Daniel Mitrione
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() (policeman) | |
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Born | August 4, 1920 |
Died | August 10, 1970 (Age 50) |
Cause of death | gunshot |
Victim of | murder |
Daniel Mitrione was a US policeman turned spook who taught torture techniques to police in South America.
Career
In 1960, he was assigned to the US State Department's International Cooperation Administration, going to South American countries to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques." A. J. Langguth, a former New York Times bureau chief in Saigon, claimed that Mitrione was among the US advisers teaching Brazilian police how much electric shock to apply to prisoners without killing them.[1] Langguth also claimed that older police officers were replaced "when the CIA and the U.S. police advisers had turned to harsher measures and sterner men"[2] and that under Mitrione as the new head of the US Public Safety program in Uruguay, 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]
In 1978 Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a CIA agent who had worked with Mitrione in Montevideo, published a book about his experiences (Eight Years with the CIA). According to Cosculluela, Mitrione had tortured four beggars to death with electric shocks at a 1970 seminar to demonstrate his techniques for Uruguayan police trainees. Cosculluela reported that Mitrione worked under William Cantrell, another CIA agent.[4]
References
- ↑ Langguth, p. 40
- ↑ Langguth, p. 286
- ↑ Nixon: "Brazil Helped Rig the Uruguayan Elections", 1971, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 71, June 20, 2002
- ↑ http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmitrione.htm