agents on Jun. 17 to Bolivian military personnel, in the presence of agents from Argentina.
The documents show that the U.S. government was fully aware of what was happening, at the time it was occurring, and that it knew ahead of time that the alleged Montoneros would be killed. ....

[Octafish]

3. Poppy Bush allowed CONDOR to kill on American soil Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffit

Thank you for bringing us up-to-date, Coyotl. When the US got into the killing business for their political beliefs in Latin America, it was only a matter of time before the strategy would be applied in der Homeland.

History for those who weren't there then:

Know your BFEE: Los Amigos de Bush

[johnnyreb]

5. Yeh but that was way over THERE

They would never wanna do that here!

song:
http://www.clandyken.com/cd/images/stories/mp3files/Clan_Dyken-War_on_the_People.MP3

[sabrina 1]

6. The wheels of justice sometimes grind slowly. It took nearly fifty years

to finally begin the process of accountability for those criminals, but victims never forget.

Don't forget either that the same British Court that detained Julian Assange without charges, freed the murderer and torturer, Pinochet refusing to hand him over for trial. He was allowed to live out his life in luxury. Empires are kind to our loyal dictator friends.

However, neither he nor they can control history and he will go down in history as one of the world's worst dictators. And there is nothing he can do about it. I hope one day our own war criminals will meet with a similar fate, and that it will done right here in the US rather than by some outside. There are far too many victims around who are trying to get some kind of accountability for that not to happen.

Cheney and Bush eg, should take note. They cannot control what history will do with their 'legacies'.

[Coyotl]

9. Reagan and Bush should be prosecuted for the assassination of Ben Linder, an American citizen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Linder

Benjamin Ernest "Ben" Linder (July 7, 1959 – April 28, 1987), was an American engineer who was working on a small hydroelectric dam in rural northern Nicaragua when he was killed by the Contras, an affiliation of rebel groups funded by the U.S. government/CIA. Coming at a time when U.S. support for the Contras was already highly controversial, Linder's death made front-page headlines around the world and further polarized opinion in the United States.

[G_j]

10. K&R

[kenny blankenship]

11. An interesting Wiki tidbit that emerged with the "collateral murder" dump of State Dept memos

was the revelation that the Bushler gang tried to restart Operation Condor after 9-11. Uncle Sam would be taking a leading role of course, in his Freedomlicious & Benevolent Omniscience and Wisdom, designating subversives to be tracked down and liquidated wherever they might be found throughout the hemisphere. It had once been a fruitful partnership for Uncle Sam's Terror and Political Murder Divisions. Surely, it would work again?

Well they got a big cold shoulder all over Latin America. ¡No to Operation Condor Dos! ¡No to CIA torture black sites! Some of the heads of state, like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom they tried to corral into their fascist crack down activities had themselves been political prisoners of rightwing govts in decades past.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-grandin/latin-america-torture_b_2712298.html

[Zorra]

12. More blatant sociopathic behavior by right wingers. We really need

to work for and promote genuine liberals in order to put them into representative leadership positions.

Conservatives are universally toxic to the well being and interests of people and the planet and they, and their insane ideas, absolutely need to be kept away from positions of power and leadership.

Great post, Coyotl, thanks!

[Judi Lynn]

14. One of the most evil, deadly, successful efforts to slaughter leftists ever devised,

and it is filthy news that this government would dream of continue to block efforts by the involved and ravaged, traumatized countries to bring the monsters to justice. Their luck should have run out so long ago. Many of them have been living comfortably in the U.S. all this time, hiding from those they tortured and those whose loved ones' lives they stole.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. One country is always absent in this list

Mexico

The Dias Ordaz and Echeverria administrations pursued it with particular glee.

[Wounded Bear]

16. "Complicit"

Washington speak for we organized, financed, trained, armed, and pretty much master-minded the whole effort.

Naomi Klein mentions our 'adventures' in Latin America extensively in her book, "Shock Doctrine."

[Cal Carpenter]

17. K & R

Great timing, too, it is high time people start learning more about some of the history of this region and patterns of US (and other Western powers') involvement.