Omar Gutiérrez was an officer for the DINA and the CNI between 1976 and 1986. As soon as he retired in 2002, he was hired by the Navy to take on various duties. Today, he serves as a technical advisor to the General Staff of the Navy for more than $2 million per month, in addition to a gross pension of the same amount.

During the dictatorship, he operated under the command of Sergio Echeverría Villarroel, who was involved in human rights cases.

Augusto Bulnes, a communist militant, was detained on the night of August 24, 1984. More than thirty agents armed with machine guns arrived at his home; he was gagged, laid on the floor of a van, and transported to Agua Santa 980, one of the torture houses that operated in Viña del Mar.

He was subjected to relentless torment for ten days. It was the CNI under Corvette Captain Sergio Echeverría Villarroel, brigade chief for the Valparaíso region.

Under his command, agents such as Carlos Herrera Jiménez—convicted for the murder of Tucapel Jiménez—and Armando Cabrera Aguilar—known as “el viejo Charly,” convicted for the murder of transport worker Mario Fernández López and Víctor Hugo Huerta—operated, as well as other officers who did not achieve public notoriety.

Two of them, young Navy lieutenants who were tracing an ascending military career, were always linked to the intelligence services of the civic-military dictatorship.

They are Captain Omar Gutiérrez Valdebenito and Frigate Captain Pedro Vargas Martínez.

Both were hired by the institution after their retirement, also being part of the extensive list of millionaire “jubilazos” (golden handshakes) granted by the Navy. This media outlet was able to verify that Gutiérrez still works for the Navy and Vargas ceased his duties in December of last year.

The CNI Sociologist

“Terrorism” was the title of the document that the young CNI officer, Omar Gutiérrez Valdebenito, presented to his superiors in April 1983. Evaluated as “excellent,” it was disseminated by the Navy’s Commander-in-Chief “for being a valuable work that provides complete background information on the subject.”

The praise is repeated throughout his military record, highlighting the role he played as an intelligence officer and analyst of subversive groups. By the end of the dictatorship, he was decorated with the “Honorable Government Junta” and “Mission Accomplished” medals.

Over the last 30 years, he has established himself as a prolific military academic, publishing articles, teaching classes to young officers at the Army War Academy and the Air War Academy, and conducting sociological studies for the Navy—he studied sociology at the University of Maryland, USA—among other tasks.

Retired in 2002 with a gross pension of $2,060,637, he currently serves as a technical advisor to the Navy General Staff, a position for which he receives $2,039,298 per month, according to documents provided by the institution via the Transparency Law.

Between 1976 and 1986, the then-Lieutenant Gutiérrez operated in the DINA and the CNI with outstanding evaluations from his superiors, who in repeated passages of his service record noted his “great professional vocation” and “unwavering loyalty.” As Commander of the Security Group of the Navy General Staff, a role assigned by the DINA in 1976, he was highlighted by Contreras himself: “Under orders from the Director General, he distinguished himself by his serious character, the excellent judgment demonstrated, and the initiative developed.”

Numerous annotations and official evaluations in his military file were crossed out by Navy lawyers; however, the remaining comments shed light on the course his career took. He had already passed through the Naval Telecommunications department by 1977, when his evaluator, the former Army captain and DINA agent Sergio Wenderoth Sanz, highlighted one of his most striking traits: “Excellent officer, of great professional spirit, loyal, fit for confidential missions.”

From then on, Gutiérrez’s military development moved toward analytical, sociological, and intelligence work, a specialty he acquired in 1981. “Terrorism” and “social violence”—according to his record—were recurring themes in his reports, both in the early ’80s and the early ’90s.

He operated for a year under the command of Fernando Lazcano Jiménez, a naval aide-de-camp. His task consisted of creating “security and protection of persons” plans that served “to a great extent for the instruction of the personnel forming the Admiral’s escort.”

Gutiérrez had the full confidence of the dictatorship’s ringleaders.

In 1981, he completed three years as a Lieutenant Junior Grade and had in his service record positive assessments from officers such as Mayer Rechnitz—a corvette captain—and Fernando Arancibia Reyes, an Army colonel, deputy director of the CNI, and identified by Odlanier Mena as the person responsible for the “Retiro de Televisores” (Television Removal) operation.

In September of that year, the head of the CNI brigade in the V Region, Sergio Echeverría Villarroel, appears as his evaluating officer.

“The work carried out by this officer is highlighted, especially for being strenuous and selfless, his discourse throughout every day of the year, which manifests his great professional spirit and spirit of sacrifice, in addition to his special conditions for this type of function,” Echeverría wrote on January 29, ’82, with his signature and the stamp of the criminal organization.

Omar Gutiérrez’s rating in the CNI

After spending nearly a year as an instructor of officers within the CNI, and being promoted to Lieutenant, he was transferred on February 22, 1984, to the Naval Intelligence Service (SIN).

He then began coordinating work with Raúl Monsalve Poblete, a Navy captain involved in the Horman case and identified as one of the CIA’s key contacts within the Navy, passing information for the arrest of the American writer.

Consolidated as an intelligence officer, in 1985 Gutiérrez was sent to the Chilean Naval Mission in Massachusetts, United States, and assumed the position of Head of the Counterintelligence Department of the SIN.

This stage was completely erased from his service record, as if it had never existed.

Upon his return to Chile, he was appointed to high-ranking positions within the institution. He worked in the Navy Cabinet and in 1987 began serving as Deputy Head of the Navy’s Sociological Studies Office, a unit whose leadership he eventually occupied in 1992. “He had a prominent participation within the team that prepared the analyses of the pre- and post-plebiscite reality, which were characterized by their accurate diagnoses and forecasts regarding subversive events, specifically regarding their burden and the syntheses of the political, economic, and social areas structured with it,” his service record registers in 1988.

From then until today, he undertook regular academic activity; he was an assistant in military philosophy at the Army War Academy, gave courses and lectures on military sociology—in 2017 he appeared on a panel as a speaker for the Navy’s Center for Strategic Studies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—conducted studies, and analyzed the national reality from a military perspective.

A former CNI agent who trains new generations.

“Arturo Marín Gutiérrez”

Gutiérrez is not the only member of Echeverría’s CNI who remained working for the Navy. This media outlet was also able to verify the case of Pedro Vargas Martínez, who until last December remained hired by the Maritime Prosecutor’s Office of Punta Arenas with a salary of $2,775,622, in addition to a gross pension of $2,497,168 for his retirement as a Frigate Captain in 2005.

Vargas, unlike Gutiérrez, was more dedicated to the exercise of force. Sources from the Ministry of the Interior identified him with the alias “Arturo Marín Gutiérrez,” known as “Arturito,” who operated in a large house with a basement that functioned as a torture center at Agua Santa 980, Viña del Mar.

Echeverría describes him as follows in an entry dated October 15, 1983, in his military record: “He stands out for his spirit of self-improvement, with a vocation for the Internal Front Service. He has proven to be an excellent operational team leader.

He acts with decision, great courage, contributing ideas and suggestions for the better fulfillment of missions. He cooperates with enthusiasm in giving lectures to personnel to maintain a good level of knowledge about the adversary.”

The operational chiefs of the CNI were in charge of carrying out the orders dictated by the directorate; they carried out the arrests and search deployments. In them, the repressive policy of the National Security Doctrine was materialized, which placed the “internal enemy” within national borders. But Vargas’s path began earlier, in 1976.

Graduating 32nd in seniority out of a group of 52 students, he passed through the Cruiser Prat, the Belloto Naval Air Base, and the Destroyer Portales, before linking up with the political repression agencies in 1978. The then-head of the SIN, Hugo D’Arcangeli, convicted in 2012 for the kidnapping, torture, and death of the MIR member Rudy Cárcamo in 1974, appears as his direct evaluator.

His work related to information management and profiling began in mid-’78, focusing on sensitive documentation as Head of the Information Section of the General Staff. Once in that position, he was transferred to the SIN, under the orders of Monsalve Poblete.

“He adapted quickly to the demands of the SIN,” Monsalve noted in the observations of December 28, 1981. “Officer of normal performance, identifying positively with the activities of the Service, after an effective work carried out in a tridimensional organization,” he evaluated.

In all probability, his transfer to the ranks of the CNI officially took place in 1983, when he was designated as an operative in the 1st Naval Zone “to perform extra-institutional tasks.”

The observation that follows was completely erased by Navy personnel, leaving only Echeverría’s signature.

While operating in the CNI in mid-’83, he served six months with the rank of Lieutenant. His superiors distinguished him for his “excellent conduct, loyal and moral (...) Especially highlighted for his selflessness and courage in his operations.”

Vargas’s rating in the CNI

What did Gutiérrez’s confidential operations consist of? What operations did Vargas lead in the V Region that earned him Echeverría’s recognition? Was he involved in the kidnapping and torture of Augusto Bulnes, Igor Goicovic, Juan Carlos Dávila, or so many others who passed through Agua Santa 980?

Did any of them participate in the brutal deployment of agents that ended in the murder of Luis Tamayo Lazcano in Cerro Placeres in 1984? Do they have information on the cases of David Miño Logan, Marcelo Miño Logan, and José Medel Rivas, murdered in the interior of the region in the early ’80s?

Did they participate in the setup that sought to frame Juan Alegría Mundaca for the murder of Tucapel Jiménez? Did they operate alongside Carlos Herrera?

Vargas left his job in Punta Arenas in December and could not be located to answer these and other questions after several contacts with the Maritime Governorate. Gutiérrez, for his part, refused to give an interview for this report.

The Navy, in response to a request for public information, declared itself ignorant regarding the actions carried out by both officers during their time in the CNI: “This Institution is unaware of what their specific functions were, as they were organizations foreign to it.” Likewise, they were hired “due to the needs of the institution (...) without there being any legal impediment.”

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, March 15, 2018