Colombia Security Agency Faces New Wiretap Scandal

`The person or the people responsible for this must face the full force of the law,` said Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos.

Colombia's security chief on Saturday ordered a probe into reports of illegal wiretapping by intelligence agency staff, saying a crime network may have infiltrated the organization.

The phone tapping accusations, published by a weekly news magazine, are the latest surveillance scandal at the DAS security agency and come only four months since its former director quit after admitting to spying on opponents of President Alvaro Uribe.

Such scandals have tarnished Uribe's conservative administration, which has received billions of dollars in U.S. military aid for a tough security crackdown on leftist guerrillas and other armed groups.

Felipe Munoz, the new director of the DAS agency, said an elite investigation team would probe the case "to establish if there is a mafioso network that is trying to strike at national security," a statement said.

According to news magazine Semana, rogue DAS agents have been intercepting phone calls to well-known journalists, politicians and magistrates to pass information to drug traffickers and armed gangs. It described the agency as being "out of control."

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos called for an urgent investigation and said the government would decide whether to fire anyone within the agency, which has been at the center of numerous political scandals.

"The person or the people responsible for this must face the full force of the law," he told local radio.

In 2007, Uribe fired his top police chiefs after an illegal wiretapping scandal that fueled worries about intelligence practices in the Andean country.