Office of Public Safety

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For the Public Safety agency see : Department of Public Safety

The Office of Public Safety (OPS) was a US government agency, established in 1957 by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower to train foreign police forces [1]. It officially depended of the USAID (US Agency for International Development), and was close to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ^[1]. Police-training teams were also sent in South Vietnam, Iran, Taiwan, Brazil and Greece ^[2]. Courses were held in French, Spanish and English ^[2]. According to a 1973 document revealed in the Family jewels CIA documents, around 700 police officers were trained a year, including in handling of explosives ^[3]. It was dissolved in 1974.

1 Creation and dissolution of the OPS
2 Divisions
- 2.1 International Police Academy
3 Operations
4 Uruguay
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Creation and dissolution of the OPS

The United States has a long history of providing police aid to Latin American countries. In the 1960s the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Public Safety (OPS) provided Latin American police forces with millions of dollars worth of weapons and trained thousands of Latin American police officers. In the late 1960s, such programs came under media and congressional scrutiny because the U.S.-provided equipment and personnel were linked to cases of torture, murder and "disappearances" in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.

In Washington, D.C., the Office of Public Safety had remained immune to public embarrassment as it went about two of its chief functions: allowing the CIA to plant men with the local police in sensitive places around the world; and after careful observation on their home territory, bringing to the United States prime candidates for enrollment as CIA employees ^[2]. The OPS's director in Washington, Byron Engle, was close to the CIA ^[1].

In 1966, US senator J. William Fulbright started criticizing the OPS' methods ^[4]. Then, informed by Brazilian opposition members, US senator James G. Abourezk set about to disclose the OPS' program ^[4]. John A. Hannah, head of the USAID and former president of Michigan State University, unsuccessfully tried to support the OPS by sending a letter to deputy Otto Passman ^[4].

In 1974, Congress banned the provision by the U.S. of training or assistance to foreign police with a statute know as Section 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) [2].

The OPS had formed a million policemen in the Third World ^[1]. Ten thousands of them had undertook training courses in the US. $150 millions' worth in material had been sent to foreign police forces ^[1].

Most of the OPS' missions were transferred to others agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while the US Department of Defense continued to transfer equipment to security forces in foreign countries ^[1]. OPS officer Jack Goin went on to found a private security firm, Public Safety Services, Inc., in Washington ^[4].

[edit] Divisions

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[edit] International Police Academy

Operated by the OPS, the International Police Academy was instituted in 1963, training police officers from various countries around the World in the United States. Its first class included sixty-eight police officers from seventeen different nations.^[5] Until the early 1970s, selected candidates could also receive training from CIA officers at the U.S. Border Patrol academy in Los Fresnos, Texas, including the making of bombs and incendiary devices.^[6]

[edit] Operations

The head of the OPS, Byron Engle, sent Los Angeles Police Department officers to Venezuela in 1962 to train local police officers and assist them in repression against the Armed Forces of National Liberation (AFNL) ^[2].

[edit] Uruguay

The OPS operated in Uruguay since 1964 ^[7], supplying the police with equipment, arms and training. This involved courses on explosives, assassination weapons, and riot control ^[1]. Between 1969 and 1973, at least 19 Uruguayan police officers were formed in the CIA and OPS schools in Washington DC and in Los Fresnos, Texas to be taught the handling of explosives ^[1]. In several occasions, the pupils were not police officers, but members of the Uruguayan right-wing ^[1]. In 1970, the OPS had formed a thousand police officers in riot control ^[1].

USAID agent, Dan Mitrione, who had trained the Brazilian police before in interrogation and torture methods, arrived in Uruguay in 1969 to work for the OPS ^[1]. Although torture was already used by the Uruguayan police, it became systematized under Mitrione's direction. In an interview to a Brazilian newspaper in 1970, the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US officers, in particular Mitrione, had instituted torture as a systemic method ^[1]. According to A. J. Langguth's Hidden Terrors (Pantheon Books, 1978, p. 286), older police officers were replaced "when the CIA and the U.S. police advisers had turned to harsher measures and sterner men." Under Dan Mitrione's leadership, the United States "introduced a system of nationwide identification cards, like those in Brazil… [and] torture had become routine at the Montevideo [police] jefatura." ^[7]

Otero, who had been formed at the International Police Services in Washington, a front for the CIA, had opposed himself to Mitrione after a friend of him and sympathisant of the Tupamaros had been tortured in Mitrione's presence ^[1]. He also opposed torture as he thought it led to radicalization of both parties.

CIA officer William Cantrell was based in Montevideo as an OPS member. He assisted in the creation, in the 1960s, of the National Directorate of Information and Intelligence (Dirección Nacional de Información e Inteligencia - DNII), to which he supplied equipment, including torture equipment. After the 1971 elections during which the left-wing Frente Amplio was defeated, Montevideo launched in September 1971 a DNII-led joint military and police force in counter-revolutionary operations against the Tupamaros. According to former police officers, death squads were run from the DNII ^[7].