Monday, October 12, 2009
Latin Americans Need Professionalized Spy Agencies
By Jerry Brewer
Espionage operations throughout Latin America, although overwhelmingly massive in
nature, are inundated with clear and present dilemmas. Coherent and fluid intelligence agency structures for achieving
the mainstay of intelligence, which is organizing evidence for sound hypotheses, eludes many governments. These
failures, among others, do not ensure territorial integrity.
The vast world of intelligence communities and their domains is reminiscent of the
universe in perspective, an always changing and all encompassing, yet disconnected, apparatus of self-interest—the
elusive nature and subjugation of which is mired by politics, public opinion and, sometimes, corruption.
Colombia is one of many within the intelligence black hole that is contemplating
elimination versus restructuring; in this case it is the DAS (Colombian Administrative Department of Intelligence Services).
The importance of the DAS originally vested with the awesome responsibility of external and internal intelligence within
the framework of the state, handling issues of security, intelligence, and constitutional enforcement. This decision
could have disastrous implications for the hemisphere, insofar as the DAS has worked valiantly beside the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) against narcotraffickers and the influences of other transnational criminals.
Microscopic looks at the DAS recently revealed what are believed to be scandals
of illegal spying on the political opposition, critics and journalists, as well as “interacting with left-wing
guerillas, right-wing paramilitary, and smugglers.” President Alvaro Uribe has said that he is in favor of eliminating
the organization and having a police institution handle intelligence tasks and responsibilities.
The potential of almost certain failure of such a transition, from a covert intelligence
organization into a tactical enforcement arm of police procedure, is anticlimactic, archaic and lacks sound reasoning, absent
mere frustration with the whole process.
What is needed with the DAS, as is the case with other democratic nations’
intelligence apparatus, is an intelligence model of sound oversight, quality control, and basic protocols of coherent and
sound intelligence analysis. Too, an intense focus on sophisticated technology beyond satellite, signals,
and imagery, dealing with human intelligence collection to facilitate verification protocols, source reliability, and content
validity. This disciplined process would show reductions in serious duplication of effort, as well as enhance the oversight
process.
Intelligence organizations throughout Latin America are facing a number of other
rogue leftist regime intelligence services that are clearly intent on disrupting and infiltrating democratic governments.
The counterintelligence tasks required to interdict this onslaught by these sinister spies is monumental, but critically necessary.
Responding to the sophistication, mobility, and superior weaponry of transnational criminals, organized narcotraffickers,
and related insurgents is another major intelligence challenge that not only necessitates sound intelligence analysis, but
tactical resistance.
Force protection (whether military or police) responsibilities have risen to new
heights due to the bold and relentless attacks on enforcement-oriented personnel and related logistics. Again,
the intelligence need throughout the hemisphere has been graphically demonstrated in the massive death and violence that has
also been directed at police, governments, and the military.
Cuba’s DGI intelligence apparatus is estimated to be at over 20,000 officials.
A communist nation with sympathizers decrying normalization of relations and a relaxing of sanctions from their human rights
abuses and iron-fisted rule continues to foster major intelligence operational acts and collection efforts against their
Caribbean, Central, South and North American neighbors. The DGI currently has a very substantial presence in Venezuela.
The cold war presented an environment essentially devoid of technology such as ground-based
surveillance radar, “relocatable over the horizon radar (ROTHR),” and other non-manned aerial reconnaissance and
imagery related devices. The human intelligence (HUMINT) operational acts became training curriculum models given to
Cuban and other rogue intelligence regimes by the Soviet KGB. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has adopted the DGI’s
model and it is believed that there are around 50,000 Cuban nationals in Venezuela serving in “various official missions”
in government, intelligence, security services and the armed forces.
Throughout Colombia, as leftist presidential regimes in Latin America protest the
U.S. presence and potential use of military bases for drug and insurgent interdiction, many private U.S. organizations (contractors) have
stepped up to assist Colombia with technology dealing with aerospace, radar systems, imagery, and communications. Much
of the focus correlates with intelligence information collected by multi-sources of allegations of Venezuelan government collusion
with the FARC revolutionary forces, and the allowance of safe ground for these terrorists on Venezuelan soil.
Venezuelan organized crime groups are known to include members and associates of
the DGI, paramilitary, National Guard, and other Colombian criminals. Chavez’s expenditures of $4 billion of Venezuela’s
wealth for Russian weapons are a current task for the intelligence process cycle, as is Ecuador’s purchasing of Brazilian
warplanes and Israeli drones. Even Bolivia has jumped into the fray with a $10 million line of Russian credit for weapon
expenditures. Intelligence must properly assess all of this potential.
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Jerry Brewer is C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global risk mitigation firm
headquartered in Miami, Florida. His website is located at www.cjiausa.org.
