'EXPRESS' TRACKING COLOMBIAN COCAINE

TAMPA - Once the domain of powerful cartels, Colombian cocaine
trafficking is increasingly the realm of violent paramilitary armies
enmeshed in the country's bloody, 40-year-old civil war.

Having landed their biggest prize from the old Cali Cartel, the Tampa-
based investigators of ``Operation Panama Express'' are pursuing a
right-wing paramilitary organization, the AUC, that authorities say
controls most of the cocaine shipped from Colombia's northern and
western coasts.

Authorities say Colombian paramilitary groups finance their activities
through drug trafficking. About 3,500 people die every year in
Colombia's civil war.

The AUC, or the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, was formed by wealthy
landowners and drug lords to fight the left-wing, Marxist rebels of
Colombia's largest paramilitary organization, known as the FARC.

After starting out as a band of ``brutal vigilantes,'' the AUC has
absorbed many of the successors to the Medellin and Cali cartels,
according to Adam Isacson, senior associate with the Center for
International Policy in Washington.

Drug Enforcement Administration supervisor Jeff Brunner said: ``Over
the years, they [the AUC] have worked to control the coast, knowing
that's where all the dope's got to leave from.''

They have ``their hand in every bit of dope. It has to, at a minimum,
be authorized and taxed by them and, at a maximum, controlled by
them,'' he said.

Although traditional drug lords still exist in Colombia, they have to
work with the AUC if they want to ship their loads, investigators say.

The first AUC member to be extradited to Tampa, Luis Manuel Sanchez
Varilla, also known as ``Mocho,'' told investigators what happened
when the FARC tried to move a load of cocaine through AUC- controlled
territory.

According to a government court filing, Sanchez said he was dispatched
with 20 AUC soldiers to seize the load. The FARC members were allowed
to leave once they admitted owning the cocaine. Sanchez then turned
the load over to higher-ranking members of the AUC.

According to the court papers, those AUC officials ``are known to law
enforcement and are still under investigation.''

Sanchez is scheduled to enter a guilty plea in U.S. District Court in
Tampa this week. He faces charges of conspiracy to import and
distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine into the United States.

According to the State Department, 90 percent of the cocaine consumed
in this country originates from Colombia, which is also a
``significant supplier'' of heroin to the United States.

Colombia also ships cocaine to Europe and Africa, Assistant U.S.
Attorney Joseph K. Ruddy said.

Steven W. Casteel, the DEA's assistant administrator for intelligence,
told Congress last year that the AUC is known to assassinate suspected
insurgent supporters and engage guerrilla combat units.

``Colombian National Police reported the AUC conducted 804
assassinations, 203 kidnappings and 75 massacres with 507 victims
during the first 10 months of 2000,'' Casteel said.

The biggest Panama Express catch to date, Joaquin Mario Valencia-
Trujillo, a multimillionaire who was an influential leader in the
notorious Cali Cartel, was extradited to Tampa in March. Officials
said his capture and prosecution marked the high point for the phase
of the investigation that sought to bring down cartel drug lords.

Unlike other investigations, which end when arrests are made, Panama
Express continues and evolves, following changes in Colombian maritime
drug trafficking. Panama Express involves an alliance of federal,
state and local law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, DEA and
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Fueled by intelligence gained mostly through arrests and prosecutions,
the investigation - one of the largest in U.S. history - follows the
trail of information to track the sources of cocaine.

Officials say that trail is increasingly leading to the AUC, which the
U.S. government designated a foreign terrorist organization Sept. 10,
2001. Authorities say it is now an umbrella organization of about 13
self-defense groups.

Another AUC member, Arturo Calderon-Salamanca, is in jail in Colombia
awaiting extradition to Tampa. The charges against him are sealed.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ruddy said he could not comment on whether he
expects more indictments. According to court records, investigators
are looking at other AUC members.

Sanchez worked for Guillermo Perez-Alzate, commander of the AUC's
``Southern Block,'' according to government court filings.
Perez-Alzate allegedly controlled the manufacture and transportation
of tons of cocaine off the Pacific coast of southwest Colombia to
Mexico for distribution in the United States.

Sanchez, who was indicted in 2002 and extradited this year, has
already given investigators from Colombia and the DEA information
about Perez- Alzate's drug activities, according to a prosecution
brief filed in federal court in Tampa. Speaking to investigators in
October 2002, Sanchez described arrangements made that August to ship
3 tons on a go-fast boat that was intercepted by the Colombian navy.

He also described being the radio operator in September 2002 for a 2-
ton shipment that was also intercepted by the Colombian navy,
according to the court filing.

Two years ago, in a case separate from Panama Express, the Justice
Department unsealed an indictment in Washington against AUC leader
Carlos Castano-Gil, charging him and others with trafficking more than
17 tons of cocaine into the United States and Europe.

Fight Against Drugs, Terror

Attorney General John Ashcroft said the indictment demonstrated ``the
convergence of two of the top priorities of the Department of Justice:
the prevention of terrorism and the reduction of illegal drug use.''

Castano, however, was never extradited. He disappeared in late April
and may have been murdered because he offered to turn himself in and
give Colombian authorities information about the drug trade in
exchange for avoiding extradition to the United States, according
Isacson, of the Center for International Policy.

Castano also was concerned about the image of the AUC, and had made
several public statements about the need of the organization to get
out of the drug trade, said Isacson, who described Castano as ``very
pro- American.''

According to Ruddy, the AUC controls access to the northern and
western coasts of Colombia. Anyone interested in shipping drugs from
those areas must do so with the consent of the AUC. The organization
either owns the drugs or forces traffickers to pay for protection and
other services, such as hiding the cocaine and preparing it for
shipment, federal investigators say.

Isacson said drug lords have bought their way into the AUC, gaining
control of factions the way someone in the United States might pay to
operate a retail store franchise. Former cartel traffickers are
interested in joining the paramilitary organizations because of
ongoing peace talks between the groups and the Colombian governments.
A possible outcome of those peace talks, Isacson said, is amnesty for
past crimes.

FBI Supervisory Special Agent Juan Carlos Molina said some drug lords
have also bought their way into the AUC to avoid the taxes levied by
the paramilitary organization on their drugs.

The drug influence of the AUC is increasingly dramatic, the DEA's
Brunner said. He said that three or four years ago, the organization
did nothing but authorize drug traffickers to operate. Now, he said,
the AUC is ``working hand in hand, in partnership with the owners [of
the cocaine] and using their infrastructure to guard it, the sale of
it, the stashing of it off of the coast [and] the preparation of it to
get on boats.''

Old-fashioned drug traffickers still exist and finance loads of
cocaine, Brunner said. But their activity is conducted ``at a minimum,
in partnership with the AUC.''

For example, Brunner said, if a cocaine owner wants to ship 2,000
kilograms of cocaine, he has to sit down with the AUC and discuss how
profits will be split. The owner might agree that half the load
belongs to the AUC and half belongs to the owner. In exchange for
that, the owner will get protection ``from other bad guys ripping it
off,'' Brunner said.

The AUC will also provide other services, such as staging the drugs in
preparation for shipping. ``The traditional owners know how to do this
on their own,'' Brunner said, but they are forced to work with the
AUC.

Unlike the old cartel days, however, he said, the AUC is not concerned
with the distribution of cocaine within the United States.

Mexican Distributors

``They're happy with turning it over to Mexican groups that are
concerned with distribution,'' Brunner said.

The FBI's Molina agreed, saying, ``We have not seen AUC here in this
country in the sense of distribution like the traditional drug lords
of before.''

Because the AUC is involved in peace talks with the government,
Isacson said, there may be pressure in Colombia to pull back on some
of the drug trafficking investigations. ``On the U.S. side, there's
going to be continued pressure to go after these guys,'' he said.
``You've got a lot of drug warriors in Washington who don't really
care about the peace process.''

In general, Isacson said, the peace process in Colombia has seen a lot
of false starts. ``There's not a lot of confidence in this process,''
he said. Peace talks that began between the AUC and the government
recently were almost derailed, for example, because the AUC had
kidnapped a former senator. The talks started only after the senator
was released.

Both Brunner and Molina said they have not felt any political pressure
one way or another in their investigations.

``We've never been given any marching orders, nor given any agreement
with Colombia that says we should not continue to do anything we
normally do, which is investigate drug crimes and charge'' whomever
the evidence points to, Brunner said. ``If that would be AUC members,
so be it.''

However the peace talks turn out, Isacson said, ``obviously the drug
trade is going to continue in Colombia.''

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.