Operation TOUCAN was a conspiracy theory which alleged a KGB/DGI public relations and disinformation campaign directed at the military dictatorship of Chile led by Augusto Pinochet, first published by the FrontPage Magazine. According to former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin, the alleged plot was originally conceived by Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov. The alleged plot's twofold task was to organize sympathetic human rights activists to pressure the United Nations and generate negative press for the Pinochet dictatorship. In 1976, the start of TOUCAN, the New York Times published 66 articles on Chile’s human rights record and four on Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and only 3 such articles on the human rights situation in Cuba.
As part of the alleged operation TOUCAN, the KGB also forged a letter tying the CIA to an assassination campaign by Chile’s DINA and many journalists, including columnist Jack Anderson of the New York Times, used this information in their news stories as evidence of the CIA’s involvement in the more nefarious parts of Operation Condor.