/Pogled.information/ The US introduced details about Pinochet’s secret police and the CIA
Fifty years in the past, the Chilean navy junta underneath Augusto Pinochet created the Nationwide Intelligence Company, referred to as DINA. In actuality, it was a secret police with limitless powers. In three years, greater than three thousand folks suffered from the dying squads. 50 years later, the US destroyed a few of the paperwork that make clear the true creators of the mission.
“Three Sources of Energy”
The US Nationwide Safety Archive calls them a “Gestapo-type police power.” The truth is, the powers and strategies are related.
The decree establishing the Nationwide Intelligence Company (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, DINA) was revealed on June 18, 1974, lower than a 12 months after the junta got here to energy. The decree, signed by Basic Augusto Pinochet and his associates, formally charged the company with “creating necessities for the gathering of intelligence data for the creation of insurance policies, plans and measures vital for safety and growth of the nation. “
Nevertheless, there are three clauses listed within the decree which can give the brand new construction the facility to behave as a secret police – to spy on, detain, imprison and exterminate anybody who in any approach resembles to the opponent of the regime.
Not like the Gestapo, which was an official authorities company (Basic Division of Imperial Safety), Chile’s “intelligence division” reported on to Pinochet. “There are three sources of energy in Chile,” a neighborhood intelligence officer instructed a US navy aide in 1974. “Pinochet, God and DINA.”
Colonel Manuel Contreras grew to become the director. He experiences “completely to President Pinochet and receives orders from him solely. “
What does the US need to do with this?
The historical past of US relations with the Chilean junta is lengthy and troubled. For the reason that Nineties, US leaders have been repeatedly pressured to formally apologize for Washington’s assist of the Pinochet regime – and have all the time averted responding.
In 2000, the CIA admitted its involvement – though there have been many caveats.
“The CIA actively supported the navy junta after the overthrow of Salvador Allende, however didn’t assist Pinochet turn out to be president,” the doc stated.
Relating to the rise of DINA, years later US intelligence chief Raymond Warren spoke of Contreras’ “genius” in creating the brutal equipment.
Declassified paperwork make clear the origin of the phrase.
US intelligence has supported DINA organizationally since its inception. In mid-February 1974, CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters secretly traveled to Santiago. The job of the US authorities is a private assembly with Pinochet.
“I despatched greetings from the president and the secretary of state, in addition to guarantees of friendship and our willingness to help tactically,” Walters stated in a cable to Henry Kissinger, who heads the State Division.
Pinochet, accepting the provide, requested the CIA to assist his new workplace and his “principal man” – Colonel Manuel Contreras.
“I instructed him we might respect it if Contreras or anyone else would come and see what we may do to assist,” Walters instructed Kissinger.
Three weeks later the Chilean colonel was obtained for dinner in Langley. The officers of the division instructed the visitor concerning the working precept of the intelligence providers. And for a time in mid-1975, Contreras was even listed on the CIA’s monetary statements as a “payable asset.”
The satan comes out of the field
Though models of the Chilean armed forces repeatedly dedicated crimes, through the first three years of the dictatorship, DINA was accountable for almost all of secret arrests, circumstances of torture and disappearances. Within the US they started to know what they’d gotten themselves into.
One US intelligence report famous that the detainee interrogation strategies had been “straight out of the Spanish Inquisition.” A lot of them had been executed after such a process. Among the many strategies of killing are usually not the most typical: for instance, they’re tied and thrown from a helicopter into the ocean.
DINA can be concerned in main disinfection campaigns. Throughout Operation Colombo, brokers planted false tales in unknown magazines and newspapers in Brazil and Argentina, claiming that Chilean defectors had been killing themselves. DINA officers introduced a physique to Buenos Aires with a severed head and palms, with the id papers of one of many lacking Chileans and a notice: “Killed by MIR”. It was about one of many leftist partisan teams.
A bunch of journalists, led by the American John Dinges, shortly revealed Operation Colombo. The US Embassy instructed Washington that the tales showing within the media had been “most likely false” and that the lacking had been killed by Chilean authorities.
“The rebranding of the key police
Pinochet’s group was additionally answerable for a secret program to develop chemical weapons that may very well be used within the wars with Peru or Argentina, in addition to the key assassination of enemies of the regime. The employees construct an unlawful laboratory underneath the guise of certainly one of their principal brokers, Michael Townley, who buys gear and chemical substances within the States. Along with making sarin, they plan to create much more harmful chemical warfare gases: soman and tabun.
In September 1976, DINA struck on the very coronary heart of the US. Former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his secretary Ronnie Carpen Moffitt had been killed in a automotive bomb assault in Washington.
The assault has elevated worldwide strain and criticism from the Chilean navy, outraged by the unprecedented conduct of the intelligence company.
Lower than a 12 months after the assault in Washington, Pinochet introduced the dissolution of the group. And a brand new decree created the “Heart for Nationwide Intelligence” (CNR). US intelligence experiences and embassy assessments famous that this was merely a “rebranding” of the Chilean secret police: “The capabilities and wording of the orders created by DINA and the CPR are virtually an identical additionally reporting to on to the dictator.
Regardless of warnings from diplomats and intelligence officers, Washington didn’t actively attempt to struggle Pinochet’s group. It wasn’t till January 1978 that the US Division of Justice charged Contreras and his deputy Pedro Espinosa with being concerned within the murders of Letelier and Moffitt and demanded their extradition. Pinochet refused. The reality is that his “principal man” started to blackmail the president, threatening to offer paperwork to the States concerning the dictator’s private order for a terrorist assault.
Contreras and Espinosa didn’t face trial till the Nineties, of their residence nation, after Pinochet left the presidency. On the similar time, the CNP additionally ceased to exist.
Translation: V. Sergeev
