Word: copcon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...week what one Lisbon daily called the "death certificate" of the left was signed-in the form of a 70-page government report that blamed the botched uprising on a wide array of leftists in the military, the labor movement, the Communist Party, the press and the now defunct COPCON security forces. The night after the report was released, flamboyant former COPCON Chief Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, who had served as part of Portugal's short-lived ruling troika (TIME cover, Aug. 11) was arrested at his home outside Lisbon. Saraiva de Carvalho, who had been demoted from general...
...Last week extreme leftist army commands were distributing arms to civilians in the south. At least 30,000 weapons have been stolen from the military, perhaps without much resistance, since the beginning of the revolution, and most of them are in the hands of leftists. When an officer of COPCON, Portugal's internal-security police, recently admitted that he had given 1,500 automatic rifles to left-wing civilians, General Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, COPCON's openly radical chief, implicitly defended him by boasting: "If there were a revolution, I would arm the people myself." Saraiva de Carvalho...
...even that is not certain. Says a Western diplomat of Saraiva de Carvalho: "He wants to run with the hare and ride with the hounds." As COPCON chief...
...right-wing coup. Later, when confronted by a leftist mob outside the ministry, he silenced their jeers by saying that he was only carrying out orders; when the crowd suggested that he join them in a protest march on the Premier's palace, the compulsively agreeable COPCON boss quickly obliged...
...ebullient, mischievous man with a flair for outrageous statements," and by another as "the only one [in the troika] who's got balls." Saraiva de Carvalho is popularly known by his first name -or, as adoring crowds chant it, "O-tell-u." His power base is COPCON, the 70,000-member military force that after the revolution assumed responsibility for public peace from the discredited Caetano police. His command of COPCON has made Saraiva de Carvalho the fastest rising star in Portugal. Still, he has his detractors. Spínola is reported to have once said that Saraiva...