The SIDE is a complex organization to govern. From 1983 to date, all presidents, except Mauricio Macri, had to change their head of Intelligence at some point during their government. Raúl Alfonsín, Carlos Menem, Fernando de la Rúa, Eduardo Duhalde, Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Kirchner changed it once. In his two years in office, Javier Milei already had to do it twice. The last one was on December 3, when he appointed accountant Cristian Auguadra as head of the house of spies.
The change occurred as a result of the wear and tear suffered by the previous Secretary of Intelligence, Sergio Neiffert, who had arrived after the expulsion of Silvestre Sívori, who left along with the person who had put him in that place: the then Chief of Staff Nicolás Posse. A little parenthesis. The rumors of Posse’s departure were associated with unholy Intelligence activities. In other words, managing the SIDE is a double-edged sword: it gives many resources, but when used incorrectly they can generate a storm against.
Neiffert arrived with the sponsorship of Santiago Caputo, but very quickly he found himself with the limitation that he had no experience in managing Intelligence personnel. It was then that they summoned, a few months later, Diego Kravetz, who had some experience in managing Intelligence brigades in the City Police and, in addition, was about to be fired as Vice Minister of Security of Jorge Macri. Santiago Caputo, quick with reflexes, recruited him to take the place of the operational head of the spies.
The arrival of Auguadra put under review almost all the hierarchical positions that had been created following the restructuring of the organization when it was renamed SIDE and was no longer called AFI. Today, the most relevant people in the organization are, in addition to Kravetz, Alejandro Cecati, in charge of operational issues, Alejandro Colombo, in charge of foreign issues, and Ariel Waissbein, dedicated to cybersecurity issues. They are all in the spotlight. Especially Waissbein, who had a tense episode last August when a delegation led by Neiffert went to his offices to ask for explanations about his tasks, because he had become a person who was reluctant to collaborate. Another of the people who led that operation was José Francisco Lago Rodríguez, a 32-year-old young man who today functions internally as Santiago Caputo’s true trusted person in the SIDE. So much so, that most of the meetings that Caputo has had with Auguadra, before and after his appointment, were with Lago Rodríguez. This lawyer was trained in administrative law, he worked at the Cassagne firm, where he did not stand out too much, perhaps due to his young age, and he is not known much in the Administrative Litigation jurisdiction of the Federal Justice, but he managed to establish a good relationship with the libertarian world and, before moving to the SIDE, he worked in the Legal and Technical Secretariat alongside María Ibarzábal. His father is the deputy general trustee of SIGEN.
Internal. Auguadra’s arrival was surrounded by rumors and crises. Weeks before Neiffert’s departure it emerged that Lago Rodríguez had gone to his house in San Isidro with intolerable demands for the then head of the SIDE. According to what was published on the ElDiarioAr portal, Neiffert kicked him out of his house and he went out to the sidewalk shouting and in his underwear. By then Neiffert’s reputation was already in tatters. There was controversy because he had made SIDE a place for his personal businesses: the food supplies from the National Intelligence School belonged to his wife, a pastry specialist; The rental cars were from the Jack Cars Agency, owned by the brothers Horacio and Javier Jack, close friends of Neiffert. In meetings with State suppliers, he asked that they hire his signage company Carteles Ya. Rumors also began to spread about work trips abroad in which he included his family in the delegation. A trip to the CIA with his son Lautaro and excursions to Europe that even included his mother-in-law. A more concrete example: from February 14 to 16 of this year, the Munich Security Conference was held, like every year. As a welcome, the German service organized a camaraderie dinner with all the intelligence chiefs of the world who had been invited. Neiffert was absent because he had already scheduled a Valentine’s dinner with his wife, who had accompanied him, at an exclusive restaurant in that city. A romantic… with the SIDE wallet.
Auguadra arrived with the promise of opening a new stage. On December 3, twenty minutes after being made official, he was already signing his first file: the “National Intelligence Policy.” Two days later it appeared in the Official Gazette through decree 864/2025 signed by President Milei and Chief of Staff Manuel Adorni. It is a 34-page document illustrated with a world map that has Argentina in the center, which functions as a roadmap to rebuild a system that, according to the text itself, has suffered more than twenty years of deterioration. The diagnosis is not surprising nor does it generate further discussion. The sensitive point is in the recipe: a redesign that significantly widens the field of action of State Intelligence, without making clear what the brakes are on internal espionage.
The decree is based on familiar rhetoric. It talks about protecting life, liberty and rights, safeguarding democracy and defending sovereignty against external threats. The problem appears when going ashore. Broad and imprecise concepts accumulate in the operational guidelines. For example, the SIDE is enabled to monitor “disruptive disinformation that can erode the institutional cohesion and legitimacy of the national State.” The information is not required to be false, nor is a prior court order or the intervention of foreign powers. Under that wording, an uncomfortable journalistic investigation, a judicial complaint or an opposition campaign could remain within the radar of State Intelligence.
Monitoring. The tension with the National Intelligence Law 25,520 is evident. This rule expressly prohibits the production of information about people based on their political opinions, their activism or their membership in social, union or party organizations. The decree claims to move within that framework, but at the same time introduces such broad categories that, in practice, they reopen the door that the law had tried to close after a history full of political espionage. In May 2025, the newspaper La Nación had anticipated that a project along these lines was being worked on. Now he saw the light. At that time that plan had been put on hold after the rejection of the Bicameral Intelligence Commission. But this Bicameral is just a commission that issues an opinion, it is already clear what the Government does with those opinions.
The approved policy also incorporates diffuse axes of surveillance: “The democratic system and its institutions constitute vectors of legitimacy that can be subject to erosion through influence operations, strategic judicialization or induced polarization,” the document describes. Translated, this may involve monitoring social protests, union demands, NGO actions or legal strategies to defend rights. It is not a theoretical hypothesis. During 2025, internal reports were leaked that revealed the activities of opposition leaders, union centers and social organizations, which led to judicial complaints and requests for explanations in Congress.
The National Intelligence Policy takes as reference the framework used by Western Intelligence agencies. The United States and Israel appear as clear models. The parallelism is noticeable in the objectives. The United States, in its National Security Strategy 2025, proposes protecting the country, its people, its economy and its way of life from foreign attacks and interference. The Argentine decree replicates this logic, but makes it more diffuse: it talks about protecting “life, freedom, goods and rights” against “global, transnational and/or local threats”, without ordering or prioritizing risks. Something similar happens with critical infrastructure. The Israeli strategy is direct: protect specific sectors such as energy, transportation and health. The local decree lists almost the same items: energy, telecommunications, logistics and health. In misinformation, the language is also familiar. The United States talks about propaganda and influence operations; Israel, of foreign digital influence. Argentina introduces “disruptive disinformation.” The result is a recognizable text, with the correct vocabulary of allied Intelligence agencies.
Another striking fact is what the decree does not say. There are no explicit exclusions that exclude journalism, electoral participation, legal defense, unionism or legal political militancy. In a public policy of this type, omissions become a definition. The lack of clear limits expands the discretion of those who execute the policy and makes any subsequent control weaker.
The Government maintains that the new National Intelligence Policy is necessary to confront real threats: terrorism, organized crime, cyber attacks, foreign espionage. The text itself dedicates entire chapters to these risks and recalls the attacks of 1992 and 1994, in addition to the persistence of transnational criminal networks. That need exists and is not under discussion. The problem appears when these objectives are mixed with poorly defined political and social categories. There the border between national security and internal control begins to move.
Funds. The publication of this document occurs in parallel with two other events around the SIDE. The treatment of the Budget law in which an expenditure of 97 billion pesos is expected for 2026 and a recent expansion of the budget item for spies that will be used only for December of this year and that raises the total figure to 107 billion pesos that the SIDE will have had by 2025. These two facts provide some news: the first is that the Government foresees a similar expense for the SIDE for next year, even a little by below. This should be taken with a grain of salt because at any time of the year items could be reallocated and the agency’s budget increased. The second novelty is that, in December, SIDE increased its budget by 26 billion pesos. This expansion, formalized by decree 849/2025, was not a generic reinforcement but was disaggregated into specific items and at some point unusual due to the magnitude of the expense. In the official annexes there are 350 million pesos for covers and air chambers, another 350 million for spare parts and accessories, 300 million for clothing and 40 million for kitchen and dining utensils, among other items. The detail was diluted in more than 500 technical pages that accompanied the decree and that the President signed en bloc. Former deputy Alejandro “Topo” Rodríguez commented on the social network It’s just a hypothesis.
Now, under the leadership of Auguadra, an accountant with a reputation as a good auditor, the numbers should be more organized. At SIDE they already knew the new boss, not only because until last month he was in charge of Internal Affairs but because he was famous among the agents for his posts on social networks, where he shared images of his mother, his wife, his children, his vacations, his friends, his work history, his home address… anyway. An endless list of private data that only reflects your inexperience in the world of intelligence.
It is still not clear to what extent Auguadra is willing to sacrifice himself for what his political bosses, Santiago Caputo and the Milei brothers, demand of him. It would not be the first time that the power in power uses the chair of Lord 5 of the SIDE for their personal benefit or to carry out internal espionage.
These bad arts, Milei would say, are typical of the caste.
