Argentina Dirty War: The CIA’s 'Operation Condor'
Argentina Declassification Project- The "Dirty War" (1976-83) #OperationCondor
Dirty War is the name used by the military junta or the civil-military dictatorship of Argentina for the period of state terrorism sponsored by the United States in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 as part of Operation Condor, on during which the army, the security forces and the death squads in the form of the Anti-Communist Alliance of Argentina (AAA, or Triple A) have hunted down all political dissidents and anyone suspected of being associated with socialism, to left-wing Peronism or the Montoneros movement. About 30,000 people have disappeared, many of whom were officially unable to make statements because of the nature of state terrorism. The abducted, tortured, and murdered included people considered to be a political or ideological threat to the military junta or contrary to the neoliberal economic policy dictated by Operation Condor.
During the Argentine government’s seven-year (1976-83) campaign against suspected dissidents and subversives, often known as the “Dirty War,” between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed, including opponents of the government as well as innocent victims. The military junta that ousted President Isabel Peron in a coup in 1976 confronted an urban-based leftist insurgency that had been intensifying for several years and had moved beyond attacking government targets to include kidnappings and killings of persons with no official connections and no particular ideology. Soon after it seized power, the junta closed the national legislature, imposed censorship, banned trade unions, and brought state and municipal governments under military control.
Until now, the military has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in its campaign against leftist guerrillas and political dissidents. The bones have been found in mass graves, but there has been no final accounting of the numbers.
Scilingo, a cashiered Navy captain, says he knows where them went.
"First, to detention. Then, to their deaths.
They were played lively music and made to dance for joy, because they were going to be transferred to the south. After that, they were told they had to be vaccinated due to the transfer, and they were injected with pentonadal. And shortly after, they became really drowsy, and from there we loaded them onto trucks and headed off for the airfield."
Part of the Process of National Reorganization involved setting up a system of over 300 secret prisons for detaining anyone suspected of being subversive. Besides the violent militants the government claimed it was protecting the country from, students, educators, trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists, left-wing activists, members of the clergy, and alleged sympathizers of anti-regime elements and their families also were among the tens of thousands of “disappeared” who were apprehended at night and taken to the detention centers, where they were interrogated and often tortured and killed. At first, much of the Argentine public supported the crackdown as necessary for restoring order, but within a few years, growing evidence of human rights violations evoked opposition to the government’s methods—perhaps most notably from the Mothers, who had lost children in the “Dirty War.” Their weekly vigils in the Plaza de Mayo, fronting the presidential palace, brought international attention to the “disappeared.” The regime was able to suppress most opposition, however, through strict censorship and curfews and a generalized fear of the secret police.
"There isn't a day that goes by without their memory. There were many young people aged 14 to 16. The center could hold about 300 people, and so the camp personnel kept count of the prisoners. Whenever the number of detainees exceeded the center's capacity, prisoners were eliminated to make room, and then new ones were brought in. Some of them arrived in trunks of cars, like Oscar Steinmberg and García (desaparecidos), two soldiers who were still dressed in their military uniforms. Others were brought in by trucks. They were beaten while being led into the camp. They were counted, each of them given a number" according the Asociación de Abogados (the Lawyers Association), which will now demand to reopen the proceedings that investigated human rights violation in Campo de Mayo,
By 1980, nearly all insurgent activity had ceased, and the most brutal aspects of the “Dirty War,” including the “disappearances,” were subsiding. The Argentine government’s domestic and international standing suffered, however, as revelations about its human rights record emerged along with growing evidence of corruption. It tried to restore its legitimacy with the Argentine people by seizing the Falkland Islands from Great Britain, but the failed campaign further discredited the regime and led to its fall in 1983. The new democratically elected government created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in December 1983 to collect evidence about the “Dirty War,” beginning the decades-long process under which most of the perpetrators of the human rights violations during 1976-83 were eventually brought to justice.
Other information can be consulted on the CIA's Electronic Reading Room or by submitting a FOIA request. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/05531264
