Information Research Department/Activities in Brazil
 Information Research Department/Activities in Brazil  | |
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| Assisting in military coups. "Quite true, but not the sort of thing we want said" |
The IRD played a role in the build-up to the 1964 Brother Sam military coup against President João Goulart.
John McEvoy, basing his article on released British documents, writes how:
In 1962, a Brazilian engineer named Glycon de Paiva helped to found the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPES). While IPES posed as an educational institute, its real aim was "organizing opposition to Goulart and maintaining dossiers on anyone de Paiva considered an enemy".
IPES was closely connected to Brazil's military, political, and business elite. With General Golbery do Couto e Silva as its chief of staff, the organisation compiled 400,000 files on left-wing "enemies" of Brazil, cultivated an army of informants, and propagandised against the government.
After the coup, IPES grew into Brazil's National Intelligence Service (SNI), which "served as the backbone of the military regime's system of control and repression".
Newly declassified files detail British support for IPES. On 6 February 1962, IRD field officer Robert Evans described how "one of the most significant developments affecting my activities has been the formation of IPES".
A week later, IRD official Geoffrey McWilliam received a letter about "Businessmen's Anti-Communist Organisations" in Brazil. The sender remains classified, and appears to be the British security services.
The letter noted that "since IPES's main task during the coming months will be to ensure that the Congress does not fall into Communist hands in the October elections, they will presumably have plenty of use for IRD material".
Eleven days before the coup, Robert Evans noted that "I keep in close touch with the Rio branch of IPES over Portuguese language editions of IRD literature, and for getting material to the armed forces".
After the coup, the British embassy reviewed IRD's clandestine operations in Brazil. "Before the Revolution our main IRD effort was not made with the knowledge and approval of the authorities", wrote British ambassador Leslie Fry.
In an apparent reference to IPES, Fry continued that "some of the IRD contacts turned out to be the summits of quite large icebergs, with responsible leadership. […] One or two leading personalities have been going around talking about his [IRD field officer Evans] contribution to the defeat of Communism in Brazil. Quite true, but not the sort of thing we want said".
During the early 1960s, Evans also agreed to take "limited action as and when opportunity offers" to counter left-wing activity in Brazil's student field.
The IRD also assisted União Cívica Feminina (UCF), a Catholic women's movement which mobilised mass anti-government street rallies in the weeks before the coup.
Despite massive human rights abuses, the IRD continued "to help Brazil discreetly in the field of counter-subversion" during the 1970s...At this time, Evans was producing literature diminishing the impact of foreign intervention in the coup of 1964.[1]
