Spying on ‘leftist’ governments in Latin America: it’s an addiction, I guess

This time, allegedly, it’s Bolivia that’s the target of U.S. snooping, or, more specifically, Cubans and Venezuelans inside Bolivia. Supposedly, La Paz U.S. Embassy security officer Vincent Cooper asked Peace Corps volunteers and an American Fulbright scholar to pass along information about Cubans and Venezuelans working in Bolivia.

Cooper has been recalled to Washington for “consultations.” Yeah, right, he’s being told to be more discreet next time. Meanwhile, the La Paz embassy is already spinning.

The embassy released a statement Monday explaining that Peace Corps volunteers had been mistakenly given a security briefing meant only for embassy staff, asking them to report “suspicious activities”

“Nobody at the embassy has ever asked American citizens to participate in intelligence activities here,” U.S. ambassador Phillip Goldberg said during a flood relief visit to the eastern city of Trinidad. “But I want to say that I greatly regret the incident that was made known this weekend.”

The ambassador’s statement referred only to the Peace Corps briefing in July. Embassy officials said they could not confirm whether Cooper also gave improper instructions to a Fulbright scholar in a one-on-one briefing in November.

Several points to make.

One, Goldberg isn’t denying that official embassy staff are directly charged with orders to engage in paranoiac behavior, just that the briefing meant for them was wrongly given to Peace Corps volunteers.

Second, he really regrets not “the incident that was made known,” but “that the incident was made known.”

The third point:

On Friday, Fulbright scholar Alex van Schaick told The Associated Press that Cooper, the embassy’s assistant regional security officer, asked him to pass along the names and addresses of any Venezuelan and Cuban workers he might encounter in the country. “We know they're out there, we just want to keep tabs on them,” Schaick quoted Cooper as telling him on Nov. 5.

In other words, this was a repeat offense. And, I’m sure there are many more cases not yet revealed.