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

LUXURY 'PRISON' AFFORDS A RARE LOOK AT ESCOBAR

Chapter Nine of a continuing serial

Four days after Pablo Escobar's escape from prison in July of 1992, a team
of American DEA agents took a leisurely tour of La Catedral, the site of
Escobar's luxury prison suite.

The mountaintop "prison" was now a hot tourist attraction for top-ranking
American and Colombian officials. CIA station chief Bill Wagner would tour
it days later with a video camera, accompanied by several members of his
staff. The visits confirmed all the worst suspicions about Escobar's
supposed imprisonment, but it also gave the Americans a rare glimpse into
the life and mind of the world's most famous fugitive.

Although the agents suspected the Colombian army of destroying or carrying
off most of the documents left behind, including floppy discs and the hard
drives from Escobar's computers, much of interest still remained.

First, there was the sheer opulence of the place. The "cells" were lavishly
furnished suites with living rooms, bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens and
balconies that offered a stunning vista of Medellin, the surrounding valley
and hills.

Just outside Escobar's suite was a small table with telephones and a metal
box mounted on the wall that was the main circuit box for all the
communications lines to the prison - leaving little doubt who was in
charge. Down a flight of steps from Escobar's balcony was an elaborate
dollhouse, large enough for his 7-year-old daughter to play inside.

The tour revealed that Escobar had been raising and using messenger pigeons
to thwart electronic surveillance. They found little metal leg-bands for
the pigeons neatly labeled: "Pablo Escobar/Maximum Security Prison/Envigado".

There was also evidence of Escobar's fears. Any flat ground on the hillside
complex had wires suspended overhead, attached to tall posts around the
perimeter to prevent helicopters from landing. One of Escobar's biggest
concerns was that airborne American commandos or paid assassins would come
for him in the night.

There were secret hiding places built into the walls of the prison suites,
and trick doors to afford quick, silent avenues of escape. The gymnasium
and kitchen were below, just inside the fence. The living quarters and
cabanas were up an incline so steep that the DEA agents were breathing
heavily when they reached the top.

Beyond the cabanas, the Colombian police had found a sizable arsenal of
automatic weapons and ammunition. Escobar and his men had been prepared to
hold off a sustained military assault.

On a shelf over Escobar's desk was a neat library of news clippings,
diligently clipped, pasted and sorted in file boxes. His correspondence
included fan mail from all over the world, requests for money, notes of
thanks for favors bestowed, letters of sympathy after his arrest and
imprisonment. One was from a local beauty queen, who referred to Escobar as
her lover.

There was a handwritten draft of a letter from Escobar to President Cesar
Gaviria, requesting armor-plated cars for his wife and children. One
pathetic letter was from a man pleading with Escobar not to kill any more
members of his family, as he had already done away with nearly all of them.
There was a letter from the wife of a prison guard, thanking him for her
husband's recent promotion.

Escobar had kept copies of all his indictments, and had framed a collection
of the mug shots taken at each arrest. One showed the lean, tousle-haired
young man arrested for stealing cars in Medellin in 1974; another was the
fuller-faced, mustachioed shot from his first and only drug bust in 1976.

Escobar kept files on his Cali cartel rivals, complete with photographs,
addresses, descriptions of their vehicles and license numbers. He had a
framed picture of Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentine-born Marxist
revolutionary. Alongside was an illustration from Hustler magazine,
depicting Escobar and his associates cavorting in an orgy behind bars
(throwing darts at a picture of President George Bush on a TV screen), and
a photograph of himself and his son Juan Pablo posing before the front gate
of the White House.

Among his collection of videotapes was, predictably, a complete set of The
Godfather films, Chuck Norris' Octagon, Steve McQueen's Bullitt and Burt
Reynolds' Rent-a-Cop. There were five Bibles, and collections of
prize-winning books. These were not the shelves of an avid reader, but of a
self-improver who purchased books in bulk intending to begin a course of
reading.

The closet in the bedroom was stacked with identical pairs of Nike sneakers
and a neat pile of pressed blue jeans. Over Escobar's huge bed was a
golden, ornate portrait of the Virgin Mary painted on inlaid tile. There
were photographs of Escobar, his family and his fellow inmates at what
appeared to be a lavish Christmas dinner in the prison's disco and bar, and
pictures of Escobar posing with Colombian soccer stars.

In the prison bedrooms were wide-screen TVs, electronic game players,
stereos, VCRs, laser disc players, laser discs and videotapes (some of them
pornographic, including homemade sex movies starring inmates and
girlfriends). One framed photo showed Escobar costumed as Pancho Villa;
another showed him and a bodyguard dressed as Prohibition-era American
gangsters, complete with tommy guns.

The DEA agents itemized all they found and posed for snapshots, happy as
high schoolers invading a rival gang's clubhouse. They posed sitting on
Pablo's bed, taking turns wearing a thick fur cap that the drug boss had
worn in a famous photograph reproduced on the cover of the Colombian weekly
newsmagazine Semana.

It was all just scraps left behind by the Colombian investigators, but it
still added up to a fascinating portrait of a man who clearly relished his
celebrity outlaw status, even though he was known to protest his innocence
at every public opportunity.

Escobar was a man of stark contradictions. He was a determined hedonist who
recruited teenage beauty queens for sex on water beds under the florid
portrait of the Virgin Mary, yet was so devoted to his family that his
pursuers considered his most vulnerable spot to be the safety of his wife,
Maria Victoria, and children, Juan Pablo and Manuela.

Escobar signed all his correspondence with his thumbprint, and he stamped
one on the framed photo of him and his son at the White House. It was a
form of graffiti, Pablo Escobar's thumbprint on the front door of the home
of the President of the United States.

At the end of July, drawing on this information and its own files, the CIA
prepared a brief "personality assessment" of the infamous fugitive. It
attempts, with thinly veiled contempt, to sketch the internal life of this
complex new military target, and concludes with chilling prescience about
the tactics that would ultimately lure Escobar to his death:

"Despite Escobar's authoritarianism, extreme self-centeredness and
grandiosity . . . he is not a madman . . . he is in touch with the
realities around him. In fact, Escobar is resilient and can generally
adjust well to changes in the environment. . . .

"Escobar appears to derive pleasure from the havoc he creates . . . Escobar
has only a very limited capacity to tolerate frustration, competition, or
challenges to his authority. He does not feel bound by the normal rules of
conduct and frequently expresses his aggression in raw, direct forms. . . .

"Escobar nurses a grudge, sometimes for years, until he can get his
revenge, which is often of homicidal proportions. And Escobar kills
gratuitously, with total disregard for innocent bystanders. Moreover, he
lacks the capacity to feel remorse. . . .

"Escobar . . . appears to be motivated primarily by money and power - he is
no idealogue.

"Escobar's paranoia is his greatest vulnerability. . . As he begins to feel
more pressured he will become more rigid and less able to adjust to changes
in his environment. . . .

"Escobar does seem to have genuine paternal feelings for his children, and
the young daughter Manuela is described as his favorite. His parents were
once kidnapped by a rival group, and Escobar apparently spared no effort or
expense rescuing them. Whether his concern for his parents or his children
would overcome his stringent security consciousness is not clear."