Group of Personal Friends  The Group of Personal Friends (), sometimes referred to by the Spanish acronym GAP, was the informal name of an armed guard of the Socialist Party of Chile maintained from 1970 to 1973 for the protection of Salvador Allende. The GAP was trained and equipped by Cuba and initially composed of ex guerrilla fighters. The GAP was formed during Salvador Allende's 1970 presidential campaign by Fernando Gómez, a member of the Cuban-trained Bolivian guerrilla group the ELN, at the instigation of Allende's daughter, Beatriz Allende. By the time of the election, the GAP had expanded with the addition of more ex-ELN combatants volunteering to provide security to Allende and, later, members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). Cuba provided technical advisers to assist the GAP, including among them Tony de la Guardia and Patricio de la Guardia. On one of Allende's first public appearances after his inauguration, a Chilean journalist inquired of the president who the armed men were accompanying him, to which Allende replied "a group of personal friends", giving the group the moniker from which it would thereafter be known. During the 1971 visit of Fidel Castro to Chile, Cuban protection officers brought with them an unusually large arsenal including RPG-7s and AK-47s, leaving almost the entire quantity behind in Chile for the previously pistol-equipped GAP. Allende came to rely on the GAP as his principal protective force, despite the organization having no formal legal status. GAP leveraged its hybrid status to conduct recce and intelligence-gathering in Chile under the pretense of presidential protection but with information actually being collected for the benefit of MIR paramilitary operations against the political opposition. However, a 1972 operation in Curimon, in which intoxicated GAP personnel fumbled their mission to locate the whereabouts of Arturo Marshall, made Chilean military intelligence aware of the use of GAP in this manner. This led to the disentanglement of the GAP from MIR, which was put under the formal control of the ruling Socialist Party, leading to the resignation or dismissal of many of the MIR members of the GAP. At the outset of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, the presidential palace of La Moneda was defended by members of the GAP, 20 detectives of the Investigations Police of Chile (PDI), and 300 carabineros. As news of the military uprising reached Santiago, leader Bruno the White led a dozen armed GAP reinforcements to the presidential residence.