Colombia Calling: The Other Wiretap Scandal (Indypendent)

By Joseph Huff-Hanon
From the May 15, 2009 issue

When the editorial staff of Semana, a feisty Bogotá-based weekly news magazine, was closing out their Feb. 21 edition, they couldn’t help but notice an unmarked car parked for several hours in front of their building. This came as no surprise to editor- in-chief Alfonso Cuéllar, who supervised a six-month long investigation of illegal wiretapping by Colombia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Administrative Department of Security, known in Colombia as the DAS.

“We knew that both the good guys and the bad guys were aware that we were working on the story,” said Cuéllar in a recent interview from Bogotá. “That’s partly why the DAS was shredding all of the evidence a month before it broke.” Backed up by numerous sources and documents, Semana exposed how members of the DAS were illegally spying on Supreme Court judges, former Colombian president César Gaviria, opposition politicians, prominent journalists and even high-ranking members of the ruling party.

Amongst a roster of Machiavellian allegations — from KGB-like tactics used to create “vice files” on prominent politicians, to the selling of sensitive intelligence to narcotraffickers and those with links to illegal paramilitary organizations and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerillas — is one charge that will be of particular interest to the United States, especially as the country contemplates the fallout from its own domestic surveillance scandal. The U.S. government, according to the Semana report, supplied the sophisticated interception devices used by the spies in Colombia.

“It will be interesting to see if the rumors that are circulating in Bogotá, that the U.S. Embassy had a role in the wiretapping operation, turn out to be true,” said Joseph Fitsanakis, senior editor of IntelNews and a longtime intelligence analyst. “It won’t be the first time” ...

http://www.indypendent.org/2009/05/14/colombia-calling/

Colombia's Supreme Court wants President Alvaro Uribe to invite UN rapporteur on judicial independence to the country, to look into the increasingly controversial wiretap scandal that now implicates the Presidency itself ordered the illegal wiretapping of judges.

In a statement, the court again asks the President to personally make a public statement on the scandal and to publicly promise guarantees magistrates and judges can do their work without being shadowed by State agents.

Moreover, the Supreme Court "demands of the National Government to set a date very soon for the rapporteur for Judicial Independence of the United Nations to come to our Republic."

Colombia's intelligence agency DAS is investigated for allegedly illegally wiretapping Supreme Court judges, journalists and opposition politicians. A former director of the agency's counterintelligence unit said Thursday he talked directly to the President's closest aides in the Casa de Nariño about wiretapping political opponents ...

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/4038-courts-demand-un-to-look-into-das-wiretap-scandal.html

The personal adviser and personal secretary of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe ordered intelligence agency DAS to conduct illegal wiretaps on political opponents of the government, the former counter intelligence chief of the DAS told prosecutors.

Former counterintelligence chief Jorge Alberto Lagos had testified that he personally had talked to Uribe's personal secretary Bernardo Moreno and with presidential adviser Jose Obdulio Gaviria about the wiretapping.

The former counterintelligence director asked the Prosecutor General for himself and his family or even be moved abroad, so he can reveal all information without being murdered, he told W Radio Thursday.

Bernardo Moreno already is being investigated by the Inspector General for meetings he had with paramilitary representatives in the Presidential Palace. Jose Obdulio Gaviria is considered one of the hawks within the presidency and of great influence on President Uribe ...

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/4021-uribes-personal-advisers-ordered-wiretaps-rcn.html