Colombia's Magic Laptops
Denvir, Daniel
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update Colombia’s Magic Laptops Since the Colombian government bombed a guerrilla camp on Ecuadoran soil on March 1, it has orchestrated a highly...
...Chávez’s Unsavory Friends,” and El País ran with “Interpol Confirms Ecuador and Chávez’s Relationship to FARC...
...The media campaign was launched as countries around the region—including Argentina, Chile, and Brazil— announced their support for Ecuador’s position, criticizing the violation of the country’s national sovereignty...
...The photos remained online for about a week until they were abruptly taken down without notice...
...Themostseriousaccusationagainst the Venezuelan government was that it had promised the FARC a $300 million payment or loan and that Chávez garry leech NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update purportedly from the laptops, leaked to the paper by an unidentified Colombian intelligence official...
...A more high-profile misrepresentation came on March 17, when El Tiempo publishedaphotoinitsprinteditionof Reyestogetherwithamanitclaimedto be Ecuadoran security minister Larrea, which would fortify the Colombian government’s claim of Ecuador-FARC links...
...An Interpol report on the computer exhibits released in May found that they collectively contained almost 38,000 written documents (like Word files and PDFs), more than 10,000 sound and video files, and almost NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008 raúl reyes, the FArC’s second in command, works on a laptop in a remote jungle camp about eight months before he was killed in a bombardment by the Colombian military...
...On March 4, the Colombian vice president also said the Reyes computers revealed that the FARC was seeking to acquire uranium in order to construct a “dirty bomb...
...At first, Colombia variously claimed that the laptops contained 10,000 or 16,000 documents (as reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post, respectively...
...Hecharacterizedhisintelligencesource as acting alone rather than as part of an orchestrated campaign...
...The Rio Group Summit, held March 7, began with denunciations of the Colombian attack on all sides and ended with what the media widely considered a success—hugs...
...The article was based on “30 documents, provided on two CDs to the Post by senior government offi NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008 update The aftermath of a Colombian aerial raid in march...
...A retraction had been issued, he said, but there seemed to be no such thing in any of El Tiempo’s online archives...
...The following month, Peruvian intelligence was provided copies of e-mails supposedly exchanged betweenPeruviansandtheFARC...
...Recently when Colombian forces killed one of the FARC’s most senior leaders,” Bush said, “they discovered computer files that suggest even closer ties between Venezuela’s regime and FARC terrorists than we previously knew...
...treasury department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) an nounced that it was designating one former and two current high-ranking Venezuelan government officials as collaborators with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC...
...Hugo Carvajal, in charge of Venezuela’s Military Intelligence Directorate, and Henry de Jesús Rangel Silva, head of the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP), were both said to have aided the FARC’s drug-trafficking operations, while Ramón Rodríguez, former minister of interior and justice, was accused of being “the Venezuelan government’s main weapons contact for the FARC” and trying “to facilitate a $250 million loan from the Venezuelan government to the FARC in late 2007...
...The laptop-based allegations have been made through press conferences and intelligence leaks, as new charges have been rolled out to counter Ecuador’s consistent diplomatic victories at the Organization of American States (OAS) and other international bodies...
...The mainstream media have done just that—particularlyinColombia...
...The laptops were used almost immediately after the raid to implicate both the Ecuadoran and Venezuelan governments in drug-trafficking and “terrorist” connections to the FARC...
...No one can ever question whether or not the Colombian government tampered with the seized FARC computers,” he was quoted as saying in The Washington Post...
...The FARC’s access to Ecuadoran territory, the paper asserted, was due to “networks of corruption tied to local and military authorities...
...the notion that the CoChilean Communist Party’s Central Committee, a visiting Mexican student (four other Mexican students were killed in the attack), a member of the Chilean Communist Youth (who, along with another Chilean, visited the FARC camp just before it was bombed), an unnamed Italian CCB delegate, and at least five other unidentified people...
...The note, which was mostly about hostage negotiations, made only onereferencetoa“300”:“Withrelation to the 300, which from now on we will call ‘dossier,’ efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cripple, which I will explain in a separate note...
...Jorge 40, sparked the so-called paramilitary-political scandal inspring2006,eventuallyleadingtothe jailing of more than 30 of Uribe’s parliamentary allies, including Mario Uribe, his cousin, on charges of colluding with narco-paramilitaries...
...Uribe ceasedthreateningtotakeCháveztothe ICC, but Colombia had never planned on stopping its allegations...
...The report cited evidence from the laptops and testimonyfromformerFARCmembers indicating that Ecuador was home to at least eight FARC camps...
...The disap date Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage by the FARC since 2002, that served as the Colombian media campaign’s ultimate coup de grâce...
...Uribe’s war on terror, and that of his allies, shows no signs of letting up,andtheuseofunverifiedelectronic evidence to prosecute that war seems likely to continue...
...Colombia claimed to have found eight “computer exhibits”—consisting of three laptops, two external hard disks, and three USB thumb drives—that luckily survived the bombing, which killed 25 people...
...No one would begin an important letter by identifying someone in relation to his or her pseudonym,” Forrest Hylton, author of Evil Hour in Patricio realPe NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update Colombia, told Venezuelanalysis.com...
...On March 2, Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa expelled the Colombian ambassador, charging that Colombia had knowingly violated Ecuador’s sovereignty, despite the doublespeak coming from Colombian officials, including President Álvaro Uribe, that Colombia had bombed Ecuador without violating its airspace...
...Colombian National Police general Óscar Naranjo then held a press conference in which he accused Ecuadoran security minister Gustavo Larrea of having met Reyes in January and agreeing to place Ecuadoran military units less hostile to the FARC along the border...
...A NACLA investigation sponsored by the Samuel Chavkin Investigative Fund finds that Colombia’s media campaign has been based on dubious evidence at best, and that the “magic laptops” are being used to deflect criticism of Colombia’s violation of Ecuadoran sovereignty, distract the public from a domestic political scandal, and justify the government’s policy of total war against the FARC...
...Information taken from the laptop of one of the paramilitary bosses, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo a.k.a...
...They supposedly revealed Venezuelan financial support for the FARC alongwithamoney-launderingscheme involving selling Venezuelan oil in Colombia...
...Hardware belonging to three paramilitary leaders disappeared and was never recovered...
...The next day, the OAS again disapproved of the attack at a meeting oftheregion’sforeignministers;aweek later, at a Jacksonville, Florida speech, President Bush repeated the charges against Venezuela...
...eight “computer exhibits” survived the attack against the FArC on ecuadoran soil...
...Investigative journalist Greg Palast made this point early on after reading the e-mail message that formed the basis for the accusation of a $300 million Venezuela-FARC financing scheme...
...Spying on friends is not unheard of among nations, but all the same, the photos seemed more likely to have been taken by Colombian intelligence or allied intelligence lombian government purposely leaked false information, speculating that the photos’ arrival at the El Tiempo offices was an accidental “infection” of the laptop evidence with material from Colombian intelligence...
...Colombia officials are investigating the ties, but this much should be clear: The United States strongly supports, strongly stands with Colombia in its fight against the terrorists and drug lords...
...Noble said Colombians had “reason to be proud of the manner in which their police handled the evidence”— even though the report notes that between March 1 and March 3, Colombian authorities “did not conform to internationally recognized pearanceofthesecomputers—possibly containing evidence of connections between the paramilitaries and the Uribe administration that could have been entered into court records in the United States—received scant atInterpol’s report principles for handling elec tention in the United States, tronic evidence...
...The files “contained touches that suggested authenticity,” the Times reported, like “revolutionary jargon, passages in numerical code, missives about American policy in Latin America and even brief personal reflections like one by a senior rebel commander on the joy of becoming a grandfather...
...update had maintained a financial relationship with the FARC since 1992...
...Meanwhile, the laptops are the gift that keeps on giving...
...It has also served to distract attention at home from a growing scandal connecting the Uribe administration to narco-paramilitaries, as well as to justify the government’s policy of total war against the FARC...
...This is not language one would expect from a “cloak and dagger” message, which would presumably have used codenames...
...Some of the photos are posted at nacla...
...This allegation, now relying on the statements of former FARC members in Colombian government custody, have resurfaced in recent media coverage...
...Hours later, Uribe’s press secretary told reporters that computers belonging to Raúl Reyes, the FARC’s second in command who was killed in the raid, had been recovered and that they revealed disturbing links between the Correa government and the FARC...
...Even in Noble’s officially drafted press statement (available on Interpol’s website), he said Interpol did not “evaluate the accuracy or the source of the exhibits’ content...
...NACLA identified the people in the photographs through comparisons with other publicly available photos and interviews with CCB members...
...intelligence official told the Los Angeles Times inMarch:“Ithinkyou have to take at face value what the Colombians are saying...
...Yet the Interpol report made no such claims...
...As an unnamed U.S...
...The Colombian government, seeing its diplomatic fortunes wane, made more accusations, not just at Ecuador but increasingly at Venezuela, which also broke diplomatic relations with Colombia and deployed tanks to its border...
...The lowquality, surveillance-style photos center on people attending the international conference of the Continental Bolivarian Coordinating Committee (CCB), a small left-wing organization with chaptersthroughoutLatinAmerica, heldthe week before in Quito...
...These “magic laptops,” which seem to supply evidence of FARC collaboration at opportune moments for the Colombian and U.S...
...This campaign follows a well-established technique: Allegations of FARC ties have long been used in Colombia to defame human rights activists and dissident politicians, often leading to death threats or assassinations by the army or paramilitary forces...
...Daniel Denvir is an independent journalist based in Quito...
...To date, Interpol has not replied to the letter...
...Torres maintained that the intelligence source insists the photos were genuine, and that all of the people captured in the CCB photos were also in photos found on Reyes’s laptops, but this could not be confirmed...
...Although Torres agreed that the of ETA in Reyes’ PC...
...During a second interview, Torres confirmed that El Tiempo had in fact not issued any retractions regarding the photos...
...Let’s call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto...
...Both quotations included references to Carvajal by name, for example: “Today I met with General Hugo Carvajal...
...But Interpol’s report on the matter, issued in May, explicitly stated that verifying the authenticity of the laptop user files was outside its purview...
...governments, have formed the centerpiece of a propaganda campaign launched by the Colombian government and security forces, abetted by the media in Colombia, the United States, and Spain...
...If verified,” the Times noted, “the files would offer rare insight into the cloak-and-dagger nature of Latin America’s longest-running guerrilla conflict...
...Mirroring Ecuador’s appeal to international law, Colombia announced that it would take its charges of FARC ties to the OAS, and Uribe threatened to bring charges against Chávez before the UN International Criminal Court for “aiding genocide...
...ies of the hard drives, which Butitwasthespectacular can be performed without verify the files’ July 2 rescue of former Co turning the computers on, authenticity...
...cials,”includingFARCe-mails,someof them addressed to Chávez, about relationships with the Venezuelan government...
...Deputy SecretaryofStateJohnNegropontesaid he found allegations of FMLN ties to the FARC “very troubling,” allegations that surfaced in May based on laptop e-mails...
...Rather, Interpol sought to determine if any of the computers’ user files had been “created, modified or deleted” onorafterMarch1,anditfound “no evidence” of this...
...He added that ratifying the Colombia Free Trade Agreement would be “the way to help [Colom bia] develop more momentum toward peace...
...The accusations photos appeared to Besides Figueroa, the seemed perfectly have been taken by for people photographed in eign intelligence opera cluded two Basque sepa timed to ecuador’s tives, he played down ratists, a member of the diplomacy...
...Carried off without a single shot, the rescue was a media masterstroke, with news stories featuring photos of a smiling Betancourt hugging the triumphant Uribe.TheoperationreinforcedUribe’s political dominance at home, consolidated his policy of “military victory” againsttheFARC,andunderminedthe positions of his regional rivals—most significantly Chávez, who had successfully brokered the release of four hostages in February...
...As the colombian government soon realized, the public cred ibility of its hastily made accusationsrequiredatleasttheappearance of independent corroboration...
...ThepaperranaMarch 7 story based on the photos, as well as documents provided by the same intelligence source, titled “Trace or police agency...
...Moreover, the e-mail message the accusation was based on, published in a Colombian magazine, seems to indicate only that the FARC was interested in acquiring and then selling the material for profit...
...While OFAC did not specify its sources, an anonymous Bush administration official told The New York Times that the allegations were partly based on evidence from laptops recovered from a FARC camp in Ecuadoran territory bombed and raided by the Colombian military on March 1. This sequence of events was a familiar one: the expulsion of an ambassador, closely followed by charges of FARC collaboration based on evidence from the laptops...
...During a June visit to El Salvador, U.S...
...The man in question turned out to be Patricio Echegaray, secretary-general of the Argentine Communist Party...
...That is not how clandestine organization works...
...Instead of explicitly said even though they caused a making write-protected cop it would not scandal in Colombia...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update Colombia’s Magic Laptops Since the Colombian government bombed a guerrilla camp on Ecuadoran soil on March 1, it has orchestrated a highly effective media campaign backed by material allegedly found on laptops belonging to a high-ranking member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC...
...Purportedly taken clandestinely by the FARC, the photos were said to demonstrate contacts between Venezuelan Communist Party secretary general Óscar Figuera—a distant ally of Chávez— and the FARC, as well as members of Batasuna, the political wing of the armed Basque separatist group ETA...
...Interpol secretary-general Ronald Noble announced the findings in Bogotá, but his comments about the computerfiles’provenancewentfarbeyond the actual findings of the report...
...Colombia apologized, and pundits prematurely declared an end to the crisis...
...Despite its limitations, the Interpol report became another salvo in the Colombian disinformation campaign, as headlines trumpeted a checkmate for the Uribe administration: “FARC ComputerFilesAreAuthentic,Interpol Probe Finds” (The Washington Post,May 15), a May 25 Times editorial said that Interpol had confirmed “Mr...
...Perhaps we could have done a better job clarifying our opinions of the photos,” he said...
...The same day as the summit, The Washington Post published an article titled “Colombian Rebels’ Ties to Chávez Come Into Focus: Computer Files Found in Raid Detail Efforts to Gain Arms, Money...
...In May, Colombian prosecutor-general Mario Iguarán announced that he was formally investigating several people, including Liberal Party senator Piedad Córdoba, U.S...
...In the same article, the Times twice quoted the files used to accuse Venezuela’s Carvajal of having helped the FARC acquire weapons...
...Such accusations often seemed perfectly timed to Ecuador’s successful regional diplomacy...
...academics (including members of NACLA’s editorial committee), stated...
...El Tiempo claimed that Colombian government sources provided the photo, saying that it was from the laptop...
...But this claimwassoondiscredited—uranium, which is weakly radioactive, would be a poor choice for such a bomb, according to the Federation of American Scientists...
...Forexample,onMarch 3, the website of the Colombian daily El Tiempo publishedagalleryof26photos, 211,000 images...
...This was registered by hundreds of alterations in the computers’ system files, which is a normal occurrence whencomputersareturnedonandoff, according to Interpol...
...Despite the massive volume of files—equivalent to almost 40 million pages in a Microsoft Word file, according to Interpol—the Colombians claimed to have culled from them specific, strategic information on the Correa and Chávez administrations within 24 hours...
...Media outlets, particularly in Colombia, the United States, and Spain, were complicit in the Colombian propaganda campaign, embedding themselves in a perceivedfightagainsttheFARCandits supposed allies in the Ecuadoran and Venezuelan governments...
...It was first reported as a payment that had already been made, perhaps in exchange for the FARC’s February hostage release mediated by Chávez...
...We are absolutely certain that the computer exhibits that our experts examined came from a FARC terrorist camp...
...Later, Jhon Torres, the paper’s Justice section editor, said they were taken down because of credible doubts that the photos were not in fact from the laptop...
...He is the editor in chief of caterwaul quarterly.com...
...development consultant Jim Jones, and Telesur reporter William Parra, of FARC ties...
...But on March 30, The New York Times, relying on information leaked by the Colombian government, claimed that there was evidence of a $250 million loan “to be paid when we take power...
...On March 30, The New York Times ran an article on 20 files provided by Colombian officials that allegedly demonstrated Venezuela’s efforts to arm the FARC as well as contributions from the guerrillas to Correa’s 2006 presidential campaign...
...Not only was it unclear what the “300” actually referred to, but the Colombians claimed that the “Ángel” referred to in the note was a codename forChávez.Yetthenextsentenceinthe note refers to the Venezuelan president by name...
...Contacted over the phone by NACLA, El Tiempo reporters said the photos were from the FARC laptops but were unsure why they were removed from the website...
...On March 4, after most of the accusations had been made public, Colombia contactedInterpol, theinternationalpolice agency, and requested an investigation of its evidence...
...All of the people photographed were ostensible FARC allies, leading this reporter to ask himself: Why would the FARC spy on its friends...
...by daniel denvir In september, the u.s...
...lombian presidential candi the Colombians viewed and downloaded the computers’ contents...
...ambassador in solidarity with Bolivia’s Evo Morales, who had done the same a day earlier...
...These assertions came a day after Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez announced that he was expelling the U.S...
...As early as March 5, four days after the Colombian incursion, the OAS resolved that Colombia had violated Ecuador’s sovereignty and affirmed that the attack violated the OAS charter (although the regional body stopped short of condemning Colombia...
...org/node/4699...
...Larrea denied this but did say he met with Reyes, the FARC’s de facto ambassador, as part of approved hostage negotiations that were known to the Colombian government...
...Moreover, “to find no evidence of something is not the same as saying that it absolutely did not happen, or that ‘no one can ever question’ whether it happened,”asanopenlettertoNoble, signed by 14 U.S...
...Especially in the United States, theaccusationsagainstVenezuelasoon eclipsed those against Ecuador...
...Meanwhile, the very day after the Interpol report received so much news coverage, thewebsiteoftheColombianmagazine Semana reported that hard drives and mobile-phone SIM cards belonging to high-level paramilitary leaders extradited to the United States on drug-trafficking charges, had been lost...
...The photo was released the same day that Ecuador conducted a tour of its Colombian border for the international press, in an attempt to rebut a March 12 report in Spain’s El País...
Vol. 41 • November 2008 • No. 6
