Morales accuses DEA of tapping his telephone conversations

Thursday’s Washington Post article on Evo Morales’ trip to Washington was typical of the mainstream media’s coverage of the Bolivian President’s first-ever visit to the US capital. Specifically, the paper mentioned the Bolivian leader’s stated opposition to the policies of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in his country. The article mentioned Morales’ allegation that the DEA had “been used for ‘political vengeance’ against him”, but gave no details. Yet Pamela Constable, the Post’s reporter writing the article, surely must know what Morales means by “political vengeance”. The Bolivian President mentioned during his address to the Organization of American States earlier this week that the DEA tried to “tap his telephone conversations instead of going after cocaine traffickers”. Earlier, Morales had stated in a radio interview that “lately, when I was already in the government, but when the communications were in hands of the telecom company from Italy, a team of the DEA were listening [to] phone calls to be able to spy on me. This is a political thing”. These serious allegations were picked up by Reuters, but not a word of it was printed by the Washington Post, which obviously considers them an irrelevant detail influencing the Bolivian President’s recent decision to expel the DEA from his country. For more on the role of the DEA in the US government’s covert operations against the Morales Administration see here. [IA]

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