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Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Tuesday, 24 December 2013
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STORIES:
Beyond Plan Colombia: Covert CIA Program Reveals Critical U.S.
Role in Killings of Rebel Leaders
A new report has exposed a secret CIA program in Colombia that
has helped kill at least two dozen rebel leaders. According to The Washington
Post, the program relies on key help from the National Security Agency and is
funded through a multibillion-dollar black budget. It began under former
President George W. Bush, but continues under President Obama. The program has
crippled the FARC rebel group by targeting its leaders using bombs equipped
with GPS guidance. Up until 2010, the CIA controlled the encryption keys that
allowed the bombs to read GPS data. In one case, in 2008, the United States and
Colombia discovered a FARC leader hiding in Ecuador. According to the report, "To
conduct an airstrike meant a Colombian pilot flying a Colombian plane would hit
the camp using a US-made bomb with a CIA-controlled brain." The attack
killed the rebel leader and sparked a major flareup of tensions with Ecuador
and Venezuela. The U.S. role in that attack had not previously been reported.
We’re joined by the reporter who broke this story, Dana Priest of The
Washington Post. Priest is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter
whose work focuses on intelligence and counterterrorism.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today in Colombia, where a shocking new
report has exposed how a secret CIA program in Colombia helped kill at least
two dozen rebel leaders. The Washington Post reports the program relies on key
help from the National Security Agency and is funded through a
multibillion-dollar black budget. The program began under President George W.
Bush and continued under Obama. It has crippled the FARC rebel group by
targeting its leaders using bombs equipped with GPS guidance. Up until 2010,
the CIA controlled the encryption keys that allowed the bombs to read GPS data.
In one case in 2008, the U.S. and Colombia discovered a FARC leader Raúl Reyes
hiding in Ecuador. According to the report, quote, "To conduct an
airstrike meant a Colombian pilot flying a Colombian plane would hit the camp
using a US-made bomb with a CIA-controlled brain." The attack killed the
rebel leader and sparked a major flareup of tensions with Ecuador and Venezuela.
This is the now-slain FARC commander, Raúl Reyes, speaking to independent
reporter Mario Murillo in 1996.
RAÚL REYES: [translated] For peace, there has to be a policy
that comes from the state. That means there has to be guarantees for the insurgency
to sit with the government and to discuss about the new Colombia we should all
construct. Right now, there are no guarantees. Right now, continued threats
against the leaders of the guerrilla movements, the proliferation of murderers
and massacres continues.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. role in the attack that killed Raúl Reyes
had not previously been reported. Colombia’s government is downplaying the
report. On Monday, Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón said collaboration with
the U.S. intelligence and special forces has occurred for a while and is
already known to have helped weaken the capacities of FARC.
Well, for more, we’re joined by the reporter who broke the
story. Dana Priest is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at The
Washington Post whose work focuses on intelligence and counterterrorism. This
article is headlined "Covert Action in Colombia: U.S. Intelligence, GPS
Bomb Kits Help Latin American Nation Cripple Rebel Forces." Dana Priest
joins us by Democracy Now! video stream
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dana. Talk about this exposé. What
were your major findings?
DANA PRIEST: Well, I’m glad to be with you, Amy.
The major findings are mainly that the CIA had—and still has—a
large covert action program in Colombia, really started in its present form in
about 2003. As you might recall, Colombia was in such bad shape in the turn of
the century, in 2000. The FARC, mainly, but also paramilitaries, were
really—had created a situation of grave instability, where Colombia had the
highest murder rate in the world. There were thousands of people being
kidnapped. Human rights violations were terrible for anybody who was judged to
be a sympathizer with the FARC. The government and the paramilitaries often
disappeared people. Torture was commonplace. And the Colombians and the
Americans, up until then, had had a close relationship. The Colombians had been
trained by the U.S. for many years, especially starting in 2000 under Plan
Colombia, which was the overt, non-classified military program to send billions
of dollars of aid down to Colombia to help them fight the FARC.
And in about 2003, there were three U.S. hostages taken when
their plane crashed. They were contractors for a company that was helping to do
the coca eradication. And they were taken as hostages by the FARC, who had
taken thousands of hostages by that time. And the U.S. sent a team of CIA
people down to try to find them. And in order to do that, they set up a fusion
center, which, by now, we’re pretty familiar with what they do, because they
operate in other parts of the world, especially aimed at al-Qaeda. It fuses, it
brings together, all sorts of intelligence from the many intelligence agencies
of the U.S. government and then fusing that together with Colombian
information.
Well, they had a hard time finding the hostages, and yet they
had a lot more capacity down there at this point. They started an embassy
fusion cell. They got a lot of help from the NSA, the National Security Agency,
who brought in eavesdropping equipment so that they could basically spy on the
FARC when they communicated with one another. They were doing the same thing
with drug cartels already, and they brought that together to find the hostages,
but they weren’t very successful. So they said, "You know, we’ve got all
this capability here. Let’s turn it against the FARC leadership," which is
something they had done or they had begun to do successfully in other parts of
the world against the al-Qaeda leadership, the so-called HVTs, high-value
targets. So they started that same thing in Colombia using the equipment and
personnel and partnership that they had begun with the Colombians.
And then, at a certain point, they realized—actually, it was one
individual who was down there at the time, who had just been sent, who was a
U.S. Air Force mission chief for all the air assets that were being deployed
down there—took a look at the Plan Colombia budget and said, "Why aren’t
we able to kill more FARC leaders? This would be—this is something that we
should do." And he analyzed it and discovered that one of the reasons they
weren’t doing that is that the FARC leaders had a ring of security around their
camps that extended for miles out, so that when they brought in ground troops
by helicopter, the FARC camp could see them beforehand and flee. And so, he,
being an Air Force guy, came up with this idea, actually said he googled around
to find bombs and fighters, and came up with this idea of a precision-guided
munition, which is a smart bomb, which has a GPS coordinate—or GPS antenna on
it, which can tell the bomb where to go. And if you could find the person and
program in the coordinates and link it up to GPS satellites that were already
in the sky, then you could do what the U.S. had been doing for years before in
various war scenarios. So, that’s what he proposed.
It took a while for the U.S. to agree to that, for various reasons
that I’d be glad to discuss, but they eventually did. But because they didn’t
trust the Colombians totally to use it as it was supposed to be used—they were
worried, given their human rights record, that they might use it against
political enemies—they kept what is described as the encryption key, which is
the key that unlocks—it basically unlocks the scrambling of the communications
between the plane—between the bomb and the GPS satellite. So you need that key
in order to get the GPS satellite to link down to the bomb, and so it will know
where it is at all times that it’s flying, but also where to go to hit the
target. And they kept that for three years, until they trusted that the
Colombians would do what they promised to do, and they eventually gave that to
them.
AMY GOODMAN: Dana Priest, describe what happened in 2008 with
the killing of the most famous face of the FARC, Raúl Reyes.
DANA PRIEST: Well, Raúl Reyes had been on their radar for some
time, but they, you know, couldn’t exactly find him at the right moment, and
you have to be able to, in this scenario, keep track of someone so that you
know where they are when the planes are in the sky and when the missiles are
launched. A combination of U.S. intelligence and a Colombian informant—the Colombians
had a very good record of being able to penetrate the FARC camps by that time.
Things came together. They found him. He was about a mile across the Putumayo
River into Ecuador.
They decided that to use a legal—they decided they wanted to go
after him, and the U.S. gave them what I call "tacit approval," which
really does mean that in their mind they had debated whether a cross-border
attack into another sovereign country was going to be legal, and the lawyers
who had done the analysis on, for instance, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan
decided that it would be legal under a new interpretation of the law that they
instituted, thought about after the 9/11 attacks, which basically was this: If
another country is harboring terrorist organizations and either is unwilling or
unable to do anything about it, the country that those groups are aiming
towards—in al-Qaeda’s case, it was the U.S., but in Colombia’s case, Reyes was
part of an organization that was bent on attacking Colombia—then it would be
justified under the rules of war and self-defense for Colombia to go into
Ecuador to kill or capture that person. So, that’s what they did. They stayed
in Colombian airspace. They launched several missiles into Ecuador, which did
have the intended effect of killing Reyes and members of his security force and
others who traveled with him in the camps.
Of course, this caused a huge diplomatic dispute between
Colombia and Ecuador—Ecuador, of course, you know, charging that it had
violated international law by bombing the country. Venezuela weighed in, in its
typical way, very anti-American, saying that they had—they were a terrorist
nation. Nicaragua broke diplomatic relations with Colombia. The pressure
mounted. The Organization of American States weighed in. There was lots of
pressure against Uribe, who was the president at the time. And he eventually
apologized in public, which caused a little anger back in the United States
among the small group of people who knew the back story, because they thought
that he was giving up a—publicly giving up the right of self-defense. But it
didn’t damage relationships between Colombia and the United States, and in fact
they carried on these secret PGM strikes against FARC members, leadership
targets elsewhere inside Colombia. And while the fact of the bombing into
Ecuador was well known, and at the time there was a lot of conspiracy theories
that the U.S. did it, there was never any proof that the U.S. knew about it,
or, certainly, they didn’t do it directly. So, this is one of the revelations
in the stories.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the Bunker, Dana Priest.
DANA PRIEST: Well, the Bunker was the nickname of the embassy
fusion center in the embassy in Bogotá. And that was a site that brought
together all of the U.S.—and it’s U.S. only; they don’t allow Colombians or
other foreigners in it—but brought together the intelligence from the National
Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, you know, the DEA
sometimes, and the CIA—all the sort of intelligence that is possible to bring
together from the U.S. side. And then flowing into that would be any sort of
information, intelligence from informants, that the Colombians had.
By that time, by 2003, the Colombians were quite good at
infiltrating camps. They were less good at technical types of eavesdropping.
So, it was a combination, really, of the human—the so-called human—the human
intelligence, the source building, and debriefings from deserters who had been
in the FARC. This was actually—is actually a very important part of the
intelligence gathering that is done in Colombia, mainly by the government
there. The CIA did help them to do more thorough debriefings, interrogations of
FARC members who agreed to take the offer by the Colombian government and
desert the FARC, and they would be given, eventually, government payments and
allowed to integrate back into society. And these people were very important to
understand—for the government to understand how the FARC was organized, where
its supply chain was, what type of armaments they had, what type of
intelligence they had. And that sort of information was combined into the
fusion cell. The CIA did help the Colombians do a better job at keeping that
data and asking more thorough questions and creating the database that allowed
the Colombians and the Americans to search information about the FARC.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, one of the people, the CIA officers,
dispatched to Bogotá was an operator in his forties who The Washington Post,
you’ve chosen not to identify, who created this U.S. embassy intelligence
fusion cell called the Bunker. Is he still operating there?
DANA PRIEST: I don’t—no, he’s not in—he’s not in Colombia
anymore. I believe he’s elsewhere. But what he was doing—and this was one of
the intriguing parts to me, was—what I wanted to do in the story or why I got
onto the story in the first place was to say, you know, we know what was
happening now in Iraq and Afghanistan and, to some extent, Pakistan and Somalia
and Yemen in the fight against al-Qaeda. What else was the CIA doing during
that decade period of time when we were all focused on other places in the
country—or in the world? And I did a story about Mexico several months ago that
showed the intelligence relationship that had burgeoned there during that time
period. And it was—and during that time is when I heard about the Colombian relationship.
So, what was—if you look at it in a bigger sense, what was
happening in Colombia was some of the same types of techniques that they were
learning about and sharing with their counterparts, the CIA counterparts, in
other parts of the world, this—again, this sort of targeting of individuals,
which is new—which is a new phenomenon that began after 9/11. The U.S. didn’t
do that well, and it didn’t do it with the CIA prior to that. And so, you see
that the—what they were—how they were doing things overseas in other places is
sort of the same that they were doing it in Colombia, and they ended up using
the same legal justification for targeting and killing an individual. As you
know, the U.S. law prohibits assassination. And so, they had to work through,
in the beginning, whether this would be considered an assassination. And the
lawyers decided, no, it would not, because they were in an active war state
with a non-state actor, and that being the terrorist organizations, the FARC,
al-Qaeda, in this case. So they were doing some of the same things [inaudible]
was the same sort of fusing of intelligence that you saw in other parts of the
world.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s interesting. By that definition, the U.S.
could have killed Nelson Mandela, right? He was part of a terrorist
organization. His, actually, location was identified by the CIA, when—and then
he was put in prison. But he was part of what the U.S. called a terrorist
organization, and he was a non-state actor.
DANA PRIEST: Well, I don’t know about that. As far as I know,
they never tried to kill Nelson Mandela.
AMY GOODMAN: Right, but by that definition, is—of saying that
you don’t call it an assassination.
DANA PRIEST: Well, you know, part of—I don’t think that’s true,
because part of the—I don’t know. But in order to—for the U.S. to get involved,
you know, they have to call an organization a terrorist organization, like they
have the FARC, and that is something that, you know, takes a lot of different
questions to be answered. You know, what sort of violence are they
perpetrating? If you remember, the FARC started out in the '60s as a peasant
organization with a Marxist ideology, that wanted to be, you know, a peace and
justice organization. And land reform in Colombia had a huge—and still does,
but it's less so—income inequity. But it transformed in the last 50 years into
what the vast majority of Colombians, who were polled on this and who support
the government doing this sort of thing, believe is a terrorist organization,
run, fueled by drug money. They are heavily involved in the drug trade. They
perpetrate indiscriminate killings against civilians, without any, you know,
seeming remorse about it. So they have transitioned from a Marxist
peasant—pro-peasant organization that wanted justice for poor people into an
indiscriminate, violent, drug-fueled group that has very little support from
Colombians, who have witnessed their assassinations, their kidnappings, their
bombings, their car bombings, and the like.
AMY GOODMAN: The FARC were in peace talks at the time of this.
Nine billion dollars went into Plan Colombia, as you point out, Dana Priest, in
your piece. But this money that went into the targeted killings is beyond, that
the NSA and the CIA is getting.
DANA PRIEST: That’s right. You know, all these programs are
hidden from us in a black budget, a classified budget. And the $9 billion that
went over since—that has been going to Colombia, mostly in military aid—there’s
some non-military aid, but the vast majority is military—since 2000. One of the
things that has been remarkable or unique about Plan Colombia is that Congress,
certain members of Congress—Senator Leahy, in particular—has been very adamant
that none of that aid will be given to U.S. military to participate directly in
operations. And that is because of the scandals from the mid-’80s against—you
know, the U.S. secret wars in Central America, in Nicaragua and Honduras and El
Salvador. They did not want [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: We’re having trouble hearing you, Dana. Go ahead
with what you were saying.
DANA PRIEST: Can you—
AMY GOODMAN: No, sorry, we can’t—we can’t hear you right now.
But I want to thank you for that report, Dana Priest, Pulitzer Prize-winning
investigative reporter at The Washington Post, whose work focuses on intelligence
and counterterrorism. We’ll link to her piece, "Covert Action in Colombia:
U.S. Intelligence, GPS Bomb Kits Help Latin American Nation Cripple Rebel
Forces."
When we come back, we’ll talk to a longtime Colombian-American
journalist, Mario Murillo, as well as Charlie Roberts, a member of the Colombia
Human Rights Committee and board chair of the U.S. Office on Colombia. He’s in
Bogotá. Stay with us.
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Did Covert U.S. Program Targeting Rebel Leaders Help Undermine
Colombia's Peace Process?
Continuing our coverage of the startling new report that exposes
how a secret CIA program in Colombia is responsible for killing at least two
dozen rebel leaders, we’re joined by Mario Murillo, professor and chair of the
Department of Radio, Television, Film at Hofstra University and co-director of
the Center for Civic Engagement. Murillo has covered Colombia extensively and
is the author of the book, "Colombia and the United States: War, Unrest,
and Destabilization."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War
and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our coverage of the startling
new report that exposes how a secret CIA program in Colombia is responsible for
killing at least two dozen rebel leaders there. The Washington Post article by
Dana Priest is called "Covert Action in Colombia: U.S. Intelligence, GPS
Bomb Kits Help Latin American Nation Cripple Rebel Forces."
In a moment, we’ll go to Colombia, where we’ll be joined on the
phone by Charlie Roberts, a member of the Colombia Human Rights Committee and
board chair of the U.S. Office on Colombia. But first we’re going to turn to
the words of a man who Charlie Roberts has been closely covering, Gustavo
Petro, the mayor of Bogotá. Earlier this month, Colombia’s inspector general,
Alejandro Ordóñez, announced Petro would have to leave office over the alleged
mismanagement of the capital’s rubbish collection service. However, supporters
say the former left-wing rebel has been the victim of a "right-wing
coup." Tens of thousands of people in Colombia have taken to the streets
to support Petro.
In March 2007, Democracy Now! spoke to Gustavo Petro and asked
him about his past as a former guerrilla and member of M-19 who later joined
the peaceful opposition.
GUSTAVO PETRO: [translated] The M-19 was a belligerent force in
Colombia against the state of siege, against the dictatorial forms that
Colombia had two decades ago. And it stopped, it ceased being a belligerent
force, in terms of an armed movement, when it negotiated agreements that made
it possible to hold a national constitutional assembly, which was held in 1991,
and in which we won the elections by popular vote, and it transformed, at least
in terms of the constitution—it transformed the country from a civilian
dictatorship into a democracy with problems.
Unfortunately, as of 1991, the constitution of Colombia, which
calls for rule of law with significant social policies with a view towards
reducing inequality, while we must keep in mind that Colombia is, socially
speaking, one of the most unequal countries in the world, it hasn’t been
implemented. Instead, at the local level and in an increasingly widespread
fashion, we have seen the rise of what I call the Mafioso dictatorships. These
are coercive paramilitary apparatuses that assassinate the population with a
single objective, which is to accumulate and concentrate wealth in the most
savage form possible, one of which is exporting cocaine to the United States.
Because of denouncing these facts; because of having spent five
years of my work as a legislator to showing, with pointing out the first names
and last names, how certain Colombian legislators in certain regions of the
country would draft laws in the morning and at night they would order
massacres; because I have been helping to reveal this intricate network of
relationships between persons carrying out genocide, drug traffickers,
politicians and public officials, I have received this insult from the
president of Colombia, who said that I was a terrorist in civilian clothes. I
was accused of being a terrorist, because I was telling the truth, because I
was helping to unveil one of the darkest stories in Colombian history, the
relationship between the country’s rulers and drug trafficking.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Gustavo Petro speaking to Democracy Now!
in 2007. Until recently, he had been serving as the mayor of Bogotá, but was
told to step down earlier this month. He and his supporters are now working to
prevent this decision from being carried out. In a moment, we’re going to go to
Charlie Roberts in Colombia, but before we do, we’re joined by Mario Murillo.
Mario Murillo is an independent journalist and a professor and chair of the
Department of Radio, Television, Film at Hofstra University in Long Island, New
York, co-director of the Center for Civic Engagement, covered Colombia
extensively, author of the book, Colombia and the United States: War, Unrest,
and Destabilization.
Mario, welcome to Democracy Now! It was your clip, an interview
that you did with Raúl Reyes, that we played on Democracy Now! This is an
interview you did in 1996. In 2008, he was killed in what was believed at the
time to be a Colombia cross-border strike into Ecuador, where he was, that
killed a number of other people, as well. That was 12 years after you did that
interview. Now, Dana Priest of The Washington Post is confirming for the first
time that the intelligence used in that strike was U.S. intelligence. It was a
CIA brain, if you will, in that GPS bomb. Can you talk about the significance
of this?
MARIO MURILLO: Well, the report, in many ways, is much like
having interviews with unidentified Israeli officials and U.S. officials
acknowledging the existence of a nuclear bomb, nuclear weapons in Israel. It’s
pretty much the same thing. It was a wink and a nod after the 2008
assassination of Raúl Reyes that the U.S. was directly involved in that. It was
never disclosed, and with the great detail Dana Priest put out in The
Washington Post on Sunday, clearly, confirms what so many people were saying.
But it’s really not a surprise, in the sense that the U.S. has been immersed in
Colombia for so many years, even before Plan Colombia. We could even say the origins
of the FARC came about as a result of Kennedy’s push to liquidate any kind of
opposition in the countryside in Colombia through the Colombian armed forces.
I think it has two implications, one from the Colombian
standpoint and the second from the U.S. standpoint. If we’re looking at it from
the U.S. standpoint—and you guys have been doing great work on this issue on
Democracy Now! in terms of the rule of law, in terms of justifying targeted
assassinations on an international scale, and making it—and rationalizing it.
And you see it in the report, how White House officials and national security
lawyers were saying, "Yes, these FARC rebels, Raúl Reyes, posed a threat
to the U.S. and to Colombia, and so we had a justification to target them militarily."
And I think anybody concerned about the rule of law, that kind of operation
happening with a complete lack of government oversight, of congressional oversight,
is—it should be alarming.
From the standpoint of Colombia, I think Petro’s clip is a good
indication of the hypocrisy of U.S., quote-unquote, "fighting
terrorism" in Colombia, when we think about the complete lack of pursuing
the right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia who for decades have been killing,
massacring, disappearing peasants throughout the country, and that basically in
the article it points out that U.S. officials saying we were not targeting the
more violent paramilitaries in this process. So you have a complete double
standard in terms of describing terrorism on the ground and then the U.S.
military directly involved in trying to liquidate the FARC as the only culprits
of violence or the only instigators of violence in the country.
AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of the killing of Raúl Reyes,
who was the most public face of the FARC?
MARIO MURILLO: Well, I think the big point there was the
international incident that occurred, how it led to major discord between
Colombia and Ecuador, and Venezuela came into the picture with Hugo Chávez
amassing troops along the border with Colombia. And I think, again, it goes to
show that U.S. interests, you know, are very vague when it comes to trying to
control a situation that—in Colombia, that in many ways they have made worse
because of their military intervention. And I think, ultimately, it was the
beginning—as Dana Priest points out, the beginning of a major demise of the
FARC. And I think the strategic blunder that the FARC have carried out over the
last 10 years or so is that they failed to recognize that they weren’t at war
in Colombia with Colombia only; they were at war with the United States, the
most powerful military and intelligence machine in the world, and the chances
were that they weren’t going to come out looking too good. So that was the
beginning, in many ways, of the process of dismantling of the FARC, and that’s
where we are right now today.
AMY GOODMAN: Where would the FARC be if the U.S., the NSA, the
CIA, were not taking out its leaders? I think, in the piece, talked about the
killing of at least two dozen FARC leaders.
MARIO MURILLO: Well, I think it’s hard to say, but I think what
we see is a long track record. This is just the latest and perhaps the most
aggressive, and in many ways, at least if we look at it from the standpoint of
U.S. strategic and military abilities, probably the most successful approach of
trying to defeat the FARC militarily. But this is a long track record, since
the 1980s, where the United States, under Reagan, refused to have any kind of
negotiation and put pressure on the Colombian military to avoid any kind of
reasonable, real negotiations that would lead to a long-lasting peaceful
settlement in Colombia, when the Colombian rebels tried to get involved
politically in the process and resulted in the deaths of thousands of political
activists that were loyal to the FARC, that were trying to do it through legal
means.
Subsequent to that, in the 1990s, in the late 1990s, when the
president at the time of Colombia, Andrés Pastrana, attempted to push forward a
peace process, under the name of Plan Colombia—but his Plan Colombia was
described as trying to pacify the countryside first, lead to negotiations, and
through that negotiation, in which the FARC would lay down their weapons, they
would be able to address the long-lasting drug problem in the region—the United
States completely transformed that into a military operation, saying, "No,
first we have to defeat the FARC militarily." And that’s what Plan
Colombia is. And so, any attempt at negotiation was jettisoned really through
the pressure of the United States. What we saw subsequent to that was basically
a massive offensive on a national scale in Colombia of the paramilitaries
attacking civilian populations where the stronghold—where there were considered
to be FARC strongholds, resulting in millions of displaced, tens of thousands
of people killed, and all in the name of, quote-unquote, "fighting the
FARC." Ultimately, it led to a complete collapse of the peace talks in the
early 2000s, and that’s where we are today.
So, every attempt at trying to negotiate a solution to the
situation has always resulted in more militarism. And that’s where today’s
situation is very interesting, because there are peace negotiations going on.
The current government, that’s been obviously behind this CIA-NSA attack on the
FARC, is trying to negotiate the FARC much—in a much weaker position, but the
government getting a lot of pressure from the Uribe—former President Uribe and
his followers to try to, again, jettison any kind of peace negotiation. So I
think that’s the takeaway, from my standpoint, is that at every turn the U.S.
has been counter to negotiations. Meanwhile, they didn’t say anything about the
negotiations that took place under the Uribe government between the Colombian
government and the AAUC, the paramilitary groups, that in many sense were
directly tied to the military in Colombia.
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Ex-Rebel Leader Faces Ouster as Bogotá Mayor After Longtime
Advocacy of Reconciliation
Amidst revelations of a secret CIA program responsible for
killing at least two dozen rebel leaders in Colombia, former guerrilla leader
Gustavo Petro is facing a campaign for his ouster as mayor of Bogotá. Earlier
this month, Colombia’s inspector general announced Petro would have to leave
office over the alleged mismanagement of the capital’s rubbish collection
service. However supporters say Petro has been the victim of a "right-wing
coup," and tens of thousands have taken to the streets to support him.
Petro and his supporters are now working to prevent his removal from being
carried out. We go to Bogotá, where we are joined by Charlie Roberts, a member
of the Colombia Human Rights Committee and board chair of the U.S. Office on
Colombia.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined, in addition to Mario Murillo, by
Charlie Roberts, with the Colombia Human Rights Committee. Charlie, you are in
Bogotá, Colombia, right now, and you’re covering what’s happening to the Bogotá
mayor. But I was wondering if you could start by responding to this report and,
perhaps in a bigger sense, how it relates to what’s happening to the mayor
today.
CHARLIE ROBERTS: Sure. I think that—well, I would agree with
what Mario has laid out in terms of the double standard, in terms of violations
of international law that are involved in the U.S. actions. It’s directly
related to what’s happening today with the mayor of Bogotá. There is an
official in Colombia known as the inspector general, who is chosen by the
Senate. He happens to be a follower of Uribe, and he is an avowed opponent of
the peace talks with the FARC. He has taken an action to try to remove Gustavo
Petro, who’s the popularly elected mayor of Bogotá, on grounds of—not of
criminal conduct, not of corruption, but of mismanaging a garbage—the trash
removal situation in Bogotá. He is authorized under the Colombian constitution
to remove elected officials and unelected officials on several grounds, and he
has thrown out hundreds of mayors.
This situation, however, is different. It’s different, first of
all, because Bogotá is the largest city, and it’s also different because Petro
is one of the leaders of Colombia’s democratic left. Petro, as indicated in the
earlier clip, negotiated peace as part of the M-19 24 years ago with the
government. If the government is actually intending to negotiate peace with the
FARC, then they have to offer them political guarantees to be able to
participate in Colombian politics. And here, with this arbitrary action by the
inspector general against Mayor Petro, he’s sending a very strong message to
the FARC. The message is: You can lay down your weapons and run for popular
office, but if you get elected, we’re going to see what we can do to throw you
out of office, because there are sectors of the Colombian elite that are not
prepared to allow democratically elected figures who propose real social change
here in Colombia, which is one of the most unequal countries in the world.
They’re not going to allow them. They’re going to do anything possible to throw
them out of office, which is what he’s trying to do right now.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what happens from here, as you are in Bogotá,
and the response of the people in Colombia, Charlie?
CHARLIE ROBERTS: Well, the inspector general announced his
decision on December 9, yet it has not yet gone into effect. That day, tens of
thousands of people came to the main plaza, Plaza de Bolívar, in the center of
Bogotá, and Mayor Petro announced the crowd—addressed the crowd. And in four of
the following five days, there were massive demonstrations. Tens of thousands
of people came. Members of what is known as the guardia indígena, which are
indigenous persons from the south of Colombia, came up to Bogotá. They are
armed with sticks—that is all. Petro made two very clear statements in response
on the first day. He said, "We must act peacefully." No violence
whatsoever by his supporters. But he said, "We also must express
ourselves."
What is happening is—well, Colombia is a country where there is
a certain obsession with doing everything as per the law, but there are always
different legal explanations and different legal arguments. In this case, on
the one hand, you have this authority of the inspector general to remove
officials from office, but at the same time, Colombia has ratified the American
Convention on Human Rights, which states that no public elected official can be
removed from office other than by a competent court. So there’s now a major
debate underway in Colombia. Even people who haven’t supported Petro are upset
with this action by the inspector general, because they see that it is
arbitrary, that it is aimed at ending the peace talks with the FARC, that it is
aimed at beheading the democratic left of Colombia. His decision also excludes
Petro—if it goes through, it would exclude Petro from any participation in political
activity for 15 years.
And so, Mr. Petro has gone to Washington. He spoke with members
of Congress, State Department, and he also went to the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights, which is the organ in charge of overseeing
implementation of the American Convention on Human Rights, seeking
precautionary measures, which is a device where the commission, if they grant
these measures—that’s still pending—would be saying that there’s an imminent
threat of irreparable harm to Mr. Petro’s human rights and, by the way, the
rights of the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for him to have him
elected.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both, Charlie Roberts and
Mario Murillo, for being with us. Charlie Roberts, member of the Colombia Human
Rights Committee, board chair of U.S. Office on Colombia. And Mario Murillo,
professor and chair of the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Hofstra
University in Long Island, New York, co-director of the Center for Civic
Engagement. He’s covered Colombia extensively for years. One of his books,
Colombia and the United States: War, Unrest, and Destabilization.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, Mikhail Kalashnikov is
dead. Stay with us.
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Mikhail Kalashnikov, Inventor of Eponymous Assault Rifle That
Shaped Modern Warfare, Dead at 94
Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the most popular firearm in
the world, died Monday at the age of 94. The Kalashnikov assault rifle became
one of the world’s most widely used weapons, with an estimated 100 million guns
now spread worldwide. The relative simplicity of the Kalashnikov, or AK-47,
made it cheap to produce, as well as reliable and easy to maintain. Kalashnikov
designed his first machine gun in 1942 after suffering injuries as a tank
commander for the Soviet Union’s Red Army during World War II. But it was only
in 1947 after years of modification that the AK-47 was introduced for Soviet
military service. In the early 1950s, the Kalashnikov became the standard
weapon for Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries. The gun also proved popular with
paramilitary groups. Although honored by the state, Kalashnikov made little
money from his gun. He was often defensive about criticism that his invention
had caused countless deaths around the world. We discuss the significance of
the AK-47 and its maker with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security
Project at the Center for International Policy. Hartung’s latest book is
"Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the
Military-Industrial Complex."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The inventor of the most popular firearm in the
world is dead. The Kalashnikov assault rifle, created by Mikhail Kalashnikov,
became one of the world’s most widely used weapons. An estimated 100 million
guns are spread worldwide. The relative simplicity of the Kalashnikov, or
AK-47, made it cheap to produce, as well as reliable and easy to maintain.
Kalashnikov designed his first machine gun in 1942 after
suffering injuries as a tank commander for the Soviet Union’s Red Army during
World War II. But it was only in 1947, after years of modification, that the
AK-47 was introduced for Soviet military service. In the early ’50s, the
Kalashnikov became the standard weapon for Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries.
The gun also proved popular with paramilitaries. Although honored by the state,
Kalashnikov made little money from his gun. He was often defensive about
criticism that his invention had caused countless deaths around the world. This
is Kalashnikov speaking to the BBC.
MIKHAIL KALASHNIKOV: [translated] I created a weapon to defend
the fatherland’s borders. It’s not my fault that it’s sometimes used where it
shouldn’t have been.
AMY GOODMAN: Mikhail Kalashnikov died Monday at the age of 94.
To talk about the significance of his weapon and its maker, we’re joined by
William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for
International Policy. His latest book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the
Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Thanks for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: The significance of Mikhail Kalashnikov, Bill?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, interesting character—didn’t have a high
school education, grew up in South Siberia, rose up through the ranks because
of his mechanical abilities. Not the only one who built this thing. It was a
design bureau competing amongst 15 others. Stalin had a secret contest to build
the next rifle for the Soviet army. Once they integrated it into the army, they
started building it in large quantities, the Warsaw Pact countries, Soviet
Union stockpiling them. Then they turned up in Vietnam, in Cuba, for the
governments of Egypt and Iraq, and became sort of the firearm of the liberation
movements in Southern Africa and, actually—
AMY GOODMAN: The Mozambican flag actually has an AK-47. It’s a bayonet
attached to the barrel?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: On the flag?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: In honor of its use in the liberation movement,
yes. ANC used them. And they were basically given away for free, and that’s why
there are so many of them in the world now. It wasn’t really a market success;
it was just the Soviet Union handing them out to any possible ally.
So what happened in Vietnam was it sort of made its reputation
because the M-16, the U.S. rifle, was not working. It was jamming in the
jungles. Any time a U.S. soldier could get a hold of an AK-47, he would throw
out his M-16, use the AK-47, because it was more durable. You could use it in
almost any condition. If it was dirty, it would work. And almost—you could do
almost anything to these things. In fact, in Afghanistan, some of the Taliban
members are using ones that are from the ’50s, that still operate 50 or 60
years later.
But we had this kind of a flip from the Cold War period where we
had these huge stockpiles. And when the Soviet Union got out of the business of
giving away weapons and became Russia, they became sort of fair game for people
like Viktor Bout and other arms traffickers. What they did was they swapped
resources with people like Charles Taylor for guns. And so you had this kind of
business of war self-perpetuating. You didn’t need a client, and you didn’t
need a country to back you up anymore. You could just steal resources, deal
with arms dealers, as happened in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
as happened in Sierra Leone, civil war in Angola. So, because of its
lightweight nature, the fact that it was cheap and ubiquitous, child soldiers
were able to operate them without a logistics trail, very easy to maintain and
use and so forth.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Mikhail Kalashnikov talking about
his invention.
MIKHAIL KALASHNIKOV: [translated] Weapons should only be in the
hands of those people who defend their country—that is, to defend, not to
attack. I designed the rifle not for international conflicts, but to protect
the borders of my homeland.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Mikhail Kalashnikov. Can you talk about
the Kalashnikov and its effect on the frequency and violence of war?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, I think it’s an enabler of war. And what
happens is, although the gun isn’t fighting the war itself, certainly the
ability to kill so many people in such a short amount of time—600 rounds per
minute—had never been possible in such a small killing package. And so, if you
have a local dispute that’s settled with an AK-47, you’re going to have a war
on your hands very shortly thereafter. So, in that sense, without the AK-47,
perhaps we would have had political space to solve some of these conflicts. In
the ’90s, the U.N. figured out that 46 of 49 conflicts was fought only with small
arms, mostly with AK-47s.
AMY GOODMAN: Mikhail Kalashnikov was a lifelong member of the
NRA. Let’s turn to comments made by the former president of the NRA, David
Keene, explaining Kalashnikov’s membership.
DAVID KEENE: Some years ago, in Moscow, there was a dinner
honoring General Kalashnikov. General Kalashnikov is the man who during the
course of World War II, in his spare time, invented the AK-47. He’s one of the
few heroes of Russia because of their flawed past. And so, on the occasion of
his 85th birthday, there was a dinner honoring him in Moscow. The toast was
given by President Putin. And when Putin finished, the general stood up, held
his glass up in Putin’s face and said, "Mr. President, my dream is a
country like the United States, governed by men and women not afraid of an
armed populace." We made General Kalashnikov an honorary life member of
the National Rifle Association after that.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s David Keene, the former president of the
National Rifle Association. The significance, Bill Hartung?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: It’s stunning even by NRA standards. Basically,
they’re embracing the maker of this weapon that’s used by terrorists, used by
tyrants, used by revolutionary movements—not a defensive weapon, as Kalashnikov
claimed, but probably the biggest killing machine of the 20th century. So I
think it just shows you how skewed the NRA view of the world is. And, in fact,
they tried to block the Arms Trade Treaty, which is trying to deal with things
like this, keep these weapons out of the hands of terrorists and tyrants. The
NRA has used its global clout to try to water that down. They were unsuccessful
in stopping it, but they’re going to try to blunt it at every turn.
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Hartung, we want to thank you for being with
us, from the Center for International Policy. His latest book, Prophets of War.
-------
HEADLINES:
Ban Calls for Near Doubling of U.N. Peacekeepers in South Sudan
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is calling for a near
doubling of the international peacekeeping force in South Sudan amidst
spiraling violence. On Monday, Ban asked the Security Council to send up to
5,500 more troops.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: "The world is watching
all sides in South Sudan. Attacks on civilians and the U.N. peacekeepers
deployed to protect them must cease immediately. The United Nations will
investigate reports of grave human rights violations and crimes against
humanity. Those responsible at the senior level will be held personally
accountable and face the consequences, even if they claim they had no knowledge
of the attacks."
The Security Council is due to vote on Ban’s proposal today.
South Sudan’s violence erupted earlier this month when President Salva Kiir
accused his former deputy, Riek Machar, of mounting a coup. On Monday, Machar
said the release of opposition leaders is a precondition for talks.
Riek Machar: "We are ready to start dialogue as soon as my
comrades under detention there, SPLM leaders, are released and evacuated to a
neutral ground, preferably Addis, because these are the people who will engage
in the dialogue. We want a peaceful settlement of this conflict. We do not want
our people to be subjected to a lot of suffering. They have already suffered
enough. We want peace."
Hundreds have been killed and thousands have sought refuge at
U.N. facilities to escape the fighting.
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Group: 87 Children Among Over 300 Killed in Aleppo Bombing
A week of bombing by the Assad regime in northern Syria has
reportedly left over 300 people dead. Syrian government helicopters have been
hitting the town of Aleppo with highly destructive barrel bombs –- oil drums
filled with explosives and sometimes with nails or scrap metal. The opposition
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the death toll includes 87 children.
Over 80 people were reportedly killed on Monday.
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14 Killed, Dozens Wounded in Egypt Bombing
At least 14 people were killed and over 120 wounded when a car
bomb hit a police station in northern Egypt. The Egyptian government has blamed
the attack on the Muslim Brotherhood, calling it a "terrorist
organization." In a statement, the Muslim Brotherhood condemned the
bombing as "a direct attack on the unity of the Egyptian people." No
one has claimed responsibility so far.
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Dozens Protest Jailing of Egyptian Activists
Earlier on Monday, dozens of people rallied in Cairo against the
jailing of three activists who helped lead the uprising against Hosni Mubarak.
The three were the first to be sentenced under a new law that effectively bans
public protest by requiring seven different permits for rallies.
Protester: "It makes us very surprised that the government
that has reached power after demonstrations against Mohamed Morsi and the
Muslim Brotherhood takes such measures against the activists and put them in
prison. We will definitely continue opposition to this demonstration law,
because we think it violates all international conventions and even the
constitution that’s been recently reached."
-------
Israel Frees Palestinian Hunger Striker
Israel has released a Palestinian prisoner whose lengthy hunger
strike helped spark major protests in the Occupied Territories. Samer Issawi
was initially released under the 2011 deal that freed Israeli soldier Gilad
Shalit, only to be re-arrested and returned to an Israeli prison last year.
Issawi staged a hunger strike that spanned eight months and fueled solidarity
actions by other Palestinian prisoners and rallies in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. Issawi ended his hunger strike in April after Israel agreed to set him
free in return.
-------
Netanyahu Seeks U.S. Explanation over "Unacceptable"
Spying
The Israeli government is seeking an explanation from the U.S.
after becoming the latest country to be caught up in NSA spying. Documents
leaked by Edward Snowden show the NSA monitored the emails of then-Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert and other top Israeli officials in 2009. On Monday,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the surveillance unacceptable.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "Concerning
matters published in the past few days, I have asked for an examination in the
matter. In the close ties between Israel and the United States, there are
things that must not be done and that are not acceptable to us."
-------
Snowden: "Mission Accomplished" in Exposing NSA
Surveillance
In a lengthy interview published by The Washington Post today,
Edward Snowden declared "mission accomplished" in his exposure of NSA
surveillance. Snowden said: "As soon as the journalists were able to work,
everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I
didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine
if it should change itself." Snowden also repeated his denials of sharing
the leaked documents with foreign governments, including his host country
Russia. Snowden said: "If I defected at all, I defected from the
government to the public."
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Admin Extends Obamacare Deadline for Jan. 1st Coverage
The Obama administration has extended a deadline until today for
Americans seeking health insurance starting January 1st through the
HealthCare.gov website. The 24-hour grace period was announced as over a
million people flooded the site on Monday. In a symbolic move to promote the
healthcare exchanges, the White House says President Obama personally enrolled
in a "bronze" plan online over the weekend.
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Judge Refuses to Stop Same-Sex Marriages in Utah
Same-sex marriages are continuing in Utah after a federal judge
refused to overturn his decision striking down the state’s ban. On Monday, U.S.
District Judge Robert Shelby rejected arguments from Utah’s attorney general,
saying he stands by his ruling that marriage is a "fundamental right"
for all. Dozens of couples exchanged vows at the city clerk’s office in Salt
Lake City.
Dennis Owens: "You know, I don’t think it’ll change
day-to-day life for us, obviously, but it is nice to know that there’s some
formal recognition for the relationship we’ve created over the last 18 years.
So it’s just a nice way to sort of commemorate the relationship that we
share."
Penny Kirby: "And just to have this opportunity in Utah, in
our home state, because we could have gone to California. We could have gone to
another state. But we’re Utahns. And that is huge. That’s huge. We’re pioneers.
I mean, you know, it’s so awesome."
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Court Rules Ohio Can’t Exclude LGBT Spouses from Death
Certificates
Meanwhile in Ohio, a federal judge has issued a partial
rejection of the state’s gay marriage ban. On Monday, Judge Timothy Black ruled
Ohio is unlawfully discriminating against gay spouses married out of state in
barring them from appearing on their partner’s death certificate.
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Ugandan Activists Vow Challenge to Anti-LGBT Law
LGBT advocates gathered in Uganda on Monday to vow opposition to
the country’s new anti-gay law. Uganda’s parliament passed a measure last week
that imposes a sentence of life in prison for repeated homosexual acts. It also
makes it a crime not to report LGBT people. Ugandan activist Kasha Jacqueline
vowed to challenge the measure in court.
Kasha Jacqueline: "If we fail in the courts of Uganda, we
shall go to the African Court. And if we fail in the African Court, we shall go
to the international court. Because the reason why, actually, we are not
already in court when this bill was passed, because you cannot challenge
something that is not already passed. When it was proposed in Parliament, we
couldn’t challenge it, because you cannot challenge something that is not
passed. But now that it’s passed, it has actually made us stronger. It has
paved a way, a shorter way for us to go to the constitutional court. And for
us, that’s one positive thing we’ve seen about this, despite all the
setbacks."
A number of U.S. evangelicals have been tied to anti-LGBTQ
fervor in Uganda, with some reportedly helping draft the newly passed law.
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Freed Pussy Riot Members Call for Olympic Boycott
The two freed members of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot are
calling for a boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics following their release
from prison. Nadia Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina had been jailed since last
March for protesting Russian leader Vladimir Putin in an Orthodox cathedral.
They were due to be released within the next few months but were freed early
under an amnesty that Putin proposed. Tolokonnikova called Putin’s amnesty a
"cynical act."
Nadia Tolokonnikova: "This is a cynical act. Putin blamed
us for carrying out cynical acts, but in reality his today’s act is much more
cynical — to release those people who do not need to be released. These
remaining two months I could have easily spent where I was, and at the same
time he refused to release those people who really needed it. It’s a disgusting
and cynical act."
The Pussy Riot members say the world should boycott the Winter
Games in the Russian city of Sochi in February to protest Putin’s record on
human rights.
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Report: NYC Settles RNC Protest Claims
New York City has reportedly settled hundreds of lawsuits over
the mass arrest of protesters at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Over
1,800 people were detained during the RNC, with many held in squalid conditions
and for far longer than legally allowed. According to The New York Times, the
new settlement would cover most or all pending lawsuits, with some payments
totaling several million dollars.
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