A journalistic investigation published on Sunday, September 15, reveals audio recorded by Alejandro Muyshondt, a former national security advisor to President Nayib Bukele, in meetings with senior administration officials. One of the audio files, which according to the exposé was recorded in August 2020, records an agreement between Muyshondt and the then-private secretary of the Presidency, Ernesto Castro, to mount an espionage operation against journalists, news outlets, and political opponents. Among those mentioned are the independent digital outlets El Faro and Revista Factum and the traditional newspapers La Prensa Gráfica and El Diario de Hoy. During that conversation, in an acknowledgement of the illegality of the operation, Muyshondt explained to Castro that he kept all the gathered information in a safe place where prosecutors would not find it if they were to raid their offices.
In the article, available in Spanish in the Guatemalan outlet Prensa Comunitaria, journalist Héctor Silva Ávalos states that he obtained access to eight hours of recorded conversations between Muyshondt and different officials, though he only details part of two conversations between the former advisor and Castro. The meetings were held one week apart, in August 2020, according to the investigation.
Since May 1, 2021, Castro has been the president of the Legislative Assembly, in which the ruling party Nuevas Ideas holds a supermajority. His meetings with Muyshondt occurred when he worked in the Office of the President, before he was even a legislative candidate and when he was responsible, among other things, for supervising and administering the Presidency’s discretional secret budget, comprised of public funds made available to each government to spend without accountability.
Muyshondt, who had shown sympathy for Bukele since he was a candidate for mayor of San Salvador, was named national security advisor in June 2019, the month when Bukele was first sworn-in as president. He gained notoriety in 2013 when he unsuccessfully attempted to capture cell phone thieves in the Historic Center District of San Salvador, armed with an AK-47, a nine-millimeter pistol, a paintball mask, and a GoPro camera. At the time, he was known to lob biting criticism online against Arena and FMLN party administrations. In August 2023, he was arrested and accused by President Bukele of working as a “double agent” and leaking confidential information to former FMLN President Mauricio Funes. In February 2024, he died in state custody.
To determine the authenticity of the audio, the article says, the voices in the audio files were contrasted with those from public statements made by the corresponding officials. The files were also corroborated with at least ten people familiar with those involved. Per the article, the audios were also cross-checked with chat messages that Muyshondt exchanged with individuals close to him, which the journalist also obtained. The report also mentions that he sought reactions from those involved, but there was no response.
In one of the audio files, which lasted for an hour and which El Faro obtained, Castro and Muyshondt spoke of an operation to spy on journalists and political opponents and discussed the need for security technology.
In another of the meetings, Muyshondt and the now-president of the Legislative Assembly spoke of corruption in the Prison Bureau involving the director of the institution and vice minister of security, Osiris Luna. According to the publication, Muyshondt references the theft of money from prison commissary stores that allegedly occurred through Asociación Yo Cambio (Asocambio), the entity created in the Ministry of Security to manage those resources. “In Asocambio there’s a huge shitshow, dude. It’s a total heist, and in the Attorney General’s Office they’re building a case against that shit. Osiris [Luna]’s mother started putting together groups of providers and there is always a [financial] commission changing hands.” Muyshondt later mentioned that the issue had the chance to affect the ruling party’s electoral prospects in the 2021 legislative and municipal elections.
The advisor also expressed concern about Bukele’s relationship with former legislator Guillermo Gallegos, due to evidence of corruption, and for the noise that this created with the U.S. government.
In one of the conversations in August 2021, in which the men discussed the espionage operation, Muyshondt requested that he be able to interface solely with Castro or President Bukele. He then asked for permission to bring two of his collaborators into the room. A woman, whom he presents as “Iris”, enters, as does a “systems engineer” who introduces himself as Raúl Torres.
Of Torres, Muyshondt tells Castro that “when [Revista] Factum started to take shots at us, Raúl gave us a hand, and that’s how we took down Factum for almost three weeks. They couldn’t do anything. They moved from server to server to server and we cost them approximately between $10,000 and $15,000 [dollars] in damage, minus the advertising they receive.”
By August 2020, Raúl Torres, according to Revista Factum, was an employee of Casa Presidencial, where he worked as an IT advisor. The attack on Factum occurred in October 2019 and was motivated by the publication of an article revealing that Bukele and his inner circle had received $1.9 million dollars from Alba Petróleos, the Salvadoran subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company that has been investigated for laundering money.
In the meeting, Muyshondt describes the scope of possibilities at their disposal: “We did it with few resources, but the same can be done to El Faro, or to whomever the hell we want. Big newspapers like elsalvador.com [El Diario de Hoy] or La Prensa Gráfica require more resources,” explained the former presidential advisor.
After speaking of the possible use of phishing attacks, a common tactic used by cybercriminals to steal login credentials, Muyshondt emphasizes to Castro the method of operations and fear of a raid: “At the office, all of the information is in the cloud, in case the FGR [Attorney General’s Office] arrives. All of the information goes to hell… They would take computers with nothing on them.” Muyshondt spoke of the operation to eliminate information as the “Hiroshima protocol”, in allusion to one of the Japanese cities where the United States dropped an atomic bomb during World War Two.
In 2020, the Attorney General’s Office was not yet controlled by Bukele. The Anti-Mafia Group, a special unit of prosecutors under Attorney General Raúl Melara, was investigating the government for pacting with the country’s gangs and other acts of corruption. In May 2021, in their first legislative session after assuming their two-thirds majority, the Bukele-controlled bloc removed Melara from office and named the current top prosecutor, Bukele loyalist Rodolfo Delgado, who opened an investigation against the Anti-Mafia Group. They are now in exile.
“If you want, tell him about the project. Pull up that chair, if you want,” Muyshondt told Raúl Torres in their meeting with Castro. Apparently as he handled devices, Torres explained to Castro how to launch a phishing attack by getting “the victim” to click on a link: “We can pretend to be Gmail, or to be Hotmail… They are called attack campaigns, that’s the correct term.”
Torres also described one of “the objectives” of the project proposed to Castro: to “cut off attacks.” “What kind of attacks?” Castro asked. “The big problem you have right now is that documents are being leaked,” responded Torres.
During the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Salvadoran journalists revealed dozens of corruption cases in the Bukele government. In some of these, the investigations were based on documents leaked from public institutions.
“Knowing when, for example, an investigation is being put together. They don’t release it for a month; there’s a period of two to three months of investigation. Being able to know how that investigation is coming along,” continued Torres, purporting that these were the upsides of spying on journalists.
Castro responded: “We don’t give a shit about hacking El Diario de Hoy. Who we want is to tap Beltrán Luna, which is totally different, or a journalist who is like… Yes, bring El Faro down, but those are just pranks; we'd screw them over for a week… What would be interesting is to tap Carlos Dada, those guys, in order to see what….”
Luna is an investigative reporter at El Diario de Hoy who has revealed various corruption cases in the current government. Dada is the co-founder and current director of El Faro.
“That’s easy. Tapping journalists is easy. From there, through phishing, we can aim for all the legislators and see which ones fall for it,” responded Muyshondt. Torres added that this type of attack can be launched not only on social media, but also at the official emails of the legislators of interest. “And on WhatsApp?” Castro asked. “That can be done, too,” responded Muyshondt.
When that conversation occurred, in August 2020, various journalists, activists, and politicians had already been spied on for two months with the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware. In the case of El Faro, and thanks to the technical analysis of organizations specializing in spyware detection, a total of 22 members of the organization —around two-thirds of all employees— were surveilled with Pegasus between June 2020 and November 2021. In total, there were 226 infections that affected all areas of El Faro — chiefly the newsroom, but also the administration and sales departments. Between those months, Dada was surveilled 12 times, spanning around 167 days.
Finally, after discussing those possibilities, Castro gave the O.K.: “Let’s do it, then. Let’s see the details on that.” Muyshondt explained that, to that point, the initiative had been called “project X”, but asked that from that time forward it be called “C815”.
After, for almost half an hour, they spoke of funds for “petty cash” available to Muyshondt’s office, joked that U.S. spyware tools are listening to their conversation, and discuss a donation that Muyshondt said he had obtained to give vests, a repeater, and radios to the Tactical Operations Section of the Police. He specified that the “donation” totalled around $60,000.
“Give us a little bit of publicity,” Muyshondt pleads.
“And why the hell do you want publicity? It’s as if Peter [Dumas, director of the State Intelligence Agency, OIE] were asking for publicity,” responded Castro.
Given that I don’t have publicity, people think my job is to be a houseplant, man,” Muyshondt answered.
Castro repeated that it was not a good idea, and added what really interests him: “Personally, it’s because by doing this we can have… things the man needs: attacks and information in advance. We are for sure interested in knowing —I’m making this up, of course— if Rodolfo Parker is a faggot… and that the lover lives… we have that and we say, Hey Rodolfo, what’s up? You’re giving us hell, how do we handle this?”
Parker is a former senior legislator and leader of the Christian Democrat Party (PDC) for multiple legislative periods. In his final years as an elected official he was critical of Bukele, though the current PDC legislator and his alternate are loyal to the present.
Muyshondt interrupted and said he understood what Bukele’s then-private secretary intended to do with such sensitive information on persons of interest: “It’s called soft extortion: It would be a shame for this to get on the internet. Calm down, asshole.” Castro responded: “Exactly.”
Before ending the conversation, Muyshondt asked if the project will provide “counterintelligence” in order to see if anyone inside the government is disloyal. “Of course,” Castro responded. “Be sure to send me the target,” concluded Muyshondt, who died in prison in February 2024, three years and six months after these meetings with Castro. Silva’s article also revealed text messages that Muyshondt sent to his collaborators stating that he feared for his life.
U.S. Suspicions
The article also stated that Guillermo Gallegos, a legislator with the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) party, was being investigated by U.S. authorities since 2014. Gallegos is a former prosecutor who in 2000 became a legislator for the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena). In 2009, he formed GANA together with other former members and legislators of that party, which became a minority party that helped sitting governments obtain a working majority in the Assembly. In 2019, GANA was the party that Bukele used to compete for the presidency, given that Nuevas Ideas, his current party, was far from being formalized.
When Muyshondt told Castro that he was worried that Bukele and Gallegos appeared to be good friends, at first the private secretary tried to minimize the relationship. Muyshondt told him: “There is a case underway in [New York] that Gallegos is in way deep… I don’t give a shit about Gallegos… the thing is that those that are in charge of intelligence here for the United States are asking why the N is friends with Gallegos. They are asking why, if it’s because he’s made him a partner or is covering for him.”
Gallegos has been criticized for the spending receipts he submitted to the Assembly without justification, for the hiring of relatives in the legislature, and for an investigation by the Probity Section of the Supreme Court of Justice that found an unjustified increase in his wealth but was archived.
Silva’s article also indicates that Muyshondt was a probable victim of torture at the hands of an official of the National Civil Police (PNC). “The agents took Muyshondt to a police delegation close to the Flor Blanca Stadium in the south of the capital city. From there, they transferred him to the Border Division, which is where he was visited by PNC Deputy Inspector Roberto Hernández Herrera, alias Chirriplín, a man profiled by the very Police as a spy and torturer,” reads the investigation.
Torture in prisons has been documented by testimonies and expert analysis in different reports on human rights violations since 2022. To date, civil society organizations have reported almost 300 deaths. Some testimonies were also taken by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which two weeks ago published a report on abuses, including torture, that have been denounced during the state of exception in El Salvador.
