MAP's index for the series: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n000/a251.html

Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia

U.S. SPY DATA, VIGILANTE KILLINGS START TO COINCIDE

Chapter 20 of a continuing serial

In the fifth-floor vault at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Centra Spike
analysts were not missing the distinct pattern in the Los Pepes hits. The
death squad was killing off the white-collar infrastructure of Escobar's
organization, targeting his money-laundering experts, bankers, lawyers and
extended family - names listed on the very charts that Centra Spike's
surveillance experts and the CIA had painstakingly assembled over the
previous six months.

Often the hits corresponded with intelligence Centra Spike was turning over
to CIA Station Chief Bill Wagner, who was passing it along to Colombian
police commanders in charge of the Search Bloc. More and more of the people
identified by Centra Spike's Beechcraft spy planes were turning up dead.

Despite this, Centra Spike's operators felt they were well within the legal
boundaries of their mission. They gave their information to Wagner, and
what happened to it after that was, as far as he was concerned, none of
their business. If Col. Hugo Martinez and his men were attempting to
enforce Colombia's laws and arrest criminals, whatever they did on their
own could hardly be the responsibility of the embassy.

If Los Pepes were working with the Search Bloc, that would explain their
apparent access to fresh U.S. intelligence. After the vigilante group's
murders and bombings on April 15, a Drug Enforcement Administration memo to
Washington summed up the official attitude at the embassy:

While not completely unexpected, the attacks by Los Pepes further
demonstrates their resolve to violently retaliate against Escobar each and
every time Escobar commits a terrorist attack against the GOC and/or the
innocent citizens of Colombia. Although the actions are not condoned nor
approved by the CNP nor the BCO, they may persuade Escobar to curb such
behavior for fear of losing members of his own family. Too, these types of
attacks will seriously cut into those assets owned by Escobar and his
associates.

As long as any American linkage with Los Pepes remained circumstantial, the
embassy had little to fear.

And as long as the Colombian government did not object, and the new U.S.
administration and Congress did not notice, the pursuit of Escobar could
proceed as a war. The phrase dirty war was redundant. Innocent people would
always get killed in the cross fire, but at least Los Pepes was choosing
targets with a great deal more precision than Escobar was.

After Los Pepes killed one of Escobar's top lawyers, Guido Parra, and
Parra's teenage son, the public outcry prompted President Cesar Gaviria to
make another public statement denouncing the group. This time he offered a
$1.4 million reward for information leading to the arrest of members of the
vigilante squad. Los Pepes promptly issued a communique announcing that it
was disbanding, having "made a contribution" to the effort against Escobar.

Several months earlier, the secret informant Dolly Moncada had given the
Americans the names of six key members of Escobar's organization who she
thought should be taken out, one way or another. By summer, three had
surrendered and were in prison and one was dead. Of the lawyers she had
named, all were either dead or had publicly resigned.

Despite Los Pepes' public pledge, the killings continued. The death toll
now included Escobar's brother-in-law, Carlos Henao, and his cousin,
Gonzalo Marin. Another nephew was kidnapped.

Fear of Los Pepes had taken root in Escobar's family. By the end of June
1993, many members of the extended family had fled the country, or had
tried. The United States was using its influence to deny them safe havens.
When Nicholas Escobar, a nephew of Escobar's, and his family were traced to
Chile, the embassy prevailed on the government there to evict them. The
family appealed through Chile's courts, which bought them a few weeks
before the appeal was denied and they fled to Germany.

In early July, the president of neighboring Peru announced that his country
would not allow Escobar's relatives to enter even as tourists. Meanwhile,
Escobar's brother Argemiro, nephew, sister Luz Maria and her husband and
three children were discovered in Costa Rica, where they were deported and
flown back to Medellin.

Back in Colombia in mid-July, Escobar's wife filed a legal petition
demanding that the Colombian government allow her children to leave the
country. It was denied.

Escobar made another offer to surrender in March, just before the Search
Bloc killed one of his most notorious assassins, a man known as "El Chopo."
The offer was delivered by an Escobar lawyer to a Roman Catholic bishop.

By now the fugitive drug boss, his ranks riddled by deaths and surrenders
and increasingly isolated and vulnerable, had dropped many of his former
demands for surrender. He no longer insisted in living in his own prison,
surrounded by his own men and guards. Now he asked that his family be given
government protection - earlier he had demanded U.S. government protection
- - that he be given a private cell with his own kitchen (to prepare his own
food to prevent poisoning), and permission to phone his family three times
a week.

President Gaviria reiterated the government's refusal to accept any
conditions for Escobar's surrender, but Fiscal General Gustavo de Greiff
sounded a dissenting view: "I do not see any difficulty in abiding by these
requests, not as a concession but as a solution."

De Greiff was increasingly at odds with the Gaviria administration. Elected
independently, unlike the American system in which the attorney general is
a presidential appointee, he felt his role was to uphold the nation's laws
and basic human rights. He viewed the official search for Escobar as a
killing mission, and began pressing instead for Escobar's capture or surrender.

His office assumed responsibility for protecting the drug boss' immediate
family, offering bodyguards (paid for and fed by the Escobars) for the
apartment building where they lived in Medellin. De Greiff also pushed for
investigation and prosecution of Los Pepes.

By early August 1993, the new Clinton administration overseers had noticed
how neatly the dirty work of Los Pepes dovetailed with the U.S. mission
against Escobar, and representatives from the Justice Department and the
Pentagon flew to Bogota to demand answers.

Ambassador Morris Busby was asked directly about Los Pepes in August, when
Brian Sheridan, the Clinton-appointed civilian overseer at the Pentagon for
covert operations, visited Bogota. Sheridan left the meeting convinced
there was no evidence linking Los Pepes to the Search Bloc.

Busby had heard about evidence to the contrary, but nothing that he found
convincing. He would later say he had not seen DEA reports suggesting such
a connection, including one written by agent Steve Murphy noting that "the
police were cooperating with the group at some level, including sharing
information."

Busby himself had written about the alleged connection a month earlier.

In a secret State Department cable titled "Unraveling the Pepes Tangled
Web," dated Aug. 1, just days before the meeting with Sheridan (a cable
Sheridan would not see until months later), the ambassador noted that he
had met with President Gaviria on April 13 to "express his strongest
reservations about the group." Busby wrote that he had discovered that
Fidel Castano, one of the suspected Los Pepes leaders, was in constant
contact with the national police.

The memo said Busby requested that all police contact with Castano cease,
and he was assured that it would.