AN ALLIANCE OF MURDER

KILLING PABLO, by Mark Bowden; Atlantic Monthly Press, 296 pp., $25.

"Killing Pablo," the tale of how the U.S. government used a death squad to
hunt down and murder Colombian drug traffickers, is probably just a
footnote in the story of official counternarcotics mayhem generated by the
United States.

But what a footnote! In brisk prose and compelling detail, Philadelphia
Inquirer reporter Mark Bowden documents the murderous impulse that lies at
the heart of U.S. counternarcotics programs in Latin America.

The story begins in 1989, when Washington sent a top secret Army
intelligence unit known as Centra Spike to help the Colombian government
neutralize the mighty Medellin cocaine cartel -- especially its top man, a
pudgy little psychopath named Pablo Escobar.

Using small spyplanes to intercept communications -- particularly cellphone
calls -- Centra Spike pinpointed the locations of cartel leaders and passed
them to the Colombians.

It wasn't innocent police work. The first time Centra Spike produced a
narcotrafficker's address, the Colombians sent a squadron of T-33
fighter-bombers to annihilate him.

Washington neither complained nor backed away. Instead, it dived in deeper.
Eventually the FBI; CIA; DEA; the National Security Agency; the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the Army's Delta Force; the Navy; and the
Air Force would all be lending a hand.

The aid to Colombian security forces continued even when U.S. operatives
saw them torturing suspects. And even when the Colombians organized a death
squad known as the People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar, or Pepes.

The Pepes murdered suspected drug barons, and their lawyers, cabdrivers,
real estate agents, apartment building managers, horse trainers, and maids
- -- perhaps as many as 300 in all.

It's a complicated tale that might have overwhelmed a lesser writer, but
Bowden skillfully weaves a narrative studded with anecdotes that are
hilarious, horrifying, and tragic, sometimes simultaneously.

Escobar was eventually killed -- probably murdered by a Colombian cop as he
lay helpless from a leg wound. And his death barely caused a blip in
Colombia's cocaine trade, which passed to the country's Marxist guerrillas.

But then, the U.S. drug warriors were never under any delusion that they
were going to stop cocaine from flowing in.

"It was about democracy, the rule of law, standing up for justice and
civilization," Bowden writes about America's involvement.

In other words, by trampling Colombia's constitution and subverting its
already shaky criminal justice system, the U.S. government sought to
civilize Colombia.

As we used to say about Vietnam, sometimes you've got to destroy the
village in order to save it.