Brazilian govt may have blown cover of local CIA chief

The GSI, the Brazilian secret service, published the identity the CIA’s Brazil chief on its public list of visitors on its website earlier this month, according to reports.

A screen shot of the website shows that on June 9, the official agenda of General Sérgio Etchegoyen, head of the GSI, had a meeting with Duyane Norman, listing him as "Chief of the CIA Post in Brasilia."

It is not clear if Norman is the former or acting Brazil chief.

The indiscretion was revealed by Folha De Sao Paulo on Monday, and the gaff was first noticed by Eurasia consultancy analyst Joao Augusto de Castro Neves.

The US embassy in Brasilia told Folha it had read the reports but “following our policy, we cannot confirm or deny [them].”

Folha reported on social media that a person with the same name was a resident of Brazil and an official in the policy area of the US State Department.

It shows Norman studied art and Latin American subjects at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

According to the GSI, the visit list is regulated by the Free Information Act of 2012, "is an active instrument of transparency" and "the names and positions of all attendees are to be registered in accordance to the principles of transparency, without exception."

An internet search for "Duyane Norman" reveals a second public agenda linking him to the CIA in Brazil.

On July 11, 2016, Norman and Joseph Direnzo had an appointment with the general director of the Federal Police, Leandro Daiello Coimbra, in Brasilia. Both their names can be found in the agenda next to the term "CIA."

The Federal Police did not issue a statement before the edition was published.

Folha learned that the US government classified the alleged revelation as a mistake.

Norman is scheduled to leave Brazil, and sources told Folha there will be no major consequences in the government.

Revealing the identity of CIA officials has generated serious problems in other countries.

On December 16, 2010, the CIA evacuated its station chief, later named as Jonathan Bank, from Pakistan after his cover was blown in legal action brought by relatives of a person killed in a 2009 drone attack, for which the station chief was accused of being responsible.

The identities of at least two other CIA station chiefs in Pakistan have been exposed in recent years.

In Pakistan, the government secret services leaked to the press in 2011 the name of the head of the agency in the country and newspapers published it. The American official received death threats and had to leave the country.

In 2014, the White House accidentally revealed the name of the CIA chief in Afghanistan in an email to 6,000 journalists. He was the head of hundreds of spies in the country, home to one of the largest CIA offices in the world. The government declined to say whether the official had to leave the post.

Another case came under significantly different circumstances, when former CIA operative Valerie Plame was exposed as officials of the George W. Bush administration sought to discredit her husband, a former ambassador and fierce critic of the decision to invade Iraq, according to the Washington Post.