...with bribes, intimidation, death threats, spying/blackmail--his whole toolbox-- and whatever he can't handle, the CIA is covering (for how long, Alvaro?).
So it's not going to be an easy task to pin anything on him. Colombian prosecutors have a pretty impressive record at convicting the people around him, and I don't think that they have the restrictions on them, that our prosecutors have, that put the very rich and the very powerful (Bush Junta principles and others) off limits.
Still, this particular investigation is only just beginning. They haven't yet decided "whether or not to formally press charges." So we'll see if Uribe is still under CIA protection.
I think that, without the threat that he poses to Bush Junta figures, Uribe would have been convicted and in jail a long time ago, for a range of crimes, including murderS, major drug trafficking, election fraud, bribery, illegal domestic spying (even on judges and prosecutors), racketeering, land theft, various kinds of gross malfeasance, misuse or theft of government funds including the $7 BILLION in military lard from the Bushwhacks, and God knows what all. Basically for being Mob Boss of Colombia.
Panetta has treated him with kid gloves--arranged protection and even honors--but something has changed and I think it may be that Panetta has had time to cover Junior's trail on a number of crimes in Colombia. These could possibly include "training missions" (turkey shoots?) for death squads to be used in Iraq and Afghanistan, test out of USAID "pacification" plans (the mass grave in La Macarena?), test out of weapons (drones, for instance), using the "war on drugs" to favor cooperative drug networks and eliminate their rivals and to better direct the trillion-plus dollar cocaine revenue stream to certain beneficiaries, aiding Uribe in his crime wave (for instance, direct connection to the U.S. embassy on the spying and U.S. ambassador aid in midnight extraditions of death squad witnesses to the U.S. on mere drug charges and putting them out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors) and probably also colluding with Uribe on war plans against Venezuela and Ecuador (including pre-war "dirty tricks" like the "miracle laptop" and the 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" they dropped on Ecuador's border, slaughtering 25 sleeping people in a FARC hostage negotiation camp).
That's a lot of crime to cover up, but Panetta is a smart and subtle operator, quite determined, I imagine, to get out from under Uribe's blackmail and start repairing some of the immense damage that the Bush Junta did to U.S./Latin American relations. Uribe has to be an onerous embarrassment. He is so-o-o-o dirty!
There are other aspects to this that are even harder to see. My ideas, above, are mostly guesses, as it is--but pretty good guesses, I think, from the "tip of the iceberg" things that have been seeable. The even harder-to-see problems have to do with the Miami Mafia and the Bush Cartel, and also the probable Big Pharma plan to get control of the illicit drug trade through legalization.
On the latter, we have Manuel Santos himself (Uribe's successor--but probably less of a criminal than Uribe) calling for drug legalization. Fancy that? After $7 BILLION U.S. tax dollars to, um...har-har...eradicate it! Basically, I think there is disagreement on this between the Miami Mafia (with the Pentagon and its private war contractors and other police-state entities as allies), on the one hand, and the Bush Cartel (with Big Pharma and Big Ag allies), which may be better prepared for legalization than the Miami Mafia is, on the other.
Uribe is bitterly opposed to legalization. His motive is obvious. He and those he represents are hugely profiting from drugs being illegal (as are war profiteers here and there). The Miami Mafia's political arm wants to re-install him in power in Colombia, among other things to stop all this legalization talk. But the legalization talk (about which Santos is very serious--already started it) has to be coming from Panetta himself. Santos would simply not be allowed to propose it without Panetta's approval. So that likely means that, ultimately, the legalization idea is coming from the Bush Cartel--that is, Bush Sr. and co. (Panetta is a close associate of Bush Sr.--for instance, he was a member of Bush Sr.'s very exclusive "Iraq Study Group"--the likely entity that led the ousting of Rumsfeld back in late 2006). The upshot of all this may be that it is the Bush Cartel that wants to jettison Uribe, and go ahead and launder this huge illicit revenue stream into legitimacy. Uribe's power comes from his illicit network--his criminal organization and its huge untaxed profits (which stretches from Colombia all the way into Miami and into Congress). He doesn't want to give it up. He doesn't want to go legit. Nor does his support group in Miami.
Panetta may be pulling the props from under Uribe, one by one. He has had to do this very carefully because of the danger to Jr. And he couldn't do it until he had Jr. covered. (Uribe knows too much.) One indication of this is that the Colombian prosecutors have been given access to the death squad witnesses who had been 'buried' in U.S. federal prison by complete sealing of their cases (arranged by Uribe and the Bush Junta's ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield). This has given Panetta time to find out what these death squad witnesses know and cleanse their testimony of any U.S. connections.
Another indication may be this--the OP--a new investigator assigned to the Uribe bribery case. I think Panetta foiled the Colombian prosecutors on the Uribe spying case because it has direct ties to Jr.'s White House. This may also be how Brownfield got kicked upstairs to head the entire U.S. "war on drugs" farce in Latin America. There was a witness in Colombia who testified that Uribe's spying agency, DAS, had a direct American liaison to the U.S. embassy in Bogota (Brownfield's embassy). And this also may explain how Maria Hurtado, Uribe's spy chief, got instant asylum in the U.S. client state of Panama, and why Interpol won't honor the Colombian prosecutors' request for a warrant to arrest her (pressure from Panetta). If there is no Bush Jr. connection to Uribe's bribery of legislators (to get a second term), then possibly Panetta will not interfere on the bribery case (meaning that the decision has been made to jettison Uribe).
Uribe is, of course, also working his own criminal network to save his ass. For instance, most of the members of a Colombia legislative committee that was supposed to investigate the spying scandal resigned, probably all because of death threats (some of them admitted it). And he is actively rivaling Santos, within their rightwing party, and saying that he's going to run for president again. He wants to stop the legalization move, and he wants to stop Santos' peace talks with the FARC guerillas. Uribe thrives on death and mayhem, as do many war profiteering entities, here and there. I hope to God that the end result of Panetta's protection of the Bush Junta from criminal prosecution is not Uribe's return to official power in Colombia. That is the risk--just as another Bush Junta here is an on-going risk, once our people have been made to forget what the first one did, and given the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines and all.
Note: Panetta now heads the Pentagon. He may be trying to change policy there, to pursuing Pentagon objectives in Latin America by other than U.S. "war on drugs" means--for instance, by means of the coup d'etats in Honduras and Paraguay, where the obstacles to a U.S. military build-up (the presidents of those countries) have been removed, in quite similar ways, by fake "constitutional crisis." The Pentagon's new bases in Honduras are already in progress. The coupsters in Paraguay immediately overturned the ousted president's policy of no U.S. boots on the ground in Paraguay. This is much more Panetta's style--trick mirror kinds of operations that give our public figures somewhat reasonable-sounding "talking points," rather than the horrendous carnage, for instance, in Colombia, that was characteristic of the U.S./Bush Junta "war on drugs"--a simply appalling war against the poor and their advocates. The "war on drugs" continues, of course. It is a major war profiteer boondoggle. But change is coming. LatAm as a whole has turned against the "war on drugs." And Big Pharma's plan will likely be the driver of U.S. policy in the future. I don't think this is Panetta's primary mission. His primary mission has been to end the war between the CIA and the Pentagon that Cheney and Rumsfeld started; and to protect Bush Junta principles from prosecution (in addition to the ISG's initial mission of preventing the nuking of Iran, i.e., ousting Rumsfeld). But an important secondary mission, for Panetta, has been damage control in LatAm; finding the Pentagon new venues; and positioning the pieces on the chess board for Big Pharma's big plan.
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