Uribe's Back Box: Spying on the media

Colombia's leading intelligence agency has distributed a handbook to agents explaining how they should spy on, threaten, intimidate and discredit journalists, NGOs and judges who are viewed a problems by the government.

The revelation follows a six month investigation by the magazine Semana is the latest in a series of scandals implicating the Administrative Department of Security or (DAS). Its comes hard on the heels of last years phone tapping revelations and the discovery last May of the media outlets and journalists already under surveillance. In October it was discovered that bodyguards assigned to protect the threatened journalist Claudia Julieta Duque were in fact spying on her. read on

"Such methods of surveillance and intimidation are worthy of a police state," Reporters Without Borders decared. "The recent dismissal of senior DAS officials has not resolved the problem of abusive practices within the agency. We note that the president's office has so far failed to dissociate itself from these latest ones. And why hasn't the DAS handed over its files on Duque and other journalists to the Constitutional Court, as it is supposed to?"

The national daily "El Espectador" said the spying manual was among the files seized during searches of the DAS offices that were carried out on orders from the National Attorney General's Office. The manual, which is in the form of a PowerPoint document entitled "Political War", includes instructions on how to make anonymous telephone calls and spread false allegations.

One of the manual's most alarming aspects is its use in the case of Duque, the Radio Nizkor reporter whose bodyguards were spying on her for the DAS. The authorities appear to have been worried about Duque's investigative reporting of the 1999 murder of columnist and humorist Jaime Garzón, which may have been carried out by former DAS employees.

Duque's personal details, including her telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, appear at the head of the manual, which recommends how long anonymous calls should last, the kind of place from which they should be made and how the person making the call should travel in a bus and avoid places with surveillance cameras. These recommendations appear to have been followed to the letter in Duque's case since 2004, the year she began receiving calls threatening her and her 10-year-old daughter.

The DAS's activities have never been properly investigated. The Constitutional Court ordered the DAS to hand over all the information it had gathered on Duque, but the agency has yet to respond.

Hollman Morris, who has been covering Colombia's civil war for more than 10 years and who, like Duque, was one of the first journalists to be targeted by the DAS, has brought a complaint against the Colombian state before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, calling for an investigation into "those responsible for the threats, harassment, tailing, defamation and political stigmatisation" of himself and his family, which forced them to flee the country.

In the 71-page complaint, prepared with the help of the José Alvear Restrepo lawyers collective, Morris said he received the first threats in 2000, when he was working for the daily "El Espectador". Since then, he has been the target of various forms of harassment, threats and smear campaigns, including by President Alvaro Uribe himself.

The following is a rush translation of Semana report:
According to one of the detectives who works in DAS and who spoke to the magazine, "here (at DAS) you look at targets who can be a threat to the safety of the State and the president. Among them you can find the guerrillas, criminal gangs and drug traffickers. But also, and that is obvious because of the functions DAS is in charge of, controlling some people and institutions in order to inform the Presidency. For example, how can we not control (Gustavo) Petro, who is a former guerrilla and a member of the opposition? Or Piedad Córdoba (liberal party senator), because of her links to Chávez and the guerrilla?" The magazine confirmed this with four other members of DAS.

Other important figures who have been tapped are members of the Supreme Court and Iván Velásquez, a judge who leads the investigations regarding the links between politicians and paramilitary leaders and who had more than 1,900 phone calls intercepted. Journalists have also suffered from this problem. A counterintelligence detective told SEMANA that one of the goals behind tapping media and journalists "is informing the government of what is being done in the media, in order to give the government some time to react when critical situations arise".

The subject of illegally tapping members of the Supreme Court and the government, journalists and opposition leaders is only the tip of the iceberg of what is happening in the intelligence agency. The disorder has not only been capitalized on by members of the government to get "political favours". Criminal organizations such as drug traffickers, paramilitaries or the guerrilla have also found there a very valuable source of information which is sold to the highest bidder.

SEMANA obtained judicial record certificates sold to paramilitaries two years ago controlled by drug trafficker Miguel Ángel Mejía Múnera. The confidential documents, which can only be requested by a small number of DAS directors, were surprisingly in the hands of Nicolás Escobar, a close friend of the paramilitary leader who demobilized and is now in prison.

The Army also found last year a computer, owned by members of the ELN guerrilla group, which contained DAS documents about the operations of that agency against the rebels.

All in all, this debate has raised again a vital question: What must be done with DAS? The agency will never be able to carry out its main goals -provide intelligence to defend Colombian democracy- if actions such as illegally tapping people are considered by some of its workers as "normal". Just as the body count policy led to the deadly false positives scandal, the idea that any detractor of the President or the government is a "legitimate target" resulted in the tapping of journalists, judges and politicians. It is definitely very dangerous for democracy in this country that DAS operates like a political police force and that some of its employees use their post to commit a crime.