Witness backs allegations US funded illegal wiretapping

Witness backs allegations US funded illegal wiretapping
Monday, 29 August 2011 14:46
Sarah Cast

Colombian newscast Noticias Uno on Sunday confirmed a report by U.S. newspaper The Washington Post that the U.S. embassy was involved in the illegal wiretapping conducted by the Colombian intelligence agency DAS.

In its Sunday broadcast, Noticas Uno showed the Supreme Court hearing of a DAS agent in which the official said he and his colleagues received U.S.-funded "psychological operations" training in 2005. "The training always was supervised by a man from the American embassy," said DAS detective Jose Gabriel Jimenez.

Before the court, the DAS agent, detective Jose Gabriel Jimenez, testified that an American agent from the U.S. Embassy regularly visited the DAS office to check up on the activities of the DAS unit "Game," which included the illegal wiretapping.

According to Jimenez, the U.S. Embassy provided an estimated $56,000 to the Game unit. He claimed that the American agent reviewed the activities with the Colombian unit's leader.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/18635-colombian-report-confirms-allegatons-us-funded-wiretapping.html

involving (Bush-appointed) U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield and Mob Boss...er, president...Alvaro Uribe, during the 2009-2010 period, which AT THE VERY LEAST involved...

1. Midnight extradition of 30 death squad witnesses to the U.S. on mere drug charges and their "burial" in the U.S. federal prison system--out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections--by complete sealing of these cases in the U.S. federal court in Washington DC. Either these witnesses knew something (for instance, where they got their "hit lists" from), or were extradited to the U.S. as a favor to Uribe (posed a particular legal danger to him and his political cohorts), in exchange for his keeping his mouth shut about what HE knew (U.S. involvement in the spying and other crimes).

2. Their (Brownfield and Uribe's) secret negotiation and secret signing of the U.S./Colombia military agreement, which gave "total diplomatic immunity" to all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. (Why the need for this more than a decade into the U.S. military presence in Colombia?). The Colombian supreme court later ruled this agreement unconstitutional, but it reveals Brownfield/Uribe intent--see the OP--in this case, to immunize U.S. spy personnel who were giving lots of our money and "technical assistance" to this vast, illegal domestic spying operation, and were monitoring it and reporting back to the U.S. embassy! There are likely other crimes that Brownfield wanted to get "immunity" for (see below) but THIS one is the hottest case that Colombian prosecutors have against Uribe--it is thus the most likely to uncover guilty U.S. personnel; it was run out of the U.S. embassy (by Brownfield himself, it seems); it very likely involved "hit lists" (trade unionists were spied upon then murdered by the Colombian military or its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads), and though Brownfield himself had diplomatic immunity, his military or private contractor runners possibly did not.

...and, no doubt, additionally involved...

--the U.S. State Department protecting and coddling Uribe, by writing a letter to the judge in the Drummond Coal "death squad" case, pressuring the judge not to force Uribe to give a deposition and implying that (ahem) "national security" was at issue; by arranging/okaying his academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard (teaching our future leaders the law, for godssakes!) and appointment to a prestigious international legal commission (the one investigating Israel's firing on an aid boat)--all help in "laundering" Uribe's Mob Boss image (and reality);

--U.S./CIA help is getting Uribe's spy chief, Maria Hurtado, out of Colombia and into asylum in the U.S. client state of Panama, out of the reach of Colombia prosecutors and over their objections. I'm guessing, but I can't see how this occurred without a U.S. okay. And it is notable that Panama's rightwing president was applying to the U.S. embassy in Panama for the same spying help that his pal Uribe was getting (--a Wilileaks cable revelation). He didn't get it, but he obviously knew what was going on in Bogota.

--early this year, the U.S. State Department "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" IN COLOMBIA "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan," and we can only imagine what that 'training' may have involved, to prompt the State Department to do this coverup sort of "fine."

--the Pentagon and the USAID were providing the Colombian military with "pacification" plans, and also, of course, "training," "advice," equipment and funding; these "pacification" plans appear to have been prototypes being tested out in Colombia for use in Afghanistan, possibly combined with testing out drone aircraft and/or other weapons--these may have been a factor in the La Macarena massacre (500 to 2,000 bodies found in a mass grave).

--the pilot, plane and 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" used to murder 25 sleeping people at the FARC guerrilla camp just inside Equador's border, in March 2008,--an act that nearly started a war between Ecuador/Venezuela and the U.S./Colombia--more than likely came from the U.S. spy base at Manta, Ecuador (Dyncorp) and could make any U.S. personnel involved in Colombia or Ecuador--military or private contractors--vulnerable to prosecution for a war crime. There were Ecuadoran and Mexican citizens visiting the camp, and envoys from Switzerland, France and Spain were on their way to the camp to receive Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages. This bombing incident not only murdered non-combatants without benefit of trial, but it put an end to all hostage negotiations and hopes for peace in Colombia's 70 year civil war. There is reason to believe that this dreadful bombing was orchestrated in the "war room" of the U.S. embassy in Bogota, complete with a live video feed. (The later "rescue" of Betancourt was so orchestrated.) Again, Brownfield may have been trying to immunize (or get signed immunity for) U.S. military personnel and/or contractors who were involved, who did not have formal diplomatic immunity. This incident clearly involved spying (how the U.S./Colombia were able to pinpoint the temporary camp, and probably extensive spying in other forms and places--spying on the European envoys, for instance). And it also involved "black ops" and treachery. It was out of this incident that Uribe (or his U.S. helpers) invented the "miracle laptop"--a laptop that supposedly survived the bombing of the camp site and allegedly contained "evidence" (later proved bogus) that the leftist leaders of Venezuela and Ecuador were "terrorists" (aiding the FARC guerrillas). There are a whole bunch of crimes, connected to this incident alone, that Brownfield may have been trying to "immunize" with the U.S./Colombia military agreement.

--the most hidden crime of all, pure guessing on my part, but I think the spying, the death squads and the Colombian military--and probably U.S. military personnel and 'contractors' and personnel from other agencies (DEA, FBI, CIA, et al)--were used, not to interdict the cocaine trade, but to consolidate and expand it, and control this trillion+ dollar revenue stream. There are lots of reasons here to "bury" death squad witnesses in the U.S. federal prison system on "drug charges," to get witnesses out of the country, to immunize everybody with a formal signature and to extensively spy on judges and prosecutors, as well as on rural trade unionists and peasant farmer leaders (many of whom were murdered). The U.S. and Colombian militaries were also being used to drive FIVE MILLION peasants from their farm lands, likely for two major reasons: to provide the big, protected drug lords with those lands; and of course to commandeer the lands for ill corporate uses such as palm oil biofuels. It is my observation that the U.S. "war on drugs"--at least as used by Bush Junta and possibly generally--is intended to create social mayhem, murder and fear, for various purposes, among them, to control and profit from the drug trade, which never ends, no matter how many war profiteer billions of dollars are poured into it. Somewhere in the investigation of Uribe--possibly in the explosive spying scandal--may be the clues to what the Bush Junta was really doing with the U.S. "war on drugs."