Lis­ten: One 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.)