Letter
from Lhasa, number 328. State Terrorism. Operation
Condor
by
Roberto Abraham Scaruffi
McSherry, J. P., Predatory States. Operation Condor and
Covert War in Latin America, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., Oxford, UK, 2005.
(McSherry 2005).
J. Patrice McSherry
Operation Condor was a
covert operation of State Terrorism under U.S. management, started in the
1970s, and initially involving the
military regimes of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil.
They were later joined by Ecuador and Peru. In addition to internal State
Terrorism, military and paramilitary commandos hunted refugees and exiles in
other Latin American countries, as well as in the USA and Europe, so with clear
cooperation of the U.S. and European governments when they operated in their
respective countries. A few exceptions apart, nobody assassinates or makes to
disappear anybody without the agreement and cooperation of the country where a
foreign Death Squad operates. In the year 1980, Condor operations started also in Central America.
There was another member of
Condor, the decisive one, the USA. (McSherry 2005, p. 162). It was such an
obvious member that it did not appear as such. The role of the US puppet-master
was so natural, too much visible, that it seemed as invisible.
For instance, when, on 6 October
1975, there was the assassination attempt of the Chilean Christian Democrat
leader Bernardo Leighton and his wife, Ana Fresno, in Rome, Italy, that could
not be realized without the active help of the Italian government and its Carabinieri-NATO.
Both the targets were seriously injured and remained disabled for their whole
life.
Idem, mutatis mutandis, in the USA, as well as in other countries, no
foreign terrorism, overall the State terrorism of allied countries, could be
implemented without the complicity and active cooperation of the indigenous
State/government. Of course, this cooperation is absolutely hidden. Such
cooperation was usually explicit, or easily detectable, in other Latin American
countries while it was more covert elsewhere.
The Condor system enjoyed also of specific detention and torture
centres. Nothing changes in the US&British-organized and -managed State
Terrorism.
“OPERATION CONDOR WAS A SECRET INTELLIGENCE and
operations system created in the 1970s through which the South American
military states shared intelligence and seized, tortured, and executed
political opponents in one another’s territory. Inspired by a continental
security doctrine that targeted ideological enemies, the military states in the
Condor system engaged in terrorist practices to destroy the “subversive threat”
from the left and defend “Western, Christian civilization.” The Condor
apparatus was a secret component of a larger, U.S.-led counterinsurgency
strategy to preempt or reverse social movements demanding political or
socioeconomic change.” (McSherry 2005, p. 1).
The USA always opposed
and overthrew whatever even only limited modernizing government in whatever
Latin America country, if it moved in same way against some US interest. Later
they exploited the same Cuban Castroism for favouring, by the intermediation of
the Cuban government, guerrilla movements in the whole Latin American and so
fighting them under the excuse of the fight against ‘communism’.
The Cuban ‘revolution’
can be read in this way. US-British interests financed the overthrow of Batista
by the guerrilla led from the then no-communist Fidel Castro. A guerrilla
movement costs a lot of money. Castro was funded from US-British interests. Immediately
later, since Castro was apparently damaging some immediate interests of some
U.S. companies, he was progressively pushed into the arms of the Soviet Union
and the “Socialist field”. Cuban, previously an offshore appendage of the USA, was
now hetero-managed by a Soviet Union strategically subordinated to the US and
British Empires.
In this way, the USA
consolidated Castroism as an under-developmentalist leadership of Cuba. The
embargo was and is a help to Castroism, and to the overwhelming Cuban backward
bureaucracy, not a strike against it.
It is simply not
credible that a Cuba totally subordinate to the “Socialist field” help could
subvert Latin America without USSR and ...US-British agreement. More that agreement,
it was USA-UK will.
Yes, there is the usual
and sounding tale of the US aggression against Cuba. The USA and the UK are
masters in the advertising and propaganda industry.
For example, the 17
April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion failed only because the USA firstly sponsored
the operation, it was badly organized from the CIA, and later the US government
did not provide sufficient support to the landed anti-Castroist troops. Not
casually, “in August 1961, during an economic conference of the Organization of
American States in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Che Guevara sent a note to Kennedy
via Richard N. Goodwin, a secretary of the White House. It said: "Thanks
for Playa Girón. Before the invasion, the revolution was weak. Now it's
stronger than ever."” (from wikipedia).
Nothing is casual. If
you want to strengthen a regime, you just need to provoke some irreversible
failure of those opposing it. It was what the USA did by the 17 April 1961 Bay
of Pigs operation.
‘Socialist’ Cuba, not
anymore opened to the US entertainment industry, provoked the going back of
this prosperous industry to the USA. A Cuba pushed to some sterile Latin
America subversion was used as an excuse for the massive State Terrorism in the
whole Latin America. There were also other US and their clients’ covert
initiatives for pushing Latin American movements to some form of guerrilla and
terrorism. Even the Forth International of Mandel-Maitan was used for this
purpose, mobilized again (already in Algeria and for other covert activities)
from the US&British governments by indigenous military Secret Police
agencies and companies.
It was the usual scheme.
If you want to fight terrorism, first you need creating it. If you want to keep
your clients underdeveloped, a possible way, one of the possible techniques, is
a condition of permanent internal civil war.
Cuba had no real interest
in promoting terrorism in Latin America or elsewhere in the world. It was pushed
to it from the US and British Empires, although the Cuban role have been considerably
overvalued and mystifies. The Cuban State/government knew it was just playing a
dirty game. It used the Empires’ dirty game for its own dirty games.
For instance, Che
Guevara was considered in Cuba just an arrogant Argentinean to be in same way
liquidated, as soon as possible. The Cuban growing ‘socialist’ and backward
bureaucracy did not tolerate him while it had no problem with the logorrheic
Fidel Castro.
Not casually, Che
Guevara was finally sent to Bolivia, in an area where a successful agrarian
reform let no space for whatever external subversion. The Che Guevara guerrilla
comrades, in Bolivia were just agents of Cuban Secret Services, so obeying to
the orders of the Cuban government, plus an agent of the GDR Secret Service (Tamara
Bunke), plus a cover composed of Bolivians and some other Latin Americans (http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/che/bolivia-guerrillas.htm). What were they doing there? Just showing
that Che Guevara was an idiot (as international guerrilla fighter), the theory
of the “foco guerrillero” a delirium, and let Che Guevara die as result of his
inaptitude and of the Cuban government will. Since many people do not
understand easily, it was fruitful to create for them a Che Guevara myth for contemporary
and further generations of manipulatable fools.
The liquidation of Che
Guevara in Bolivia was de facto a
joint Cuban-CIA operation. The successive deification of Che Guevara has the
same characteristics of the deification of Lenin de facto defeated from Stalin. His assassination was wanted from
the Cuban government and, after assassinated, he has been used for the
Castroist-Cuban rhetoric and propaganda. He was transformed in an empty icon.
So, his assassination had a double advantage for Cuba.
The Che Guevara
voluntarism was incompatible with Cuban bureaucratism. In addition, and as a
consequence of that, he was stigmatized as an arrogant Argentinean. The real
Cuba refused him. Since he identified himself with an imaginary Cuba, he could
be removed only assassinating him in some covert way. Given his suicide
instincts, he helped the Cuban butchers’ work.
The Che Guevara case was
a sui generis (since he was an Argentine)
case of Cuban intra-State/government fighting, with this Argentine-Cuban Che
Guevara sent away just for being freely assassinated. In Bolivia, he was coming
from his Congo failure. In Congo, not differently from wherever in the world,
the only guerrilla movements were and are the ones organized from companies or from
other States, specifically from the mining companies and connected neo-colonial
governments and Empires or sub-Empires.
Che Guevara did not know
and did not understand Congo, as he did not know and did not understand Bolivia.
Finally, the Bolivia State/government, not differently from Cuba and the USA,
exploited ‘his’ suicidal guerrilla for its own purposes.
Many other Latin America
guerrilla movements, endogenous ones, included the Marighella one, may be read
using the same frame. Internal militaries, in coordination with the USA, needed
terrorist movements for reasons of internal State terrorism, a form of
consensus according to the frames of the [pseudo-] stabilizing destabilization. So they pushed internal subjects to
terrorism. They were aided, in that, from the Cuban government, which had no
apparent direct interest to do that. However it de facto helped the CIA and its Latin American militaries to sink
Latin America in this screwing, in this clash terrorism=><=anti-terrorism
just for helping Latin American militaries, their death squads and their CIA
puppet-masters. Also European leftists (a case study is that of the
Mandel-Maitan Fourth International), clearly manipulated on US-British behalf by
their European clients (NATO countries and militaries), contributed to this craziness.
All that was very useful
for keeping Latin American underdeveloped and absolutely subordinated to the
USA-UK. Mutatis mutandis, the same
pattern is followed everywhere in the world, where there are not developmental
oligarchies.
Pseudo-revolutionary icons
were very useful for the USA-UK. If you want to keep Latin America under
under-developmental regimes with permanent internal wars, you need creating
internal and external enemies. Pseudo revolutionaries legitimizing a permanent
State terrorism are the best options, in same periods and contexts. For
creating pseudo-revolutionaries (masses of manoeuvre), myths are an essential
aspect. At the same time, you need someone or something providing weapons and
funds. Vehicles for that were, then, foreign leftist organizations and States/countries
as Cuba. The CIA and the SIS could not be happier.
Operation Condor was
the internationalization, with US help, of State terrorism in single Latin
American countries. So, targets were persecuted and hit everywhere in the world,
actually not only in Latin America. Obviously, everything was covered by the
State secret. The usual State/government [military-, war-] propaganda told that
everything was normal, than nothing was happening. Usual pattern.
Paramilitary forces were
just official parallel militias. They were government additional apparatuses
for special purposes, for State terrorism. The USA provided all kind of
assistance and supervised everything.
The use of organized
criminality and extremist (and not only extremist) organizations from
State/government apparatuses was and is not a novelty. It is everyday practice
everywhere in the world.
This US-led death
squads’ system struck persons’ supposed ideas, not necessarily illegal acts. A
suspect of heterodoxy was automatically guilty and was struck by State
terrorism. People was tortured and assassinated on this ground. It is actually
the best, from the point of view of the barbarianism State terrorism is. Also
the cheka did the same.
This work, (McSherry 2005), tells only one-half of the story.
The US & British
world-wide State terrorist web, as well as each single State terrorist web,
fights ‘subversion’ while creating it. They use ‘anti-communist’ para-State
militias and they use, at the same time, ‘communist’ para-State militias. Of
course, they massacre and/or lobotomize people while manipulating them by their
leaderships. There are power’s levels were ‘political’ or other differences are
just marketing labels.
This is even more visible
now, after the 1989 implosion of the Soviet Empire. Not only. The so claimed
Italian, Greek etc “communist movements”, WW2 “anti-fascist/nazist” resistance
etc were created from the same UK and USA claiming, later, to fight them (not
all in the same way, but according to the end 1943 Teheran agreements). If, at
the rank-and-file level, that was not perhaps perceived, at the top levels,
ideologies etc are just marketing labels.
The Empires create
‘subversion’, criminality etc for justifying State terrorism. It is not true
that exploited and super-exploited people rebel. Exploitation and oppression do
not provoke rebellion. Whatever organized rebellion is work of power fractions
creating and using dissent and subversion for their interests. The same
so-called ‘revolutions’ are always work of power fractions and State/government
services creating and using them. ‘Revolutions’ always are ex-post
story-telling, making sense, for further deceiving people.
It is not a question of
infiltration.
Whatever political,
trade-unionist, social, religious etc organization either acts as a
State/government parallel militia, or is openly taken over or dissolved.
Whatever organized criminality or terrorist organization cannot be created and
survive without Secret Police agreement and support. Sometimes, or at certain
levels, it may not be aware of that. There is the mass of manoeuvre and there
are other levels.
At the highest levels there
are organic links. When there are ‘honest’ leaders, they are manipulated by
hetero-management techniques, or variously liquidated if not manipulatable. It
is not a question of single informers, and of infiltrated and recruited agents.
If an organized criminality or a terrorist organization is not useful and not
manageable, it is immediately liquidated. The State/government plays the game
of fighting it. Until it is useful, it is used and covered.
A single person may not
be controllable. Collective entities are. Whatever organization is immediately
known from intelligence services, from Secret Police agencies, and manipulated
from them. It is highly improbable, nearly impossible, it be not. There is
decisive technical and historical-factual evidence about that, about both the
aspects: to be known, and to be manipulated and managed.
There are also decisive
psychological aspects making highly improbable that even a small group be not
known from intelligence and police apparatuses. But even in presence of
geniuses of clandestinity, there are various forms of detection even from
corrupted and inefficient bureaucracies as even intelligence and police
apparatuses are or may be. Anyway, apart from science fiction-style arguing, from
State/government-create conspiracy theories or a-conspiracy theories, a
decisive mark of organized criminality and terrorist groups is precisely that
they need to be known. If they are known to their reference areas, they cannot
remain invisible to State/government apparatuses. When it seems that, it is
simply because they are covered or protected from one or more Secret Police agencies.
A book as this one
cannot avoid current stereotypes.
Nobody really worried
that Moro (McSherry 2005, pp. 43-45) was including the PCI into formal government. Aldo
Moro should become President of the Republic in a few months, since a precise agreement
between the DC and the PCI. That was intolerable to Andreotti. He ordered the
kidnapping and assassination of Moro and Berlinguer. Berlinguer was alerted
from the P2, from Licio Gelli, and he was protected from an impressive PCI
armed militia. Moro knew he would have been assassinated. Nobody could protect
him. The BR had not the military expertise to liquidate the Moro bodyguard team
and to kidnap him. The Andreotti Carabinieri Secret Police provided decisive
military help by a Calabria organized criminality clan. Of course an Andreotti
Carabinieri Secret Police officer supervised the entire operation, including
the Via Fani attack, for removing whatever obstacle and avoiding whatever
problem, and for driving it to the conclusion Andreotti wanted.
Not only then the Red
Brigades, as well as whatever other organization of that kind, were ‘assisted’
and hetero-managed. Of course, they were liquidated (not completely;
State/government may always need them), just they were not anymore useful because
State terrorism, in Italy and in the world, assumed different forms.
Was Kissinger worried?
Theatre... Low politicking. The Moro liquidation was an Andreotti operation,
not a US one. Yes, Andreotti got the USA-UK approval, or not disapproval, with
the excuse that Moro was a para-communist. The USA-UK did not worry that Moro
were liquidated. They did not like him. So they were complacent or not
obstructive relatively to the Andreotti will.
The Gelli’s P2?! The P2
was an Andreotti-Berlinguer partnership. Of course Berlinguer was the
subordinate partner. When the USA-UK decided to liquidate it, the names of
about one thousand of its affiliates were made public. They were the irrelevant
ones. Another couple of thousands was really covered. The lists with their
names were never found. If it had been a US-British structure, it would have
not been liquidated. Its liquidation was a US-British reprisal against
Andreotti.
It should not be
difficult to discover why the British Intelligence Service hanged Calvi in
London and heavily stole Banco Ambrosiano funds. It was part of the same
British campaign against the Andreotti bloc. Something to do with the Falkland
war and not only.
The game was more
complex, not necessarily rational, and/or with short term rationalities, or
apparent rationality, perhaps opposed to long term ones. The USA followed their
‘rationality’. The UK another one. Andreotti nobody can really know which one.
The Church, or that specific Pope, his own ‘logic’ perhaps supposing a US
support and no opposition from other sides. There were numerous ‘historical’
events in that period, in part obeying to the different logics, in part perhaps
difficultly explicable. Sometimes there is the risk of forgetting interests and
institutional actors. Other times there is the tendency to overvalue the latter.
Anyway, the CIA could cooperate
and have cooperation, in Italy, for its terrorisms because formal government
and the Presidency of the Republic used Carabinieri Secret Police services for
State terrorism. Of course, this State terrorism had and has NATO assistance
and cover. Whatever State terrorist operation usually needed and needs a formal
government and Presidency of the Republic secret decree. Mutatis mutandis, it is what happens in whatever other country of
the world.
The USA have created the
Operation Condor apparatuses and
provided worldwide support. However, whatever episode of State terrorism
usually needed and needs a specific secret formal decree of the
State/government of nationality of each target. Nobody acts without the cover
of the State secret, so without a specific and formal order from an institution
providing it. State terrorism uses criminal and insane louses. But they are
coward too. They do not act without specific orders and covers.
Worldwide similarity
with Operation Condor?
State terrorism was and
is basically the same, everywhere in the world. The USA and the UK lead it. So
they provide full assistance to their client States/governments, and also
outside the NATO area, even from formally enemy blocs and State/governments.
State terrorism unites all the criminal and insane louses of the world, be them
Statesmen/women or ordinary ‘people’. Operation
Condor, or Operation Condor-style
State Terrorism is nowadays globalized and it is well broader than the little that
media let to see and understand.
Banality of crime.
Criminal and insane
bureaucracies are not different from the other ones. There is a bureaucratic
‘logic’ in State terrorism in all its forms.
Bureaucracies need more
funds and more employees. State terrorism bureaucracies need to expand their
activities for getting more funds and employees. So they need to persecute and
to assassinate more and more people.
More persecutions and
assassinations è more funds and employees.
More funds and employees
è more persecutions and assassinations.
YOU pay! YOU are
persecuted and assassinated. ...Of course, you hope be somebody else... YOU pay, anyway.
Many State terrorism
criminal and insane louses are in need of psychiatric and similar help, despite
all the mechanisms of deresponsabilization for making the State terrorist
machine as going on without anybody feel responsible for its insanities and
crimes. ‘They’ are trying inventing drones and satellites automatically finding
out and striking whoever even only with some heretical thought. Perhaps it
would be finally easier to replace humanoids with drones, instead of using
armed drones for fighting them.
State of denial?
Of course, State
terrorism be an immanent reality since a long time and it be in progressive
expansion, it denies to exist or it admits just some of its forms. Function of
the State secret is to cover State terrorism. The expansion of the State secret
witnesses the expansion of State terrorism. The same State secret over the
State secret, a Kafkian world, perhaps suggests a progressive implosion of
these bureaucracies made of criminal and insane louses speculating over State
terrorism. Will they go on expanding themselves while imploding?
Of course, they may also
go on without imploding. Future always is uncertain and technology advancements
are used without any problem for the expansion of State/government and of its
State terrorism.
From the assault to
lefts’ governments to supporting them.
The book extensively
describes the US assault against lefts’ governments, using local militaries and
their terrorism. It does not seem that lefts’ governments later in office in
Latin America had undermined the US domination, and its imposed
underdevelopment and under-developmentalism.
It was only a big,
miserable, game. Yes, the “division of the world”... No, it was and is just
propaganda, war propaganda. The world was intentionally divided from the US and
British Empires precisely for playing such miserable games. There was and there
is no real antagonism to the US and British Empires. The “cold war” was a tragic
game for extending the US militarism, for perpetuating the war economy in the
USSR, and for freezing the part of the world allocated to the ‘socialist’ area.
Despite the USA-UK
formally (apparently) fired their military regimes, in a certain number of
countries, firstly in Latin America, for replacing them with formally ‘democratic’
governments, US State terrorism impressively expended its activities. Also the
Latin American countries, now claimed as ‘democratic’, do not seem to have seen
undermined the power of their military.
State terrorism assumed
different forms. Instead of paramilitary death squads, now organized
criminality is used while Secret Police agencies obstruct whatever
investigation and prosecution on State terrorism crimes. What is the
difference?
Instead of torture
centres there are now State/government-organized stalking against internal and
foreign targets. What previously was visible is now apparently invisible.
Lefts’ formal
governments now guarantee the same apartheid societies, the usual chronic
underdevelopment, and the traditional subordination to the US and other
interests. Some temporary apparent exceptions do not seem to worry too much
foreign interests, also because the temporary exceptions are only about some
nationalist policies about some economic interest. Since the traditional Latin
American apartheid societies are not overcome, Latin American
under-developmentalism remains solidly established. Predatory oligarchies
remain the same, under formal ‘democratic’ governments.
With ruling classes and
militaries under US and other influence, the comprador nature of all the Latin
American States/government does not show any weakening. The same Cuba is a
lightening example that, with US embargo, there is even more underdevelopment
than with US open subordination. In Cuba, there are even stronger predatory
bureaucracies although without the traditional comprador ruling classes.
What an achievement that
Castroist Cuba is! Nothing works, while claiming ‘socialism’ near the US marine
borders. If this is ‘socialism’, that is why the USA are well happy to preserve
it, after having pushed the 1959 Cuba into Soviet hands.
“THE CONDOR PROTOTYPE BEGAN TO OPERATE as a transnational state
terror organization in late 1973 or early 1974.” (McSherry 2005, p. 69).
It is a classic. If you
are assassinated abroad, it is work of the State/government of your formal
nationality jointly with the State/government of the State/country where you
are. That for whatever other attack and persecution. Exceptions are possible
although improbable. Bureaucracies, State terrorist ones included, have
mafia-style rules. Real world works in this way. Not in another one. “International
relations” work in this way.
They call it “modern
State”. However proprietary rules are going on. They are called ‘citizens’
while they are just subjects, as slaves, personal property of what is now
called State, with an apparently impersonal bureaucracy, a supposed rule of
law. Forms are changed. Not substance. There are not free individuals, apart
from in propaganda.
Since in Latin America,
as elsewhere, there have been only formal regime changes, State terrorism
assassins are very rarely prosecuted, sentenced and jailed. Someone in
Argentina. Occasionally in Chile. Generally, nobody worries of even only
unmasking State terrorism insane criminals. Millions of louses are sure of
their formal unaccountability.
Do you think that a Lula
could become a trade-unionist leader in Brazil without providing some decisive
cooperation to the State terrorism machine? Impossible... Do you thing that a
terrorist (turned infamous just arrested, since she denounced her comrades) as
Dilma could later become president of Brazil without extending the usual total
cover to the Brazilian State terrorism apparatuses, which are going on in their
insane and criminal activities, assassinations included?
Various elements shown
in this book show that the Condor networks,
alias the US-led terrorism in Latin
America, are yet operating and that the various military apparatuses do not
tolerate any investigation and interference with their clandestine past and
current activities. Now, with civilian governments, the military remains
unaccountable.
Condor-style operations
are nowadays generalized and super-clandestinized. They are covered by
Interpol-agreements and they are implemented by SecretPoliceServices/governments’
direct contacts eventually with the intervention of the US and/or British
Embassies/governments. Persecutions assume the form of
State/government-organized stalking. Tortures assume the form of electronic
targeting. Assassinations are realized in a plurality of usual and unusual
ways. Whatever Secret Police agency easily gets worldwide cooperation.
They call it Interpol
while it is a Condor-style frame. The
legal side of Interpol is a cover for illegal/clandestine State terrorism
operations. As in whatever State Terrorism, legal apparatuses are used as a
cover for Secret Police agencies, so with special regulations and powers,
practising State Terrorism.
Everything began well
before the 11 September 2001 attacks ordered from the Christian (evangelic)
terrorist Bush, Cheney and others against their same country. There is massive
evidence that stacks of lies have been told about the 9/11 and that only the US
government could have organized and implemented such attacks.
It is very easy. When
there is massive State/government-organized deception (and the USA are not a
marginal country), about some terrible events, for charging others with the
responsibility of it, that is because the State/government promoting deception
is surely guilty.
The post-9/11 US and
British Terrorist World War are public affairs with visible and hidden sides.
The worst one could think about what these US and British Evil Empires be
doing, one would be anyway too naive. They are actually worse and the worst (for
what they do), although also the remaining part of the world be what it be. It
is only less developed so less powerful.
McSherry, J. P., Predatory States. Operation Condor and
Covert War in Latin America, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., Oxford, UK, 2005.
