The anti-Cuba TV Marti produced by the U.S. government may soon expand its reach across Latin America. According to a recently obtained planning document, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) hopes to step up pressure on Cuban leader Fidel Castro by securing air time on DirecTV.

It intends to accomplish this task by convincing TV programmers currently leasing time via DirectTV's Latin American channels to sell portions of their time slots to BBG's International Broadcasting Bureau. Those channels cannot otherwise be distributed to audiences in the U.S., the document emphasizes.

A U.S. House International Relations panel is holding a hearing today on the topic of "the illicit drug transit zone in Central America." Vice Admiral Guillermo E. Barrera, chief of the Colombian Armed Forces, will provide the committee with a private briefing following the open testimony segment.

The hearing will be held at 1:30 p.m. in Rm. #2172 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

The U.S. State Dept. is ramping up efforts to bolster the capabilities of the Haitian National Police (HNP), which is preparing for national elections in December while contending with continuing violence and domestic turbulence. State’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), which in May 2004 restarted its Police Advisory Group (PAG) in Haiti, intends to deploy a program director/senior advisor to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince to coordinate the group’s activities.

The facilitation of weapons sales from the U.S. to the government of Haiti will be among the many responsibilities of the new advisor, according to a personal services contracting-document that the State Dept. on Friday uploaded to the federal Electronic Posting System database.

A Burlington, Vermont-based research and consulting firm yesterday was awarded a $190 million contract to carry out a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) project in Colombia. Associates in Rural Development, Inc. (ARD) received the award as part of USAID's "Areas for Municipal Level - Alternative Development Program," whose primary policy goal is to encourage Colombian coca farmers to switch to forestry and non-drug agricultural businesses.

The U.S. Trade & Development Agency (USTDA) is providing the financial backing for a pre-cleanup "feasibility study" of the Lake Valsequillo watershed area in the Mexican states of Puebla and Tlaxcala.

The role of a journalist in the Americas and globally is a precarious one, fraught with a combination of physical danger from hostile forces as well as undue pressure from corporate boardrooms and governmental bodies. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, based in the University of Texas at Austin, focuses its efforts on tracking such developments through a weekly news compilation/summary and Web site in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

The U.S. Treasury Dept. intends to globally deploy advisors for its Financial Crimes Law Enforcement Program, and has identified an "immediate" need to recruit a resident advisor specifically for operations in Paraguay. Treasury's Office of Technical Assistance launched its recruitment campaign yesterday (Oct. 20), according to a solicitation document obtained via the federal Electronic Posting System contractor database.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) last week rescinded a potential $20.5 million contract that would have enlisted the help of nongovernmental organizations in its Judicial Reform Project in Colombia – a U.S. Dept. of Justice-assisted program whose stated goals include the strengthening of the government of Colombia's justice system and to “enhance access to justice (especially for the poor and disenfranchised).”

The UH-1 military helicopter, also known as the "Huey," played a critical role in U.S. "casualty extraction" and troop deployment missions in Viet Nam. It now appears that an upgraded version of the Huey, the UH-1N, will serve in a similar capacity in Colombia, where the U.S. State Dept. intends to bring aboard yet another private contractor to coordinate such activities.

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, last week launched its search for a COLAR (Colombian Army) Aviation UH-1N Program Manager, a slot that must be filled by a U.S. citizen who has or can obtain a secret clearance. According to a personnel services contract-document discovered during a search of the federal Electronic Posting System database, the individual whom the Narcotics Affairs Section selects for the job will oversee multinational and multi-cultural aircrews “on missions that include air assault/air movement, force protection for aerial eradication, aerial interdiction, and forward, area aerial resupply, replenishment and sustainment activities.”

The usual suspects -- DynCorp International, Kellogg, Brown & Root, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon  -- over the next two months will jockey for a position at the table  to secure contracts to expand U.S. counterdrug aircraft-deployment sites in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

These multinational behemoths, part of an unaffiliated contingent of 30 companies, will meet U.S. officials at what are known as the Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) in Curacao and in Manta, Ecuador, to assess the scope of the projects. As NarcoSphere/Narco News Bulletin reported back in May (see U.S. Air Force Preparing to Build More Counterdrug Deployment Sites), the U.S. has indicated that the first phase of this initiative will focus on the modernization of existing FOLs, while serving as a stepping stone to develop new locations across the hemisphere in the future.