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Still Seeing Red: The CIA Fosters Death Squads in Colombia

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Back in 1989, the CIA built its first counter-narcotics center in the basement of its Directorate of Operations headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Since then, the newly renamed “crime and narcotics center” has increased four-fold, says CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher. She says she cannot comment about any specific counter- drug operations, except to say that the agency is now conducting them worldwide.

The CIA was established in 1947 as a frontline institution against the Soviet Union. Today, nine years after the Berlin Wall fell, the agency is seeking a new purpose to justify its $26.7 billion annual subsidy. Besides the crime and narcotics center, the CIA now runs a counterterrorism center, a center to stymie the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and even an ecology center to monitor global warming and weather patterns, including El Nino.

George J. Tenet, the Clinton Administration’s new Director of Central Intelligence, recently told Congress the United States faces new threats in “this post-Cold War world” that are “uniquely challenging for U.S. interests.”

But the CIA remains a Cold War institution. Many officers, especially within the clandestine operations wing, still see communists behind every door. They maintain warm relationships with rightist military forces worldwide that are engaging in widespread human-rights abuses. These ties conflict with the agency’s purported goal of fighting drugs, since many of the rightist allies are themselves involved in the drug trade.

Take Colombia. In the name of fighting drugs, the CIA financed new military intelligence networks there in 1991. But the new networks did little to stop drug traffickers. Instead, they incorporated illegal paramilitary groups into their ranks and fostered death squads. These death squads killed trade unionists, peasant leaders, human rights, journalists, and other suspected “subversives.” The evidence, including secret Colombian military documents, suggests that the CIA may be more interested in fighting a leftist resistance movement than in combating drugs.

Thousands of people have been killed by the death squads, and the killings go on. In April, one of Colombia’s foremost human-rights lawyers, Eduardo Umana Mendoza, was murdered in his office. Umana’s clients included leaders of Colombia’s state oil workers’ union. Reuters estimated that 10,000 people attended his funeral in Bogota.

Human-rights groups suspect that Umana’s murder may have been carried out by members of the security forces supporting or operating in unison with paramilitary forces. At the funeral, Daniel Garcia Pena, a Colombian government official who was a friend of Umana’s, told journalists that before his death Umana had alerted authorities that state security officials along with security officers from the state oil company were planning to kill him.

The killings are mounting at a terrible pace. In February, a death squad mowed down another leading human-rights activist, Jesus Maria Valle Jaramillo. He had pointed a finger at the military and some politicians for sponsoring death squads.

“There is a clear, coordinated strategy of targeting anyone involved in the defense of human rights,” says Carlos Salinas of Amnesty International. “Every statement of unconditional support by U.S. lawmakers only encourages these kinds of attacks.”

A new debate is taking place today between human-rights groups and the Clinton Administration over U.S. aid to Colombia. The Clinton Administration has escalated military aid to Colombia to a record $136 million annually, making Colombia the leading recipient of U.S. military aid in this hemisphere. Now the administration is considering even more, including helicopter gunships.

Colombia did not figure prominently on the world stage back in late 1990 and early 1991. Germany was in the process of reunification, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait, and El Salvador was negotiating an end to its long civil war. But the Bush Administration was not ignoring Colombia. It was increasing the number of U.S. Army Special Forces (or Green Beret) advisers there. And the CIA was increasing the number of agents in its station in Bogota — which soon became the biggest station in Latin America.

“There was a very big debate going on [over how to allocate] money for counter-narcotics operations in Colombia,” says retired Colonel James S. Roach Jr., the U.S. military attaché and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) country liaison in Bogota in the early 1990s. “The U.S. was looking for a way to try to help. But if you’re not going to be combatants [yourselves], you have to find something to do.”

The United States formed an inter-agency commission to study Colombia’ s military intelligence system. The team included representatives of the U.S. embassy’s Military Advisory Group in Bogota, the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, the DIA, and the CIA, says Roach, who was among the military officers representing the DIA. The commission, according to a 1996 letter from the Defense Department to Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, recommended changes in Colombia’ s military intelligence networks to make them “more efficient and effective.”

In May 1991, Colombia completely reorganized its military intelligence networks “based on the recommendations made by the commission of U.S. military advisers,” according to the secret Colombian reorganization order, which Human Rights Watch made public in 1996. The U.S. commission of advisers backed the reorganization plan ostensibly as part of the drug war. Yet the secret Colombian order itself made no mention anywhere in its sixteen pages or corresponding appendices about gathering intelligence against drug traffickers. Instead, the order instructed the new intelligence networks to focus on leftist guerrillas or “the armed subversion.”

The forty-one new intelligence networks created by the order directed their energies toward unarmed civilians suspected of supporting the guerrillas. One of these intelligence networks, in the oil refinery town of Barrancabermeja in Colombia’s strife-torn Magdalena Valley, assassinated at least fifty-seven civilians in the first two years of operation. Victims included the president, vice president, and treasurer of the local transportation workers union, two leaders of the local oil workers union, one leader of a local peasant workers union, two human-rights monitors, and one journalist.

Colonel Roach says the Defense Department never intended the intelligence networks to foster death squads. But Roach says he can’t speak for the CIA, which was more involved in the intelligence reorganization and even financed the new networks directly.

“The CIA set up the clandestine nets on their own,” says Roach. “They had a lot of money. It was kind of like Santa Claus had arrived.”

The secret Colombian order instructed the military to maintain plausible deniability from the networks and their crimes. Retired military officers and other civilians were to act as clandestine liaisons between the networks and the military commanders. All open communications “must be avoided.” There “must be no written contracts with informants or civilian members of the network; everything must be agreed to orally.” And the entire chain of command “will be covert and compartmentalized, allowing for the necessary flexibility to cover targets of interest.”

Facts about the new intelligence networks became known only after four former agents in Barrancabermeja began testifying in 1993 about the intelligence network there. What compelled them to come forward? Each said the military was actively trying to kill them in order to cover up the network and its crimes. By then the military had “disappeared” four other ex-agents in an attempt to keep the network and its operations secret.

Since the military was already trying to kill them, the agents decided that testifying about the network and its crimes might help keep them alive. Saulo Segura was one ex-agent who took this gamble. But rather than prosecuting his superiors over his and others’ testimony, Colombia’s judicial system charged and imprisoned Segura. In a 1996 interview in La Modelo, Bogota’s maximum-security jail, Segura told me he hadn’t killed anyone and that his job within the network was limited to renting office space and handling money. Segura then glanced about nervously before adding, “I hope they don’t kill me.”

Two months later, on Christmas Eve, Segura was murdered inside his cellblock. His murder remains unsolved; the whereabouts of the other three ex-agents is unknown. No Colombian officers have been prosecuted for ordering the Barrancabermeja crimes.

In 1994, Amnesty International accused the Pentagon of allowing anti-drug aid to be diverted to counterinsurgency operations that lead to human-rights abuses. U.S. officials including General Barry R. McCaffrey, the Clinton Administration drug czar who was then in charge of the U.S. Southern Command, publicly denied it. But back at the office, McCaffrey ordered an internal audit. It found that thirteen out of fourteen Colombian army units that Amnesty had specifically cited for abuses had previously received either U.S. training or arms. Amnesty made these documents public in 1996 (full disclosure: I provided the internal U.S. documents to Amnesty; Winifred Tate and I provided the secret Colombian order to Human Rights Watch).

Colombian military officers, along with some of their supporters in the United States, say the line between counterinsurgency and counter-drug operations in Colombia is blurry, as Colombia’s leftist guerrillas are more involved today than ever before in drug trafficking.

Indeed, they are. For years, about two-thirds of the forces of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and about half the forces of the National Liberation Army (ELN) have been involved in the drug trade, mainly protecting drug crops, according to both U.S. intelligence and leftist sources.

Colombia’s rightist paramilitary groups, however, are even more involved in the drug trade, and they have been for a decade. Back in 1989, Colombia’s civilian government outlawed all paramilitary organizations after a government investigation had found that the Medellin drug cartel led by the late Pablo Escobar had taken over the largest ones.

At the time, Escobar and his associates were fiercely resisting U.S. pressure on the Colombian government to make them stand trial in the United States on trafficking charges. They took control of Colombia’s strongest paramilitaries and used them to wage a terrorist campaign against the state. These same paramilitaries, based in the Magdalena Valley, were behind a wave of violent crimes, including the 1989 bombing of Avianca flight HK-1803, which killed 111 passengers. Investigators concluded that Israeli, British, and other mercenaries, led by Israeli Reserve Army Lieutenant Colonel Yair Klein, had trained the perpetrators in such techniques. In February, Klein and three other former Israeli reserve officers, along with two Colombians, were indicted in absentia for their alleged involvement in these crimes.

The CIA bears some responsibility for the proliferation of drug trafficking in the Magdalena Valley since it supported rightist counterinsurgency forces who run drugs. But the CIA has also helped combat drug trafficking in Colombia. In other words, different units within the agency have pursued contrary goals.

The CIA’s most notable success in the drug war was the 1995-1996 operations that, with the help of the DEA, apprehended all top seven leaders of Colombia’s Cali drug cartel. One of those apprehended was Henry Loaiza, also known as “The Scorpion,” a top Colombian paramilitary leader. He secretly collaborated with the CIA-backed intelligence networks to carry out assassinations against suspected leftists.

A young, techno-minded CIA team led the Cali bust. Heading up the team was a woman. “I’m just a secretary,” she protested when I called her on the phone at the time.

But despite her denials, she was not unappreciated. On September 19, 1995, a courier delivered a white box to her at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. I happened to be in the lobby at the time. She opened the box to find roses inside. They had been sent by the head of Colombia’s National Police, General Rosso Jose Serrano.

Most other agency counter-drug operations, however, have yielded few breakthroughs.

The net result of CIA involvement in Colombia has not been to slow down the drug trade. Mainly, the agency has fueled a civil war that has taken an appalling toll on civilians.

Colombia is not the only place where these two elements of the CIA nave clashed with each other.

In Peru, the CIA coordinates all of its counter-drug efforts through the office of the powerful Intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos — even though DEA special agents have produced no fewer than forty-nine different intelligence reports about Montesinos and his suspected narcotics smuggling. It is no wonder that agency counter-drug efforts in Peru have failed.

In Guatemala, the agency has played a strong role in both counterinsurgency and counter-drug operations. As in Peru, the agency has worked with Guatemala’s office of military intelligence, even though DEA special agents have formally accused a whopping thirty-one Guatemalan military officers of drug trafficking. Despite the CIA’s efforts, not even one suspected officer has been tried.

The Clinton Administration finally cut off CIA counterinsurgency aid to Guatemala in 1995 after revelations that an agency asset, Guatemalan Army Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, had been involved in the murder of Michael DeVine, a U.S. innkeeper, as well as in the murder of Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a leftist guerrilla who was married to the Harvard-educated lawyer, Jennifer Harbury. But the Clinton Administration has allowed the CIA to continue providing counter-drug aid to Guatemala.

Most of the major drug syndicates so far uncovered by the DEA have enjoyed direct links to Guatemalan military officers. One of the largest syndicates, exposed in 1996, “reached many parts of the military,” according to the State Department.

This year, the State Department reports, “Guatemala is the preferred location in Central America for storage and transshipment of South American cocaine destined for the United States via Mexico.”

Mexico is the next stop on the CIA counter-narcotics train. The fact that Mexico’s former top counter-drug officer, General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was himself recently indicted for drug trafficking, raises the same old question: What is U.S. policy really all about? Before Gutierrez was busted, the DEA thought he was dirty, while U.S. officials, like General McCaffrey, still sporting Cold War lenses, thought he was clean and vouched for him shortly before his indictment.

Some DEA special agents question the CIA’s priorities in counter-drug programs. Human rights groups remain suspicious of the same programs for different reasons.

“There is no magic line dividing counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency operations,” says Salinas of Amnesty International.

“Given the current deterioration of human rights in Mexico,” an expanded role in counter-drug operations by the United States “could lead to a green light for further violations.”

Testifying before Congress in March, the CIA Inspector General Frederick R. Hitz finally addressed allegations that the CIA once backed Cold War allies like the Nicaraguan contras even though they ran drugs. Hitz admitted that, at the very least, there have been “instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations.”

What CIA officials have yet to admit is that the agency is still doing the same thing today.

Colombia’s Gringo Invasion

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The US military boasts that its Army Special Forces or “Green Berets” are “the most versatile special operations soldiers in the world.” [1] While serving under the Department of Defense (DoD), members of these units, trained in unconventional warfare, psychological operations, and other skills, sometimes work on temporary “attachment” to the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.[2] Under CIA auspices, Green Beret advisers have been involved in both covert actions (never to be attributed to the US) such as Operation Phoenix, which set up death squads in Vietnam in the 1960s, and clandestine operations (secret only during their execution) such as the training of El Salvador’s Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols in the 1980s.[3]

In the 1990s, Green Berets and other US advisers have been deeply involved in Colombia, even though it has the worst ongoing human rights record in Latin America.[4] Last year, at least 231 US military and intelligence advisers were sent there, according to the DoD’s official deployment schedules.[5] These include two teams with 52 US Green Beret advisers each to train the Colombian Army in “junior leadership” combat skills. That official count is only three fewer than the congressionally-imposed limit (often violated[6]) on the number of in-country US advisers deployed in El Salvador during the peak of its war. Even more Green Beret advisers have trained Colombian Army Special Forces units outside Colombia at US bases in Panama.[7] According to US officials involved, this particular training has taken place under the auspices of the CIA as part of a “Top Secret” counter-drug program.[8]

Since 1989, all US military training, advice, arms and services to Colombia have been officially earmarked for the drug war. While most coca leaf is grown in surrounding Andean countries, Colombia refines and exports about 80 percent of the world’s processed cocaine.[9] US anti-drug policy, by prioritizing law enforcement over prevention and treatment measures, puts considerable pressure on countries such as Colombia. All of Washington’s $169 million annual aid to that country is earmarked to counter drugs. Some has actually been used for this purpose. A Bogota-based CIA team, for example, was instrumental in the 1995 arrests of the top leaders of the Cali cartel. But most US aid has been diverted to Bogota’s counterinsurgency war against leftist guerrillas. Since the 1960s, the Colombian military, with US backing, has been fighting the formerly pro-Moscow Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the pro-Cuba National Liberation Army (ELN), as well as other groups. In recent years, the conflict has heated up, with Amnesty International reporting more than 20,000 dead since 1986.[10] While all sides have committed abuses, the military and allied (though illegal) rightist paramilitary groups are guilty of the vast majority.[11]

Spooks Bearing Gifts

Human rights monitors have long accused Washington of complicity in these crimes. Now they have proof. Last October, Amnesty International released internal US military documents showing that the US had provided arms to 13 of 14 Colombian army units that Amnesty had cited for abuses.[12] In November, Human Rights Watch released US and Colombian military documents, along with oral testimony, showing that in 1991, both the CIA and DoD advised Colombia before its Defense Ministry established 41 clandestine intelligence networks. According to a classified (reservado) ministry order creating the program, the networks’ only function was to target “the armed subversion,” i.e., leftist guerrillas and their suspected supporters. Four former members of one network, based in the river port town of Barrancabermeja, testified that it incorporated illegal paramilitary groups and was responsible for killing hundreds of civilians.[13]

The CIA was directly involved in helping design and fund the intelligence networks, according to retired US Army Col. James S. Roach, Jr., then military attaché and Defense (Department) Intelligence Agency liaison in Bogota. “The CIA set up the clandestine nets on their own,” Roach says. “They had a lot of money. It was kind of like Santa Claus had arrived.” CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield declined to comment.[14]

These CIA-promoted intelligence networks enabled the Colombian military and illegal paramilitaries to expand the pattern of secret collaboration which began in the early 1980s. According to Javier Giraldo, a Jesuit priest and founder of Colombia’s Inter-Congregational Commission for Justice and Peace:

A vast network of armed civilians began to replace, at least in part, soldiers and policemen who could be easily identified. They also started to employ methods that had been carefully designed to ensure secrecy and generate confusion. Because of this, witnesses and victims of crimes are unsure of the exact identity of the individual(s) responsible for committing them. This problem with identifying the perpetrators is often insurmountable.

At the same time, members of the army and police began to conceal their identities, frequently wearing civilian clothes and hoods, to drive unmarked cars and to take their victims to clandestine torture centers, all in order to forego legal formalities in arrest. What has frequently followed these abductions is intimidation or torture, enforced disappearances and murder.[15]

SOA’s Traditional Values

While DoD officials continue to deny complicity in human rights violations, the close ties between US intelligence and defense agencies and their Colombian counterparts are well documented. Last year, for example, the US Navy deployed 97 operations and intelligence advisers in-country. There they helped plan strategy with the Colombian Navy command and provided tactical advice to units based out of ports including Barrancabermeja.[16] Meanwhile, US Green Berets train the Colombian army in Cimitarra, a town that even Colombian police reports identify as a center of illegal paramilitary operations.[17] Other US officials work closely with Colombia top commanders. The US Military Advisory Group’s office is inside the Colombian Armed Forces command compound, conveniently down the hall from the offices of the Colombian army commander.

As is the case throughout much of Latin America, many key human rights violators have received US training. Commander Gen. Manuel Jose Bonett Locarno is one of hundreds of Colombian officers who have graduated from the US School of the Americas (SOA).[18] He was later implicated in torturing and murdering trade unionists, community leaders, and human rights monitors. Bonett, who denies responsibility for these or any other crimes, reports to Gen. Harold Bedoya Pizarro, Colombia’s Armed Forces commander, who studied military intelligence at the SOA in 1965 and was invited back to teach it as a guest professor in 1978 and 1979. A coalition of European human rights groups and others have accused him of running death squads comprised of joint military and paramilitary forces. More recently, Bedoya has mapped out “intelligence planning regarding the country’s internal political situation” through El Diario de Bedoya, a classified analysis with general orders from Bedoya himself, regularly sent to all divisions and brigade commanders.[19]

While Bedoya acknowledges that he has identified suspects for army surveillance, both he and Bonett deny that these targets include such legal entities as community leaders, non-governmental organizations, or political parties and their elected officials. But a July 1995 “reservado” division-wide order signed by Bonett instructs army intelligence networks to conduct “permanent surveillance of the municipal governments and the ways in which they are managing their funds.”[20] Another classified Colombian army document from March 1995 claims that the guerrillas have infiltrated an estimated 800 locally-elected municipal governments nationwide and an unknown number of non-governmental organizations, “especially leftist ones … in Colombia, the United States, Canada, Europe.” This activity has led the groups, the document goes on, to adopt positions favoring “the overcoming of impunity,” “the vigilant and effective monitoring of human rights,” and “the construction of a peace process.”[21]

Within Colombia’s tense climate, simply identifying an organization or individual as “leftist” is tantamount to authorizing anything from surveillance to murder, and indeed, many Colombians so labeled have disappeared or been killed. Take the rural town of Aguachica in the northern Magdalena Valley, where the army’s ability to process intelligence is made more efficient with computers. One classified printout, “Latest Information on the Enemy,” was prepared by army Task Force No. 27 Pantera (Panther). It names dozens of alleged subversives, including leaders of the local Community Action Movement (CAM), a legal group which this printout identifies as a “political branch” of the guerrillas. Their crime? Community leaders “led a meeting of peasants where they espoused their political objectives and how they plan to achieve them as a movement.”[22]

Among CAM’s popular leaders were “Libardo Galvis, a.k.a. Lalo” and his brothers, Jesus Emilio and Luis Tiberio. On September 24,1995, two months after the army printout, Jesus and Luis were abducted by armed men, “some wearing civilian clothes and others wearing army uniforms with the insignias of the Counter-guerrilla Unit Task Force No. 27.” Witnesses quoted by the human rights group, MINGA, later said: “The brothers were brutally tortured. They burned the fingers of their hands, and then decapitated them.” The same armed men then walked to a nearby village and killed a local police inspector, Emelda Ruiz, who had been investigating death squad crimes. According to witnesses: “The perpetrators announced that they would be back for other people whose names they had on their lists.”[23]

There is also good documentation of abuses by the Colombian Navy, which has also been armed, trained, and advised by the United States. The US helped design its Riverine units to patrol rivers in search of trafficking boats. One of the ports the Riverines are based in is Barrancabermeja, also the site of one of the 41 intelligence networks promoted by the CIA. Four ex-agents of this network have testified about it. In a pattern used around the country, naval intelligence wanted to keep the network covert, so it incorporated retired military officers and other civilians to both gather intelligence and execute operations. One such clandestine operative was ex-naval Sgt. Saulo Segura. He reported to Capt. Juan Carlos Alvarez, the network chief who served under Lt. Col. Rodrigo Quinonez, then the Navy’s top intelligence commander.[24] Together these men identified targets for surveillance and decided which ones to hit.

One ex-agent testified:

[Lt.] Col. Rodrigo Quinonez was told everything about the [surveillance] operations. And according to what was discovered, he would speak with Capt. Juan Carlos Alvarez, alias El Ingeniero [“The Engineer”], giving the green light if the operation was OK or not, in other words, to kill people or not. After that, Capt. Juan Carlos Alvarez would communicate directly with [our team leaders], who told us what to do. If it was by phone, they used the following codes: “There are some broken motors. I need you to repair them. They are in such and such a place.” And they would give the address. “Take good mechanics and good tools.” Mechanics meant sicarios [hired assassins], good tools meant good arms, and the motors meant the victims.[25]

According to the testimony of four ex-agents, early victims included the president, vice-president, and treasurer of the local transportation workers union; two leaders of the local oil workers union (another one of its leaders was killed last October); one leader of a local peasant workers’ union; and two human rights monitors.[26]

These murders and others drew the interest of Ismael Jaimes, editor of La Opinion, Barrancabermeja’s leading independent newspaper. After investigating for several months, he began writing columns alleging that the military was behind these crimes. Finally Jaimes was targeted too. One witness said: “After following him for several months, they established that he went every morning to drop off his son at school in the Torcoroma neighborhood, where he was killed one moming.”[27]

Soon the network attracted even more attention as many of its sicarios were also accused of robberies and other common crimes. To protect itself from exposure, the Navy began killing off operatives. On June 1, 1992, after four network sicarios were apprehended by a regular army unit over an authorized murder, military intelligence officers disappeared all four, according to a document signed by the regular unit’s commanders.[28] Later, several more network personnel were killed. Unidentified gunmen eventually tried to kill Segura, wounding him twice. [29]

This turned Segura against the Navy, and he joined three of his former colleagues who testified against their superiors. But instead of prosecuting the officers named by these ex-agents, the Colombian government charged and imprisoned Segura. Last year inside La Modelo, Bogota’s maximum security jail, he glanced about nervously before saying, “I hope they don’t kill me.” Two months later, on Christmas Eve, Segura was murdered inside his cellblock with a handgun left next to his corpse. His murder remains unsolved; the whereabouts of the other three witnesses remain unknown. Nonetheless, they provided solid and overlapping details about the murders of 57 specific political opponents and activists. Yet not one case has gone to Court.[30]

American Hand

The US bears complicity in Colombia’s human rights record, having armed, trained and advised most of the military units and commands directly implicated in the killing. Still, the Clinton administration is now increasing aid to the Colombian military. This year, the US is sending a record $169 million in arms. They include 12 Blackhawk helicopter gunships, even though Amnesty International has already shown how US weapons have been diverted to the Colombian military’s dirty counterinsurgency war. Nonetheless, US officials insist that this time, the weapons will be used to fight drugs. “[W]e are very clear that the military assistance that we provide to Colombia must be used for the purposes intended, counter-narcotics,” said Nicholas Burns, The State Department spokesman.[31] But human rights groups no longer believe it. Recent revelations by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch “confirm what we expected,” says Charles Roberts of the Washington, DC-based Colombia Human Rights Committee. ” While trying to avoid the appearance of complicity in human rights violations, the United States has continued to provide training and materiel to the Colombian military irrespective of its horrendous abuses.”[32]

1. US Special Operations Forces Posture Statement, (Washington, D.C.: US Defense Department, 1994), p. 10
2. Interviews with senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials, Dec. 1995.
3. Douglas Valentine, Phoenix Program (New York: William Morrow, 1990); and Frank Smyth, “Secret Warriors: U.S. Advisors Have Taken Up Arms in El Salvador,” The Village Voice, Aug. 11, 1987. The US role in training these patrols first came out in testimony by Lt. Col. Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings. One of the CIA operatives involved, Felix Rodriguez, a.k.a. Max Gomez, also participated in the 1967 Bolivian operation, which resulted in the capture and summary execution of Che Guevara.
4. See, among others, Amnesty lnternational, Political Violence in Colombia: Myth and Reality (London: Al Publications, 1994); Javier Giraldo, S.J, Colombia: The Genocidal Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1996).
5. “List of FY96 Deployments for USMILGP [US Military Advisory Group] Colombia. This document first appeared in Appendix 3 of Human Rights Watch, Colombia’s Killer Networks: The Military/Paramilitary Partnership and the United States, Washington, D.C., 1996)
6. Interview with Anne Manuel, deputy director, Human Rights Watch/Americas, Feb. 1997.
7. Human Rights Watch. op. cit., p. 91.
8. Interviews with senior DoD officials, Dec. 1995.
9. See “The Cali Cartel: New Kings of Cocaine,” US Drug Enforcement Administration Drug Intelligence Report, Nov. 1994; and The National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee Report 1993: The Supply of Illicit Drugs to the United States, Aug. 1994, pp. 2-6.
10. Amnesty International, op. cit., p. 1.
11. Ibid., pp. 67-74.
12. See, among others, Reuters, “Amnesty calls for halt in U.S. aid to Colombia,” Oct. 29, 1996.
13. Human Rights Watch, op. cit., pp. 27-41.
14. Telephone interview, March 1996.
15. Giraldo, op. cit., p. 22.
16. List of FY96 Deployments, op. cit.
17. “Human Rights Watch,” op, cit., p. 91.
18. Out of the one list of 247 Colombian military officers implicated in specific human rights cases, 124 of them have received training at the US School of the Americas. Another seven Colombians, including Bedoya, have been invited to teach there. This Alumni list was prepared by Fred Gaona and is on file at the Washington Office on Latin America. Profiles of both the known abusers and the evidence against them was compiled by a coalition of European human rights groups in El Terrorismo de Estado en Colombia (Brussels), Ediciones NCOS, 1992, pp. 71-72.
19. Authors’ notes on document, Oct. 1996.
20. “Asunto: Examinacion de la Estrategia Divisionaria, Reservado,” signed by Maj. Gen. Manuel Jose Bonett Locarno, when he was the Colombian Army Second Division commander, July 24,1995.
21. “Asunto Apreciacion Coyuntural Situacion Nacional,” signed by Lt. Col. Jose Domingo Garcia Garcia, second commander and chief of staff of the Colombian Army Fifth Brigade, March 2, 1995.
22. Fuerza de Tarea No. 27 “Pantera, Ultimas Informaciones del Enemigo,” April 8-July 11, 1995.
23. MINGA Urgent Action, “Political Genocide Continues in Aguachica, Cesar,” Sept. 25, 1995.
24. Interview with Saulo Segura Palacios, La Modelo prison, Bogota, Colombia, Sept. 18, 1995.
25. Testimony of Carlos Alberto Vergara Amaya to the Colombian attorney general, Feb. 11, 1994.
26. Letter from Carlos David Lopez to the Colombian attorney general, Dec. 7, 1993; Letter from Saulol Segura Palacios to the Colombian attorney general, Dec. 7, 1993; Testimony of Carlos Alberto Vergara Amaya to the Colombian attorney general, Feb. 11, 1994; and Letter from Felipe Gomez to the Colombian attorney general, Nov. 29, 1994.
27. Letter from Carlos David Lopez, Dec. 7, 1993
28. “Asunto: Informe desaparicion personas,” signed by Colombian Army Gen. Marino Gutierrez Isaza, June 2, 1992, as quoted in Human Rights Watch, op. cit.
29. Interview with Segura, op. cit.
30. See Human Rights Watch, op. cit.; and Charles Roberts, “Rule of Law and Development: U.S. AID and the Public Courts of Colombia,” Georgetown University Law Center manuscript, Spring 1995.
31. Transcript of State Department briefing, Washington, D.C., Oct. 29, 1996.
32. Interview, Washington, D.C., Jan. 21, 1997.”

La Mano Blanca en Colombia

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La CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) ha respaldado por mucho tiempo a sus aliados anticomunistas quienes, durante su relación con la CIA o después, han traficado drogas. Esto no es sorprendente. Desde los primeros años ’60, los manuales militares estadounidenses sugirieron que los agentes de la inteligencia se aliaran con “contrabandistas” y con “operadores del mercado negro” para derrotar a los insurgentes comunistas, como reportó Michael McClintock en su libro “Los instrumentos de la formación del Estado” (Instruments of Statecraft). La CIA hizo precisamente eso, por ejemplo en el Sudeste de Asia.

Después, durante la misma década, la CIA se alió con los Hmong en Laos, entre otros, quienes según el historiador Alfred W. McCoy, traficaban con opio.Note1 Otro ejemplo es Afganistán donde, en los años ochenta, la CIA apoyó a los Mujahedeen en su lucha contra la Unión Soviética. Durante los años noventa, según Tim Weiner (The New York Times), los mismos Mujahedeen llegan a controlar hasta la tercera parte del opio (materia prima de la heroína) que llega a los Estado Unidos.

En nuestros días, el ejemplo de Colombia es aún más claro. Además de sufrir tasas desenfrenadas de criminalidad común, Colombia es un país lisiado por dos campañas de órden político en marcha; una es la guerra que, desde hace tres décadas, enfrenta a los militares colombianos (respaldados por la CIA) y sus aliados paramilitares, contra los grupos guerrilleros de la izquierda, anteriormente primero pro-Moscú y luego pro-Habana. La otra campaña es la guerra contra las drogas, con un campo de batalla mucho menos claro. Todos estos grupos tienen elementos involucrados en el narcotráfico colombiano que cubre aproximadamente el 80 por ciento de la producción mundial de cocaína, la materia prima del crack.

La CIA no es la excepción en Colombia. Desde 1995, un equipo de élite antinarcóticos, dirigido -en actitud progresista- por una mujer y conformado mayormente por tecnócratas jóvenes y competentes, tuvo una participación decisiva en la captura de los siete capos del Cártel de Cali. Pero en 1991 hubo un otro equipo de la CIA que jugó un papel diferente. Más interesados en apoyar a la guerra sucia contra la insurrección que a los esfuerzos antidrogas, éste equipo ayudó a forjar y financiar una alianza secreta anticomunista de los militares colombianos y grupos paramilitares ilegales, muchos de los cuales hoy en día trafican drogas.

¿Por qué fue secreta esta alianza? Dos años antes, en 1989, luego de que una investigación del gobierno colombiano descubrió que el Cártel de Medellín (encabezado por Pablo Escobar) se había apoderado de estos mismos grupos paramilitares, Colombia los había prohibido. En aquel tiempo, Escobar y sus socios estaban resistiendo ferozmente la presión de los EE.UU. para la aprobación en Colombia de leyes de extradición que permitieran su procesamiento en los EE.UU. por cargos de narcotráfico. Así, Escobar y sus socios empezaron a controlar a los grupos paramilitares más fuertes de Colombia, para utilizarlos en una lucha terrorista contra el Estado. Estos paramilitares, con sede en el Valle de Magdalena Medio, fueron los responsables de una ola de crímenes violentos, incluyendo la destrucción por bomba del vuelo HK-180 de la aerolínea Avianca en 1989, que causó la muerte de 111 personas. Investigadores concluyeron que la bomba fue detonada por un altímetro y que los autores del atentado fueron capacitados por merce

narios israelitas, británicos y otros, encabezados por un teniente coronel de la reserva del ejército israelita, Yair Klein. Los militares colombianos habían ayudado a proteger los entrenamientosNote2 y Escobar cancelaba los honorarios de los mercenarios.

La CIA ignoró estos hechos cuando, dos años más tarde, decidió renovar en secreto la alianza entre los militares colombianos y los grupos paramilitares. Los grupos insurgentes de la izquierda permanecían relativamente fuertes, a pesar de que había finalizado la Guerra Fría y la ayuda económica del bloque de Europa Oriental. Muchos sindicatos, grupos de estudiantes, campesinos y otros, les proveían con apoyo político y hasta logístico. Los agentes de la CIA sabían que los paramilitares -civiles generalmente comandados por oficiales retirados de las Fuerzas Armadas- podían ofrecer a los militares colombianos pretextos plausibles para negar su participación en asesinatos de izquierdistas sospechosos y en otros crímenes de esa índole. En palabras de Javier Giraldo, sacerdote jesuita y fundador de la Comisión Intercongregacional por la Justicia y la Paz en Colombia: “Una enorme red de civiles armados empezó a reemplazar, por los menos en parte, a soldados y policías quienes podían ser fácilmente identificados. Est

os grupos irregulares empezaron a emplear métodos cuidadosamente diseñados para mantener en secreto sus actividades y generar confusión.” Pero ni la CIA ni ninguna otra agencia estadounidense admitió que seguía apoyando a la campaña contra-insurgente en Colombia.

En cambio, los oficiales estadounidenses afirman que, desde 1989, todo el apoyo de su país a Colombia ha sido planificado en función de la guerra a las drogas. “Hubo un debate muy grande (sobre la mejor distribución del) dinero para las operaciones anti-narcóticos en Colombia”, afirmó el coronel (retirado) de Ejército estadounidense, James S. Roach (hijo), en ese entonces el agregado militar de más alto rango y enlace de la DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) en Bogotá; “EE.UU. estaba buscando una manera de ayudar, pero si no estás dispuesto a combatir con tropas propias, hay que buscar una salida”.

Así hicieron. Primero, un equipo interagencial (que incluyó a representantes del Grupo de Asesores Militares de la Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Bogotá; del Comando Sur en Panamá; de la DIA en Washington; y de la CIA en Langley, estado de Virginia), formuló recomendaciones para hacer una reestructuración general de las redes colombianas de inteligencia militar. Después, la CIA financió independientemente la incorporación de fuerzas paramilitares a esas redes. No le importó a la CIA que estas fuerzas paramilitares en ese momento fueran ilegales en Colombia; ni tampoco le importó que fueran explícitamente prohibidas, debido a la creciente influencia de Pablo Escobar y su Cártel de Medellín en la dirección de estos grupos.

Además del tráfico de drogas, los nefastos paramilitares colombianos han sido implicados en muchos abusos de los derechos humanos. Este hecho llevó a que, entre otros, el Departamento de Defensa norteamericano recomendara que las Fuerzas Armadas colombianas no los incorporaran en sus nuevas redes de inteligencia. “La intención fue no ser relacionados con los paramilitares”, dijo el coronel Roach, quién mantuvo contactos frecuentes con agentes de la CIA en Bogotá, quienes, según él, tenían otra estrategia. “La CIA organizó las redes clandestinas por su cuenta; tenía bastante dinero, fue más o menos como si llegara Papá Noel”. Mark Mansfield, portavoz de la CIA, se negó a brindar cualquier comentario al respecto.

Noticias de estas redes clandestinas de inteligencia salieron por primera vez a luz pública a través de Human Rights Watch, cuando ésta organización privada publicó, en noviembre de 1996, documentos de las FF.AA. (estadounidenses y colombianas), así como testimonios orales, que demuestran que ambos, el Departamento de Defensa (EE.UU.) y la CIA, persuadieron a Colombia para reorganizar por completo su sistema de inteligencia militar. En mayo de 1991, Colombia conformó 41 nuevas redes de inteligencia en todo el país; según la orden colombiana que las estableció: “con base en las recomendaciones de la comisión de asesores militares de los EE.UU.”. Más tarde, cuatro ex-integrantes colombianos de una red en el Valle de Magdalena Medio, declararon que la red tenía incorporados a grupos paramilitares ilegales, pagados tanto por el acopio de información de inteligencia como por el asesinato de personas sospechosos de ser izquierdistas.

Aunque oficiales estadounidenses sostienen que apoyan la reestructuración del sistema de inteligencia como parte de los esfuerzos antidrogas, la mencionada orden colombiana instruye a las nuevas redes a luchar solamente contra “la subversión armada” o la guerrilla izquierdista. De hecho, la mayoría de la guerrilla izquierdista colombiana -especialmente las FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas)- está también involucrada con el narcotráfico. Sin embargo, un reciente estudio interagencial, encomendado por Myles Frechette, embajador de los EE.UU. en Bogotá, concluye que el papel de las guerrillas en el narcotráfico se limita principalmente a la protección de plantaciones de materia prima, y en menor grado, a las operaciones de procesamiento de droga. En cambio, de acuerdo a las autoridades de orden colombianas así como de inteligencia estadounidenses, los paramilitares derechistas (en alianza con los militares) protegen mayormente los laboratorios de droga y las rutas internas de transporte. Es más,

según un informe de las fuerzas de orden colombianas, el narcotráfico ha vuelto a ser el “eje central” de financiamiento de los paramilitares.

Asimismo, un informe de 1995 sobre el Valle de Magdalena y preparado por investigadores de la Policía Judicial colombiana, sostiene que los militares y paramilitares en esta zona permanecen aliados: “no exclusivamente para la lucha anti-subversiva, sino también para beneficiarse económicamente y abrir el paso a los narcotraficantes”. El informe nombra como paramilitar sospechoso a “el conocido narcotraficante Víctor Carranza”. Carranza, contemporáneo de Pablo Escobar, en un principio cobró fama al alcanzar la cumbre del rentable negocio de esmeraldas en las montañas de Boyaca, eliminando a la vez al númeroso frente guerrillero de esa región. Poco después, Carranza también llegó a ser un terrateniente de importancia, comprando enormes terrenos en los llanos orientales de Meta, una provincia plagada de cultivos para la droga así como de laboratorios para su procesamiento. Hoy en día, la policía colombiana identifica a Carranza como traficante de múltiples toneladas de droga, y como uno de los líderes principale

s de los abundantes grupos paramilitares colombianos, como por ejemplo, en Meta, el infame Serpiente Negra. Organizaciones de derechos humanos han acusado a Carranza de ser el autor intelectual de tanto asesinatos como masacres.

No existen evidencias de que Carranza haya sido, en algún momento, un informante o colaborador de la CIA pero tiene credenciales anticomunistas impecables y mantiene contactos frecuentes con los militares. Testigos militares han dado cuenta de una reunión con oficiales en su hotel “Los Llanos” en Villavicencio (Meta). También los oficiales estadounidenses saben mucho de él: “Carranza aparece a menudo en los informes de inteligencia”, según un experto. Don Víctor, como lo conocen sus hombres, es un líder chapado a la antigua. Continúa frecuentando sus minas de esmeraldas para disfrutar la primacia en la selección de las piedras más grandes y de las mejores vetas descubiertas.

Carranza es un hombre intocable. En 1995, uno de sus supuestos lugartenientes, Arnulfo (Rasguño) Castillo Agudelo, fue detenido, a consecuencia de la exhumación (en 1989) de aproximadamente cuarenta cadáveres en una de las haciendas de Carranza en Meta. Rasguño se negó a ser entrevistado en la prisión Modelo de Bogotá. Tampoco Carranza, quien normalmente evita la publicidad, quiso dar comentarios.

En años recientes, Carranza ha ampliado sus operaciones en Colombia central a través del Valle de Magdalena. El mencionado informe policial señala que: “Carranza está planeando adquirir Hacienda Bella Cruz (allá) para usarla como una base para sus actividades, (y) traer a 200 soldados paramilitares de Meta”. Testigos sostienen que ahora el lugar está sumamente concurrido por hombres armados, quienes han desterrado a centenares de campesinos del lugar. Según Jamie Prieto Amaya, obispo católico de la región, Carranza y otros sospechosos de narcotráfico han comprado cerca de 45.000 acres (18 mil hectáreas) de terreno a través del Valle de Magdalena.Note3

Otro personaje paramilitar sospechoso es Henry Loaiza (El Alacrán), detenido en 1995 con ayuda de la CIA bajo sospecho de ser uno de los siete capos del Cártel de Cali. Como Carranza, el Alacrán se encuentra implicado en varias masacres de civiles y supuestos izquierdistas, llevadas a cabo conjuntamente por fuerzas militares y paramilitares. Entre ellas está la masacre de Trujillo cerca de la ciudad de Cali, que se caracterizó por el uso de motosierras.

La policía colombiana identificó a otros (ex-)oficiales militares como sospechosos de narcotráfico, como es el caso del Mayor Jorge Alberto Lázaro, acusado de ordenar a los paramilitares en el Valle de Magdalena en la ejecución de masacres. Hoy día este valle, que se extiende por una distancia de 400 millas hacia los puertos caribeños en el norte, es uno de los corredores principales para el tráfico de drogas procesadas y de precursores químicos.

Más de un año después de la caída del muro de Berlín, La CIA ayudó a posibilitar una colaboración oscura entre los militares y los paramilitares colombianos. De este modo, la CIA ha facilitado crímenes, en el ámbito de los derechos humanos y del narcotráfico. Si ésta clase de comportamiento fue reprensible durante la Guerra Fría, ahora es completamente indefendible.

(Texto original en inglés, traducción: Kathy Ledebur.)

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Notas

Note1 MCCOY, Alfred W. “The Politics of Heroin: The CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade”, Laurence Hill Books, Chicago, Illinois, 1991.

Note2 Se estableció que los militares colombianos habían mantenido contacto por radio con la base de entrenamiento de los paramilitares.

Note3 Prieto Amaya fue citado en la revista Cambio-16 de Bogotá.

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Frank Smyth: Periodista independiente de nacionalidad estadounidense. Ha publicado sobre narcotráfico y políticas antidrogas en ‘The Village Voice’, ‘The Washington Post’, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ (Estados Unidos) y otros.

Colombia’s Blowback

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The article below by investigative journalist Frank Smyth was published last Fall by the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam) and Accion Andina (Cochabomba, Bolivia) as a chapter titled, “La Mano Blanca en Colombia,” in the book, Crimen Uniformado [Crime in Uniform]: entre la corrupcion y la impunidad (1997). It appears in Antifa Info-Bulletin with the author’s permission.

The CIA has long backed anti-communist allies who, either during their relationship with the agency or later, ran drugs. This comes as no surprise. As early as 1960, U.S. military manuals encouraged intelligence operatives to ally themselves with “smugglers” and “black market operators to defeat communist insurgents, as reported by Michael McClintock in his seminal book Instruments of Statecraft. In fact, the CIA did just that. Take Southeast Asia. Later in that same decade the agency allied itself with, among others, the Hmong in Laos, who, according to historian Alfred W. McCoy in his book, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, were trafficking opium. Or Afghanistan. There in the 1980s the CIA backed the Mujahedeen against the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, according to Tim Weiner of The New York Times, the same Mujahedeen have controlled up to one third of the opium (used to make heroin) reaching the United States.

Colombia is an even better example today.

In addition to suffering from rampant common crime, Colombia is a country crippled by two ongoing political campaigns. One is a three-decade war pitching the CIA-backed Colombian military and allied rightist paramilitaries against formerly pro-Moscow and pro-Havana, leftist guerrilla groups. The other campaign is the drug war, where the battle lines are far less clear. Elements of all these sides are involved in Colombia’s drug trade, which includes the processing of about 80 percent of the world’s cocaine, the base substance of crack.

The CIA is no exception. Since 1995, an elite CIA counter-drug team commanded by, progressively enough, a woman, and staffed mainly by young, competent technocrats, has been instrumental in apprehending all top seven leaders of Colombia’s Cali cartel. But back in 1991, another CIA team played a different role. More interested in supporting Colombia’s dirty counter-insurgency than its counter-drug efforts, this team helped forge and finance a secret anti-communist alliance between the Colombian military and illegal paramilitary groups, many of whom are running drugs today.

Why was this alliance made secret? Colombia had outlawed all such paramilitary groups two years before in 1989. Why did Colombia do that? A Colombian government investigation had found that these same paramilitaries had been taken over by the Medellin drug cartel led by the late Pablo Escobar. At the time, Escobar and his associates were fiercely resisting U.S.-backed pressure for Colombia to pass extradition laws intended to make them stand trial in the United States on drug trafficking charges. So they took control of Colombia’s strongest paramilitaries, using them to wage a terrorist campaign against the state. These same paramilitaries, based in the Middle Magdalena valley, were behind a wave of violent crimes, including the 1989 bombing of Avianca flight HK-1803, which killed 111 passengers. Investigators concluded that the bomb was detonated by an altimeter, and that the perpetrators had been trained in such techniques by Israeli, British and other mercenaries led by an Israeli Reserved Army Lieutenant Colonel, Yair Klein. The Colombian military had helped protect this training, to the point of even being in radio contact with the paramilitaries’ training base, while Escobar had paid the mercenaries’ fees.

The CIA, however, ignored these facts when it decided two years later to help renew — in secret — the alliance between the Colombian military and paramilitary groups. By then, even though the cold war was over and Eastern bloc aid had long since dried up, Colombia’s leftist insurgents were still relatively strong. And many trade union, student and peasant groups, among others, provided them with political and sometimes even logistical forms of support. CIA officers knew that paramilitaries — civilians usually led by retired military officers — could provide the Colombian military with plausible deniability for assassinations of suspected leftists and similar crimes. “A vast network of armed civilians began to replace, at least in part, soldiers and policemen who could be easily identified,” writes Javier Giraldo, a Jesuit priest and founder of Colombia’s Inter-Congregational Commission for Justice and Peace. “They also started to employ methods that had been carefully designed to ensure secrecy and generate confusion.”

But neither the CIA nor any other U.S. agency admitted that it was still backing Colombia’s counter-insurgency campaign. Instead U.S. officials claim that all U.S. support to Colombia, since 1989, has been designed to further the drug war. “There was a very big debate going on [about how to best allocate] money for counter-narcotics operations in Colombia,” said retired U.S. Army Colonel James S. Roach, Jr., who was then the top U.S. military attaché in Bogota as well as the Pentagon’s ranking Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) liaison there. “The U.S. was looking for a way to try to help. But if you’re not going to be combatants [yourselves], you have to find something to do.”

Do, they did. First an inter-agency team including representatives of the U.S. embassy’s Military Advisory Group in Bogota, the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, the DIA in Washington and the CIA in Langley made recommendations to completely overhaul Colombia’s military intelligence networks. Then The CIA independently provided funds to incorporate paramilitary forces into them. It didn’t matter that these paramilitary forces were illegal in Colombia at the time. Nor did it matter that they had been outlawed explicitly over the growing influence of the late Pablo Escobar and his Medellin drug cartel in directing them.

In addition to drug trafficking, Colombia’s nefarious paramilitaries had already been implicated in widespread human rights abuses. This led the Defense Department, for one, to discourage the Colombian military from incorporating them into these new intelligence networks. “The intent was not to be associated with paramilitaries,” said Colonel Roach, who was also in regular contact with CIA officers in Bogota. He says they had another approach. “The CIA set up clandestine nets of their own. They had a lot of money. It was kind of like Santa Claus had arrived.” CIA spokesman Mike Mansfield declined to comment.

News of these clandestine intelligence networks was first brought to light by Human Rights Watch, in November 1996 released U.S. and Colombian military documents, as well as oral testimony, to show that both the Defense Department and the CIA, in late 1990, encouraged Colombia to reorganize its entire military intelligence system. In May 1991, Colombia formed 41 new intelligence networks nationwide “based on the recommendations made by the commission of U.S. military advisors,” according to the original Colombian order which established them. Later, four former Colombian operatives from one of network in central
Colombia’s Magdalena valley testified that it incorporated illegal paramilitary groups, paying them to both gather intelligence and assassinate suspected leftists. Though U.S. officials still maintain that they supported this intelligence reorganization as part of their drug war efforts, the same Colombian order quoted above instructs these new intelligence networks to fight only “the armed subversion” or leftist guerrillas.

Indeed most of Colombia’s leftist guerrillas, especially among the formerly pro-Moscow FARC, are also involved with drugs. But a U.S. interagency study recently ordered by the Clinton administration’s former ambassador in Bogota, Myles Frechette, found the guerrillas’ role to be limited to mostly protecting drug crops, and, to a lesser degree, processing operations. Meanwhile, rightist paramilitaries allied with the military protect far more drug laboratories and internal transit routes, according to both U.S. intelligence and Colombian law enforcement authorities. In fact, according to one Colombian law enforcement report, drug trafficking today is — again — the paramilitaries’ “central axis” of funding.

Similarly, according to another report from a different law enforcement entity, this one about the Magdalena valley in 1995 by top detectives from Colombia’s Judicial and Investigative Police, the military and paramilitaries there are allied “not only for the anti-subversive struggle, but also to profit and open the way for drug traffickers.” One paramilitary suspect it names is “the well-known narco-trafficker Victor Carranza.” A contemporary of Medellin’s Escobar, Carranza first established himself by rising to the top of Colombia’s lucrative emerald trade among the Boyaca Mountains, and by wiping out a large guerrilla front there at the same time. Soon Carranza also became a major landowner, buying large swaths of it in the eastern plains of Meta, a province choked with drug crops as well as laboratories. Today Colombian police identify Carranza as both a multi-ton level drug trafficker, and one of the key leaders of Colombia’s many illegal paramilitary groups like, in Meta, the infamous “Black Snake.” Human rights groups have accused Carranza of engineering assassinations as well as massacres.

There is no evidence that Carranza has ever been either a CIA asset or informant. But his anti-communist credentials are unquestionable. And he runs frequently in military crowds. Military eyewitnesses say that military officers in Villavicencio, Meta have even met him inside the Los Llanos hotel, which he owns. U.S. officials too know a lot about him. “Carranza comes up constantly in intelligence reporting,” one such expert says. An old-fashioned gangster, “Don Victor,” as he is respectfully called by his men, still frequents the emerald mines and likes to be the first to pick out the largest stones from the best veins uncovered. Yet, Carranza remains untouchable, even though one of his purported lieutenants, Arnulfo Castillo Agudelo, also known as “Scratch,” was arrested in 1995 implicated Carranza in circumstances involving over 40 corpses which had been exhumed — six years before — on one of Carranza’s Meta ranches. “Scratch” declined to be interviewed in Modelo prison in Bogota. Carranza, who avoids publicity, was also unavailable for comment.

In recent years, Carranza has been expanding his operations in central Colombia throughout the Magdalena valley. The above police report notes: “Carranza is planning to acquire Hacienda Bella Cruz [there] to use as a base for his activities, [and] bring in 200 paramilitary operatives from Meta.” Witnesses say that it is now teeming with armed men, who have displaced hundreds of local peasants. In total, Carranza and other drug suspects have bought about 45,000 acres of land throughout the Magdalena valley, according to Jamie Prieto Amaya, the Catholic bishop there, quoted in the Bogota newsweekly, Cambio 16.

Still another suspect is Henry Loaiza, also known as “The Scorpion.” Demonstrating the importance of paramilitaries to the overall drug trade, he was one of the top seven Cali cartel suspects arrested with CIA help since 1995. Like Carranza, “The Scorpion” is also implicated in several specific civilian massacres of suspected leftists carried out jointly by military and paramilitary forces, including the 1989 Trujillo massacres (involving chainsaws) near Cali. Other drug suspects identified by the Colombian police include military officers like Major Jorge Alberto Lazaro, a former Army commander also accused of ordering paramilitaries to commit massacres in the Magdalena valley. Today this same central Colombian valley, which runs about 400 miles north toward Caribbean ports, is a major corridor for both processed drugs and precursor chemicals.

The CIA helped enable Colombia’s military and paramilitaries to collaborate in the dark — more than a year after the Berlin Wall fell. By doing so, the CIA has facilitated crimes involving both human rights and drug trafficking. Such behavior was reprehensible during the cold war. It is completely indefensible now.

Frank Smyth is a freelance journalist who has written about drug trafficking in The Village Voice, The New Republic, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He is co-author with Winifred Tate of “Colombia’s Gringo Invasion,” Covert Action Quarterly, Number 60, Spring 1997. The article above was reprinted in Colombia Bulletin: A Human Rights Quarterly.