Podcasts about castro cuban

You really think this guy gets a job 40 days before the assassination, moving to Dallas from New Orleans and just happens to work in a high rise building right at the end of the motorcade rout that had an empty (meaning no people) room on the top floor?You'd have to say one of 3 things. Either he was part of a plan, was extremely well handled, or was a super rare coincidence.Think about it, a covert asset of ONI and CIA who could speak Russian and was certainly not lacking intelligence, moves to a new city to get a minimum wage job moving books. And then as testified by Roselli, he was shot so as to silence him.Remember what Hoover wrote Nov 24th 1963Why say the Real Assassin?”It is nteresting because Nick Katzenbach who Hoover is referring to, himself wrote the next day in a memo to Bill Moyer “THE PUBLIC MUST BE SATISFIED THAT OSWALD WAS THE ASSASSIN; THAT HE HAD NO CONFEDERATES WHO ARE STILL AT LARGE; AND THAT EVIDENCE WAS SUCH THAT HE WOULD HAVE BEEN CONVICTED AT TRIAL.””Jack Ruby, also a Jew, even told the warren commission he had to do it “because of his Jewish faith”and what was he talking about when he told Earl Warren“Unfortunately, Chief Earl Warren, had you been around 5 or 6 months ago, and I know your hands were tied, you couldn't do it, and immediately the President would have gotten a hold of my true story, or whatever would have been said about me, a certain organization wouldn't have so completely formed now, so powerfully, to use me because I am of the Jewish extraction, Jewish faith, to commit the most dastardly crime that has ever been committed. Can you understand now in visualizing what happened, what powers, what momentum has been carried on to create this feeling of mass feeling against my people, against certain people that were against them prior to their power?” That goes over your head doesn't it.…I want to say this to you. The Jewish people are being exterminated at this moment. Consequently, a whole new form of government is going to take over our country, and I know I won't live to see you another time. Do I sound sort of screwy–in telling you these things?… All I know is maybe something can be saved. Because right now, I want to tell you this, I am used as a scapegoat, and there is no greater weapon that you can use to create some falsehood about some of the Jewish faith, especially at the terrible heinous crime such as the killing of President Kennedy….Now maybe something can be saved. It may not be too late, whatever happens, if our President, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth from me. But if I am eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing. Right now, when I leave your presence now, I am the only one that can bring out the truth to our President, who believes in righteousness and justice.”Note that later while talking to the press that Jack Ruby says the Truth may never come above board and that it goes all the way to the top. If LBJ isn't in the loop and at the top as it were, then who is he talking about?“But he has been told, I am certain, that I was part of a plot to assassinate the President…. I am sorry, Chief Justice Warren, I thought I would be very effective in telling you what I have said here. But in all fairness to everyone, maybe all I want to do is beg that if they found out I was telling the truth, maybe they can succeed in what their motives are, but maybe my people won't be tortured and mutilated. ….No; the only way you can do it is if he knows the truth, that I am telling the truth, and why I was down in that basement Sunday morning, and maybe some sense of decency will come out and they can still fulfill their plan, as I stated before, without my people going through torture and mutilation. …But I won't be around, Chief Justice. I won't be around to verify these things you are going to tell the President. … I have been used for a purpose, and there will be a certain tragic occurrence happening if you don't take my testimony and somehow vindicate me so my people don't suffer because of what I have done. …All I want is a lie detector test, and you refuse to give it to me. Because as it stands now—and the truth serum, and any other–Pentothal–how do you pronounce it, whatever it is. And they will not give it to me, because I want to tell the truth. And then I want to leave this world. But I don't want my people to be blamed for something that is untrue, that they claim has happened. “It seems that Jack Ruby is paranoid that the president has been told already that he was party of a plot to kill the president that that “his people” meaning Jewish people or the Israeli state was behind it. Israel had several motives to want both JFK and RFK dead. It was in their eye a matter of survival.1 The Kennedys want Israel inspected for nuclear weapons. RFK also had information and testing done around Dimona showing the Uranium there had come from the US's Nautilus project, since it was the only uranium in the world enriched to that high a % at that point in time. It was all over the area.2 The Kennedys supported Palestinians right of Return.3 They wanted Israel's foreign lobbies to register as foreign agents4 JFK along with France's Charles de Gaulle who also survived an assassination attempt, supported Algeria independence.The John Birch Society, who Ruby tries to paint a picture of as all powerful, didn't kill the President. As much as big oil was tied to LBJ, and Texas oil man David Harold Byrd owning the building where Lee Harvey Oswald worked, they didn't control Jack Ruby nor did they gain anything worth the risk when RFK was assassinated in California. Guys like David Ferrie and Jacob Rubenstein were working for the Mafia. And the Mafia lost a billion dollars in revenue when Castro shut down the casinos. They had every reason to work with the CIA when they came knocking and they did, and the CIA had every reason to seek plausible deniability that the mafia provided for a variety of illegal activities, from narcotic and gun running to assassination. The CIA's Victor Marchetti testified that Ferrie worked for the CIA.Jack Ruby was a central mafia figure and knew almost every cop in Dallas. He also went the Cuba and even rode with FBN agents to the airport. So was Oswald's childhood friend and fellow closet f****t Efraim Sullivan, who became a chief of police in Louisiana and got 4 cops killed as well as 5 civilians all in one shooting. According to his son he work for the Mossad. These southern mafia heads guys were bragging about JFK AND Robert getting killed before both happened. The Kennedys demanded the ZAC/ZOA/AIPAC register as a foreign agent. RFK issued them a moratorium with 72 hrs to comply in November of 63. The PM resigned over it to stall for time and Kennedy was killed the same month.The mafia was the CIA's plausible deniability and ground distribution network for narcotics which is how they were covertly financing anti communist resistance in Cuba, China, and USSR. Vietnam's opium was a natural market move as Europe was recovered from WWII. RFK was prosecuting the same mob leaders who the CIA was secretly working with to sell drugs and even attempt to assassinate Castro. Think back to the CIA's earliest operations in the Middle East, operation Ajax and the Suez Crisis, which was itself the product of a botched 1956 Israel false flag operation, Operation Suzanna, now commonly called the Lavon Affair. As a Senator, Johnson blocked the Eisenhower administration's attempts to apply sanctions against Israel following the 1956 Sinai Campaign. Who did these CIA operation in Iran and Egypt really benefit? Not the United States. But of course both Dulles brothers were hardcore Zionists. Bobby was killed on the first anniversary of the six day war and set up a Palestinian. Now who would want to do that?The plan was to replace him with Katzenbach, which LBJ did. And none of it could move until JFK was out of the way. The mob lost a billion dollars a year in gambling revenue when Castro shut down casinos. Hoffa using teamster pension funds to create Las Vegas as the new Cuba was in reaction to this. These are the guys who end up in a series of murders for or before finishing testimony to the House Committee on assassination. Giancana had been Ruby's boss. Trafficante had him killed.The Jewish finger prints are all over both assassinations. Johnson's domestic and foreign policies on Cuba on Russia on Vietnam didn't really change. Kennedy was not getting out of Vietnam. This is wishful thinking on par with the fools who thought Obama was going to be an antiwar president. JFK had already procured 6 billion dollars, most of it left over from Eisenhower who had had enough of the MIC, to spent on the F111 fighter jet. Oh it is interesting that the Crown family benefited when Johnson lobbied to have the contract go to General Dynamics. They also married into the family who owned the hotel where Bobby was shot and allowed Jewish mobsters to use it for gambling operations. It was Henry Crown's personal lawyer Albert E Jenner, who was appointed by Johnson and to be part of the Warren Commission whitewash, was hired to look into the backgrounds of the two most important individuals, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Of course he found no intelligence ties or mob ties. Jenner was also a director for general Dynamics. Reading the biographies given for these men by the WC and comparing them to the mountains of information we have now is enough to make even the most crooked lawyer blush. Jack Ruby's first jail visitor was the mob boss of Dallas.The only dramatic changes under LBJ were on his Middle East policy. He had Americans killed! About the USS Liberty which the Israelis attacked in the Six Day War, LBJ told Admiral Lawrence Geis “I dont care if that ship sinks to the bottom of the ocean.” LBJ stacked his admin with Zionists and the US has never recovered. Israel kept it nukes, Palestinians never got right of return, (it was never even brought up again) the lobbies never registered as foreign agents, and America as subsidized the racist apartheid state with billions every year from then to now. Of Course Johnson didn't want the ZOA (Zionist Organization of America) to be registered as a foreign lobby. His aunt, Jessie Johnson was on it! Few people know that according to Jewish law, LBJ was himself Jewish. His mother was Rebekah Baines, thus Johnson's middle name. She was Jewish. Her mother was Ruth Ament Huffman, and her mother was Mary Elizabeth Perrin all of whom were Jewish. Perrin's husband was John S. Huffman whose mother was Suzanne Ament, thus Ruth's Middle name. Ament was a German Jew. The Huffman's settled in Fredrick Maryland and from there went to Kentucky and finally Texas. The Jewish times brags ” The line of Jewish mothers can be traced back three generations in Lyndon Johnson's family tree. There is little doubt that he was Jewish.” Regardless there is no doubt that LBJ was a Zionist and put Israel's needs first. Writing that list would take a long time.On November 21, 1963, a government informant named Thomas Mosley was negotiating the sale of machine guns to a Cuban exile named Echevarria. In the course of the transaction, Echevarria said that “we now have plenty of money – our new backers are Jews” and would close the arms deal “as soon as we [or they] take care of Kennedy.” The next day, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.You wont see that in Oliver Stone's film on JFK of course the Executive producer of that film was Arnon Milchan, Israel's largest arms dealer. It is unfortunate but many laymen JFK researcher use that film as their initiation.Echevarria's words are often associated with the Mocone -Rowley memo. CD 498 [Rowley memorandum| which does reference it. It goes on to explain how the conversation was interrupted by other bus drivers. The follow up interview with the informant is of course classified.Furthermore this adds. “I further told Mr Johnson that the informant had worked with us in a recent counterfeiting Case and had proved to be reliable.”However the primary source is a Secret Service ReportSpecial Agent Joseph E Noonan.What is the Jewish (mafia/state) doing mixed up with anti-Castro Cuban exiles who were illegally buying arms? And why isn't this pre Kennedy assassination foreknowledge more well known? Oh but you see it is, only the Jews part is usually removed. I don't think researchers should omit this just to be Politically Correct. The international angle and Johnson's deep ties with Israel and Israel's motives to kill not only JFK but RFK as well, is seldom explored. Stone's movie doesn't even mention middle eastern policy or Israel and instead focuses on the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam. I think enough eyeballs have been over every inch of those theories for over 5 decades. I have a working theory that cleanly ties both assassinations together. But I am censored on everything.How Israel stole the bomb and killed JFKI need you to subscribe, it is just $6 a month less if you sign up for a year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ryandawson.org/subscribe

Jamaica, Cuban Revolution, Castro, Anti-Castro Cubans, Operation 40, Brigade 2506, Alpha 66, anti-Castro Cuban terror, the role of anti-Castro Cubans in the drug trade, Meyer Lansky, the Syndicate, offshoring, Felix Rodriquez, Guyana, US intrigues in Guyana, Jonestown, the Dominican Republic, US-sponsored coups in Guyana & the Dominican Republic during the 1960s, Angola, South Africa, Cubans in Angola, how the Angolan War played out in the Caribbean, Jamaica's history of smuggling, pirates, Sir William Stephenson, the World Commerce Corporation (WCC), the WCC presence in Jamaica after WWII, Ian Fleming, British elites in Jamaica, James Bond, Jamaican politics, Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), People's National Party (PNP), socialism in Jamaica, Edward Seaga, Michael Manley, organized crime in Jamaica, criminal links to the JLP and PNP, the Shower Posse, the Shower Posse's possible CIA links, disinformation, Philip Agee, Counterpunch, Thomas RId, the Shower Posse's CIA links, Jamaica's 1976 election, CIA efforts to destabilize Jamaica in the run up to the election, the aftermath of the election, cocaine in Jamaica during the 1980s, the crack epidemic, Bob Marley, the 1976 attempt to assassinate Bob Marley, criminal links to Jamaica's recording industry, roots vs dance hallMusic by: Keith Allen Dennishttps://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com/ Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 180 covers the The Houma bunker raid, of the Schlumberger  Wells Company munitions and arms cache, which took place in the late summer of 1961. Later it was found that  participants  in the raid included  some individuals who were also implicated in the assassination plot related to  President Kennedy.The participants in the raid included David Ferrie, Sergio Aracha Smith, Rancier Blaise Ehlinger, Carlos Quiroga, Layton Martins, Luis Rabel Nunez, Gordon Novel, Novel's wife Marlene Mancuso and Andrew Blackmon, an ex-Marine.The munitions  stored at the compound were thought to have been placed there by the CIA under a contract with Schlumberger and were thought to have originally been designated for use in  a diversionary portion of  the Bay of Pigs, or to be used in the OAS revolt of the French Generals against Charles  DeGaul.  It turns out that they were not used in  either event,  and the CIA made a decision to remove them from the bunker after Schlumberger expressed their unhappiness over the Bay of Pigs outcome. As a result the CIA directed a  group of covert operatives which included David Ferrie to remove the arms cache over a period of several months, in several different trips to Houma. They munitions were distribute to several locations including David Ferrie's apartment,  the New Orleans offices of Guy Bannister at 544 Camp Street, and to the Lake Pontchartrain anti-Castro Cuban training camp owned by William McClaney, which was raided by the FBI in July, 1963.Even as early as 1964, rumors and serious concerns over  the lone gunman theory and the evidence that might contravene it,  were becoming a major concern for the government and the commission. Conspiracy theories were contrary to the government's stated narrative from the very beginning. This  real-life story is more fascinating than fiction. No matter whether you are a serious researcher or a casual student, you will enjoy the fact filled narrative and story as  we relive one of the most shocking moments in American History. An event that changed the nation and changed the world forever.

Support the show and receive bonus episodes by becoming a Patreon producer over at: www.themidnighttrainpodcast.com  Archives of terror Archivos del Terror were found on december 22, 1992 by a lawyer and human rights activist, strange how those two titles are in the same sentence, Dr. Martín Almada, and Judge José Agustín Fernández. Found in a police station in the suburbs of Paraguay known as Asunción.   Fernandez was looking for files on a former prisoner. Instead, stumbled across an archive describing the fates of thousands of Latin Americans who had been secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay with the help of our friendly neighborhood CIA. Known as Operation Condor.   “Operation Condor was a U.S. backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents.”   Let's go back a ways toward the beginning. One day, a young guy, wanted to fuck up the world and created the CIA. JK… but not really.   So we go back to 1968 where General Robert W. Porter said that "in order to facilitate the coordinated employment of internal security forces within and among Latin American countries, we are ... endeavoring to foster inter-service and regional cooperation by assisting in the organization of integrated command and control centers; the establishment of common operating procedures; and the conduct of joint and combined training exercises."   According to former secret CIA documents from 1976, plans were developed among international security officials at the US Army School of the Americas and the Conference of American Armies in the 1960s and early 1970s to deal with perceived threats in South America from political dissidents, according to American historian J. Patrice McSherry. "In early 1974, security officials from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia convened in Buenos Aires to prepare synchronized attacks against subversive targets," according to a declassified CIA memo dated June 23, 1976.   Following a series of military-led coups d'états, particularly in the 1970s, the program was established: General Alfredo Stroessner took control of Paraguay in 1954 General Francisco Morales-Bermúdez takes control of Peru after a successful coup in 1975 The Brazilian military overthrew the president João Goulart in 1964 General Hugo Banzer took power in Bolivia in 1971 through a series of coups A military dictatorship seized power in Uruguay on 27 June 1973 Chilean armed forces commanded by General Augusto Pinochet bombed the presidential palace in Chile on 11 September 1973, overthrowing democratically elected president Salvador Allende A military dictatorship headed by General Jorge Rafael Videla seized power in Argentina on 24 March 1976   According to American journalist A. J. Langguth, the CIA organized the first meetings between Argentinian and Uruguayan security officials regarding the surveillance (and subsequent disappearance or assassination) of political refugees in these countries, as well as its role as an intermediary in the meetings between Argentinian, Uruguayan, and Brazilian death squads.   According to the National Security Archive's documentary evidence from US, Paraguayan, Argentine, and Chilean files, "Founded by the Pinochet regime in November 1975, Operation Condor was the codename for a formal Southern Cone collaboration that included transnational secret intelligence activities, kidnapping, torture, disappearance, and assassination." Several persons were slain as part of this codename mission. "Notable Condor victims include two former Uruguayan legislators and a former Bolivian president, Juan José Torres, murdered in Buenos Aires, a former Chilean Minister of the Interior, Bernardo Leighton, and former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 26-year-old American colleague, Ronni Moffitt, assassinated by a car bomb in downtown Washington D.C.," according to the report.   Prior to the formation of Operation Condor, there had been cooperation among various security services with the goal of "eliminating Marxist subversion." On September 3, 1973, at the Conference of American Armies in Caracas, Brazilian General Breno Borges Fortes, the chief of the Brazilian army, urged that various services "expand the interchange of information" in order to "fight against subversion."   Representatives from Chile, Uruguay, and Bolivia's police forces met with Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine Federal Police and co-founder of the Triple A killing squad, in March 1974 to discuss collaboration standards. Their purpose was to eliminate the "subversive" threat posed by Argentina's tens of thousands of political exiles. Bolivian immigrants' bodies were discovered at rubbish dumps in Buenos Aires in August 1974. Based on recently revealed CIA records dated June 1976, McSherry corroborated the kidnapping and torture of Chilean and Uruguayan exiles living in Buenos Aires during this time.   On General Augusto Pinochet's 60th birthday, November 25, 1975, in Santiago de Chile, heads of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met with Manuel Contreras, commander of the Chilean secret police, to officially establish the Plan Condor. General Rivero, an intelligence officer in the Argentine Armed Forces and a former student of the French, devised the concept of Operation Condor, according to French writer Marie-Monique Robin, author of Escadrons de la death, l'école française (2004, Death Squads, The French School).   Officially, the targets were armed groups (such as the MIR, the Montoneros or the ERP, the Tupamaros, etc.) based on the governments' perceptions of threats, but the governments expanded their attacks to include all types of political opponents, including their families and others, as reported by the Valech Commission, which is known as The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report. The Argentine "Dirty War," for example, kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated many trade unionists, relatives of activists, social activists such as the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, nuns, university professors, and others, according to most estimates.   The Chilean DINA and its Argentine counterpart, SIDE, were the operation's front-line troops from 1976 forward. The infamous "death flights," which were postulated in Argentina by Luis Mara Menda and deployed by French forces during the Algerian War (1954–62), were widely used. Government forces flew or helicoptered victims out to sea, where they were dumped to die in premeditated disappearances. According to reports, the OPR-33 facility in Argentina was destroyed as a result of the military bombardment. Members of Plan Condor met in Santiago, Chile, in May 1976, to discuss "long-range collaboration... [that] went well beyond intelligence exchange" and to assign code names to the participating countries. The CIA acquired information in July that Plan Condor participants planned to strike "against leaders of indigenous terrorist groups residing overseas."   Several corpses washed up on beaches south of Buenos Aires in late 1977 as a result of extraordinary storms, providing evidence of some of the government's victims. Hundreds of newborns and children were removed from women in prison who had been kidnapped and later disappeared; the children were then given to families and associates of the dictatorship in clandestine adoptions. According to the CIA, Operation Condor countries reacted positively to the concept of cooperating and built their own communications network as well as joint training programs in areas like psychological warfare.    The military governments in South America were coming together to join forces for security concerns, according to a memo prepared by Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America Harry W. Shlaudeman to Kissinger on August 3, 1976. They were anxious about the growth of Marxism and the consequences it would have on their dominance. This new force worked in secret in the countries of other members. Their mission: to track out and murder "Revolutionary Coordinating Committee" terrorists in their own nations and throughout Europe.Shlaudeman voiced fear that the members of Operation Condor's "siege mindset" could lead to a wider divide between military and civilian institutions in the region. He was also concerned that this would further isolate these countries from developed Western countries. He argued that some of these anxieties were justified, but that by reacting too harshly, these countries risked inciting a violent counter-reaction comparable to the PLO's in Israel.   Chile and Argentina were both active in using communications medium for the purpose of transmitting propaganda, according to papers from the United States dated April 17, 1977. The propaganda's goal was to accomplish two things. The first goal was to defuse/counter international media criticism of the governments involved, and the second goal was to instill national pride in the local population. "Chile after Allende," a propaganda piece developed by Chile, was sent to the states functioning under Condor. The paper, however, solely mentions Uruguay and Argentina as the only two countries that have signed the deal. The government of Paraguay was solely identified as using the local press, "Patria," as its primary source of propaganda. Due to the reorganisation of both Argentina's and Paraguay's intelligence organizations, a meeting scheduled for March 1977 to discuss "psychological warfare measures against terrorists and leftist extremists" was canceled.   One "component of the campaign including Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina envisages unlawful operations beyond Latin America against expatriate terrorists, primarily in Europe," according to a 2016 declassified CIA study titled "Counterterrorism in the Southern Cone." "All military-controlled regimes in the Southern Cone consider themselves targets of international Marxism," the memo stated. Condor's fundamental characteristic was highlighted in the document, which came to fruition in early 1974 when "security officials from all of the member countries, except Brazil, agreed to establish liaison channels and to facilitate the movement of security officers on government business from one country to the other," as part of a long-tested "regional approach" to pacifying "subversion." Condor's "initial aims" included the "exchange of information on the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (RCJ), an organization...of terrorist groups from Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay" with "representatives" in Europe "believed to have been involved in the assassinations in Paris of the Bolivian ambassador to France last May and a Uruguayan military attache in 1974." Condor's primary purpose, according to the CIA assessment, was to eliminate "top-level terrorist leaders" as well as non-terrorist targets such as "Uruguayan opposition figure Wilson Ferreira, if he should travel to Europe, and some leaders of Amnesty International." Condor was also suspected by the CIA of being "involved in nonviolent actions, including as psychological warfare and a propaganda campaign" that used the media's power to "publicize terrorist crimes and atrocities." Condor also urged citizens in its member countries to "report anything out of the norm in their surroundings" in an appeal to "national pride and national conscience." Another meeting took place in 1980, and Montensero was apprehended. The RSO allegedly promised not to kill them if they agreed to collaborate and provide information on upcoming meetings in Rio.   So, after all of this mumbo jumbo, let's recap.    50,000 people were killed, 30,000 disappeared, and 400,000 were imprisoned, according to the "terror archives."  A letter signed by Manuel Contreras, the chief of Chile's National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) at the time, inviting Paraguayan intelligence personnel to Santiago for a clandestine "First Working Meeting on National Intelligence" on November 25, 1975, was also uncovered. The presence of intelligence chiefs from Argentina, Bolivia, and Uruguay at the meetings was also confirmed by this letter, indicating that those countries were also involved in the formulation of Operation Condor. Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela are among the countries named in the archives as having collaborated to varying degrees by giving intelligence information that had been sought by the security agencies of the Southern Cone countries. Parts of the archives, which are presently housed in Asunción's Palace of Justice, have been used to prosecute former military officers in some of these countries. Those records were used extensively in Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón's prosecution against Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. Baltasar Garzón interviewed Almada twice after he was a Condor victim.   "[The records] represent a mound of shame and lies that Stroessner [Paraguay's ruler until 1989] used to blackmail the Paraguayan people for 40 years," Almada said. He wants the "terror archives" to be listed as an international cultural site by UNESCO, as this would make it much easier to get funds to maintain and protect the records.   In May 2000, a UNESCO mission visited Asunción in response to a request from the Paraguayan government for assistance in registering these files on the Memory of the World Register, which is part of a program aimed at preserving and promoting humanity's documentary heritage by ensuring that records are preserved and accessible.   Now that we are all caught up, let's talk about a few noteworthy events. First we go to Argentina.   Argentina was ruled by military juntas from 1976 until 1983 under Operation Condor, which was a civic-military dictatorship. In countless incidents of desaparecidos, the Argentine SIDE collaborated with the Chilean DINA. In Buenos Aires, they assassinated Chilean General Carlos Prats, former Uruguayan MPs Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, and former Bolivian President Juan José Torres. With the support of Italian Gladio operator Stefano Delle Chiaie and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, the SIDE aided Bolivian commander Luis Garca Meza Tejada's Cocaine Coup (see also Operation Charly). Since the release of secret records, it has been revealed that at ESMA, there were operational units made up of Italians who were utilized to suppress organizations of Italian Montoneros. Gaetano Saya, the Officer of the Italian stay behind next - Operation Gladio, led this outfit known as "Shadow Group." The Madres de la Square de Mayo, a group of mothers whose children had vanished, began protesting every Thursday in front of the Casa Rosada on the plaza in April 1977. They wanted to know where their children were and what happened to them. The abduction of two French nuns and other founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in December 1977 drew worldwide notice. Their corpses were later recognized among the deceased washed up on beaches south of Buenos Aires in December 1977, victims of death planes.   In 1983, when Argentina's democracy was restored, the government established the National Commission for Forced Disappearances (CONADEP), which was chaired by writer Ernesto Sabato. It gathered testimony from hundreds of witnesses about regime victims and known atrocities, as well as documenting hundreds of secret jails and detention sites and identifying torture and execution squad leaders. The Juicio a las Juntas (Juntas Trial) two years later was mostly successful in proving the crimes of the top commanders of the numerous juntas that had composed the self-styled National Reorganization Process. Most of the top officers on trial, including Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Eduardo Massera, Roberto Eduardo Viola, Armando Lambruschini, Ral Agosti, Rubén Graffigna, Leopoldo Galtieri, Jorge Anaya, and Basilio Lami Dozo, were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.   Following these trials, Ral Alfonsn's administration implemented two amnesty laws, the 1986 Ley de Punto Final (law of closure) and the 1987 Ley de Obediencia Debida (law of due obedience), which ended prosecution of crimes committed during the Dirty War. In an attempt at healing and reconciliation, President Carlos Menem pardoned the junta's leaders who were serving prison sentences in 1989–1990.   Due to attacks on American citizens in Argentina and revelations about CIA funding of the Argentine military in the late 1990s, and despite an explicit 1990 Congressional prohibition, US President Bill Clinton ordered the declassification of thousands of State Department documents relating to US-Argentine relations dating back to 1954. These documents exposed American involvement in the Dirty War and Operation Condor.   Following years of protests by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and other human rights organizations, the Argentine Congress overturned the amnesty legislation in 2003, with the full support of President Nestor Kirchner and the ruling majority in both chambers. In June 2005, the Argentine Supreme Court deemed them unlawful after a separate assessment. The government was able to resume prosecution of crimes committed during the Dirty War as a result of the court's decision.    Enrique Arancibia Clavel, a DINA civil agent who was charged with crimes against humanity in Argentina in 2004, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the death of General Prats. Stefano Delle Chiaie, a suspected Italian terrorist, is also said to have been involved in the murder. In Rome in December 1995, he and fellow extreme Vincenzo Vinciguerra testified before federal judge Mara Servini de Cubra that DINA operatives Clavel and Michael Townley were intimately involved in the assassination. Judge Servini de Cubra demanded that Mariana Callejas (Michael Townley's wife) and Cristoph Willikie, a retired Chilean army colonel, be extradited in 2003 because they were also accused of being complicit in the murder. Nibaldo Segura, a Chilean appeals court judge, declined extradition in July 2005, claiming that they had already been prosecuted in Chile.   Twenty-five former high-ranking military commanders from Argentina and Uruguay were charged on March 5, 2013, in Buenos Aires with conspiring to "kidnap, disappear, torture, and kill" 171 political opponents throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Former Argentine "presidents" Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, both from the El Proceso era, are among the defendants. Prosecutors are relying on declassified US records collected by the National Security Archive, a non-governmental entity established at George Washington University in Washington, DC, in the 1990s and later.   On May 27, 2016, fifteen former military personnel were found guilty. Reynaldo Bignone was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Fourteen of the remaining 16 defendants were sentenced to eight to twenty-five years in prison. Two of the defendants were found not guilty.  A lawyer for the victims' relatives, Luz Palmás Zalda, claims that "This decision is significant since it is the first time Operation Condor's existence has been proven in court. It's also the first time former Condor members have been imprisoned for their roles in the criminal organization."    Anyone wanna go to Brazil?   In the year 2000, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso ordered the publication of some military documents related to Operation Condor. There are documents proving that in that year, attorney general Giancarlo Capaldo, an Italian magistrate, investigated the "disappearances" of Italian citizens in Latin America, which were most likely caused by the actions of Argentine, Paraguayan, Chilean, and Brazilian military personnel who tortured and murdered Italian citizens during Latin American military dictatorships. There was a list containing the names of eleven Brazilians accused of murder, kidnapping, and torture, as well as several high-ranking military personnel from other countries involved in the operation.   "(...) I can neither affirm nor deny because Argentine, Brazilian, Paraguayan, and Chilean soldiers [military men] will be subject to criminal trial until December," the Magistrate said on October 26, 2000.   According to the Italian government's official statement, it was unclear whether the government would prosecute the accused military officers or not. As of November 2021, no one in Brazil had been convicted of human rights violations for actions committed during the 21-year military dictatorship because the Amnesty Law had protected both government officials and leftist guerrillas.   In November 1978, the Condor Operation expanded its covert persecution from Uruguay to Brazil, in an incident dubbed "o Sequestro dos Uruguaios," or "the Kidnapping of the Uruguayans." Senior officials of the Uruguayan army crossed the border into Porto Alegre, the capital of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, with the permission of the Brazilian military administration. They kidnapped Universindo Rodriguez and Lilian Celiberti, a political activist couple from Uruguay, as well as her two children, Camilo and Francesca, who are five and three years old.   The unlawful operation failed because an anonymous phone call notified two Brazilian journalists, Veja magazine reporter Luiz Cláudio Cunha and photographer Joo Baptista Scalco, that the Uruguayan couple had been "disappeared." The two journalists traveled to the specified address, a Porto Alegre apartment, to double-check the facts. The armed men who had arrested Celiberti mistook the journalists for other political opposition members when they came, and they were arrested as well. Universindo Rodriguez and the children had already been brought to Uruguay under the table.   The journalists' presence had exposed the secret operation when their identities were revealed. It was put on hold. As news of the political kidnapping of Uruguayan nationals in Brazil made headlines in the Brazilian press, it is thought that the operation's disclosure avoided the death of the couple and their two young children. It became a worldwide embarrassment. Both Brazil's and Uruguay's military governments were humiliated. Officials arranged for the Celibertis' children to be transported to their maternal grandparents in Montevideo a few days later. After being imprisoned and tortured in Brazil, Rodriguez and Celiberti were transferred to Uruguayan military cells and held there for the next five years. The couple were released after Uruguay's democracy was restored in 1984. They confirmed every element of their kidnapping that had previously been reported.   In 1980, two DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order, an official police unit in charge of political repression during the military administration) inspectors were found guilty of arresting the journalists in Lilian's apartment in Porto Alegre by Brazilian courts. Joo Augusto da Rosa and Orandir Portassi Lucas were their names. They had been identified as participants in the kidnapping by the media and Uruguayans. This occurrence confirmed the Brazilian government's active involvement in the Condor Operation. Governor Pedro Simon arranged for the state of Rio Grande do Sul to legally recognize the Uruguayans' kidnapping and compensate them financially in 1991. A year later, President Luis Alberto Lacalle's democratic government in Uruguay was encouraged to do the same.   The Uruguayan couple identified Pedro Seelig, the head of the DOPS at the time of the kidnapping, as the guy in charge of the operation in Porto Alegre. Universindo and Llian remained in prison in Uruguay and were unable to testify when Seelig was on trial in Brazil. Due to a lack of proof, the Brazilian cop was acquitted. Later testimony from Lilian and Universindo revealed that four officers from Uruguay's secret Counter-Information Division – two majors and two captains – took part in the operation with the permission of Brazilian authorities. In the DOPS headquarters in Porto Alegre, Captain Glauco Yanonne was personally responsible for torturing Universindo Rodriquez. Universindo and Lilian were able to identify the Uruguayan military men who had arrested and tortured them, but none of them were prosecuted in Montevideo. Uruguayan individuals who committed acts of political repression and human rights violations under the dictatorship were granted pardon under the Law of Immunity, which was approved in 1986. Cunha and Scalco were given the 1979 Esso Prize, considered the most significant prize in Brazilian journalism, for their investigative journalism on the case.  Hugo Cores, a former political prisoner from Uruguay, was the one who had warned Cunha. He told the Brazilian press in 1993: All the Uruguayans kidnapped abroad, around 180 people, are missing to this day. The only ones who managed to survive are Lilian, her children, and Universindo.   Joo "Jango" Goulart was the first Brazilian president to die in exile after being deposed. On December 6, 1976, he died in his sleep in Mercedes, Argentina, of a suspected heart attack. The true cause of his death was never determined because an autopsy was never performed. On April 26, 2000, Leonel Brizola, Jango's brother-in-law and former governor of Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul, claimed that ex-presidents Joo Goulart and Juscelino Kubitschek (who died in a vehicle accident) were assassinated as part of Operation Condor. He demanded that an investigation into their deaths be launched. On January 27, 2008, the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo published a report featuring a declaration from Mario Neira Barreiro, a former member of Uruguay's dictatorship's intelligence service. Barreiro confirmed Brizola's claims that Goulart had been poisoned. Sérgio Paranhos Fleury, the head of the Departamento de Ordem Poltica e Social (Department of Political and Social Order), gave the order to assassinate Goulart, according to Barreiro, and president Ernesto Geisel gave the permission to execute him. A special panel of the Rio Grande do Sul Legislative Assembly concluded in July 2008 that "the evidence that Jango was wilfully slain, with knowledge of the Geisel regime, is strong."   The magazine CartaCapital published previously unreleased National Information Service records generated by an undercover agent who was present at Jango's Uruguayan homes in March 2009. This new information backs up the idea that the former president was poisoned. The Goulart family has yet to figure out who the "B Agent," as he's referred to in the documents, might be. The agent was a close friend of Jango's, and he detailed a disagreement between the former president and his son during the former president's 56th birthday party, which was sparked by a brawl between two employees. As a result of the story, the Chamber of Deputies' Human Rights Commission agreed to look into Jango's death.   Later, Maria Teresa Fontela Goulart, Jango's widow, was interviewed by CartaCapital, who revealed records from the Uruguayan government confirming her accusations that her family had been tracked. Jango's travel, business, and political activities were all being watched by the Uruguayan government. These data date from 1965, a year after Brazil's coup, and they indicate that he may have been targeted. The President Joo Goulart Institute and the Movement for Justice and Human Rights have requested a document from the Uruguayan Interior Ministry stating that "serious and credible Brazilian sources'' discussed an "alleged plan against the former Brazilian president."   If you thought it wasn't enough, let's talk about Chile. No not the warm stew lie concoction you make to scorn your buddy's stomach, but the country.   Additional information about Condor was released when Augusto Pinochet was detained in London in 1998 in response to Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón's request for his extradition to Spain. According to one of the lawyers requesting his extradition, Carlos Altamirano, the leader of the Chilean Socialist Party, was the target of an assassination attempt. He said that after Franco's funeral in Madrid in 1975, Pinochet contacted Italian neofascist terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie and arranged for Altamirano's murder. The strategy didn't work out. Since the bodies of victims kidnapped and presumably murdered could not be found, Chilean judge Juan Guzmán Tapia established a precedent concerning the crime of "permanent kidnapping": he determined that the kidnapping was thought to be ongoing, rather than having occurred so long ago that the perpetrators were protected by an amnesty decreed in 1978 or the Chilean statute of limitations. The Chilean government admitted in November 2015 that Pablo Neruda may have been murdered by members of Pinochet's administration.   Assassinations   On September 30, 1974, a car bomb killed General Carlos Prats and his wife, Sofa Cuthbert, in Buenos Aires, where they were living in exile. The Chilean DINA has been charged with the crime. In January 2005, Chilean Judge Alejandro Sols ended Pinochet's case when the Chilean Supreme Court denied his request to strip Pinochet's immunity from prosecution (as chief of state). In Chile, the assassination of DINA commanders Manuel Contreras, ex-chief of operations and retired general Ral Itturiaga Neuman, his brother Roger Itturiaga, and ex-brigadiers Pedro Espinoza Bravo and José Zara was accused. In Argentina, DINA agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel was found guilty of the murder.   After moving in exile in Italy, Bernardo Leighton and his wife were severely injured in a botched assassination attempt on October 6, 1975. Bernardo Leighton was critically injured in the gun attack, and his wife, Anita Fresno, was permanently crippled. Stefano Delle Chiaie met with Michael Townley and Virgilio Paz Romero in Madrid in 1975 to plan the murder of Bernardo Leighton with the help of Franco's secret police, according to declassified documents in the National Security Archive and Italian attorney general Giovanni Salvi, who led the prosecution of former DINA head Manuel Contreras. Glyn T. Davies, the secretary of the National Security Council (NSC), said in 1999 that declassified records indicated Pinochet's government's responsibility for the failed assassination attempt on Bernardo Leighton, Orlando Letelier, and General Carlos Prats on October 6, 1975.   In a December 2004 OpEd piece in the Los Angeles Times, Francisco Letelier, Orlando Letelier's son, claimed that his father's killing was part of Operation Condor, which he described as "an intelligence-sharing network employed by six South American tyrants of the time to eliminate dissidents."   Letelier's death, according to Michael Townley, was caused by Pinochet. Townley admitted to hiring five anti-Castro Cuban exiles to set up a booby-trap in Letelier's automobile. Following consultations with the terrorist organization CORU's leadership, including Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Daz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll were chosen to carry out the murder, according to Jean-Guy Allard. The Miami Herald reports that Luis Posada Carriles was there at the conference that decided on Letelier's death as well as the bombing of Cubana Flight 455.   During a public protest against Pinochet in July 1986, photographer Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri was burned alive and Carmen Gloria Quintana received significant burns. The case of the two became known as Caso Quemados ("The Burned Case"), and it drew attention in the United States because Rojas had fled to the United States following the 1973 coup. [96] According to a document from the US State Department, the Chilean army set fire to both Rojas and Quintana on purpose. Rojas and Quintana, on the other hand, were accused by Pinochet of being terrorists who lit themselves on fire with their own Molotov cocktails. Pinochet's reaction to the attack and killing of Rojas, according to National Security Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh, was "contributed to Reagan's decision to withdraw support for the regime and press for a return to civilian rule."   Operación Silencio   Operación Silencio (Operation Silence) was a Chilean operation that removed witnesses from the country in order to obstruct investigations by Chilean judges. It began about a year before the "terror archives" in Paraguay were discovered. Arturo Sanhueza Ross, the man accused of assassinating MIR leader Jecar Neghme in 1989, departed the country in April 1991.    According to the Rettig Report, Chilean intelligence officers were responsible for Jecar Neghme's killing. Carlos Herrera Jiménez, the man who assassinated trade unionist Tucapel Jiménez, flew out in September 1991. Eugenio Berros, a chemist who had cooperated with DINA agent Michael Townley, was led by Operation Condor agents from Chile to Uruguay in October 1991 in order to avoid testifying in the Letelier case. He used passports from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil, prompting suspicions that Operation Condor was still active. In 1995, Berros was discovered dead in El Pinar, Uruguay, near Montevideo. His corpse had been mangled to the point where it was hard to identify him by sight.   Michael Townley, who is now under witness protection in the United States, recognized linkages between Chile, DINA, and the incarceration and torture camp Colonia Dignidad in January 2005. The facility was founded in 1961 by Paul Schäfer, who was arrested and convicted of child rape in Buenos Aires in March 2005. Interpol was notified about Colonia Dignidad and the Army's Bacteriological Warfare Laboratory by Townley. This lab would have taken the place of the previous DINA lab on Via Naranja de lo Curro, where Townley collaborated with chemical assassin Eugenio Berros. According to the court reviewing the case, the toxin that allegedly murdered Christian-Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva could have been created at this new lab in Colonia Dignidad. Dossiê Jango, a Brazilian-Uruguayan-Argentine collaboration film released in 2013, accused the same lab in the alleged poisoning of Brazil's deposed president, Joo Goulart.   Congressman Koch   The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents was released in February 2004 by reporter John Dinges. He reported that in mid-1976, Uruguayan military officers threatened to assassinate United States Congressman Edward Koch (later Mayor of New York City). The CIA station commander in Montevideo had received information about it in late July 1976. He advised the Agency to take no action after finding that the men were inebriated at the time. Colonel José Fons, who was present at the November 1975 covert meeting in Santiago, Chile, and Major José Nino Gavazzo, who led a team of intelligence agents working in Argentina in 1976 and was responsible for the deaths of over 100 Uruguayans, were among the Uruguayan officers.   Koch told Dinges in the early twenty-first century that CIA Director George H. W. Bush informed him in October 1976 that "his sponsorship of legislation to cut off US military assistance to Uruguay on human rights concerns had prompted secret police officers to 'put a contract out for you'." Koch wrote to the Justice Department in mid-October 1976, requesting FBI protection, but he received none. It had been more than two months after the meeting and the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington. Colonel Fons and Major Gavazzo were sent to important diplomatic postings in Washington, D.C. in late 1976. The State Department ordered the Uruguayan government to rescind their appointments, citing the possibility of "unpleasant publicity" for "Fons and Gavazzo."  Only in 2001 did Koch learn of the links between the threats and the position appointments.   Paraguay The US supported Alfredo Stroessner's anti-communist military dictatorship and played a "vital supporting role" in Stroessner's Paraguay's domestic affairs. As part of Operation Condor, for example, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thierry of the United States Army was deployed to assist local workers in the construction of "La Technica," a detention and interrogation center. La Technica was also renowned as a torture facility. Pastor Coronel, Stroessner's secret police, washed their victims in human vomit and excrement tubs and shocked them in the rectum with electric cattle prods. They decapitated Miguel Angel Soler [es], the Communist party secretary, with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened on the phone. Stroessner asked that tapes of inmates wailing in agony be presented to their relatives.   Harry Shlaudeman defined Paraguay's militarized state as a "nineteenth-century military administration that looks nice on the cartoon page" in a report to Kissinger. Shlaudeman's assessments were paternalistic, but he was correct in observing that Paraguay's "backwardness" was causing it to follow in the footsteps of its neighbors. Many decolonized countries regarded national security concerns in terms of neighboring countries and long-standing ethnic or regional feuds, but the United States viewed conflict from a global and ideological viewpoint. During the Chaco War, Shlaudeman mentions Paraguay's amazing fortitude in the face of greater military force from its neighbors. The government of Paraguay believes that the country's victory over its neighbors over several decades justifies the country's lack of progress. The paper goes on to say that Paraguay's political traditions were far from democratic. Because of this reality, as well as a fear of leftist protest in neighboring countries, the government has prioritized the containment of political opposition over the growth of its economic and political institutions. They were driven to defend their sovereignty due to an ideological fear of their neighbors. As a result, many officials were inspired to act in the interest of security by the fight against radical, communist movements both within and beyond the country. The book Opération Condor, written by French writer Pablo Daniel Magee and prefaced by Costa Gavras, was published in 2020. The story chronicles the life of Martin Almada, a Paraguayan who was a victim of the Condor Operation.   The Peruvian Case   After being kidnapped in 1978, Peruvian legislator Javier Diez Canseco announced that he and twelve other compatriots (Justiniano Apaza Ordóñez, Hugo Blanco, Genaro Ledesma Izquieta, Valentín Pacho, Ricardo Letts, César Lévano, Ricardo Napurí, José Luis Alvarado Bravo, Alfonso Baella Tuesta, Guillermo Faura Gaig, José Arce Larco and Humberto Damonte). All opponents of Francisco Morales Bermudez's dictatorship were exiled and handed over to the Argentine armed forces in Jujuy in 1978 after being kidnapped in Peru. He also claimed that declassified CIA documents and WikiLeaks cable information account for the Morales Bermudez government's ties to Operation Condor.   Uruguay   Juan Mara Bordaberry declared himself dictator and banned the rest of the political parties, as was customary in the Southern Cone dictatorships of the 1970s. In the alleged defense against subversion, a large number of people were murdered, tortured, unjustly detained and imprisoned, kidnapped, and forced into disappearance during the de facto administration, which lasted from 1973 until 1985. Prior to the coup d'état in 1973, the CIA served as a consultant to the country's law enforcement institutions. Dan Mitrione, perhaps the most well-known example of such cooperation, had taught civilian police in counterinsurgency at the School of the Americas in Panama, afterwards renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.   Maybe now we can talk about the U.S involvement? The U.S never gets involved in anything so this might be new to some of you.   According to US paperwork, the US supplied critical organizational, financial, and technological help to the operation far into the 1980s. The long-term hazards of a right-wing bloc, as well as its early policy recommendations, were discussed in a US Department of State briefing for Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, dated 3 August 1976, prepared by Harry Shlaudeman and titled "Third World War and South America." The briefing was an overview of security forces in the Southern Cone. The operation was described as a joint effort by six Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay) to win the "Third World War" by eliminating "subversion" through transnational secret intelligence operations, kidnapping, torture, disappearance, and assassination. The research begins by examining the sense of unity shared by the six countries of the Southern Cone. Kissinger is warned by Shlaudeman that the "Third World War" will trap those six countries in an ambiguous position in the long run, because they are trapped on one side by "international Marxism and its terrorist exponents," and on the other by "the hostility of uncomprehending industrial democracies misled by Marxist propaganda." According to the report, US policy toward Operation Condor should “emphasize the differences between the five countries at all times, depoliticize human rights, oppose rhetorical exaggerations of the ‘Third-World-War' type, and bring potential bloc members back into our cognitive universe through systematic exchanges.” According to CIA papers from 1976, strategies to deal with political dissidents in South America were planned among international security officials at the US Army School of the Americas and the Conference of American Armies from 1960 to the early 1970s. "In early 1974, security officials from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia convened in Buenos Aires to arrange synchronized attacks against subversive targets," according to a declassified CIA memo dated June 23, 1976. Officials in the United States were aware of the situation.   Furthermore, the Defense Intelligence Agency revealed in September 1976 that US intelligence services were well aware of Operation Condor's architecture and intentions. They discovered that "Operation Condor" was the covert name for gathering intelligence on "leftists," Communists, Peronists, or Marxists in the Southern Cone Area. The intelligence services were aware that the operation was being coordinated by the intelligence agencies of numerous South American nations (including Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia), with Chile serving as the hub. Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, according to the DIA, were already aggressively pursuing operations against communist targets, primarily in Argentina.   The report's third point reveals the US comprehension of Operation Condor's most malevolent actions. "The development of special teams from member countries to execute out operations, including killings against terrorists or sympathizers of terrorist groups," according to the paper. Although these special teams were intelligence agency operatives rather than military troops, they did work in structures similar to those used by US special forces teams, according to the study. Operation Condor's preparations to undertake probable operations in France and Portugal were revealed in Kissinger's State Department briefing - an issue that would later prove to be immensely contentious in Condor's history.   Condor's core was formed by the US government's sponsorship and collaboration with DINA (Directorate of National Intelligence) and other intelligence agencies. According to CIA papers, the agency maintained intimate ties with officers of Chile's secret police, DINA, and its leader Manuel Contreras.  Even after his role in the Letelier-Moffit killing was discovered, Contreras was kept as a paid CIA contact until 1977. Official requests to trace suspects to and from the US Embassy, the CIA, and the FBI may be found in the Paraguayan Archives. The military states received suspect lists and other intelligence material from the CIA. In 1975, the FBI conducted a nationwide hunt in the United States for persons sought by DINA.   In a February 1976 telegram from the Buenos Aires embassy to the State Department, intelligence said that the US was aware of the impending Argentinian coup. According to the ambassador, the Chief of the Foreign Ministry's North American desk revealed that the "Military Planning Group" had asked him to prepare a report and recommendations on how the "future military government can avoid or minimize the sort of problems the Chilean and Uruguayan governments are having with the US over human rights issues." The Chief also indicated that "they" (whether he is talking to the CIA or Argentina's future military dictatorship, or both) will confront opposition if they start assassinating and killing people. Assuming this is so, the envoy notes that the military coup will "intend to carry forward an all-out war on the terrorists and that some executions would therefore probably be necessary." Despite already being engaged in the region's politics, this indicates that the US was aware of the planning of human rights breaches before they occurred and did not intervene to prevent them. "It is encouraging to note that the Argentine military are aware of the problem and are already focusing on ways to avoid letting human rights issues become an irritant in US-Argentine Relations." This is confirmation.   Professor Ruth Blakeley says that Kissinger "explicitly expressed his support for the repression of political opponents" in regards to the Argentine junta's continuous human rights violations.  When Henry Kissinger met with Argentina's Foreign Minister on October 5, 1976, he said, ” Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better ... The human rights problem is a growing one. Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help.”   The démarche was never provided in the end. According to Kornbluh and Dinges, the decision not to deliver Kissinger's directive was based on Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman's letter to his deputy in Washington, D.C., which stated: "you can simply instruct the Ambassadors to take no further action, noting that there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme."   President Bill Clinton ordered the State Department to release hundreds of declassified papers in June 1999, indicating for the first time that the CIA, State, and Defense Departments were all aware of Condor. According to a 1 October 1976 DOD intelligence assessment, Latin American military commanders gloat about it to their American colleagues. Condor's "joint counterinsurgency operations" sought to "eliminate Marxist terrorist activities," according to the same study; Argentina developed a special Condor force "structured much like a US Special Forces Team," it said. According to a summary of documents disclosed in 2004, The declassified record shows that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was briefed on Condor and its "murder operations" on August 5, 1976, in a 14-page report from [Harry] Shlaudeman [Assistant Secretary of State]. "Internationally, the Latin generals look like our guys," Shlaudeman cautioned. "We are especially identified with Chile. It cannot do us any good." Shlaudeman and his two deputies, William Luers and Hewson Ryan, recommended action. Over the course of three weeks, they drafted a cautiously worded demarche, approved by Kissinger, in which he instructed the U.S. ambassadors in the Southern Cone countries to meet with the respective heads of state about Condor. He instructed them to express "our deep concern" about "rumors" of "plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad."   Kornbluh and Dinges come to the conclusion that "The paper trail is clear: the State Department and the CIA had enough intelligence to take concrete steps to thwart the Condor assassination planning. Those steps were initiated but never implemented." Hewson Ryan, Shlaudeman's deputy, subsequently admitted in an oral history interview that the State Department's treatment of the issue was "remiss." "We knew fairly early on that the governments of the Southern Cone countries were planning, or at least talking about, some assassinations abroad in the summer of 1976. ... Whether if we had gone in, we might have prevented this, I don't know", In relation to the Letelier-Moffitt bombing, he remarked, "But we didn't."   Condor was defined as a "counter-terrorism organization" in a CIA document, which also mentioned that the Condor countries had a specific telecommunications system known as "CONDORTEL."  The New York Times released a communication from US Ambassador to Paraguay Robert White to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on March 6, 2001. The paper was declassified and disseminated by the Clinton administration in November 2000 as part of the Chile Declassification Project. General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, the chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, told White that the South American intelligence chiefs engaged in Condor "kept in touch with one another through a United States communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone that covered all of Latin America."   According to reports, Davalos stated that the station was "employed to coordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". The US was concerned that the Condor link would be made public at a time when the killing of Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier and his American aide Ronni Moffitt in the United States was being probed."it would seem advisable to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest." White wrote to Vance. "Another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor." McSherry rebutted the cables. Furthermore, an Argentine military source told a U.S. Embassy contact that the CIA was aware of Condor and had played a vital role in establishing computerized linkages among the six Condor governments' intelligence and operations sections.   After all this it doesn't stop here. We even see France having a connection. The original document confirming that a 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires set up a "permanent French military mission" of officers to Argentina who had participated in the Algerian War was discovered in the archives of the Quai d'Orsay, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was kept at the offices of the Argentine Army's chief of staff. It lasted until 1981, when François Mitterrand was elected President of France. She revealed how the administration of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing secretly coordinated with Videla's junta in Argentina and Augusto Pinochet's tyranny in Chile.   Even Britain and West Germany looked into using the tactics in their own countries. Going so far as to send their open personnel to Buenos Aires to discuss how to establish a similar network.  MOVIES   https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=military-coup&sort=num_votes,desc&mode=detail&page=1&title_type=movie&ref_=kw_ref_typ https://islandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/terror%3Aroot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archives_of_Terror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20774985 https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB239d/index.htm

This episode first examines the Great Leap Forward in China, an instance of bad Maoist policies creating mass starvation. We then discuss diplomatic exchanges between the superpowers in 1959, including the Kitchen Debate between Khrushchev & Nixon, as well as the Soviet Premier's cordial visit to the USA later that same year. But the main portion of our program explores the causes, consequences, & legacy of a dramatic political revolution in the Caribbean island nation of Cuba. The January 1959 Cuban Revolution was a key turning point in the history of the Cold War. US support of dictator Fulgencio Batista, alongside the heavy influence by American corporations & organized criminal syndicates on the island, led Cuban revolutionaries such as Fidel Castro & Che Guevara to distrust the United States. They instead pursued an alliance with the capitalist Americans' archrival, the Communist Soviet Union. This pact panicked the Eisenhower Administration. In response to the emergence of a Marxist regime in Cuba, the USA attempted to adopt more humane policies toward other Latin American nations (in an attempt to prevent similar left-wing revolutions), while simultaneously taking a very hard line against Castro. By 1960, the CIA was training anti-Castro Cuban exiles to invade the island & topple the regime. In the early 60s, tensions over the fate of Cuba would bring the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/boomertomillennial/posts)

  was a bio-chemist and a political Cuban refugee. born in Haiti, was/is a publisher of rare books. How did this combination end up in Durham to produce a 100% farm to table, authentic Cuban restaurant in Durham, North Carolina. Written words do not do justice to the passion, integrity and respect for history these to have for their food but the spoken word does!  Listen in to discover the wonders of Cuban Cuisine, and classic Havana cocktail culture. Hear how a recipe book written by and published in 1864 comes alive every night in the kitchen of       Looking for a home in the Triangle? Contact Lora Harris - your   And get your wine & beer at  Use promo code 'NCFB' at checkout! Hospitality industry veterans, and , get behind the scenes of North Carolina's burgeoning food and beverage culture. Hear from local chefs, sommelier's, distillers, farmers, brewers and the whole lot of them in the NC F&B podcast.  Max is a front-of-house vet/sommelier that moved from Los Angeles to North Carolina in 2013. Since moving to North Carolina, he's run restaurants, designed wine programs and builds craft cocktail menus. Matthew is a certified sommelier from New York. His experience ranges from restaurant/bar to importing some of the finest wines in the world. He moved his family to North Carolina two years ago and works as a wine distributor.  For questions, comments and booking, contact us at  or Eat & Drink Merrily!    

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy ushered in an era of hope in the United States, working to mend relations with the Soviet Union, refusing to invade Laos and Cuba, and promising to further social benefits for all Americans. Before Kennedy could begin to make good on his promises, he was killed while visiting Dallas, Texas, allegedly by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald. Since 1963, the world has scrutinized the assassination of JFK and the subsequent killing of Oswald, implying that the truth is far darker than what the official story alleges. In the fourth and final part of our JFK Assassination saga, we conclude by taking a look at the many alleged conspirators in the murder of President Kennedy. Matt and Kayla talk about the CIA, the Secret Service, Lyndon B. Johnson, the American mafia, anti-Castro Cuban exiles, and much more. Support Big, If True on Patreon at www.patreon.com/bigiftrue Subscribe to Big, If True on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts - while you're at it, leave us a rating or review telling us what you love about the show! Email us at: bigiftruepodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Intro/Disclaimer: Josh McLellan Music: Sleeping In by The Postal Service

Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, as Oswald was being escorted from Dallas Police Headquarters to Dallas County Jail in front of television news cameras and newspaper reporters just two days after Kennedy's death. This action gave a wealth of ammunition to anyone looking for a conspiracy surrounding Kennedy's assassination. Yet the actual personalities of both Oswald and Ruby indicated each man had acted alone. Oswald had actually fled to the Soviet Union, seeking asylum as a committed Communist, only to return to the United States with his Russian wife. While in his native New Orleans, Oswald would work on behalf of pro-Castro Cuban groups and attempt the assassination of an Army general. Then he would go to Dallas, where he was seen shooting at President Kennedy from the Texas Book Depository on November 22nd. The assassination shook the world, especially nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Ruby would repeatedly hang around Dallas Police headquarters with a loaded pistol. He finally used it when Oswald was moved to the Dallas County Jail. Ruby would give weird responses about his connections after his arrest, but few authorities believed him. 

How will Cuba change after Fidel Castro’s death and with a new U.S. president taking office? Richard Feinberg shared his insights with AS/COA’s Alana Tummino at a launch for his new book Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy.

Forty-three years ago, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Although it was obviously the work of a powerful group, the blame was placed on patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. Independent researchers have proposed explanations that point the finger at the mob, the CIA and anti-Castro Cuban forces, and Lyndon Johnson and the oil magnates. Michael Collins Piper, author of Final Judgement, an investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, demonstrates that Mossad played an important role in the...

Forty-three years ago, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Although it was obviously the work of a powerful group, the blame was placed on patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. Independent researchers have proposed explanations that point the finger at the mob, the CIA and anti-Castro Cuban forces, and Lyndon Johnson and the oil magnates. Michael Collins Piper, author of Final Judgement, an investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, demonstrates that Mossad played an important role in the...

Forty-three years ago, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Although it was obviously the work of a powerful group, the blame was placed on patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. Independent researchers have proposed explanations that point the finger at the mob, the CIA and anti-Castro Cuban forces, and Lyndon Johnson and the oil magnates. Michael Collins Piper, author of Final Judgement, an investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, demonstrates that Mossad played an important role in the...