Dan Mitrione

[John Simkin]

Any possibility that Dan Mitrione was involved in the assassination of John Kennedy? Richard Nixon sent his secretary of state William Rogers to his funeral in 1970.

[Don Bailey]

He looks like Malletman...

[John Simkin]

It is well known that George Bush was director of the CIA he instigated Operation Condor, a terrorist network of assassins operating mainly in South America. This operation dates back to the activities of Dan Mitrione. This former FBI agent was sent by the International Development's Office of Public Safety (OPS) to Brazil where he provided training for the Brazilian military in torture and assassinations before being transferred to Uruguay. He was captured and killed by the Tupamaros guerrillas in 1970.

[Don Bailey]

John,

Please provide more information on Mitrione. He bears a striking resemblance to the man in the Croft photo.

Don

[John Simkin]

John,

Please provide more information on Mitrione. He bears a striking resemblance to the man in the Croft photo.

Don

Daniel A. Mitrione was born in Italy on 4th August, 1920. The family moved to the United States and in 1945 Mitrione became a police officer in Richmond, Indiana. He joined the FBI in 1959. The following year he was assigned to State Department's International Cooperation Administration. He was then sent to South America to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques." His speciality was in teaching the police how to torture political prisoners without killing them. According to A.J. Langguth of the New York Times, Mitrione was working for the CIA via the International Development's Office of Public Safety (OPS). We know he was in several foreign countries but between 1960 and 1967 he spent a lot of time in Brazil and was involved in the military coup that overthrew left-wing president João Goulart in 1964. According to David Kaiser, this marks the change in the foreign policy developed by JFK. Franco Solinas claims Mitrione was also in the Dominican Republic after the 1965 US intervention.

In 1967 Mitrione returned to the United States to share his experiences and expertise on "counterguerilla warfare" at the Agency for International Development (AID), in Washington D.C.. In 1969, Mitrione moved to Uruguay, again under the AID, to oversee the Office of Public Safety. At this time the Uruguayan government was led by the very unpopular Colorado Party. Nixon and the CIA feared a possible victory during the elections of the Frente Amplio, a left-wing coalition, on the model of the victory of the Unidad Popular government in Chile, led by Salvador Allende. The OPS had been helping the local police since 1965, providing them with weapons and training. It is claimed that torture had already been practiced since the 1960s, but Dan Mitrione was reportedly the man who made it routine. He is quoted as having said once: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." It has been alleged that he used homeless people for training purposes, who were allegedly executed once they had served their purpose.

The Tupamaros kidnapped Mitrione on July 31, 1970. They proceeded to interrogate him about his past and the intervention of the U.S. government in Latin American affairs. They also demanded the release of 150 political prisoners. The Uruguayan government, with U.S. backing, refused, and Mitrione was later found dead in a car, shot twice in the head.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Here is an interesting article that connects the Dan Mitrione story with a fellow Hoosier notorious for his off-brand Kool-Aid.

Jim Hougan is a former writer for Harpers Magazine, who wrote a great book about Watergate called Secret Agenda.

http://www.jimhougan.com/JimJones.html

[John Dolva]

Here is an interesting article that connects the Dan Mitrione story with a fellow Hoosier notorious for his off-brand Kool-Aid.

Jim Hougan is a former writer for Harpers Magazine, who wrote a great book about Watergate called Secret Agenda.

http://www.jimhougan.com/JimJones.html

possible further avenues : (snippets that may lead somewhere)

http://www.ezinearticles.com/?Early-Americ...a&id=720275

http://ezinearticles.com/?Was-the-Peoples-...?&id=715011

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Here is an interesting article that connects the Dan Mitrione story with a fellow Hoosier notorious for his off-brand Kool-Aid.

Jim Hougan is a former writer for Harpers Magazine, who wrote a great book about Watergate called Secret Agenda.

http://www.jimhougan.com/JimJones.html

possible further avenues : (snippets that may lead somewhere)

http://www.ezinearticles.com/?Early-Americ...a&id=720275

http://ezinearticles.com/?Was-the-Peoples-...?&id=715011

----------------

Thanks John this snippet is intriguing:

Ryan was not the CIA’s favorite Congressman. He had leaked damaging information to journalist Daniel Schorr and he was investigating CIA mind control experiments and possible domestic operations when he was killed. Ryan was co-author of the Hughes-Ryan Amendment that would have required the CIA to inform Congress of all its covert actions and projects. Ryan was also a source for columnist Jack Anderson, who first revealed CIA involvement in mind control experiments. Anderson also tied the kidnapping of Patty Hearst in 1974 to the agency because Donald “Cinque” De Freeze allegedly underwent some sort of programming in Vacaville, California.

I was not aware that Ryan had leaked info to Daniel Schorr and Jack Anderson. Both could be relevent to Watergate and JFK. I will try to follow up on this, though maybe not on this thread, which is supposed to be about Dan Mitrione. Sorry If Ive taken the thread off-topic, but it might not be.

[James Richards]

A related tid bit:

The 1973 film 'State Of Siege' was based on the Mitrione story. Yves Montand played the lead.

James

[Tim Gratz]

John wrote:

The Tupamaros kidnapped Mitrione on July 31, 1970. They proceeded to interrogate him about his past and the intervention of the U.S. government in Latin American affairs. They also demanded the release of 150 political prisoners. The Uruguayan government, with U.S. backing, refused, and Mitrione was later found dead in a car, shot twice in the head.

John's implication is that his kidnappers killed him, and I believe that is probably what happened.

But just to show that I do not always post pro-government stuff (well my thread on the missing DRE documents should certainly demonstrate THAT)-- if you Google and read the articles on Mitrione's son, Dan Mitrione, Jr., you will soon learn that his son was covinced the US government had murdered his father.

[Tim Gratz]

Peter wrote:

It was in some book [drawing a blank now, which - maybe Stockwell's? Agee?] that gave graphic details on how Mitrione would spend all day in torture chambers full of screaming, bleeding, dying persons

Where is Mitrione now that we need him?

Hey, folks, I'm kidding!

A lot of what Peter is talking about is available on the Web. I do not necessarily believe it since one of the main sources is a Cuban communist if I recall correctly. But whether true or false, Mitrione's methods sure makes "waterboarding" pale in comparison.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Peter wrote:

It was in some book [drawing a blank now, which - maybe Stockwell's? Agee?] that gave graphic details on how Mitrione would spend all day in torture chambers full of screaming, bleeding, dying persons

Where is Mitrione now that we need him?

Hey, folks, I'm kidding!

A lot of what Peter is talking about is available on the Web. I do not necessarily believe it since one of the main sources is a Cuban communist if I recall correctly. But whether true or false, Mitrione's methods sure makes "waterboarding" pale in comparison.

-----------------------------------------

What makes us think that the Mitirone methods are not being used in addition to waterboarding right now? Are these options opposites, and/or mutually exclusive? Or are they being made to SEEM so, with the Mitrione methods getting no coverage whatsoever in the US press? In this way, the whole waterboarding face of torture could be a domestic media psyop ("is that all there is") to keep torture alive and thriving.

Edited December 12, 2007 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[John Simkin]

Peter wrote:

It was in some book [drawing a blank now, which - maybe Stockwell's? Agee?] that gave graphic details on how Mitrione would spend all day in torture chambers full of screaming, bleeding, dying persons

Where is Mitrione now that we need him?

Hey, folks, I'm kidding!

A lot of what Peter is talking about is available on the Web. I do not necessarily believe it since one of the main sources is a Cuban communist if I recall correctly. But whether true or false, Mitrione's methods sure makes "waterboarding" pale in comparison.

-----------------------------------------

What makes us think that the Mitirone methods are not being used in addition to waterboarding right now? Are these options opposites, and/or mutually exclusive? Or are they being made to SEEM so, with the Mitrione methods getting no coverage whatsoever in the US press? In this way, the whole waterboarding face of torture could be a domestic media psyop ("is that all there is") to keep torture alive and thriving.

Exactly. The Secretary of State William Rogers and President Nixon's son-in-law David Eisenhower attended Mitrione's funeral. The Uruguayan ambassador, Hector Luisi, promised that the people responsible for Mitrione's death would "reap the wrath of civilized people everywhere".

A few days after the funeral, a senior Uruguayan police officer, Alejandro Otero, told the Jornal do Brasil that Mitrione had been employed to teach the police to use "violent techniques of torture and repression". The US government issued a statement calling this charge "absolutely false" and insisted he was a genuine member of the Agency for International Development. We now know that both AID and OPS, the two organizations that employed Mitrione, were CIA fronts.

In 1978 Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a CIA agent who had worked with Mitrione in Montevideo, published a book about his experiences. 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, a CIA agent. Mitrione told Cosculluela that he was following CIA orders and that interrogation was a "complex art" and the objective was to "humiliate the victim, separating him from reality, making him feel defenceless".

Again this was portrayed as Cuban propaganda (Cosculluela was a Cuban secret agent who had infiltrated the CIA). However, an investigation by Congress in 1978, led by James Abourezk, discovered that the OPS had been training Latin America police to torture left-wing activists for many years. As a result of Abourezk's report, the OPS was closed down.

[John Simkin]

Daniel Mitrione joined the State Department's International Cooperation Administration (ICA) in 1960. According to Jim Garrison, George De Mohrenschildt was also working for ICA, a CIA front, at this time (On the Trail of the Assassins, page 54).

[Michael Hogan]

Maybe Greg Grandin visits this Forum. He is the author of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805083235/ref=no...ationbooks08-20

Mr. Grandin teaches history at NYU.

Today an article by him appeared on Middle East Online. An excerpt on Mitrione:

"Before all else, you must be efficient," said U.S. police advisor Dan Mitrione, assassinated by Uruguay's revolutionary Tupamaros in 1970 for training security forces in the finer points of torture. "You must cause only the damage that is strictly necessary, not a bit more." Mitrione taught by demonstration, reportedly torturing to death a number of homeless people kidnapped off the streets of Montevideo. "We must control our tempers in any case," he said. "You have to act with the efficiency and cleanliness of a surgeon and with the perfection of an artist."

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=23494

I would bet Forum member Alfred McCoy knows a lot about the career of Mitrione.