March 1976. Following the coup against Isabel Peron, the armed forces of Argentina formally exercised power through a right-wing junta whose leaders would rule until Dec. 10, 1983. They called their repressive governing program the National Reorganization Process.

Using the tactics adopted by the opposition Montoneros (left-wing Peronists) and People's Revolutionary Army as rationale, these military dictators attempted to silence all dissenting voices.

The linchpin of their doctrine of ideological war was the elimination of the "social base" of insurgency, which translated as the detention, torture and murder of intellectuals, middle-class students and labor organizers, though few had proven ties to leftist guerrillas. By the end of the 1970s, the insurgents had been suppressed, but the nation had suffered horribly from its "Dirty War."

Documenting the disappearance and probable death of some 11,000 people at the hands of the military regime, the 1984 Commission on the Disappeared was a grisly testament to political paranoia. But human rights groups estimate that more than 30,000 "disappeared" (arrested and executed without trial) during the 1976-83 purge. This does not count an estimated 1,500 deaths attributed to various guerrilla attacks and assassinations.

Many fled into exile. Few dared voice outrage, save for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, mothers of the dead and disappeared who began holding vigils in April 1977. Their demands for an accounting were unmet.

As editor of The Buenos Aires Herald, Robert Cox, who had immigrated to the country from England in 1959, exhorted the generals to stop the killing, even trying to engage them directly — a delicate and dangerous process. Exhibiting tenacity and courage, he stayed on as others left, fighting to bring the truth to light until the safety of his family finally compelled him to leave.

"We all grew up very quickly in that time," recalls 42-year-old journalist David Cox, who followed in his father's footsteps. "There was the fear of constantly being watched. We were children, but we knew what was going on. It wasn't just when the military came to power in 1976; it started earlier. All these people had been killed. My father, who saw this happening before anyone else, felt he had to stay.

"He spoke harshly to the generals. But when the word came that we were going to be next on the list, my mother pleaded with him for us to leave. At first, he wanted the family to go ahead of him while he stayed and did the work. But even though my mother believed in what he was doing and was partly the source of his courage, what it came down to was her saying, 'We need you with us.' We all came out of it alive, which was a miracle."

Robert Cox retired earlier this year as assistant editor of The Post and Courier after 28 years of service.

His son, a producer with CNN in Atlanta, is the author of the chronicle "Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Editor Robert J. Cox (Buenos Aires, Argentina: 1976-1983)," published by the book division of Evening Post Ventures in association with Joggling Board Press.

Economic disarray, corruption and public revulsion, not to mention the regime's 1982 defeat at the hands of Great Britain in the Falklands War of 1982, finally discredited the junta and led to the lifting of bans on political parties and basic political liberties. But grave damage had been done.

David, who also remembers an Argentine childhood that was "very rich, full of immense wonders," wrote the book his father could not.

"After the experience we had endured, my father wanted a place that would be quiet and good for the family. He went ahead of us, to Charleston. Once the family arrived here, it was quite something to us, so green and tranquil — a dream. This was very powerful, this feeling of calmness.

"When I was still little, my mother asked my father to write this book, thinking that it would do him good because of everything he was going through — and to this day still does go through. He tried. Later I asked him to do the book and hoped he would follow through. It was important to the whole family, but most important for him, because everything he had experienced was so intense and difficult. But it was too painful; he had seen way too much, and just couldn't write it."

The job fell to David to write a story about journalism, about terrorism and about family.

"It is, of course, a tribute to my father, who, in opposing the junta, did something very few did. Because of that, a lot of people still are alive. The hardest thing for me was to sit down and hear his voice on the recordings that had been made when he was in Argentina, recordings made in order to protect his life, for fear that at any moment anything might happen. He wanted to leave some sort of testimony.

"My father kept every single document, which was amazing since a lot of things in Argentina had been destroyed. I felt this enormous responsibility to be able to write it in the most objective way."

David first wrote a Spanish-language account of letters exchanged between his father and a confidante, loosely translated as "Witness to the Truth," which he says is very different in approach than "Dirty Secrets, Dirty War."

"It is pure, objective testimony. There is a big struggle in Argentina about the truth of what really happened, though things are coming out more and more. It is now very hard to deny what happened."

When David, himself a former Herald staffer, was in Buenos Aires writing "Witness to the Truth," he injected himself into the narrative only to the extent of relating what he was experiencing thereupon his return. "I spoke to the generals. I also spoke to the victims. I asked them questions I had not been able to ask when I was very little."

With "Dirty Secrets, Dirty War," he wanted to tell his father's story and stay completely out of it. David felt he had been presented with a great opportunity, not only to describe his family's experience, but the story of all those who had suffered.

"It is my hope that people can take something positive out of this," he says. "It's still very emotional, though. The story still touches us, affecting each one of us in a different way. But I think that the more we make the journey as a family, the easier it becomes. I knew it would be painful, but in many ways it is a relief. For the first time, my brother, Peter, has been able to open up about what he experienced.

"I felt I had to do it, really, for my father. Although this is a family story, I felt this tremendous burden to set my father free, and to tell this story to my generation."