Date

Jan 19, 1979

Description

The very first public references to DINA and its role in Operation Condor were provided by a Top Secret/Sensitive Senate staff report for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations in mid-January 1979. The scandal of the Korean intelligence service, KCIA, operating in Washington, generated a Senate investigation into other foreign intelligence services also conducting surveillance, secret lobbying, disinformation and other operations in the United States. Since the Chilean secret police had already been identified as responsible for the car-bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, a Senate staffer named Michael Glennon obtained permission from the Carter White House to obtain CIA briefings, based on secret intelligence records regarding DINA operations in the United States and around the world. Drawing on those detailed files shared with him at the CIA’s headquarters—many of which remain classified to this day—Glennon reported that “Chile has been the center of Operation Condor” and that DINA had stationed agents in Chilean embassies not only in the other Condor countries but also in Spain for operations in Western Europe. CIA briefers informed Glennon that the agency had learned that Condor was “planning to open a station in Miami” but the CIA had alerted the State Department and voiced objections to its Condor liaisons and “the Condor Miami Station was never opened.”

The report also cited efforts by the CIA to alert French and Portuguese authorities to Condor assassination missions in their countries. It drew on a then-secret FBI report, written one week after the assassination of Letelier and Moffitt, that provided extensive intelligence on “phase three” Condor death squad operations. “Condor clearly has the potential of planning and executing drastic covert operations,” states the Senate report. “Indeed, it was barely two years ago that the FBI concluded that ‘it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the recent assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C. may have been carried out as a third phase of Operation Condor.’”

The Senate report was never officially published as a committee print. An uncensored draft was obtained by the famous syndicated investigative columnist Jack Anderson, who published an eight-part series based on its contents. His August 2, 1979, Washington Post column titled “Condor: South American Assassins,” marked the first time Operation Condor was significantly described in the media.

Source

Obama Administration Argentina Declassification Project

Document published in following posting(s):

The Pinochet Regime Declassified
DINA: “A Gestapo-Type Police Force” in Chile

Jun 18, 2024

U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on International Operations, Foreign Relations Committee, Report, “Staff Report on Activities of Certain Intelligence Agencies in the United States,” Top Secret/Sensitive, January 18, 1979 [Section on DINA and Operation Condor]