The military at the GSI – 04/29/2023 – Elio Gaspari

After the mess with the January 8th coup plotters, the Institutional Security Office turned into a goat. Well done, because he became an example of bureaucratic expansionism, with the palace military meddling where it shouldn’t.

Back then, the old Casa Militar advised the president on barracks issues, but its head was also the secretary of the National Security Council. The trouble started there.

As the government did not have an instrument of administrative coordination, in addition to military matters, the head of Casa Militar was a virtual Minister of Communications, with a voice in matters of foreign policy. After 1964, that power expanded. In 1969, when President Costa e Silva lost his voice for the second time, he asked the head of the Medical Service of the Presidency, after he had recovered it:

“Isn’t it stroke what I’m feeling?

– No sir. Spill is not. But we’re going to get everything right.”

It was, but at that point, no neurologist had examined the marshal. Only that doctor, a major who obeyed the general who headed Casa Militar, interested in shielding the episode.

Costa e Silva had suffered ischemia, would become mute again, lose movement on one side of his body and would never recover.

Over time, Casa Militar got involved in nuclear adventures and accompanied the extermination of the Araguaia guerrillas. During re-democratization it grew and became the Institutional Security Office and ended up (in fact) annexing Abin, heir to the National Information Service.

Time has passed, the government has another size and another structure. The GSI needs to redefine its attributions, removing the generalities that allowed its expansion. Lula decided to replace General Gonçalves Dias with another soldier, also from the reserves. Unlike his predecessor in the Bolsonaro government, he worked with Dilma Rousseff at a time when the figure of palace generals had not been reborn.

The clothes that GSI bosses have in their closets matter little. The Casa Militar de Costa e Silva was commanded by General Jayme Portella, patron of palace generals. He helped to ruin the regime with the issue of AI-5 and the health of Costa e Silva.

Interestingly, the medical major of 1969 was preceded and later succeeded in caring for the president’s health by a competent and sincere reserve colonel. His name was Américo Mourão.

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