|
That is the question that we must consider first. Could they be engaged in...um...journalism? They haven't done that since Watergate (and I've even begun to wonder if that wasn't a coverup of something as well. Our multinational corporate/war profiteer rulers didn't like Nixon's openings to China and Russia? Or something about the JFK assassination, which was only a decade earlier--maybe the anti-Castro Cuban connection?)
Anyway, presuming up front, that this is a CIA memo parading as "news" is a useful way of digging around in the bloody muck of human entrails and body parts that stink up the Potomac without having to actually smell it and trail your hands in it, trying to ID the bodies. The stench of this cauldron from Hell, that our government has become, speaks for itself. The job of the Washitdownthedrain Post is to induce people to ignore it, deny it, forget it.
So why would they be publishing an article that discloses that the Colombian cases have been handled, by U.S. courts, in a uniquely secret way--rare among sealed cases--of complete sealing of the cases, barring Colombian prosecutors and judges, families of the victims of rightwing paramilitary death squads and human rights groups from obtaining any information about them at all-- which was, indeed, as the article points out, a violation of a promise made by Bush Junta-appointed ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, to Colombian prosecutors, after he and Bush Junta tool, Alvaro Uribe, pResident of Colombia, cooked up this extradition deal in total secrecy and whisked the death squad murderers out of Colombia to face relatively minor drug trafficking charges here. He said that these death squadders would remain available for questioning. That was a damned lie.
One of Brownfield's secret deals with Uribe was the U.S./Colombia military agreement, by which Brownfield obtained a SIGNED agreement (signed by outgoing pResident Uribe) granting total diplomatic immunity to all U.S. soldiers and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. The negotiations were kept secret from the Colombian legislature, the Colombian courts, the Colombian people, all the other leaders of Latin America (who were outraged), and, of course, the American people. (It was hardly a blip in the news here when it was finally announced.) The agreement included U.S. military use of at least seven more bases in Colombia, and use of all civilian infrastructure in Colombia, in addition to total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. soldiers/'contractors'. The promoters of this agreement, in Colombia and at the Pentagon--when the agreement was finally announced--said that it merely ratified existing arrangements.
The agreement was recently declared unconstitutional by the Colombian supreme court because it had not been submitted to the legislature. Conditions for democratic elections do not exist in Colombia, due to rampant Colombian military and paramilitary terror against the poor majority. Colombia's legislature is therefore dominated by fascists and criminals and will likely fake-discuss the agreement and ratify it. This exercise in democracy cosmetics may have been arranged by CIA Director Leon Panetta (who was a member of Daddy Bush's "Iraq Study Group"), when he visited Bogota in the spring, amidst rumors of a Uribe coup to stay in office. Democracy cosmetics (as in Honduras) seems to be the "signature" of the Obama/Clinton State Department and CIA. Uribe's Defense Minister, Manuel Santos, then became president (I won't say "pResident" quite yet) in a very curious election, in which pre-election polls had the Green Party candidate running neck and neck with Santos, then, suddenly, on election day, Santos won hands down. Frankly, I think this was all arranged by the CIA. Colombia is a wholly dependent U.S. client state and its fascist elite does what it is told.
The upshot will be total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. soldiers and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia, no matter what they did in Colombia, signed by the pResident of the country, and arguably retroactive, if cases against U.S. military personnel or U.S. 'contractors' should show up in Colombian courts, or Spain's courts, or at the Hague. Interestingly, the U.S. State Department has just "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of Colombians for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. And another mass grave has been discovered (containing at least 500 and possibly as many as 2,000 unidentified bodies in La Macarena, a region of special interest and activity by the Pentagon and the USAID.
I'm not saying that the Bush Junta used the Colombian atmosphere of utter lawlessness and rampant murder, which they had encouraged (and funded with $7 BILLION U.S. taxpayer money in military aid) for "turkey shoot" practice against many Colombian civilians as well as against Colombia's leftist guerrillas (in Colombia's 40+ year civil war). But that is what I suspect. That is what I think the SIGNED total diplomatic immunity was about. And that is what I think the extradition of Colombian death squad murderers to the U.S., out of the reach of Colombian prosectors and courts--and now utterly sealed away from them--is about. It is a coverup of U.S. war crimes in Colombia.
I was surprised that William Brownfield remained ambassador to Colombia until recently. That may be by Obama's choice but more likely by the Bush Cartel's choice (which may have Obama in some kind of vise over investigating/prosecuting Bush Junta war crimes). We now know of these two probable cleanup operations that Brownfield conducted, both in secret, both in outrageous violation of Colombia's sovereignty. And we can surmise that Leon Panetta--a colleague of Daddy Bush--is equally committed to covering Junior's bloody trail. So why would the CIA's disinformation arm, the Washitdownthedrain Post, point to the secret extradition operation and its upshot in U.S. courts, total secrecy?
It may be that word was getting out of Bush Junta evil in Colombia, and the story had to be directed rather than black-holed. This article, though it mentions Brownfield, directs the story at U.S. judges and their secrecy practices. It makes you feel at bit outraged that court proceedings here can by entirely removed from the public venue at a judge's whim. But this wouldn't be the first time that the Bush Junta used our gradual loss of democracy here, since Reagan, to carve these losses in stone, in part to cover up their many and grievous crimes, and in part because they really and truly loathe our democracy and want to be rid of it.
What's missing from this article is not that death squad witnesses have been 'disappeared' into the U.S., but WHY. And another possible misdirection in the article may be related. It is contained in some apparently innocuous paragraphs about the practice of judges sealing cases from public view:
---
"The cases involving the Colombians were probably sealed to protect their safety, because they are cooperating with U.S. drug enforcement authorities, several former prosecutors said. 'It's very possible,' (DC Chief Judge Royce C.) Lamberth said. U.S. prosecutors, defense attorneys and Walton declined to comment.
An agreement involving secrecy would require authorization at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Prosecutors must obtain approval from the deputy attorney general before requesting, or agreeing to, the sealing of a criminal case.
But ultimately, sealing decisions are made by individual judges. Court policies urge judges to shield as little as possible - a document, a witness's name - and for as short a time as possible. Total secrecy is supposed to be ordered only under 'extraordinary circumstances,' according to legal precedent. Even in those cases, judges are supposed to unseal records eventually."
---
The clever writing here suggests that this is the "objective" view of the matter--i.e., investigative reporter view--that complete sealing ('disappearing') of the cases was to protect the death squad criminals. But a more likely explanation is that it was to protect--silence, 'disappear,' bury--what these death squad criminals KNOW about who directed their operations, who gave the orders, who paid them, who chose the victims, and--if my guess is correct--how U.S. operatives were involved.
One of the things we know about Uribe is that he was spying on everybody--very likely with U.S. military technical assistance--and drawing up "lists," for instance, of trade unionists, very likely for targeting by the Colombian military and its death squads. (Thousands of trade unionists and others community organizers were murdered during Uribe's bloody reign. About half of the trade unionists were murdered by the Colombian military itself, according to Amnesty International, and the rest mostly by their closely tied paramilitary death squads.)
Now, consider how the Obama administration is treating Uribe. They just appointed him to a prestigious international legal commission (the one investigating Israel's firing on aid boats). Georgetown U. just gave Uribe a prestigious academic sinecure, teaching international relations. (Shame, shame on the Jesuits!). Are they buying this war criminal off as well as silencing the death squad witnesses? Did he make these things--and CIA protection for himself--conditions of his signing of the total immunity agreement and conditions for his own silence (if he ever feels the need to tell what HE knows)? He, too, has been whisked from the scene, out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors (who had begun investigating, had indicted or had convicted some 70 of Uribe's closest political associates for various crimes including their ties to the death squads).
The article gives no hint of the large Bush Junta umbrella of mass murder, torture, spying, terror, social mayhem and utter lawlessness in which these secret "extraditions" occurred, in which the secret U.S./Colombia military agreement occurred, and in which the wanton murder of thousands of Colombian civilians, and the displacement of five MILLION peasant farmers in Colombia, by means of state terror, has occurred--the second worst human displacement crisis in the world.
These cases were completely sealed because the perps, wanted in Colombia as material witnesses to mass murder, were "cooperating with U.S. drug enforcement authorities"? Give me a break. This raises yet another issue--the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" and the suspicions of many investigators of Bush Cartel and CIA drug trafficking. Clearly, in Colombia, the big drug lords are protected, while the "war on drugs" is used to kill leftists and to drive small peasant farmers from their lands--in service to the big drug lords and to multinational corporations like Monsanto and Chiquita.
One more context item about this situation: Obama's A.G., Eric Holder, was Chiquita's attorney and the one who negotiated a handslap for Chiquita executives, with the Bush Junta, when word of their hiring of death squads to kill trade unionists on their farms in Colombia got out--via a victims' lawsuit that apparently had very good evidence, because the Chiquita execs admitted doing it. THAT is the personage--A.G. Holder--with whom judges are supposed to consult, about sealing cases. The article mentions this legal fact, but of course doesn't mention that this A.G. has been previously involved in death squad cases in Colombia, to make a victims' case against Chiquita go away.
Chief judge Royce Lamberth's tearjerker statement about victims' rights, in this article, is all the more loathesome, considering this omission of relevant fact.
---
"Lamberth acknowledged that victims may feel deprived of justice when cases are sealed.
"'I honestly don't know how we balance letting victims have a say,' he said. 'If there is a way to do it without endangering" the lives of those cooperating, "we are open to that.'"
----
He "honestly" doesn't know about giving victims "a say"? I think that this is a completely dishonest statement. He knows very well what the victims' rights of Colombians are worth in the U.S. "justice" system. Absolutely nothing! The murderers of their loved are BEING PROTECTED, under the guise of the useless, failed, war profiteering "war on drugs." Those giving the orders and hiring the death squads were protected by the A.G. in the Chiquita case, and these murderers are being protected NOW, with this bullshit excuse, after being SECRETLY and suddenly ferreted out of Colombia.
My conclusion is that the Washitdownthedrain Post doesn't give a fuck about judicial secrecy, except maybe as a whip to beat Obama with (in the narrative that they and the rest of the other corpo-fascist press are setting up for the Diebold/ES&S 'selection' of Congress in November). Where were they when the U.S. was funding mass murder in Colombia? Where have they been on ANY issue of Bush Junta or U.S. client state crime (in Colombia and Honduras particularly)?
I think that "judicial secrecy" is a rattle that they are shaking at their readers to distract them and misdirect them. ('Oh, those judges! We all know how pompous and self-important they are, and how they love their prerogatives!'). These judges may be directly collusive in covering up Bush Junta crimes, but that is a sub-story. What U.S. institution has NOT been corrupted by the Bush Junta? The much more important story is buried here, and that is WHY this extraordinary secrecy of judicial proceedings, on top of the extraordinary secrecy of the "extradition" of these criminals, on top of ALL the secrecy about U.S. military activities in Colombia.
I am not sure, in this case, what the writers of the article thought they were doing (as opposed to what their Washitdownthedrain Post editors intended). This article goes far enough to make me think that the writers were maybe well-intended but maybe unaware of CIA shaping (or couldn't do anything about the shaping)? It does use words like "stunned" and "outraged" to describe Colombian prosecutors and victims' reaction to the secret extraditions as well as to the U.S. judicial 'disappearing' of the cases. These activities do imply questions of Bush Junta/Brownfield, DOJ and judicial misconduct and coverup. But the article also backtracks to give the judges some cover and then reports the all-purpose excuse, the U.S. "war on drugs," with a straight face. And nowhere does it try to connect the dots to the other blatant use of secrecy in the U.S./Colombia military agreement. Something is up with this. A good reporter would smell it and hint at it. They don't--except to expose U.S. judicial secrecy.
And are they ignorant of Holder's Chiquita case, or not allowed to mention it? It is certainly relevant to evidence of yet MORE U.S. coverups of death squad murders and zero accountability for those who ordered them.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
