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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-08 04:35 PM
Original message
Colombia's intelligence chief resigns over scandal (Bush's South American ally)
Source: Reuters

Colombia's intelligence chief resigns over scandal
Thu 23 Oct 2008, 16:18 GMT

By Patrick Markey

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's intelligence chief has stepped down after acknowledging her agents secretly spied on left-wing political opponents of President Alvaro Uribe, in the latest surveillance scandal to tarnish his administration.

DAS security agency director Maria del Pilar Hurtado resigned after a leading opposition lawmaker charged this week that officers had illegally kept tabs on members of his Democratic Pole party, the government said on Thursday.

Uribe last year fired his top police chiefs after an illegal wiretapping scandal that fuelled worries about intelligence practices in Colombia, where Washington has spent billions in aid to help fight guerrillas and cocaine barons.

"The country still can and should count on the DAS; it would not be fair for the work of hundreds of agents to be stained by the actions of a few," Hurtado said in a statement.



Read more: http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnTRE49M706.html







Maria del Pilar Hurtado standing behind Uribe


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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-08 04:48 PM
Response to Original message
1. Uribe's immediately previous intelligence chief, Jorge Noguera, was involved in an assassination
plot against Venezuela's elected President Hugo Chavez, and was found to have given lists of Colombian union workers and other leftists to paramilitaries (death squads) for execution. When the Justice Department went after him, he fled the country, was captured, returned to Colombia. Don't know what Uribe's administration is going to do with him, has done with him, yet.

http://bp0.blogger.com/_3VGZgnp4slY/ReBofOtSHKI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/NNx52kAvTxs/s320/Portada+Semana+Jorge+Noguera.jpg


Bad record going there with intelligence chiefs.
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Narkos Donating Member (919 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-08 04:48 PM
Response to Original message
2. Perfect example of why warrantless wiretapping should be outlawed. n/t
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peacetalksforall Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-08 05:53 PM
Response to Original message
3. Billions. Too bad it wasn't Uribe. Collaborator.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-08 08:47 PM
Response to Original message
4. Colombia spy chief quits; agency spied on senator
Colombia spy chief quits; agency spied on senator
By CESAR GARCIA, Associated Press Writer
– 20 mins ago

BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombia's director of domestic intelligence resigned Thursday after her agency was caught spying on a prominent political opponent of President Alvaro Uribe.

Maria del Pilar Hurtado called her resignation after 14 months as head of the Administrative Department of Security, or DAS, "an act of dignity" in a statement she read to reporters. She did not take questions.

Hurtado said neither she nor Uribe ordered the surveillance of Sen. Gustavo Petro, a member of the leftist Polo Democratico party and a key figure in efforts to uncover ties between political allies of the president and far-right death squads.

Hurtado's resignation comes two days after Petro said he anonymously received two incriminating memos signed by her intelligence chief that ordered regional DAS offices to investigate the senator and his party. Hurtado fired the intelligence official on Wednesday.

More:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081024/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_colombia_secret_police
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AndyTiedye Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-08 10:56 PM
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5. How is it that the Rule of Law is More of a Reality in COLOMBIA than Here?
:wtf:

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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-08 12:30 AM
Response to Original message
6. You get the feeling this is just the outer skin of the onion? I do.
The Uribe administration is like a "little Bush Junta." Both are filthy as hell with murder, torture, spying, blackmail, secrecy, lying, war profiteering, black ops, illicit business dealings and grand theft, and both are Byzantine as hell in the networks of crime that underpin their power.

A spy chief in Colombia doesn't go down merely for spying. Something else is at work, I sense. The bits and pieces we pick up here, in what passes for 'news,' and from alternative sources, point to the following items that a Colombian spy chief may well be involved in--and who is possibly being cast out as a coverup of the filth others are steeped in--someone or someones higher up (including all the way to Washington DC), to sacrifice her, or to silence her, or for some other reason we can't know (yet anyway):

1) major drug trafficking;
2) major weapons trafficking;
3) corruption re the $6 BILLION in Bushwhack military aid;
4) the concoction of the "miracle laptops" supposedly seized in the bombed out FARC camp in Ecuador (which Uribe used to make wild accusations against the presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador), and the trail on that black op and where it might lead (to the US embassy, to the head of Interpol, to Rumsfeld's private "Office of Special Plans," etc.);
5) the U.S./Colombia bombing /raid on Ecuador itself, earlier this year, and the use of U.S. high tech surveillance equipment (what ELSE is the U.S./Colombia using U.S. high tech surveillance for?)--all orchestrated from the "war room" in the U.S. embassy;
6) spying in aid of the assassinations of union leaders (more than forty this year alone) and other leftists, human rights workers, journalists, peaceful protesters, peasant farmers;
7) this Bushwhack, three-country strategy that the president of Ecuador has talked about, for funding and organizing fascist secessionist groups in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, to split off the oil rich provinces into fascist mini-states--a war plan, if true, that is especially perilous to Venezuela, whose oil rich state of Zulia (a fascist hotbed) sits right on the Caribbean, vulnerable the U.S. 4th Fleet, and adjacent to Colombia.
8) that charade this summer of Ingrid Bettancout's 'rescue,' with Defense Minister Santos telling his oily, sleazy lies at a Washington press conference (I heard him on C-span) about how some underling lieutenant was responsible for the Red Cross paint and gear, and the reports indicating a direct feed from the field to the U.S. embassy "war room."
9) various false flag ops--including (recently exposed) a drug operation in Colombia that was funding Hezbollah (a big Bushwhack psyops point has been that Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia are doing this--but it was in Colombia!).

Any of these things--and others we know not of--could be behind Colombia's chief intelligence officer resigning over mere spying and surveillance. As here, that is a given in Colombia. Bush, Cheney, the NSA, were/are massively spying on all of us, but especially, I think, on Democratic politicians, with complete impunity. The Uribe regime is a mirror to the Bush regime--and, in at least one case we know of, uses US high tech surveillance equipment and systems. A difference may be that Colombia has a few courageous politicians who dare to speak the truth.

It could be that the way the spying was uncovered--how the docs got out, and who was involved in that--indicates a grave leak in the Uribe apparatus; more is coming, and Hurtado will be a convenient dumping ground for blame. Where are the fiery denials, lies and counter-accusations, so typical of Uribe and his regime? They are responding to this with too much equanimity.

Anyway, my little tinfoil antennae are waving wildly on this one.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-08 06:20 AM
Response to Original message
7. I just learned what happened to the LAST Colombian intelligence chief
Edited on Fri Oct-24-08 06:21 AM by Judi Lynn
who was in trouble, Jorge Noguera. This is so predictable, unfortunately:
Posted on Thursday, 10.23.08
Colombia spy chief quits; agency spied on senator
By CESAR GARCIA
Associated Press Writer

~snip~
In 2005, a previous agency director and close Uribe ally, Jorge Noguera, was forced to resign over allegations he colluded with the illegal far-right militias known in Colombia as paramilitaries.

Documents found in a paramilitary lieutenant's computer say Noguera provided the militias with names of union and human rights activists, some of whom were later murdered.

First formed in the 1980s by ranchers and drug traffickers to counter leftist rebels, the militias evolved into mafias that killed thousands and stole millions of acres.

Petro began to publicly denounce ties between Uribe-allied politicians and the militias in 2005, with witnesses approaching him who did not trust the chief prosecutor's office to protect them.

Subsequently, the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of more than 30 members of Congress for allegedly benefiting politically or financially from ties with the so-called paramilitaries.

Noguera, meanwhile, was arrested in February 2007 and charged with criminal conspiracy but released in June by a court that ruled prosecutors made a procedural error.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/AP/story/739003.html

So they performed a sham trial, and bungled it so it was easy to set this piece of filth free. That really, REALLY doesn't surprise anyone, I'm sure.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-25-08 05:57 AM
Response to Original message
8. Dark Clouds Loom Over Colombia President Uribe's Administration
Dark Clouds Loom Over Colombia President Uribe's Administration
10-25-080607ET


BOGOTA (AFP)--Labor strikes, indigenous protests, a slowing economy - these are some of the dark clouds looming over the last two years of Alvaro Uribe's second term in office that threaten to eclipse the Colombian president's sky- high approval rating. Uribe, a conservative first elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006, has a 78% approval rating according to a Gallup poll in September. He remains the most popular head of state in Latin America - though his popularity appears to be slipping.

The government's woes have been multiple: truckers on strike in August, and a six-week strike of court workers that ended in October. Even sugar cane cutters went on strike in mid-September. And since October 10 thousands of indigenous Colombians - representing about 3.2% of the population - have been holding protest marches demanding the government fulfill a promise to hand over land. They are also angry at what they say are abuses on their community carried out by leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and even army soldiers.

Uribe faces a potentially major headache as political egos begin to sharpen ahead of the 2010 presidential election. One outcome was Congress' refusal to approve an Uribe-supported reform of the judiciary.

Abroad the president also faces the possibility of losing his main benefactor, as US President George W. Bush, a staunch Colombia supporter, is less likely to be replaced in the upcoming election by fellow Republican John McCain - who visited Colombia in July - than by Democrat Barack Obama, who leads in US opinion polls.

Bush and McCain are strong supporters of a US free trade agreement with Colombia, while Obama and the Democrats want the agreement delayed to obtain more human rights protections, especially for Colombian labor leaders.

In December the United Nations Commission on Human Rights is to look closely at human rights in Colombia, including studying a report from non-governmental organizations charging that the Colombian state "tolerates" and even "supports" thousands of crimes carried out by right-wing paramilitary forces.

More:
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/newsStoryPrintVer.aspx?cpath=20081025%5cACQDJON200810250607DOWJONESDJONLINE000315.htm&&mypage=newsheadlines&title=Dark+Clouds+Loom+Over+Colombia+President+Uribe
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