Editing Eugenio Berrios (section)

==Career with DINA and Proyecto Andrea==
In 1974, Berríos joined the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), Chile’s secret police under General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, adopting the alias “Hermes.” His expertise in biochemistry made him a key figure in DINA’s covert operations, particularly Proyecto Andrea, a Pinochet-ordered initiative to develop chemical and biological weapons. Berríos synthesized sarin gas, a nerve agent that mimics heart attack symptoms, as well as anthrax and botulism, which were used to eliminate political opponents discreetly. He worked in a clandestine laboratory at Vía Naranja de Lo Curro in Santiago, part of DINA’s Quetropillán unit, alongside Michael Townley, a U.S.-born CIA and DINA operative.

Berríos’s lab, later moved to Colonia Dignidad, a German cult in Chile used as a DINA torture center, produced toxins for assassinations, including the 1976 murder of Orlando Letelier, Chile’s former ambassador, in Washington, D.C., where Berríos crafted the explosive device. Townley’s 1978 confession revealed Berríos synthesized sarin used to kill Renato León Zenteno, a real estate archives custodian, and Manuel Leyton, a Chilean Army corporal, in 1976 and 1977, respectively. Berríos was also suspected of torturing and killing Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria in 1976, using sarin gas at Townley’s Lo Curro mansion.

Beyond chemical weapons, Berríos allegedly produced cocaine for Pinochet, who reportedly sold it to Europe and the U.S., and developed “black cocaine” (mixed with sulfato ferroso to evade detection) at the Army’s FAMAE facility. During the late 1970s Beagle Crisis with Argentina, he reportedly planned to poison Buenos Aires’s water supply, though this was never executed. These activities, detailed in The Pinochet File by Peter Kornbluh, highlight Berríos’s role in DINA’s “dirty war” against dissidents, often tied to [[Operation Condor]], a U.S.-backed campaign by Southern Cone dictatorships.