1990s-present, Colombia: The Phoney 'War on Drugs'

By Frank Smyth

 In 1991, in the name of fighting drugs, the CIA financed military intelligence networks in Colombia that incorporated illegal paramilitary groups and fostered death squads.  These death squads have killed thousands of trade unionists, peasant leaders, human-rights monitors, 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.

      In 1998, the U.S. escalated military aid to Colombia to a record $136 million annually, making it the leading recipient of U.S. military aid in this hemisphere. [In 1999, Colombia became the top recipient of U.S. military and police assistance in the world.]

      The Bush Administration increased the number of U.S. Army Special Forces advisers in Colombia and the CIA increased the number of agents at its station in Bogota - making it their biggest station in Latin America.

      The U.S. 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, the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA, says Colonel James Roach Jr., the U.S. military attaché and Defense Intelligence Agency liaison in the early 1990s.

      In May 1991, Colombia completely reorganized its military intelligence networks "based on 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 secret Colombian order made no mention of gathering intelligence against drug traffickers.  Instead, it instructed the new networks to focus on leftist guerrillas or "the armed subversion."

      The 41 new intelligence networks created by the order directed their energies toward unarmed civilians suspected of supporting the guerrillas.  One of these intelligence networks, in Barrancabermeja, assassinated at least 57 civilians during its first 2 years.  Victims included a journalist and the leaders of unions and human-rights groups.

      "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 acted 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."  The entire chain of command "will be covert and compart-mentalized, allowing for the necessary flexibility to cover targets of interest."

      Facts about the new intelligence networks became known after former agents began testifying in 1993.  They said the military was trying to kill them in order to cover up the network and its crimes.  By then, the military had "disappeared" four other ex-agents.

      One of the informants was imprisoned and then murdered.  His murder remains unsolved; the whereabouts of the other ex-agents is unknown.

      In 1994, Amnesty International accused the Pentagon of allowing anti-drug aid to be diverted to counterinsurgency operations that lead to human-rights abuses.  Thirteen of fourteen Colombian army units that Amnesty specifically cited for abuses had received either U.S. training or arms.

      Colombia's leftist guerrillas are involved in drug trafficking.  For years, about two-thirds of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and about half of the National Liberation Army have been involved in the drug trade.

      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 found that the Medellin drug cartel had taken over the largest ones.

      The cartel took control of Colombia's strongest paramilitaries and used them to wage a terrorist campaign against the state.  These paramili-taries, based in the Magdalena Valley, were behind a wave of violent crimes.  Investigators concluded that Israeli, British and other mercenaries, led by Israeli Reserve Army Lieutenant Colonel Yair Klein, had trained the perpetrators.  In February 1998, Klein, three former Israeli reserve officers and two Colombians, were indicted.

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

      The CIA's most notable success in the drug war was the 1995-1996 operation that, with the help of the Drug Enforcement Agency, apprehended the top seven leaders of Colombia's Cali drug cartel.  One of those apprehended was a top Colombian paramilitary leader.  He secretly collaborated with the CIA-backed intelligence networks to carry out assassinations against suspected leftists.

      Most CIA 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 CIA has fueled a civil war that has taken an appalling toll on civilians.

Source: "Still Seeing Red, The CIA fosters death squads in Colombia," The Progressive, June 1998.