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

FRUSTRATING HUNT GIVES RISE TO VIGILANTISM

Chapter 11 of a continuing serial

On Jan. 30, 1993, a car bomb exploded in Bogota, blowing a crater
several feet deep in the street and sidewalk and taking a savage bite
out of a bookstore.

Bogota was accustomed to car bombs by now, but even by that weary
city's standards this was a nightmare. The bookstore bomb was
estimated to have contained 220 pounds of dynamite.

Inside the store, children and their parents had been buying school
supplies. Torn body parts were strewn about. In all, 21 people were
killed, 70 more injured in an attack blamed on Pablo Escobar.

Bill Wagner, the CIA station chief in Colombia, recoiled when he
stepped past the police barricades. The first thing he saw was a
severed hand in a gutter running with blood. It was the hand of a
small child.

He thought: "We are going to kill this son of a bitch if it's the last
thing I do on this earth."

Despite the determination of the United States, the expenditure of
hundreds of millions of dollars, and the deployment of elite U.S.
military and espionage units, six months had passed in the hunt for
Escobar and the effort had yielded little but frustration. Their prey
was always one step ahead. And even though Escobar was on the run, he
was quite capable of ordering terrorist bombings anywhere and at any
time.

But his pursuers were growing stronger. Discipline instilled by a new
commander, Col. Hugo Martinez, and Delta Force training had vastly
improved the speed and efficiency of the Colombian National Police
Search Bloc, based at an old police academy in Medellin. The academy
now felt almost like home to Delta chief "Col." Santos, Joe Vega and
the other Delta soldiers and Navy SEALs who regularly rotated through.

There had been successes, most notably on Oct. 28, 1992, when Brance
"Tyson" Munoz, one of Escobar's most notorious sicarios, or assassins,
was killed in the proverbial "gun battle with national police," a
phrase that drew winks at the U.S. Embassy.

Centra Spike, the top-secret U.S. Army electronic-surveillance unit,
had first located Tyson at a house outside Medellin. A killer whose
nickname came from his resemblance to the American boxer, Tyson was
renowned for his ferocity and loyalty to Escobar, whom he had known
since childhood. He had gained weight and grown his hair long in an
effort to disguise himself.

Tyson was located when an informant took advantage of reward money
offered by the U.S. Embassy. Delta operators in Medellin then watched
him for days, determining that every day at noon he played soccer in
the yard of his house. A raid was planned for one of these soccer
sessions. The Search Bloc wanted to catch him outdoors and unarmed.

On the day of the raid, as Centra Spike operators listened in, they
picked up a call tipping off Tyson. The killer at first misunderstood
the warning. Assuming that Escobar himself was the target, Tyson
quickly called the boss and warned him to move. Predictably better
informed, Escobar explained the mistake, and Tyson fled to a new
hideout, this time in a ninth-floor apartment in northern Medellin. He
shared the apartment with his girlfriend and their small child.

Centra Spike promptly found him again by tracking his wireless phone
calls; Escobar and his men had not yet learned how quick and precise
the surveillance could be. Again Delta operators watched him through
high-powered lenses, studying his routine.

The raid was launched at 1 a.m. with the whispered radio code "The
party has begun." Search Bloc officers found Tyson's apartment secured
with a heavy steel door, which they blew off its hinges. The breeching
charge was a bit overdone. It blasted the door across the apartment
and punched it completely through an outer wall, sending it crashing
to the street nine stories below.

Tyson was shot, according to the Search Bloc's report, as he climbed
out a back window to the fire escape. It was particularly good
shooting. He took a bullet between the eyes.

There was always a steep price to pay for these victories. On the day
Tyson was killed, four police officers were shot in retaliation, and
three died. In the six-month hunt for Escobar, more than 65 police
officers had been killed in Medellin, including some Search Bloc
members whose identities were supposed to be secret. Often these men
were killed in their homes or while traveling to and from the academy,
which demonstrated that Escobar knew their identities, work shifts and
home addresses.

The officers' funerals were grueling. Colombians were not fastidious
embalmers, so the special chapel the National Police had built in
Bogota often reeked of death, an odor that in time seemed to hover
over this entire enterprise.

The women would wail and the men would gasp and weep and then retire
to get staggeringly drunk. After attending one funeral in which a
pregnant widow clutching a small child threw herself on her husband's
casket and had to be pulled away, the normally stoic DEA country
chief, Joe Toft, went back to his secure apartment and cried.

Escobar issued occasional galling communiques. He had given a rambling
interview in September to a journalist, in which he portrayed himself
as a persecuted national hero with broad popular support. He had
donated millions of dollars for soccer fields and housing in urban
slums.

"Sixty percent of the people say that the government betrayed me . . .
," Escobar said. "I think all the saints help me, but my mother prays
a lot for me to the child Jesus of Atocha." Escobar said he would like
to "die standing in the year 2047," and added: "Those who know me know
that I have a good sense of humor and I always have a smile on my
face, even in difficult moments. And I'll say something else: I always
sing in the shower."

Bill Clinton took office in January 1993 with an inclination to
reverse the priorities of President Bush's drug war. The new
administration planned to attack addiction at least as hard as it went
after suppliers. Bush's defeat meant that Ambassador Morris Busby's
days in Bogota were numbered, and few in the embassy believed that
President Clinton and his new ambassador would share their enthusiasm
for the hunt for Escobar.

It felt as if time was running out. The prospect of Escobar slipping
away once more was frustrating to the Americans who had devoted so
much time, money, effort and emotion to the chase.

It was at precisely this moment that the hunt for Escobar took a
dramatic new turn. One day after the bookstore bombing, "La
Cristalina," a hacienda owned by Pablo Escobar's mother, was burned to
the ground. Two large car bombs exploded in Medellin outside apartment
buildings where Pablo's immediate and extended family members were
staying. No one was killed - the guards had been warned to flee
minutes before the bombs went off - but the message was clear.

Several days later, another of Escobar's country homes was torched.
All of these acts targeted individuals who, while related to Escobar,
were not themselves considered criminals. In the timeless hammerlike
prose of the police teletype, DEA agent Javier Pena explained in a
cable to headquarters in Washington that a new, homegrown resistance
had emerged:

"The CNP believe these bombings were committed by a new group of
individuals known as 'Los PEPES' (Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar/
People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar). This group, which has only
recently surfaced in the Medellin area, has vowed to retaliate against
Escobar, his family, and his associates, each and every time Escobar
commits a terrorist act which injures innocent people."

The Colombian police, Pena wrote, had determined that the targets of
three attacks attributed to Los Pepes were Escobar's wife, mother and
aunt. And while the police and Colombian government had officially
denounced the attacks, he wrote, "they may secretly applaud these
retaliatory acts."

In the cable, Pena outlined Escobar's likely response:

"He will either slow his terrorist campaign in order to protect his
family and property, or he will escalate his attacks to demonstrate
his power and lack of respect and fear of his enemies."