Interpol Analysis of FARC Laptop Authenticity Will Not “Prove” Links Between Venezuela, Rebels

Colombian interpretation of documents discredited by analysts, OAS Secretary General

Later this month, the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) will publicly determine the “authenticity” of laptops recovered from a rebel encampment in Ecuador after a March 1 raid on the camp by the Colombian government. Based on previous press coverage of the incursion and the documents, we are concerned that the media take extreme care in interpreting the Interpol findings.  In the first round of media coverage of the event, significant problems of inconsistency surfaced precisely as a result of the gap between Colombia’s exaggerations and what the documents actually say.   

Even if the laptops are found to have belonged to members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), there is no evidence that the publicly available documents support any of the extreme claims by the Colombian government that Venezuela and Ecuador had any sort of financial relationship with the rebels. In fact, independent analyses of the documents indicate that the Colombian government has substantially exaggerated their contents, perhaps for political purposes. Any media coverage of the Interpol findings must make clear that many of the Colombian allegations have already been largely discredited.

The Colombian interpretation has already proven so weak that OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza, testifying before the House Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs last week, stated unequivocally that there is “no evidence”  linking Venezuela to the Colombian rebels, yet Insulza’s statement has gone virtually unreported in the English language press.

Analysts cite three primary flaws in the Colombian government’s charges linking Venezuela and the FARC:

The “Dossier”:  The notion that the Venezuelan government provided—or intended to provide—$300 million to the FARC is based exclusively on this passage from a letter sent to the FARC secretariat from Raul Reyes:

“With relation 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”

There is no clear description of what the “300” represents. While the Colombians claim it is a reference to three hundred million dollars, it could just as easily refer to three hundred dollars or even three hundred hostages. Note that this letter was dated December 23, 2007—two weeks before the first wave of FARC hostage releases.

The Contact: To believe that Hugo Chavez was providing material support to the FARC—beyond his role as a hostage negotiator—one must accept the premise that the person referred in the FARC documents under the code name “Angel” is indeed Hugo Chavez. Yet the documents reference both “Angel” and “Chavez”—sometimes in the same paragraph. It appears that the documents are referring to two different people.

The Timing: The most extensive evaluation of the available documents has been done by Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy . In addition to the concerns above, Isascson concluded that the uptick in communication between the Venezuelan government and the FARC coincided almost exclusively with the timeframe in which Chavez had been invited to mediate hostage negotiations.

As Isacson put it, “When considered in chronological order, the guerrilla communications regarding Hugo Chávez and Venezuela appear to reveal a relationship that was cordial but distant until the fall of 2007,”  exactly the time that negotiations began.

Note too that other laptop-related Colombian allegations have already been proven false or dubious. Notably, claims that the FARC were conspiring to build a “dirty bomb” were publicly dismissed  by the U.S. government as well as terrorism experts throughout the region. Also Colombia’s allegations that a photo found in the laptops showed a meeting between FARC leaders and an Ecuadorian cabinet official were also proved to be false.

The discussion here is about state support of terrorism, and in the current political climate the stakes could not be higher. Given the sensitivity and potential implications for peace within hemisphere, it is crucial that the media exercise a more critical eye in its reporting than has been demonstrated to date. Any fair-minded coverage of the upcoming Interpol announcement would make clear that the authentication of the laptops does not mean the validation of the Colombian interpretation of their contents, and should make note both of the independent analyses of the documents and the statement from the OAS Secretary General.

Sincerely,

Charles Bergquist, University of Washington, Seattle
Larry Birns, Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Amy Chazkel, Queens College, City Univerity of New York
Avi Chomsky, Salem State College
Luis Duno Gottberg , Florida Atlantic University
James Early, TransAfrica Forum Board of Directors and Institute for Policy Studies Board of Directors
Samuel Farber, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Sujatha Fernandes, Queens College, City University of New York
Lesley Gill, American University
Greg Grandin, New York University
Daniel Hellinger, Webster University
Forrest Hylton, New York University
Diane Nelson, Duke University
Jocelyn Olcott, Duke University
Diana Paton, University of Newcastle, UK
Fred Rosen, North American Congress on Latin America
T.M Scruggs, University of Iowa
Sinclair Thomson, New York University
Miguel Tinker Salas, Pomona College
Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research
John Womack, Harvard University