WikiLeaks Colombia: cable documents armed forces collaboration with paras

[Judi Lynn]

WikiLeaks Colombia: cable documents armed forces collaboration with paras

Submitted by WW4 Report on Fri, 03/04/2011 - 15:22. Colombian "neo-pramilitary" groups containing former armed forces personnel were able to infiltrate the state by exploiting past military connections, according to a WikiLeaks cable. The cable, dated Feb. 13, 2007, relates how the then-director of the Rural Security Police, Gen. Jesus Gómez Méndez, told a US official that the three main difficulties in dismantling these organizations were topography, money and infiltration. Gómez said infiltration allows paramilitaries to receive information through collaborators in the armed forces notifying them of an imminent operation against their activities.

An anonymous inteligence officer with the army's Brigada XVII elaborated that this network of collaborators stemmed from the fact that many members of these groups were former military personnel who could exploit relationships with former colleagues. The official highlights the Urabá region, in the north of the Antioquia department, where they estimated that nearly 250 of approximately 330 to 340 new members of criminal groups had prior military experience.

These networks of illicit cooperation were apparently complicated further by the allegations of ex-leaders of the now officially disbanded United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) that the government had agreed with them to incorporate the paramilitaries' informant networks with the military's.

Although Administrative Security Directorate (DAS) and government officials denied this, the anonymous intelligence officer confirmed that this was indeed the case and that he had personally incorporated former members of the bloc led by ex-AUC leader "El Aleman" into his network with the government's consent. He added that they were providing the government with valuable information on new criminal groups and their operations.

More:
http://ww4report.com/node/9573

[Peace Patriot]

1. The embassy had to inform the CIA what the Uribe/Bush Junta vulnerabilities were,

so they could cover for Uribe and get witnesses against him out of the country?

Cuz that's what the U.S. embassy and the CIA proceeded to do.

I see Uribe's design for consolidating the trillion dollar-plus cocaine revenue stream, in the systems described in this cable, and the candor of the cable is puzzling although it, of course, fails to pinpoint the source of the trouble--that Uribe was running Colombia like a criminal enterprise on behalf of the Bush Cartel. It is no surprise that the death squad collaborators thickly infested the military in Antioquia, where Uribe got his start. This is 2007--toward the end of the Bush Junta--so they had to start cleaning up. I'm not sure who wrote this cable (the article doesn't say) but the "fixer," William Brownfield, was appointed U.S. ambassador by the Bush Junta at some point in this period. He was in place in March 2008 for the U.S./Colombia bombing/raid on Ecuador, the secretly negotiated U.S./Colombia military agreement--putting a Uribe signature on total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia--and the extradition to the U.S. of major death squad witnesses and their "burial" in the U.S. federal prison system--out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections--by complete sealing of these cases in U.S. federal court in Washington DC. I'll have to look up appointment dates, but I suspect that this cable was written by the prior ambassador (or one of his aides) as they trawled for information that might implicate Uribe and the Bush Junta itself, and passed it along. Then Brownfield was put in charge of cleaning up the mess, as well as of ops like the "miracle laptop." It occurs to me that Rumsfeld had resigned only a few months before this cable was written and also that the "miracle laptop"/hostage treachery against Chavez and Correa (probably of Rumsfeld design) was still in motion (unfolded at the end of 2007).