LATIN AMERICA

Brazil

Bruneau, Thomas C. "Intelligence Reforms in Brazil: Contemporary Challenges and the Legacy of the Past." Strategic Insights 6, no. 3 (May 2007). [http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/]

Brazil has "an extensive intelligence system composed of at least thirteen different organizations.... The development of the system was slow and drawn out ... and exacerbated by political weakness and fecklessness in the executive branch between 1985 and 1995, and the slow emergence of interest by members of the legislative branch.... [T]here is real concern as to the effectiveness of the system due to the way it is structured and staffed. The concern with effectiveness ... is due to rampant violence by organized crime in ... Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, and the ... Pan American Games to be held in Rio de Janeiro in July of 2007."

Bruneau, Thomas C., and Steven C. Boraz, eds. Reforming Intelligence: Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007.

According to Peake, Studies 52.1 (Mar. 2008), this book's 13 chapters include "studies that discuss democratic control and effectiveness in three Western nations -- the United States, the United Kingdom, and France -- and seven new democracies -- Brazil, Taiwan, Argentina, Romania, South Africa, Russia, and the Philippines." Reforming Intelligence "is well documented, well written, and should serve as a foundation for studying this persistent problem."

Reddig, NIPQ 23.4 (Sep. 2007), calls this a "useful and thought provoking compendium of case studies," dealing with "the challenge of maintaining an intelligence establishment in a democratic framework."

Cepik, Marco. and Priscila Antunes. "Brazil's New Intelligence System: An Institutional Assessment." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 16, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 349-373.

The authors survey the evolution of the Brazilian intelligence system from 1964 to 2002. They show that the National Information Service (SNI) became "a sort of 'parallel power' during the military rule in Brazil"; they survey the changes in the intelligence system in the early 1990s, "especially the transformation of the military services, and the transitional agency named Secretariat of Strategic Affairs (SAE)"; they analyze "the role played by Brazil's Congress in the reform process of Brazilian intelligence between 1994 and 1996"; and they present "the main provisions of Public Law No. 9,883, enacted in December 1999 .... [which] is the main legal basis for the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN)."

Gribbin, Peter. "Brazil and CIA." CounterSpy, Apr.-May 1979, 4-23.

Clark comment: After you wade through the anti-imperialist rhetoric that substitutes for documentation in this article, you are left with unsubstantiated and overblown assertions blaming the CIA and U.S. AID for most of the ills in Brazil in the early1960s. The article includes lists of Brazilians who supposedly attended "CIA-connected police programs in the U.S." and "who participated in CIA-directed labor training courses." It also has a list of "CIA Officers in Brazil as of August, 1978" and another rather strange list of "CIA Collaborators in Brazil as of August, 1978," that is, "U.S. government employees [who] have collaborated or worked with the CIA in a functional capacity."

McSherry, J. Patrice. "Operation Condor: Clandestine Inter-American System." Social Justice 26, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 144-175.

This article traces "[a]nti-insurrection collusion among the intelligence services of the 'southern cone' countries of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay." Swenson, IJI&C 16.1/127/fn25.

McSherry, J. Patrice. Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

From publisher: "Operation Condor was a military network created in the 1970s to eliminate political opponents of Latin American regimes. Its key members were the anticommunist dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil, later joined by Peru and Ecuador, with covert support from the U.S. government." The author draws "on a wealth of testimonies, declassified files, and Latin American primary sources." McSherry "shows how, using extralegal and terrorist methods, Operation Condor hunted down, seized, and executed political opponents across borders."

Stepan, Alfred. Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

This work includes references to the Brazilian National Security Service (SNI).

Wittkoff, E. Peter. "Brazil's SIVAM: Surveillance against Crime and Terror." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 16, no. 4 (Winter 2003-2004): 543-560.

SIVAM is Brazil's System for Surveillance of the Amazon, inaugurated in July 2002. It "consists of a network of radars, aircraft, satellites, and other sensors electronically tied to a centralized command center." The author believes that SIVAM's future lies in Brazilian-U.S. cooperation to deal with the "spillover of insurgents and drug traffickers from Colombia..., as well as activity of terrorist organizations in the region."

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