and SIDE was indirectly helping the Russians in their smuggling operation. They expected the Secretariat to be on their side, and to make the 'Russian problem' a government issue, therefore putting pressure on the Russians. The head of the Secretariat's counter-intelligence service at the time, retired Major Alejandro Broussoun, an ex military serviceman from the Argentine Army Engineers Corps, and an ex-follower of the ultra-nationalist right wing Carapintadas organization in the 1980s and 1990s, was blamed by the CIA for the leak of the identity of their station chief to the popular newspaper. The United States investigation into the incident with SIDE, revealed that the picture and information of Ross Newland was given to the newspaper by the Secretariat itself. Meanwhile, SIDE tried to repair relations by explaining the scandal by another theory. At the end of the scandal, with Ross Newland's identity uncovered and the episode becoming a major embarrassment for the U.S. and Argentina in the worldwide intelligence community, the CIA removed its Station Chief from Argentina, and said they were going to permanently move their offices to Montevideo, Uruguay because of their problems working together with SIDE. Also, as a result of this, the head of the SIDE counter-intelligence service, retired Major Alejandro Brousson was expelled because of the American diplomatic pressure to punish the responsible of an act they considered "a violation of game rules" (in the intelligence community, that is). The scandal not only put a stain in the CIA's relations with SIDE, but also made the Americans distrust the Argentine intelligence community which they had come to collaborate extensively during the Carlos Menem administration. Bribes in the Senate In 2001, the government under President Fernando de la Rúa used the Secretariat's reserved funds to orchestrate the bribery of several senators in the Argentine Congress. The motive behind the operation was to assure the promotion of a labor reform law that De La Rúa was promoting. When the level of involvement of the Executive Branch became known to the public, a national scandal broke out and De La Rúa's administration took heavy criticism. The Secretariat was then under the command of banker Fernando de Santibañes, a close friend of then President De La Rúa, who promised to make sweeping changes to the Secretariat of Intelligence. The opposition parties in Argentina, specially during the government of Carlos Menem, saw SIDE as a political tool and promised