In early 2005, seventeen brigadiers, including the Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Carlos Rohde, were sacked by President Néstor Kirchner following a scandal involving drug trafficking through Ezeiza International Airport. Kirchner cited failures in the security systems of the Argentine airports, which were overseen by the National Aeronautic Police, then a branch of the Air Force (predecessor of the today independent Airport Security Police), and cover-ups of the scandal. It later became known that many government agencies, among them the Ministry of the Interior, the Customs Administration and the Secretariat of State Intelligence knew about the drug trafficking.