The Office of Public Safety (OPS) was a U.S. government program within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that provided training, assistance and equipment to the security forces of U.S. allies.
[3] Police assistance projects overseas had been established by the Eisenhower administration, but military intervention and covert action by the CIA was the primary method of addressing communist groups and other subversives in poor and recently decolonised countries.
[4] Already a proponent of modernization theory and international development programs as an alternative method of combating the spread of Communism, Kennedy was receptive to the efforts of national security advisor Robert W. Komer to grow police assistance and make it the primary agent of counterinsurgency.
[6] International development programs could present the modernisation and expansion of security infrastructure as growing stability and preventing crime in these nations, without the bad optics of the CIA or the military.
In a document drafted to launch the concept of the OPS, the USAID expressed concern over the optics of white American soldiers killing non-white dissidents: “In countering insurgency, the major effort must be indigenous.
[12] Lauren "Jack" Goin set up forensics and fingerprinting labs in South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic and Brazil initially under the auspices of the 1290-d program and later under the OPS.
Supporting his right-wing authoritarian replacement Carlos Castillo Armas, the ICA's 1290-d program operated with a $600,000 budget to professionalise the country's police force which was undisciplined and poorly equipped.
[24] From 1971 until the OPS's termination, the Somoza regime received $81,000 worth of equipment including vehicles and radios from USAID to assist in rooting out "subversives", primarily the leftist anti-imperialist FSLN.
[27] The director of the Uruguayan police alleged that he had kidnapped homeless people for torture expert Dan Mitrione to use for teaching purposes, a claim corroborated by Cuban CIA operative Manuel Hevia Consculluela.
[32] The OPS helped Chile build Police Operations Control Center (POCC) facilities, which were highly advanced training rooms designed to aid in combating unrest.
[34] In 1967, the OPS supplied weaponry, communications equipment and three aircraft to reinforce border security against Ethiopian forces, and built POCC facilities for civil unrest training.
[35][33] After a 1966 CIA-backed coup to overthrow Ghana's first leader after achieving independence, Kwame Nkrumah, the OPS established a $400,000 program, providing weapons and surveillance equipment to assist police in suppressing pro-Nkrumah and labour agitation.
[41] In 1973, the OPS provided Thailand's security forces with thousands of fragmentation grenades to strengthen its borders against potential insurgency in regions where relations with Laos and Malaysia were unstable.
[44] The bomb-making course at Los Fresnos was already highly controversial, and in 1970, Life magazine published a photo essay revealing the horrific conditions that prisoners of Con Son Island were kept in.
This vocal coalition, in addition to information from a Brazilian opposition members about the US's role in human rights abuses in their country, spurred South Dakota Democratic Senator James G. Abourezk to expose the OPS's illicit activities and call for an end to overseas police aid.
[49] Byron Engle became a consultant after his retirement in 1973, advising the Rhodesian government; Lauren Goin, who succeeded him as director for the last year of the program, formed his own company, Public Safety Services, Inc.[50]