Delahunt says he has received new information on the extent to which U.S. corporations supported the AUC, which existed with relative impunity throughout Colombia, inflicting a government-protected, drug-funded reign of terror from roughly 1997 to 2004. (Whether that period has truly ended if of course debatable). Last year, the coal company Drummond was found not liable for the paramilitary murders of three mine union officials after extraordinary maneuvers by the judge and the Uribe administration to prevent key witnesses from testifying. And while Chiquita Brands was fined a sum amounting to less than one percent of its annual income for making payments to the AUC (the company’s leaders portraying themselves in the press as victims of extortion), no one in the justice department or the press seemed concerned that thousands of weapons for the AUC had entered Colombia through Chiquita’s private ports.