Dan Mitrione

Dan Mitrione was an American policeman, FBI agent and alleged torture expert who cooperated with the police in various Latin American countries.

Career

He was a policeman in Indiana from 1945 to 1947 and joined the FBI in 1959. In 1960 he was assigned to State Department's International Cooperation Administration, going to South American countries to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques." There he started his unofficial career of torture expert.

From 1960 to 1967 he worked with the Brazilian police, during a time in which political opponents were systematically tortured, imprisoned without trial and killed. He returned to the US in 1967 to share his experiences and expertise on "counterguerilla warfare" at the Agency for International Development, in Washington D.C.. In 1969, Mitrione moved to Uruguay, again under the AID, to oversee the Office of Public Safety.

In this period the Uruguayan government had its hands full with a collapsing economy, labor and student strikes, and the Tupamaros, a left-wing urban guerilla group. The OPS had been helping the local police since 1965, providing them with weapons and training. It is assessed that torture was already practiced since the 60s, but Dan Mitrione is reportedly the man who made it routine. He is often quoted as having said once: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." He also helped train foreign police agents in the United States in the context of the Cold War. In his torture teaching experiments he used homeless wanderers, of which three are known to have died during Mitrione's torture sessions.

As the use of torture grew and the tensions in Uruguay escalated, the Tupamaros kidnapped Mitrione on July 31, 1970. They proceeded to interrogate him about his past, without using torture, and demanded the release of 150 political prisoners for his freedom. The Uruguayan government, with US backing, refused, and Mitrione was later found dead. The 1973 movie State of Siege by Costa-Gavras is based on this story, with Mitrione being played by Yves Montand, though with a different name.

Personal life

Mitrione was married and he had 9 children. His funeral was largely publicised by the US media, and it was attended by, amongst others, David Eisenhower and Richard Nixon's secretary of state William Rogers. Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis held a benefit concert for his family in Richmond, Indiana. Though he was characterized at his death as a man whose "devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere" by White House spokesperson Ron Ziegler, and as a "a great humanitarian" by his daughter Linda, evidence of his secret activities would later emerge, mostly through Cuban double agent Manuel Hevia Cosculluela. Today, although recalled by few Americans, he is still a controversial Cold War character.

See also

• History of Uruguay
• Brazil under the military regime

External links

• http://www.killinghope.org/ - Killing Hope, a book by William Blum on US foreign interventions, including in Uruguay
• http://farmrunoff.blogspot.com/2004/07/river-of-painted-birds.html