Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (English: National Intelligence Directorate) or DINA was the Chilean secret police in the government of Augusto Pinochet. DINA was established in November 1973, as an Army Intelligence unit headed by General Manuel Contreras and vice-director Raúl Iturriaga, who fled from justice in 2007. It was separated from the Army and made an independent administrative unit in June 1974, under the aegis of decree #521. DINA made it possible for Augusto Pinochet to come in to power.

DINA existed until 1977, after which it was renamed the Centro Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) (National Information Center).

DINA internal suppression and human rights violations

Under decree #521, the DINA had the power to detain any individual so long as there was a declared state of emergency. Such an administrative state characterized nearly the entire length of the Pinochet dictatorship. Torture of detainees was common, and rape of female detainees was routine.

Foreign involvement

The United States backed and supported the 1973 coup, and continued to aid the Pinochet dictatorship until it ended. Documents declassified from the CIA in September 2000 revealed that the head of DINA in 1975 was a "paid CIA asset1." The CIA actively supported the junta after the overthrow of Salvador Allende. The head of DINA, General Manuel Contreras, was made a paid asset despite continuing CIA reservations concerning the human rights abuses of the organization. Eventually the CIA became aware of DINA's "possible" involvement in the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., but they continued to maintain him as an asset. The CIA reports remain heavily excised.

DINA foreign assassinations and operations

see: Operation Colombo DINA was involved in Operation Condor, as well as Operation Colombo.

In July 1976, two magazines in Argentina and Brazil published the names of 119 Chilean leftist opponents, claiming they had been killed in internal disputes unrelated to the Pinochet regime. Those two magazines would disappear after this one and only issue. Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia would eventually ask Chilean justices to lift Pinochet's immunity in this case, called "Operation Colombo", having accumulated evidence that he had ordered the DINA to plant this disinformation, in order to cover up the "disappearance" and murder by the Chilean secret police of those 119 persons. On September 2005, Chile's Supreme Court would accept the lifting of Pinochet's immunity on this case. Judge Victor Montiglio, who took over the case after Juan Guzmán Tapia's retirement a few months before, has yet to name the doctors who would statue on Pinochet's health and ability to be interrogated. Victor Montiglio is known as a Pinochetist, and supports military auto-amnesty laws. He has already accorded amnesty to Manuel Contreras, who was given firm prison sentence in 2004 in the Operation Colombo trial.