FEW Argentines doubt that the country’s intelligence services needed a shakeup. But the way it happened satisfied almost nobody. On January 26th the president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, wheelchair-bound from an ankle injury, appeared on television to announce that she would propose a law to scrap the main intelligence agency, the Intelligence Secretariat (SI), and replace it with a new body whose directors would be named by her and approved by the Senate.This happened while the SI is at the centre of a furore set off by the death from a gunshot of Alberto Nisman, a prosecutor who had accused Ms Fernández and other senior officials of trying to thwart his investigation into the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s worst terrorist attack. The president, who denies the allegations, quickly pronounced his death a suicide, then hinted that he was murdered by rogue intelligence agents. She suggested the 300-page document detailing Mr Nisman’s allegations had been the product of false information fed to him by the SI. Hence the need for a reform.But Argentines, some of whom took to the streets after Mr Nisman’s death, do not see her as a credible reformer. They are as confused as ever about what really happened. Their suspicions that the government was somehow involved have not been allayed. Some Jewish groups boycotted the official commemoration of...
from The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1txsYZQ
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