Reply #3: A surprise for the U.S. ambassador [View All]

[rabs]

One morning in Sept. 2009 U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield was being driven to the embassy. The radio was tuned to the news on Bogota radio and to his surprise, he heard a wiretap of one of his legal officers, James Faulkner, speaking with Colombian Supreme Court judge Iván Velásquez. The two in the wiretap discuss the physical delivery of documents from Velásquez to Faulkner. (Faulkner's Spanish is pretty good, except for the accent.)


--------U.S. Dept. of Justice official wiretapped (about 2 minutes, Spanish)-----------

http://www.semana.com/multimedia-nacion/conversacion-entre-magistrado-auxiliar-ivan-velasquez-james-faulkner/2374.aspx

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

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: September 16, 2009

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — President Álvaro Uribe, the top ally of the United States in Latin America, is enmeshed in a scandal over growing evidence that his main intelligence agency carried out an extensive illegal spying operation focused on his leading critics, including members of the Supreme Court, opposition politicians, human rights workers and journalists.

The scandal, which has unfolded over months, intensified in recent weeks with the disclosure of an audio intercept of a top official at the United States Embassy. Semana, a respected news magazine, obtained an intercept of a routine phone call between James Faulkner, the embassy’s legal attaché, and a Supreme Court justice investigating ties of Mr. Uribe’s political supporters to paramilitary death squads.

Other recordings obtained in investigations by journalists and prosecutors point to resilient multiyear efforts to spy on Mr. Uribe’s major critics by the Department of Administrative Security, a 6,500-employee intelligence agency — possibly South America’s largest — that operates directly under the authority of the president’s office.

More from NYT article of two years ago (Sept. 2009)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/world/americas/17colombia.html