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COLOMBIA: All the President’s Spies
Analysis by Javier
Darío Restrepo
BOGOTA, Jun 13 (IPS) - Colombian journalist Hollman
Morris phoned an international news agency and said
in an agitated voice: "I am being followed by the
police."
As he left his apartment on the north side of
Bogotá, he saw a police car on the other side of the
street; when he reached his parents’ apartment a few
minutes later, to drop off his kids, another car was
parked near the building.
And when he reached the spot where he was planning
to meet with this reporter, a third car with
plainclothes police officers made it clear to him
that orders had been given to follow him.
Ten days earlier, President Álvaro Uribe had
publicly accused Morris of being an accomplice of
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
because of his newspaper coverage of the release of
a group of kidnapped victims by the insurgent group.
A few weeks later, Morris commented in a meeting of
journalists on the "chilling" discovery of a dossier
in his name that had been kept for some time by the
Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) –
Colombia’s domestic secret police service, which
answers directly to the office of the president –
when its offices were searched on orders from the
attorney general’s office in the midst of a scandal
over widespread illegal wiretapping.
The file contained photos and information on his
parents, siblings, wife and children, and on his
day-to-day movements, with a level of detail that
reminded those looking at it of the thorough
investigations carried out by hired killers while
planning their hit jobs.
Morris is one of the reporters who was targeted by
the DAS, which illegally eavesdropped on a wide
range of opponents of the right-wing Uribe
administration. Searching through DAS computers,
investigators from the attorney general’s office
found that the secret police had intercepted the
phone calls and e-mails of Supreme Court justices,
opposition lawmakers, reporters and even the likely
presidential candidate of the opposition Liberal
Party, Rafael Pardo.
The ongoing scandal over illegal wiretapping
operations by the DAS has led to the resignation of
the director of the intelligence agency, María del
Pilar Hurtado, and investigations of the last four
directors as well as 30 DAS agents.
The similarities of the case with the Watergate
scandal, which forced U.S. president Richard Nixon
(1969-1974) to step down, have been cited by
opposition figures calling on Uribe to resign – not
a likely outcome, however, due to the president’s
high level of popularity and Colombian society’s
jaded attitude towards such scandals, which are all
too common in this country.
Before DAS
The government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla
(1953-1957) replaced the security police by creating
the Servicio de Inteligencia Colombiano (SIC) in
1953, which was answerable to the president’s office
and used methods like those of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) in the U.S.
The SIC worked in close coordination with the state
Office of Information and Propaganda, in activities
like monitoring the press, with advice from Karl von
Merk, a former secretary to Nazi Germany’s
propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, according to a
report by journalist Alberto Donadío.
The SIC, DAS’s predecessor, played a significant
role in the investigation of Rojas Pinilla’s
political opponents.
In April 1955, the SIC searched the headquarters of
the Liberal Party and, based on letters from
guerrilla leaders in the regions of Tolima and
Llano, accused the party’s leader, Alberto Lleras,
of being involved in subversive activities.
The SIC also alleged that it found evidence to
accuse the dean of the National University law
school, Abel Naranjo, of communist infiltration
after the bloody events of Jun. 9, 1954, when the
army opened fire on student demonstrators.
The SIC set out on a mission of sniffing out
communists in Colombia, which included spying on and
arresting reporters. Hernando Santos Castillo, who
later became director of the newspaper El Tiempo,
was arrested painting anti-government graffiti in
downtown Bogotá. Around the same time the then
presidential candidate of the Conservative Party,
Guillermo León Valencia, was arrested as well.
Another activity carried out by the SIC was
denounced by a military commander in the western
province of Valle del Cauca, who said SIC agents
were operating in complicity with "los pájaros" in
that province – the term used to refer to
paramilitary squads at the service of conservative
elites.
Similar activities were carried out at a Feb. 5,
1957 bullfight, when numerous SIC agents infiltrated
among the public beat dozens of spectators who booed
Rojas Pinilla’s daughter María Eugenia when she
arrived. According to U.S. Embassy reports, 20
people were killed.
The DAS era
The DAS, created by decree in 1960, continued the
SIC’s work, under the shelter of the state of siege
and the security statute (the latter was adopted in
late 1982) – instruments that almost became part of
the legal system after the 1991 constitution was
passed.
According to a later draft law on the state of
emergency, searches and wire tapping could be
carried out without a legal warrant. The draft law
was denounced at the Eighth Human Rights Forum, held
in 1996, which stated that under the government of
president Julio César Turbay (1982-1986) "an
addiction to such practices, justified in the name
of defence of the fatherland, had been instilled in
the young officers."
Not as crude as torture and dungeons, the tradition
of hounding and eavesdropping on political opponents
has been maintained and refined with the latest
technological advances.
Vans with equipment that can simultaneously tap 16
calls in an area of 70 metres followed judges,
politicians and journalists in recent months
In the days of General Rojas Pinilla, the focus was
on hunting down communists and dissidents. Today,
involvement in activities opposed to the government
is more dangerous than being a communist.
For example, the Supreme Court judges began to be
followed when they started investigating and
arresting legislators who had worked together with
far-right paramilitary groups to manipulate
elections and electoral results.
Besides wiretapping their phones, the DAS
investigations looked at bank accounts, tax returns,
parties the judges had attended, trips they had
taken, gifts they received – anything that might
possibly be used to discredit them.
While the opposition and journalists saw these
activities as an attempt to undermine the legitimacy
of the judges who were investigating more than 60
Uribe allies in Congress for their ties to the
paramilitary militias, the government insinuated
that the magistrates were involved in money
laundering, had ties with drug traffickers, or were
accomplices of the guerrillas.
The documents, instructions, archives and photos
gathered by the investigators of the attorney
general’s office show that at least 50 people were
spied on without a legal order, "in line with the
democratic security policies" of the Uribe
administration, as a memorandum from a detective to
the DAS counterintelligence director states.
The targets of surveillance "are being politically
persuaded to mobilise a bloc that could counteract
the election of the president," says another of the
agents describing his work in Pasto, in the south of
the country, referring to the possible approval of a
constitutional amendment to allow presidents to run
for a third term.
Because the DAS, like the now-defunct SIC, is
directly answerable to the president, there is
little doubt about the origin of the orders for
illegal wiretapping and surveillance.
But the investigations by the attorney general’s
office and the office of the public prosecutor have
only led to offices near Uribe, and no further. And
although the DAS wiretapping operations are eerily
similar to Watergate, the difference lies in that
the scandal has not yet reached the president’s
desk. |
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