Spotlight: Argentine president eyes overhaul of spy agency after prosecutor's death

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez on Monday rejected accusations against her by a prosecutor who was mysteriously killed before giving potentially explosive testimony, calling for a deep reform of the intelligence services.

The prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, 51, was found dead at his home in the capital with a gunshot in the head on Jan. 18, just hours before going to a congressional hearing to accuse Fernandez of obstructing his investigation into a 1994 bombing at a Jewish charities federation office.

While government officials had labeled as absurd Nisman's allegations that Fernandez had reached a secret deal with Iran in exchange for economic benefits, the country's intelligence agency overseen by her has been plunged into suspicion that rogue agents were behind the prosecutor's mysterious death.

Speaking via TV from a wheelchair because of a fractured ankle and dressed all in white, Fernandez said her government had nothing to do with Nisman's death. She called the case a plot to discredit her and called on the Congress to dismiss the current national spy agencies.

In recent letters, she had suggested that rogue intelligence agents might have orchestrated Nisman's death.

During Monday's nationally televised speech, the president said: "The plan is to dissolve the Intelligence Secretariat, and create a Federal Intelligence Agency."

Under Argentina's law, the leadership of the agency will be chosen by the president but subject to Senate approval. Fernandez had removed the leadership of the current intelligence service in December 2014.

The 1994 bombing of the Jewish center that left 85 dead and more than 200 injured, remains unsolved 20 years later, with nobody convicted or even detained.

Nisman had accused Fernandez and her foreign minister Hector Timerman of shielding Iranian officials implicated in the largest terrorist attack in Argentina.

After his death, Fernandez suggested that Nisman had been manipulated by former intelligence agents who then killed him to smear her, but she offered no evidence for such an assertion.

Nisman had said that the government had agreed to swap grain for oil with Tehran in exchange for withdrawing "red notices" to Interpol seeking the arrests of the former and current Iranian officials accused of involvement in the case.

But Fernandez said the 2013 memorandum of understanding with Iran was aimed at obtaining cooperation with the Middle East powerhouse to finally seek justice for the bombing, in which Iran has repeatedly denied any involvement.

The president said an overhaul of the intelligence services would be presented to the Congress by the end of this week, adding that the structure of a new Federal Intelligence Agency will comprise a director and a deputy, and only a few in the government will have access to the agency heads.

Meanwhile, a top presidential aide promised that journalists enjoy "full security" in Argentina, after Damian Pachter, a reporter for the English-language Buenos Aires Herald who revealed the Nisman death, fled to Israel on Saturday, claiming that he had been threatened and followed, with his phones being tapped.

"In Argentina, there is full security for all journalists...There is no obstacle for any journalist to express whatever he thinks," Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich said Monday. Endi