Mary O’Grady writes in today’s Wall Street Journal,
Too Close to Call in Colombia
A wiretapping scandal gives the underdog a chance to pull off an upset.
an emerging corruption scandal involving a government agency known as the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), which answers to the president, has energized his campaign.
The agency is accused of wiretapping and following a variety of public figures it believed could have links to drug traffickers and rebels. These activities are not expressly forbidden under Colombian law, but wiretapping requires permission from a judicial official. Whether that permission was received is still not clear. But since those subject to surveillance allegedly included members of the Supreme Court and since the court has had a number of high-profile disputes with Mr. Uribe, the conventional wisdom, crafted by the local press, is that the government was using the intelligence agency as a political weapon.
More in today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern.
