Fernando Pocino: Spy on social media

For a decade, the universe of Argentina’s Intelligence services was divided into two worlds. One half was aligned with Antonio ‘Jaime’ Stiuso, the others were on Fernando Pocino’s side. The former managed to nearly control the entire Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado (SIDE) throughout the presidencies of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The latter became his internal adversary and started gaining ground during the last few years of Kirchnerism.

Stiuso had a higher profile nearly throughout his career and even gave interviews. Among them, with Noticias magazine. He even took part in a Netflix documentary about the death of AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman. Pocino, on the other hand, never spoke. Until now. 

On October 17, at 6.46pm, from an X account with the username @fernando_pocino, a thread of tweets was published. It began with the following phrase: “Yesterday, looking over my credit card transactions, I noticed there is a hefty sum owed to @MovistarArg,” he wrote, referring to the telecommunications firm. “I call the bank and note I am unaware of such consumption.” A connoisseur of all kinds of telephone-hacking, the user then wrote in another tweet: “I’m worried about being part of a new or old way of intrusion into communications.”

That is, the former agent – who was in charge of the Reunión Interior sector, a hypersensitive division of the intelligence services, chose to leave anonymity behind and debut with a complaint, which has already been taken up by deputy Marcela Pagano, who is also a friend of lawyer Franco Bindi, an old acquaintance of Pocino’s. Bindi’s friends claim that he warned the deputy about this situation for her to pick up the gauntlet.

Pocino’s leap onto social networks has been coupled with a series of strange events related to his new public profile. The first one is the attempt at hacking his telephone line. The other incident had happened two months earlier, on August 9 in Pinamar, where he has settled ever since he retired from the SIDE. On that day, he reported that someone had opened his Renault Duster van and rummaged around in there. A few days earlier, others lit a few pine needles he had piled up in his front garden and had even moved an armchair where he usually sits in the back of his house. These movements have concerned the former agent.

Pocino has always been linked to the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) figures that entered the SIDE during former president Raúl Alfonsín’s government in the 1980s. He worked as a delegate in Congress, where he met Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and as time went by, developed a good relationship with some sectors of Kirchnerism, which ultimately led him to a hierarchical post within the SIDE of those governments.

But from his X account, he has criticised Kirchnerism and even his former boss Oscar Parrilli. One of his recent tweets reads: “I was asked about @OscarParrilli. @CFKArgentina has already said it all” – a reference to the famous “fucking idiot” she called him in a leaked telephone conversation.

In some posts, Pocino has revealed information about his personal life. For instance, that his brother was a producer for Alfredo Casero, who went to school with Mauricio Macri’s legal advisor, Fabián ‘Pepín’ Rodríguez Simón. Or that he met President Javier Milei in 2016. He even interacts with a fake parody account in the name of his former rival agent Stiuso (@Jstiuso5) and played at being an influencer, asking his 49 followers for help because last the weekend a seal was dying on the shores of a Pinamar beach (he could not save her).

Between 2013 and 2015, Pocino had some hectic years. During that time, tensions between Fernández de Kirchner and her secret services were at their height. They were the years when Kirchnerism strengthened their intelligence operations within the Army, which was then commanded by César Milani, with whom Pocino had a good relationship and talked almost daily. He survived the purge of SIDE during Parrilli’s term and was even there during the early years of the leadership duo of Gustavo Arribas and Silvia Majdalani during Mauricio Macri’s government, until he left. 

During his last years at SIDE, health problems became constant and they have lingered to this day, which is why he has difficulty moving. When deputy Pagano told him he would be summoned by the Telecommunications Commission to talk about his complaint over the hacking attempt, he said he would not have a problem attending, though he clarified: “Health permitting.” Perhaps the combo of threats, hacking and health have pushed him into raising his profile.