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

DELTA, COLOMBIANS GET OFF TO BAD START

Chapter Six of a Continuing Serial

After an unnerving trip from Bogota, the two Delta soldiers finally arrived
at the Medellin headquarters of the Colombian police units searching for
Pablo Escobar in July of 1992.

The two Americans slept that night in sleeping bags on the floor of a
storehouse just inside the main gate of the Holquin police academy - close
enough, they thought, to be obliterated by a car bomb parked outside.

They awoke to their first view of the city. Medellin, Colombia's
second-largest city, had a reputation for mercantile genius and industry.
The city's traditions had nurtured, in part, its most recent boom as the
world capital of cocaine.

One of the Americans, known to the Colombians simply as Col. Santos, met
the following morning, July 28, with Lt. Col. Lino Pinzon, a commander of
the search forces. Pinzon indicated that he regarded Delta's arrival as an
insult to his leadership skills and a threat to his career. The elite,
top-secret American commandos had been sent after a request by Colombia's
president for help in the hunt for Escobar.

It was a classic culture clash. Pinzon had already complained to Joe Toft,
the Drug Enforcement Administration chief in Colombia. Toft tried to calm
Pinzon, to convince him that working with these Americans would bring
credit and glory to his unit, but he knew Pinzon wasn't buying it.

When big, aggressive Gary Harrell, a Delta lieutenant colonel, arrived
later that day from Bogota, things got worse. Harrell and Pinzon had
already clashed at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. Now, on Harrell's first day
as the top American at the Holquin Academy, he and Pinzon began quarreling.

Still, the two men were stuck with each other and began setting up joint
operations. Delta positioned two operators in Escobar's former observation
tower up at La Cathedral, the prison Escobar had built. One operator was
Sgt. Maj. Joe Vega - a "captain" for this operation - a broad-shouldered
weight lifter with long, black hair.

The Colombian police had moved into the prison and were living in comfort,
the commander ensconced in Escobar's former luxury suite. Vega had a
satellite phone and laptop computer to help him rapidly correlate the map
coordinates sent to him by Centra Spike, the secret American Army team of
electronic-surveillance experts who operated from two specially outfitted
twin-engine planes.

Vega also carried an 8mm video camera with several high-powered lenses, and
a microwave relay to transmit the image down to the Holquin Academy.

The team waited for Escobar to make another phone call from a finca, or
estate, in an exclusive Medellin suburb of Tres Equinax where Centra Spike
had previously homed in on one of his conversations. He was quiet that
night, but early the following evening, a Tuesday, Centra Spike picked up
another phone call from the same spot.

In the observation tower, Vega quickly found the coordinates on his map and
alerted Harrell, who tried to rouse Col. Pinzon and get his men moving.

According to Delta soldiers and DEA agents, the Colombian commander did not
respond.

When the embassy in Bogota learned that Pinzon had not moved, calls were
placed to the Presidential Palace, and President Cesar Gaviria himself
finally ordered Pinzon and his men to get going. Outraged that the Delta
team had gone over his head, Pinzon was indignant, and took hours to
assemble his men.

It wasn't until early the next morning that Pinzon launched his "raid."
Pinzon dispatched about 300 men in a caravan of pickup trucks and cars.

>From his perch at La Cathedral prison, talking by phone to Steve Jacoby,
the American major in charge of Centra Spike at the embassy, Vega noted the
procession of headlights as this giant convoy begin moving up the mountain.

"Wait a minute," he told Jacoby. "Now there's another set of headlights
moving down the hill on the other side of the mountain."

Escobar would not have even needed to be tipped off. Everyone on the
mountain could see and hear the approach of the police.

Pinzon's men found the estate to be typical of an Escobar hideout,
luxurious furnishings far beyond the norms even for that neighborhood,
including a sparkling new bathroom with a deep tub.

Pinzon seemed pleased when his men turned up nothing. He later told DEA
agent Javier Pena that he had a "gut feeling" that Escobar had never been
at the finca. He would find Escobar quicker, he said, by relying on his own
instincts rather than all this American technology.

As soon as the police withdrew, however, Centra Spike intercepted more
phone calls, these from Escobar's men arranging to move him to a new
hideout and discussing the need to collect identity documents and weapons.
It was 4:30 a.m. when Pinzon, clad in silk pajamas, answered Harrell's
summons at the door of his quarters.

"How do you know he's there?" Pinzon asked.

Harrell was not at liberty to explain.

Again, it took pressure from Bogota to force Pinzon to move, and again he
sent the caravan up the hill. They spent the rest of the night and most of
the day searching door to door, and found nothing. Pinzon complained to
Pena: "These Delta guys are trying to get me fired in Bogota."

By the end of the week, the search force was empty-handed and Escobar had
clearly moved on. There was little chance now that he would be found
quickly.

Harrell returned to Bogota with complaints about Pinzon's attitude, effort
and tactics, while Pinzon spread word of Delta's failure. At the embassy,
Col. Pinzon would henceforth be known simply as "Pajamas."

In the capital, U.S. Ambassador Morris Busby had his own problems. Once the
Colombian government's invitation for help was made known at the Pentagon
following Escobar's escape that July, it had prompted an overwhelming
response and now the competition was on.

The CIA made a bid for funds to get "Majestic Eagle," their own more
expensive eavesdropping version of Centra Spike, flying. All the other
branches had their own ideas about how to best locate a fleeing drug lord.
By the end of the first week, the ambassador had people camped out on the
floor in the embassy conference room.

Every direction-finding, surveillance and imagery team in the U.S. arsenal
descended on Medellin.

Anything that had a potential manhunting capability was shipped to
Colombia. It was like a sweepstakes. There were so many American spy planes
over the city, at one point 17 at once, that the Air Force had to assign an
AWAC, an airborne command and control center, to keep track of them. It
took 10 giant C-130s just to deliver the contractors, maintenance and
support staffs for all this gear.

For Joe Toft, the DEA country chief who had spent years learning his way
around Colombia, the initial excitement over all this military help quickly
soured. The flood of new data required intelligent, seasoned analysis,
which was in short supply.

This sudden full-court press was meant to cause problems for Escobar, but
instead it provoked a crisis in Bogota. One night, one of the newly arrived
aircraft, an enormous RC-135, flew so low that the Colombian press was able
to photograph it clearly.

When a radio report broadcast evidence of an American military "invasion"
of Medellin, all hell broke loose. The mayor of Medellin demanded an
immediate investigation. The Colombian defense minister was forced to admit
that the government had invited the Americans. A judicial investigation
began instantly, on charges that President Gaviria's administration had
violated the constitution by allowing foreign troops on Colombian soil.

The defense minister argued that American troops weren't on Colombian soil,
they were just in the air - in fact, most of the military planes were
flying out of Panama. There was nothing in the constitution about
overflights. Of course, no one knew about Delta Force.

It was the journalistic equivalent of war. Radio Medellin started
broadcasting the tail numbers of American aircraft, including one of the
CIA planes, which was promptly flown out of Colombia.

CIA Station Chief Bill Wagner was furious, Jacoby was spooked, and
President Gaviria, mindful that he had asked for this help, was now
politely complaining to Ambassador Busby, "This is nuts!"

By the end of the week Busby had ordered home everything except Centra
Spike, the CIA and Delta. It was clear that Escobar was not going to be
caught, even with the most sophisticated targeting information, until
Colombia could muster a mobile, elite strike force that was trustworthy,
determined, stealthy and fast. What was needed, clearly, was a surrogate
Delta Force.

"Pajamas" Pinzon would have to go. And whether it was quid pro quo or not,
Gary Harrell was shipped back to Fort Bragg.

"Captain" Vega stayed camped out up at La Cathedral, and "Colonel" Santos
stayed on at the Holquin Academy awaiting the arrival of the one man
everyone felt was needed to make the effort come together: the
indefatigable, incorruptible Col. Hugo Martinez.