John Dinges, THE CONDOR YEARS. How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents

Pinochet is a very divisive figure. Some WAISers think he saved Chile, others despise him. The latter will be pleased by the very title of John Dinges, The Condor Years.How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (New York: The New Press, 2004, pp.- 322). The black dust jacket, with a photo of a defiant Pinochet and a screeching condor, the black covers and the black end pages convey the message of death, Prize winning journalist Dinges was a special correspondent for the Washington Post in Chile and Central America during the Condor years, 1973-80. i-e- the time of Operation Condor, the joint operation of South American dictatorships to eradicate leftist activists. The account is colored by Dinges' experience (he himself was interrogated in a concentration camp), but it it is not simply a lurid account of atrocities. It is heavily documented, with 50 pages of notes. If you are looking for an easy read, like the books of John Gunther, you will be forced to concentrate. Gunther was accused of inaccuracies by Latin Americans who resented his criticisms. Dinges' documentation protects him against that charge. In sum, his book us more academic; Dinges now teaches journalism ay Colombia University- In scholarship as in theology, there are sins of commission and omission. Defenders of Pinochet will accuse Dinges of the latter for failing to point out that Operation Condor was a response to a real Soviet threat in South America, However, even that does not justify the mass murders which marked Operation Condor. The American villain in this story is Henry Kissinger. A 1978 cable said "Kissinger explained his opinion that the Government of Argentina had done an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces". In 1976 as Secretary of State Kissinger addressed an OAS meeting in Santiago. His theme was the need to defend human rights, but in private he told Pinochet not to worry. For decades the story of US cooperation with Operation Condor was a carefully kept secret. The truth was revealed in a 1980 book Dinges wrote with my former student Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row. The story opens with a notorious episode which brought Chilean terrorism to Washington, DC: the car bomb which killed Chilean exile Orlando Letelier, who had served as Allende's Ambassador to Washingtton, Foreign Minister and then Defense Minister, which made him Pinochet's boss. This shocked America, and provided the Democrats with ammunition. New York Congressman Ed Koch, soon to be mayor of that city, was especially and typically loud in his attack on the Latin American dictatorships and was then himself the target of a failed assassination plot. Although the book focuses on Pinochet and Chile, Argentina receives ample attention, chapters 5, 9 and 12 being devoted to it. Especially vicious was the assassination there by Chilean agents of General Carlos Prats, who had been close to Allende. While the Chilean dictatorship received special publicity because of the complex international attempts to bring Pinochet to justice and because Chile had been respected as a democracy, the Argentine military loomed larger on the international scene. Chapter 6 is devoted to Paraguay, the fief of General Afredo Stroessner. Some space is devoted to Uruguay, which had been viewed as a model of democracy for Latin America. Under a military dictatorship, democratic leaders took refug in Argentina, where they were targets for assassination. Brazil, the most important country in Latin America, was also taken over by a military dictatorship, but, Brazil being Brazil, it was less brutal than those of Chile and Argentina. The final chapter /14) is titled "The Pursuit pf Justice and U.S. Accountability. While Dinges does not think that the US deliberately connived in the killings, Kissinger personally comes in for a final criticism (p. 252): ""You are our leader" Pinochet said to Kissinger in the same month in which he, Pinochet, gave the go-ahead to commit an assassination in Washington, D.C." The book's final sentence reads:"The history of the Condor Years is not one we are condemned to repeat", i.e. "never again", On the one hand, this book is a serious well documented account which cannot simply be dismissed by partisans of Pinochet and co. On the other hand , its account of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara is restrained, while that of Allende is very benevolent. I knew Allende, and he impressed me as being humane and compassionate but who failed to realize that politics is the art of the possible. How do Chileans view him today? As a martyr?