June 16, 2002
Narco News '02
Gorman's
South American Round-up:
"My Friend,
Langley" in
Brazil, Perú
and Colombia
Changes
Unnoticed
in the
United States
By Peter Gorman
Special to the Narco News Bulletin
Despite
most of the US press paying little attention,
several major events have occurred in South America during the
past two months. Some of them, like April's two-day coup of Venezuela's
Chavez, did get coverage, even though nearly all of it missed
the point. The May 6 claim by John Bolton, the Undersecretary
of State for Arms Control, that Castro was manufacturing biological
weapons in Cuba also briefly hit the newsstands; the subsequent
US admission that the claims were completely invented, however,
was mostly overlooked.
But several other events have taken place
or are taking place that should be closely watched as well. Some
of them I've written about; others I've held back on to see what
develops. And during the past few weeks several conversations
with my friend Langley have shed light on some things, at least
a few of which this reporter missed completely. Of course, when
talking with Langley it's important to keep in mind that he may
be feeding me disinformation at the Company's behest, or may
be feeding me disinformation that he's been given as genuine.
But much of what's been passed over the past 20 years has proven
true, so I tend to go with him, though cautiously.
That said, here are some of the important
stories coming out of South America and Langley's imput on a
few of them:
COLOMBIA
Álvaro Uribe Veléz, former Mayor of Medellin during that city's heyday as the world's cocaine
capital, was elected president in the May 26 elections with enough
of a majority to avoid a runoff. Uribe, who was clearly the US
choice as Colombia's next president because of his hard-line
stance against the left-wing FARC rebels, was greeted in his
winning hotel suite by US Ambassador Anne Patterson in a show
of US-solidarity with his agenda. Or so it seemed. In fact, while
Patterson's victory visit told the world we were behind him,
what it told Uribe was that he would be closely watched and had
better be behind the US.
The US decision to back Uribe-who takes
office August 7- had been made months earlier, but was set in
stone on April 14, when a remote-controlled bomb was set off
on a bridge just after a motorcade in which Uribe was riding
to stump the northern coastal Colombia city of Barranquilla had
passed over it. While four civilians were killed, Uribe was unhurt.
But Uribe, who had just prior to the blast suffered devastating
blows to his campaign with the
release of information tying his campaign manager to the cocaine
trade and himself to the brutal AUC paramilitaries, saw his
stock rise in the blast's aftermath.
Uribe blamed the FARC for the blast while
cynics saw it as the doing of his own campaign to solidify the
need among the Colombian populace to once-and-for-all eliminate
the FARC with all necessary force. But the truth, according to
Langley, was that the bomb was arranged by the US CIA as a political
persuader. Uribe, says Langley, was being told in clear terms
that while the US would see that he was elected, he is expected
not to simply go along with the US agenda in Colombia, but with
the US agenda everywhere. For the duration of his term, says
Langley, Uribe will mouth agreement with every major political
decision the US makes everywhere in South America.
And Ambassador Anne Patterson's appearance
at his victory party was a reminder that the US will be watching
closely. To prove his willingness to go along with the program,
shortly after his victory the Harvard-educated Uribe announced
that "We need the help of the USA in order to preserve our
democracy.''
Another
major event that was missed by much of the US press and, according to Langley, misinterpreted by those
who did catch it, was the March 17 assassination of Catholic
Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino, Colombia's highest cleric.
Duarte was assumed to have been killed for having called for
a boycott of Colombia's March 10 Congressional elections-a call
which resulted in a 62% voter-absence. Duarte had called for
the boycott in response to what he said was the presence of drug-money
in those elections. What speculation there was at the time over
who was responsible for Duarte's death involved either the drug
lords-the official Colombian political line, or the FARC, who
were blamed by AUC paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño.
Cynics saw it as the work of either Uribe's camp - hoping blame
would fall on the FARC - or the AUC paramilitaries themselves
because of their leadership role in the cocaine trade. Regardless,
the Duarte assassination helped the Uribe camp during the presidential
campaign because it helped focus public opinion on the lawlessness
in Colombia that Uribe was promising to eliminate.
But in a conversation shortly after the
May 26 election, Langley proposed to this reporter an altogether
different scenario: the killing, he said, was planned and carried
out by the Catholic church on orders from Rome. Duarte, said
Langley, had been getting more and more active politically for
several years, and with Colombia being overwhelmingly Catholic,
his power was increasing fantastically. Rome - up to and including
the Pope himself - had on several occasions during the past several
years, suggested that Duarte either retire or back off non-Rome-authorized
politics. More recently, says Langley, Rome had ordered Duarte
to leave politics alone. When Duarte's response was to order
a boycott of Colombia's March 10 Congressional elections, he
sealed his fate. "Political opinion flows from Rome in the
Catholic church, not to Rome," explained Langley. "And
this was a clear message to all Catholic hierarchy that that
remains as true today as it was five hundred years ago."
Interestingly, more than a week after
Langley's assertions in the Duarte assassination, on June 8,
Uribe announced the itinerary for his first trip abroad since
being elected the next Colombian president: Washington, Canada,
France, and the Vatican, for a private conversation with Pope
John Paul ll. The trip has since been expanded to include Spain
and England, but the thank you visits with Washington and the
Vatican are the only ones of significance.
A
third event of importance that occurred
in relation to Colombia recently was the brief May 9 AP mention
of a shipment of 3,000 Kalashnikov rifles that were allegedly
headed to Panama but wound up instead in the hands of the AUC
paramilitaries. The shipment, which included 5 million rounds
of ammunition, was manufactured by two Israeli-owned Nicaraguan
arms companies.
The story, though brief, is this: the
two Israeli-owned Nicaraguan arms companies were commissioned
to make the rifles and rounds and ship them to Panama-though
why Panama, which has no Army, needed them is uncertain. But
for some reason, the arms ended up aboard the Otterloo, a Mexican-crewed
ship flying under the Panamanian flag and were unloaded into
the hands of the AUC at a small Colombian port shortly before
midnight on November 10, 2001. Nicaragua admits selling the guns
at a tenth of their value but officials there say they had proper
documentation from Panamanian security. Panama denies ever having
ordered the guns and the Panamanian company which owned the Otterloo
has since been dissolved and authorities have been unable to
contact its former owner.
What is almost an afterthought in the
story is that the US State Department, through Wes Carrington,
spokesman for the Department's Western Hemisphere section, admitted
that it knew of the shipment but hilariously claims it thought
the weapons were collectors' items intended for the US collectibles'
market.
No one needed Langley to explain this
one, but he did nonetheless. The arms were always intended for
the AUC, he said, to insure continued mayhem in Colombia during
the period when the election was heating up and Horatio Serpa,
the candiate calling for continued peace talks with the FARC,
was in the lead. Continued mayhem, much of it caused by the AUC
but blamed on the FARC, was what eventually cost Serpa the lead
and subsequently, the election.
Another
Colombia-related recent event was the May 1 certification by Secretary of State Colin Powell that the Colombian
military has met the US Congress' human-rights requirements,
freeing up $62 million in US military aid. Powell's certification
means that Colombia's military has made progress in vetting those
forces involved in human rights violations and in severing it's
ties with the right-wing AUC paramilitaries that the US continues
to arm.
In
addition to the above scandals, in
May, a routine audit of US Plan Colombia funds turned up $2 million
missing that was intended for the administration of the Colombian
counter-narcotics police. In the ensuing scandal, General Gustavo
Socha, head of the counter-narcotics police resigned and several
officers were fired. The money was apparently diverted to pay
for personal expenses.
PERU
On
April 29 the Peruvian administration of Alejandro Toledo called off a joint US/Peruvian military exercise
that had been in the planning stages for more than a year and
was scheduled for May 15 to August 15 in the Amazon region of
the Andean country. The exercise, called New Horizons, would
have brought a rotating force of 220 US Army engineering and
medical troops-mostly Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers-to
Peru's jungle to build schools and medical clinics. New Horizons
has been held in a number of Latin American countries including
neighboring Bolivia and Ecuador, since 1996.
The official explanation for calling off
the exercise is that Peru suspects the US would subsequently
pressure them to permit a permanent
base on its soil, which is forbidden by the Peruvian constitution
unless authorized by Congress. The situation is much more complicated
than that, however. A refusal by ex-President Alberto Fujimori
to permit the US to use a secret base built near the Peruvian/Colombian
border by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1998-1999 was perhaps
the single most important factor in the US decision to stage
the public scandals that eventually toppled Fujimori and forced
him to run for cover in Japan. That base was intended for use
by both US Special Forces and CIA-contract mercenaries to cut
off the southern escape route most likely to be used by the FARC
revolutionaries in Colombia when the Colombian military pushed
them southward.
Following Fujimori's demise, the interim
government of Valentin Paniagua said it would do whatever it
could to assist the US in implementing Plan Colombia-which, though
unsaid, included the use of that base. But when
Narco News reported that a team of former Navy SEALS had been
recruited to eliminate fleeing FARC rebels as they reached
the Putumayo river-the border between Peru and Colombia-that
operation had to be cancelled, much to the annoyance of the US
government.
The plan for the training exercise then,
was seen by Peru as a substitute for the two earlier failed plans
by the US to gain more of a foothold in the Amazon region. Certainly
no one who has ever spent time in the Peruvian Amazon believes
there is either a shortage of schools or medical clinics. In
truth, had the exercise taken place near either Iquitos or Pulcallpa,
the two largest cities in the Peruvian Amazon, it would have
been disastrous for the locals, who already generally despise
American troops for leaving loads of fatherless white babies
when their tours are up, their frequent drunken behavior and
their ability to walk away from motor vehicle accidents with
financial and criminal impunity.
Those factors, in addition to the car
bomb that went off in front of the US Embassy in Lima just prior
to President Bush's visit in late March which killed nine Peruvians-arranged,
as many Peruvians suspect, by the US CIA but blamed on the defunct
Shining Path rebels-have combined to put Peru's President Alejandro
Toledo in a difficult position. If he went ahead with the planned
military operation and it resulted in a permanent US base, he
would lose all credibility with the Peruvian populace. If he
went ahead with the op and it resulted in drawing Peru into the
US-imposed war on terrorism against their neighbors, it would
similarly destroy his base of support. And even if he went along
with the training exercise and it didn't result in either drawing
Peru into the war on terrorism or a permanent US base in Peru,
it would still go down badly with the Amazon states-because of
the havoc the American soldiers would likely cause among the
locals - a block Toledo may need to ensure a future second term
in office.
The official announcement of the cancellation
was made by Peru's Defense Minister Aurelio Loret and Foreign
Minister Diego Garcia Sayan. Though Toledo himself has thus far
had no comment on the matter insiders say the decision was entirely
his and may even have been made in part because he is allegedly
so upset about the US muscle-flexing, Lima car bombing.
Unfortunately for Toledo, while calling
off the exercises sits well with his constituency, it may not
sit well with Uncle Sam, which has been calling all important
financial and political shots in Peru for more than a decade.
And Toledo might do well to remember that the last time a Peruvian
President decided to become overly nationalistic he was forced
not only from office but to flee the country. And according to
Langley, this was Toledo's only chance: one more mistake and
there will be major scandals affecting him prior to the next
election that will prevent him from winning a second term.
Despite
the success of the Peruvian coca eradication
program during the 1990s - which saw Peru's crop fall by 70%
annually - authorities there now concede that planting is up
and the US goal of complete eradication is not only unrealistic
but something they will not attempt. ''Saying we would eradicate
all crops would be as difficult as the United States saying it
would eradicate drug consumption in four years. It's not possible,''
said Fernando Rospigliosi, Peru's interior minister.
As
coca crops increase in both Peru and Colombia,
the Bush administration has decided to revive the drug-plane
shootdown policy over those two countries that was suspended
in April, 2001 following the downing of a missionary plane outside
of Iquitos, Peru.
''The amount of drugs moving through
there has never been higher,'' a former Pentagon official told
the Washington Post in early May, ignoring the implicit indictment
of the failure of Plan Colombia.
The changes being considered before the
program is officially revived include the donation of all CIA-spotter
aircraft to Colombia and Peru, and the elimination of CIA-contract
pilots from the spotter aircraft. Instead, Colombia and Peru
will have the planes flown by their own men, with a US official
onboard. Which means that while the US will continue to call
the shots on which planes to shoot out of the sky, its hands
will never again have to be sullied like they were when missionary
Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter Charity were killed in
a shootdown called by the US-contract pilots.
BRAZIL
One
more locale which may soon see US Banana Republic diplomacy is
Brazil, where perennial far-left Workers'
Party candidate Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva is making
a surprising showing in polls leading toward Brazil's Primary
elections on Oct. 6 and Secondary elections on Oct. 27. Da Silva's
election - he's currently leading the field - would present the
US with the spectre of a non-US aligned block in South America,
with Chavez not-yet-gone in Venezuela, generally leftist Argentina
as well as Brazil all opposing Bush's plan for the implementation
of a Free Trade Zone throughout the Americas by 2005. While the
State Department's official comments have suggested that a da
Silva win would not necessarily hinder US Free Trade plans, to
this reporter, it would seem an untenable situation for the US.
And several government sources speaking on condition of anonymity
have already begun joking about what type of accident the boys
at the CIA will arrange for him if he looks to still be ahead
in the polls by late September.
for
more Narco News, click
here
What
They Ignore, We Restore