The Condor Years

A “compelling and shocking account” of a brutal campaign of repression in Latin America, based on interviews and previously secret documents (The Miami Herald). Throughout the 1970s, six Latin American governments, led by Chile, formed a military alliance called Operation Condor to carry out kidnappings, torture, and political assassinations across three continents. It was an early “war on terror” initially encouraged by the CIA—which later backfired on the United States. Hailed by Foreign Affairs as “remarkable” and “a major contribution to the historical record,” The Condor Years uncovers the unsettling facts about the secret US relationship with the dictators who created this terrorist organization. Written by award-winning journalist John Dinges and updated to include later developments in the prosecution of Pinochet, the book is a chilling yet dispassionately told history of one of Latin America’s darkest eras. Dinges, himself interrogated in a Chilean torture camp, interviewed participants on both sides and examined thousands of previously secret documents to take the reader inside this underground world of military operatives and diplomats, right-wing spies and left-wing revolutionaries. “Scrupulous, well-documented.” —The Washington Post “Nobody knows what went wrong inside Chile like John Dinges.” —Seymour Hersh

This powerful study makes a compelling case about the key U.S. role in state terrorism in Latin America during the Cold War. Long hidden from public view, Operation Condor was a military network created in the 1970s to eliminate political opponents of Latin American regimes. Its key members were the anticommunist dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil, later joined by Peru and Ecuador, with covert support from the U.S. government. Drawing on a wealth of testimonies, declassified files, and Latin American primary sources, J. Patrice McSherry examines Operation Condor from numerous vantage points: its secret structures, intelligence networks, covert operations against dissidents, political assassinations worldwide, commanders and operatives, links to the Pentagon and the CIA, and extension to Central America in the 1980s. The author convincingly shows how, using extralegal and terrorist methods, Operation Condor hunted down, seized, and executed political opponents across borders. McSherry argues that Condor functioned within, or parallel to, the structures of the larger inter-American military system led by the United States, and that declassified U.S. documents make clear that U.S. security officers saw Condor as a legitimate and useful 'counterterror' organization. Revealing new details of Condor operations and fresh evidence of links to the U.S. security establishment, this controversial work offers an original analysis of the use of secret, parallel armies in Western counterinsurgency strategies. It will be a clarion call to all readers to consider the long-term consequences of clandestine operations in the name of 'democracy.'

Now on television: Condor, an AT&T Audience Network original series inspired by James Grady's first Condor novel. Look in the mirror: You're nobody anybody knows. You know pursuing the truth will get you killed. But you refuse to just fade away. So you're designated an enemy of the largest secret national security apparatus in America's history. Good guys or bad guys, it doesn't matter: All assassins' guns are aimed at you. And you run for your life branded with the code name you made iconic: Condor. Everyone you care about is pulled into the gunsights. The CIA star young enough to be your daughter-she might shoot you or save you. The savvy political aide who lets love trump the law. The lonely woman your romantic dreams make a fugitive. The Middle Eastern child warrior you mentored into a master spy. Last Days of the Condor is the bullet-paced, ticking clock saga of America on the edge of our most startling spy world revolution since 9/11. Set in the savage streets and Kafkaesque corridors of Washington, DC, shot through with sex and suspense, with secret agent tradecraft and full-speed action, with hunters and the hunted, Last Days of the Condor is a breakneck saga of America's secrets from muckraking investigative reporter and author James Grady. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The novel that inspired the Robert Redford film Three Days of the Condor Sandwiches save Ronald Malcolm’s life. On the day that gunmen pay a visit to the American Literary Historical Society, he’s out at lunch. The Society is actually a backwater of the Central Intelligence Agency, where Malcolm and a few other bookworms comb mystery novels for clues that might unlock real life diplomatic questions. One of his colleagues has learned something he wasn’t meant to know. A sinister conspiracy has penetrated the CIA, and the gunmen are its representatives. They massacre the office, and only learn later of Malcolm—a loose end that needs to be dealt with. Malcolm—codename Condor—calls his handlers at the Agency, hoping for a safe haven, instead drawing another attempt on his life. With no one left to trust he goes on the run. But like it or not, Malcolm is the only person who can root out the corruption at the highest levels of the CIA.

The explosive short story launch for the new novel LAST DAYS OF THE CONDOR "They led him out of the CIA's secret insane asylum as the sun set over autumn's forest there in Maine." Led him into a modern American nightmare any of us could face. But he's a legend, a silver-haired man codenamed Condor, a classic American hero in his first appearance since Watergate, on his way in this prequel to the upcoming novel, LAST DAYS OF THE CONDOR. And it's all about the price he's forced to pay to get there. Award-winning short story author, screenwriter and novelist James Grady delivers a bullet-paced, savage journey with the iconic character he created and that Robert Redford made an international sensation in the movie THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR. Love, sex, loyalty, honor and savagery loosed in our modern world electrify this novella, a portrait of heroism and horror and America beyond 9/11. It is an espionage adventure unlike anything you've ever read. "Grady is to spy novels as the great Elmore Leonard was to crime fiction," says Pulitzer Prize winning author Kai Bird, while John Grisham calls Grady: "A master of intrigue." At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

“A heart-stopping saga of the rescue from the very brink of extinction of one of the grandest of all birds.”—Thomas Lovejoy, president of the Amazon Biodiversity Center. RETURN OF THE CONDOR is the riveting account of one of the most dramatic attempts to save a species from extinction in the history of modern conservation. Features a new Afterword by the author. With the condor’s population down to only twenty-two birds in the 1980s and their very survival in doubt, the condor recovery team flouted conventional wisdom and pursued a controversial strategy to pull the bird back from the brink of extinction. Thus began the ongoing, decades-long program to reestablish America’s largest bird in its ancient home in Western skies. Award-winning science writer John Moir takes readers into the backcountry to get to know the recovery program scientists as well as some of the individual condors. These are stories of peril, uncertainty, and controversy. Woven throughout these tales of heartbreak and triumph is the extraordinary dedication of the humans who have sometimes risked their lives for this charismatic, intelligent, and social bird. Despite the program’s remarkable successes, the condor’s narrative is still unfolding with a number of challenges remaining. This includes the dilemma of lead poisoning among free-flying condors that is a major obstacle to the bird’s recovery. The new Afterword presents a compelling examination of the progress and continuing adversity facing the condor recovery effort since the first edition of the book was published. Finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize from the Stanford University Libraries Honorable Mention from the National Association of Science Writers

We are each so much more than we can imagine. This true story brings you along on the intimate path of spiritual initiation. It evokes Native American and Incan myths, and legends of the lost continent of Lemuria. In Peru, the author discovers that an Andean shaman is her Soul's twin flame. With the help of spirit guides and mystical visions, she brings ancient knowledge and spiritual power to light. You will laugh and cry and learn. Book jacket.

This edited volume explores political violence and genocide in Latin America during the Cold War, examining this in light of the United States’ hegemonic position on the continent. Using case studies based on the regimes of Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Peru and Uruguay, this book shows how U.S foreign policy – far from promoting long term political stability and democratic institutions – has actually undermined them. The first part of the book is an inquiry into the larger historical context in which the development of an unequal power relationship between the United States and Latin American and Caribbean nations evolved after the proliferation of the Monroe Doctrine. The region came to be seen as a contested terrain in the East-West conflict of the Cold War, and a new US-inspired ideology, the ‘National Security Doctrine’, was used to justify military operations and the hunting down of individuals and groups labelled as ‘communists’. Following on from this historical context, the book then provides an analysis of the mechanisms of state and genocidal violence is offered, demonstrating how in order to get to know the internal enemy, national armies relied on US intelligence training and economic aid to carry out their surveillance campaigns. This book will be of interest to students of Latin American politics, US foreign policy, human rights and terrorism and political violence in general. Marcia Esparza is an Assistant Professor in Criminal Justice Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Henry R. Huttenbach is the Founder and Chairman of the International Academy for Genocide Prevention and Professor Emeritus of City College of the City University of New York. Daniel Feierstein is the Director of the Center for Genocide Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina, and is a Professor in the Faculty of Genocide at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The California condor has been described as a bird "with one wing in the grave." Flying on wings nearly ten feet wide from tip to tip, these birds thrived on the carcasses of animals like woolly mammoths. Then, as humans began dramatically reshaping North America, the continent's largest flying land bird started disappearing. By the beginning of the twentieth century, extinction seemed inevitable. But small groups of passionate individuals refused to allow the condor to fade away, even as they fought over how and why the bird was to be saved. Scientists, farmers, developers, bird lovers, and government bureaucrats argued bitterly and often, in the process injuring one another and the species they were trying to save. In the late 1980s, the federal government made a wrenching decision -- the last remaining wild condors would be caught and taken to a pair of zoos, where they would be encouraged to breed with other captive condors. Livid critics called the plan a recipe for extinction. After the zoo-based populations soared, the condors were released in the mountains of south-central California, and then into the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, and Baja California. Today the giant birds are nowhere near extinct. The giant bird with "one wing in the grave" appears to be recovering, even as the wildlands it needs keep disappearing. But the story of this bird is more than the story of a vulture with a giant wingspan -- it is also the story of a wild and giant state that has become crowded and small, and of the behind-the-scenes dramas that have shaped the environmental movement. As told by John Nielsen, an environmental journalist and a native Californian, this is a fascinating tale of survival.

Ten thousand years ago, the California condor's shadowraced across the rock faces of canyon walls throughout theSouthwest, but, over time, the majestic condor disappearedfrom this land--seemingly forever. Last seen in northernArizona in 1924, the California condor was on the brink ofextinction. In the early 1980s, scientists documented onlytwenty-two condors remaining in the wild, all in California.Thanks to a successful captive-breeding program, theirnumbers have increased dramatically, and dozens now flyfree over northern Arizona and southern Utah. Sophie A. H. Osborn's groundbreaking book, Condors inCanyon Country, tells the tragic but ultimately triumphantstory of the condors of the Grand Canyon region. A naturalstoryteller, Osborn has written an in-depth, highly personalnarrative that brings you along as the author and othercondor biologists struggle to ensure the survival of thespecies. The book's kaleidoscopic photographs of thesehuge birds flying free over the Southwest are nearly asbreathtaking as seeing California condors live. The onlybook of its kind, Condors in Canyon Country is a must-readfor anyone passionate about endangered species and whathumankind can do to save them.