Operation Condor

Operation Condor was a cooperative effort, ostensibly anti-Communist but working against multiple forms of dissent, among the 1970s-era military dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Manuel Contreras, head of the Chilean political police, is often considered the creator of the program, started in 1975 on the birthday of Chilean military leader Augusto Pinochet. The secrecy of the program was breached almost accidentally, when a Paraguayan judge, looking for information about a specific political prisoner, found a number of archives about the entire program.

While Chile may have initiated the program, some of the most intense activity was Argentinean. It was an indigenous Latin American program, the U.S. appeared to have some access to it.

Argentina
U.S. Ambassador Raul Castro, in September 1978, after Vice-President Walter Mondale met with the head of the head of the Argentian junta (1976-1981), Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the country's military junta from 1976 to 1981, reported that Argentine Army Chief of Staff Roberto Eduardo Viola was positive about American Foreign Military Sales to Argentina.

"A 1979 telegram reveals how U.S. policy placed U.S. officials in a moral and political predicament while dealing with those responsible for human rights atrocities. At a meeting with General Viola, then-U.S. Ambassador Raul Castro asked him to help clarify the fate of two recent disappeared Montonero insurgents, Mendizabal and Croatto. Viola responded without hesitation, "Mendizabal and Croatto were terrorists ... who were eliminated ... with my authorization."

Brazil
A 1995 study put Brazil midway between Argentinean democratization, and the question if there had been serious change in Paraguay. {{citation | title = Civil-Military Relations in Brazil: The Myth of Tutelary Democracy | author = Scott D. Tollefson | url = http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/lasa95/tellefson.html

Chile
Manuel Contreras, who was head of the Chilean intelligence agency, reported directly to Pinochet. Much took place inside the country, but the assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, in Washington in September 1976. Contreras, was imprisoned, in 1993, for his role in the killing.

Paraguay
Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay's former military dictator, was charged in connection with disappearances related to Operation Condor, but us in Brazil, from which he is apparently safe from extradition. General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, head of the Paraguyan military was charged in September 2005 with similar matters, but denied knowledge and responsibility, saying it was the responsibility of intelligence and police officials, who were dead.