Meeting at Department of State to Discuss “Operation CONDOR”

The US Ambassador in Montevideo shares further information with the State Department regarding the activities of Uruguayan legislators and opponents of the military regime, Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz. The Argentine authorities suspect that Michelini is involved with the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR) in Argentina.

This document reports that, during a meeting in Santiago in May 1976, Condor member countries committed to forming a unit called 'Teseo' to combat members of the leftist Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR) and its supporters in France.

Arrest by Argentine authorities of 30 Uruguayan subversives. Among those captured was Margarita Michelini, daughter of the Uruguayan Senator Zelmar Michelini who was assassinated as part of Operation Condor.

Following the assassination of the former Chilean Ambassador to the US, Orlando Letelier, the CIA postulates that Condor countries may be undertaking joint offensive actions on US soil. The CIA had distributed background information on Operation Condor to the State Department and FBI.

CIA document on the expansion of Operation Condor.

In this report, the CIA provides an overview of the structure of Operation Condor including 'Condortel', which will manage the communications aspects, and 'Condoreje', which will be responsible for the operational activities. The CIA also comments on Operation Condor's planned activities including the selection of targets for the special teams which will operate in Europe.

This FBI document shares intelligence on the third phase of Operation Condor involving the planned assassination of key political opponents in non-member countries. Target countries identified in Europe include France and Portugal. The FBI states that it has no evidence that Condor plans to undertake activities in the US; however the involvement of Condor in the assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington is not 'outside the realm of possibility'.

This is a copy obtained by the CIA of the 'text of the agreement by Condor countries regulating their operations against subversive targets'- a detailed planning paper on financing, staffing, logistics, training, and selection of targets for Condor's 'Teseo' death squad operations. The Teseo Operations Centre would be based in Buenos Aires.

The CIA reports that a high-level official of the Ministry of the Interior has claimed that Operation Condor has become ineffective due to a lack of coordination between member countries.