The Flight

Incensed by what he perceived as injustices in the treatment of former members of Argentine's military dictatorship, retired navy officer Francisco Scilingo stunned his countrymen and the world by openly confessing to his own participation in the practice of pushing live political dissidents out of airplanes over the South Atlantic during the course of Argentina's dirty war. In a series of interviews with Horacio Verbitsky, Scilingo confirms what was rumoured for years but always denied by the Argentine military. He recounts his inside knowledge of the monstrous campaign of systematic torture and death waged by the military from 1976 to 1983, he details the military's practice of rotating personnal so that everyone including the officers would be complicit, and he talks about the Church's awareness and seeming endorsement of many of the atrocities.