The Bush administration is getting desperate for good news out of Colombia. Despite promises each year that the war on coca cultivation is turning the corner, about to bear fruit (pick your favorite metaphor, the drug czar has tried them all), the supply of cocaine remains more or less stable, with prices still far below their pre-Plan Colombia levels. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC in its Spanish initials) appears no closer to defeat despite major U.S.-backed military offensives against them. And word is slowly but surely beginning to spread about the overwhelming corruption of U.S. law enforcement agents in the country, thanks to Bill Conroy’s reports in Narco News.
Now the U.S. Justice Department has “indicted” 50 members of the FARC. “This is the largest narcotics trafficking indictment ever filed in U.S. history,” said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at a press conference last week, triumphantly giving the illusion of some kind of progress in the war on drugs.
Only three of the 50 accused are actually in custody; the other 47 are active fighters in Latin America’s largest and strongest insurgent army, with no more likelihood of capture than before the March 22 announcement. And given that agencies implicated in the cover-up of the DEA’s corruption in Colombia were at the lead in this “investigation,” its findings are highly questionable…
As the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC in its Spanish initials) completes its “demobilization” and right-wing paramilitarism moves from the fringes of the law into the legal mainstream of Colombian society, both the U.S. and Colombian governments are now trying to wipe them from the public memory as the major drug trafficking force in country.
The press release from Justice is peppered with language referring to the FARC as a “criminal enterprise,” claiming it is responsible for supplying “more than 50 percent of the world’s cocaine and more than 60 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States.” While a great deal of the FARC’s revenue obviously comes from taxing production and other types of involvement with the drug trade, if the group really had such a monopoly over the business its profits would be in the billions of dollars, something that no serious observer of the conflict from either side of the political spectrum has found any evidence of.
But given the alleged relationships uncovered by Narco News between DEA and other U.S. agents and figures in the Colombian drug mafia — based on evidence that the Justice Department and other agencies have covered up and failed to investigate or disprove — how seriously can any of this be taken anyway? According to the Justice Department’s March 22 press release:
The investigation culminating in the indictment announced today was led by the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York; the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section (NDDS) of the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice, along with law enforcement officers from the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Internal Revenue Service, working together as part of the New York OCDETF Strike Force, or “New York Strike Force.” The New York Strike Force is composed of law enforcement officers from the DEA; ICE; the IRS; the FBI; the New York City Police Department; the New York State Police; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the U.S. Marshals Service. The investigation and prosecution are supported by trial attorneys from the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section and by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colombia.
Narco News readers may recognize some familiar names in there. Most significantly, the Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section (NDDS) is the same agency that Thomas M. Kent worked for when he wrote the now-famous memo that would expose the accusations of corruption against the Bogotá DEA office. The NDDS leadership is part of the same web of officials that did all they could to cover up these accusations.
From the January 9, 2006 report by Bill Conroy:
On Dec. 19, 2004, Thomas M. Kent, an attorney in the wiretap unit of the Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs Section (NDDS), sent off a memo to his section chief. Law enforcement sources tell Narco News that a number of other high-level officials within Justice and the DEA soon received copies of the same memo. In it, Kent raised a series of corruption allegations centering on the DEA’s office in Bogotá.
…
Kent is no longer with the Washington, D.C.-based wiretap unit of NDDS. He has been transferred to Nashville, according to sources familiar with the memorandum. Ironically, the NDDS chief to whom Kent addressed the memorandum, Jodi L. Avergun, is now the chief of staff for DEA.
Until the DEA and Justice department respond to the overwhelming evidence cited in Conroy’s reports, can anything these agencies say be taken at face value?
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And the Death Squad Leaders Get Community Service
Submitted May 1, 2006 - 9:59 pm by Sean DonahueBy the Colombian military's own estimate the AUC controls roughly 40% of Colombia's cocaine trade. (Which of course raises interesting questions about the U.S. claim that the FARC controls 50% of the world's cocaine trade.) And the U.S. State Department has officially designated the AUC a terrorist organization.
Nevertheless Mancuso and Castaño are being allowed to rehabilitate themselves by pulling up a few coca plants -- without confessing or apologizing for any of their crimes or forfeiting any significant portion of their assets.
The AP goes on to report that:
They neglect to mention the fact that the 30,150 paramilitaries who have "surrendered" have only turned in 16,077 weapons -- which may explain why activists continue to be murdered in paramilitary strongholds.
And if the U.S. "disaproves" of the suspension of the two terrorists' extradition orders, that disaproval hasn't been strong enough to prevent the State Department from continuing to cerify that Colombia is cooperating with the U.S. in combatting drug trafficking and improving its human rights record. Nor was it strong enough to prevent U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns from making the preposterous claim in last Wednesday's Miami Herald that "Led by President Alvaro Uribe, Colombia has reclaimed its territory from drug gangs, restored respect for the rule of law, battled vicious terrorist groups and returned democracy to the people."
Somebody apparently forgot to tell both Burns and the AP that Mancuso and Castaño headed the "drug gang" that [whistleblowers now claim helped to deliver the 2002 election for Uribe.]
Of course Mancuso has acknowledged as much -- when Uribe was elected he told reporters "now we have a president."
As usual Mancuso has the last laugh. The AP quotes him as saying that "''Eliminating illegal crops, we'll eliminate drug trafficking in Colombia." But being the old hand that he is, Mancuso knows that as long as there are wealthy and well connected narcos willing to import the chemicals needed to make cocaine and to put up the money necessary to process it and smuggle it out of Colombia, there will always be more poor campesinos willing to push further into the rainforest to plant new coca.
Of course the campesinos get more U.S. planes spraying poison on their crops while the big narcos get to pull up a few plants and then walk free.
Back in 2001, a parish priest in Putumayo told me, "We look on in great pain when we see how the farmers are trampled on like cockroaches while the big traffickers walk the streets."
All just a new twist on the same old story.