Declassified information from the United States government shows that European governments during the 1970s wanted to learn how to conduct their own ‘Operation Condor’ from South American dictators who were systematically torturing and killing dissidents in the region.

In the documents opened to the public April 12, official statements from the United Kingdom, France, and then West Germany were looking for advice from South American dictators in mainly Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Chile to combat the “dangerous level (of) subversion“ from the left.