them with weapons and training. Former Uruguayan police officials and CIA operatives 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. His credo was "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." He also helped train foreign police agents in the United States in the context of the Cold War. 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. He said that attempts would be made to keep each victim alive for multiple torture sessions, but that torture would eventually kill them, and that their mutilated bodies would be dumped in the streets. He claimed that Mitrione personally tortured four homeless people to death. Mitrione's captors may also have believed him to be the inventor of a torture device known as the "Mitrioni vest". This alleged device was described as "an inflatable vest which can be used to increase pressure on the chest during interrogation, sometimes crushing the rib cage." Mitrione was kidnapped by the Tupamaros on July 31, 1970 demanding the release of 150 political prisoners. The Uruguayan government, with U.S. backing, refused and Mitrione was later found dead in a car, shot twice in the head. There were no other visible signs of maltreatment, beyond the fact that during the kidnapping, Mitrione had been shot in one shoulder, a wound that was clean and healing well, and had evidently been treated while in captivity. Tom Golden, a career army intelligence operative detailed to the CIA and assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo, was a personal friend of Mitrione. Golden worked closely with Uruguayan officials to try and secure the release of Mitrione and prevent his murder. After Mitrione's death, Golden disputed the torture-training allegations in closed-door testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. In his autobiography (Ambassador Ortiz: Lessons from a Life of Service, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2005, p. 106), Frank V. Ortiz whose appointment as Deputy Chief of Mission at the United States Embassy in Montevideo coincided with the kidnapping and killing of Mitrione, wrote: