Colombia asked US for intelligence on Venezuela: WikiLeaks

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia asked US for intelligence on Venezuela: WikiLeaks
Friday, 10 December 2010 08:20 Adriaan Alsema

In a leaked cable, sent by then-Ambassador to Bogota William Brownfield on April 14, 2008, then-armed forces commander Freddy Padilla asked the ambassador for intelligence on Venezuela, a month after Colombia had attacked a FARC camp in Ecuador and military tensions with its neighbors were high.

Padilla said that from a military perspective, he was satisfied with the waythe recent border dust up with Venezuela and Ecuador played out. The Colombian military saw that the Venezuelan Armed Forces were considerably weaker than they had believed. In contrast, the Ecuadorian military showed it was a much more professional, if smaller, force than its Venezuelan counterparts. Padilla acknowledged that the Colombian military needed to reestablish its bilateral relations with the Ecuadorians, but said this would take time. He again asked for continued intelligence exchange on Venezuela, and also sought any additional intelligence the USG could provideon Ecuador. The Ambassador committed to looking into the matter, but reminded Padilla both countries benefited by keeping the intelligencerelationship quiet. Padilla agreed.

According to the same cable, Brownfield and Padilla discussed the establishment of a U.S. military facility at Palanquero, which was part of a military pact between Colombia and the U.S. a year and half later and caused friction with its neighbors. The pact was later turned down by Colombia's Constitutional Court.

The cable is one of a total of 2,416 diplomatic cables sent to or from Bogota that were leaked to the whitleblower website.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/13351-colombia-asked-us-for-military-intelligence-on-venezuela-wikileaks.html

[social_critic]

1. Surprise surprise

I think Colombia may have asked for information about Venezuela from anybody they could. Venezuela had a very hostile postion versus Colombia when Uribe was president.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Oh? As hostile as to have their paramilitaries showing up to assassinate the President? Oh, wait.

That's COLOMBIA, and COLOMBIAN paramilitaries being caught near Caracas on a ranch owned by one of the Venezuelan right-wingers, Cuban Venezuelan right-wing asshole, supporter of violent protests, "guarimba," Roberto Alonso.

Or maybe it was having their head of state investigation operating in a plot to assassinate the other President. No, wait! That was Uribe's D.A.S. head, Jorge Noguera, who eventually fled the country when the Colombian justice department went after him.

It got so bad that one president spent hours with the other President apologizing how it happened his country had tried to kill the other President. Well, wait a minute: that was Uribe who apologized to Hugo Chavez, wasn't it?

ETC.

[Peace Patriot]

3. I wonder at RW-ers who have so much time to jump in and try to mis-direct threads about Venezuela.

Not only is it wrong, and probably disinformation, to say that Venezuela was "very hostile" to Colombia during Uribe's rule, it distracts from the true context of this Brownfield cable, both the parts that we know and the parts that we can only make educated guesses about. Below, I will provide the story, as well as it can be pieced together, of the U.S./Colombia bombing/raid on Ecuador. Here is the general context for this cable about U.S. spying on Venezuela and Ecuador--that is, Uribe's spying on everybody in Colombia...

--the probable collusion between the Bush Junta and Uribe to spy on everybody in Colombia--not just Colombia's neighbors (bad enough), but judges, prosecutors, congresspeople, political opponents, human rights groups, trade unionists and others within Colombia--likely to make up hit lists for the Colombian military and their closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads, to murder or to threaten the targets. This is likely the reason that the CIA recently arranged for all of the spying witnesses against Uribe to receive weird overnight asylum in Panama, amidst an on-going investigation of Uribe's spying program by Colombian prosecutors. And it is also likely the reason why Brownfield arranged the extradition of death squad witnesses to the U.S., on mere drug charges, and burial of these witnesses in the U.S. federal prison system--out of the reach of Colombia prosecutors and over their objections--by completely sealing their cases in U.S. federal court in Washington DC (a nefarious assault on Colombia's justice system that current U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder--former attorney for Chiquita in their death squad case--likely was involved in). The extraditions and asylums, to keep Uribe from being indicted in Colombia, are very likely intended to cover up Bush Junta crimes in Colombia, as well as that of their tool and hit man, Uribe.

--it gets worse. Not only were hundreds of trade unionists at Chiquita, Drummond and other U.S. corporate operations in Colombia being slaughtered by rightwing death squads--and not only was the Colombian military also murdering trade unionists, and not only were many others being murdered or terrorized--human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, many peasant farmers (5 MILLION of whom have been displaced in Colombia)--all very likely at Uribe's direction and with his help (who stated publicly during this period that everyone who opposes him "is a terrorist")--and not only with $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid--but there is evidence that U.S. military contractors (if not the U.S. military itself) may have participated in these "turkey shoots" of innocent people. The U.S. State Department recently "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" (don't know who) IN COLOMBIA "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan." (A "fine" is the handslap that Eric Holder arranged for Chiquita execs who admitted hiring death squads who murdered trade unionists on Chiquita farms in Colombia. In the Corporate State of America, a "fine" levied on corporate brethren is a euphemism.)

--Brownfield and Uribe were secretly concocting a U.S./Colombia military agreement that, among other things, granted total diplomatic immunity to all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. This was last year, nearly a decade into Bush Junta military operations in Colombia. Those who touted this agreement, after it became known--such as Pentagon spokespeople--claimed that it merely ratified existing arrangements (patently not true--it included expansion of U.S. military presence to at least 7 more bases in Colombia). But the real question may be: If "total diplomatic immunity" was an informal arrangement, why did Brownfield secretly seek to get a signature on it, this late in the game (2009)? A reasonable surmise is that Colombian prosecutors were getting too close to Uribe on his many crimes, with some 70 of his closest political cohorts, including family members, already under investigation or in jail, for spying, bribery, ties to the death squads, ties to drug trafficking and other crimes, and the lid was threatening to come off of Bush Junta collusion in these crimes. If, for instance, U.S. technical experts, working for, say, Dyncorp (a U.S. military contractor in Colombia and previously in Ecuador), had, for instance, provided technical assistance (equipment, training) to Uribe's spy agency, they could be indictable in Colombia, along with Uribe. Uribe's spying was very illegal and it is the crime that he is the most vulnerable on, at the moment. His vulnerability may be threatening exposure of illegal U.S. spying in Colombia (which is why the U.S. is coddling and protecting him, and getting all the witnesses against him out of Colombia). The "total diplomatic immunity" that Brownfield secretly negotiated with Uribe likely had to do with some situation or situations like this--including the Blackwater situation--where the U.S. military (and its commander-in-chief and/or Sec of Defense) and/or their military 'contractors' committed crimes or aided/abetted crimes in Colombia.

----------------------------------

This cable:

Bushwhack ambassador William Brownfield is an experienced Bushwack operative in the diplomatic corps in Latin America. He is not going to put anything into a diplomatic cable that is not treated as "top secret" (highly encrypted, etc.) that is going to reveal Bush Junta crimes. So we have to parse this cable for what he inadvertently reveals. One such item (if true) is that the Uribe regime had to ask for intelligence on Venezuela and Ecuador. In other words, Colombia didn't have U.S. technical abilities for spying. How then did the Colombian military locate FARC commander Raul Reyes' temporary camp inside Ecuador's border, for nighttime, pinpoint dropping of 500 lb "smart bombs" to obliterate the camp and some 25 sleeping people? They needed U.S. spying capabilities to do this (not to mention the plane and the "smart bombs"). And was this also true for Uribe's spying within Colombia? Did Uribe's illegal domestic spying capabilities need help that was provided by the U.S./Bush Junta?

But the more that I parse this cable, the more I think that it is a "deniability" cable. Brownfield (who was surely aware of the leakability of cables) may have been designing an illusion of "distance" here--that Colombia had to ask 'big brother' for intelligence; that the U.S. was not running the whole show right out of the U.S. embassy "war room" in Bogota (where I believe they all watched those 25 sleeping people get blown to bits, in a live feed from somebody's camera, as they did the highly orchestrated 'rescue' of Ingrid Betancourt a while later). It takes very special intelligence bureaucrat skills to add, in the cable, that 'we should all keep our intelligence sharing hush-hush, of course'--and that he (Brownfield) will "be looking into the matter."

--------------

The context of the cable: The U.S./Colombia attack on Ecuador

In Comment #12, in another thread on U.S. Colombia/Venezuela cables, I posted the context for January 2008...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4654677

Here is my comment:

Peace Patriot (1000+ posts) Sat Dec-11-10 05:45 PM
Response to Original message
12. January 2008. Here's the context...

In the previous year, a plot to assassinate Chavez was hatched in the Colombian military and was exposed. Uribe and Chavez held a four hour meeting in which Uribe apologized to Chavez. Since an apology is two words and takes two seconds ("I'm sorry."), what else happened, in the remaining 3+ hours? My guess: That is where the treacherous Uribe hatched the next plot against Chavez, by asking him to negotiate with the FARC guerillas for hostage releases. That request was then announced publicly.

Chavez took it seriously. He began negotiating with the FARC for hostage releases. And he was on the point of success--with the first of what would be a total of 8 hostages to be released--on route to their freedom, when Uribe suddenly announced that he was rescinding his request of Chavez. This was two days before the release of the first two. That same weekend (12/1/07), Donald Rumsfeld published an op-end in the Washington Post, stating, in the first paragraph, that Chavez's help with the hostages "is not welcome in Colombia." The Colombian military then sent rocket fire at the locations of the first two hostages, who were on their way through the jungle. They were forced back on a 20-mile hike to a safe location. Numerous world leaders, including French President Sarkozy, human rights groups and the hostages' families begged Chavez to continue, which he did until he got a total of 8 out. Then he had to stop because it was becoming too dangerous for the hostages.

Chavez's hostage release work concluded just prior to the time that Uribe was calling Chavez "Hitler" to U.S. congressmen and talking about invading Venezuela--the date of these cables (1/28/08). I figure Uribe's (Rumsfeld's?) nasty little plot to hand Chavez a diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages, got foiled and that is why he was so angry.

And here's what happened just afterward--a month later (3/1/08):

Chavez and many other leaders had hopes of getting a peace negotiation going, to settle Colombia's 70 YEAR civil war. Argentina's newly elected president Crisinta Fernandez pledged her support of the hostage release efforts in her inaugural address. Many efforts were going forward, centered on FARC commander Raul Reyes, who was the FARC's chief hostage and peace negotiator. Reyes moved his hostage release camp to a location just inside Ecuador's border. He was about to release high profile hostage Ingrid Betancourt (a French-Colombian citizen). Her family had been notified. French, Swiss and Spanish envoys were in Ecuador, headed to Reyes' camp to receive her. They were warned off--told that "everyone in that camp were going to be killed." That night, the U.S./Colombia dropped 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" on Reyes' camp, and raided over the border to shoot any survivors in the back, slaughtering a total of 25 sleeping people. This horrendous act nearly started a war between the U.S./Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela.

But that's not the end of it. Soon Uribe was claiming to have seized Reyes' laptop computer from the bombed out camp and started making wild charges against Chavez--that he was a "terrorist lover," that he was giving the FARC money, that he was helping the FARC get a "dirty bomb," etc. etc. He said he had FARC emails to prove all this. This "evidence" was eventually completely debunked (even by Interpol, whose head tried so hard to help Uribe). It was crap. There weren't even any emails in the laptop (just alleged FARC documents). And the Colombian military had the laptop for three days and so compromised its provenance that it could not be used in a court of law.

From this perspective--the "miracle laptop" conclusion--looking back over the previous months, we can see the outlines of a likely made-in-Washington strategy to use Chavez's and others' desire for peace to expand Colombia's long civil war into Venezuela and Ecuador. Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves on earth (twice Saudi Arabia's, according to the USGS). Ecuador also has lots of oil and is also a member of OPEC. The U.S. wanted to destabilize these countries, get rid of their leftist governments and gain control of the oil (and particularly of the oil profits, for Exxon Mobil and Chevron). And, at the least, they wanted to stop all talk of peace in Colombia's civil war--it is a U.S. war profiteer gravy train--and damage Chavez and Correa as much as possible with dirty tricks and slander.

One other thing should be mentioned: Nearly half a million Colombians--mostly poor peasants--have fled over the borders into Venezuela and Ecuador, in flight from the Colombian military and its and Uribe's paramilitary death squads, and from the dreadful U.S. "war on drugs" (spraying of toxic pesticides on small farmers', their children, their animals, their food crops). A total of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers have been displaced in Colombia, by state terror--THE worst human displacement crisis on earth. The refugees who have crossed the borders are a significant burden on Venezuela's and Ecuador's governments (for one thing, because they are humanitarians and believe in helping the poor), and this vast migration also creates unstable borders. It is in the immediate interest of decent governments, like Venezuela's and Ecuador's, to see an end both to Colombia's civil war and to the U.S. "war on drugs" which the Bush Junta folded together into ONE WAR--the "war on terror"--a completely inappropriate and dreadfully bad policy, that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocents and the poverty of millions, and has been used by Colombia's fascist rulers as an excuse to slaughter trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, political opponents, peasant farmers and others, and to spy on everybody (judges, prosecutors, opposition politicians and all of the above). Uribe has a string of bodies behind him all the way to Antioquia, where he was governor, in his early career. Some seventy of his closest political cohorts, including family members, are under investigation or in jail, for bribery, spying, ties to death squads, ties to drug trafficking and other crimes.

This is the context for Uribe--who oversaw one of the bloodiest, most criminal regimes ever to be propped up by the U.S. ($7 BILLION in military aid)--comparing Chavez to Hitler, and wanting to make war on Venezuela. Venezuela didn't destabilize its borders. Colombia did! The FARC is an armed leftist guerrilla army made in Colombia. They are not Venezuelans. They are Colombians. If they and a quarter of a million Colombian peasant farmers have spilled over the border, fleeing Colombia's police state forces, who's fault is that? Chavez wouldn't join Uribe in his war. Thank God! --or many more innocent people would be dead. He risked a lot for peace, and got nothing but the most twisted treachery imaginable for his efforts--the willingness of the fascists in Colombia and in Washington to kill hostages as a political ploy.

The Obama administration is now coddling Uribe, protecting him from prosecution in Colombia and giving him a platform. He gets to continue telling lies like this, and saber-rattling and stirring up trouble from the safety of CIA "made man" status, probably because of what he knows about Bush Junta crimes in Colombia--while Chavez gets constantly beaten up and lied about in our corpo-fascist press and by the U.S. State Department, no doubt following scripts written in Langley.

And Uribe is no doubt meeting with those same congresscreeps, that he blathered to about "Hitler," back in 2008, salivating over the newly Diebolded Puke U.S. Congress and itching to get back in power and be the U.S. point man for the next oil war. He's in Washington with an academic sinecure at Georgetown, and in Boston at Harvard, no doubt teaching our young people that, when it comes to crimes of the rich and the powerful, "we need to look forward not backward." He just asked Hillary Clinton to give him "sovereign immunity" from prosecution--and from even having to give a deposition--in a case filed here on behalf of rightwing death squad victims in Colombia! And he'll probably get it. They've already gotten all the witnesses against him out of Colombia, and out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors, with various midnight extraditions and asylums. "Sovereign immunity." What next?

------------------------------------------

It should be pointed out that, at the end of the first series of events--the U.S./Colombia bombing/raid on Ecuador--Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, singled out Hugo Chavez for praise, in preventing a war. He called Chavez, "the great peacemaker.' It is a LIE that Chavez was "very hostile" to Colombia during the Uribe regime. Chavez went out of his way, on numerous occasions, not to be hostile, even though a quarter of a million Colombia refugees were spilling over his border, in flight from the Colombian military and its death squads, and despite numerous treacheries against him--by U.S. tool Uribe, by the U.S. "bought and paid for" Colombian military and by the U.S. itself.

One important footnote on how Chavez managed to avoid the Colombian military killing the 8 hostages that Chavez got released: The excuse that Uribe used to rescind his request for Chavez's help on hostage releases, just as those releases were happening, is that Chavez broke some kind of protocol about not calling the Colombian military. SOMEHOW (spying?) Uribe found out that Chavez did make one call to the Colombian military (through a 2nd party). This is the call that likely saved the hostages lives. (The Colombian military rockets missed.) And it also likely reveals WHY Uribe had included this strange provision. (I mean, who on earth would undertake hostage releases in Colombian without assurances from the Colombian military?) It was a set-up. Chavez's call to the military botched the set-up. Yet more reason for Uribe to rage like Rumpelstilksin. He had been outfoxed.

Brownfield writes in the cable that Padilla (Uribe/Colombia) said that "from a military perspective" the bombing/raid on Ecuador (the "dustup"!) had "played out" well, and followed this with an assessment of Venezuela and Ecuador military forces. Both of these statements are disengenuous in the extreme--as if Brownfield needed a report on either item! The U.S. military (probably Dyncorp) was more than likely involved in the "dustup," had more than likely provided the surveillance, the plane, the pilot and the 500 lb "smart bombs" and the whole thing was more than likely orchestrated by Brownfield and initiated in Washington, specifically designed to end all hope of peace in Colombia's civil war, to observe Venezuelan and Ecuadoran military forces as they were moved to their borders (important intel for the Pentagon's long term war plan for the region), and to invent "evidence" that Chavea and Correa were "terrorist lovers" with the "miracle laptop" allegedly found at the bombed out camp.

Further, and quite incredibly, Brownfield doesn't mention that, while the incident may have gone well "from a military perspective," it couldn't have been gone worse from a political perspective. All hell broke loose in Latin America over this incident. The other government leaders in the region--Brazil, Argentina, Chile, all of them, even rightwing leaders--convened the Rio Group specifically to exclude the U.S. from their unanimous condemnation of Uribe and their extraction of a promise from him never to do it again. It was also probably THE incident that put everyone in the region on the alert, and helped create the unity and cooperation that foiled the next Bush Junta plot in South America--the attempted overthrow of Evo Morales in Bolivia seven months later (Sept 2008). Just before, that summer, they finally formalized UNASUR, which was the instrument for backing up Morales, when he threw the U.S. ambassador out of Bolivia, for funding and organizing a riotous and murderous white separatist insurrection. They all came to his aid immediately. And, very likely because Uribe was 'persona non gratis' for the Ecuador bombing/raid, they even got Colombia to sign onto the Bolivia resolution and actions, for a unanimous vote. From the point of view of the multinational corporations and war profiteers who rule the U.S., it was a political disaster.

If Brownfield wasn't in direct collusion with the Pentagon, Dyncorp, Rumsfeld's Office-of-Special-Plans-in-exile* (the "miracle laptop"), and any other U.S. entities involved in this act of war against Ecuador, he surely would have said SOMETHING about the political repercussions, which were immediate. He carefully excises those out. "...from a military perspective" calls for the next sentence or paragraph to be "from a political perspective...". It's not there. I don't know who Brownfield was really writing for (if not for the general public, in an eventual leak), but this omission points to him covering his ass on the political fall-out from outrageous activities that he himself was deeply involved in.

This whole series of events could also, quite conceivably, have been a factor in our Corporate Rulers' decision to oust the Bush Junta in 2008. The Bush Junta was "losing" South America with its brutal and insulting activities. It was unifying the whole region, including Central America, against the U.S., and was thus greatly strengthening the very governments that the U.S. wants to destroy, to get control of the oil profits and to re-conquer the region.

After doing the Bush Junta clean-up work, or some of it (Panetta is doing the rest)--the midnight extraditions, the secretly negotiated "total diplomatic immunity," etc.--Brownfield was finally exited from Colombia, by the Obama administration, this year. A new U.S. strategy is emerging that has subtler and more well thought-out components, probably the work of the suave Mr. Panetta (a Daddy Bush pal). (I can't help it. I'm thinking of mafia thugs being let loose in a neighborhood, to foster a feeling of mayhem and terror, then the suave dons come in, to offer order and protection.) Panetta personally delivered the word to Bush Cartel thug Uribe that the U.S. needed a change in Colombia, and has given him all kinds of coddling perks and even this "sovereign immunity" thing (coming up) to keep his mouth shut. And former Colombian Defense Minister Santos was given the nod, who--even while Uribe was still railing against Chavez at the OAS in his last two weeks in office, and trying to instigate a war with yet more wild and bogus charges--was arranging a peace pow-pow with Chavez, who readily agreed to re-open Venezuela's border, and committed to increased trade and to mutual efforts to better monitor the border areas.

I don't know if this will last. The U.S. military is still basically occupying Colombia, a U.S. client state, and has additional bases in the region, which, if you look at a map, surround Venezuela's northern oil provinces and Caribbean oil coast. I think there is still a war plan on the Pentagon's Big Board (Oil War II: South America). And the U.S. intention to topple Chavez, Correa and others (probably Ortega in Nicaragua is next on the hit list, following the U.S.-aided rightwing coup in Honduras) is still very much in evidence. The methods may change--temporarily or even long term; the goals remain the same. The Pentagon, the USAID and other agencies are not spending billions of our tax dollars to support rightwing groups throughout Latin America to "promote democracy."

------


*(Note: Rumsfeld resigned in December 2006. His op-ed in the Washington Post was published on Dec 1, 2007, a year after his resignation, and the very weekend of the first hostage releases negotiated by Chavez. Rumsfeld states in the first paragraph that Chavez's help with hostage releases "is not welcome in Colombia," although it had been days before. I suspect that this Uribe treachery against Chavez--the plot to hand him a diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages--was designed by Rumsfeld, thus his interest, a year after his resignation, in the thing playing out as planned--NOT with a Chavez diplomatic success (which it was quickly becoming) but with its opposite. He may have personally made the call ordering Uribe to rescind his request of Chavez, because they found out about Chavez's call to the military (that their plot was foiled). With pleas from around the world for Chavez to continue, despite Uribe's strange action (trying to pull the plug at the last moment, just as the first hostages were being released), they had then to devise (or had previously devised) the second part of the plan to destroy Chavez--the bombing/raid on Ecuador, from which the "miracle laptop" was to emerge containing "evidence" that Chavez was a "terrorist-lover." This is 'dirty tricks' work so similar to what Rumsfeld's OSP had done on Iraq--inventing "evidence" of WMDs--that it is reasonable to presume--especially given Rumsfeld's odd interest in this matter, a year after his resignation--Rumsfeld OSP-in-exile involvement. And never forget the oil. Rumsfeld had failed to get control of the other Mideast oil reserve he wanted control of--Iran's. He wanted to nuke Iran to get it. This may well be one of the main reasons he was ousted. The military brass did not want to do it. (Iran is no pushover, like Iraq was, and has two strong nuke allies, China and Russia.) (The other reason may have been the outing of the CIA WMD counter-proliferation project.) Venezuela then becomes the backup plan for fueling the great U.S. war machine and for U.S.-dominated globalized trade. The biggest oil reserve on earth, right in our own "back yard.")