“Get close to him,” he told me.
IT WOULDN’T BE easy. Barrientos was good-looking and pleasant, even charming. But Ovando was like social sandpaper—he rubbed everybody raw.
His wife, on the other hand, was the opposite. She was dynamic, sincere, outgoing, and giving. She was involved in a variety of charities, and although he looked none too happy in the pictures of them that appeared in the paper, she made sure that he was on hand at the fund-raisers and galas, dinners and concerts, and all such similar social occasions. She behaved, in essence, like a first lady, even if her husband didn’t occupy the presidency. Yet.
Naturally, I realized that the way to get to General Ovando was through his better half. And the way to her was through charities.
I knew I couldn’t take a direct line, of course. But I was lucky enough to make the acquaintance of a young man who was the director of culture in La Paz. He was close to her. I got close to him.
I told him that I had been a promoter before and that I was interested in fostering wider appreciation for Bolivia’s cultural heritage, through music. It was true. Bolivia had these singing groups known as peñas nocturnas, who were nocturnal strolling minstrels, singing and playing unique traditional instruments I had never seen anywhere else. Not just pan flutes, although there were those, too, but also guitars little bigger than ukuleles, made from tortoise shells. The Americans who worked at the embassy and people who came to visit loved the music. They went to hear the different groups again and again.
I thought that rather than wait for the world to come to Bolivia, it might be a good idea to take their music to the outside world.
“Not only will it bring some positive attention,” I told my contact, “it could make a lot of money, which I’d like to see go to charity.”
“I think it’s a magnificent idea,” he said. “How can I help?”
“Well,” I said, “as you know, I’ve only recently arrived. I don’t know which charity is best. And I wouldn’t want to offend someone by picking the wrong one. I think it would be wonderful if Mrs. Ovando chose.”
He agreed. And he agreed to introduce me immediately.
Elsa Ovando loved the idea, too. I surprised myself with my salesmanship. David Phillips, who banged on doors as a cemetery plot salesman as a young man in Texas, would be proud. I got my foot in the door, and then got her to open it wide.
She named a charity right away that she thought would be perfect.
“I can even introduce you to them,” she said. “And to others who can help, too.”
From then on, I made fairly regular visits. The military sentries guarding the Ovandos’ front door got to know me. So did the servant who showed me into the living room to wait while she summoned Elsa. We’d chat for fifteen or twenty minutes and I’d be on my way.
I even enlisted Sira’s unwitting help. Honestly, there wasn’t a lot for her to do while the kids were at school. I got her to invite Elsa to tea, without telling her why it would be valuable.
Occasionally, I’d bump into Elsa’s husband while I was there. Over time, he actually began to greet me. Ovando didn’t tell me things directly. And I wasn’t necessarily trying to turn him into a mole. I would be in his house, and I would hear people talking. An officer might come to see him about some item of business, and I’d pick up bits and pieces. I had to decipher certain things. Then I’d pass them on.
While I was working on that, two scandals rocked the nation. I learned they both might be connected through an urgent call from Bishop.
The first came the year after I got there. Barrientos died unexpectedly, under questionable circumstances. He was on his way back from a meeting when his helicopter crashed. Many suspected it had been downed by sniper fire, that he had been assassinated by someone in the military. Ovando seemed the most likely one behind it, since he stood to gain the most. But he was out of the country when it happened and made no move to prevent the vice president, Luis Siles, from assuming the vacant presidency.
Siles lasted a mere five months. Then Ovando ousted him in a coup d’état. He became Bolivia’s president in September 1969.
Shortly after he did, Bishop told me that Barrientos had been involved in a contorted arms deal designed to make a lot of people, including himself, a lot of money. The short version was that Bolivia would serve as cover for a multimillion-dollar sale of weapons headed to Israel. Bishop wasn’t sure if his death had something to do with this lucrative transaction, but he knew Barrientos wasn’t working alone. Now that he was gone, the others could divvy up his share.
The urgent call from Bishop came after the country’s finance minister, Alberto Larrea, disappeared.
“He knows what happened with the weapons,” Bishop said. “I need you to find him, before someone else does.”
I’d had time to develop some pretty good sources by then. It didn’t help. I asked. And asked. Nobody knew where he was.
Somebody did, though.
I heard it on the radio. Larrea had gone underground. He was hiding out at his sister’s house. Somebody sprayed machine gun fire through the window of his bedroom in the early morning. They kept firing until they were sure he was dead.
Ovando was considered the most likely to have ordered the hit, but no one ever proved it. I never did get to have a very close relationship with him. In the end, it didn’t matter. A year after he’d staged the coup against his predecessor, Ovando was out, pushed aside by his own military. His successor lasted even less time.
Then Bolivia got a strongman, Colonel Hugo Banzer, who had no qualms about using repression to hold on to power. He did, for six years. The man he named minister of the interior was well known to Bolivians, and to me. We’d all seen him before, at least once. Colonel Andrés Selich was the uniformed officer touching his finger to El Che’s bare, lifeless chest in the famous “passion of the Che” photograph.
chapter 9
OPERATION CONDOR
THE DESERT SEEMED to go on forever. It stretched from horizon to horizon in every direction, cut only by the ribbon of road I drove.
Baked. Barren. Vast.
The only humans I had seen for at least two hundred miles were the ones in the car with me—my wife, my kids, and the killer.
Only the killer and I knew about the cache of weapons hidden under the back seat, under where my children now sat. There, buried under some clothes to muffle any attention-attracting clatter, rested a Belgian FN FAL rifle with a telescopic sight, two revolvers, and a pistol.
We had chosen the FAL because of its track record and capability: an effective range of six hundred meters, a powerful 7.62 mm shell, sure and reliable—as long as it wasn’t used on automatic. Because of its widespread use by NATO forces, it had become known as “the right hand of freedom.”
But it was only a backup. The real plan called for the pistol to be the instrument of Fidel’s death. The weapon of choice had to be small enough to fit inside a fully operational television camera, to remain hidden until the assassins were close enough, and to fire one or more shots, point blank, into Fidel’s throat and head.
It was, once again, my plan. More than six months in the making, it now sped toward its conclusion. Literally.
It was fall 1971, and I was on my way from Lima to Santiago to oversee another assassination attempt on the man whom I’d been stalking for over a decade. Castro was due to arrive for a state visit in the Chilean capital in November, and my killing team would be waiting for him.
Later, looking back on those long hours spent crossing the bleak emptiness of the Atacama Desert, I realized that my obsession had won. My desire to kill Castro had consumed me. I was willing even to risk my children for that one purpose. I had brought them here in the midst of the world’s second-largest desert and set them and all of their innocence atop the weapons, without once worrying what would happen to them if the arsenal were discovered. I never thought once about what would happen if we had an accident out there, hours from the nearest town. About
how long we would wait before help arrived. About how long we could last. The Atacama is not particularly hot, but it is the driest desert on earth, a vast expanse stretching under a cloudless sky between the Andes and the Pacific. Scientists say that in the span of one thousand years, a mere four inches of rain have fallen there. In some places, not a single drop has fallen in more than four hundred years.
As I drove through the parched terrain, I could believe it. Everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but sand and dirt the color of rust, under a crisp blue sky.
I didn’t care.
The desert was not my destination. It was merely a passageway. This was the path to my future, the way to clear my past—the way to rid the world of Fidel Castro.
I held no one to blame but myself for the failure in Havana. I had prepared so carefully. That was my nature. I am a perfectionist. The apartment had been rented and occupied by my mother-in-law for six months to eliminate suspicion. The weapons moved into place with similar care. The escape plan orchestrated in infinite detail, as well.
But I had failed to account for one factor—the men who would actually be in position to pull the trigger. I still couldn’t blame them for faltering. I had no idea what it was like to be in their shoes.
I did know the result: Cuba remained in shackles.
The thought had haunted me during my time in Bolivia. Even as I did the work asked of me. The goal remained the same, to topple Castro, and my regular meetings with Bishop invariably brought new assignments with that end in mind.
Still, I could see Communism and other left-wing ideologies taking hold across the continent. Despite Che’s death. Despite the efforts to discredit him with his own diary. Allende had come to power in Chile. Fidel had an ally, and hope.
Salvador Guillermo Allende was a Chilean physician and politician, born into a family of upper-class liberals with a history of political activism. He bore a coincidental connection to Castro from birth: he celebrated his birthday on July 26. It was the date Fidel chose to attack the Moncada Barracks in Cuba, launching his uprising against Fulgencio Batista.
The United States despised them both. But Allende may have been the bigger threat.
Castro seized power through armed revolution. Allende became Latin America’s first democratically elected Marxist. That meant he was popular, and the tide against capitalism might be, too.
Castro was, relatively speaking, a kid in politics, and a newcomer to Communism. Allende’s political career extended over nearly four decades. He began, like Fidel, as a college student and was arrested several times for protesting against the government. After he got his medical degree in 1932, he co-founded Chile’s Socialist Party.
In 1938, Allende headed the Popular Front’s presidential campaign. He was named minister of health after his candidate won. In that position, Allende was responsible for multiple social changes, including safety laws for factory workers, higher pensions for widows, maternity care, and free lunch programs for schoolchildren. Later, as a senator, Allende introduced legislation guaranteeing universal health care for the country’s citizens, the first program of its kind in the hemisphere.
In all, Allende served four terms as a Socialist Party senator, and as a deputy and cabinet minister. And throughout his political career, he consistently denounced capitalism and imperialism.
Allende’s narrow victory in September 1970 was his fourth presidential bid. He won by a plurality of just over a third of the popular vote. Still, even though he had the most votes, the United States poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the Chilean congress not to award him the victory.
The propaganda plan might have succeeded if another CIA-supported effort hadn’t exploded dramatically and tragically.
Two days before the Chilean congress was scheduled to confirm the president, the commander-in-chief of Chile’s army, General René Schneider, was shot during a kidnapping attempt headed by one of his generals. Schneider was a firm “constitutionalist,” believing that the army existed to defend the country, not to interfere in politics. He staunchly opposed the idea of staging a coup to prevent Allende from taking office. The loyal general’s death galvanized public opinion and gave Allende the support of the people and the military.
With Vietnam and the Cold War with the Soviet Union raging, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger vehemently opposed the rise of a second Marxist government in Latin America. Nixon ordered the CIA to “make the [Chilean] economy scream” to prevent Allende’s ascension, or to unseat him if he came to power.
The agency’s deputy director for plans issued clear instructions to the CIA base in Santiago: “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October, but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [U.S. Government] and American hand be well hidden.”
Once Allende took office, Bishop’s focus shifted to Chile. So did the assignments he gave me. More and more, I became a courier, delivering cash to Chilean officials and generals collaborating secretly with the United States. Sometimes it was a two-way exchange: I gave them the thick packet of money I carried into the country, and they gave me documents to take to Bishop.
Sometimes I recognized these clandestine operators. Sometimes I didn’t. I was often surprised. And, even though I entered and left Chile through a variety of means and with a variety of false documents and identities, I was frequently reminded of the risks.
Once, Bishop sent me with instructions to deliver an envelope stuffed with cash to a confidential informant in Chile’s capital. In return, the informant was to give me a sealed packet with documents from the Cuban Embassy and the Presidential Palace. We were to meet at the entrance to a popular movie theater. My contact would wear a yellow tie, with a matching handkerchief in his jacket pocket.
When I saw him, I offered the passphrase, in Spanish, of course: “Brother, we all have to die.”
He responded with the correct countersign, “That we already know.” Then, he continued: “Do you have the money with you?”
“I do,” I said, “and I’ll give it to you as soon as you give me the documents.”
“How do I know you have the amount we agreed on?”
“I have no idea how much is in the envelope,” I told him. Then I slipped. I used a term only a Cuban would use.
“As you’ll see, it’s pretty hefty,” I said. “I imagine it has more than a few ‘kilos.’”
Kilos is Cuban slang for cents. Others would say centavos. Using it identified me as Cuban, and that could blow my cover.
The informant gave me a wry smile. “Are you Cuban?” he asked.
“No,” I answered, trying to recover. “I’m Venezuelan.”
His smile broadened and he gave me a wink. “Chico,” he said, “you’re as Venezuelan as I am Chilean.”
Chico was, in its own way, another countersign. It’s another typically Cuban expression.
Later, when I told Bishop what had happened, he said, “You made a mistake. He didn’t. Let it be a lesson. And don’t let it happen again.”
When he saw how his words hit me, he tried to soften their impact. “He really is a Cuban,” Bishop said. “A very well-paid one. He works in the Cuban Embassy. We’ve paid him magnificently, but his information is invaluable.”
I waited.
“Thanks to him,” Bishop continued, “we’ve learned the exact location of the militia training camps in Chile. And, more importantly, what their plans and objectives are for the immediate future.”
It was indeed a lesson. One that could have easily led to my arrest, or my “disappearance.” And one that could easily have led Bishop to question my ability. Or, worse, to consider me a risk whose amateur mistakes
could expose, and possibly compromise, his plans.
So when Bishop summoned me to Lima for another meeting, I did as I was asked. I went to receive my latest instructions. What he said, though, I never expected.
We met as we always did, in the lobby of a downtown Lima hotel. The places changed, but we could feel secure—just another pair of men in business suits, lost among the many smoking over their cocktails or coffee. This time, I found him at the Hotel Bolívar, sitting under its exquisite stained-glass dome.
“Fidel is going to Chile,” he said, “for an extended stay. There will be plenty of opportunities.”
I felt a rush of emotion.
“What?” I stammered. “When?”
“The dates aren’t set yet. We have time.”
I could barely speak. It would be a chance to redeem myself. I had carried the shame for my failure for so long. I saw it when I looked in the mirror. It welled in me every time I heard Fidel’s name.
Bishop might have noticed that I was overwhelmed by the rush of conflicting feelings. He might even have recognized the surge of exhilaration that lifted me and left me speechless. Whether he did or didn’t, I’ll never know. As I stumbled mentally, gathering my thoughts, he spoke.
“Fidel loves the limelight,” he continued. “This is a chance for him to shine. There will be plenty of long-winded speeches, lots of press conferences, and lots and lots of posing for the cameras.”
He studied me for a moment before finishing.
“Which means lots and lots of chances,” he said, “to get it right.”
We met again the next day, at a private residence on the outskirts of the city. Bishop wanted to discuss the mission. He called it “Operation Condor.”
We talked for six hours—about the known, the unknown, the obstacles, and the possibilities.
Bishop remained adamant about one thing. He wanted the world to know that the assassins were Cuban exiles. The CIA could not be implicated in any way. Alpha 66, he said, should take responsibility.
Trained to Kill Page 17