CALI DRUG CARTEL'S BETRAYER TELLS HIS STORY

He used to be Jorge Salcedo, and he helped authorities bring down the
cocaine kingpins of Colombia.

Miami - The official end of the notorious Cali cocaine cartel came
late last year here with little more commotion than the rap of a
judge's gavel.

The Colombian drug lords Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, 63, and Gilberto
Rodriguez Orejuela, 67, entered guilty pleas and were ushered off to
federal prison for the next 30 years - no Miami Vice-like dramatics,
no bodies riddled with gunfire in the manner of Medellin rival Pablo
Escobar.

But behind the bloodless fall of the ruthless Orejuela brothers and
collapse of their $7-billion-a-year empire lies a little-known story
of daring and betrayal.

Aiding U.S. drug agents unexpectedly and at great risk was a senior
cartel official, the head of security and intelligence for the
syndicate. For years he had protected the bosses, their wives and
children. Then, he crossed them.

"It was very risky, but I was trapped in a nightmare, in a totally
corrupt environment. I had to escape," he explained.

Federal prosecutor Edward R. Ryan called the defection a shock and "a
very personal betrayal" to the Cali bosses, leaving the man marked for
death. He is still "No. 1 to be killed," Ryan said.

The man has lost much of what he once took for granted: his home, his
country, his name, even his past.

From somewhere deep inside the federal witness protection program that
harbors him and his family, he has shared pieces of his story in
sporadic telephone conversations with a reporter.

"Obviously, I'm not looking for celebrity - it would jeopardize our
safety," he told The Times. "But people should know what I know now.
My story should start by saying, if you are invited into such an
organization, stop - stop and run away.

"Don't think you can ever fully escape."

He used to be Jorge Salcedo.

The wonkish, soft-spoken family man was an unlikely drug gang recruit.
He held university degrees in mechanical engineering and industrial
economics. He started his career designing forklifts and other
machinery. Later he ran an oil recovery business.

His father was a retired Colombian army general and respected
diplomatic figure. The son was an officer in the army reserves, but he
regarded himself more as an engineer than a soldier. He became
proficient in electronic surveillance, which increasingly drew him
into counter-terrorism assignments.

His military service in the late 1980s coincided with one of
Colombia's bloodiest periods.

Anti-government guerrilla groups unleashed waves of kidnappings that
terrorized the nation. Some targeted the rich drug lords. At the same
time, rival cocaine cartels were warring with one another, killing
scores of police, judges, politicians and innocent bystanders.

Military leaders grew restless because of the security failings of an
impotent and corrupt government and tried to fill the vacuum,
sometimes taking military actions without approval from officials in
Bogota, the capital.

Enter Salcedo. He was secretly dispatched to Europe by military
leaders to assemble a team of mercenaries. In an unusual move largely
financed by Medellin cartel bosses, he was to organize an
off-the-books, paramilitary operation - an armed assault on a
guerrilla mountain fortress called Casa Verde.

It was aborted at the last minute. However, word of Salcedo's role
reached Cali, 185 miles southwest of Bogota. The drug bosses there,
engaged at the time in a vicious feud with Escobar and the Medellin,
summoned the 41-year-old engineer to visit.

"Some people in Cali want a word with you," Salcedo was told in a
phone call in January 1989.

"I had to go. It was not an invitation I could refuse," he said. "In
Colombia, even honest people have to deal with the cartels."

The next morning, he caught the first Avianca flight to
Cali.

The compound of Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela filled a city block. In
addition to living quarters, it contained a large swimming pool, a
tennis court and half of a soccer field.

Salcedo was escorted to a wing of the residence that contained
Miguel's offices - with marble floors, wood paneling, leather
furniture, fine porcelain and four cartel dons who were waiting to see
him.

Jose Santacruz Londono got right to the point. Pablo Escobar of
Medellin was "a bandit a criminal a crazy guy" who was threatening
to kill their wives and children. Miguel, the younger of the two
Orejuela brothers, was even more direct: He wanted Escobar dead.

Escobar was the most powerful criminal in the world. The Cali brothers
earlier had dispatched an unsuccessful hit squad to Medellin, 155
miles northwest of the capital. But it was the would-be assassins who
ended up dead. All six of them. Another attempt with a massive car
bomb succeeded only in injuring one of Escobar's children.

The Cali dons knew Salcedo had ties to mercenaries. They knew he
helped plan the aborted raid on the guerrillas. They told him his
skills were required to end Escobar's reign of terror and to help
protect them and their families.

Thus was Salcedo drafted into the Cali cartel.

"I did not feel I was a criminal," Salcedo recalled. "I had been
fighting against the guerrillas. Now I was against Pablo Escobar."

Almost immediately, Salcedo helped devise an assault
on Escobar's Medellin compound.

Two heavily armed Hughes 500 helicopters, painted in the olive green
of Colombia's national police, flew a 12-man team of Salcedo's
mercenaries to a mountain staging area.

But descending through a cloud bank, one of the choppers hit a
mountaintop. The pilot was killed. The attack had to be abandoned.

A second assault was planned, this time from a base in Panama. The
mostly British mercenaries were in hotels for nearly two months
awaiting orders to attack. Salcedo said they got bored and rowdy.

"It was difficult to keep these wild people quiet," he said. "They
fought, they drank, they wanted women every day - they were like mad
dogs."

Finally the raucous strangers attracted so much attention, including
television news coverage, that Salcedo was forced to scrap yet another
mission.

Meanwhile, Salcedo beefed up security for the Orejuela brothers and
their extended families - a mother, four sisters, in-laws, wives and
children.

"The families were huge. We had about 150 persons dedicated to caring
for the safety of these people," Salcedo recalled.

Local police helped. Some were on the cartel payroll. Some regularly
shared information with Salcedo.

"Miguel and Gilberto were able to corrupt anyone," he
said.

Finally, Escobar went to prison, where he continued to run his cartel
and menace rivals from his cell. Salcedo was ordered to arrange an
aerial bomb attack on Escobar's wing of the prison.

"It was an absurd idea. I told them it was unlikely to succeed. But
Miguel said, 'Do your job,' " Salcedo recalled.

He traveled to El Salvador and, through a military contact, purchased
four 500-pound bombs for about half a million dollars.

Waiting at a rural airstrip for the dawn arrival of a cargo plane from
Cali to retrieve the illicit munitions, Salcedo was distressed to see
an executive jet swoop out of the clouds. Its limited cargo space
wasn't designed for bombs. Only three fit, stacked in the passenger
cabin.

Local authorities closed in. The leftover bomb was abandoned. Salcedo
barely escaped El Salvador and arrest before the botched pickup was
exposed.

The episode drew international attention, and another assault plan was
junked.

There was no turning back for Salcedo. The Colombian government now
knew he had worked for the Cali cartel. And the Medellin gangs knew he
was plotting to kill Escobar.

But in Cali, Salcedo found personal safety as he settled in to
managing security for the Orejuela family.

"I had nothing to do with drugs. I told myself I was not one of them,"
he said.

Salcedo had arrived in Cali just in time for a business boom. The
early 1990s were, he said, the golden years for the cartel.

Business improved even more after December 1993, when Escobar died in
a blaze of gunfire. The Medellin boss had escaped from prison, and
from continuing Cali assassination plots, in 1992 only to be tracked
down by national police 15 months later. Police were guided to his
hide-out by radiophone signals. He and his bodyguard were gunned down
as they tried to flee across the rooftops.

The Orejuela brothers promptly absorbed much of the Medellin cartel
and ultimately controlled 80% of the international cocaine market. At
its peak, the family ran what one U.S. Justice Department official
told Congress was "the most prolific and successful criminal
enterprise in history."

Then came the crackdown.

In Miami, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents targeted the
Cali cartel's distribution organizations. Smuggling routes from
Florida to Texas were compromised and had to be replaced. Key
operatives were arrested and had to be bribed, or killed, to keep
silent. Shipments of dope and money were lost.

In Bogota, the Clinton administration pressed Colombian political
leaders to arrest major traffickers.

"Miguel was getting paranoid," Salcedo said. "He saw traitors
everywhere."

Desperate for protection from what they feared most - extradition to
the United States - the cartel bosses poured millions of dollars into
the bank accounts of Colombian politicians. The new constitution
included a no-extradition provision for native Colombians.

As U.S. prosecutor Ryan later would note, then "the bodies began to
show up."

The far-flung cartel was directed by Cali-based Colombians, but its
operatives included many non-Colombians susceptible to extradition. The
"extraditables" came to be seen as security risks.

One day in the summer of 1994, Salcedo was dispatched along with the
cartel's chief enforcer to a farmhouse outside Cali. The Orejuela
brothers wanted four Panamanian operatives questioned.

"There were suspicions of a leak," Salcedo said.

He found the four held in different rooms of the house, each bound and
tied to a chair - three men and a woman.

Salcedo realized that this was to be more than an interrogation
session. He made an excuse and tried to leave the house. The enforcer
insisted that Salcedo accompany him.

"I had to watch him strangle them," Salcedo said. The chilling episode
was a turning point for him. "I wanted to go to someone, but I didn't
even know on what door to knock," he said.

Salcedo waited for the chance to use a public phone at a Cali
telecommunications building. He dialed the main switchboard of the CIA
in Langley, Va.

"Listen, this may sound unusual," he said he told the duty officer who
answered. "I'm calling from Cali, Colombia, and I have important
information on how to locate the heads of the cartel."

"I'm sorry. I don't know where to direct your call," the voice in
Langley responded, according to Salcedo.

"They treated him like a crackpot - I confirmed that," drug
enforcement agent Edward J. Kacerosky testified years later.

No one took up Salcedo's offer of assistance. Meanwhile, the cartel
bosses launched an internal blood bath targeting other
extraditables.

"Miguel literally tried to wipe out all non-Colombian nationals
operating in Colombia," said Ryan.

The Orejuela brothers saw that U.S. pressure on the Bogota government
was forcing Colombian authorities to crack down on the cartels. They
tried to negotiate a voluntary surrender.

The entire cartel brain trust would go to jail in exchange for a
limited five-year sentence to be served at a prison built, or
substantially remodeled, at cartel expense.

No deal.

Finally, threatened with arrest, the brothers fled their palatial
homes. The billionaire fugitives continued to manage the syndicate
while moving from one safe house to another.

One of the few who consistently knew where to find them was
Salcedo.

He also knew who was on the cartel's growing list of security risks
marked for assassination. In the summer of 1995, some of those hits
were Salcedo's responsibility to carry out - including cartel chief
accountant Guillermo Pallomari, a Chilean.

Faced with orders to kill a colleague and friend, Salcedo grew
desperate. He tried again to signal U.S. authorities. This time he
contacted a Miami lawyer he trusted who could make the connections.
Still, Salcedo used great care - calling from a public phone and
leaving only a vague message offering "to be helpful."

Within days, Salcedo and Agent Kacerosky were on the phone together.
Though wary of cartel and Colombian government wiretaps, Kacerosky
landed one of the most remarkable confidential informants in all of
international crime.

But that was the easy part.

Within a week of his first conversation with a U.S. agent, Salcedo
faced his first life-threatening decision. He knew where Miguel would
be in the morning. He had been summoned to the hide-out to give an
impatient Miguel a detailed report.

"He wanted to know what I was doing" to complete the assassination of
Pallomari. Instead of preparing his report, Salcedo called in federal
police.

The raiding party that hit Miguel's door about dawn the next morning
included two DEA agents and an elite search team under Gen. Jose
Serrano, chief of the Colombian national police.

Inside the apartment they found no one.

Many safe houses were known to conceal vaults built into the walls for
magician-like escapes. The Bogota team listened, tapped on cement
walls and floors, then pulled out power drills and bored into
suspicious areas.

Across town, Salcedo's pager went off. Still no sign of Miguel, the
agents told him. He sensed doubts about his information.

Salcedo insisted that the drug lord was there. He also directed the
raiding party to a desk in one of the rooms. It had a thick top, he
said, that concealed a secret compartment.

Searchers dismantled the desk. Its secret chamber gave up a trove of
records that delighted Serrano - "30,000 checks, cartel payments to
police, 150 politicians, reporters, everyone," Salcedo said.

The sensational evidence was rushed back to Bogota.

About that time, however, cartel-friendly police arrived at the search
site. They noted the physical damage - broken desk and holes in the
walls - and found that the search team lacked a proper warrant.
Furthermore, the American drug agents were armed, a violation of
Colombian law.

Under threat of arrest, the U.S. agents and Serrano's team abandoned
their search for Miguel Orejuela.

Salcedo soon learned of "the horrible situation."

On a cartel radiophone he overheard a call between Miguel and his son,
William. The drug boss had just been rescued from an escape vault with
the help of a local police captain.

He had emerged bleeding, an angry, wounded bear, apparently injured by
one of the power drills.

Listening in on the phone conversation as Miguel reported to his son
the details of his ordeal, Salcedo's only thought:

"What a nightmare. I am dead."

Salcedo was a prime suspect, one of only five to 10 people who knew
where Miguel had been hiding.

The American DEA agents insisted on taking him into protective custody
immediately. But Salcedo refused, knowing that more time was needed to
evacuate his extended family from Colombia.

"I decided to play on the fact that I might not be discovered,"
Salcedo said. "I immediately started investigating the leak."

The ploy seemed to deflect suspicion. It bought time. Salcedo used it
to help steer accountant Pallomari toward the DEA. He also helped
agents raid a cartel bomb-making site and a weapons storage warehouse
with hundreds of machine guns.

"The risk was so incredible," Agent Kacerosky said in testimony. "I
had to advise him to be [more] careful."

Salcedo and his U.S. handlers arranged to meet in a rural area outside
Cali.

"If I was seen talking to an American, I would be killed," he said.
"So we always arranged our meetings in the woods. This time it was
near a sugar cane plantation."

It was nearly dark. Salcedo in his silver Mazda sedan was joined on an
isolated dirt road by two U.S. agents crammed into a small, rented
car.

"It should have been the perfect lonely place," Salcedo said. But
suddenly police surrounded them. By unnerving coincidence, they were
looking for the killer of a taxi driver.

The police demanded identity papers and prepared to search their cars.
Salcedo knew that if the DEA agents were identified, their case would
be blown and his life would be in even more jeopardy.

He took the police aside and pulled out 500 pesos.

"What are you doing in the middle of a cane field?" one officer
inquired. Salcedo said he responded:

"Don't ask - just take this and go."

When they pressed for information, Salcedo told them: "We are
homosexuals. They are foreigners and will be very embarrassed by any
questions."

The policemen took the 500 pesos and drove off.

From mid-July into August 1995, Salcedo continued to play a dual role
- - the man in charge of security for Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, and his
secret betrayer.

He stayed close to Miguel and his family, at every opportunity sharing
car rides and meeting with them alone to let his vulnerability erode
suspicions.

The family became most concerned about accountant Pallomari. In the
wrong hands, his extensive records of bribes and business dealings
posed a greater threat to operations than the inconvenience of the
brothers spending a few years of lavish confinement in a Colombian
jail. Salcedo feigned progress toward setting up an assassination.

A police raid was scheduled one night to arrest Pallomari at a hiding
place. An incident also was arranged so he would inexplicably die in
custody.

That night, Salcedo arrived just ahead of the police. He told
Pallomari he was about to be arrested and would die in jail. Though
Pallomari did not trust Cali's chief of security, the fearful
accountant went along to another hide-out.

"How did you know where to find me?" Pallomari asked the next
day.

"I said, 'Guillermo, I've been taking care of you a lot.'
"

But Salcedo's ability to protect Pallomari and himself was nearly
exhausted. Then he got another opportunity and called his DEA contacts
in Bogota.

At dawn on a Sunday in August, four weeks after the failed raid that
left Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela wounded, another police strike team
arrived outside an apartment building in Cali.

Accompanied by two U.S. agents, the 15-man team of Colombian national
police poured silently into the building.

Miguel heard them too late. He was arrested without incident in his
underwear, scurrying for a vault in the wall.

Almost immediately, people began to disappear - Salcedo and his
family, Pallomari - but this time it was into the custody and
protection of U.S. authorities.

In the days that followed, the entire Cali cartel infrastructure was
exposed. Within a few months, about 130 people were indicted. It was,
Agent Kacerosky later would observe tersely, "historical."

Salcedo pleaded guilty in Miami to a single count of racketeering and,
at an unusual sentencing hearing, was universally praised by agents
and prosecutors who recommended unprecedented leniency. U.S. District
Judge William Hoeveler agreed, noting Salcedo's "service rendered to
this country" and actions that "saved the lives of a number of people."

But it was not the end of the Cali cartel.

As Colombian citizens, the Orejuela brothers could not be extradited
to the United States. Though that law was repealed after the
politicians behind it were exposed for taking bribes from the cartels,
the brothers remained in Bogota's La Picota prison, beyond the reach
of U.S. authorities.

Federal drug agents would have to prove that the cartel leaders
continued to operate their smuggling empire from prison, after the
extradition ban was lifted.

They did just that. Since then, the entire Cali cartel hierarchy has
been extradited, thanks to Salcedo. For his service, the relocated
Colombian received rewards of about $1.7 million.

But more than a decade after betraying his bosses, Salcedo's life
remains in jeopardy.

"He has done an inestimable service to the U.S. and Colombia," said
his lawyer, Robert F. Dunlap of Miami.

Ryan, the federal prosecutor, in a recent interview called Salcedo one
of the country's "least-known heroes," one of the people most
responsible "for bringing down the most powerful criminals in the world."

Ryan still marvels at Salcedo's contribution, saying he and federal
agents thought at the time that the effort had no more than "a 1%
chance to succeed."

He recalled: "You can't imagine just how alone this guy was - talking
on phones that he knew were bugged knowing so well how easily he
could be compromised. He must have brass balls this big."

Miguel Orejuela was extradited to Florida in 2005, a year after
Gilberto. Today, the brothers are serving what probably will be life
terms in U.S. federal prison.

The former Jorge Salcedo remains in hiding - his location unknown even
to his lawyer - somewhere in the United States.

About this story

Jorge Salcedo's contacts with The Times began with a handshake in
Miami during a brief court appearance in October 1998. In the years
since, he has made sporadic telephone calls to a Times reporter from
undisclosed locations.

In telephone interviews ranging from a few minutes to more than an
hour, he shared details of his role in the cartel and occasional
frustrations with life in U.S. exile. Years passed between some of his
calls.

The Times has no information about his whereabouts and no way to reach
him. All contacts were by phone and were initiated by Salcedo.

This account is based on those interviews, corroborated by court
records, sworn testimony and additional interviews with federal agents
involved in the case.