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LATIN AMERICA |
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Venezuela Offers Evidence of Colombian
Espionage
CARACAS – The Venezuelan government
presented on Thursday what officials called
“irrefutable evidence” that neighboring
Colombia has dispatched spies to Venezuela,
Ecuador and Cuba as part of an ambitious,
CIA-financed operation.
Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami detailed
the contents of documents allegedly
originating with Colombia’s DAS security
service and unearthed since the apprehension
of two suspected Colombian on Venezuelan
soil.
He said Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was
fully aware of the espionage carried out by
the DAS, which reports directly to the
office of the head of state and has been
repeatedly caught spying on journalists,
judges and opposition politicians in its own
country.
El Aissami said the purported DAS documents
refer to three operations: “Salomon,”
targeting Ecuador; “Phoenix,” aimed at Cuba,
and “Falcon,” directed at Venezuela.
He said the information was compiled in the
course of a DAS internal investigation about
a leak of classified information.
The minister did not say how he obtained the
DAS report.
One of those interviewed in the DAS probe,
“Carlos Orguela Orguela, Colombian
identification card No. 79,596,402,” told
questioners that Operation Salomon involved
144 agents and that the funding came from
DAS and the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.
The U.S. mission, El Aissami said, “pays the
rent for the sham office” used by the spies.
“With operational support given by the DAS
and the CIA they accomplished the
recruitment of high-profile human sources
who currently provide strategic information
to the DAS,” the Venezuelan official said.
Orguela said the results of the spy efforts
were relayed to Uribe and then-Defense
Minister Juan Manuel Santos “in three
official presentations and an informal one.”
El Aissami said the aim of the Colombian
espionage operation in Venezuela was “to
collect information about the Bolivarian
National Armed Forces” as well as “to suborn
and corrupt officials” and enlist opposition
politicians.
“We know who is involved here in Venezuela
in Project Falcon,” the minister said,
though providing no details.
Caracas obtained the documents pursuant to
the capture of two DAS agents in Venezuela,
El Aissami told the National Assembly.
He said that Eduardo Gonzalez Muñoz and
Angel Jacinto Guanare were arrested Oct. 2
in Maracay, 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of
Caracas, along with one of their sources,
Venezuelan citizen Melvin Argenis Gutierrez.
In announcing the arrests of the suspected
DAS agents earlier this week, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez recalled that he had
previously alerted Uribe “about the
conspiratorial activities” of Colombian
operatives in Venezuela.
Those activities continue, the Venezuelan
leader said, “above all now with the
decision of Colombia” to sign an accord with
Washington giving the U.S. Armed Forces
access to seven Colombian military bases.
Officials in Bogota, which has received some
$6 billion in mainly military aid from the
United States since 2000, say the pact will
be signed Friday.
Chavez, survivor of a 2002 coup attempt that
former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says took
place with Washington’s advance knowledge if
not active collusion, says the basing
agreement poses a threat to his “Bolivarian
Revolution.” EFE
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