Daniel Anthony Mitrione (August 4, 1920 – August 10, 1970) was a U.S. government official in Latin America who trained local police in the use of torture. He was kidnapped and murdered by the Tupamaros guerrilla group fighting against the authoritarian government in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Early life and career 
Dan Mitrione was born in Italy, the second son of Joseph and Maria Mitrione. The family emigrated to America soon after Dan's birth, settling in Richmond, Indiana, where Mitrione grew up. Mitrione married Henrietta Lind while serving on a Michigan naval base during World War II, and the couple eventually had nine children. After the war ended, Mitrione became a police officer in Richmond. He started as a patrolman in 1945, rising through the ranks until he was hired as the Richmond chief of police in 1956, a position which he held until 1960.

Career in the Office of Public Safety 
In 1960, Mitrione joined the Public Safety program of the International Cooperation Administration (ICA). The program, begun in 1954, provided U.S. aid and training to civilian police in countries around the world. Mitrione's first post was in Belo Horizonte, a large city about 250 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro. During the two years Mitrione was posted in Belo Horizonte, ICA was replaced by the United States Agency for International Development, and the police aid program was reorganized into the Office of Public Safety (OPS).

After two years in Belo Horizonte,  Mitrione was transferred to Rio de Janeiro in 1962, where he served as a training adviser for another five years. During these five years he shared torture techniques that were used by the Brazilian dictatorship against its own citizens. In 1967, he was rotated back to the United States and taught for two years at the OPS International Police Academy in Washington, D.C.

Uruguay 

In 1969, Mitrione was appointed the OPS Chief Public Safety Adviser in Montevideo, Uruguay. In this period the Uruguayan government, led by the Colorado Party, had its hands full with a collapsing economy, labor and student strikes, and the Tupamaros, a left-wing urban guerrilla group. On the other hand, Washington feared a possible victory during the elections of the Frente Amplio, a left-wing coalition, on the model of the also-Cuban-supported victory of the Unidad Popular government in Chile, led by Salvador Allende, in 1970. The OPS had been helping the local police since 1965, providing them with weapons and training.

Former Uruguayan police officials and CIA operatives stated Mitrione had taught torture techniques to Uruguayan police in the cellar of his Montevideo home, including the use of electrical shocks delivered to his victims' mouths and genitals. His credo was "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." He also helped train foreign police agents in the United States in the context of the Cold War. In 1978, at the 11th International Youth Festival in Cuba, Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a Cuban who claimed to have infiltrated the CIA as double agent from 1962 to 1970, stated that Mitrione ordered the abduction of homeless people, so that he could use them as 'guinea pigs' in his torture classes. He said that attempts would be made to keep each victim alive for multiple torture sessions, but that torture would eventually kill them, and that their mutilated bodies would be dumped in the streets. He claimed that Mitrione personally tortured four homeless people to death.

Mitrione's captors may also have believed him to be the inventor of a torture device known as the "Mitrioni vest". This alleged device was described as "an inflatable vest which can be used to increase pressure on the chest during interrogation, sometimes crushing the rib cage."

Mitrione was kidnapped by the Tupamaros on July 31, 1970 demanding the release of 150 political prisoners. The Uruguayan government, with U.S. backing, refused and Mitrione was later found dead in a car, shot twice in the head. There were no other visible signs of maltreatment, beyond the fact that during the kidnapping, Mitrione had been shot in one shoulder, a wound that was clean and healing well, and had evidently been treated while in captivity.

Tom Golden, a career army intelligence operative detailed to the CIA and assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo, was a personal friend of Mitrione. Golden worked closely with Uruguayan officials to try and secure the release of Mitrione and prevent his murder. After Mitrione's death, Golden disputed the torture-training allegations in closed-door testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In his autobiography (Ambassador Ortiz: Lessons from a Life of Service, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2005, p. 106),  Frank V. Ortiz whose appointment as Deputy Chief of Mission at the United States Embassy in Montevideo coincided with the kidnapping and killing of Mitrione, wrote: "My first duty, on my first day in Montevideo, was to attend a memorial service for Dan Mitrioni, a former state chief of police from New Mexico who headed a U.S. mission to train the Uruguayan police to combat terrorism. Just four days before we [Ortiz and his family] arrived, the Tupamaros had kidnapped Mitrioni during a carefully organized operation against American Embassy officials. They also captured the head of the commercial section of the embassy by hitting him on the head, wrapping him in a rug, and tying him down in the back of a pickup. Fortunately, he worked his ties loose and jumped out of the pickup while it was speeding down the road. The terrorists also tried to take the cultural attaché. They jumped him in the garage of his apartment building, but he honked his car horn, attracting attention and scaring off his would-be captors. But poor Mitrioni--they tied him up, tortured him, and finally killed him."

In 1987, two years after being released from prison, the leader of the Tupamaros, Raúl Sendic, said in an interview that Mitrione had been selected for kidnapping because he had trained police in riot control, and as retaliation for the deaths of student protestors. He did not mention the accusations of torture. In addition, Sendic also revealed that Mitrione's death was unintended; the Tupamaro leaders had decided to keep Mitrione alive and hold him indefinitely instead of killing him if the government continued to refuse their demands.

On August 7, 1970, just a week after the kidnapping, the Uruguayan police raided the house where the Tupamaro leadership was staying and captured Sendic and the others. A short time later, he said, the replacement leadership, which also knew of the plan to keep Mitrione alive, was also captured. "Those captured lost all contact with the others," he said, "and when the deadline came the group that was left with Mitrione did not know what to do. So they decided to carry out the threat."

Continuing controversy and diplomatic exchanges
The Mitrione case continued to reverberate within U.S.-Uruguayan relations in 2008, with U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay Frank E. Baxter being involved in high level exchanges about Uruguayan investigations into other crimes committed during the country's civilian-military dictatorship from 1973 until 1985, to which linkages were allegedly perceived.

Commemoration 
The Nixon Administration, through spokesman Ron Ziegler, affirmed that Mitrione's "devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere." His funeral was widely publicised by the U.S. media and was attended by, amongst others, David Eisenhower and Richard Nixon's secretary of state William Rogers.

Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis held a benefit concert for his family in Richmond, Indiana.

In fiction 
The 1972 movie State of Siege by Costa-Gavras is based on the story of Mitrione's kidnapping.

The kidnapping and the execution of Mitrione are also central to the plot of the novel El color que el infierno me escondiera by Uruguayan author .

The French espionage fiction novel SAS 31: L'ange de Montevideo, written in 1973 by Gérard de Villiers, relates the CIA agent kidnapping, torture and killing by the Tupamaros. The agent's name is Ron Barber, but as is often the case in SAS novels, the stories are based on real world events and being as the fictional character Ron Barber was a torture instructor in Uruguay; it is possible that Barber is based on Dan Mitrione.

See also 
History of Uruguay
History of Brazil (1964-1985)

References

Sources

Further reading

External links 
Torture's Teachers

1920 births
1970 deaths
American expatriates in Uruguay
American municipal police officers
American people murdered abroad
Assassinated American diplomats
Deaths by firearm in Uruguay
Italian emigrants to the United States
Military personnel from Indiana
People from Richmond, Indiana
People murdered in Uruguay
Terrorism in Uruguay
Torture in Uruguay
1970 murders in Uruguay
American terrorism victims
United States Navy personnel of World War II
American expatriates in Brazil
대니얼 앤서니 "댄" 미트리오네(, 1920년 8월 4일 ~ 1970년 8월 10일)는 이탈리아 태생의 미국 고문기술자, 살인자, 경찰관, 연방수사국(FBI) 요원이다. 라틴아메리카에 중앙정보국(CIA)의 고문관으로 파견되었다가 투파마로스에게 살해당했다.

미트리오네는 1945년에서 1947년까지 인디애나주 리치먼드에서 경찰관으로 일했고 1959년 FBI에 들어갔다. 1960년, 미국 국무부의 국제협력청에 들어가서 남아메리카에 "고급 반란진압 기술"을 교육하기 위해 파견되었다. 전직 《뉴욕 타임스》 사이공 지국 국장 아서 존 랑구스는 미트리오네가 브라질 경찰에게 사람을 죽이지 않으면서 전기충격을 줄 수 있는 방법을 가르친 미국인 고문관들 중 하나라고 주장했다. 또한 랑구스는 미트리오네가 우루과이의 미국 공공보안프로그램 신임 책임자가 된 이후 브라질에서와 마찬가지로 전국적인 신분증 제도가 도입되었고 고문이 몬테비데오 경찰에게 일상화되었다고 말한다.

1960년에서 1967년 사이 미트리오네는 브라질 경찰과 동업하여 처음에는 벨로호리존테에서, 그 다음에는 히우지자네이루에서 일했다. 1967년 미국으로 귀국하여 워싱턴 D.C. 국제개발청(USAID)에서 자신의 대(對)분란전쟁 경험과 노하우를 공유했다. 1969년 USAID의 지시에 따라 우루과이로 파견되어 공중안전청(OPS)을 감독했다.

1965년 도미니카 내전 이후 도미니카 공화국에도 파견된 적이 있다.

미트리오네가 파견되었을 당시 콜로라도당 정권이 집권하고 있던 우루과이는 경제붕괴, 노동자 파업, 학생운동, 그리고 좌익 도시유격대 투파마로스 등으로 내홍을 겪고 있었다. 한편 워싱턴 D.C.는 좌익 정당연합 광역전선(FA)이 1970년 칠레의 인민전선이 그랬던 것처럼 선거에 승리할 가능성을 두려워했다. OPS는 1965년부터 이미 우루과이 경찰에게 무기와 훈련을 제공하며 그들을 돕고 있었다. 1960년대부터 이미 고문이 실행되고 있었다는 주장도 있으나, 그것을 일상화시킨 장본인은 댄 미트리오네라고 한다. 미트리오네는 “정확한 고통을, 정확한 부위에, 정확한 양만큼 가하면 원하는 효과를 얻는다”고 말하며 고문을 정당화했다.

전직 우루과이 경찰관들과 CIA 공작원들은 미트리오네가 몬테비데오의 자기 자택 지하실에서 우루과이 경찰에게 고문대상의 입과 성기에 전기충격을 가하는 법을 비롯한 고문기술을 가르쳤다고 증언한다. 뿐만 아니라 미트리오네가 냉전 맥락에서 미국으로 온 외국 경찰요원들을 훈련시키면서 노숙자들을 훈련대상으로 사용했고, 피험체로 사용한 뒤 살해했다는 혐의마저 존재한다.

미트리오네의 개입에 의해 고문이 일상화되면서 우루과이의 긴장은 급격히 가속되었다. 그 결과 미트리오네 본인도 1970년 7월 31일 투파마로스에게 납치당했다. 투파마로스는 미트리오네를 심문하여 그의 과거와 미국의 라틴아메리카 개입에 대해 알아냈고, 그를 풀어주는 대가로 정치범 150명을 석방할 것을 요구했다. 그러나 우루과이 정부는 이를 거부했고, 미트리오네는 머리에 총을 두 방 맞은 시체가 되어 자동차 뒷좌석에 실린 채 발견되었다. 납치 당시에 어깨에 총을 한 방 맞은 것과 살해될 때 머리에 두 방 맞은 것을 제외하면 신체상 학대당한 흔적은 전혀 없었다. 우루과이 정부는 미국의 지원을 받고 있었기에 이는 사실상 미국이 미트리오네를 버린 것이라고 판단할 수 있다.

투파마로스 총수 라울 센딕 안토나시오는 감옥에서 석방된 이후 사실 자기들은 미트리오네가 고문기술자인 줄은 몰랐다고 밝혔다. 투파마로스는 미트리오네가 경찰에게 시위 진압 방법을 교육한다고 생각했고 학생 시위자들의 죽음을 보복하기 위해 미트리오네를 납치한 것이었다. 또한 센딕은 미트리오네의 죽음은 의도한 것이 아니며, 투파마로스 지도부는 정부가 자신들의 요구를 거부해도 미트리오네를 죽이기보다는 계속 붙잡아 놓고 있기로 결정했다고 주장했다. 그러나 1970년 8월 7일, 납치 실행 이후 1주일 뒤 우루과이 경찰이 투파마로스 지도부가 머물고 있던 집을 덮쳐 센딕 등을 모조리 체포했고, 미트리오네를 살려두기로 한 계획을 알고 있던 이들이 모두 감옥에 들어가 나머지 조직원들과 연락이 끊겨 버렸다는 것이다.

리처드 닉슨 행정부는 대변인 론 지글러를 통해 미트리오네의 “질서있는 세계의 평화적 진보를 위한 헌신은 전세계 자유인들의 귀감이 될 것”이라는 성명을 발표했다. 미국 언론은 미트리오네의 장례식을 대대적으로 보도했으며 데이비드 아이젠하워와 국무장관 윌리엄 P. 로저스를 비롯한 여러 저명인사들이 장례식에 참여했다. 프랭크 시나트라와 제리 루이스는 인디애나주 리치먼드에 살고 있던 미트리오네 가족을 위한 자선공연을 열기도 했다. 그러나 미트리오네의 장례식이 있고 불과 며칠 뒤 우루과이 고위 경찰 알레한드로 오테로(Alejandro Otero)가 호르날 두 브라지우 기자에게 미트리오네가 경찰에게 고문기술을 가르쳤다고 밝혀 버린다.

미트리오네 납치살해사건은 그리스계 프랑스인 감독 콘스탄티노스 가브라스의 1972년 영화 《계엄령》의 소재가 되었다. 작중 등장인물들의 이름이 가명 처리된 것을 제외하면 영화 줄거리는 실제 사건을 거의 그대로 따라가고 있다. 이 영화는 당시 아옌데 좌파정권이 집권하고 있던 칠레에서 촬영되었는데, 불과 1년 뒤 아옌데 정권도 CIA가 개입한 군사 투데타로 붕괴하고 만다.

참고 자료 

 

1920년 출생
1970년 사망
고문 가해자
CIA 요원
이탈리아계 미국인
FBI 요원
미국의 외교관
미국의 경찰관
우루과이에 거주한 미국인
암살된 외교관
리치먼드 (인디애나주) 출신
1970년 살인 사건