The government of Javier Milei made official the new structure of the AFI, which will once once more become a secretariat, taking back the old and cumbersome name of SIDE, and becoming dependent on the Presidency. The SIDE will be the governing body of the National Intelligence System (SIN), which, in turn, will be divided into four agencies.
The acronym symbolically refers to the basements of democracy and not only the name is loaded with the past, but also the officials that Milei’s government will appoint, many of them linked to Menemism, such as Juan Bautista “Tata” Yofre, Secretary of State Intelligence between 1989-1990 and Alejandro Walter Colombo, a former SIDE delegate in Rome during Menemism, linked to Antonio Stiuso, who the Macri administration had tried to put back in the same place and then retracted. In another of the new agencies there will be retired General Commissioner Pablo Cecati, former head of Macri’s presidential security and very close to the former president.
As Página/12 reported on Sunday in an article by Luciana Bertoia, the change by decree coincides with the 30th anniversary of the attack on the AMIA, the investigation of which was tainted mainly by the role of the agencies dedicated to espionage. Among other “works” that were proven, the SIDE was the one that paid Carlos Telleldín 400,000 dollars to implicate a group of Buenos Aires police officers in the attack on the AMIA, with the aim of diverting the investigation. After the scandal over the payment of bribes, the Argentine State promised before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to make transparent the always murky secret funds of Intelligence.
The SIDE had stopped operating under that name in 2001, following the approval of Law 25520 on Intelligence. From 2001 to 2015, the Intelligence Secretariat existed until 2015 – following the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner promoted the creation of the AFI. In the next few hours, according to reports from Casa Rosada, the decree will be issued with the officialization of the changes and the return of the SIDE.
Eloquent logos: who is Sergio Neiffert
The decree that will be issued on Tuesday will carry out the dissolution of the AFI and, in parallel, will order the creation of the SIDE, which will be headed by Sergio Neiffert, and which will be the governing body of the National Intelligence System (SIN), a State Secretariat. At the same time, four other agencies will be spun off from the SIN: The Argentine Intelligence Service (SIA), which will be headed by the Menemist Alejandro Walter Colombo, another figure very close to Macri. It will have, according to the government, the function of “gathering strategic information around the world, as well as cooperating with allied intelligence agencies for the prevention and deterrence of threats.”
The National Security Agency (ASN), headed by Cecati, will also be in charge of “providing early warning and generating information on complex federal crimes within the national territory, as well as monitoring coordinated threats from criminal and terrorist organizations.”
The third will be the Federal Cybersecurity Agency (AFC) that “will evaluate, plan and develop solutions for the detection and containment of cyberattacks once morest critical computer infrastructure in the country,” and whose director will be Ariel Waissbein, a doctor from the University of Buenos Aires. And, finally, the fourth will be the Internal Affairs Division (DAI) that “will supervise and audit the management of the resources of the agencies that operate under the orbit of the SIDE.”
In the organizational chart that spokesman Manuel Adorni published on social media, even the logos raise concerns: one (the DAI) resembles the Illuminati triangle; another has an eagle (the National Security Agency), a symbol alien to any national reference.
Explicit Menemism
Another of the Menemists who will return to the SIDE, besides Colombo, will be Juan Bautista “Tata” Yofre, Secretary of State Intelligence between 1989-1990. He was summoned by the new head of the AFI, Sergio Neiffert –a trusted man of advisor Santiago Caputo– to take charge of the National Intelligence School. “We have had ties with him for several years and he knows a lot regarding intelligence,” the government says regarding the decision.
The SIDE, as the governing body of the SIN, will be in charge of the operational coordination and budgetary control of the National Directorate of Criminal Intelligence (DNIC) and the National Directorate of Military Strategic Intelligence (DNIEM), which depend on the Ministry of Security and the Ministry of Defense, according to the government.
In a statement issued on Monday night, the Casa Rosada denounced that the AFI “was used for spurious activities such as internal espionage, influence peddling and political and ideological persecution,” and that the new system “will allow the consolidation of a strategic and modern vision that will guarantee balance between the different agencies, removing any personal, partisan or contrary interest to the greatness of the Homeland.”
The architect of the new intelligence system structure was presidential adviser Santiago Caputo. He studied computer engineering for three years at the Army Engineering School, but abandoned his project when the agent who was recruiting him told him that the world “was shit,” that “there was no real work” and that “they were all slackers.”
More decrees
Beyond the officialization of the SIDE, Casa Rosada has two other decrees in the pipeline. One for the formation of the May Council and another for the modification of the structure of the state. This Tuesday, meanwhile, the Secretary of Labor will meet with the CGT to move forward with more labor reforms within the framework of the May pact. The labor union has already decided that the one who will sit at the May Council table, on behalf of unionism, will be Gerardo Martínez, from the UOCRA.
The idea is that, once the council is formed, the first thing to be discussed are points eight and nine of the pact, that is, the labor and pension reform. Regarding the decree, the Casa Rosada says that it will only make its creation official. The meetings will be once a month in the Casa Rosada, in a room that they will specially rename “the May room.” It will contain the minutes of the Pact and the constitution of Juan Bautista Alberdi, among other things. But for that they will have to replace the name of an existing room. They already did this with the Women’s Room and the Room of Indigenous Peoples. This time, it might be the turn of the Eva Perón Room or the Argentine Scientists Room.
The “decree 50”
The decree that will take the longest to be issued is the one the Government calls “decree 50.” In reality, it is the regulatory decree of the law of ministries, which was signed in 2019, and had that number. It was a major restructuring carried out by former President Alberto Fernández and, over time, modifications were made to it. In other words, what will be done is a decree modifying decree 50/2019.
Once the law on ministries has been modified, the regulatory decree will create and eliminate secretariats and sub-secretariats within each ministry and will also define what each of them will do. The writing of the decree is quite advanced, but the approval of some ministries is still lacking. Some secretariats will move from one ministry to another and others will disappear, but most of them will be reduced and so will the powers of the JGM. Another definition that will be reflected in this decree is the transfer of the executive unit that will be in charge of privatizations, which will move from the head of the cabinet to the Ministry of Economy. Diego Chaher will continue to be in charge of it.
