 Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), is a United States Department of Defense Institute located at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia, created in the 2001 National Defense Authorization Act.In 1946, the United States Army founded the Latin American Training Center-Ground Division ("Centro de Entrenamiento Latino Americano, Division Terrestre"")" at Fort Amador in the Panama Canal Zone to centralize the "administrative tasks involved in training the increasing number of Latin Americans attending U.S. service schools in the canal zone."