Argentine President Javier Milei on Monday dissolved the espionage structure he inherited from Kirchnerism. He put an end to the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) by decree and replaced it with a structure of four offices that will answer directly to the president and It will be called SIDE (State Intelligence Secretariat), the name that the secret services founded in 1946 bore until 2015. The Casa Rosada’s argument is that the AFI was “used for spurious activities such as internal espionage, influence peddling and political and ideological persecution.”
The return of the SIDE is part of the “cultural war” that Milei has undertaken since his arrival at the Casa Rosada last December. The agency lost its name in March 2015, two months after the death of Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation of the terrorist attack that destroyed the headquarters of the AMIA Jewish mutual society in Buenos Aires in 1994. The then president, Cristina Kirchner, saw behind that death, which has never been clarified, the dark hand of the secret services. Her response was to restructure the entire system to take power away from the spies: she eliminated the SIDE and created the AFI. One of the fundamental changes was the transfer to the Supreme Court of control of wiretapping, the SIDE’s preferred weapon for spying on politicians, journalists and businessmen. Kirchner’s successor, Mauricio Macri, maintained the Kirchnerist structure. Milei has now dismantled it because, she says, “the denaturalization of the role of the intelligence agency for decades was total.”
The Casa Rosada has promoted the return to the SIDE as a fresh start. And it chose a significant date for this: next Thursday marks the 30th anniversary of the attack on the AMIA, an attack that caused 85 deaths and remains unpunished thanks, in part, to the deplorable work of the intelligence services. The Justice Department even took those who were in charge of the agency during the Menem administration (1989-1999) to court for covering up. The death of prosecutor Nisman in January 2015 is part of the same dark plot: even today it is not known whether it was suicide or murder.
The current inspector of the now ex-AFI, Sergio Neiffert, will continue to be in charge of the new SIDE. Before becoming the head of Argentina’s spies, he was a radio and television producer at an advertising agency. Today he answers directly to Santiago Caputo, an advisor to Milei without a position who is the most powerful man in the government. Aged 38, he is the nephew of the current Minister of the Economy, Luis Caputo, and little by little he has been occupying increasingly relevant spaces in the presidential entourage. He took control of the intelligence services last June, when he placed Neiffert after the resignation of the man chosen by Nicolás Posse, the Chief of Staff who was ejected from his post by Milei after only five months in office.
President Javier Milei has ordered the dissolution of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) based on the results obtained within the framework of the intervention of the agency that took place on December 12, 2023. Instead, the governing body of the Federal Intelligence System (AFI) will be formed… pic.twitter.com/c9vdowJ4X3
— Office of the President (@OPRArgentina) July 16, 2024
According to the scheme devised by the far-right government, four independent offices will be under the control of SIDE, each with its own chief. There will be an Argentine Intelligence Service (SIA), which will be in charge of promoting cooperation with other international intelligence agencies; a National Security Agency (ASN), responsible for anticipating and reporting on federal crimes and terrorism; a Federal Cybersecurity Agency (AFC), intended to prevent attacks on state archives; and a new Internal Affairs agency, which will audit the use of resources by the other three. The atomization of the structure takes power away from the middle managers and adds it to Neiffert, that is, Caputo, Milei’s personal advisor. As director of SIDE, Neiffert will also have control of the reserved funds, the money that finances special operations without having to be held accountable. These are a traditional black box of Argentine politics.
With the new SIDE, Milei intends to take control of the spy underworld, a structure parallel to the State that has been the nightmare of all governments since the end of the dictatorship in 1983. Raúl Alfonsín, the first president of democracy, suffered a structure contaminated by the military legacy; Carlos Menem suffered the consequences of the attack on the AMIA; Cristina Kirchner was always convinced that the death of prosecutor Nisman was an operation by the SIDE to harm her; Mauricio Macri could not prevent his government from being involved in a scandal involving wiretapping of critical journalists; Milei is trying, once again, to bell the cat with a scheme that transfers enormous power to her closest circle.
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