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FARC Terrorists, Computer Hardrives, Colombian Free Trade Deal

The FARC Jones Boy & Congressman James McGovern

Dead men talk and in the Colombian-Ecuadorian jungle, they talk loudly about Congressman James McGovern (D-Mass).

The media-downplayed hard drive recovered from the computer of killed Colombian guerilla Raul Reyes, No. 2 in command of the Colombian FARC, tells a tawdry tale of the opposition of House Democrats to the US. -Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

“Some Democrats oppose the Colombia trade deal because they sympathize more with FARC’s terrorists than with a U.S. antiterror ally (Colombia)”

(The Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2008).

“Congressman McGovern is now arguably as well known to average Colombians as he is among his own Massachusetts constituents,” Ernesto Pardo, of the Bogotá Free Planet (BFP) told Canada Free Press (CFP) this morning.

Killed in a military strike three weeks ago, Raul Reyes’ career to take over FARC leadership ended on the jungle floor.  Retrieved by authorities, his computer reveals a brisk business with the FARC by anti-Colombian government Congressman James McGovern, a leading opponent of the free-trade deal.

As things turn out, McGovern has been working with an American go-between, who has been offering FARC terrorists help in undermining Colombian’s duly elected government.

The spotlight for siding with Colombian terrorists has thus far been on big-talking Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Somewhat like the anti-American Chavez, McGovern’s press office says the Congressman is merely working at the behest of families whose relatives are held as FARC kidnap hostages.

Although a few politicians have been released by FARC in the high profile, Chavez-led negotiations, not a single average citizen--some held for more than a decade--has ever been set free.

Although he may sound like a traitor to free people everywhere, McGovern’s office describes the congressman’s go-between, James C. Jones, as a “development expert and a former consultant to the United Nations.”

Riveting accounts of Jones’ dialogue with the FARC appeared in Colombia’s popular Semana magazine on March 15. 

The FARC Jones Boy should not be mistaken for the former Congressman and ambassador to Mexico of the same name, who hails from Oklahoma.

Jones seems to have felt he was speaking for all of Washington, DC in his letters to the captors of some 700 known hostages. “Receive my warm greetings, as always, from Washington,” Jones began in a letter to FARC last fall.  “The big news is that I spoke for several hours with the Democratic Congressman James McGovern.  In the meeting we had the opportunity to exchange some ideas that will be, I believe, of interest to the FARC-EP (popular army).”

Like an actor in an Oliver Stone-directed movie, Jones added that “a fundamental problem is that the FARC does not have, strategically, a spokesman that can communicate directly with persons of influence in my country like Mr. McGovern.”

Courtesy of Semana magazine, we know that in the recovered documents Jones rules himself out as the spokesman, offering himself instead as a “bridge” of communication between the FARC and the congressman.

Semana reports that when it spoke with Jones, he verified the letter and explained that “he made the offer because the guerrillas need interlocutors if they want to achieve peace and that it is a mistake to isolate them.”

Just to think that most Colombians feel it is the FARC captors who are isolated in FARC’s infamous jungle jails.

Semana tells all about Jones’ proposals to the FARC, which included a Caracas meeting with representatives of Venezuela, Colombia, the FARC, other South American countries, U.S. Congressmen and the Catholic Church.  “It would be almost impossible for (Colombian President Alvaro) Uribe to reject such a meeting,” Jones wrote FARC. “without burning himself lot, nationally and internationally.  If he persists in being against it, I have understood that there are ways to pressure him from my country (the U.S.).”

That’s more than an empty threat when it is considered that boss man McGovern is the author of a resolution that would force President George Bush to end the war in Iraq.

Now that the Wall Street Journal spotlight has found his words, Jones says his comments were taken out of context.  He wants it known that he is not in favor of the “violent methods of the guerilla” or “the military solutions” of the government.

Jones told Semana, he had only a “professional relationship” with the FARC and had to address them as he did because he had to build trust.

For its part, McGovern’s office should have no difficulty convincing the mainstream media that it knew what Mr. Jones was doing and engaged with him because “we need to find an interlocutor who could discuss these things including the safe haven” for the FARC.

Make that a “professional relationship with murderers” on behalf of the Hugo Chavez of American Congress.