Secret police of Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1974–1990)
The Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional () or DINA was the secret police of Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The DINA has been referred to as "Pinochet's Gestapo". Established in November 1973 as a Chilean Army intelligence unit headed by Colonel Manuel Contreras and vice-director Raúl Iturriaga, the DINA was then separated from the army and made an independent administrative unit in June 1974 under the auspices of Decree 521. The DINA existed until 1977, after which it was renamed the "Central Nacional de Informaciones" () or CNI.
In 2008, the Chilean Army presented a list of 1,097 DINA agents to Judge Alejandro Solís.
Despite falling under Pinochet's legal authority, American-born DINA operative Michael Townley described Contreras as DINA's actual "intellectual head." Pedro Espinoza served as deputy to Contreras as well.
DINA internal suppression and human rights violations.
Under decree #521, the DINA had the power to detain any individual so long as there was a declared state of emergency. Such an administrative state characterized nearly the entire length of the Pinochet government. Torture and rape of detainees was common:
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DINA censorship of media.
As of September 11, 1973, the military dictatorship worked with DINA to censor channels, newspapers, and radio transmissions that supported the Popular Socialist Union and supporters. A decree by the Junta established that all public information would have to be inspected and revised by the Junta before airing, and a couple days later an "Office of Censorship" was created to supervise all media. A lot of newspapers received their work back scribbled out with red ink.
Through coercion, murder, and kidnappings, television outlets masked the truth on the coup d'état as a plan by the military of Chile. Various international cable news networks were banned by DINA to prevent the news of the forced coup d'état by the military. Some international networks were convinced to lie by the Junta about social and political aspects of Chile.
The censorship breached particular homes and public services, and on September 23, 1973, DINA sent policemen to register households and institutions. They searched subversive evidence such as books by Pablo Neruda, articles on social sciences, political science, human rights, and those who were rounded up and burned at the Plaza de Armas (Santiago).
Role of Manuel Contreras.
Despite answering to Pinochet, Gen. Manuel Contreras held significant sway over DINA's operations and is credited with creating the group. In his role as leader of DINA, and as one of Pinochet's closest confidents, Contreras became the second most powerful person in Chile. In a letter which Michael Townley wrote to Contreras on March 1, 1978, Townley, using the alias J. Andreas Wilson, referred to him on as "Don Manuel" and noted the authority he had over him. When he brought up the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, Townley noted how the influential DINA leader was able to get away with not letting Pinochet know the truth about this case.
Foreign involvement.
The United States backed and supported the Fatherland and Liberty Nationalist Front, which funded and directed the first coup attempt against Allende's regime, known as the Tanquetazo. The CIA established links with DINA after the successful 1973 Chilean coup d'état. Ties were cut, however, after the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington DC, which DINA agent Michael Townley was directly tied with and which eventually led to the disbanding of the DINA in 1977. In a confession letter dated March 13, 1978 Townley claimed that he in fact went through with the Letelier and Ronni Moffit assassinations on behalf of DINA and was "following orders from Gen. Contreras." On September 21, 1976, Townley updated an earlier letter and implied that DINA worked with other Southern Cone secret police forces as part of a network known as "Red Condor," which he claimed assisted his travel into the United States to recruit the American Cuban exile assassins who were on his assassination team that killed Letelier.
DINA foreign assassinations and operations.
The DINA was involved in Operation Condor, as well as Operation Colombo. In July 1976, two magazines in Argentina and Brazil appeared and published the names of 119 Chilean leftist opponents, claiming they had been killed in internal disputes unrelated to the Pinochet regime. Both magazines disappeared after this one and only issue. Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia eventually asked Chilean justices to lift Pinochet's immunity in this case, called "Operation Colombo", having accumulated evidence that Pinochet had ordered the DINA to plant this disinformation, in order to cover up the "disappearance" and murder by the Chilean secret police of those 119 persons. In September 2005, Chile's Supreme Court ordered the lifting of Pinochet's general immunity from prosecutions, with respect to this case.
Michael Townley's role.
In a confession letter which Michael Townley wrote on March 14, 1978, he acknowledged to being DINA's lead foreign assassin. Joining DINA in 1974, Townley would go on lead a special DINA unit called the “Agrupación Avispa”—the Wasp Group—which operated under DINA’s Mulchén Brigade and was “dedicated to elimination” of opponents of the Pinochet regime.
Assassinations of Carlos Prats and Orlando Letelier.
The DINA worked with international agents, such as Michael Townley, who assassinated former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington DC in 1976, as well as General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974. In a letter discussing plans for the assassination of Letelier, Townley noted the planned date-September 21, 1976- and how he received the assassination order from Contreras deputy Pedro Espinoza.
Michael Townley worked with Eugenio Berríos on producing sarin in the 1970s, at a laboratory in a DINA-owned house in the district of Lo Curro, Santiago de Chile. Eugenio Berríos, who was murdered in 1992, was also linked with drug traffickers and agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Accounts of daily life in Chile.
Certain writers and journalists who opposed the right-wing regime conducted clandestine interviews with individuals enduring life under DINA. Among them was Patricia Politzer, who documented the harrowing experiences of those who suffered in Chile.
One of the testimonies features a mother whose leftist sympathizer son fell victim to forced disappearances in Chile. Despite the removal of Pinochet from power, she never received any information about her son's fate. Numerous others who disappeared or were killed during that period remained unidentified, leaving thousands of families of leftist sympathizers still searching for their loved ones in Chile to this day.
Compensation for these losses was minimal, and children endured immense hardship. In another interview, Politzer recounted the story of a woman who survived being shot alongside other leftists. She emphasized that had she perished at the hands of DINA, her children would have been left without care. These accounts highlight the callous disregard exhibited by DINA and other agencies operating under Pinochet's authority, resulting in children being orphaned. Patricia Politzer's work in "Fear in Chile" vividly portrays the stark realities of life in Chile during the Pinochet era.
Replacement of DINA by the CNI.
DINA was replaced by the CNI (Central Nacional de Informaciones) in 1977 and Contreras was replaced by general Odlanier Mena. By that time, DINA had reached its military goals: assassinate the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) leadership and the main leaders of the Popular Unity, the coalition of the parties that had won the 1970 elections. The dissolution of the CNI occurred in 1990 during the Chilean transition to democracy.
After the fall of Pinochet's regime, Contreras was prosecuted in Chile due to crimes against humanity while heading the DINA and sentenced to 12 years in prison for covert kidnappings, a crime that had not been amnestied. However, judge Víctor Montiglio who had replaced judge Juan Guzmán Tapia gave amnesty to Contreras in 2005.
Finally, on June 30, 2008, Contreras was sentenced to two life-sentences, one for the murder of Carlos Prats and one for the murder of his wife, Sofía Cuthbert. He also received an additional 20-year sentence for illicit association.
Other activities.
In 1975, Virgilio Paz Romero, a Cuban exile affiliated with DINA, visited Northern Ireland and secretly took photographs of prisons run by the Northern Ireland Prison Service as part of a DINA assignment. The Chilean government had intended to publicly display the photographs at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City to discredit British criticism of human rights abuses in Chile. However, the photographs arrived too late to be utilised by the Chilean government, and were eventually published in Santiago-based newspaper "El Mercurio" instead. Townley wrote an undated letter to Pinochet informing him of Romero's assignment, which was subsequently intercepted by the American National Security Agency.
Beginning in late 2014, in response to a request by Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin, the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, a United States Department of Defense (DoD) institution for defense and security studies in the Western Hemisphere, was placed under investigation by the DoD's Inspector General. Levin's request was in response to several instances of insider whistleblowing, which alleged that the institution knowingly protected a professor who worked for DINA, as well as the purported participation of other employees of the institution in the 2009 Honduran coup d'état. Senator Patrick Leahy stated that "[r]eports that NDU hired foreign military officers with histories of involvement in human rights abuses, including torture and extra-judicial killings of civilians, are stunning, and they are repulsive". Leahy had previously authored the "Leahy Law", which prohibits U.S. assistance to foreign military and law enforcement personnel suspected of violating human rights.
References.
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