The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press 2004), by John Dinges

Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 11:52 PM John Dinges comments on my review of his book The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press 2004), "I saw your review of my recent book and wanted to send you a note. First, I'm honored that you did the review. You are one of the scholars who first got me interested in Latin America. The Hispanic American Report that you founded at Bolivar House was an inspiration, and showed me that there is a way to do serious scholarship as well as to follow and write about current events in Latin America.

In 1971, I entered the Masters program in Latin American studies at Stanford, and used it to prepare myself for a career as a journalist in Latin America. I began writing from Latin America in 1972, and as you point out in the review I spent most of the rest of the decade in Allende's and Pinochet's Chile--the period I now call the Condor years.

The program you created at Stanford had an enormous effect on me and on my career. I'm not sure you intended it as such, but it turned out to be a tremendous training ground for a would-be foreign correspondent. (I had had only two years experience in local news reporting before going to Latin America.)

It is interesting that you wrote, "In scholarship as in theology, there are sins of commission and omission." Interesting because I studied three years of graduate level theology before going into journalism.

I also wanted to comment on your observation that my sin of omission was to fail to point out that "Operation Condor was a response to a real Soviet threat in South America." It is true that I did not find evidence of a Soviet threat to Chile and the other Southern Cone countries after the Allende government was removed. And of course it can be argued that pre-1973 Chile was a channel for Soviet influence in Latin AMerica. But POST-1973, which is the period of my book, I document in great (and at times exclusive) detail the real threat from the extreme-left revolutionary groups (MIR-Chile, ERP-Argentina, MLN-Tupamaros; and ELN-Bolivia) who were pursuing a strategy of continent wide guerrilla war. Those groups united in a four-country alliance called the Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria, which was cited at the Condor organizational meeting as the threat that called for the creation of the military Condor alliance. To be sure, the deadly purpose of Condor always included the elimination of military rivals like Prats and democrats like Letelier, Leighton, and Michelini, as well as the guerrillas, but I don't believe Chile could have talked its neighbors into such an unprecedented level of security collaboration if it had not been for the existence of the JCR and its military preparations.

I don't believe there is a single book on the 1970s until mine that reveals the true extent and purpose of the JCR. There has been a kind of willing agreement on the part of the leftist survivors not to talk about the JCR and on the part of historians not to write about the leftist victims as other than victims.

On the question of a specific threat from the Soviet Union itself, I examined hundreds of military intelligence documents from the Condor countries. There is almost nothing about intelligence reports indicating Soviet support for the guerrilla operations of the JCR. The Soviets are excoriated regularly in the intelligence analyses, but they are cast as a contextual, geopolitical threat and as an ideological enemy rather than as a military objective. Significantly, no Condor operation was directed at a Soviet target. The Cuban threat was another matter. The CIA and Condor both went after the Cuban connection to the JCR with great energy (which is another story exclusive to my book).

I think I tell the story of the leftist threat in a way that is factual and pulls no punches. I certainly don't carry any water for the left in this regard, although I avoid the demonization of the left that one encounters in much of the overtly anticommunist literature. Again, thank you for reading my book and giving it such a thoughtful review".