Bolivia expels second US diplomat for having CIA links

March 11, 2009 by intelNews

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |

Two weeks ago, Bolivian President Evo Morales said the CIA was actively conspiring to subvert his government’s energy policy. On Monday, the President announced the expulsion of a US diplomat, whom he accused of working for the CIA. The diplomat, Francisco Martinez, Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Bolivian capital La Paz, has been given 72 hours to leave the country. The Bolivian government says Martinez “was in permanent contact with opposition groups” in the country, and helped facilitate the separatist protests of September 2008. Martinez’s alleged actions were reportedly exposed by a Bolivian police officer who was recently arrested for participating in an alleged CIA-led effort to infiltrate Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), Bolivia’s nationalized oil company. The scandal led to several layoffs at YPFB and to the subsequent arrest of the company’s former Director, Santos Ramirez, on corruption charges. Reacting to the expulsion order, the US Embassy in La Paz accused the Bolivian President of “using the US as a scapegoat in domestic politics”. Similarly, the US State Department dismissed the Bolivian government’s allegations of Martinez’s CIA activities as “unwarranted and unjustified”. But Evo Morales insists that the US diplomat’s expulsion will serve to “put an end to a foreign conspiracy”. Recent CIA efforts to destabilize the Bolivian government have been extensively documented. They reportedly include “direct and covert assistance to the opposition movement” in Bolivia’s energy-rich eastern provinces, as well as CIA-directed USAID and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) operations. Last November, the Bolivian government decided to halt DEA activities in the country, after it discovered that the agency tried to tap the Bolivian President’s telephone conversations. Two months earlier, Bolivia had expelled US Ambassador Philip Goldberg, accusing him of “conspiring against democracy and encouraging Bolivia’s break-up”. The US government responded by expelling the Bolivian Ambassador and ending all special trade benefits with the South American nation.