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Judi Lynn

(160,981 posts)
6. This country was so desperate to keep Uruguay from becoming democratized it sent a torturer,
Sat Sep 20, 2014, 09:54 PM
Sep 2014

Daniel Mitrione, former police in Indiana, who joined the State Department, under Dwight D. Eisenhower, to Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, to teach the "art" of torture to their police, so they could effectively torture the Tupamaros, the group to which both the current President and his wife belonged. Tuparmaros were leftists.

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Dan Mitrione[/center]
Here's a quick grab I found regarding his story:


December 08, 2013

Indiana Undercover: Dan Mitrione And The Birth Of Extraordinary Rendition

Mitrione was born in Italy in 1920 and his family later emigrated to the United States. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Mitrione began work as a cop for the Richmond police department in 1945. By 1955, he became the department's police chief. Mitrione came in contact with one of Indiana's most infamous residents, Rev. Jim Jones, while working as a Richmond cop. Jones began a sidewalk ministry in Richmond's black neighborhood when he was only 15 years old. It's unclear the nature of their relationship. Some believe that Mitrione counseled Jones as a police officer would counsel a child, while others believe Mitrione used Jones as an informant within Richmond's black community. Whatever their relationship, many years later Jones would be quoted as speaking very negatively of Mitrione to his followers at the People's Temple in Guyana. "There was one guy that I knew growing up in Richmond, a cruel, cruel person . . . a vicious racist." Mitrione and Jones would cross paths again later, but that's the subject of another post.

The FBI recruited Mitrione to work as one of its agents in 1959, but his career took a decidedly different path when he was assigned a year later to the State Department's International Cooperation Administration. From there he was sent to South America to teach public safety and police methods to local law enforcement officials. Although he operated under the auspices of International Development's Office of Public Safety, a predecessor organization for the Agency for International Development (AID), it is now widely accepted that he was actually working as an agent of the CIA. He was sent to several Latin American countries to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques," but his specialty was teaching local police how to torture political prisoners without killing them.

Mitrione spent most of the time from 1960-1967 working in Brazil. The American government was not happy with the leadership of Joao Gouart, a wealthy landowner who pursued policies to promote wealth redistribution, although he was anti-communist. The Johnson administration approved a CIA-led effort to oust Gouart, which was successful. It's not clear the extent of the role Mitrione played in the overthrow, but his work in Brazil for the CIA preceded and followed the successful overthrow of the government. He was also present in the Dominican Republic when the US intervened to overthrow the government there. Mitrione is credited with being the person responsible for the routine use of torture by police against political prisoners in pro-American countries in Latin America. "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect," he once said. Mitrione allegedly used homeless persons to demonstrate torture techniques, including electrocution, who were executed once they had served their purpose.

In 1967, Mitrione was brought back to AID's office in Washington where he reportedly shared his experiences and expertise on "counterguerilla warfare." The Nixon administration sent him to work in Uruguay in 1969 where there was concern that leftists might repeat the success of Allende's rise to power in Chile, who was later deposed by a CIA-backed military coup in 1973. In Uruguay, it is believed that Mitrione helped the government fight leftists by: establishing a network of spies in high schools and universities; installing hidden cameras in terminals to monitor persons traveling to socialist countries; inaugurating police training courses in recruitment of informers, interrogation techniques; increasing the size of militias; inspecting all mail and publications from social countries; and use of explosives.

More:
http://advanceindiana.blogspot.com/2013/12/indiana-undercover-dan-mitrione-and.html

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As other reading will inform you, Mitrione had people swept up off the street, and brought to his sound-proof torture chambers so he could grind them down for audiences of his "students." They ended up killing some of them during their "learning" experiences.

He also had the US government deliver his torture supplies to him through the auspices of the US embassy pouch which was inviolate. It worked out totally successfully, as he had all the supplies his heart could desire, apparently. Very, very cruel person. He was loudly, highly exalted by Richard M. Nixon when he was killed, as an extraordinary patriot.
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