Secret Brazilian military documents recently discovered in the southern state of Pará have confirmed that military intelligence services continue to spy on civilians considered “enemies” of the current order, just as they did during the military regime that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985. The documents, found during an investigation into the fate of disappeared members of a 1970s guerrilla insurgency, show that even today, under a civilian government headed by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the army classifies certain social movements as “adverse forces” and admits to “undermining citizens’ rights” in the name of maintaining law and order. The discovery demonstrates that contrary to government assertions, the military intelligence service has not become apolitical and subject to control by Congress; instead, national security doctrine principles remain operative. During the military dictatorship, this doctrine led to widespread human rights abuses as the military followed its precepts by targetting supposed internal enemies.
The documents were unearthed unexpectedly in July of last year after a Commission of Families of the Dead and Disappeared asked for an inquiry into the location of the remains of guerrillas killed in a confrontation with the army. The investigation led to the discovery of an army intelligence unit working secretly from a house in the Nova Marabá neighborhood of Pará. The unit had been operating under the cover of a fictitious journalists’ group called “RP Freelance,” and the 12 agents who worked there claimed to be journalists. Government prosecutors gathering evidence about the guerrillas’ fate had obtained a search warrant for the house, where they found documents about the Araguaia Guerrilla—which had operated under the Communist Party of Brazil’s (PC do B) auspices in the southern part of Pará state between 1972 and 1974—as well as documents that described military intelligence activities in the region since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985. These included textbooks, manuals, reports, and files on informants and collaborators. The prosecutors made the documents part of their public inquiry, and they were published in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s largest circulation newspaper.
These secret documents were not the first evidence of military spying on civilians in the post-dictatorship period, however. In July 1997, the then-President of the Federal Human Rights Commission, Representative Pedro Wilson, released documents sent to the commission by the mother and sister of army corporal José Alves Firmino. Firmino had contracted leprosy, and angry that the army had denied his request to retire with a pension, he resolved to reveal documents produced by the intelligence system of the army detailing his participation in political espionage.
Among the documents produced by Firmino were reports on the 1993 and 1995 national meetings of the Workers Party (PT), the party that is currently leading the polls for the 2002 presidential election. Firmino also revealed a decree signed on September 7, 1995 by the Cardoso government that approved a directive for the creation of intelligence companies to strengthen internal espionage in several states. The intelligence companies were directly subordinate to area military commands and outside the control of the national Congress. Representative Wilson tried to bring the Minister of the Army to testify about the matter before the Federal Human Rights Commission of the Congress, but the majority coalition on the commission blocked the move. The media and the academic community stayed quiet, and everything continued as if the military had returned to the barracks.
Meanwhile, the documents provided by Firmino and discovered in Pará are adding to the evidence that military intelligence agencies continue to carry out political, economic, business and social espionage in every region of the country. The documents show that the army classifies newspapers according to their “party position,” “dependence on economic power,” and “degree of influence exercised by the government.” Editors and journalists are catalogued according to “personality” and the “personal relationships” they maintain. Military agents are being trained to monitor indigenous people, local authorities, nongovernmental organizations, unions, businesses, and even government agencies such as the Fire Department and transportation, civil, military and federal police.
According to one of the documents uncovered in the Pará house, a “Plan for Organic Security” for defense of intelligence office installations maintained by the army in Marabá, the members of Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) are “adverse forces” who, under certain circumstances, can be “eliminated.” The plan defines “adverse forces” as “groups, social movements, nongovernmental organizations and any person who is not in close touch with the Information Office, and who has a negative impact on national security through actions that exacerbate adverse factors or antagonisms and cause prejudice against democratic institutions. Current examples of these entities include organized crime, drug traffickers and popular movements like MST.”
In early 2000, the Army detected “a radicalization of MST activities” in Amazônia. The leaders of the movement adopted the practice of meeting “secretly,” making espionage work more difficult. In response to this, the intelligence service launched “Operation Tempest” around the Pará towns of Marabá and Tucuruí. The objective of the operation, which continued until September 2000, was “to uncover the locations and number of invasions, protests and occupations by the MST.” The spies received false journalist credentials, and operated disguised as employees of the news agency “RP Freelance.”
“Operation Fish” was launched in 1998 in response to the radical language of some MST leaders. Agents received code names of regional fish: Pirarucu, Dourado, Pintado, Lambari, etc. Without producing any proof, the agents tried to associate the MST, PT and Central Workers Union (CUT) with paramilitary organizations. A secret document from “Operation Fish” dated April 25, 2000 states: “It has been verified that MST, together with CUT and the PT are forming a brigade for attack andthe defense of their operations known as the Cabanos Brigade; this part of the movement has developed a paramilitary organization. This is a fact that should be observed and confirmed during the missions… . Considering that this is an election year, the opposition parties will certainly support, directly or indirectly, the actions of several organizations with the objective of creating disorder.” Other targets of Operation Fish included the Pastoral Land Commission and the Missionary Indigenous Council, both linked to the Catholic Church.
With the end of the military regime in Brazil, many national and international commentators, politicians and editors proclaimed the consolidation of Brazilian democracy and the return of the military to the barracks. There were even those that affirmed that with the passage of time, the military would become paper tigers. There was no solid basis for this optimism. The Brazilian transition was characterized by great continuity of civil and military elites in the state apparatus. For example, the current Vice President was the leader of the Chamber of Deputies during General Ernesto Geisel’s government (1974-1979). Secondly, the articles of the 1988 Constitution that refer to civil-military relations are very similar to the authoritarian Constitution of 1967.
The civil elites were not concerned with creating new institutions that could advance civilian democratic control over the military. Finally, by maintaining significant authoritarian enclaves intact within the state, the military negotiated a return to electoral democracy in exchange for retaining control over the state’s coercive authority. This was a means of guaranteeing that the right would not lose control over the political agenda of the country. In the case of a threat, the repressive apparatus could be called in.
President Cardoso, as commander in chief of the armed forces, has responded timidly to accusations, based on the discovered documents, that the Army Intelligence School teaches that to “maintain order” measures such as “undermining citizens’ rights” and applying the theory of “necessary impunity” are justified. Rather than repudiate such views, he merely stated that he was unaware of the issue and appointed the Minister of Defense, Geraldo Quintão, and the Commander of the Army, General Gleuber Vieira, to investigate.
This reaction should be seen in the context of an earlier faceoff between Cardoso and the generals: In October 2000, the president tried to fire Gleuber after the general publicly criticized low military budgets and salaries. With that, Cardoso touched off a crisis in relations with the military. As soon as the presidential decision reached the barracks, 155 generals from all over the country gathered in Brasília without the presence of the Minister of Defense. Cardoso understood the message and reversed his decision to fire Gleuber.
General Ministerof Institutional Security Alberto Cardoso has described the secret operations as a “specific sectoral problem that is being resolved by the armed forces command,” as if a plan with such significant infrastructure and expenditures could be the fruit of an isolated attitude. General Cardoso recalled that article 142 of the Constitution charged the armed forces with not only the defense of the country, but also the maintenance of law, order and the defense of constitutional institutions. Thus, he argued, they must investigate any threat to those institutions, and the action taken was constitutional and legal.
General Gleuber initially expressed surprise at the tenor of some of the secret documents and he promised a probe to clean up “occasional transgressions” of his subordinates. He called for the adoption of “necessary corrections.” However on August 25, 2001, Day of the Soldier, the general released a tough statement criticizing the Attorney General’s office and the press for their role in releasing the documents as well as indirectly criticizing his superiors for not coming to the defense of the force. On August 20, 2001, the federal government sought a protection order against the search and retention of the documents found in the army’s Marabá house. The judge initially denied the petition, but three days after Gleuber’s statement the same judge reconsidered his ruling and determined that the Attorney General’s office should return the documents to the army.
On August 30, the Attorney General published an order declaring “perplexity” about Gleuber’s critical statement and stating that the officials whose work led to the discovery of the documents had followed the law. For his part, General Quintão, the minister of defense, appeared before the national Congress where he justified the need for military intelligence to follow MST’s activities but he did not comment on the other issues. The journalist who leaked the documents, Josias de Souza, was investigated by the army.
Thus, Cardoso washed his hands; the army was not held responsible for what occurred; the judiciary vacillated; the Congress practically ignored it and the press stopped mentioning it. This lack of accountability is further evidence that the old political order has not been destroyed. The military, still a ferocious tiger, continues to set the limits of Brazil’s fragile democracy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jorge Zaverucha is professor of political science at the Federal University of Pernambuco and author of Fragil Democracia: Collor, Itamar, Cardoso e os Militares (1990-1998) (Ed. Civilizacão Brasileira, 2000). He would like to thank Glaucio Ary Dillon Soares for comments on this article. Translated from the Portuguese by Judy Rein.
