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

A FORMER ALLY OFFERS A PROFILE OF ESCOBAR

Chapter 15 of a continuing serial

After her husband was murdered by his former boss Pablo Escobar, Dolly
Moncada began providing valuable information to the Americans who were
helping direct and finance the hunt for the fugitive drug lord. Among
her suggestions was that the authorities talk to Colombian drug
traffickers held in American jails.

Soon after Dolly was debriefed by the DEA in Washington, D.C., in late
1992, an incentive was offered to jailed Colombian drug dealer Carlos
Lehder, a former associate of Escobar's. Lehder, seeking a reduced
sentence, responded with his own suggestions for closing in on his
former ally.

In a letter to the DEA from federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan., where
he had been given a new identity under the federal witness protection
program, Lehder recommended that the Americans create a Colombian
"freedom fighters brigade, controlled by the DEA, and independent of
the Colombian politicians, police or army." Lehder wrote that "the
rich, the poor, the peasant, the political left, center and right are
willing to cooperate" in the effort to bring Escobar down.

Of more immediate use was Lehder's description of Escobar's daily
routine while in hiding - how he would move from safe house to safe
house, how he would almost certainly stay close to his home base in
and around Medellin. He drew a crude map and provided insights into
Escobar's habits and preferences:

"Escobar is strictly a ghetto person, not a farm or jungle person. . .
. Escobar always tries to keep within distance range for his cellular
phone to reach Medellin's phone base. That's approximately 100 miles,
so he can call any time.

"Generally, P. Escobar occupies the main house with some of his hit
men, radio operator (Big High Frequency radio receiver), cooks, hores
[whores] and messengers. For transportation they have jeeps,
motorcycles and sometimes a boat. I have never seen him riding a
horse. Escobar gets up at 1 or 2 p.m. and goes to sleep at 1 or 2 a.m.

"Fugitive Escobar uses from 15 to 30 security guards, with arms and WT
[walkie-talkies]. Two shifts of 12 hours each. Two at the main road
entrance, some along the road, the rest around the perimeter of the
main house (one mile) and one at his door. . . .

"The main house always has two or three gateway paths which run to the
forest and thus toward a second hideout or near a river where a boat
is located, or a tent with supplies and radios. Escobar is an obese
man, certainly not a muscle man or athlete. He could not run 15
minutes without respiratory trouble. Unfortunately, the military
police has never used hunting dogs against him."

Lehder told the agents that any time the lookouts on the far perimeter
saw a vehicle approaching or a low-flying airplane or helicopter, they
would "scream through those walkie-talkies" and Escobar would
immediately flee.

In addition to Dolly Moncada and Lehder, the DEA noted with approval
the cooperation of another former Escobar associate with a grudge.
Colombian paramilitary leader Fidel Castano was a charismatic assassin
who occasionally exported drugs and smuggled diamonds. A onetime
friend of Escobar's who had helped him hide during the government's
first war against the narcos, Castano turned against Escobar after the
murders of Castano's friends, the drug-dealing Moncada and Galeano
brothers.

In a dispatch to DEA headquarters on Feb. 22, 1993, DEA agent Javier
Pena identified Castano as "a cooperating individual who was once a
trusted Pablo Escobar associate." He reported that Castano had
actually accompanied the Search Bloc on a raid 10 days earlier, when
one of the unit's top officers drowned as the raiding parties crossed
the Cauca River. Castano had reportedly made heroic efforts to rescue
the man.

In Castano, Lehder and the Moncada and Galeano families, the hunt for
Escobar had gained allies willing to play by the bloody rules of
Medellin's underworld. The Colombian government and the U.S. Embassy
used them throughout the fall and winter of 1992 to gather information
about Escobar and his organization.

As early as September, the search effort seemed to be acting on Dolly
Moncada's suggestion to go after Escobar's lawyers. On Sept. 26, the
Search Bloc raided an estate owned by Escobar's attorney, Santiago
Uribe, one of those named by Dolly. The raiders were in the process of
ransacking the place when Uribe himself drove up. He was arrested and
questioned.

Uribe acknowledged that he was one of Escobar's lawyers but denied
knowing his fugitive client's whereabouts. Among Uribe's files the
Search Bloc found letters from Escobar and tapes linking him to drug
dealing, bribes and murder - including the assassination just days
before of Judge Myrian Velez, one of the "faceless" judges in
Medellin, who had been appointed, supposedly in secret, to investigate
the murder of a crusading newspaper editor. Velez had been preparing
to indict Escobar as the "intellectual author" of the murder.

The evidence added to the government's criminal case against Escobar,
but by now few in the government - and virtually no one within the
Search Bloc - were talking about arresting Escobar and putting him on
trial. As a DEA memo pointed out in summarizing the raid against
Uribe, the Colombian police officer in charge "relayed a message that
they were continuing their search for Escobar and preferred that
Escobar not surrender."

As determined as its leadership was, the Search Bloc was still a step
or two behind its prey. The team simply could not close the last one
hundred yards.

This was the assessment delivered by "Col. Santos," the chief Delta
operator assigned to the Search Bloc headquarters in Medellin. After
the first blundering raids in 1992, when Escobar and his entourage had
driven down one side of a mountain while the Search Bloc lumbered up
the other, the unit had blown one good lead after another.

Despite these failures, the Americans were impressed with Col. Hugo
Martinez after he took command following Escobar's escape. None of the
Americans assigned to the Search Bloc headquarters had been in
Colombia during the first war against Escobar, so they didn't realize
at first how far back went this war between the colonel and the drug
lord.

The colonel knew how the game was played. American soldiers working
closely with the Search Bloc knew that when Martinez grabbed somebody
associated with Escobar, the man had better start talking fast. If the
man did talk, he would end up arrested instead of having his photo
added to the growing pile of photographs of bloody corpses in the
colonel's desk drawer.

Between October and the end of December 1992, 12 major players in
Escobar's empire had been killed by the Search Bloc. Often the photos
in the colonel's drawer would show the victim with a bullet wound in
the forehead, or through the ear. Each one was reported killed "in gun
battles" with the Search Bloc.