Promoted to captain in 1954, he entered the War College to train as a staff officer, and remained there three years transferring to the Army's Mountain Division in Mendoza Province.

[citation needed] Bussi was designated Master of military logistics by the Army High Command, and he taught the discipline in the General Luis María Campos War College.

Bussi was promoted to brigadier general in 1975, named head of the Tenth Infantry Brigade of the city of Buenos Aires, and in December, he was tapped to replace General Acdel Vilas as commander of Operativo Independencia, a military offensive ordered early that year by President Isabel Perón to counter a growing People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) insurgency in Tucumán,[3] which had already resulted in the deaths of at least 43 troops and 160 insurgents.

[5] The report of the Congressional Commission on Human Rights Violations in the Province of Tucumán described the Bussi administration as a vast repressive apparatus, directed mainly against labor union leaders, political figures, academics and students (many of whom were known to be unrelated to the climate of left-wing violence in evidence during the early 1970s).

[6] Justice Minister Ricardo Gil Lavedra, who formed part of the 1985 tribunal judging the military crimes committed during the Dirty War would later go on record saying that "I sincerely believe that the majority of the victims of the illegal repression were guerrilla militants".

[13] The Argentine Army 4th Airborne Infantry Brigade and local police scored further successes in mid-April in the city of Córdoba, when in a series of raids it captured and later killed some 300 militants entrusted with supporting the ERP military operations.

[3] A June 1976 operation succeeded in capturing People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) leader Mario Roberto Santucho, who was taken alive and died in a military hospital.

[18] Argentine intelligence officers in 1995 claimed ERP guerrillas were responsible for the deaths of at least 700 people in addition to scores of attacks on police and military units as well as kidnappings and robberies.

[20] In late 1990, before any trials could commence against him and fellow officers, President Carlos Menem pardoned him as well as 64 left-wing guerrilla commanders,[21] including the ERP successor, Enrique Haroldo Gorriarán Merlo, mastermind of the 1989 assault on an army barracks.

Obtaining a surprising 18% of the vote, the showing (and his base of support among large provincial landowners) encouraged him to form the Republican Force party and run for governor in 1991.

During his tenure, he had an important railyard cooperative in Tafí Viejo shuttered and faced charges of embezzlement for failing to disclose a Swiss bank account worth over US$ 100,000; when pressed on the issue, Bussi refused to confirm or deny the allegations.

[25] His election in 2003 as Mayor of San Miguel de Tucumán by 17 votes was likewise rejected and he was arrested on 15 October 2003 for his role in the 1976 disappearance of Congressman Guillermo Vargas Aignasse.

[26] Following the newly elected President Néstor Kirchner pledge to prosecute Dirty War-era crimes, and Congress' 2003 rescission of the Full Stop and Due Obedience Laws which had sheltered the military officers and ERP, Montoneros, and other guerrilla commanders guilty of human-right abuses, Bussi became a defendant in more than 600 cases.