In my previous post, I praised better intelligence as the reason why the United States has had such success recently at capturing or killing suspected terrorists. In Columbia, their intelligence agency The Administrative Department of Security (DAS) is now accused of passing intelligence documents to associates of noted cocaine dealer Daniel “El Loco” Barrera.
This is the latest scandal for the plagued intelligence agency that is facing a concentrated effort to disband it, following a very public scandal where members of the agency were accused of wiretapping oppisition politicians, Supreme Court justices, and human rights activists. Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2011/0920/Colombian-intelligence-agency-s-latest-scandal-leaking-docs-to-drug-lord.
The above allegations shed a disturbing light on why the Columbian government has had such a difficult time in dealing with the rampent drug cartel problem there. When the cartels are able to gain access to sensitive information, the Columbian government is never going to gain traction in their own drug war. If the security agencies have been corrupted, what hope can there possibly be that democratic mechanisms like the rule of law can mean more than words on paper?
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