The Condor years (updated edition)

First published nearly twenty years ago, distinguished journalist John Dinges’s “scrupulous, well-documented, and indignant” ‘The Condor Years’ blew the lid off a secret intelligence-sharing, torture, and assassination program named Operation Condor, which helped Latin American dictatorships stay in power for a decade—all with the blessing of the United States. In the ensuing years, Dinges has closely tracked a series of groundbreaking judicial investigations—and resulting trials of military officers—in Argentina and Chile, and gained access to the largest-ever trove of CIA and FBI files on Latin America, which were declassified in 2019. Delving into the full documentary record of this most pivotal period in Latin American history, Dinges undertook a major revision of his original book, creating this riveting new edition, of which over 75 percent is completely new material. ‘The Condor Years’ is now the definitive story of Latin American dictatorships and repression, with extensive new material on the U.S. role, new revelations about targeted assassinations and collaboration between different nations’ security and intelligence services, and the fullest accounting to date of the victims of this global program of terror. It is crucial reading for anyone who is seeking to understand Latin America today and the U.S.’s enabling of autocratic governments in our neighbors to the south.