Is Argentina going totally blind?

The proposal by President Cristina Kirchner to abolish the Secretariat of Intelligence (SI) may make sense, at least to her, in the current political context of the Nisman death, but should be deeply considered before any action is taken. In neighboring Brazil, in 1990 President Fernando Collor de Mello, fulfilling a campaign promise, abolished the National Information Service (SNI) the intelligence service of the military that governed 1964-85, and it was not politically possible to create a new civilian intelligence service, the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN), until 1999. During that time the government was basically blind to civil unrest caused by the Landless Workers’ Movement and to drug lords in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Once the ABIN was created, it was extremely limited in its sphere of action, and is prohibited, for example, from doing intercepts. Most of the scandals that ABIN has been involved in during the past fifteen years are due to its being illegally involved in intercepts, something that any intelligence agency must have access to.