Chapo Trap House - 788 - The AMIA Mystery feat. @iwrite4jacobin (12/4/23)

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Felix is joined by Stef aka @iwrite4jacobin to discuss his investigation into Argentina’s AMIA bombing. The 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires has generated much speculation as to who the perpetrators actually were, accusations of irregularities in the investigation, suspicions of cover-ups, connections with intelligence agencies, and the probable suicide of a prosecutor related to the case. Stef takes us through the whole story and its implications for relationships between America, Israel, Iran and Argentina. Find Stef’s series of essays on the incident on Substack, starting with Part 1 here: https://whitesiadbarre.substack.com/p/interpreting-the-amia-i-peronism And follow him on twitter here: https://twitter.com/iwrite4jacobin

Music Earlier this month, Israel spy agency Mesaud made an explosive announcement that they worked in conjunction with Brazilian police to foil a Hezbollah terror plot. Soon after this, the Brazilian police made the unusual move of telling the Israelis to fuck off and stated that the plot they had foiled had no involvement with international events. While many laughed, others brought up the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as proof that there must be something to Israel's accusations. Being in a Marafat who lost his ability to consistently read in Comprehensive Spanish

due to my past membership at a kickboxing gym or sparring happened four days a week, I can't claim to have ever read a ton about the AMIA attack, only surface level things like the suicide of special prosecutor Alberto Nismet, the claims of his Bola, slisha rainy and involvement, and the way that this alleged involvement has been used by American neo-conservatives to point to a broader Iranian operation in Latin America. But luckily for all of us, we're joined today by this shows first ever Jewish Latino guest,

Twitters and Substacks, I write for Jack of it, who also happens to have written an excellent three-part series on the bombing and the tangled mess that has since followed. How are you doing today, stuff? I'm good. So just for our listeners who are not super familiar with the attacks and in general, not super familiar with Argentinian history in the 20th century.

Could you give some context for what it was like for the Jewish community in Argentina both during the dictatorship and sort of right before the bombing? So during the dictatorship, the dictatorships repression was primarily directed against the last and specifically against the Baroness last and the Marxist last. And I don't, you know, to some extent, the disproportionate number of Jews who were targeted or tortured were, you know, was of course the result of just disproportionate Jewish representation and left wing movements in general. But according to Jecovo D. M. Arman, and who wrote a famous book about his experiences

under torture during the dictatorship, there was a specific question that Jewish, like last disk detainees would be asked frequently, which was about information for something called La planandinha, the Andinia plan. Andinia plan, this will come up in and in the end, and in the end, this will come up later in strange revelations about the Amia bombing. But it's essentially a conspiracy based on when theodore Hertz wanted to create Israel

and in Argentina, that states that there's sort of a joint Zionist left wing conspiracy to take Patagonia from Argentina and Chile and create a second Israel there. So in the dictatorship era, this was like, oh, Soviet troops, Soviet and Israeli troops are going to land any day now. Like we have to, you know, this is like an urgent real national security threat. It persisted into democracy, but you know, that's like a deeply, sort of deeply bizarre aspect of anti-Semitism in the Argentine dictatorship that I don't think. A lot of people realize that it was also that they were hardcore Catholic anti-communist, but there was a very specific belief there, however strange it was. Yeah, no, that kind of struck me in some of the materials you sent me.

How little like anti-Semitism in Argentina was discussed just in the context of the bombing at large. I thought that was a pretty stark emission in at least American sources about this. Yeah, I mean, just to say something in connection with that, you know, Argentina, I mean, this is not something we can get into here, but you know, Berron allowed these various like World War II war criminals

to take refuge in Argentina. And so there's this, you know, Americans don't really know who Berron was or what parenthesis is and it's hard to explain, but Berron was also gone on pretty well with the Jewish community in Argentina. It's part of his general schizophrenic outlook on everything. Whereas the anti-paranist right is where anti-Semitism

historically comes from in Argentina, not even under the dictatorship, but prior to it on when like the first sort of progressive movement in Argentine national history, you see our the radical civic union was empowered briefly. Like a lot of the elite reaction against those governments involved like attacks on synagogues and so on just because. So, you know, I don't know, again, all of the people who did that stuff, like all of their descendants love Israel now, and Israel armed the Argentine dictatorship, of course,

famously, but that is sort of, to me, that's sort of the really relevant legacy of antisemitism and Argentina, more than like, betones like weird little retirement home for Nazis. Yeah, so you've written a lot about how model the investigation has been, but to the best of your abilities, could you give what is the consensus best recounting of events of the actual attack. So on July 18th, 1994, the Amia,

which stands for is the main building of a Sotya Siyom Muthuali, Sraali, Arhendina, which is like the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association. It's like a Jewish community group. Bloded 85 people were killed. The what happened has never been conclusively proven, but the has never like literally has not been proven, like it's a cold case, but the consensus

narrative in both like North American and in Argentine society and media is that this was a Hezbollah suicide bombing, which there are a number of problems with. I think also important to note is that the Amiab bombing happened two years after the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed fewer people. And like, it's sort of more, I feel like people are more dismissive towards just because it's like oh well the Hezbollah explanation kind of makes sense there like that's like in Israeli political target but that event is also like deeply odd and I personally don't believe that Hezbollah or around was responsible for it but regardless it there's there's a lot of unanswered questions around that too and it sort of kicked off the whole processes that the Amia would then really hit kick into overdrive. Yeah, that is the thing that I have repeatedly run into in my limited reading of this, like just how weird it would be for Hezbollah to seemingly like at random select Argentina, and how convoluted, you know, like on the other

hand, how convoluted like a false flag attack would be. Could you talk a little bit about the immediate aftermath of the bombing and sort of the US's role through the FBI in pushing the Iran theory forward? Yes. So in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, a couple of things happen. One to note that's recorded in Gabriel Levinas's great book, La Leyva Holosis Thombros, The Launder, The Rubble, is a reporter for Radio Mietre, which is like a major, or at least at the time,

was a major Argentine radio station, is live on air, like right after the bombing happens, like as the police are supposed to be pulling people out from under the rubble, and he sees a group of men affiliated either with the federal police or with C the intelligence agency, like picking up, like carry around a bunch of auto parts, and interviews them live on air and they're like,

oh, these are parts of the suicide van that we just like already found at the scene. Like as people are, as like rescue efforts are going on, like before the investigation has even started. And that sort of tracks into, you know, what happens further and further on. So like, whatever you make of this, and Israeli forensic team is immediately flown in to examine the AMIA, this, I mean, to be, to be, you know, to be sure this probably has partially

to do with the fact that like the Argentine police, especially the Buenos Aires municipal police, were just like not very experienced in these types of things, but it's still odd. Then there's a couple of teams from the US. There's FBI, which is sort of consistently involved in the later investigation. And then there's also an ATF team. The ATF team is notable only because,

I think his name is Charles Hunter, the chief ATF investigator, is skeptical of the suicide bomb version. And I'm not an explosive expert, but his reasoning is like, none of the surrounding buildings were damaged. None of the surrounding buildings had their windows blown out. Like, this seems like an explosion that came from within the building. There are other reasons to be suspicious of this suicide bomb version of events.

But in any case, that is the version of events that eventually sort of everyone runs with. And that conditions, NeseMond's investigation and before that, the investigations as to in attempts to prove like, there was a bomb explosion from a vehicle that drove into the building and the driver was the member of Hezbollah or affiliated to Iran or Lebanese or what have you. Yeah, I noticed that a lot of, I mean, it's already just like very thin evidence if you could call it that for Iranian involvement. We'll link to the three-part

series that you wrote. But in that, you talk about how a lot of the evidence for Hezbo or Iranian links is in like sort of very bad early 90s phone analysis. I forget what the exact intelligence term for it is, but just like connecting phones basically. And there's one suspect that they think that they figured at one point who most send Ravani, who like you note also had died once before this attack. had died months before this attack, but they basically pended on him in preliminary investigations by pointing out that like a phone call made in the area of Buenos Aires that he lived in called the Van Company that supplied the Van, purportedly used in the attack. Yeah, so there's sort of three different incarnations

of the Aeronc Yelp theory, and we'll go through each of those, but just maybe to preface the, this is all the branch, like you mentioned the United States's role and sort of pushing the narrative and Israel's role in pushing the narrative. And of course, like they were the beneficiaries,

but as we saw by sort of how clumsy, the like Brazil thing was, whoever's in charge of Israel's Latin America, the massage Latin America desk, or in charge of the FBI's like, you know, there's definitely has Belen Latin America desk is like, is essentially like Cersei Lannister with that once, um, Taiwan dies. essentially like Cersei Lannister with that once Tywin dies. And the Tywin in this case is a man with the most guests who ask super spy allias of all time called Aldo Style, whose real name, who will later be known as Hi Mistuso and whose real name is Antonio Arasio Stuso,

who not only spends his entire career career but his entire adult life pretty much as like these sort of power behind the throne of Nassi, the Argentine like foreign intelligence agency. So you know like for instance when the Israeli embassy bombing first happens, Stusa's manatella vives this guy named Patricia Fienen, like goes to Masad and it's like see that can prove that there was a suicide bomb and you should like run this through us, you should give all your resources to us, like, you know, wear your guys on the ground in Argentina, like, and that's sort of the beginning of a very fruitful relationship for Stusa and see that with the US and Israel

and with various European intelligence agencies, which goes great until it doesn't in 2014. All right. So now that you've sort of established SKU, so could you give our listeners a brief tour into the personal and political life of a man whose career SKU so patronized, Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor. Yeah, so Nisman is like Stusa's pawn, or Stusa is Nisman's like daddy. I don't know how else to really put it.

And there's consciousness of this in Argentina. There's like, you know, there's also stuff that you'll see, like if you search like, you know, Nismman, Sionithmar, Nisman, Masad, or something, Nisman, C.A. on Twitter, there'll be people who are like, oh, Nisman was like a Masad agent, and he was working for American imperialism. But Nisman was like a pawn in the game of high misuse, though. And basically, Nisman, he starts out as a young lawyer.

There's some odd stuff in his early career. Like, he barely escapes being prosecuted for making obscene phone calls, like very obscene phone calls to one of his female colleagues. And then he becomes head of the Amian investigation eventually. And his entire rest of his career and his life really will center on this. So he becomes a very prestigious person who receives all of his information that he uses in the investigation through Stusa.

And he also gets personal benefit, a lot of personal benefits out of this relationship. So like one of Stusa's biggest assets in sort of marketing himself politically or making himself indispensable to politicians and democratic Argentina with his network in the court system. So Stusa gets Neesman's wife appointed to a federal judgeship that she's like, you know, not even in the running for.

And Neesman becomes quite wealthy. He travels and sort of is prestigious internationally, like there's various videos you can find on YouTube him speaking to foundation for defensive democracies in particular. He does speak through a translator, but yeah, and there's a lot, a lot, a lot of weirdness around Nysmone's finances that we'll probably ultimately never know the answer to. Like he had a secret, as was revealed immediately after his death, he had a secret bank account in the US, which was receiving, you know, $10,000, $15,000 deposits, you know, pretty regularly from unknown individuals. His IT guy, Diego Lago Marzino gave Niesman half his salary at the end of every month, who will also be a

suspect in Niesman's death. So there's a, you know, he's sort of like, you know, the way I think of Niesman is he's sort of like a sort of playboy lawyer type who's like, you know, he's Jewish and he, you know, he comes from, you know, a pro-his-real background as I do and as all Argentine Jews do, but he's really a pawn in the game of someone who's not Jewish and sort of a subcontractor from a side in the CIA. So let's establish the timeline for sort of right before Neesman kills himself and then does. So what happened with Stiyoso, Christina Kirchner,

and then Neesman's investigation? Because you characterize his ultimate set of accusations and sort of like a desperate move to save this very lucrative career that he's made for himself. Yeah, so now we could probably get into the three different incarnations of the Amia Hasbela guilt theory.

So the first one is, as you said, see that makes a series of, does this really dubious phone link analysis, connecting like someone in when a side is called someone in in Paraguay who called someone in Lebanon who was you know we think was involved with Hasblah. James Bernazzani, the FBI liaison to see that who you know is fully invested in proving the around theory famously said that this is like dangerous and you could link his phone to a summit in Latins with this methodology but yeah so see that see that makes a series of claims centered around around that and then a lot of the specific

individuals who are calling on each end are sort of murky but one is as he said most in Rabani the cultural attaché to the Iranian embassy in Argentina, who purchased a white Renault traffic van several months before the attack. And because it's alleged that a white Renault traffic van was the suicide van, is like, oh, he purchased this, you know, he purchased this on behalf of the attack, like the Iranian embassy was involved in planning the attack. And, you know, the phone stuff on Rebanis and is especially, you know, like, murky, like, see the alleges that like, a call was made to a Hezbo link number, a call was linked to a number that called

a Hezbo link number from like near Rebanis rental apartment, which like, yeah, the other thing that See the Dozen this first phase is a restaurant named Carla Steshadeen who's a very weird guy. He's a used car salesman, Wheeler dealer, Lebanese Argentine man who has connections to different like low level corrupt when a side of cops and his wife is like a prostitute. There's some kind of like sex work linkage to this that I haven't entirely is not entirely clear to me

But they rest at should lean and this begins like a whole like really horrendous legal Odyssey for him Where for years he's being hounded through the courts and ultimately he's completely exonerated everything But one thing that's interesting about that is that like when he's first arrested, a see that agent comes to him and is like, we're gonna give you 400,000 bucks if you like say the names of the Hezbo operatives who committed the attack, which of course, you know, even if that was the suicide van, like they should be and just sold it, use car like he, he, you know, so of course he couldn't do that. And he sort of gets pursued through the course. You mentioned the name of the suspect. Ravani is still alive. He can't leave Iran for somewhat obvious reasons.

But the actual name of the suspect is a guy named Ibrahim Hussain Barrow, the alleged suicide bomber. So we could get into like the second, this is like this already into the second incarnation of like the, the Amia has bullet pieces. Yeah, yeah, just, yeah, run through all of them. Yeah, so Eastman claims in the early 2000s that, that this has below like this driver who defected, this has bullet de facto, who is like a driver for an us brawler

or for email to move meh or someone identified the suicide, identified Hezbollah's guilt in the attack and identified the suicide bomber as someone whose last name was like Bru or Barro. And so Nisman alleges that this was a man named Ibrahim Hussein Barro, whose funeral in Lebanon was attended by high ranking Hezbollah. Like figures, I'm not sure if it was Nusraola himself or Ormouniere or like someone else whose name I don't know. But the primary guilt, like the primary evidence of guilt against Barrow is that, you know, well, these guys wouldn't have come to his funeral unless he carried out some important mission for Hasbola. Yeah.

So then, Nismen and Stu, so locate Barrow's brothers who are in Detroit, which is a very, I find the image of them heading to Detroit together very funny, but they take DNA samples from the brothers. The DNA samples were never tested. Supposedly, they're eventually lost. So there's ultimately this, you know, the Barrow thing is sort of, you know, again, this is now the official story,

but it sort of goes nowhere. The third incarnation of the Amia has bullet-yield pieces. Once Niesman sort of is making this grand accusation at the Pristine of Fernandes de Kirchner is comes entirely from Brazilian M.E.K. sources. So I think he has like seven, like Aronion, Brazilian exiles who are in some way affiliated with M.E.K. like go on the record and be like, oh yeah, like we knew about the plot, like, you know, these figures in Iran were calling these people like here in Brazil and they were, you know,

arranging the whole thing. So that last one is obviously the most, the most doubtful. And I think it sort of speaks to the increasing desperation of that surrounds like Niesman in his last few years and last few months. And why, why was Niesman so desperate? Could you talk a little bit about Stiosus firing and talk a little bit about Stiosus firing and Neesman's personal fears that he was speaking to close friends in the days and weeks before the suicide. Yes, so Neesman is very stressed out. His friends describe him as like very frantic in the months before. He's traveling all over the place. He's sending like these cryptic WhatsApp messages to his friends. And he is working on this indictment against Christina for non-discursion or the de-great-pink-tied figure

of Argentina. So what this indictment has to do with is that, in, I forget the year, I think 2011, Argentina and Iran sign a memorandum of understanding, which would have Argentine prosecutors interview the relevant Iranian suspects in Iran, and the two countries will sort of work together to get to the truth of this.

The rationale for Iran here is that these figures who include like very senior like ex-political functionaries and stuff are under interpol red alerts, which means that if they leave Iran any country that wants to, like, can and should arrest them. And Iran wants to get these lifted. Nisman makes the argument that, in fact, there's no intention to get to the truth behind the memorandum of understanding. And in fact, the entire point of this is just to exonerate the Iranian officials without justice ever being done. And so as he's, you know, he sort of starts working on this kind of, you know,

in brushed fashion. And a lot of it does have to do with, Stu So is being shuffled out of C then 2014. Nisman is losing like his guy, like his patron and his very, like we know from what's been released of like his friends that have gone on the record and stuff that he's extremely fearful about losing his own job and his own career. On top of which he's very fearful about once he lost you so in that protection, the political fallout, do you like just cheer like hatred that would come down

on him from like the then, like Hirschner's left in Congress and stuff. And so he starts preparing this accusation. Now by the time in the days before Niesman dies, Skuso has stopped picking up his phone calls from Niesman, which no doubt like Adj, you know, his general feeling of panic. And the primary person pushing Nisman to present this in front of Congress is Batrecia Bullrich, who is a far right politician, but who is like still like the mainstream right wing candidate in the first round of the elections that just happened, who's like just extraordinarily fail.

Like I encourage anyone like if you're a Spanish speaker and you like want to, you know, que es como un hecho extraordinario. Creo que si eres el español, y quieres ver un mes de simple, me encanta ver como es el rechazana gritante video que ha sido de una RV poniendo en el Provincio Tuchumán, o el campaña de la campaña de la empresa doctor Cristina Fernández de Cierce Memorial. El campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de la campaña de The future with the delinquents and corrupts, really prices.

That time, and forever. The Eastman is already like his, the people supporting him were like the crazy edge of the right wing already from where he had like this all-powerful, stuice of figure previously. Yeah, and I thought it was incredibly weird that Stuice so happened to flee Argentina after being questioned following hisman suicide. He fled to America and

has he returned that time? He has returned and that gets into that gets even weirder, but um, yeah, so Stuoso immediately after Nisman's death Stuoso leaves Argentina. He goes to an undisclosed location in the US. I think he said in some interviews that it was somewhere in California. I don't know, but there's a risk between Argentina and the US because Argentina wants to question Stuso and or charge him. And the Obama administration totally stone walls any like Argentine requests about this. And you know, this gets like the US announced before the UN by like the Argentine, you know, relevant representatives there. And all sorts of things

like that. In 2016 after Marisi Omakri, the like sort of hard right neoliberal candidate wins the elections, Duso does return to Argentina. And his life since then is sort of characterized by these like very rare but very like weird media appearances. He makes like once or twice a year where he'll say stuff like, you know, oh, there were people affiliated with the Kirschner's like tracking me before Nysmund died and like they threatened the lives of me and my daughters, I fled Argentina and fear of my life, which is like overall the Kirschner's who's like, you know, machine left-wing politicians, who's like networks

are like in activist movements and in the unions and in like local political machines. You know, I don't really, this doesn't seem very credible. In fact, for like, spied stuff, they relied on Stuso for years, which was because he was the guy you went to for that. But yeah, he says that he declares he testifies a bunch of times in the Niesman case and he keeps wanting to testify more times like he keeps asking to be allowed to testify again. The most recently I think was like either last or this year. And he basically is like, yeah, like Christina Kirschner assassinated Niesman. And like it's a whole, you know, Niesman was right. It's all a big conspiracy to cover up Iran's kill in the attacks.

I would encourage again, any Spanish speakers to watch, like there are some, like floating around clips from Stusa's interviews, both on Argentine TV and for this very weird Netflix documentary series, which I would encourage people to watch because he's like very smog, very cryptic. He keeps doing these like huge broad like Cheshire Cat Grins. And like, you know, just dancing around like, I know more than I'm letting on. You know, in terms of what else Stusa does, he found the consulting company as all intelligence

ex-intelligence officials that are want to do, which is a combination security and nutrition consulting firm because his wife is a nutritionist. He also makes our media appearances. He gets offered because of that Netflix documentary. Netflix offers him the position of an advisor on that show, Fowda, like the, like, massage. Probably. Yeah, the whole land type show. Yeah, which I could find nothing on whether or not he accepted or he accepted that offer or not, but he did get it.

You go to the Great Lanks in your series about sort of explaining that, you know, for the same reasons why it's very unlikely that Hezbollah or Iran did this, why it's very unlikely that like this is a false flag attack by Israel or the US, like again, like why would they need to, like Argentina just isn't on many Americans' minds at all, why would they do it there, et etc. But could you talk a little

bit about why the U.S. is so interested in this? And sort of the U.S. is interest in the trib order region? Yeah, so the first thing is what I personally believe about this is that this was not done as a false flag flag and that could be like, you know Sort of my you know arguing too much with Sean McCarty like anti conspiracy biases But um, but it did become a fault. It was a retroactive false flag So in other words the people who did this created a fantastic opportunity for someone much smarter than them Hi, Miss Kusa to sort of form this very beneficial smarter than them, high miscuso to sort of form this very beneficial relationship with the US and Israeli intelligence agencies. But yeah, so the argument around, the argument around Hasbola

Paraguay, you know, sort of goes back to this whole discourse, which of which Scuso is really the father after the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing about how in the tribe border area, which is like basically where the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet. It's like not a, you know, it's like a rural sort of swampy place. Iguesu Falls are there, I guess, if you think that's cool. But there are a lot of, there are a lot of like Lebanese and Syrian immigrants there. There are in Argentina and South America in general. And Scususa sort of

starts making the case that these people are like a, that has bullets like somewhere embedded here. And because this is sort of like a, you know, an arctic like cross border region, which like no one, you know, really has under their firm control, that like, you know, all kinds of gun runners and terrorists and whatnot or moving there. And in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, you say even attempts to sell to the US that been lot in hiding in Paraguay, which not even the Bush administration takes that bit. But it's difficult to sort of go.

I personally don't like a lot of left wing explanations for why the US cares so much about this region just because they're very deterministic. So the second largest aquifer in the world is here, and huge, huge, very fertile agricultural land. And that's famously a bit of a testing ground for like Monsanto and all these NGMOs and all these multinationals. And Lithium is there, and there's all these resources. I think that's probably part of the story. I think a bigger part of the story is if you look at a map, the US's Imperial Satrap in Latin America is like first and foremost Colombia, which is all the way

in the far north of the country. So if you want like to do stuff in the South American landmass, if you want to do stuff in the Southern Cone, like Columbia, it doesn't really cut it. And I think this is all connected to US efforts to sort of establish a presence in the tribe order region, which have been most successful concerning Paraguay, but the general, like, Amia discourse threat, like, threat construction has been a huge part of legitimizing even like those bases and such that exist outside Argentina. And that region has a lot of Middle Eastern diaspora as well, right? Yeah. One of the more interesting things that he sent me was the story of this guy who was, he

was a spy for the cops in Argentina, Jose Alberto Perez. He was undercover in the Jewish community in Argentina at the time of the bombing, or before the bombing. Could you talk a little bit about his accusations? Yeah, so, you know, he called himself you see when undercover. This is the best like link for Argentine state actors being involved in the attack, but basically Perez, Perez's story is that he was sent undercover during democracy by his bosses within the federal police who were dictatorship pulled over is who wanted to sort of, you know, make sure the last didn't resurg, but also we're interested in what we mentioned at the top of the show, which is La Plana Ndina, and wanted sort of him to, you know, go into Jewish institutions of like, you know, find the secret plans to take over Patagonia. And Perez played this role for

some years. He visited the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires regularly. He also specifically alleges that his bosses and the federal police had plans for the Amia building and that he's quite certain that it was an explosion that came from within the building. And this is all strengthened by the fact that one of the many suspicious things that happened the day of the attack is that the federal police who are normally around the amoeia, like

you know, as guards or whatever, are conspicuously absent in like the hours like right before the attack. And so there's all kinds of, you know, even in sort of the mainstream account, there's all kinds of stuff that's like, state actors were complicit in this and that actually backs up the, you know, bizarre like Kyrschner, Iran cover up theory. But the problem with this is that as we know from Perez and as we know from sort of in general, the federal police was the preserve of like very right wing anti-paranist like dictatorship hold over elements.

And so if you want like a theory of what happened, you know, I think one possible theory of what happened is that that's very realistic, but we may never know for sure is that these right wing elements of the federal police were responsible for the attack and that, you know, these sort of right wing neat heads just gave like the perfect chance to to high misuseise, so to like, you know, make it big. Off of this. I'd encourage people, there's actually some reporting about this in England, in English. I'd encourage people to read Gareth Porter's stuff at the Grey Zone. The other thing, the other weird addendum to the story is that there's an Amazon original series made about Jose Peraz called Yosei, the regret grateful spy, which I believe is subtitled, which narrates all of these events. And so implicitly cast out, I'm like, at least says there's something more going on

in the Iran thesis. But it got really rare reviews in the right wing Jewish press. You know, reviews that were like, oh, this shows how the Argentine state was conspired against Jews, which is like, yes, but not the how like the Argentine state was conspired against Jews, which is like, yes, but not the elements of the Argentine state that you're thinking of. That's very interesting.

So like almost 20 years, or, oh, sorry, almost 30 years after the fact now, is this still something that like people outside the Jewish community in Argentina even like talk about anymore or is it just sort of like in the wind, more or less? It got kicked very much back into public consciousness by Nisman's death, which we haven't totally talked about yet,

but I don't wanna say it's like the dominant mythology of like the Argentine, right, or the defining thing. But like in the last debates, Javier Miele, the lunatic, like libertarian tiktok psycho candidate, you know, brought up, oh, you know, they killed Nisman to insulate themselves from accusations that he's anti-democratic because he's an apologist for the dictatorship and for the generals. So it's definitely still there and you know, it sort of gets

trotted out in the demonization of the left. And if the Kirschner specifically is like, they committed the worst crime against democracy. Like they assassinated the guy who is going to expose all of their aron plotting. And I think that's important. I mean, my family who are from the Jewish community were very tuned up about Nesman when it happened. And to the stale, it's still pretty big in their minds. They're like, oh, CFK is in the Sassassina. She killed him. And it's all an anti-Semitic Venezuela, Bolivia, Hezbollah,

all the enemies of the West and Israel like teamed up against Argentine Jews. But I mean, it's not the driver of like Malay's campaign. It's just, of note, that it does get to its deployment is sort of definitely still a feature on the Argentine, right? A prominent Argentine prosecutor has been found dead in his apartment hours before he was set to testify before a congressional panel. He had been aiming to open an investigation into the country's president. Our Shasta Dalington is live from South Pole and Brazil with more. And Shasta, what is shocking discovery?

What are the details? Absolutely, Linda. It's a real mystery here. This is the special prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who just last week accused the president of Argentina Cristina Kirchner of covering up Iran's involvement in the bombing of a Jewish center 20 years ago. And now on Sunday afternoon, just hours before he was going to give some testimony on these allegations, they found his body blocking the bathroom door with a 22 caliber gun and a shell casing next to his body, so and

How do most people see Nismans death like you're? Pretty confident that it's a suicide and going off what you wrote. I am too But how do people generally see this? So people do you generally see Nesmon as having been assassinated. And this eventually, like the timing was so strange that this eventually did really become hegemonic, even on the last and center left. So Alberto Fernandez, the like very milk toast

kind of center left president, at the moment, has said he believes Neesmon was killed. Christina Kirschner herself said, at one point that she believed Neesmon was killed. Christina Kirschner herself said at one point that she believed Nesman was killed. And of course in their version, the suspect is high miscuso who did this to pin it on the art, or I mean, it doesn't even have to be suso it could be like Iranian or Hasbole agents.

But it wasn't them and it was someone who did it to make the government look bad. On the right, obviously, the hegemonic narrative is this way. And, you know, certainly the narrative that's more received in North America is Christina Kirschner did this because he was going to testify against her and, you know, blow her whole. There's a couple of problems with this. The biggest one is that Nesman's indictment of CFK turned out to be essentially a nothing burger, like the Argentine courts ruled after his death that there's just like nothing of substance in this, like this is sort of like rambling, like very hastily and sloppily constructed, like, you know, it didn't amount to anything. And you know, the fact that Heimist Uso had no confidence in it

might probably also be a tell. Aside from that in terms of the physical evidence and like the, you know, which again, I'm not an expert on, but an Argentine journalist, very good Pablo Dugin wrote a very concise good book called Who Killed Niesman about this, where he points out that like, however weird the suicide is, there's like absolutely no evidence that Niceman was assassinated. So we know his mental state was like very panicky and precarious. He believed he was gonna lose, you know, everything he had.

He also had a big falling out with his ex-wife and with his children, like right before he returned to Argentina to sort of from their vacation together to sort of write all the stuff up. And then also there's just like, all of his apartment doors were locked from the inside. There's no evidence, there's no forensic evidence of any kind of struggle.

It's true, you know, people try to out, like the biggest thing people try to out is like, oh, there was no gunpowder residue on Neesun Tan, but he used like a 22, which sometimes doesn't leave that. Again, it's not, it's very much not a like two shots to the back of the head situation. It's like, you know, his body was blocking the bathroom door. Like there's no signs that a third party was in the apartment at all. He'd also told his guards, his bodyguards and his friends, like early early in the

evening before like don't bother me supposedly because he was riding up his indictment. But you know, there's more, it certainly seems overwhelmingly more likely on the way to the evidence that Netnese Mun did in fact kill himself. He had a motive and there's like no real reason to believe otherwise other than timing. Yeah, and you'd figure if it were the other way, someone could at least present something, some strand of evidence, not just the absence of evidence with the gunpowder residue hypothesis. Oh, the other thing I should mention here is that a few days before his death, Nisman asked Taboro that he didn't own the handgun that he used to kill himself.

He requested to borrow it from his aforementioned IT guide, Diego Lager Marcino, who is like, you don't know how to use a gun, what the fuck do you want with this, and who's months like, oh, I need to protect my daughters or some shit. So again, this is the gun, this is without doubt the weapon that killed him. And he had asked to borrow it that shows, again, this is the gun, this is without doubt the weapon that killed him. And he'd asked to borrow it that shows, again, that makes it the suicide narrative quite plausible. Yeah, your characterization of Nisvan all said and done, not that he was like this guy playing

at the highest echelons of like international power or this like widely asset of American nor Israeli intelligence, but just like sort of like a skeezy weird guy who like may have gotten in over his head with a few things. I did think it was weird that like with his American bank account that no one knew about until after his death, that there apparently you said there were large deposits that came from an unknown source. But even then, it's just like, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean he was on the payroll of Mossad or CIA for that matter. I thought that thing that you put in about his association with that scumbag

like model agency guy was sort of more pertinent than anything. Yeah, so this is something that to my knowledge has only been written about in Spanish, which is Nisman's sort of big hobby after his divorce was fucking much younger women, who he would like aggressively. Again, there's sort of a weird, there's sort of a, you know, hints that he had some kind of like, there was something like sexually pathological, you know, in his life, like with the obscene phone call incident, but he would like show pictures of himself with these much younger women in bed and can't whoon or Miami to his friends really aggressively. They would be like like you know, grossed out like you know as you know any 50 year old

would be a 50 year old friend tried to show them this like what's an amazing move to do just as a middle aged man with kids like Laura having sex and the way Nispa was meeting these women was through a guy he knew named Landra Santos, who ran a model agency, as you said, but was also wanted in Uruguay. I think still is for prostitution of minors. And who recently, or not in 2021 was charged for making violent threats against one of the girls that Nisman had been with to be like,

you know, don't mention me, Lantra Santos in your testimony. So, you know, was Niesman like, you know, buying high-class prostitutes? Was he just, you know, kind of scummy and getting this creepy friend to like hook him up with like, you know, because Santos probably was a pimp, but he, you know, did run a legitimate modeling agency. I don't think it's really that important. I wouldn't want to, I think the characterization to come away with nice month from this is like, yeah, you can characterize him as like a, you know, sexual deviant and a fiend, but the one that I think is just like more German is just like, yeah, he was like a playboy. He like, he liked fucking and like showing, you know, and like telling people he fucked and was ranch like, yeah, he was like a playboy. He liked fucking and like showing, you know,

and like telling people he fucked and was ranch. Like, you know, this sort of shows who's kind of, he's kind of mind and like, he was not like playing at the highest levels. The only other thing I will mention about that, about Nies Mom though, that made contradict that, is that the only party who received a copy of the indictment prior to his death

was the US Embassy in Buenos Aires. Which again, with his American bank account, it's like, okay, yeah, he was obviously in very deep with a lot of very high level international machinations, but does that prove that he himself was more than a tool or an employee of greater forces. I don't really think so. Yeah. So just to wrap it up, what was the fallout after Niesman's death? What were the consequences for Kirchner and where does that leave us today? So after Niesman's death, as I mentioned, there was this huge political firestorm that was like, CFK killed him, Marisa Makri, like one of the least charismatic men in history, wins Argentine presidency from the right,

right after Nisun's death. And in that case, probably it did have something to do politically, and it just like really intensifies the like firestorms and divides an Argentine society that are like, CFK is like this demon, like, you know, really like St. and incarnate, like, you know, I have family members who, who feel like hostile to CFK really beyond ideology. I would say who are like, you know, she's a criminal,

she's a murderer, and it gets sort of used for that. I would say it also, it also does resurrect the, the Hezbollah Latin American narrative more broadly, not that it ever went away, but like there's a, there's certainly like a crop, a big like bloom and think tank reports about like that time, Amia blew up a, yeah, that time around blew up a synagogue in Argentina and what it says about like, Iran could be in Venezuela or Hezbollah's and you know Hezbollah's running drug trafficking networks and Hezbollah's like going across the US-Mexican border and Hezbollah's in

Brazil and it all refers back to the central incident and the fact that Nisman died you know in admittedly like a very strange manner or at least with very strange timing like has really at least with very strange timing, like has really, really did help to kick that into overdrive and still does sort of come up. In the wake of, in the wake of Nisman's death, obviously Heimist Uso is no longer at sea there. Sea there's also abolished and replaced with a new intelligence agency and they purge all the top leadership. But again, a lot of the guys in it are still in the new, the AFI, the new intelligence agency are still the same people. And more to the point, I think what Stusa's career reveals is that Stusa worked with presidents

across the political spectrum in Argentina. And his way of making himself useful was he would show up on an agration day and say, you know, alda styles at your service. And then you would help with his network in the judiciary and in different state organs to sort of smooth things out for people. The Cursioners were also very much indulged in so in this and used him for this, especially Christina's husband and

predecessor, Nester Cursioner. And so this is the way that, you know, I think intelligence functions in Argentina, and maybe, you know, in the third world or in Latin America more broadly, is like, so I mean, in the US, it's also the case. Like politicians rely on these sorts of weird operators for like short-term interests.

And there are, you know, much bigger things going on. These people are working for larger forces and for themselves and don't really have the the the national interest at heart. And I think that whoever wins tomorrow, that's something to keep in mind. But with reference to the election smart, also just mention, Argentina, again, there's sort of like, it's not well known, the parenthism, Nopsy thing, colors people's view about a lot, but Argentina has a very like Soverentist, left wing political tradition. It's not like Colombia where like Gustavo Petro is like literally like David fighting Goliath.

Like and so to deconstruct that just these omnipresent sort of threat narratives and so forth have been put forward. Now I don't think if Malay wins tomorrow, it's the end of that tradition, you know, that great tradition in Argentine history. But I guess the real takeaway from Ami is like, you know, sort of the narrative subversion against Latin American sovereignty and for US imperialism in Latin America, rather than the likes to Iran to the Middle East,

which are like, it's less clear if these are just a tool to do stuff in Latin America or if these are like, it's less clear if these are just a tool to do stuff in Latin America, or if these are like, there was really something going on with these because they haven't panned out into literally anything. And is there anything more you'd like to add before we wrap up? Oh, I've told my friend Miris Slav, I would do this. We do buy weekly Twitter spaces called Regime Radio. That may become a podcast at some point. Come check those out.

We're doing one next week with our buddy, MJB about Palestine that I'm looking forward to a lot. All right. Well, we will have links in the description that can guide you guide people to that, your sub stack and your Twitter. Thank you so much, Steph. Thanks. This is a really good. I'm really glad to have gotten sort of told to store in this format.

I think it blends itself much better. No, no, I'm really happy we did this. The only thing, oh, the other thing I would mention is that my Amius series is not done yet. I'm just sort of juggling a lot. So I do intend to sort of explain a bunch of other things like the Syria theory, which we managed to get to or just like a fuller biography of kindness you so so those will come at some point if people are interested just you know probably not in like the next movie alright uh yeah definitely looking forward to that uh yeah thank you so much

thanks Thank you.