Emilio Eduardo Massera was an Argentine Naval military officer and a leading participant in the Argentine coup d'état of 1976. In 1981, he was found to be a member of P2, a clandestine Masonic lodge involved in Italy's strategy of tension. Many considered Massera to have masterminded the junta's Dirty War against political opponents, which resulted in over 30,000 deaths and disappearances.

The Dirty War is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina for the period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor, during which military and security forces and death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance hunted down any political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism, or the Montoneros movement.