There Are No Dead Here

by Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

  He also reached out to other people at the DAS, some of whom started to talk. There were DAS agents who didn’t agree with what was happening inside the agency, and they wanted Calderón to expose it. Others agreed to talk to him because Calderón figured out that they were angry about the treatment they were getting from their supervisors, or frustrated in some way, and Calderón was able to play on those feelings to get them to open up. With a couple of others, Calderón was able to get them to talk out of fear, because they started to realize that things were getting out of control, and that they could end up in jail for following illegal orders.

  By December, Calderón was receiving large quantities of audio recordings and intelligence reports that documented some of the agency’s activities. He had already obtained a vast amount of information, but there was more coming, and he wanted to get as much as possible before he essentially shut down his access to the documents by going public.

  But at this point, he concluded, continuing his investigation without publishing anything was just not feasible without taking on an unacceptable amount of risk.

  ON FEBRUARY 23, 2009, Semana ran the first of what would turn into a months-long series of stories, leading with an explosive statement: “The DAS is out of control. It illegally records the calls of judges, journalists, and politicians, and has put itself at the service of drug traffickers, paramilitaries, and guerrillas.” This scandal was worse, Calderón wrote, than the one the DAS had faced in 2005, after Noguera’s departure and Rafael García’s allegations. Based on statements by over thirty witnesses and participants in the events, as well as a vast number of documents and audio recordings, Calderón described an intelligence agency that, instead of focusing on true threats to national security, had poured much of its resources into spying on people perceived as enemies of the Uribe administration. These included opposition politicians, such as Gustavo Petro, as well as journalists, such as Semana director Alejandro Santos, and prominent columnists Daniel Coronell and Ramiro Bejarano, who had criticized the government (Bejarano also happened to be the attorney for the Supreme Court president, César Julio Valencia, in the defamation suit brought by Uribe). It also included the Supreme Court itself, and, most importantly, Iván Velásquez.

  “Any person or entity that might represent a threat to the government has to be monitored by the DAS. And along those lines, more than a year ago the activities of the [Supreme] Court and some of its members began to be considered and treated as a legitimate ‘target,’” Calderón quoted one detective from the Intelligence Directorate of the DAS as saying. Four other DAS officials had corroborated the claim that the DAS was spying on the court. Calderón had reviewed some of the intelligence reports about the court, including one about Velásquez: “Velásquez has been the subject of ‘one-on-one tracking’ since the Tasmania incident in October 2007,” he wrote. “They don’t leave Velásquez alone even for a minute, as is evident from the DAS report.” The DAS had listened in on more than 2,000 of Velásquez’s calls and monitored dozens of his meetings. DAS reports included detailed logs of Velásquez’s movements—from the classes he taught at universities to the interviews he conducted with potential witnesses and lunch with his family on weekends. “The risk to judicial investigations is obvious,” wrote Calderón. In fact, one of Calderón’s DAS sources said, “when the confrontation between the court and the presidency became more acute, about a year and a half ago, the order was to find out as much as possible about all of the justices, by whatever means necessary, from human sources to technical tools. When the confrontation began to slow down, monitoring began to focus only on those that were higher priorities, like Velásquez.”

  In addition to illegally wiretapping phone calls, the DAS was scooping up emails of their targets—Calderón discovered this by accident, when in early February 2009 a DAS official had called him, alarmed, a few hours after Calderón had an email exchange with fellow journalist Félix de Bedout about some of what he was learning about the DAS. Without thinking, the DAS official said something about the friendship between the two journalists. Calderón asked how the official knew about that, and the official said that Jorge Lagos, the counterintelligence director, had told him. But, Calderón pointed out, the DAS would have had no way of knowing about his contact with De Bedout unless it was monitoring their emails, as Calderón and De Bedout had only recently started to be in touch online. Calderón wasn’t able to get a straight answer from the official, but it was clear to him that the DAS was somehow getting access to his or De Bedout’s email messages. More broadly, with regard to the media, one of Calderón’s sources said that “the priority is to know the information about the ones who worry the government, either because they are too critical, or because, unlike others, the government cannot control them at will.”

  The DAS conducted its illegal wiretapping through various means. A few years before, the United States had helped Colombia establish what was known as the “Sistema Esperanza” (Hope System), an official wiretapping system formally under the control of the attorney general’s office, to strengthen its ability to conduct criminal investigations. The system was operated from several different salas, or chambers, including two—the “wine chamber” and the “silver chamber”—within DAS headquarters. In theory, phone calls could only be intercepted through the Esperanza system if there was a judicial warrant for the surveillance. However, Calderón explained, DAS officials had gotten around the warrant requirement by simply getting judicial warrants for phone numbers of criminal suspects, but then—once the order got to the DAS rooms—changing the phone number to that of the target the DAS officials wanted to monitor. Alternatively, Calderón reported, DAS officials had at times manufactured fake warrants, or had tricked prosecutors into issuing warrants based on false information. In addition to the Esperanza system, the DAS had mobile surveillance equipment that it had purchased from the United States. It could use this technology to tap hundreds of phone lines without warrants, and even to track cellphone locations from secret DAS offices.

  The story also described several incidents in which DAS information had ended up in the hands of prominent paramilitaries, drug traffickers, and even—in one case—ELN guerrillas, presumably because of corruption within the agency. At times, Calderón wrote, drug traffickers had even been able to get the DAS to carry out wiretapping on their behalf, using its mobile equipment.

  In January 2009, Calderón wrote, a small group of DAS officials had been given the order to destroy most of the records of the illegal spying. The word had been spreading internally about Calderón’s investigation, and the government had decided to name a new DAS director, Felipe Muñoz, to replace María del Pilar Hurtado. Muñoz was going to take over on January 22, and midlevel officials were nervous about whether their illegal activities would be exposed, especially once Semana published. Eventually, investigators from the attorney general’s office would uncover video footage from the DAS’s security cameras that corroborated Calderón’s report: it showed an unusual amount of activity on those dates, with numerous DAS officials exiting the building with what appear to be boxes and briefcases of materials, and even entire desktop computers. Five hours of video from the day Muñoz took over were also missing—supposedly because the cameras stopped working during that period.

  In the days after the story broke, Calderón felt like Semana was, more than ever, alone. On the radio, on TV, and in the newspapers, commentators were arguing that Calderón’s story was false, that it couldn’t be trusted, because it was based on anonymous sources, and that there was nothing there. The new DAS director, Muñoz, was also claiming that Semana had the facts wrong, and some of the other media outlets seemed to buy Muñoz’s line.

  Calderón did find one source of support: the national police chief, General Óscar Naranjo, checked in on him, and he made a point of walking with Calderón around the “Parque de la 93,” a small, tidy park surrounded by cafés a block from Semana’s offices, on a regular basis. Naranjo admired C
alderón’s courage and humility, and had been impressed by his depth of knowledge about organized crime in the country—on that issue, he said, Calderón “might be the best informed person in Colombia.” He couldn’t give Calderón armed guards without undermining the journalist’s ability to do his work, but by walking with him publicly, he could offer some measure of protection.

  Nonetheless, a couple of weeks after breaking the story, Calderón and his wife fled to London, with help from the British embassy. One of Calderón’s contacts had warned him that there was an order out to kill him, so Calderón planned to stay outside of Colombia for three months. Mónica recalled that it was extremely difficult for him to leave, not only because he was attached to Colombia, but also because of his phobia of airplanes (apparently caused by a bad flight when he was a child). The entire flight out of the country was a nightmare. But it was good to have a few days of peace in a place where they could walk freely down the street.

  Less than two weeks later, however, they were back in Colombia. Administration officials were on the offensive, attacking Semana and claiming that the story about the DAS was part of a political plot against the government. Since Calderón had worked alone, there was nobody else at Semana who had access to sources and could reply; he could either stay away and let the government kill the story, or he could return and defend it. He chose the latter. Some of his contacts in law enforcement and the intelligence community were also able to at least temporarily halt the plan to have him killed. “After that, we got the funeral announcements and wreaths, but that was a public threat, it was more comforting,” Calderón later recalled with a smirk. He kept meeting with his sources, though it became extremely difficult because now he was under surveillance himself: “It was very evident.… I would go out for coffee at a bookstore and the guys would be back there holding the books upside down while they watched what we did.”

  Still, he was able to keep collecting information, often by slipping away in the middle of the night for meetings with sources, and over the following months he published several stories that shed more light on what had happened in the DAS. An investigation by the attorney general’s office—including a fairly thorough initial report by the CTI on the files they had found in the DAS—also yielded further details, and the new information started to change the coverage of the story by other news outlets, giving more credibility to Semana’s reporting.

  The picture that emerged was that, as early as 2004, when Noguera was directing the DAS, the agency had established a group of around sixteen agents called the G-3, led by José Miguel Narváez, who was then the deputy director of the DAS. The G-3 was focused on conducting what Calderón later described as a “dirty war” against human rights groups and members of the labor movement. Narváez had for years held various prominent positions in the Ministry of Defense, in the military, and in military and intelligence training schools, and he was said to have been a teacher of General Rito Alejo del Río, whom former president Andrés Pastrana had cashiered over alleged links to paramilitary groups. Narváez was said to have been close to Pedro Juan Moreno, Uribe’s right-hand man in Antioquia, and there were rumors that, early in Uribe’s presidency, Moreno had pushed Uribe to set up a new central intelligence agency, with Narváez as its possible head.

  The G-3 was the branch of the DAS that—as Calderón had reported during the 2006 scandal enveloping the agency after the former IT chief for the DAS, Rafael García, began making his statements about Noguera—had put together lists of trade unionists and activists and passed those along to paramilitaries. Some of the people listed, including a well-known university professor, Alfredo Correa de Andreis, were later assassinated by paramilitaries under the orders of Jorge 40 (Rodrigo Tovar Pupo), the senior commander of the AUC’s Northern Block. But the new documents revealed that the G-3 had also pursued prominent journalists, including Daniel Coronell, the Semana columnist and Noticias Uno director who later exposed the Yidis Medina scandal; opposition politicians, such as Gustavo Petro; and members of human rights groups. The documentation about Alirio Uribe, the head of a Bogotá-based organization, the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective, that litigated human rights cases, included detailed information about his movements and those of his entire family, photos and analyses of his financial transactions, and numerous transcripts of his phone calls.

  Another DAS target during that period was Claudia Julieta Duque, a journalist who was then investigating the 1999 assassination of beloved comedian and journalist Jaime Garzón. Some of the DAS files that emerged after Calderón’s 2009 story contained detailed notes as well as photos of Duque, and even photos of her small daughter; there was also an instruction manual in the files about how to threaten someone, using Duque as an example. In fact, in November 2004, Duque had received a call that followed the precise formula sketched out in the manual: “Señora, are you the mother of María Alejandra?” they asked her. When she said yes, they went on to say, “Well, I have to tell you that you gave us no other choice. You were told in every possible way and you did not want to listen. Now neither bulletproof trucks nor silly little letters will help you. We’re now going to have to go after what you most love. This is what happens to you for being a bitch and getting involved in things that are none of your business.” Duque also recalled that the caller said, “Your daughter is going to suffer. We’re going to burn her alive, we’ll sprinkle her fingers throughout the house.” Within weeks, Duque and her daughter fled Colombia. Duque had been working closely with the Lawyers’ Collective. A senior official at that organization, Soraya Gutiérrez, also reported threats against her daughter at the time: she received a doll with [drops of] blood on it, and a note saying, “You have a lovely daughter. Don’t sacrifice her.”

  The G-3 was dissolved after 2005, when Noguera resigned, and Narváez was removed from the DAS in the midst of a public fight between the two, in which they traded accusations of paramilitary links. But the illegal spying did not end there: soon afterward, now under the leadership of a new DAS director, the DAS established a new group, the GONI (Grupo de Observación Nacional e Internacional) or National and International Observation Group. According to Calderón, the GONI had many of the same members as the G-3, and it operated under the leadership of Fernando Ovalle, who had previously been coordinating the G-3. In theory, the GONI was divided into subgroups—Falcón, Fénix, and Cóndor—that were supposed to focus on external threats, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and the supposed Islamic terrorists in Colombia. There was a practical reason for selecting these themes, Calderón later explained: the GONI’s interest in getting US assistance, including access to surveillance equipment. In fact, Calderón said, the GONI did get extensive US support, including mobile surveillance equipment that it used for illegal spying. Calderón reported, for example, that if Senator Gustavo Petro was traveling to Cali, the GONI, which was in theory monitoring a foreign consulate there, would use its mobile surveillance equipment in Cali to spy on Petro. During this time, the GONI surveilled not only opposition politicians but also members of the Colombian Constitutional Court, when in 2005 it was considering a constitutional amendment to allow presidents to serve for two consecutive terms—thus allowing for Uribe’s reelection.

  Around the same time, the DAS was also restructured a bit, elevating the intelligence and counterintelligence departments to the level of “directorates,” supposedly with the goal of making the intelligence-collection process more efficient and transparent. But this status meant that the chiefs of these departments—Fernando Tabares and Jorge Lagos, respectively—now formally had direct communication with the president.

  By 2007, according to the information Calderón had collected, the GONI had turned its attention to a new set of targets: Iván Velásquez and other members of the Supreme Court. Initially, the DAS’s interest in the court seemed to have been triggered by an interview that Yesid Ramírez, who was then the president of the court, gave to Semana in 2006. In the interview, Ramírez—who had prev
iously had a good relationship with President Uribe—sharply criticized the president for having backed the Constitutional Court in a conflict between the two courts over whether the Constitutional Court could review Supreme Court rulings for violations of fundamental rights. It had been widely believed that Uribe would back the Supreme Court on the issue, and so his decision to do otherwise—coming soon after the Constitutional Court approved an amendment allowing him to run for office a second time—had incensed Ramírez. In the interview, he insinuated that Uribe’s decision to back the Constitutional Court was a way to repay the court for having approved the amendment. Uribe reportedly called Ramírez to complain about his statements, and it was said that Ramírez hung up on the president. Soon afterward, DAS documents showed, the agency began monitoring Ramírez’s movements, examining his financial transactions, and digging into his background. DAS surveillance reports from early 2008 also showed that one of the agency’s plans was to look into connections between Ramírez and Ascencio Reyes, the businessman who—according to stories leaked to the press by the presidency—had paid for several justices to take a trip to Neiva.

  But it was clear to Calderón that the DAS’s surveillance of the court extended well beyond the Neiva trip, and that it was politically motivated. In fact, the surveillance had ramped up significantly in early 2007, after the court indicted Senator Álvaro Araújo, expanding to include many other justices, and focusing in particular on Velásquez.

  Calderón started talking to Velásquez much more often, corroborating information and piecing together how different sectors of the government were going after him. “I remember being in his house and talking to [Supreme Court Justices] César Julio Valencia and María del Rosario González and telling them that this was serious,” Calderón recalled. “Because Iván had enemies everywhere.”