US told Uribe to clean up DAS: Wikileaks

Source: Colombia Reports

US told Uribe to clean up DAS: Wikileaks
Tuesday, 22 February 2011 11:30 Hannah Aronowitz

WikiLeaks cables reveal that the U.S. pressured the government of then-President Alvaro Uribe to clean up the scandal-hit intelligence agency DAS in 2009, El Pais reported Tuesday.

The cables show that then-U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield told then-Vice President Fransisco Santos to toughen his government's relationship with the DAS, and ordered him to carry out a "thorough, transparent and public," investigation of the secret service agency for its part in the illegal wiretapping of government critics.

Santos acknowledged the demands, and even contemplated dissolving the DAS altogether, according to a cable sent form Bogota to Washington the day after the September 15, 2009, meeting.

While the attitude of the U.S. Embassy prior to this demand seemed limited to observing, recording and reporting back to Washington on the wiretap scandal, their stance changed when it emerged that one of the illegal recordings made was of a phone call between a U.S. Embassy official and a Colombian judge.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/14519-us-pressured-uribe-to-clean-up-das-wikileaks.html

:)

But that's not quite it. Some combination of "Dr. Strangelove" (the joy of nuking) and "Duck Soup" (farce of government, i.e., "Hail, Freedonia"). And maybe throw in some laughs from the TV spy comedy "Get Smart."

I'm not quite sure what to make of CR reporting this cable story with a straight face.

They seem to understand--in the last line of the article--that everything that F. Santos and A. Uribe was telling U.S. Amb. Brownfield was a lie. After all this song and dance that Santos and Uribe performed for Brownfield about dismantling their spy agency, the CR article states that, "A year and a half later, Felipe Muñoz is still director of the DAS, the agency has not been dismantled and prosecutors are still investigating the illegal wiretapping."

But the CR article seems to buy Brownfield's portrayal of his own comedic role in this cable tale as a straight role. It's as if Groucho Marx had taken his mustache off, in the middle of "Duck Soup," turned to the audience and given a straight performance of Hamlet's soliloquy or Lincoln's Gettysburg address.

Strange, extreme, farcical discontinuity.

Yes, everything that Brownfield says that Santos and Uribe told him were baldfaced lies. But, additionally, the entire structure of this tale and Brownfield's role in this dark farce--as virtuous U.S. lecturer to lesser species of human Bushwhack that they were running in Colombia--is false. And part of the reason for this layered comedy is probably that the date is 2009. Bushwhacks out. Obama, Clinton and Panetta (new CIA Director) in. Not that the latter are innocent (I don't think they are) but it's hard to gage their awareness of just how dirty Bush Junta ops were in Colombia--i.e., how cognizant were they of the farcical nature of these cables?

My own view is that Uribe was running the entire country as a criminal enterprise on behalf of the Bush Cartel, to consolidate control of the trillion dollar-plus cocaine trade. Side benefits were whacking thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, peasant farmers and other inconvenient persons (with the help of $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid) in preparation for U.S. "free trade for the rich," providing U.S. war profiteers with a backup boondoggle (U.S. "war on drugs"), experimenting with various "pacification" projects for use in Iraq and Afghanistan and training mercenary assassination teams for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, expanding the Pentagon's bootprint in a region of important resources (Venezuela's oil, right next door), running psyops against Venezuela out of Colombia, and other kinds of thievery and mayhem for the rich, the dirty and the corporate (for instance, displacement of 5 MILLION peasant farmers, by state terror--benefit to Monsanto, Chiquita, favored drug lords, etc.).

Uribe's spy operations--no doubt in my mind abetted by Brownfield and the Bush Junta (if not initiated by them)--were just one part of the picture of the total criminal enterprise that Colombia had been turned into. It was the part that Colombian prosecutors could get a handle on, as to Uribe. Some 70 of his closest political cohorts were under serious investigation or already in jail, for bribery, drug trafficking, ties to the death squads and other crimes, circa 2009. Uribe is a slippery eel. He was getting away. Brownfield was helping him do so--for instance, by arranging extradition of death squad witnesses to the U.S. and "burying" them in the U.S. federal prison system--out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections--by complete sealing of their cases in U.S. federal court in Washington DC. He was doing this at the same time that he was writing utterly non-real and farcical cables like these, to his new bosses. He was also secretly conniving with Uribe to provide Uribe-signed total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. Tit for tat. 'We protect you. You protect us.'

Obama, Clinton and Panetta's knowledge of this exceedingly bloody and corrupt regime in Colombia, and the Bush Junta involvement, can perhaps be gaged by their elevation of Brownfield to Asst Sec of State for the western hemisphere. Brownfield was writing them ridiculous cables but likely telling them the truth in less vulnerable venues (less vulnerable than low security cables, as to leaking)--and this and his help in cleaning the mess up was why he was elevated. I think that what they may have been looking at, when they came to power, was the potential indictment of Bush Jr (and others, esp. Rumsfeld) in Colombia, in Spain and/or in the World Court, for war crimes in Colombia. There are a number of pieces of evidence that point to the Obama administration's cover up actions--the death squad extraditions (which required AG Eric Holder's involvement) (Holder was Chiquita's attorney during their Colombia death squad scandal), in 2009-2010, the secret U.S./Colombia military agreement that they authorized Brownfield to negotiate (total immunity for U.S. soldiers/contractors), the most recent spiriting of the main spying witness against Uribe out of Colombia to asylum in the U.S. client state of Panama (requiring Panetta/CIA intervention, I would think), and, finally, the "laundering" of Uribe by giving him cushy academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard and appointment to a prestigious international legal commission.

All of this points to Uribe being coddled for what he knows about the Bush Junta's crimes in Colombia. Panetta went down there, to Bogota, amidst rumors of a Uribe coup to stay in power, and yanked him. And they put Manual Santos (former defense minister) in charge, to try to clean up Colombia's image a bit, for the long-lusted for U.S./Colombia "free trade for the rich" bill. But what were they to do with Uribe? Well, he's now teaching "international law" to America's future leaders. That's one thing you could do with him, I guess. (Syllabus No. 1: "Little people get in your way, you whack 'em." Syllabus No. 2: "Looking forward, not backward on the crimes of the rich and powerful.")

Anyway, however many laughs Obama-Clinton-Panetta got from Brownfield's cables, they were evidently apprised of the truth in some other way, and began working with Brownfield to hose off Junior's bloody trail through Colombia. Where Uribe, the potential tale-teller, was most vulnerable was the vast domestic spying operation. This may also be a major Bush Junta vulnerability. I think the Bush Junta was simultaneously conducting its own vast spying operation in Colombia and the region, probably feeding items to Uribe, as needed, and providing him with technical assistance. At a couple of points, they were doing live feeds right to the U.S. embassy in Bogota of military ops, including (my guess) the bombing/raid on Ecuador in March 2008--slaughter of 25 sleeping people at a FARC guerrilla hostage and peace negotiation camp--this op aimed at ending all hope for peace in Colombia's 70 year civil war--with our embassy officials and Uribe & co. probably cheering it on. There is also suspicion that one purpose of Uribe's spying was to draw up lists of trade unionists to be targeted by the military or its death squads.

It's hilarious, in a macabre sort of way, that Uribe was spying on the U.S. embassy's calls to Colombian judges. Everybody was spying on everybody. (Remember that MAD magazine comic, "Spy vs Spy"?). I'm not sure of the date of that particular "listen" but probably it had to do with Uribe's worries about how hard a fall he might be in for, at the hands of the new CIA director. (Soft landing, as it turns out.)

It sure would have been dark fun to have been a "fly on the wall" for that Uribe-Brownfield meeting--the real one, not the one depicted above by Brownfield--wherein Uribe had to admit he was spying on Brownfield, and Brownfield had obviously spied on Uribe to find that out, and the two of them glaring at each other in fury, but each of them wondering to himself who they could whack to get rid of this problem with the Colombian prosecutors. Would the U.S. have to whack Uribe? (They may still have to.) Could they just drop a bomb on the Colombian justice building and blame it on Hugo Chavez?

Ah, the perils and petty details of Empire!