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Colombia spy chief says working 'hand in hand' with CIA despite row
Colombia spy chief says working 'hand in hand' with CIA despite row
Colombia's spymaster on Friday told AFP that intelligence-sharing with the CIA and other US agencies is "completely fluid" despite an angry public spat between the country's two leaders.
"They are collaborating a lot, and so are we," Jorge Lemus, head of the National Intelligence Directorate, said in a rare interview, seeking to scotch talk of a rupture with the US spy agency.
Decades of close security cooperation between Colombia and the United States were upended last month when Washington slapped sanctions on Gustavo Petro, accusing the guerrilla-turned leftist president of aiding drug traffickers.
Petro responded by lambasting Donald Trump's "murder" of alleged traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and declaring that Colombia would no longer share intelligence with the United States.
That threat was later rowed back by Petro's aides. But Lemus's comments are the first high-level confirmation that intelligence cooperation continues unabated despite the diplomatic rancor.
Lemus said Colombia had destroyed 10,000 cocaine labs this year and operations are still being carried out "many times together with them, hand in hand with them."
Experts had warned that a break in intelligence cooperation could spark a surge in cocaine exports to the United States and strengthen the hand of cartels.
Several Colombian ex-military and intelligence bosses had told AFP Petro's threat to cut intelligence sharing was "absurd" and "makes no sense."
One former US intelligence official said information gleaned from human sources by Colombian officers was often vital in supporting American eavesdropping and satellite intelligence.
Lemus insisted that cooperation continues "not only with the CIA, but with all agencies, they have various. With all of the US intelligence agencies, it remains completely fluid," he said.
"We continue exactly as before," he added. "At the end of the day, we are both fighting against drug trafficking".
Lemus, himself a former guerrilla, was appointed by Petro earlier this year.
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