Dan Mitrione

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Dan Mitrione was an American police officer, FBI agent and alleged torture expert who cooperated with the police in various Latin American countries.

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[edit] Career

Dan Mitrione Sr. was a police officer in Richmond, Indiana from 1945 to 1947 and joined the FBI in 1959. In 1960 he was assigned to State Department's International Cooperation Administration, going to South American countries to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques." There he started his unofficial career of torture expert. A.J. Langguth, a former New York Times bureau chief in Saigon, related that Mitrione was among the US advisers teaching Brazilian police how much electric shock to apply to prisoners without killing them [1]. A. J. Langguth also tells how older police officers were replaced "when the CIA and the U.S. police advisers had turned to harsher measures and sterner men." [2] He also describes that under the new head of the U.S. Public Safety program in Uruguay, Dan Mitrione, the United States "introduced a system of nationwide identification cards, like those in Brazil… [and] torture had become routine at the Montevideo [police] jefatura." [3]

From 1960 to 1967 he worked with the Brazilian police, during a time in which political opponents were systematically tortured, imprisoned without trial and killed. He returned to the US in 1967 to share his experiences and expertise on "counterguerilla warfare" at the Agency for International Development (AID), in Washington D.C.. In 1969, Mitrione moved to Uruguay, again under the AID, to oversee the Office of Public Safety.

In this period the Uruguayan government, lead by the conservative Colorado Party, had its hands full with a collapsing economy, labor and student strikes, and the Tupamaros, a left-wing urban guerilla group. On the other hand, Washington feared a possible victory during the elections of the Frente Amplio, a left-wing coalition, on the model of the victory of the Unidad Popular government in Chile, led by Salvador Allende, in 1970 [4]. The OPS had been helping the local police since 1965, providing them with weapons and training. It is assessed that torture was already practiced since the 60s, but Dan Mitrione is reportedly the man who made it routine [5]. He is quoted as having said once: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." [6]. He also helped train foreign police agents in the United States in the context of the Cold War. In his torture teaching experiments he used homeless wanderers [7]

As the use of torture grew and the tensions in Uruguay escalated, the Tupamaros kidnapped Mitrione on July 31, 1970. They proceeded to interrogate him about his past and the illegal intervention of U.S. government in Latin American affairs. Besides, they demanded the release of 150 political prisoners. The Uruguayan government, with US backing, refused, and Mitrione was later found dead in a car, with two shots in the head and no signs of any maltreatment (in fact, during the kidnapping, Mitrione had been shot in one shoulder and healed afterwards in the "Cárcel del Pueblo", "People's Prison").

[edit] Personal life

Mitrione was married and he had 9 children. His funeral was largely publicised by the US media, and it was attended by, amongst others, David Eisenhower and Richard Nixon's secretary of state William Rogers. Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis held a benefit concert for his family in Richmond, Indiana. Though he was characterized at his death as a man whose "devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere" by White House spokesperson Ron Ziegler, and as a "a great humanitarian" by his daughter Linda, evidence of his secret activities would later emerge, mostly through Cuban double agent Manuel Hevia Cosculluela. One of his sons, Dan Mitrione Jr., also joined the FBI and later got involved in a scandal involving bribes in a FBI drug investigation. Today, although recalled by few Americans, Dan Mitrione Sr. is still a controversial Cold War character.

[edit] References

  1. ^ A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors, Pantheon Books, 1978.
  2. ^ Langutth, p. 286
  3. ^ NIXON: "BRAZIL HELPED RIG THE URUGUAYAN ELECTIONS," 1971, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 71, June 20, 2002
  4. ^ documents presented by the National Security Archive NGO.
  5. ^ (Langguth, Hidden Terrors, pp. 285-7; New York Times, 15 August 1970)
  6. ^ (in Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, Pasaporte 11333: Ocho Años con la CIA. Havana, 1978, p. 286) See also Dan Mitrione, un maestro de la tortura, Clarín, September 2, 2001 (Spanish)
  7. ^ Dan Mitrione, un maestro de la tortura, Clarín, September 2, 2001 (Spanish)

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography and movie

[edit] External links

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