DEA DATA LEAKS ARE ALLEGED

BOGOTA - The former director of Colombia's FBI, known as DAS, ordered
that information compromising agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration be leaked to drug traffickers, former DAS official
Rafael Garcia has told government investigators.

Garcia, once chief of DAS' computer systems, confirmed to El Nuevo
Herald in a telephone interview from prison that he has told Supreme
Court investigators that Jorge Noguera ordered him to deliver the
information to the traffickers.

"I carried the information in hard disks or in USB memory, per
instructions from Noguera," said Garcia, who this month was sentenced
to 18 years in prison for corruption.

Garcia has made several allegations against Noguera, who resigned from
the DAS last year. Prosecutors are investigating Noguera, but he has
been out of the country.

According to Garcia, he delivered the top-secret information to
intermediaries for Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, an alleged trafficker and one
of the top leaders of Colombia's illegal paramilitary groups.

Garcia said he specifically remembered delivering details of a vast
operation being prepared by the DEA, together with Colombian antidrug
agencies, to tap the telephones of drug traffickers.

He delivered the information from late 2002 until late 2004, Garcia
said, when he was fired from the DAS on charges that he had deleted
the records of drug traffickers from DAS computers.

While testifying before the Supreme Court, Garcia said that Noguera
"almost made me feel that [Colombian President Alvaro Uribe] knew of
and approved what we were doing," according to records.

Uribe has denied knowing of the alleged DAS corruption.

Noguera, who is now in the United States, last week declared through
his lawyer that he does not have the financial means to return to
Colombia to face the charges filed by prosecutors on the basis of
Garcia's accusations.