LET'S ALL GO TO BOGOTA

Ironically, The U.S. News Corps Is Moving In At A Time When Everyone In
Colombia Wants Out

As recently as last year, major U.S. newspapers were loath to send their
reporters to Colombia. "It's an edgy story that involves a lot of people
who don't play by normal rules," says Andrew Rosenthal, foreign editor of
The New York Times. But sometimes you have to risk lives to get the story,
and Colombia is now such a hot spot that the Times plans to move its Buenos
Aires bureau to Bogota or Caracas sometime soon.

Other papers are following suit. The Los Angeles Times plans to open a
Bogota bureau next week, and The Washington Post is moving its Caracas
bureau chief there as well. The big three will join The Miami Herald, the
Houston Chronicle, and several wire services that have been in Bogota for
years.

Ironically, the U.S. news corps is moving in at a time when everyone in
Colombia wants out. Rosenthal says the Andean region is important both
because of the drug trade and because of Congress' decision to commit $1.3
billion of (mostly) military aid to Colombia. "The inevitable Vietnam
comparisons aside," he says, Plan Colombia represents "a major military
involvement" and "the most aggressive foreign policy story" today.

Until recently, the Times maintained bureaus in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos
Aires, with Rio correspondent Larry Rohter assigned to cover Colombia and
Venezuela. But as the Colombia situation heated up last year, covering it
became more of a hassle for Rohter, who must travel an entire day just to
get there.

By last fall, Rosenthal says, Times editors agreed that "we weren't doing
enough" on the Colombia story and needed somebody on it full time. The
answer was Metro reporter Juan Forero, a Colombian citizen who was "really
eager to do it." When the Times first dispatched Forero, they worried about
his safety, but months later, Rosenthal says, Forero has "done well" and
the reception to his stories has been "really good."

Forero has gotten help from Buenos Aires bureau chief Clifford Krauss. But
when Krauss completes his three-year tour of duty this spring or later, it
won't be the usual changing of the guard. At that point, the Times will
move its Buenos Aires office to Caracas or Bogota; Rohter will be relieved
of Venezuela and Colombia and reassigned to cover Chile and Argentina; and
a new bureau chief will be appointed to run the Times coverage of
Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and other countries in the territory. Rosenthal
says "we haven't decided yet" whether Forero will run the new bureau.

Also this spring, The Washington Post is moving Caracas bureau chief Scott
Wilson to Bogota. According to foreign assistant managing editor Philip
Bennett, this is not so much about content-"We're already deeply committed
to our coverage"-as about logistics. When the Post opened its Caracas
bureau last summer, the editors knew Wilson would be spending most of his
time in Colombia. Even so, they hesitated to relocate Wilson, his wife, and
two kids to Bogota, because "Colombia has a record of violence against the
media that's unmatched almost anywhere in the world." But so far no one is
going after the foreign press, and "while the safety of our correspondents
is important, we're not going to be scared off the story."

Bennett concedes that opening a Bogota bureau is a response to the
increased U.S. embassy presence there and to a story that is "really
evolving quickly." He says the story is no longer just about drugs, but
about "the enormously complex mechanics of violence and of political
conflict in Colombia."

While Post editorials continue to support Plan Colombia, opinion writers at
the Times seem less comfortable with the dirty little secrets involved.
Recent Times editorials have pointed out that this botched war is likely to
strengthen right-wing paramilitary groups, put American soldiers and/or
contract employees at risk, and destabilize the Andean region by spreading
the corruption and violence of the drug trade. And while we can't stop the
coca production, it turns out that the U.S. has ulterior motives for a
military buildup in a country that lies between the Panama Canal and
Venezuelan oil fields.

So far, so good. Now if only Juan Forero would take off the blinders. In
the past year of Colombia coverage, the Times has not once published the
words "Navy SEAL" or "Green Beret." But according to a February 23 Miami
Herald story, Colombia is swarming with U.S. mercenaries under contract
with private companies to execute Plan Colombia. These companies include
DynCorp, which provides plane and helicopter pilots, Military Professional
Resources, Inc., which provides military advisors, and Northrop Grumman,
whose employees "maintain five radar stations" in Colombia.

According to the Herald's Juan O. Tamayo, the U.S. government has no
authority to stop these mercenaries from associating with paramilitaries or
entering into combat. DynCorp employees are "under strict orders to avoid
journalists," but congressional sources say "many are hard-boiled,
hard-drinking veterans of the U.S. military" for whom the best introduction
is "a case of beer." According to wire stories, a helicopter carrying
DynCorp employees was recently fired on by Colombian guerrillas.

Next to mercenaries, the missing link in the Times coverage is an
unexpurgated report on the Colombian paramilitaries, who are responsible
for about 80 percent of the killings in that country. On March 4, Forero
weighed in on the paramilitaries, but his story focused more on what the
Colombian government says it's doing to stop them than on the fact that the
right-wing troops are still getting away with murder. Fairness & Accuracy
in Reporting recently accused Forero of downplaying the number of
paramilitary killings in Barrancabermeja in a January 22 Times story, while
reporting not a word on the January 17 paramilitary massacre of two dozen
civilians at Chengue. By contrast, the Post's Scott Wilson wrote an
"excellent" front-pager on Chengue that ran on January 28. FAIR says Times
readers "would be hard-pressed to know that anything had happened at all."

In his Nation cover story this week, Marc Cooper recounts a local report on
the January 17 massacre, to wit: "A right-wing paramilitary group entered
the northern town of Chengue . . . rounded up the villagers and beat
twenty-six of them to death with stones and machetes. As sixty homes were
set on fire, the attackers fled with ten other live victims." That same
week, Cooper writes, Clinton's State Department waived its obligation to
prevent human rights violations associated with Plan Colombia-another key
point Forero seems to have overlooked.

For a gnarly look at what's coming up, check out Peter Gorman's February 19
story on Narconews.com. The dateline is Iquitos, Peru, a city close to the
Colombian border that has been recently infiltrated by ex-Navy SEALs and
state-of-the-art gunboats. Based on his conversations with ex-SEALs, Gorman
writes that their mission is to "ply the Putumayo river and kill any FARC
rebels . . . trying to retreat onto Peruvian soil." The mercenaries tell
Gorman that they will be paid for each left-wing Colombian they kill.