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Brazil National Intelligence Service 1964-90
The National Intelligence Service, 1964-90
The military-dominated SNI, which the Castelo Branco government
created in 1964, was intended originally as a civilian agency of
the executive branch. Initially, the SNI, under retired General
Golbery do Couto e Silva, freed Castelo from dependence on army
and Federal
Police intelligence reports. The then head of the army, General
Costa e Silva, feared that the new agency would weaken the army's
secret service. However, by the end of 1968, with the triumph of
the hard-liners, the SNI took on a military coloration. In 1973
it secured its dominance over the so-called intelligence community
with the opening of the National Intelligence School (Escola Nacional
de Informações--EsNI) in Brasília. The following
year, the EsNI absorbed the ESG postgraduate intelligence course.
Supposedly, the EsNI did not train police agents, and it selected
its own students. By 1980 some officers were saying that the EsNI
would be as useful as the ESG to their careers.
Alfred Stepan observed that the SNI differed from similar agencies
in other countries in that it enjoyed a near monopoly over operations
and training, and that the SNI chief had ministerial rank and therefore
sat in the president's cabinet. In addition, he has pointed out
that the SNI had an official in every government agency, in state-owned
businesses, and at one point in the universities.
These officials followed the daily functioning of the administrative
machinery to ensure conformity with national security goals. Moreover,
the SNI was autonomous, even regarding finances.
The SNI served as the backbone of the military regime's system
of control and repression. Although there have been secret police
in Brazil since at least the Vargas era, military involvement reached
new heights with the creation of the SNI. The SNI grew out of the
Institute for Research and Social Studies (Instituto de Pesquisas
e Estudos Sociais--IPES), which General Couto e Silva had established
to undermine the Goulart government. The SNI provided clearances
for anyone seeking a government job or requesting to conduct research
in the army archives. Using an elaborate system of informants and
telephone taps, the SNI accumulated and analyzed reports on a wide
range of people, organizations, and topics. One study by political
scientists David V. Fleischer and the late Robert Wesson suggests
that there were as many as 50,000 persons in the employ of the SNI
during the 1964-85 regime. Furthermore, both Presidents Médici
and Figueiredo had been SNI chiefs.
In theory, the SNI supervised and coordinated the intelligence
agencies of the three services. However, in practice the service
agencies maintained their autonomy. The service agencies included
the Army Intelligence Center (Centro de Informações
do Exército--CIE); the Air Force Intelligence Center (Centro
de Informações da Aeronáutica--CIA); and the
Naval Intelligence Center (Centro de Informações de
Marinha--Cenimar).
The chief of staff of each of the army commands supposedly was
responsible for the intelligence work in that command's territory.
In practice, that officer was not necessarily informed of CIE activities,
which followed a parallel chain of command. Each command also had
an Internal Operations Department-Internal Defense Operations Center
(Departamento de Operações Internas-Centro de Operações
de Defesa Interna--DOI-CODI). The DOI-CODIs became centers of dirty
tricks and torture.
From the outset, there was resistance to the idea of the CIE. In
1966 President Castelo Branco rejected the idea of creating an army
intelligence service annexed to the minister of army's office, because
it would weaken the General Staff's influence. The next year, the
new minister of army, General Aurélio de Lyra Tavares, established
the CIE over the objections of the chief of staff, General Orlando
Geisel. As early as 1968, the CIE was exploding bombs in theaters,
wrecking bookstores, and kidnapping people. When the left began
terrorist violence in late 1968, the CIE expanded to about 200 officers
and became the axis of repression, eliminating all signs of leftist
violence in three years.
The SNI, CIE, and other intelligence agencies were the most dubious
legacy that the military regime left to the New Republic. The scars
of repression and violence, including the mistreatment, torture,
and murder of prisoners, will mark the officer corps for years to
come. During World War II, Brazilian officers serving in Italy with
the FEB (Brazilian Expeditionary Force), the first Latin American
military organization in history to participate in combat in Europe,
prided themselves on the correct treatment they accorded German
prisoners under the Geneva Convention. Their successors, however,
were taught that international law did not apply in cases of internal
security. Thus, they used massive intimidation, kidnappings, beatings,
secret arrests and imprisonments, psychological and physical torture,
murder, and secret burial. In the past, rebels or criminals from
the margins of society and working-class people could expect brutal
treatment from the forces of law and order. The military regime
brought that experience to the opposition in the middle and upper
classes. The "repressive apparatus," as it was often referred
to, cast a shadow of fear and drew an invisible pale through Brazilian
society to dissuade the educated classes from crossing it. It also
served to dissuade opposition within the military itself.
The creation of the DOI network beginning in 1971 formed a parallel
chain of command, one that did not necessarily end with the president
of the republic. President Geisel, a retired general, struggled
to have his orders fulfilled by the CIE system. Consequently, the
CIE sought to undermine his government and to make Minister of Army
Sylvio Couto Coelho da Frota the next president. The CIE also waged
a pamphlet war against General Golbery do Couto e Silva, chief of
Geisel's Civilian Household, who wanted to shut down the CIE.
Data as of April 1997
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