Argentine Leader Attacks Spy Agency Amid Furor Over Prosecutor’s Death

BUENOS AIRES — With her government badly shaken over the mysterious death of a prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said in a televised speech on Monday night that she would immediately send a bill to Congress to dissolve the nation’s premier intelligence agency.

The intelligence services “have not served the interests of the country,” Mrs. Kirchner said in the speech, in which she proposed replacing the agency, the Intelligence Secretariat, or S.I., with a new organization that would have reduced surveillance powers.

Mrs. Kirchner accused rogue factions within the S.I. of trying to sabotage an agreement with Iran to jointly investigate the attack on the Jewish center, which killed 85 people.

Before the prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, was found dead in his apartment this month, he made the explosive assertion that Mrs. Kirchner had tried to reach a secret deal with the Tehran government to shield Iranian officials from responsibility for the bombing. Her aides have accused a spymaster she ousted from the agency last month of having a hand in preparing Mr. Nisman’s criminal complaint against her and others.

In a wheelchair with a cast on her fractured left ankle, Mrs. Kirchner hinted that an aide to Mr. Nisman was responsible for his death and sought to link the aide to the Clarín Group, a news organization that has long been critical of her government.

“There is no distance,” she said, disputing some reports that the shot had come from a distance of six to eight inches, a detail many Argentines had taken to mean Mr. Nisman was murdered.

Sofía Guterman, 73, a retired tutor whose daughter died in the unsolved 1994 bombing, is waiting for definitive answers.

“We knew that there were certain agents working with him,” Ms. Guterman said of Mr. Nisman. But as for the accusation that spies had manipulated him, she said, “We don’t know if it happened like that, or if the government is dreaming things up.”

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

A version of this article appears in print on January 27, 2015, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Argentine Leader Attacks Spy Agency Amid Furor Over Prosecutor’s Death. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

The New York Times