The Case Against Uribe
Friday, 15 June 2012 05:54
The Case Against Uribe
Written by Geoffrey Ramsey
While former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has faced mounting allegations of drug trafficking and paramilitary ties, he has proved to be surprisingly immune from criminal charges.
On June 9, Colombian think tank Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris published an investigation which revealed that the United States has requested the extradition of a niece of ex-President Alvaro Uribe and her mother on drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Dolly Cifuentes Villa and her daughter, Ana Maria Uribe Cifuentes, were arrested in 2011 and accused of helping Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel traffic cocaine into the US and laundering illicit profits. The two are members of the notorious Cifuentes Villa family, which allegedly smuggled more than 30 tons of cocaine into the US from 2009 to 2011.
The news sparked controversy in Colombia, as it exposed Uribe Cifuentes as the daughter of the former president’s brother Jaime Uribe, who died of throat cancer in 2001. The revelation raised suspicions that Jaime may have had links to organized crime, which would have troublesome implications for his brother, who earned a reputation for his security gains as president. These suspicions were fueled when Nuevo Arco Iris also found that Jaime had been detained in 1986 after authorities discovered phone calls made from his car phone to infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. The ex-president dismissed this as well, noting that Jaime had been freed and investigators determined that his phone “had been cloned by criminals.”
One day after the report’s publication, Alvaro Uribe sought to downplay his brother’s relationship with Cifuentes. He claimed to have no knowledge of the extramarital affair, in spite of Ana Maria’s birth certificate listing Jaime as her biological father and the fact that Cifuentes gave birth to another of Jaime’s children ten years later.
While the investigation has brought his deceased brother’s past into the spotlight, it looks as though Uribe himself has been untouched by the scandal. But this is hardly the first or most prominent instance in which criminal allegations have seemingly threatened the former president’s political profile, only for him to deflect them with ease.
More:
http://www.insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/2775-the-case-against-uribe
= new reply since forum marked as read
...except that it's so flabby-brained and clueless, and leaves so much out, that it may just be wretched reporting (rather than the work of Leon Panetta's analysts). It reminds me of the Christian Science Monitor--a corporatized "liberal" publication whose articles seem to be written by lingerers in Starbucks, say in DC or Virginia, who set up their laptops, get a latte, listen to better-connected peoples' gossip and tap out useless drivel, based on 4th, 5th, 6th-hand info, and fire it off to the temp editor in his tiny room in the Watergate.
SOMETIMES CIA disinformation is dropped on the hangers-on in Starbucks; sometimes the disinformation is just second nature to the 'reporter' (they 'know' how to handle certain stories, based on the vibes in our Imperial Capitol) and sometimes the crapola is unintentional disinformation (the 'reporter' isn't very bright and/or doesn't know that he/she is being used).
The writer of this piece (Geoffrey Ramsey) is apparently unaware that the death squad witnesses that Uribe brags about "extraditing" to the U.S., were extradited at midnight, with the help of Bushwhack U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, on mere drug charges, and were subsequently "buried" in the U.S. federal prison system, by complete sealing of their cases (an unusual procedure), out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their vociferous objections. He is unaware of it (clueless) or deliberately leaves it out (lets Uribe use it as a lying propaganda point without contradiction).
These extraditions were NOT evidence that Uribe is not a criminal into drug trafficking and worse. They point quite the other way--AND to U.S. government (CIA, FBI, DEA, Dept. of Justice, State Department, U.S. federal court) protection of Uribe.
Ramsey is also apparently unaware of the flight of Uribe's spy chief, Maria Hurtado--wanted by Colombia's prosecutors for testimony about Uribe--to the U.S. client state of Panama, where she was given instant, overnight asylum, at great political cost to Panama's rightwing president, who was obviously pressured by SOMEBODY to protect this witness AGAINST Colombia's prosecutors. (Who has that kind of power?) And he apparently has no suspicions as to why Interpol denied the Colombian prosecutors' request for a warrant to return her to Colombia (nor does he apparently have any knowledge of the role of Interpol's head in colluding with Uribe on the Rumsfeldian "miracle laptop" caper in 2008.)
He's not a Panetta watcher either--and anybody following the Uribe story really needs to keep any eye on Panetta, however difficult that may be. Some things stand out: a) that Panetta was a member of Poppy Bush's Iraq Study Group ('Old CIA'/Bush Sr. crony), and b) that Panetta's first visible travel as "Obama's" CIA Director was TO BOGOTA. We have to guess, from that point, what Panetta's intense, first-priority interest was in Bogota, since our highly secretive government agencies don't tell us anything about what they are really doing with billions and billions of our tax dollars. My guess is that Uribe--about whom rumors were flying of a Uribe coup to stay in power, when Panetta visited--was just too dirty to run U.S. "free trade for the rich" and he had to be eased aside, but very gently, onto a silk cushion, because of what he knows about Bush Jr./Bush Junta crimes in Colombia. Thus, Uribe's cushy academic sinecures at Harvard and Georgetown--teaching "law" to our young people (gawd!)--and other perks of U.S. government protection.
Nor does Ramsey seem to know that yet another witness against Uribe--his "Peace" Commissioner Restrepo--is on the lam from Colombian prosecutors, in the U.S., coddled by the U.S. Immigration Service.
Really, the evidence (and I've only mentioned some of it) that the U.S. is PROTECTING Uribe is compelling. And, in any case--however you construe the evidence--some of this surely needs to be MENTIONED in an article about Uribe's criminal history that includes Uribe's denial of the many crimes he is accused of and that implies that Colombian prosecutors are INEPT. The evidence strongly points to the Colombian prosecutors being deliberately hampered by the U.S. government.
And, of course, Ramsey never asks WHY the U.S. would protect and benefit Uribe. So many vital pieces of the puzzle are missing from his article that "why" never arises. For instance, there has been testimony in Colombia that the Bush Junta's ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, had a direct American liaison to Uribe's vast, illegal spying operation (spying on judges and prosecutors, as well as on trade unionists and other "enemies"
, i.e., it is probable that the U.S. was HELPING Uribe to commit a major crime. There is also evidence that the Bush Junta permitted U.S. military 'contractors'--and possibly U.S. military personnel--to engage in "turkey shoots" of the peasants in Colombia ("training" death squads "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan" . There is also evidence that the Pentagon/USAID designed mass murder and mass displacement operations.
Now read this article, which "isolates" the "case against Uribe" from anything to do with the U.S./Bush Junta and ITS criminals. He has some troubles in Colombia. He has some accusers in Colombia. And Colombian prosecutors can't seem to get a handle on their "case against Uribe."
Clueless...or disinformation? Hard to know for sure. My guess: disinformation. I think that Uribe is something of an "albatross" to Panetta (who is tasked with cleaning Jr.'s trail and enforcing a no-investigation/no-prosecution deal for Bush Junta principles, probably brokered by Bush Sr's "Iraq Study Group," whose primary goals, in my opinion, were to end the war between the Pentagon and the CIA that Cheney/Rumsfeld had started; to prevent the nuking of Iran, which Cheney/Rumsfeld were intent upon (bad for business); and also to save Jr.'s ass from CIA retaliation for the outings of its agents). Panetta's protection of Uribe is part of the ISG's (Poppy Bush's) goals. This article may be a reminder to Uribe of all that Panetta has done for him, and a warning to keep his mouth shut or these protections will be removed. It could also be a preliminary to Panetta jettisoning Uribe. Though it ends up saying that Uribe will likely evade prosecution, it does lay out some of the case against him--his lifelong ties to the death squads and drug trafficking, and the ties of numerous of his closest associates, top appointees and family members to the death squads, drug trafficking and other crimes. (He was the president, for godssakes, while much of this crime was in progress!)
My question about Uribe--whom I presume to be a Bush Cartel "made man"--has been "how 'made' is he?" Is he among their top protected people--or can he be, or will he be, cut loose?
It's kind of amusing how this writer cites the U.S. DIA report on Uribe from 1991--which identifies him as Medellin Cartel--with a straight face:
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"Just two years into his first term as president, a declassified report written in 1991 by US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analysts in Colombia surfaced which directly linked the then-senator to Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel. The report’s authors referred to him as 'a Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high government levels,' and went on to claim that Uribe was 'a close personal friend' of Escobar’s." --from the OP (see the OP for links)
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What occurs to ME is that this DIA report is HOW Rumsfeld/Cheney identified their operative for installation as president (and mafia boss) of Colombia! He was perfect for that role! The DIA may have created the report in good faith, but it wasn't used that way. The Bush Junta needed someone to consolidate the cocaine trade into fewer hands, to remove the peasants from the picture (FIVE MILLION peasants brutally displaced from their farm lands under Uribe) and to better direct that illicit trillion+ dollar revenue stream.
I think that a big rift developed between the Bush Junta and the Bush Cartel, and that Rumsfeld/Cheney got out of control and had to be curtailed (circa 2006, when Rumsfeld resigned), but the purposes of the Bush Junta and the Bush Cartel were initially the same--for instance, getting control of Iraq's oil--and they were the same in Colombia--getting control of the cocaine trade. Uribe was their jointly agreed upon "made man" and lieutenant.
IF my guess is correct that Big Pharma is about to make its big move on the legalization of drugs and monopoly over that trade, then Uribe may be too tied to the criminal trade to make the transition. His successor, Manual Santos, whom Panetta mentored in, has publicly called for the legalization of drugs--a policy that is bitterly opposed by Uribe. (It is quite fascinating that it is the current rightwing/U.S "free trade for the rich" leaders in LatAm who are the most visible in promoting legalization--Santos being the most surprising of all.)
So, is Uribe expendable? Does he need to be cut loose? Are Panetta's agents feeding info to writers like this, or suggesting ideas, to lay the ground work for getting this "albatross" (Uribe) off their backs, so they can proceed with the bigger, longer term plan of legalization/monopoly? That would explain the big holes in the article where the ties between Uribe and Bush Jr. should be. (I mean, Bush Jr. gave Uribe the U.S. "Medal of Freedom"! (vomit...) They were/are big pals.) A carefully crafted article, to omit Bush Junta ties, to kind of sneer at Colombian prosecutors but, nevertheless, to indict Uribe? Or just sloppy research, sloppy thinking and naivete?
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I was roaming around this site (insightcrime.org) to try to get a sense of it, in general and as a CIA feeder sight. Their "Gorilla in the Room" series on drug legalization is pretty interesting:
http://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/insight-exclusives
Here is their map of countries and their leaders' positions on drug legalization (red = anti, green = pro, yellow = partial legalization or willing to talk about it):
http://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/insight-exclusives/item/2461-gorilla-in-the-room-mapping-pre-summit-drug-policy-positions
But their article on "Plan Colombia" swallows the U.S. propaganda line, nearly whole hog. What a worthless piece of crapola reporting!
http://www.insightcrime.org/security-police/plan-colombia/item/5-plan-colombia
I don't need to travel far into this site to see that it is a transglobal "security state" web site promoting war profiteer solutions. As such, it is not only very likely a CIA feeder site, it may be a CIA project.
