quality:correction
Antecedents

Operation Condor, which took place in the context of the Cold War, had the tacit approval and material support of the United States. In 1968, U.S. General Robert W. Porter Jr. stated 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 American historian J. Patrice McSherry, based on formerly secret CIA documents from 1976, in the 1960s and early 1970s plans were developed among international security officials at the U.S. Army School of the Americas and the Conference of American Armies to deal with perceived threats in South America from political dissidents. A declassified CIA document dated 23 June 1976 explains that "in early 1974, security officials from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia met in Buenos Aires to prepare coordinated actions against subversive targets." According to the CIA, Operation Condor was a cooperative mission enabled by Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia. The cooperation between the countries for intelligence and security services had existed from as early as February 1974 to late May 1976 when it was formalized.

Members of Condor coordinated their activities with one another, established a special network for communication, and constructed various types of training. Some of which included psychological warfare.

The program was developed following a series of military coups d'états in South America:

American journalist A. J. Langguth states in a 1978 book that the organization of the first meetings between Argentinian and Uruguayan security officials, concerning the watching (and subsequent disappearance or assassination) of political refugees in these countries, can be attributed to coordination by the CIA, and that the CIA also acted as an intermediary in meetings between Argentinian, Brazilian, and Uruguayan death squads.

The National Security Archive reported, "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, according to the National Security Archive's documentary evidence from U.S., Paraguayan, Argentine, and Chilean files." Under this codename mission, several people were killed. As the report stated, "Prominent victims of Condor 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, as well as former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 26-year old American colleague, Ronni Moffitt, assassinated by a car bomb in downtown Washington D.C."