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The three-page CIA document stipulates that Ecuador’s intelligence services, along with its army, navy and air force, agreed to gather and share information with other states, monitor telecommunications and engage in psychological warfare as part of the plan. It also outlines Ecuador’s relationship with Argentine and Chilean officials who installed telecommunications systems in the country and offered scholarships and training to the Ecuadorian military. The activities were continued by the Ecuadorian military after Roldós was elected without his knowledge.
“The CIA financed an entire network of people to work in their interests,” said Cuenca journalist Francisco Herrera Arauz, who recently co-authored the book The CIA Against Latin America, Special Case of Ecuador, which examines CIA interventions during the period. “They wanted to destroy communism, and affect the position of sovereignty of Ecuador to break its relations with Cuba. This was not good in the eyes of the CIA and caused us a lot of damage. It is the period in which the left experienced the greatest repression.”
The countries involved with Operation Condor agreed to share information, and work to eliminate leftist groups within their borders, as well as persecute those seeking refuge abroad,” according to Arauz. Operation Condor knew no borders, as U.S.-funded death squads and extra-judicial killings were common throughout the region, he said.
A former member of the revolutionary guerrilla group Alfaro Vive ¡Carajo!, Mireya Cardenas, described the work Operation Condor: “In our case, the CIA destroyed a building one night in Cuenca. And they assassinated our friends. There were infiltrators also, who were paid over a period of two years, three years, they were paid with dollars, when the Ecuadorian currency was the sucre.”
Former CIA agent Philip Agee confirmed that he delivered money for bomb-making in Cuenca. The bombs, set off in public areas such as Parque Calderon, were intended to scare the public, he said. “We would blame them on left-wing political groups and fed this false information to the media.”
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