Dinges, John. The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents. New York: The New Press, 2004. 322 pages.

Operation Condor was a secret kidnapping and assassination program during the 1970s. It was organized by fascist Chile, and included the intelligence agencies of Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina. Condor assassinated a prominent activist in Washington and was also active in Europe. At home the Condor countries were kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and disappearing tens of thousands of their own people.

For Henry Kissinger it was a lovely war, and even today the extent of CIA complicity in Condor is unresolved. In 1999 Clinton ordered the declassification of documents about Chile and Argentina, the effect of which was to raise more questions than answers. A more interesting resource are the files found in a Paraguay police station in 1992. The author also got copies of correspondence between Chile's intelligence agency and their operatives in Buenos Aires, and interviewed or obtained testimony from more than 200 people. (John Dinges lived in Chile during the 1970s and is now a journalism professor at Columbia University.) There is so much evil described in this book, and so many compelling stories of victims, and heroes relentlessly pursuing justice without compensation or fanfare, that after putting this book down one must ask, "Why is quality journalism such as this published so rarely in the U.S.?"
ISBN 1-56584-764-4

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