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

RARING TO GET STARTED, DELTA LEARNS ITS LIMITS

Chapter Five Of A Continuing Serial

The Delta soldiers who arrived in Colombia just four days after Pablo
Escobar left his prison in July 1992 had initially hoped to hunt down
the notorious narco-terrorist themselves. Given the clumsy track
record of the Colombians, it seemed the best chance of finding
Escobar quickly.

Delta specialized in this kind of quick strike. The men trained
constantly and could move rapidly anywhere, day or night. They
preferred orders that explained the what and why of a mission without
precisely spelling out the how. This time the initial order was,
vaguely, to assist in the hunt for Escobar, who had escaped from
prison just four days before.

Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison, commander of joint special operations
at Delta's home base at Fort Bragg, N.C., was a veteran of covert
operations. He had worked on the infamous Phoenix program in Vietnam,
which targeted Viet Cong village leaders for assassination.

That was long before Executive Order 12333, the prohibition on U.S.
government involvement in assassinations. The order, which originated
during the Nixon administration after congressional hearings exposed
excesses in intelligence operations, had been updated under
Presidents Carter and Reagan:

2.11 PROHIBITION ON ASSASSINATION

No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States
Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.

2.12 INDIRECT PARTICIPATION

No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or
request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this Order.

Maj. Gen. George Joulwon, commander of the U.S. Army Southern Command
in Panama, had been emphatic in his instructions for the Escobar
operation. He knew how easy it was for these "black"
special-operations forces to fly beneath the Army's command radar.
Joulwon knew that the Delta men wanted to do the job themselves, and
probably could, but he was more concerned that in achieving the
military goal of eliminating Escobar, they would create a political
storm more destructive than Escobar himself.

"No, you're not going to do it yourself," Joulwon had instructed Col.
Jerry Boykin, commander of the eight-man Delta team sent to Colombia
on July 26.

Officially, the team members were flying to Bogota merely to provide
advice and training. Of course, if they managed to kill Escobar in
such a way that the Colombians got credit, no one was going to
complain. But no such order was articulated, and Morris Busby, the
U.S. ambassador to Colombia, was set against it anyway.

Sensitive to the precarious position of President Cesar Gaviria, the
ambassador explained to Col. Boykin the political storm that would
erupt if Delta operators were discovered running around in black
masks shooting people. Given Escobar's penchant for spectacular
violence and his well-armed bodyguards and assassins, the chances of
an American getting killed or captured were high.

The ambassador simply wanted the Delta men to lend their expertise,
to provide intelligence, analysis, training and operational
assistance. If the Colombians took all that and then went out and
shot somebody while trying to arrest Escobar, the U.S. mission would
stay comfortably within the law.

The Delta operators were not to participate in raids. They were to
remain at the National Police command posts in Medellin, the main one
at the Carlos Holquin police academy, and the other inside the prison
where Escobar had been held. Busby wanted the team members to get out
there and show the Colombian police how to track down this fugitive,
pronto.

They had to act quickly, before Escobar had a chance to rebuild his
operation. In the four days since Escobar's escape, he already had
begun reassembling his hit men and bodyguards and setting up the
system that would allow him to live comfortably on the run.

Busby tried to convey urgency. He and his embassy staff had been
working round the clock since the escape.

On Monday, July 27, Col. Boykin and the ambassador met with President
Gaviria, while two high-ranking Colombian police commanders met at
the U.S. Embassy with the newly arrived Americans. One of the
Colombians was Lt. Col. Lino Pinzon, the man assigned to head the
Colombian search effort for Escobar.

The Delta men inflated their ranks. They did not want the Colombians
thinking a mission as important as hunting down Pablo Escobar would
be relegated to midlevel soldiers. So Lt. Col. Gary Harrell, one of
the largest line officers in the Army, with an aggressive personality
to complement his linebacker physique, was introduced as a general.

Col. Pinzon, who already was unhappy with the Americans' refusal to
allow him to see their command center inside a steel-lined vault on
an upper floor of the embassy, clashed with Harrell.

Harrell was a country boy with a direct style. He had a handshake
that people warned you about. Pinzon was something of a dandy, a
stylish officer with a crisp salt-and-pepper crew cut who played a
good game of tennis and kept a manicurist and pedicurist on his staff.

Pinzon was told of an American surveillance team's phone intercepts
that had pinpointed Escobar at a finca, or estate, on a hilltop in a
wealthy suburb of Medellin called Tres Equinax. He scoffed at the
idea that the fugitive could be found magically by plucking his phone
calls out of the air, but agreed that if another call came from the
same place, his forces would be ready to move in. Four members of the
Delta team would fly to Medellin the next day to help plan the
assault if it came.

One of the first two operators to leave for Medellin was a man known
to the Colombians as Col. Santos, or simply Jefe (Chief). None of the
Delta men used their real names. While Boykin was the commander, and
Harrell was initially in charge in Medellin, it was Santos, whose
real rank was sergeant major, who would stay on for most of the
15-month hunt, supervising the Delta operators and Navy SEAL
commandos who rotated in and out.

Santos also acted as liaison between the embassy and the Colombian
units hunting for Escobar. He was a slender, exceedingly fit former
track star of Mexican heritage who had grown up in New Mexico
speaking both Spanish and English.

A man of exceptional warmth and poise, Santos had a wry sense of
humor. Where Harrell was full of hearty bluff, Santos was calm, smart
and resolutely nonconfrontational.

He and another operator boarded a plane to Medellin the following
evening, laden with portable global satellite positioning devices,
microwave visual imagery platforms, and video cameras with powerful
lenses for remote day-and-night ground surveillance. They were to
link up with Colombian forces and pinpoint the spot where Escobar's
phone calls had originated, using coordinates supplied by the
airborne Centra Spike electronic-eavesdropping unit.

They would train a camera on that location and begin watching for
signs of the fugitive's presence. The microwave transmitter would
send real-time images back to the Colombian police, so that there
would be no mistaking the target.

The two Delta men were late arriving at the Holquin Academy. They had
been dropped at the wrong landing strip and had to wait for their
police escorts to drive from another airstrip to retrieve them.

It was bad enough that they had spent three hours in the dark at a
remote airstrip deep inside narco country, two unarmed Americans
loaded with sophisticated spying gear. When they finally did link up
with the Colombian police search force, things would get worse.