(One 30-minute segment)

RFAs 17–21 detailed and ana­lyzed (among other things) a dis­turbingly large num­ber of bloody deeds per­formed by the P-2 or “Pro­pa­ganda Due” Lodge. The P-2 is a clan­des­tine polit­i­cal and crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion, which func­tioned as a de facto crypto-fascist gov­ern­ment in Italy through­out much of the 1970s and 1980s. Includ­ing in its ranks pow­er­ful crim­i­nal, mil­i­tary, intel­li­gence and vio­lent right-wing ele­ments, the P-2 and the polit­i­cal milieu that it con­trolled pros­e­cuted a series of kid­nap­pings, bomb­ings, assas­si­na­tions, arms-for-drugs oper­a­tions, finan­cial scams coup attempts and other polit­i­cal machi­na­tions designed to desta­bi­lize Italy.

With pow­er­ful con­nec­tions to the Vat­i­can, ele­ments related to the P-2 fig­ure in the events in and around, the shoot­ing of Pope John Paul II in May of 1981.

The P-2 wielded con­sid­er­able deadly influ­ence in Latin Amer­ica, as well. This pro­gram exam­ines the influ­ence of key Argen­tine P-2 mem­ber Gen­eral Car­los Suarez-Mason on inter­na­tional ter­ror in Latin Amer­ica and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of death-squads in South and Cen­tral America.

The pro­gram begins by high­light­ing the recent Span­ish arrest war­rant and extra­di­tion request issued for key for­mer mem­bers of the Argen­tine mil­i­tary junta that con­ducted the “Dirty War” ter­ror pro­gram of the 1970’s and early 80s. Suarez was among the most impor­tant fig­ures in both the junta and the ter­ror. It was Suarez-Mason who devel­oped the con­cept of “ide­o­log­i­cal fron­tiers,” a polit­i­cal ratio­nale that was the foun­da­tion of an expan­sion of the method­ol­ogy and orga­ni­za­tion of Argen­tine polit­i­cal ter­ror in the region. Ide­o­log­i­cal fron­tiers entailed an inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of death squad and coun­terin­sur­gency oper­a­tions, ratio­nal­ized by the pre­sump­tion of the exis­tence of an “Inter­na­tional Com­mu­nist Con­spir­acy”. Mason was instru­men­tal in insti­gat­ing the Boli­vian “Cocaine Coup” of 1980. Mason was involved with Oper­a­tion Con­dor, an inter­na­tional assas­si­na­tion con­sor­tium com­posed of Latin Amer­i­can dictatorships.

The pro­gram also high­lights the exten­sion of Suarez-Mason’s influ­ence through­out Cen­tral Amer­ica through the piv­otal Argen­tine assis­tance given to the for­ma­tion of the Sal­vado­ran death squads and counter-insurgency appa­ra­tus, as well as the Nicaraguan Con­tras. (Recorded on 11/14/99.)