Chertoff knew Chiquita paid Colombian terrorist outfit, and did ... nothing

[babylonsister]

Chertoff knew Chiquita paid Colombian terrorist outfit, and did ... nothing
by Weldon Berger | Aug 2 2007


The Washington Post is reporting today that top anti-terrorism official knew that U.S.-based Chiquita International paid protection money to a right-wing Colombian paramilitary group implicated in hundreds of murders and listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization but did nothing about it. The Post says that in 2003, when Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff was an assistant attorney general under John Ashcroft, a Chiquita official told Chertoff that the company believed it was violating U.S. anti-terrorism statutes and asked his advice on the situation, but Chertoff never followed up on the meeting and Chiquita continued making the payments for another year.

Chiquita has since pleaded guilty to paying the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) nearly $2 million between 1997 and 2004, when the connection was uncovered and made public by investigators from the Organization of American States. The OAS report also accuses the company of helping the terrorist group smuggle large quantities of weapons and ammunition into Colombia.

To review: the man who now heads the nation's domestic security apparatus, who at the time headed the Justice Department's criminal division, knew that at least one US company was paying large amounts of money to a terrorist organization and did absolutely nothing beyond sympathizing with the company's "complicated" situation.

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9092

[acmavm]

1. Face it, we all know the guy's a worthless piece of shit that

is leaching off the American taxpayers. He'd never done anything.

NO surprises here.

[Parche]

2. Chertoff

And he is not apeeling either...........

[BridgeTheGap]

3. They're not terrorists - they're "freedom fighters"

just like the contra goons -
Remember - if they're on our side, they can't be terrorists. If they've been terrorists and then they join our side, they are no longer terrorists - no matter what they do.

[RB TexLa]

4. It's called extortion, the US justice department can't prosecute it there what was he supposed to do

[babylonsister]

5. Ignore it, like he did? nt

[Peace Patriot]

6. Billions of our taxpayer dollars to Colombia, where rightwing "paras" chainsaw union leaders,

small peasant farmers and political leftists, and throw their body parts in mass graves--rightwing paramilitaries with very close ties to the Uribe government (chief of the military, former chief of intelligence and many Uribe office holders including relatives). Uribe--Bush's go-to guy in South America. (One of the plots of these rightwing paramilitaries was to assassinate Hugo Chavez and destabilize the Andean democracies--Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador.)

The Bush Junta reviles and plots against the democracies in the region, and supports the one dinosaur government, Colombia, that has been running a terrorist state in the name of the murderous U.S. "war on drugs" (ahem, the murderous U.S. drug cartel and war on the poor).

These rightwing paramilitaries are responsible for 90% of the carnage in Colombia. They use the leftist "rebel" groups as an excuse to eliminate any dissent against the government or its Corporate Rulers. The official military and the U.S. forces work hand in glove with them. Goals: restoration of rightwing dictatorships in South America (essential to corporate profiteering); collusion with fascist groups in the resource rich provinces in Bolivia and Venezuela, to create "secession" movements of the big landowners, to split off the areas rich in oil, gas, minerals and other resources from the central (leftist) governments, to rob the vast poor populations in urban areas of any benefit from their countries' resources; using pesticides (enriching US chem giants) and violence (enriching US war profiteers) to drive out peasant farmers (who have been feeding their families and communities for hundreds of years), push them into urban shantytowns as cheap labor for corporate sweatshops (and inure them to a diet of corporate frankenfood), and permit the big drug cartels, and corporations like Chiquita, Monsanto and Drummond Mining to exploit the land (for drug trafficking and corporate ag including ruinous biofuel production, and rapacious mining); also, training of cheap-wage mercenaries for Blackwater and others in Iraq and wherever there is need for soldiers who have no rights, and who won't balk at torture and mass killing of civilians.

BushWorld.

It is a supreme irony that these Chiquita execs turned to the Bush Junta for an explanation of the "rule of law." They no doubt wanted help in evading it--with huge scandals breaking out in Colombia (the result of some very courageous prosecutors and judges in Colombia and the OAS). Still, it would be funny if so many people had not been tortured and killed. Chiquita asking the Bushites for advice on the laws they had broken! You gotta wonder why Chertoff did not follow up. He was probably flabbergasted that anyone would care if they broke the law or not. And, after these Gonzo and other hearings on the Department of Justice, you gotta wonder if top Bushites even KNOW the law, let alone give a crap if it is violated.

I have felt for a long time that Colombia was one of the Bush Junta's biggest vulnerabilities. You just know they are tight with these rightwing paramilitaries. Why else appoint John "death squad" Negroponte as Undersecretary of State for Latin America? And why else are they pouring billions of dollars into a government that is riddled with heinous crimes against innocent people? They call Hugo Chavez a "dictator"--who was elected three times, with ever higher margins, in the most highly monitored elections on earth--and tolerate, and FUND, mass murder, drug trafficking and utter lawlessness in Colombia.

Alice in Wonderland--where everything is upside down and backwards.

Colombia, mirror to the hideous corruption in Washington DC.