MILITARY, INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES, POLITICAL SCANDALS, AND DEMOCRACY IN BRAZIL - 1998-2000, THE

Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Summer 2003 by Zirker, Daniel, Redinger, Matthew

Another possible driving feature of military politics in Brazil, one that is deeply affected by the crosscutting currents of nationalism, appears to be interservice rivalry. The most prominent recent struggle in this regard seems to be the apparent competition for funding between two intelligence and security projects: Calha Norte (Northern Trench) and Sivam (Amazon Surveillance). Calha Norte, first articulated in the 1980s, has been an Army-led program to create an extensive security buffer along Brazil's Amazon borders (Zirker & Henberg, 1994). Sivam, in contrast, has been an Air Force-directed radar and air space surveillance system, also for the Amazon region. The awarding of the huge Sivam contract to a US contractor, Raytheon, followed the deactivation of Calha Norte in the 1990s.15 The subsequent Sivam scandal of 1995, revolving around charges of influence peddling,16 was openly regarded by senior Air Force officers as a personal condemnation (Rodrigues, 1995). Others noted that the Calha Norte project, which began to be resurrected following the Sivam scandal, was an immediate beneficiary,17 apparently at Sivam's expense.18

The history of Brazilian intelligence services over the past four decades is linked to the military establishment. During the dictatorship, the military formally directed all police and intelligence activities; in the first decade after 1985 and the official end of military rule, agencies such as the National Information Service (SNI) and its successor, the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs (SAE), continued to be staffed with many active military personnel and directed by senior officers.

It might be argued, in this context, that 1999-2000 represented the possibility of a watershed in the civilianization of the Brazilian government. The implementation of two crucial projects, the civilian-directed Ministry of Defense and the civilian-directed (or, at least, Congressionally overseen) Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin), both of which were proposed and debated for over a decade, were now at hand. Moreover, although some sectors of the military had lodged bitter nationalistic criticisms of both of these new programs, early indications were that President Cardoso was completely committed to their smooth implementation. It is highly significant, then, that both of these key proposals were severely qualified in 1999 and early 2000 by political scandals linked in their initial disclosure to military intelligence agencies, and that the military seems to have gained a greater measure of political control as a result, as the following will seek to clarify.

POLITICAL SCANDALS AND POLICY OUTCOMES

Political scandals have increasingly emerged throughout the world over the past decades as important and available devices in democratic power struggles. Generally defined as moral and legal transgressions leading to the discrediting of policies and political actors, scandals have taken on a variety of forms and functions; in Latin America over the past several decades, major political scandals have typically involved charges of corruption, abuse of power, and conflicts of interest, interestingly some of the same arguments used to justify military intervention in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.