As the Cold War recedes into the past, researchers have found a rich array of new opportunities as archives are discovered, documents are declassified, trials are held, and participants begin talking. Such is the case with Operation Condor, the international military intelligence network created by the Chilean dictatorship, and joined by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (with some involvement by Ecuador and Peru, as well as export of Condor practices to Central America). J. Patrice McSherry has deftly utilised such resources in an analysis that combines a conceptual framework with a compelling account of repression, suffering and death.

McSherry's primary theoretical thrust is that counterinsurgency fundamentally changed the relationship between state and society. Born of the French experience in Indochina and Algeria, and then further developed by the United States from the 1960s, counterinsurgency explicitly involved the expansion of state intelligence, psychological warfare (fostering fear, in other words), and disregard for legal norms. These ideas were disseminated widely, in some cases by the United States itself, although Latin American officers were also reading and digesting doctrines from all over the world, while adapting them to their own political contexts. The Cuban Revolution convinced many military leaders and political elites that new means were necessary to achieve the goal of protecting their countries from the scourge of Marxism.

As implemented in the 1970s, these new state policies meant that citizens' rights were conditional, total secrecy was necessary, and, perhaps most importantly, the state itself created a parastatal structure that acted on behalf of state actors while providing them plausible deniability. Carrying out operations that violated every norm of international law, they followed orders that could not be traced directly back to state authorities. The parallel state had ‘access to a vast shadow infrastructure including secret prisons, fleets of unmarked cars and unregistered aircraft, unofficial cemeteries, secure communications systems, and other parallel structures funded by “black budgets”’ (p. 8).

This element of McSherry's argument also directly contradicts the very common defence that these types of operations were run by rogue elements, over which the state had no control, and without direct connection to senior military policy makers. In Chile, for example, former army commander in chief, Juan Emilio Cheyre, deservedly gained much attention in 2004 when he took institutional responsibility for human rights abuses committed during the dictatorship, but still stopped short of admitting that it had been state policy. McSherry reveals the inner workings of an international institution, composed in turn of different national intelligence agencies, that was organised, financed and directed by state authorities, including in the United States. There may never be a ‘smoking gun’, as orders were given verbally and many documents destroyed, but research like McSherry's demonstrates convincingly that deniability is no longer plausible.

In detail, with 100 or more endnotes per chapter, McSherry examines case studies of assassination and torture committed by these parallel states: how they were planned, who planned them, who carried them out, how they were carried out, who knew about them, and how the international connections were forged and maintained. Also prominent is the role of the US government itself in promoting the work of Operation Condor, knowing full well what its operations entailed. Documents from the CIA routinely referred blandly to ‘missions’ and ‘activities’ that included kidnapping and assassination around the world.

An important issue left unexplored is the legacy of parallel state structures across the region. The intelligence agencies of that era were officially dismantled, but a number of militaries in the region continue to enjoy wide latitude regarding espionage activities, which are not necessarily overseen by elected civilian authorities and at times still generate controversy. In addition, parallel state structures have emerged in times of political upheaval, such as in Peru under Alberto Fujimori or in Colombia. McSherry's analysis should be viewed not only as a discussion of the past, but also as a cautionary tale for the present and future.