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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
In the immediate aftermath of the 1973 coup, a
semiformal
umbrella group, the National Intelligence Directorate
(Dirección
Nacional de Inteligencia--DINA), was formed, ostensibly to
coordinate the activities of the intelligence services of
the army,
navy, air force, Carabineros, and Investigations Police.
From the
beginning, DINA functioned as a secret police and was
engaged in
the repression of dissidence within the state and the
exaction of
revenge on its enemies without. So notorious were its
activities
that of 957 identified "disappearances" of enemies of the
Pinochet
regime, DINA was blamed by the Rettig Commission on human
rights
abuses for perpetrating 392.
DINA has also been linked by prosecutors in the United
States,
Italy, Argentina, and Chile to the murder of General
Carlos Prats,
the former commander in chief of the army, in Buenos Aires
in 1974;
the attempted murder of Bernardo Leighton, the Christian
Democratic
leader, in Rome in 1974; and the assassination of Orlando
Letelier,
a former member of the Allende administration and
ambassador to the
United States under the Popular Unity (Unidad Popular)
regime, in
Washington in 1976. DINA was abolished in 1977 and
replaced by a
new organization known as the National Information Center
(Centro
Nacional de Información--CNI).
The functions of the CNI combined those functions
carried out
by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
FBI, and
Secret Service. Although human rights abuses abated
significantly
after the abolition of DINA, its successor continued to
draw
criticism and was disbanded upon the return of civilian
government
in 1990. Most of its approximately 2,000 operatives were
absorbed
either by army intelligence or by a new coordinating body
for
military intelligence, operating under the aegis of the
National
Defense Staff and known as the Directorate of National
Defense
Intelligence (Dirección de Inteligencia de la Defensa
Nacional--
DIDN). The DIDN concerns itself primarily with defense
rather than
with internal intelligence.
The Aylwin government relied mainly on the
Investigations
Police to combat terrorist groups. Technical assistance
has been
obtained from Italy and Germany. The Carabineras created a
new
countersubversive intelligence body in May 1990, the
Directorate of
Carabineros Political Intelligence (Dirección de
Inteligencia de
Carabineros--Dipolcar). Its previous unit was implicated
in human
rights violations. In early 1993, the government was
finally able
to enact new legislation, after more than a year of
congressional
delays in approving the project, creating the Directorate
of Public
Security and Information (Dirección de Seguridad Pública e
Informaciones). The new directorate is under the Ministry
of
Interior and allows the ministry to coordinate the
intelligence and
anticrime and antiterrorist activities of the Carabineros
and
Investigations Police.
Data as of March 1994
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