“Colombian Elites Are Shocked! Shocked!”

Paramilitary Scandal Takes Colombian Elite by Surprise (Washington Post Foreign Service).

But really, how much of a surprise could it possibly be to the people reporting this story to the American public, who have proved themselves to be, after all, asshole buddies of the people whose downfall they are reporting on?

The story, by a New York Times veteran from the Washington Post Foreign Service, reminds me a bit of the noise-machine campaign here in Brazil, apparently calculated to pump up Veja magazine’s “investigative scoop” on alleged elections fraud in the Northern state of Alagoas.

The message: Veja — which once published the phrase NOVOLACERDA as the password for newsstand buyers to its online edition — has changed its stripes!

But it has not. It is merely responding to the pressure that has been brought to bear on it for lying to the reading public

And it is counting on the notion that vigilante consumers of information will not look up the back story and discover the organized epistemological vandalism and doublespeak it defends under the rubric of Journalism 2.0.

But hey, this is Latin America. Shit happens.

The question for the homeland consumer is why world-class U.S. newspapers print disinformation and propaganda? Why do they continue to cover for the likes of Larry Rohter? It’s simply jaw-dropping.

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 22, 2007; Page A10

BOGOTA, Colombia — Col. Hernán Mejía was among Colombia’s most decorated officers, a young, strapping warrior with five medals for valor on his chest and a reputation for being a relentless adversary of the Marxist guerrillas who operated in the dusty hamlets of northeast Colombia.

But after disclosures that have astonished many Colombians, Mejía has been removed from his post, and the attorney general’s office is investigating him for having worked with right-wing paramilitary groups to kill peasant farmers and guerrilla sympathizers. The allegations, announced by Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos in January, mark the first time the military has turned over one of its own to civilian prosecutors on suspicion of collaborating with the death squads.

Al Giordano of Narco News on Juan Forero, in 2001:

Juan Forero of the New York Times is just another soldier-of-fortune, one with a press pass.

Giordano’s complaint:

Forero, in an August 16th story, interviewed mercenary pilots in Colombia. But he chose not to disclose that a U.S. Embassy official was present, monitoring the interviews. Meanwhile, the officially monitored story occupied space on the pages of the Times, serving as a cocaine-laced curtain over the bigger news story out of Colombia that the newspaper did not report: the granting of sweeping martial-law powers to the narco-corrupted Colombian military.

So who is this Juan Forero? asked Giordano, in 2001.

Three years ago, Juan Forero — a Colombian citizen who resided in the United States — wrote for something called the “Religion News Service,” churning out sophmoric ideological propaganda with titles like “Pope’s Visit Gives Cubans Hope for Freedom.” Two years ago, Forero was a reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, in New Jersey. A year ago, Forero popped up as a New York Times correspondent, writing some stories from New York City — where, as the Times’ discredited ex-bureau chief in Mexico, Sam Dillon, once commented, that Times correspondents “learn to obey” their bosses — but quickly ended up on the Latin America beat, soon after narco-lobbyists had pushed the $1.3 billion Plan Colombia military intervention through Congress.

Faith-based analysis by Forero:

The Mejía case comes as this country — a linchpin in an unstable region, and the Bush administration’s closest ally in Latin America — is undergoing an imperfect but remarkable judicial process that has produced nearly daily disclosures of ties between death squad leaders and Colombia’s political and military establishment.

Linchpins of stability?

Colombia and Peru are countries where constitutional guarantees are still suspended, both formally and informally, andwhere the hard men, armed, resolute, and well-heeled from their share of the cocaine traffic, still squat in the mountains and jungles.

As we noted a while back, a former senior Colombian antinarco official was in Mexico recently explaining to a major metropolitan daily why Calderón’s militarization of the antinarco crusade was likely to founder on the shoals of military, police, and government corruption.

Human rights groups have long contended that the military has used paramilitary groups as a proxy force in its war on rebels, but the depth of those connections — and the degree to which senior political and military officials are being prosecuted — has shaken the country. The disclosures also have provided a glimmer of hope for a genuine catharsis in a country that has been enmeshed in conflict for decades.

The problem with paramilitaries being, of course, that they do not confine themselves to making war on armed rebels.

They make total war on everybody, just for the hell of it. And get away with it.

“We think there’s a real possibility that this may reach the point where it’s irreversible,” said Ivan Cepeda, leader of a victims’ rights organization and son of Manuel Cepeda, a senator killed by paramilitary gunmen in 1994.

Cepeda was a communist Senator and editor of the party daily, Voz, as well.

So perhaps Bill Gates, champion of press freedom, can lay a wreath when he comes to Cartagena next month for a grip and grin with Presidents Uribe and Garcia.

Giordano on Forero again:

On December 5, 2000, Forero caused his first global disgrace, when he authored a hagiography – known in the profession of journalism as a “puff piece,” the kind that is done on rock stars and Hollywood moguls – but he wrote it about the notorious drug-trafficking Colombian paramilitary phenomenon, in which Forero hailed the “savvy public relations efforts by its straight-talking leader, Carlos Castaño.”

Now, however, Mr. Forero writes as if he had never contributed to the problem himself.

As part of a pact between the government and paramilitary leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a group notorious for trafficking in cocaine and murdering peasants by the thousands, one of its top leaders, Salvatore Mancuso, has been providing riveting testimony to prosecutors about slayings he had ordered. There are also investigations by the attorney general’s office and the Supreme Court. Along the way, Colombians have learned how a group of 11 congressmen and regional lawmakers signed a pact with paramilitary groups to “re-found the fatherland” and “build a new Colombia.”

FAIR on Forero in February 2001:

“There were at least 27 massacres in the month of January alone, claiming the lives of as many as 200 civilians. The killings are overwhelmingly the work of right-wing paramilitaries with close ties to the Colombian military, such as the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

“Despite the dramatic nature of the attacks and the U.S.’s heavy financial involvement in the war, the New York Times did not report on a single massacre during the month of January. The findings of the human rights groups’ “Certification” report, including its recommendation that the U.S. cease military funding to Colombia, also went unmentioned.

“Far from documenting the recent wave of paramilitary terror, the Times has told precisely the opposite story. Juan Forero’s January 22 dispatch from the city of Barrancabermeja, headlined “Paramilitaries Adjust Attack Strategies,” gave a highly distorted version of events.

“Forero claims that ‘the militia members are killing fewer people than the rebels, who have responded to the threat in neighborhoods they long controlled with a furious assault on those they accuse of supporting the paramilitaries,’ and that the New Granada battalion of the Colombian military ‘is sending specially trained urban commandos into the neighborhoods to restore order.’

“The notion that the rebels in Barrancabermeja have been responsible for more killings than the paramilitaries contradicts all available evidence….

“Nationwide, Human Rights Watch reported that ‘paramilitary groups are considered responsible for at least 78 percent of the human rights violations recorded in the six months from October 1999′ (annual report, 2001).”

Giordano also cites Cynthia Cotts of the Village Voice in March 2001:

But that Forero got caught in his lie apparently didn’t cause any pause on the part of the Times’ International fixer Andy Rosenthal, who told Village Voice media critic Cynthia Cotts that he was shopping for a Bogotá bureau chief and that Forero was “really eager to do it.”

The Times-watcher Cotts wrote last March 7th:

Now if only Juan Forero would take off the blinders. In the past year of Colombia coverage, the Times has not once published the words ‘Navy SEAL’ or ‘Green Beret.’ But according to a February 23 Miami Herald story, Colombia is swarming with U.S. mercenaries under contract with private companies to execute Plan Colombia. These companies include DynCorp, which provides plane and helicopter pilots… According to the Herald’s Juan O. Tamayo, the U.S. government has no authority to stop these mercenaries from associating with paramilitaries or entering into combat. DynCorp employees are ‘under strict orders to avoid journalists,’ but congressional sources say ‘many are hard-boiled, hard-drinking veterans of the U.S. military’ for whom the best introduction is ‘a case of beer.’

Here in Brazil, Gov. Cabral of Rio de Janeiro was overheard contemplating the Bogotization of public security during the election campaign, but has recently reversed course.

The question now is whether the local media will follow suit.

The case of a Globo TV reporter who was arrested for selling confidential information he gathered on the job to local gambling rackets ought to put a chill into their skeevy little hearts.

Amazing how little follow-up coverage we have seen on that story.

Imagine if Tim Russert were caught getting paid off by Scooter Libby to perjure himself in the trial that has just gone to the jury.

A search for the man’s name, José Xavier Messias, yields zero results in a search of Globo Web properties.

Amazing.

Nauseating.