DEA IMPLICATED IN DEAL WITH TERRORISTS

In a desperate effort to trap Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, the
governments of the United States and Colombia allied themselves to a
fearful criminal organization that was responsible for the deaths of dozens
of Escobar's associates and friends in 1993, according to testimony and
documents obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

A former member of the organization -- known as Los Pepes, or People
Persecuted by Pablo Escobar -- said the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration turned a blind eye to the group's activities. He also
asserted that some of the group's members kept in direct contact with DEA
agent Javier Pena, who worked in Medellin.

Pena was the DEA's liaison with the National Police's Search Bloc, a unit
whose sole mission was to track down Escobar. Today he is deputy director
of the DEA's bureau in Colombia.

Until his death in December 1993 at the age of 44, Escobar led Colombia's
notorious Medellin Cartel.

"The Americans covered their eyes to keep from seeing what Los Pepes did,
but they knew exactly what was happening," said the source, who asked to be
identified only as "Ruben."

"In the end, we had a common enemy," he said.

United States law forbids government agencies to work hand-in-hand with
illegal groups, much less if they are involved in the commission of violent
crimes.

Organized in February 1993, Los Pepes were funded by the Cali Cartel,
paramilitary groups, a legion of relatives and friends of Escobar's victims
- -- even associates of Escobar who turned against their boss to save their
own skins.

"The DEA has never compromised itself deliberately and does not condone the
actions of paramilitary or terrorist organizations," said DEA spokesman
Michael Chapman in a written statement from Washington.

"However, the gathering of information about the activities of
drug-trafficking organizations such as Los Pepes is one of the DEA's key
roles," he wrote.

According to official documents and contemporary testimony, Los Pepes were
responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, among them Escobar's
relatives, lawyers and lieutenants.

"Nobody has finished counting the dead, but I believe that they numbered --
on the average -- six a day, for almost one year," Ruben said.

Los Pepes were under the command of brothers Fidel and Carlos Castano Gil,
founders of the paramilitary movement in Colombia. They declared war on
Escobar in response to the persecution he unleashed on them and their
friends from La Catedral prison.

Escobar, who surrendered to the government in June 1991, had continued to
direct the cartel's activities from La Catedral, a minimum-security
institution in the city of Envigado. He escaped in July 1992, after the
authorities announced they would transfer him to a more secure prison.

=46idel died in a gunfight in September 1994. Carlos today is the leader of
Colombia's paramilitary groups, which have been vigorously condemned by
Washington because of the massacres committed during their private war
against the leftist guerrillas.

According to one of Escobar's lawyers, the Castano brothers and other
members of Los Pepes had unrestricted access to the Carlos Holguin School
in Medellin, headquarters of the National Police's Search Bloc.

"It was as if they were members of the Search Bloc," the lawyer said.
"Right there, in the same bunker, slept Pena, the DEA agent."

As a token of appreciation, the American Embassy gave a visa to "Don
Berna," one of the most active members of Los Pepes, to come to the United
States in 1994 and watch the World Cup Soccer games being played in Los
Angeles, Ruben said.

Don Berna had worked as a bodyguard for Fernando Galeano, an Escobar
associate who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in July 1992 on orders
from Escobar.

In its written statement to El Nuevo Herald, the DEA made no reference to
the visa granted to Don Berna, who is accused of leading a band of
mercenaries calling itself Las Terrazas (The Terraces), based in Medellin.

The DEA's spokesman said that, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, agents
of that agency and other U.S. government agencies "worked proudly with the
Colombian police to combat the powerful cartels."

Col. Oscar Naranjo, who directed the Colombian police's intelligence
services during the search for Escobar, said that "a direct channel of
communications existed between the police and Los Pepes" and that the
American antidrug agencies knew of its existence and took advantage of it.

However, Naranjo denied being in complicity with Los Pepes.

=46or almost all of 1993, none of the leaders of Los Pepes was arrested,
even though the government offered a rich reward for information leading to
their capture. At least on one occasion, the then Attorney General, Gustavo
de Greiff, voiced puzzlement over the impunity with which the mercenaries
operated.

"It seems to me something odd is going on," De Greiff said in October 1993.
His office offered protection to Escobar's relatives.

Before Los Pepes came onto the scene, the Cali Cartel worked with the
intelligence services of the administrations of presidents Virgilio Barco
(1986-1990) and Cesar Gaviria (1990-1994) in the search for Escobar.

Their collaboration was so close that the cartel would ask the president's
brother, Jorge Barco, to deliver information to the intelligence services,
according to prosecution documents obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

In a sworn statement, the head of the Cali Cartel, Miguel Rodriguez
Orejuela, identified the president's brother as an intermediary betwen the
cartel and the government. In the statement, Rodriguez told how his
organization would warn the authorities about Escobar's attempts on the
lives of politicians, journalists and police officers.

Escobar was killed by police while trying to escape over the rooftops in
the Los Olivos neighborhood of Medellin, on Dec. 2, 1993. He died barefoot,
a pistol in his hand.