Carefully Under Wraps

The president of the bishopric, Monsenor Adolfo Tortolo, announces to an audience of business people that a purification process will soon be carried out. The Order for Army Operations includes dispensations for special methods of interrogation, a euphemism for torture. The navy follows suit; the commander of naval operations, Admiral Luis Mendla, communicates this to navy officers in the Puerto Belgrano naval base. He maintains that these methods, as well as the elimination of living prisoners by throwing them into the sea, have been approved by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. But because of the international isolation of the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, the Argentine military must keep its procedures carefully under wraps.

Horacio Verbitsky's Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior