The objective of this thesis is to use the case of journalist Vladimir Herzog to analyze the Brazilian secret service’s role within the government during the military dictatorship. I use the term secret service when referring to the Brazilian intelligence agency Sistema Nacional de Informações (SNI). I argue that the secret service’s efforts to remain both autonomous and independent produced extra repression, as evidenced in the Herzog case. To support my main argument, I use digital collections from the Comissão da Verdade and the Instituto Vladimir Herzog. This thesis suggests a more nuanced history of the military dictatorship. Rather than treating the repressive state as a monolith, it traces the particular role of the secret service in rooting out dissent via human rights abuses. I use Giorgio Agamben’s theory on "the state of exception" to support this thesis’s main argument about the secret service’s unusual degree of power. The role that intelligence activity plays in national security and social and political institutions is central to this research. This is especially true when the state finds itself in a situation of political crisis, economic ineptitude, and international vulnerability, in which the acquisition and possession of intelligence is of fundamental importance.