Wiretapping Scandal Shakes Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Source: NPR

Wiretapping Scandal Shakes Colombia
by Juan Forero
August 29, 2011

In Colombia, a major scandal involving the country's intelligence service is unfolding. Colombia's chief prosecutor says the spy service bugged the Supreme Court, intercepted the phones of its justices and followed their every move.

Prosecutors also say the illegal surveillance was directed from the offices of former President Alvaro Uribe, who in his eight years in power was Washington's closest ally in Latin America.

With hours of tape as evidence, prosecutors say the Department of Administrative Services (DAS), which is under the president's control, targeted the court's justices and the investigative magistrates, who function something like prosecutors. The purpose was to find ties between the criminal underworld and the court in order to discredit the country's highest judicial body.

"Through the intelligence agency, they tried to control, attack and discredit," prosecutor Misael Rodriguez said at a court hearing earlier this year. "Actions that cannot be viewed as some isolated DAS plan, an entity that is dependent on the presidency of the republic."





Read more: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/29/140043175/wiretaping-scandal-shakes-colombia?ft=1&f=1001

[GliderGuider]

1. Gee, I wonder where they learned how to do that???? /nt

[woo me with science]

7. Hmm....Remember this gem from just a few weeks ago?

U.S. plans to provide Iraq with wiretapping system

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4942515

[Hubert Flottz]

2. Sounds like the PNAC/NeoCons/Obama

[Arctic Dave]

3. Wellthen, we better double our "free trade" with them to prove a point.

Oh! Wait...

[WhiteTara]

4. Uribe. Enough Said. Friend of * and his poppy. n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. When is the U.S. going to be held accountable for their wiretapping?

[rabs]

6. So, Forero comes in from the cold on the scandal

It only took Juan Forero, Washington Post reporter in Bogota, two and a half years to "discover" the "chuzadas" (wiretappinmg) story.

Semana magazine broke the story on Feb. 21, 2009 and we in the Latin American Forum have known about it since.

Washington Post with a Page 1 story on Sunday a week ago fired a broadside at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, saying it was complicit in the wiretapping.

Now Forero jumps on the bandwagon, almost three years later. Forero is a native of Colombia and during the Uribe period laid low.

[midnight]

8. K&R

[ShockediSay]

9. The purpose was to find ties between the criminal underworld and the court in order to discredit the

"The purpose was to find ties between the criminal underworld and the court in order to discredit the country's highest judicial body."

Maybe we should look to find ties b/n the Big Money Corporate Underworld with Alito and Roberts, IMHO.