The Rise and Fall of U.S. Support for Operation Condor

Operation Condor (Condor) was a transnational terror network set up by six military dictatorships in South America with the support of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in order to kill and silence dissidents in the nineteen seventies. Research on Condor tends to focus on the individual dictatorships involved; the relationship between those dictatorships and the United States has been comparatively understudied. Unlike in other Cold War battlegrounds, the human rights violations committed by the Condor dictatorships caused Congress to take action, investigate the CIA, and tie human rights requirements to U.S. foreign assistance to the region.