Directorate of National Intelligence

Common card · No. 317019

The Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA; pronounced [diɾeɣˈsjon de inteliˈxensja nasjoˈnal], lit. 'National Intelligence Directorate') was the secret police agency of Chile during the first years of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Formed as a Chilean Army intelligence unit in the weeks after the 1973 coup d'état, it was placed on an independent legal footing by Decree Law 521 of June 14, 1974, reporting directly to the ruling military junta rather than to the armed forces' regular chain of command. It was headed throughout its existence by Army colonel (later general) Manuel Contreras, who answered personally to Pinochet and became, in the assessment of American diplomats and of DINA's own agents, the second-most-powerful man in Chile. DINA has been described by journalists and historians as "Pinochet's Gestapo." Operating under the wide powers granted to the government during the near-continuous state of emergency of the dictatorship's early years, DINA agents ran a...

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