Ex-spy Antonio ‘Jaime’ Stiuso retains influence at SIDE intelligence services
Antonio ‘Jaime’ Stiuso, former director-general of operations at Argentina’s intelligence service, has well-oiled contacts with the libertarians leading SIDE.
The years go by and the ghost of Antonio 'Jaime' Stiuso, former director-general of operations at Argentina’s intelligence service, still haunts the corridors of Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado (SIDE) intelligence. Nowadays, his presence is of increasing certainty.
Ever since leaving SIDE in late 2014, Stiuso has dedicated himself to keeping the court cases alive which interest him and reconstructing his influence at the current intelligence services.
The last year of Kirchnerism forced him into exile. The Mauricio Macri administration respected and feared him at the same time – which was why they did not get too close to him. He was even monitored by that well-known gang of illegal spies run by Gustavo Arribas and Silvia Majdalani known as “The Mario Bros.” The government of Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner did not even come close to inviting him to work.
Some 10 years after that hasty departure, with the death of the AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman as context, Stiuso again has a voice within Intelligence.
SIDE chief Sergio Neiffert consults him and top presidential advisor Santiago Caputo has had more than one meeting with him. Stuiso has no formal post but those in charge were kind enough to name a confidant of his to direct counter-intelligence. This is important for Stiuso, allowing him to stay informed about the area he ran throughout his entire career in espionage and which he used to construct strong links with the the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States and Israel’s Mossad.
Stiuso’s presence is at the same time a problem for everybody because, in this context, to whom does the director of counter-intelligence respond? To Neiffert, to second-in-command Diego Kravetz or Stiuso himself?
The same thing happens with the three agencies into which SIDE is divided – the Agency of National Security with Alejandro Cecati at the helm, proposed by Enrique ‘Coti’ Nosiglia; the Federal Agency of Cybersecurity with Ariel Waissbein, and the Service of Argentine Intelligence, headed by Alejandro Colombo. Waissbein and Colombo met up with political analyst Rodrigo Lugones and Santiago Caputo at the Casa Rosada on June 4, 2024.
Today Nosiglia and Lugones are far removed from everyday operations at SIDE, whose three main chiefs report to different bosses: Cecati is closer to Stiuso and Waissbein to Caputo, while Colombo, hyperconnected to the ecosystem of foreign embassies in Argentina, finds more support from the CIA and Mossad.
Along general lines, SIDE today has many heads and one of them, in an informal capacity, is also Stiuso. He has returned, in one form or another.
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