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

September 17, 2009

A Scandal Over Spying Intensifies in Colombia

By SIMON ROMERO

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro 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.

The agency, known widely by the acronym DAS, has been the focus of accusations of illegal spying before. But this case is sowing fear among Mr. Uribe's critics in the political elite, coming as the president, a conservative populist, presses ahead with a project to secure a third term.

While Mr. Uribe is ideologically isolated on a continent that has shifted to the left, he is following the example of neighbors who have changed their constitutions to remain in office, like Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, and Ecuador's, Rafael Correa.

"Uribe is seriously weakening Colombia's democracy," said Ramiro Bejarano, a lawyer and opposition leader who was a director of DAS in the 1990s. Earlier this year, Semana obtained recordings, transcripts of intercepts and other files from current and former DAS employees that showed that Mr. Bejarano was among several senior opposition leaders whose phones were illegally tapped by DAS. Five appointees have led DAS since Mr. Uribe came to power in 2002. The first four resigned amid claims of illegal surveillance and are being formally investigated by Colombia's attorney general.

The accusations against Mr. Uribe's first DAS director, Jorge Noguera, are the most serious. He is charged with organizing the murders of three trade union activists and a well-known sociologist, Alfredo Correa d'Andreis. The charges are based on reports that under his leadership, DAS gave paramilitary leaders their names on an assassination list.

Mr. Noguera stepped down in 2005, when Mr. Uribe appointed him consul in Milan. Mr. Noguera has since left that position, and the government has distanced itself from him.

But all of Mr. Noguera's successors -- including the current director, Felipe Muñoz, are under scrutiny over reports of irregularities, notably wiretaps, which are illegal in Colombia without a court order. Some of the most recent disclosed intercepts were recorded just weeks ago. Others were made over several years earlier this decade.

For instance, the Special Intelligence Group, a secret DAS unit also known as G-3, operated into 2006 and focused on monitoring human rights groups critical of Mr. Uribe's government, like the Colombian Commission of Jurists and the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers' Collective.

"Chills went down my spine when I discovered the lengths that DAS went through to watch my every movement," said Alirio Uribe, a human rights lawyer (no relation to President Uribe) for the José Alvear Restrepo Collective who, through prosecutors' investigations and congressional testimony, gained access to part of the file that G-3 kept on him and his wife and children.

He compared what he saw in the file, which included photos of his children, transcripts of phone and e-mail conversations, details on his finances and evidence that DAS agents rented an apartment across from his home to monitor him, to "The Lives of Others," the Academy Award-winning 2006 German film about Stasi surveillance in East Germany.

"The DAS was searching for evidence that we received money from the guerrillas, and of course they found none because there was none to find," Mr. Uribe said. "What does this say about our society and our form of government if the president's own intelligence service deems NGO's its enemies and fit for violations of this kind?"

A spokesman for Mr. Uribe declined to comment, referring queries to Mr. Muñoz, a former urban planning official who became director of DAS this year.

In an interview near Bogota's old center at DAS's bunkeresque headquarters, which were rebuilt after being gutted in a 1989 bombing attack by drug traffickers, Mr. Muñoz grimly acknowledged the possibility that surveillance irregularities had occurred earlier this decade. He said he was leading the most profound reorganization of DAS since its founding in the 1950s, with plans to cut the agency's work force by as much as half to focus on intelligence, counterintelligence and border control.

Reflecting the legacy of presidents who strengthened DAS at the expense of other institutions, the agency still carries out a broad range of activities, including registration of foreigners, providing bodyguards to 500 people considered at risk of assassination and serving as Interpol's headquarters in Colombia.

DAS's secret police unit also competes with other Colombian intelligence agencies, including the Finance Ministry's financial crimes division, in carrying out investigations. The sprawling nature of DAS's operations may have allowed some of its agents to sell intelligence to the private armies that have plagued Colombia during its four-decade war, or otherwise be infiltrated by paramilitary and guerrilla operatives.

In one case investigated by Semana, a computer that had been used last year by rebels from the National Liberation Army held detailed information collected by DAS on the military plans against the group.

Mr. Muñoz said he preferred to comment on claims of irregularities since he took over the agency. He said an investigation of the recent intercepts was under way, and suggested that rogue agents might be seeking to thwart his overhaul. "There may be people interested in countering the reforms," he said.

For the United States, which works closely with DAS on many intelligence-gathering issues, the scandal complicates its warm relations with Mr. Uribe's government, the recipient of more than $5 billion in security aid from Washington this decade.

Ian C. Kelly, a State Department spokesman, said last week that the accusations of illegal wiretapping were "troubling and unacceptable." But in the same statement, he said Colombia's human rights record was satisfactory enough to meet standards allowing Mr. Uribe's government to receive all of the military assistance included in the $545 million in American aid that Colombia was set to receive this year.

Jenny Carolina Gonzalez contributed reporting.