[1] Mitrione married Henrietta Lind while serving on a Michigan naval base during World War II, and the couple eventually had nine children.
[4] During the two years Mitrione was posted in Belo Horizonte, ICA was replaced by the United States Agency for International Development, and the police aid program was reorganized into the Office of Public Safety (OPS).
In this period the Uruguayan government, led by the Colorado Party, had its hands full with a collapsing economy, labor and student strikes, and the Tupamaros, a left-wing urban guerrilla group.
stated Mitrione had taught torture techniques to Uruguayan police in the cellar of his Montevideo home, including the use of electrical shocks delivered to his victims' mouths and genitals.
In 1978, at the 11th International Youth Festival in Cuba, Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a Cuban who claimed to have infiltrated the CIA as double agent from 1962 to 1970, stated that Mitrione ordered the abduction of homeless people, so that he could use them as 'guinea pigs' in his torture classes.
[15] In 1987, two years after being released from prison, the leader of the Tupamaros, Raúl Sendic, said in an interview that Mitrione had been selected for kidnapping because he had trained police in riot control, and as retaliation for the deaths of student protestors.
Ambassador to Uruguay Frank E. Baxter being involved in high level exchanges about Uruguayan investigations into other crimes committed during the country's civilian-military dictatorship from 1973 until 1985, to which linkages were allegedly perceived.
[citation needed] The Nixon Administration, through spokesman Ron Ziegler, affirmed that Mitrione's "devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere.