The role of Argentina in Central America reached its zenith in the early 1980s with National Reorganization Process's involvement in covertly directing the Contra rebellion in Nicaragua in conjunction with the CIA.
Within the framework of Operation Charly, the Argentine military also implemented, with the help of the Reagan Administration, a series of arms interdiction programs in Central America to disrupt the supply of weapons to the insurgencies in the region.
New York Times journalist Leslie Gelb explained that "Argentina would be responsible, with funds from North American intelligence, of attacking the flux of equipment which was transiting Nicaragua to El Salvador and Guatemala [4]".
U.S. journalist Martha Honey documented the exportation of "social control techniques" which the Argentine army had "brutally perfected" in Argentina to Central American countries.
In July 1980, the Grupo de Tareas Exterior (GTE, External Operations Group) headed by Guillermo Suárez Mason, of the 601 Intelligence Battalion, took part in the Cocaine Coup of Luis García Meza in Bolivia, with the assistance of the Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.
[6] After attaining power in 1976, the National Reorganization Process formed close ties with the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle in Nicaragua among other right-wing dictatorships in Latin America.
According to an Argentine advisor with the Nicaraguan National Guard, the intelligence techniques used by the Somoza regime consisted of essentially the same "unconventional" methods which had been used in Argentina's Dirty War (torture, forced disappearance, extrajudicial killings).
The military in Argentina sent agents of the Batallón de Inteligencia 601 and the SIDE to Nicaragua in 1978 with the aim of apprehending and eliminating Argentine guerrillas fighting within the ranks of the Sandinistas.
A special commando team from Argentina worked in conjunction with Somoza's OSN (Office of National Security) and its Argentine advisors with the objective of capturing exiled squadrons from the ERP and the Montoneros.
Shortly after the Sandinista victory in July 1979, agents from Argentine intelligence began to organize exiled members of Somoza's National Guard residing in Guatemala into an anti-Sandinista insurgency.
On November 1, 1981, the Director of the CIA William Casey met with the Chief of Staff of the Argentine military; the two purportedly agreed that Argentina would oversee the contras and the United States would provide money and weapons.
Argentina's involvement had initially began in 1980, when the Videla regime dispatched army and naval officers to Guatemala, under contract from President Fernando Romeo Lucas García, to assist the security forces in counterinsurgency operations.
As part of the agreement, two-hundred Guatemalan officers were dispatched to Buenos Aires to undergo advanced military intelligence training, which included instruction in interrogation.
By way of the Guatemalan military's new computer service (installed by Tadiran Electronics Industries Ltd. of Israel), Argentine advisors introduced a data analysis system developed during the "Dirty War" in Argentina, which was used to monitor electrical and water usage to pinpoint the coordinates of guerrilla safe-houses.