Seems like the right move on his part. The president really should be "in the loop" about matters of international espionage with one's generalissimos and neighbors. But this story has been brewing for a while. See my previous post on April 10, 2008: Ecuador’s Prez Charges Disloyalty in Defence Dept./CIA Collusion for more.
Ecuador's leader p
urges military and moves to expel American base
By Simon Romero, Published: April 21, 2008
MANTA, Ecuador: Chafing at ties between American intelligence agencies and Ecuadorean military officials, President Rafael Correa is purging the armed forces of top commanders and pressing ahead with plans to cast out more than 100 American military personnel from an air base here in this coastal city.
Correa — who this month dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence and commanders of the army, air force and joint chiefs — said that Ecuador's intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA." He accused senior military officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush administration's top ally in Latin America.
[...] Still, tensions persist over his clash with top generals, which emerged after Colombian forces raided a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador last month. The raid against the rebel group, the Marxist-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, put Ecuador and its ally Venezuela on edge with Colombia. Twenty-five people were killed, including Franklin Aisalla, an Ecuadorean operative for the group, known as the FARC.
The face-off between Ecuador and Colombia ended at a summit in the Dominican Republic, but it has begun again over revelations that Ecuadorean intelligence officials had been tracking Aisalla, information that was shared not with the president, but apparently with Colombian forces and their American military advisers.
The leak became evident when video and photo images surfaced in Colom
bia and Ecuador showing Aisalla meeting with FARC commanders.
[...] In a rebuke of senior military officials, Correa named as defense minister his personal secretary, Javier Ponce, who was an outspoken critic of the armed forces in his previous careers as a poet and an editorial writer at some of Ecuador's largest newspapers.
[...] Unlike the armed forces of most other countries in Latin America, Ecuador's military has retained substantial economic might since a military junta transferred power to a civilian government in the 1970s.
[...] Correa has not challenged these financial interests. But he and his political supporters are moving forward with efforts to shift the military away from its traditional reliance on training and assistance from the United States and toward strengthening ties with the armed forces of other South American countries.
The first indication of his plans to shift the country's focus was his promise to end the American presence at the Manta base once the United States' lease expired in 2009.
[...] Meanwhile, the assertions that American intelligence agencies were exerting too much influence in Ecuador have raised concerns among Correa's critics in Ecuador that he could take a radical turn like that of Chávez in Venezuela. Correa has been relatively moderate in his policies so far during his presidency.
For now, at least, the last word on the issue may rest with Ponce, the rumpled poet thrust into the public eye as Correa's new defense minister.
In an interview in Quito, Ponce, 59, mentioned the moderately leftist governments of Brazil and Chile as potential partners for increased military cooperation, subtly suggesting a reluctance to depend heavily on Venezuelan aid, as countries like Bolivia have done. But he was also clear about relying far less on the United States.
"We must get past our legacy of relying too much on military relations with the United States, with President Bush showing little regard for national borders or sovereignty," Ponce said. "The risk of remaining too close to such a partner is one of ideological contagion."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/21/america/21ecuador.php
April 22, 2008
Correa Casts Out US Military
April 10, 2008
Ecuador’s Prez Charges Disloyalty in Defence Dept./CIA Collusion
Ecquador's Presid
ent, Rafael Correa
By Jeanneth Valdivieso, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuador's defence minister has resigned amid allegations the country's military intelligence is controlled by the CIA.
No official reason has been given for the resignation of Defence Minister Wellington Sandoval.
However his departure was confirmed Wednesday by Deputy Defence Minister Miguel Carvajal.
The announcement came a day after the military high command requested a meeting with President Rafael Correa to discuss his demand that Ecuador's intelligence services be investigated for disloyalty.
Correa became outraged after learning in the media that Ecuador's military intelligence apparently advised Colombian officials - and not him - about an Ecuadorian man's contacts with Colombian rebels. [my bold]
The man was killed in a cross-border raid March 1 that also killed a key rebel leader and 23 others in a camp maintained by the rebels inside Ecuador. The attack led both Ecuador and Venezuela to break diplomatic relations with Colombia, Washington's closest ally in South America.
Correa said he had to learn about the contacts from media reports, and his government launched a civilian investigation into alleged foreign influence in Ecuador's military intelligence services.
Correa's attacks apparently provoked discontent in military circles. [...]
January 10, 2008
Traitors & Whores v. 9/11 Truth
My bold for emPHAsis: 
From The Sunday Times (UK), January 6, 2008
For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets
Insight: Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria
A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.
Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.
[…] Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
[...] What I found was damning,” she said. “While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on.”
The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.
They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.
[…] The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.
[…] Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.
The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.
Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.
Khan caused an alert among western intelligence agencies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden. “We were aware of contact between A Q Khan’s people and Al-Qaeda,” a former CIA officer said last week. “There was absolute panic when we initially discovered this, but it kind of panned out in the end.”
[…] In summer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She overheard the agent saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece