Intercepted phone call: 'tell them it was a coati, do not deviate'

The recording is a twenty-six second segment that surfaced as part of an unrelated leak in 2011. Its provenance is described in the accompanying summary as a domestic intelligence intercept, captured on a fixed line during the week following the events. We have not been able to confirm or rule out that provenance.

The senior speaker tells the subordinate, in Portuguese, to advise local press that the captured creature was a misidentified coati that had escaped from a nearby holding facility, and to refuse all follow-up questions on the basis that the matter is closed. He repeats the instruction once. The subordinate acknowledges and the call ends.

The cover story described in the call is, in fact, the cover story that subsequently appeared in regional press in the days that followed. The coati explanation has been publicly disputed by witnesses since 1996.

An audio engineer commissioned for review concluded that the recording is consistent with a fixed-line capture of the period and that there are no edits. The engineer was unable to authenticate the speakers' voices because no public reference recordings are available for either party.