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Reporter's Notebook: Stephen Peacock

Documents Governing Counterdrug Deployment Sites Now Available

Posted by Stephen Peacock - June 13, 2005 at 7:21 pm
Several documents detailing the use of Central American and Caribbean airports by counter-narcotics units of the United States Air Combat Command were published today on the Internet, an action undertaken specifically for the benefit of companies seeking to do business with the U.S. government. These formal agreements between the U.S. and The Netherlands and Ecuador, respectively, govern what are known as Forward Operating Locations, or FOLs -- existing sites in Aruba, Curacao and Ecuador containing special facilities and airstrips where U.S. counterdrug aircraft are deployed.

The documents -- which include slides from a recent Industry Contractor Conference -- pave the way for the upgrading of existing FOLs while also opening the door to build additional facilities in the region. (For an earlier breaking story from NarcoSphere on Forward Operating Locations, see U.S. Air Force Preparing to Build More Counterdrug Deployment Sites

Notable excerpts from both the U.S.-Netherlands and U.S.-Ecuador agreements include the granting of immunity from criminal prosecution to U.S. FOL personnel and their dependents. This status is equivalent to what is granted to "administrative and technical staff" of the U.S. Embassy under the Vienna Convention. However, these personnel "shall not be immune from the civil and administrative jurisdiction... for acts performed outside the course of their duties."

On the other hand, the U.S. offers to give "sympathetic consideration to a request for a waiver of immunity in cases which the authorities [of Ecuador or The Netherlands] consider to be of particular importance."

Agreement of Cooperation Between the U.S. and the Kingdom of the Netherlands Concerning Access To and Use Of Facilities in the Netherlands Antilles [Curacao] and Aruba For Aerial Counter-Narcotics Activities (March 2, 2000)

Operating Arrangement for the Forward Operating Location at the Ecuadorian Air Force Base In Manta Ecuador

Agreement of Cooperation Between the U.S. and Ecuador Concerning U.S. Access To and Use Of Installations at the Ecuadorian Air Force Base In Manta Ecuador (Nov. 12, 1999) Document is split into two separate sections, one English, one Spanish.

Slides from U.S. Air Combat Command Industry Day (June 1, 2005)

About Stephen Peacock

Biography
I'm a former Washington, DC, journalist (1998-2003) who most recently worked for Communications Daily and Washington Internet Daily (WID), investigative newsletters that cover the telecommunications, broadcast and Internet industries. Following the 9/11 attacks, my news beat expanded beyond Capitol Hill telecom/TV/IT policy and began to include technology-policy coverage at the Pentagon and Dept. of Homeland Security. I've written over a thousand articles about government and industry affairs, and I'm pleased to say that I was the reporter who broke the story about the Total Information Awareness surveillance/data-collection initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. I've written articles for publications including NACLA Report on the Americas, Drug Enforcement Report, Corrections Journal, SoJo Mail (Sojourners), and the Tampa Tribune. I've also written a memoir about my former career as a plainclothes security officer of the Helmsley Palace hotel in New York City, Hotel Dick: Harlots, Starlets, Thieves & Sleaze. I look forward to contributing to the fine work being done here at NarcoSphere.

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Broken Link-Manta Operating Arrangement

Submitted June 14, 2005 - 2:46 pm by Stephen Peacock
For reasons unknown, the link for the "Operating Arrangement for the Forward Operating Location at the Ecuadorian Air Force Base In Manta Ecuador" document was not -- and apparently cannot be -- copied and pasted without the URL getting jumbled in the process.

The "fix" for this is to access the list of amendments to the original presolicitation notice at http://www1.eps.gov/spg/USAF/ACC/AACCONS/FA4890%2D 06%2DR%2D0001/Attachments.html , then scroll down to and click on Manta Operating Arrangement Posted on June 13, 2005.

My apologies if the unworkable link caused any frustration for any readers.

Direct link

Submitted June 14, 2005 - 3:05 pm by Jeff Simpson
This link will get you directly to the document.

The problem seems to be with how Scoop interprets text.

Links and URLs in Notebooks Entries

Submitted June 14, 2005 - 5:24 pm by Dan Feder
Stephen – I took the liberty of editing all those long URLs out of the story and just linking document titles. Jeff is right; scoop, in “autoformat” mode, looks for signals in the text to be able to understand what to do with it. Since parentheses are really not supposed to be in URLs, scoop got confused in the case of this URL.

In general, I’d say it’s easier on both the software and the reader to simply link relevant words without pasting the entire URL into the text itself. To make a link, you can either use the old HTML syntax - <a href="http://www.url.com">linked text</a> - or the autoformat syntax – [linked text http://www.url.com]. I’ve added a brief note about this to the new notebook entry page.

Thanks

Submitted June 20, 2005 - 10:19 am by Stephen Peacock
Dan & Jeff:

Your help is appreciated, as I agree that the lengthy URLs were unsightly, to say the least.

Steve

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