Horacio Verbitsky (born February 11, 1942) is an Argentine investigative journalist and author with a history as a leftist guerrilla in the Montoneros. In the early 1990s, he reported on a series corruption scandals in the administration of President Carlos Menem, which eventually led to the resignations or firings of many of Menem's ministers. In 1994, he reported on the confessions of naval officer Adolfo Scilingo, documenting torture and executions by the Argentine military during the 1976–1983 Dirty War. His books on both the Menem administration and the Scilingo confessions became national bestsellers. As of January 2015 Verbitsky is a Commissioner for the International Commission against the Death Penalty.
Verbitsky become immersed in controversy following the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis, due to Verbitsky's accusations that Bergoglio was complicit with military dictators during the so-called Dirty War. These claims have been disputed. The Argentine journalist Gabriel Levinas and his investigative team in early September 2015 came out with the best-selling book, Doble Agente. La biografía inesperada de Horacio Verbitsky (Double Agent: The unexpected biography of Horacio Verbitsky), documenting Verbitsky's work with the Argentine military during the period of state terror. September 2016, former Argentine Army chief César Milani, a frequent Verbitsky target on alleged human rights grounds, responded bluntly that his critic "has to explain his time during military dictatorship," adding, "His friends were senior military officials. Why was it that he never questioned them?"César Milani: "Horacio Verbitsky tiene que explicar su paso por la dictadura militar", La Nacion, 29 September 2016
Verbitsky heads the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), an Argentine human-rights organization. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina, CELS distanced itself from Verbitsky after his involvement in a scandal in which Verbitsky used his connection with the former Minister of Health Ginés González García to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, at that time multiple front-line doctors were not yet inoculated. For this episode, the president Alberto Fernández, requested the resignation of González García, who was quickly replaced by Carla Vizzotti.
Early life Verbitsky was born in Buenos Aires in 1942 and he is the son of the also Argentine journalist and writer Bernardo Verbitsky. His paternal grandparents were Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants. Since 1960, he has earned national acclaim for his writings and political columns, focusing primarily on the unmasking of political corruption and the promotion of a free press, denouncing any government policies that may affect the constitutional rights of free speech for journalists and citizens. He has also become known by the nickname "el Perro" ("the dog"), for his determination in uncovering stories.Verbitsky y su militancia en Montoneros: "Participé en enfrentamientos armados y, por suerte, no murió nadie", interview of H. Verbitsky, in Perfil, November 4, 2007
During the 1970s he was a member of Montoneros, a Peronist guerrilla organization that was engaged in terrorist activities in Argentina. According to him, he participated in shootings, during which "luckily" nobody died. He also stated that he had no important functions in the Montoneros organization,Fallo favorable a Montoneros de la Cámara Federal, La Nación, December 21, 2007 although former Montoneros commanders Juan Zverko, Rodolfo Galimberti and Carlos Patané have claimed otherwise. and point him out as the person that detonated a powerful bomb at the parking lot of the Argentine Army Headquarters by remote control on 15 March 1976,Ámbito Financiero, 07-08/09/1992 that wounded 15 military servicemen and 6 civilians as well as killing a civilian passerby.Argentine army quarters blasted, The Telegraph Herald, 16 March 1976
Along with Mario Firmenich and five other Montoneros, he was indicted for allegedly being involved in the planning and execution of the bombing of the Superintendence of Security of the Federal Police, on July 2, 1976 — a few months after the military coup — which caused 21 deaths mainly among NCOs and 100 wounded. The case was however closed in 2007 because of statute of limitations.Fallo favorable a Montoneros de la Cámara Federal, La Nacion, December 21, 2007
Political and guerrilla militancy
1970s
In the seventies, together with Rodolfo Walsh, he joined Peronismo de Bases (PB), with the Peronist Armed Forces formed in 1968, as an armed wing. In 1972, with one of the splits of the Peronist Armed Forces, he joined Montoneros. He is criticized by Gabriel Levinas because "people who worked with Verbitsky in Montoneros were kidnapped and tortured, the dictatorship did not even ring his doorbell".
During the Argentine dictatorship During the dictatorship, he worked with Rodolfo Walsh in Montoneros Intelligence. As he described in an interview with Revista Noticias, it was a "handmade work, but it was a work aimed at understanding political processes, the characteristics of the enemy".
Attack against the Argentine Federal Police of 1976 Verbitsky together with Walsh was accused as the intellectual author of the attack against the Argentine Federal Police in 1976 that left 23 policemen dead and 63 wounded. But he was acquitted on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired and that the crime was not considered "against humanity".
Collaborations with the Argentine Air Force According to the Sixth Annual Report of the Newbery Institute, due June 30, 1981, Verbitsky was hired by the Argentine Air Force to write "the history of our aeronautics".
In the middle of the Argentine military government (1979) "El poder aéreo de los argentinos" was published under the signature of a fictitious author. Verbitsky admitted to an English journalist in an interview (July 1995) that he himself was the author of this publication.
Swiftgate, Milkgate, and Topogate In 1991, Verbitsky came to national attention when he reported in Página/12 that U.S. Ambassador Terence Todman had complained to the Argentine government that Emir Yoma, a brother-in-law and advisor of president Carlos Menem, had asked for a bribe from the U.S. corporation Swift Armour meatpacking. The story soon became a national scandal known as "Swiftgate". Menem in turn accused Verbitsky of being a "criminal journalist" and Página/12 of being financed by narcotrafficking.
Verbitsky later played a role in reporting "Milkgate", a scandal in which Menem's private secretary Miguel Angel Vicco was linked to the sale of spoiled milk to a government agency, forcing his resignation. In 1992, Verbitsky published a compilation of the Menem administration's scandals titled I Steal for the Crown, a quip reportedly from Interior Minister Jose Luis Manzano. The book became a national bestseller.
Menem was eventually forced to change half his cabinet in an attempt to regain the lost political credibility.
The publication of the Gabriel Levinas exposé, Doble agente, led Argentines to quip, perhaps in reference to "Swiftgate" and "Milkgate," that Verbitsky's real role during the dirty "war" meant that "The Dog" was really a "Mole." See Verbitsky: más topo que perro by television journalist Alfredo Leuco, hence the term "Topo-gate".
The Flight Verbitsky claims he was approached on the subway in November 1994 by naval officer Adolfo Scilingo who offered to discuss human rights abuses by the Argentine military during the 1976-83 Dirty War. During that time, Scilingo was stationed at the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics (ESMA), which was the site of some of the worst violations. He met with Verbitsky for several taped sessions telling him "We did terrible things there, worse than the Nazis". Most notably, Scilingo admitted that the military had disposed of unwanted prisoners by throwing them naked, drugged but still alive from airplanes into the Atlantic Ocean.
Scilingo was the first member of the Argentine military to speak openly about the human rights abuses of the military junta that ruled during those years, and his testimony, published by Verbitsky, elevated the stories of torture from opposition claims to generally accepted truth. Other military officers came forward later to confirm his statements, and the army's chief of staff admitted the involvement of top military leadership. Verbitsky's subsequent book The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior was published in four languages. A best seller in Argentina, the book received mixed reviews from critics abroad. Following these revelations, the Argentine Army chief, Lieutenant-General Martín Balza, gave a public statement on 25 April 1995 where he acknowledged and apologized for the army's involvement in killings and disappearances. The commander of the Montoneros, Mario Firmenich, in a radio interview in late 2000 from Spain in turn stated that "In a country that experienced a civil war, everybody has blood in their hands."
Later work He wrote for the newspaper El País (Spain); The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (USA). In 2004 his colleague Julio Nudler accused Verbitsky of defending the government after Verbitsky played down that Página/12 refused to publish Nudler's corruption allegations against Alberto Fernández who was the chief of the cabinet of Néstor Kirchner.
He made news in March 2013 due to his critical book, El Silencio, about Pope Francis' alleged involvement with two priests who were tortured during the Dirty War.
Because Verbitsky had impeached the former president Carlos Menem with corruption allegations, Verbitsky was criticized for judging similar allegations against the governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner with a considerably less critical attitude. Although promoted publicly by UN human rights chief Juan Méndez and Buenos Aires reporter Uki Goñi, Verbitsky admitted that he does not display the same critical attitude towards the Kirchner governments largely because he agrees with their politics.
AMIA–Nisman case
Página/12's Verbitsky commenting on justice corrupted:
The three offices of the Attorney General's Office of San Isidro were raided on December 30 by the federal judge of that same district, Sandra Arroyo Salgado. The search was part of the most important judicial case to this day regarding the sale of illegal drugs. The case links the most shocking files of drug-trafficking: the Unicenter shopping mall murders, the ephedrine trafficking case, the arrest of the Colombian drug-dealer nicknamed "Mi Sangre" ("My Blood") and the smuggling of almost a ton of cocaine into Spain for which the brothers Gustavo Adolfo and Eduardo Juliá were arrested and convicted in Barcelona. In a surprising turn of events that shows the complicity of public agencies with those crimes, the head of the Attorney General's Office of San Isidro, Julio Alberto Novo, was indicted for cover-up and violating his duties as a public official. The investigation determined that Adolfo Juliá's defence lawyer and his sister-in-law are close collaborators of Novo in positions of responsibility in the Buenos Aires province attorney's offices. In addition, Novot's private secretary was in touch with the defence lawyer of one of the criminals involved in the Unicenter shooting. According to federal attorney Fernando Domínguez, Novo and other indicted people would be responsible for "obstructing and frustrating the legal development of the process in which the murders were investigated". They are indicted for, in short, obstructing justice.The Buenos Aires Herald: Sunday columnists round-up / Views and opinions from yesterday’s newspapers. Monday, January 12, 2015.