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.
The complete note, in this edition of NEWS.
