U.S. POLICE PROGRAM IS CALLED C.I.A. COVER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R002000100072-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 2006
• Sequence Number: 72
• Publication Date: May 7, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2006/08/10: CIA-RDP81 M00980R002000100ft'i4_
NEW YORK TIMES
U.S. POLICE PROGRAM
IS CALLED C.1,A, COVER
Charge of Intelligence Connection
in Training of Foreign Officers
Is Repeated in New Book
By GRAHAM HOVEY.
Special tome New YOr Dimes
WASHINGTON, May 6-The United
States is accused in a book, to be pub-
lished next month of using a program
for training foreign policemen as a cover
for Central Intelligence Agency activities
and for encouraging the torture of politi-
cal prisoners in Brazil and Uruguay.
The author, A. J. Langguth, also repeats
charges that the C.I.A. and the United
States Embassy were directly involved
in the overthrow of Brazil's elected Gov-
ernment by the armed forces in 1964.
His book, "Hidden Terrors," will be is-
sued June 5 by Pantheon Books.
The account by Mr. Langguth, a former
reporter for The New York Times, begins
on Aug. 13, 1970, with the funeral in
Richmond, Ind., of Dan A. Mitrione, an
adviser in the police training program,
who was kidnapped and killed by left-
wing Uruguayan guerrillas known as
Tupamaros. The book alternates episodes
of Mr. Mitrione's 10-year career as police
adviser in Brazil and Uruguay with ac-
counts of Brazilian political events before
and after the ouster of President JoSo
Goulart in 1964 and the alleged United
States involvement in those events.
Although Mr. Langguth reports many
allegations, most of them by exiled left-
wing Brazilian and Uruguayan revolu-
tionaries, that Mr, Mitrione encouraged
-he use of police torture, he also cites
evidence to the contrary, and he rebuts
the charge, widely circdlated by leftist
groups around the world, that Mr. Mitr-
ione was a C.I.A. agent.
In particular Mr. Langguth dismisses
the version of Mr. Mitrione's role por-
trayed in the motion picture "State of
Siege," produced by the Greek film-
maker Costa-Gavras, who, he said, "in-
cluded every undocumented rumor"
about Mr. Mitrione because his aim was
"a composite indictment of United States
policy throughout Latin America."
Noting that after Mr. Mitrione was
killed "male and female prisoners at Uru-
guay's jails traded stories about his par-
ticipation in the torture," Mr. Langguth
adds: "Usually those were second-hand
accounts, repeated to convince a doubter
that the Tupamaros had been justified
in killing Mitrione." Because of the im-
pact of "State of Siege" and the allega-
tions of the former prisoners, "Mitrione
acquired a reputation as his country's
foremost expert in torture," Mr. Lang-
guth says.
SUm10A~
M9Y 7, ~g7gl.
-Report of Another Inquiry
Ernest W. Lefever, then a senior fellow
at the Brookings Institution, who did ex-
tensive'research on the Mitrione case and
k detailed two-year study of the police
training program, is more emphatic in
ri'ecting the allegations against both Mr.
Mitrione and the - program. "Mitrione
never had anything to do with the
C.I.A.,"; Mr. Lefever told a reporter re-
cently.' "He ?nevee taught or advocated
methods of torture. In Montevideo, Mitr-
ione never even entered the door of the
special [secret] police. He dealt with the
'conventional police." The State Depart-
ment denied similar charges'in'1973.
Under the police program, carried out
by the Agency for International Develop-
ment from 1954 until it was ter.ninated
by Congress in 1975 because it invited
partisan criticism, more than 10,700 po-
licemen from 52 - countries were trained
in the United States. ..
The charges that the United States Am-
bassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon, his
staff and the C.I.A. were directly involved
in the overthrow of President Goulart
have been made intermittently since the
.1964 coup and regularly denied by the
principals. Mr. Langguth implies in his
book that by early 1964 Mr. Gordon, who
had been Ambassador since October 1961,
was "at the center of a plot to overthrow
the Government of the fifth largest na-
tion in the world.".
'That's Simply Not True'
The author also says that the Brazilian
generals plotting -the coup "beilieved their
assurances from Gordon and their other
United States contacts: If they could hold
Sao Paulo for 48 hours, Washington
would recognize them as Brazil's ' leg'iti-
a mate government."
In a recent interview Mr. Gordon, now
a senior fellow of Resources for the Fu-
ture, a Washington-based research
organ- ization, said in reply to each charge,
"That's simply not true," and he added
that "no assurances were given." He first
met Gen. Humberto Castelo Branco, who
led the coup and subsequently became
President, only six days before it took
place, he said.
Mr. Gordon also denied a statement
by Mr. Langguth that he concluded as
early as 1962 that President Goulart was
"the greatest danger to his country's
democracy." It was more than -a year
later, Mr. Gordon said, that he became
x convinced that Mr. Goulart intended to
stage his own coup against the constitu-
tional system and try to emulate the au-
thoritarian rule of his mentor, the late
Getulio Vargas, or of Juan D. Peron in
Argentina-a course Mr. Gordon believed
would lead to Communist control of
Brazil.
Mr: Gordon did concede that the C.I.A.
poured money into Brazilian political
fronts to support candidates in the 1962
election, though he said he would be
amazed if the amount was -anything like
the 120 million that Mr. Langguth men-
tiom.. "With hindsight, I thought it was
a, mistake,"'Mr. Gordon said of the politi-
cal funds.
The former Ambassador also acknowl-
edged that he recommended the forma-
tion of a United'States Navy task force
for limited intervention in Brazil in the
event of a civil war in 1964. The rapid
success of the coup aganst President
Goulart made the operation unnecessary,
so Mr. Gordon called it off while the
task force, the formation of which was
disclosed in United States documents de-
classified in 1976, was still "far from
Brazilian waters."
Mr, Gordon said he would stand by
assertions that the United States was not
a participant in the action against Mr.
Goulart, that it, had no advance warning
and that "even if we had opposed it we
could not have prevented it."
Approved For Release 2006/08/10: CIA-RDP81 M00980R002000100072-0