MARIE-MONIQUE ROBIN interview by LUCAS CACHINERO-GORMAN (Translation by Alex Cachinero-Gorman)
Lucas Palero: If you had to give a general characterization of “Operation Condor”, what would the contribution of the United States be compared to the contribution of the French?
Marie-Monique Robin: The United States offered their support within the framework of the National Security Doctrine, which they had already applied to all of the “Southern Cone” [a geographic term comprised primarily of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay]. That was their role, which we know because many documents have now been declassified; the US embassy and the CIA were also involved. The role of the French, on the other hand, was more in painting the broader strokes of this plan. “Operation Condor” is essentially the Battle of Algiers taken to a continental level. The same methods—manufacturing an internal threat, detaining suspicious persons, torturing them, and then ‘disappearing’ them—are employed, but with the continent itself as the battlefield, and with the help of the intelligence services of each participant country, to boot. This is the conclusion I’ve reached in my documentary. The plan was developed within the bounds of the ‘French School’, with the additional input of the US, which had developed its own techniques, learning from the lessons of the French.
LP: At the end of the 1950s, French military collaboration consisted in exchange programs, courses, and information sharing. When did this preparatory work get implemented practically for the first time?
MR: I contend that the rehearsal—the ‘pilot trial’—was Operation Independence. Here they did directly what they would do one year later on a national level in Argentina. They designated a special zone, Tucumán, and down to a ‘t’ carried out the teachings of the French. They entered houses and removed individuals, took them to a school that served as a secret detention center, tortured and disappeared them—all of this after the first decree announcing the guerrilla annihilation signed by Estela Martínez de Perón. With the 1976 coup, this was taken to a national level. The division of territory had already began in the 1960s; it was divided into quadrants by zones, sub-zones, sectors, etc., so that when the coup finally arrived everything was already in place, with each appointed to monitor their appropriate sector. It was all very rapidly accomplished because everything had been prepared years earlier, which the dictator, Videla, understood. It wasn’t like Chile: in this case, there were rumors of a coup, but Pinochet didn’t become a part of the story until much later, and he appeared a bit…manic about it, we could say. On the other hand, here it was known in advance where the detention centers would be placed; they’d already made contact with the right people. For example, the French consul in Tucumán was a hardline right-wing type who had collaborated with the Germans. He had a French contact who lent him his hotel for use as a detention center.
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LP: How does the “time-bomb” argument, as it was imagined by Jean Lartéguy, manifest itself in the debates which still go on over the use of torture?
MR: It’s an argument that always appears. It originated with the French in Algeria, the Argentine military repeated it during the dictatorship, and still today it is alive and well in the United States, where Rumsfeld used it when he was Minister of Defense. In English they call it the ticking time bomb scenario and it means that you can torture a “terrorist”—in quotation marks—because they are alleged to have information about such-and-such a bomb which one will detonate in such-and-such a place on such-and-such day. To save the lives of the potential victims one must secure the information with all available methods, and thus torture is a legitimate technique in this kind of case. For Torture made in USA I interviewed Larry Wilkerson, who was Collin Powell’s right hand man. He is a colonel who is also a republican, mind you, the furthest from the Left one could imagine, and he told me that it is pure drivel, a scenario that would never occur. And if it does occur in some exceptional case, that is still no reason to throw away all of one’s principles. That is to say, it can exist in movies, or in this TV show 24, which is something of an international plague, but no, it doesn’t exist anywhere. You will never have the right person, in the right moment, that has the right information. It’s a fallacy.
LP: What is the role of 24 in propagating this discourse?
MR: It’s a series that began after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Before September 11th, no one talked about torture on television in the United States. Of course, it was done, but usually as a kind of condemnation. But there has been an important shift, and now there are more and more books, shows, and movies coming out about it. And not at two in the morning, but on prime time. 24 is an example of that. I had never seen it before, but then I watched it as part of my work. It’s incredible. In every single episode they torture people! And it’s a show that a lot of young people watch, so that at the end of the day it becomes almost habitual. They are indoctrinating people with the idea that torture is something normal.
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