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COLOMBIA: Spying in
the Name of 'Democratic Security'
By
Constanza Vieira*
BOGOTÁ (IPS) - While the world's attention was
riveted on the inauguration of U.S. President Barack
Obama, an operation was surreptitiously being
carried out Jan. 19-21 at the headquarters of
Colombia’s domestic intelligence agency, the
Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS),
which answers directly to the president’s office.
Over the course of those three days, dozens of boxes
of files, computer hard drives, tape recordings and
transcripts containing the results of months or even
years of spying on Supreme Court judges,
prosecutors, human rights defenders, opposition
politicians and journalists were destroyed on orders
from above.
A month later, on Feb. 21, the operation was
reported by the Bogota magazine Semana and the
Noticias Uno TV newscast.
On Jan. 16, three days before – according to Semana
– the government issued the order to gather up the
recordings and documents from the DAS offices, a new
DAS director had been appointed, Felipe Muñoz, who
assumed the position on Jan. 22 – the day after the
destruction of the files was completed.
"Of all the boxes taken to DAS Counterintelligence
(the section in charge of verifying the loyalty of
DAS agents and officials), containing documents,
recordings, etc, only one was left, which was
removed from (Counterintelligence on) the 11th floor
on the evening of Wednesday Jan. 21," said a DAS
employee who spoke to Semana anonymously. "I don’t
know what they left in that box, or where it was
taken. I only know that the rest was destroyed."
In reaction to the media reports, the Cuerpo Técnico
de Investigaciones (CTI - the Attorney General’s
Office’s judicial police), searched DAS offices on
Sunday Feb. 22 – after the agency's director was
notified about the operation.
On Monday Feb. 23, an ad hoc committee of
prosecutors visited DAS to join the CTI unit that
was still carrying out the search.
The CTI carried out further inspections from Mar.
1-19, which were "significant" in terms of the
information gathered, according to a 228-page CTI
report to which IPS had access.
The report was addressed to the prosecutors working
on the case, whose first goal was to locate the
source of the leak to the press on the illegal DAS
wiretapping operations.
The CTI computer experts discovered digital tracks
in computers that had been "cleaned" by the DAS
Counterintelligence office on the 11th floor, as
well as in wiretapping equipment on two other floors
of the building. The results of their report have
not yet been divulged.
Material that was not destroyed, which has been held
in DAS archives since 2007, marked "top secret,"
included 104 A-Z expanding files dated 2004 to 2005
and containing records and minutes of meetings from
the highest levels of the domestic intelligence
agency, along with other documents and photos handed
over to the CTI by the new DAS leadership.
The first 46 pages of the 228-page CTI report sum up
the content of the A-Z accordion files considered of
greatest interest in judicial terms.
Eighty percent of the files referred to "operation
Transmilenio", which involved spying on the José
Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, a human rights
group, and especially its director, human rights
lawyer Alirio Uribe.
The DAS also kept human rights defender Gustavo
Gallón, head of the Colombian Commission of Jurists
– a non-governmental organisation with United
Nations consultative status - under close
surveillance, along with his entire family, under
"operation Cascabel".
In addition, files were kept on Jesuit priest Javier
Giraldo, the director of the databank of the Jesuit
Centre for Popular Research and Education (CINEP),
which documents the victims of Colombia’s
long-ranging civil war.
Files were also found on the San José de Apartadó
Peace Community in the banana-producing Urabá region
in the northwestern province of Antioquia.
That community, of which Giraldo is one of the
staunchest defenders, is an association of small
farmers opposed to the use of weapons who have
declared themselves neutral in the armed conflict.
Right-wing Colombian President Álvaro Uribe does not
accept neutrality in the war, and accuses the
community of being allied with the leftist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the
largest guerrilla group, which emerged 45 years ago.
Another peace group, the National Network of
Initiatives for Peace and Against War, also fell
under the suspicion of the Uribe administration,
whose flagship "democratic security" policies
include engaging the civilian population more
actively in fighting the guerrillas.
Two files titled "Puerto Asís" were dedicated,
according to the CTI report, to journalist Hollman
Morris, director of the TV news programme "Contravía",
which the reporter has described as "the voice of
the voiceless in Colombia" because of its work
uncovering human rights abuses and giving visibility
to the victims.
The reporters critical of the government who were
spied on by the DAS also included Carlos Lozano,
director of the Communist newspaper Voz; Daniel
Coronell, director of the Noticias Uno TV news
programme; Félix de Bedout with the W Radio station;
and Swedish reporter Dick Emanuelsson, a
correspondent for several media outlets from his
country.
Other files show that the phone conversations and
e-mails of politicians belonging to opposition
parties and Supreme Court magistrates were also
intercepted, as the DAS wiretapping scandal
continues to snowball.
The file named "Blancos políticos" (political
targets), containing 541 sheets of paper, shows that
presidential candidates were followed ahead of the
2006 elections: Carlos Gaviria of the left-wing
Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA); Horacio Serpa of
the Liberal Party; and Álvaro Leyva Durán, a former
Conservative Party cabinet minister who announced
his independent candidacy before withdrawing from
the race.
"Blancos políticos" also included PDA members Luis
Eduardo Garzón, then mayor of Bogotá; Antonio
Navarro, the current governor of the southwestern
province of Nariño; Senator Gustavo Petro; and
lawmaker Wilson Borja. Another was Piedad Córdoba, a
Liberal Party senator internationally known for her
role in achieving the release of hostages held by
the FARC.
Other "political targets" were former mayor of San
José de Apartadó Gloria Cuartas and former attorney
general Alfonso Gómez Méndez, a contender for the
Liberal Party’s presidential candidacy.
On May 28, Attorney General Mario Iguarán announced
that 34 DAS officials and former officials –
including the agency's last four directors – would
be called in for questioning.
The Attorney General’s Office is in the process of
determining whether to charge the DAS officials with
conspiracy to commit crimes, illegal use of
surveillance equipment, abuse of authority,
tampering with public documents, the destruction,
suppression or concealment of public documents, or
other charges.
At the same time, the Procuraduría General de la
Nación (office of the inspector general) opened
disciplinary investigations into 16 DAS officials in
mid-May.
It also linked the case to three key presidential
aides: Bernardo Moreno, the general secretary of the
presidency; Uribe’s press secretary César Mauricio
Velásquez; and his communications adviser, Jorge
Mario Eastman.
The Procuraduría will be investigating meetings held
by the three aides and the then heads of the DAS
Intelligence and Counterintelligence offices.
In the meetings, the three presidential aides
reportedly received classified information on the
wiretapping of Supreme Court judges, with whom Uribe
was at loggerheads due to their investigations of
dozens of the president’s allies in Congress –
including his cousin, Mario Uribe – accused of ties
with the far-right paramilitary militias.
Iguarán’s term ends Jul. 31, and his successor will
be chosen by the Supreme Court - from a short-list
provided by the president.
*This is the first part of a special series of
articles on the DAS wiretap scandal. |
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