July 20, 2024
Brazilian President Lula da Silva. Photo: X/@BRICSInfo.
US authorities monitored Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for five decades, amassing an enormous amount of data on his political and union activity, with at least 819 documents totaling 3,300 pages.
The Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo reported that this information was provided by the US government at the request of Fernando Morais, Lula’s biographer. In early 2023, Lula began his third presidential term, after the previous two during 2003-2011.
Most of the documents (613) were produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). However, there are also reports from the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense, as well as other US government and security bodies.
The records cover the period between 1966, at the height of the military dictatorship in Brazil when Lula was rising in prominence as a union leader, and 2019. At the end of 2019, the president was released from prison after being incarcerated for 19 months when the Supreme Court of Brazil overturned Lula’s conviction for corruption in the infamous Lava Jato lawfare case.
More US documents are expected
Fernando Morais, photo: Bill Hackwell
According to the Brazilian newspaper, Morais has not yet had access to other files on Lula, which cover his relationship with political colleague and former President Dilma Rousseff, meetings with Chinese and Middle Eastern officials, and Brazilian military plans.
The biographer requested the documents through a law firm, taking recourse to the US Freedom of Information Act.
“The president was still in prison when I obtained powers to compile all the existing records in the [US government] agencies on his behalf,” explained Morais.
He added that all the information obtained from these documents will be used for the second volume of the president’s biography. The first part of Lula’s biography was published in 2021.
Morais, who revealed Washington’s espionage, said in comments to RT that the US southern naval air center has an intelligence service in charge of spying on Latin Americans. In Morais’ opinion, the espionage against Lula da Silva should be investigated as a crime “of violation of Brazilian sovereignty.”
Source: RT, translation Orinoco Tribune