{"id":100894,"date":"2013-12-24T04:53:17","date_gmt":"2013-12-24T04:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/cia-role-in-colombia-assassination-program-bared\/"},"modified":"2013-12-24T04:53:17","modified_gmt":"2013-12-24T04:53:17","slug":"cia-role-in-colombia-assassination-program-bared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/cia-role-in-colombia-assassination-program-bared\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA role in Colombia assassination program bared"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

<\/h3>\n

\n By
\n Bill Van Auken
\n
24 December 2013
\n <\/h5>\n

Both the US Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency have participated for over a decade in a secret targeted assassination program that has killed at least two dozen leaders of guerrilla movements in Colombia, according to a lengthy article written by the Washington Post<\/em>‘s investigative reporter Dana Priest.<\/p>\n

The operation involved the provision of \u201csmart bomb\u201d GPS guidance systems\u2013at the cost of $30,000 for each bomb\u2013that would allow the pinpointing of targeted individuals in the Colombian jungle. It was also based on the systematic and continuous interception of Colombian communications by the NSA.<\/p>\n

Those target included senior commanders of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a peasant-based movement that emerged nearly five decades ago in the context of armed resistance to the forced expropriation of small landholdings by Colombia’s oligarchy and the ELN (National Liberation Army), a smaller Castroite guerrilla movement operating in the northeast of the country.<\/p>\n

The operation was funded through a secret \u201cblack\u201d budget, over and above the $9 billion in primarily military aid that Washington has poured into the South American country since former US President Bill Clinton launched \u201cPlan Colombia\u201d on the pretext of carrying out a \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Colombian intervention was woven into the \u201cwar on terror\u201d propaganda used to justify US militarism internationally and focused increasingly on destroying the guerrilla movements challenging the Colombian government.<\/p>\n

The operation was massive in scale. \u201cBy 2003, US involvement in Colombia encompassed 40 US agencies and 4,500 people, including contractors, all working out of the US Embassy in Bogot\u00c3\u00a1, then the largest US embassy in the world,\u201d the Post<\/em> reports.<\/p>\n

The US presence in the country grew to include at one time some 1,000 US special operations troops. The CIA set up in Bogota a special intelligence fusion center known as \u201cthe Bunker\u201d<\/p>\n

The Post<\/em> reports: \u201cIt was a cramped, 30-by-30-foot room with a low ceiling and three rows of computers. Eight people sat at each row of consoles. Some scoured satellite maps of the jungle; others searched for underground FARC hiding places. Some monitored imagery or the movement of vehicles tagged with tracking devices. Voice intercepts from radio and cellphone communications were decrypted and translated by the National Security Agency.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Post<\/em> report, the CIA’s and NSA’s participation in the assassination program has continued uninterrupted under the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

The article indicates that the covert CIA assassination campaign against the Colombian guerrillas was launched in earnest beginning in February 2003 after a plane carrying American \u201cwar on drugs\u201d contractors cashed in the Colombian jungle and three US contractors were taken prisoner by the FARC. It would appear, however, that the fate of these individuals was more a pretext than a motive for the US buildup. Washington was concerned that the Colombian government could lose control of the country to the guerrillas, which at one point controlled over 40 percent of the country’s territory.<\/p>\n

As the Post<\/em> points out, the methods used to murder the FARC and ELN leadership were adopted more or less intact from those utilized by the CIA to hunt down and kill Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the Bush administration’s lawyers invoked the same \u201cwar on terror\u201d rationale to justify an assassination program, which is formally prohibited under US law. The killings were legal, supposedly because of the FARC’s involvement cocaine trafficking, which was said to pose a \u201cthreat to national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the article focuses on the March 1, 2008 killing by a US-supplied \u201csmart bomb\u201d of the No. 2 figure in the FARC’s command, Raul Reyes, in a cross-border raid on his encampment in Ecuador.<\/p>\n

Again US national security lawyers worked up a legal rationale for this blatant violation of Ecuador’s national sovereignty\u2013an act of war\u2013arguing that if a terrorist group is operating in a country that is unwilling or unable to suppress it, than the country being attacked can launch military strikes of its own in self defense. This is the same pseudo-legal justification used for drone assassination strikes in countries like Pakistan and Yemen.<\/p>\n

The Post<\/em> account of this attack presents it as a success in which \u201cthe bombs landed as programmed \u2026 killing Reyes, who according to Colombian news reports, was asleep in his pajamas\u201d and resulting in \u201cthe most valuable FARC intelligence discovery ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article acknowledges that the incident touched off a serious \u201cdiplomatic crisis,\u201d with Ecuador and Venezuela rushing troops to their borders with Colombia. According to US officials cited by Priest, the apology given by then Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to repair relations was greeted with anger in Washington. \u201cFor them to be giving up an important legal position was crazy,\u201d said one.<\/p>\n

The Post<\/em> article effectively whitewashes the murder of Reyes and the assassination program as a whole, claiming that it there was no \u201ccollateral damage from the smart bombs.\u201d In fact, 24 others were killed in the raid to assassinate Reyes, including three Mexican students.<\/p>\n

The article also makes no mention of the real purpose of the attack, which came as Reyes\u2013who had been the FARC’s lead negotiator in talks with the Colombian government as well as US State Department officials\u2013was involved in advanced preparations for a hostage release involving the American contractors as well as the former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.<\/p>\n

The talks, brokered by Venezuela’s Chavez, involved then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was prepared to go to the Colombian border area to accept the release of Betancourt, who held both French and Colombian citizenship. The day before the bombing raid, French envoys were en route to Reyes’ camp a mile inside the Ecuadoran border when they received a phone call from a Colombian official warning them not to go.<\/p>\n

The US had no desire to see such a negotiated release involving its regional enemy Chavez and allowing France to play a prominent role on a continent that Washington regarded as its \u201cown backyard.\u201d It therefore murdered Reyes before the hostages could be freed.<\/p>\n

The role of the CIA in this affair hardly comes as a surprise to those in the region. Colombian military officials more or less acknowledged the agency’s involvement at the time. Ecuador’s Defense Minister Wellington Sandoval said in the immediate aftermath of the attack that it had included the use of five \u201csmart bombs\u201d of the type used by the US military. He added that to carry out such a raid, Colombia \u201cneeded equipment that Latin American armed forces do not have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa responded to the Post<\/em> report Monday by warning that the revelations may have been intended to scuttle ongoing peace talks in Havana between the FARC and the Colombian government.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point, I don’t believe in \u2018coincidences,’\u201d Correa wrote on his Twitter account. \u201cColombia and the international extreme right are capable of anything!\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Colombian daily El Tiempo<\/em> reported Sunday that a US federal court in Virginia has submitted a request to the Colombian government for the extradition of two members of the FARC’s negotiating team in Cuba, Omar Retrepo y Ad\u00c3\u00a1n Jimenez, on charges of arms and drug trafficking. The Colombian government, which has been negotiating with the guerrilla movement for the last year, suspended all arrest orders against FARC members involved in the talks.<\/p>\n

The author also recommends:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n Latin American crisis triggered by an assassination \u201cMade in the USA\u201d<\/a>
\n
[7 March 2008]\n <\/p>\n

\n US-backed border massacre brings South America to brink of war<\/a>
\n
[5 March 2008]\n <\/p>\n

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Source: WSWS<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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