TO COLOMBIANS, HE IS THE WAR ON DRUGS

*Latin America: Federal Police Chief Carries Hero Status At Home. Now His
Victories Are Altering The Battle--And His Role.

GUAYMARAL AIR BASE, Colombia--Dressed in a pale blue sport coat instead of
his usual olive green uniform, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, Colombia's top
police officer, stepped out of his helicopter a few yards from the hangar
where three U.S.-donated Black Hawks were undergoing the manufacturer's
final inspection.

They were the last of six helicopters promised in 1998, when the Colombian
National Police became the first law enforcement agency in the world to fly
the military helicopters. Serrano was here to thank the U.S. congressional
aides who had delivered them.

He was especially grateful because, as the helicopters were flying here,
two more Black Hawks were pledged to the police as part of a $1.3-billion
aid package before Congress to help fight drugs in Colombia.

For the general's congressional supporters, as for many people in the
United States and Colombia, Serrano and the police are this nation's fight
against drugs.

Here, polls consistently rank the gray-haired general as the nation's most
popular public figure.

Serrano kept U.S. anti-drug money flowing in ever greater quantities even
after Colombia's previous president's U.S. visa was revoked because of
suspected ties to narcotics traffickers, and even while a horrendous human
rights record prevented the army from receiving aid.

At a time when U.S. officials trusted no one else in Colombia, Serrano
collaborated with the Drug Enforcement Administration to break up the Cali
cartel, then the world's most powerful cocaine syndicate.

But now, thanks in part to the effectiveness of the police, the nature of
the drug war in Colombia is changing.

The fight has spread from the cities to the countryside. The big cartels
have atomized into smaller, more flexible networks that are believed to be
run largely from Mexico and Miami.

The success of eradication programs in Bolivia and Peru has forced
traffickers to move production of coca--the plant used to make
cocaine--into the Colombian jungles.

That brings the traffickers into partnerships with the brutal, heavily
armed leftist rebels and right-wing counterinsurgents who have been
fighting the Colombian government and each other for 36 years.

Police, even with Black Hawks, do not have the equipment or training to
fight a drug war that is blurring into a guerrilla war. The proposed U.S.
aid package, which emphasizes military hardware for the armed forces,
reflects those changes, as well as U.S. confidence in Colombia's current
president, Andres Pastrana.

Serrano and the police are no longer the only representatives of their
country's fight against drugs.

At age 57, the general must guide the police into a new role of cooperation
with the armed forces and explain that role to his supporters on Capitol
Hill, who fear that he is being discarded.

"Now we have to operate more on an international level, to share more
information and teach others from our experience," Serrano said during an
interview on his way to the airport and an anti-narcotics seminar in
Argentina. In the same week, he had already met with the congressional
aides, visited a remote village where guerrillas had killed 21 police
officers, attended their funerals and cut the chains of a young kidnapping
victim after police rescued her.

Serrano's ability to anticipate change and respond has allowed him to
survive four defense ministers and two presidents during his more than five
years as police director.

That's impressive for a kid from the little town of Velez who admits that
he joined the police at age 17 because he liked the uniform.

"Serrano is more than a great policeman," said Myles Frechette, former U.S.
ambassador to Colombia. "He also has a natural political instinct and he is
patriotic."

Serrano has demonstrated those qualities by walking a tightrope held on one
end by his friends in the U.S. government and on the other by sometimes
jealous Colombian politicians. The only safety net is his tremendous
popularity.

In his 1999 autobiography, "Checkmate," Serrano writes that he has no idea
why former President Ernesto Samper chose him for director in 1994,
skipping over half a dozen more senior officers.

He was not Samper's first choice, or even his second, according to sources
close to the decision-making.

However, those sources said, U.S. officials made it clear that
anti-narcotics aid hinged on Serrano's heading the police.

Convinced that Samper's 1994 presidential campaign had accepted $6 million
from drug traffickers, the Americans dealt directly with Serrano, ignoring
the president and even revoking his U.S. visa.

Their anger with Samper overshadowed what Serrano said is the police
chief's greatest triumph: a two-year effort, ended in 1996, to capture
leaders of the Cali cartel.

Even then, the United States refused to certify Colombia as a fully
cooperative partner in the war against drugs.

Nevertheless, anti-narcotics aid to Colombia--mainly for the police--kept
growing, from $85.6 million in 1997 to $289 million last year. And
Serrano's popularity grew with it.

When he visited an army base in Tolemaida last year with the military high
command, soldiers politely stepped past the defense minister and armed
forces commander to shake hands with the top cop. After lunch, the kitchen
staff shyly emerged to ask Serrano to pose for a picture with them.

"It is difficult to provide him with security because people rush toward
him to touch him, to take a picture of him," said Capt. Herman Bustamante,
his chief of security and the son of his close friend Hernan Bustamante.

"Fortunately, I do not have to take care of him alone," said the younger
Bustamante. "I have the help of 100,000 police and 90% of the population of
Colombia."

Actually, Serrano's approval ratings come in closer to 94% in most recent
surveys--which, paradoxically, also show that Colombians' biggest worry is
safety in a country that averages eight kidnappings a day.

"Everybody loves Gen. Serrano, but nobody loves the police," said Maria
Victoria Llorente, a crime researcher at the prestigious Los Andes
University. "It's something I cannot understand."

Her only explanation is that Colombians do not blame Serrano for the lack
of public safety because common crime cannot be separated from the violence
of this country's long-standing guerrilla war and drug trafficking. Serrano
said he worries about public safety: "I wish that there were no narcotics
and that we could concentrate on crime."

Colombians appear to accept that reasoning and to respect Serrano's
reputation in a nation crippled by corruption. "The police are riding on
the coattails of his prestige," Llorente said. "It is a cult of personality."

And Serrano undeniably has a magnetic personality.

"Everyone sees him as their father," said Jorge Serrano, 23, the youngest
of his three children. "He looks like a teddy bear."

Serrano turns his defects into positives.

He unabashedly acknowledges the struggle with weight that deprives him of
his favorite sweet, bocayo de guayaba--a candy made in his hometown of
Velez. He even published a book of weight-loss exercises.

He is open about his humble origins as the son of a seamstress and a meat
salesman. Frechette recalled that Serrano asked him to arrange for a used
firetruck to be delivered to Velez, about 100 miles north of the capital,
Bogota, through a U.S. program that allows the U.S. military to transport
the trucks when there is space on ships or planes.

Serrano is an avid tennis player, known for his ability to put a spin on a
ball so that it drops just past the net. A well-publicized tennis game was
used to hush rumors of a rift between Serrano and Pastrana last year. "The
president chooses him as his doubles partner," said the younger Bustamante.
"It's better to have him on your side."

The general is never more human than at the all-too-frequent funerals for
officers who have died in the line of duty. Serrano visits the murder
scene, often a remote village that has been attacked by guerrillas, and
talks with the officers to raise their spirits.

He always serves as a pallbearer.

"He takes the loss of his boys seriously," said a European diplomat.

Because the government provides pensions only for the widows and orphans of
officers who have more than 15 years of service, Serrano's wife, Hilde,
runs a private charity to benefit other families.

"He never abandons a subordinate in trouble, neither those who have been
attacked in battle or those who have faced accusations," said Gen. Luis
Enrique Montenegro, his second in command. "People are confident that if
they are loyal to him, he will be loyal to them."

The most public example of that loyalty has been Serrano's staunch defense
of Maj. Oscar Pimienta, a hero of the Cali cartel capture who was accused
last May of skimming U.S. aid. American officials are still trying to work
out how to conduct an audit that will not compromise police security.

When Judge Diego Coley ruled that there was enough evidence to hold
Pimienta for trial, he said, he was called to Serrano's office.

He surreptitiously recorded the upbraiding that Serrano gave him, accusing
the judge of trying to destroy a brilliant police career and besmirch
Serrano's reputation.

Coley filed a complaint with the attorney general over Serrano's conduct.
When newspapers published the story, radio talk show hosts immediately
sprang to Serrano's defense.

Callers to the shows disparaged Coley.

"Instead of hurting Serrano, this incident has increased his popularity,"
Coley said. "People think, 'Yes, the general should put that judge in his
place.' "

Coley, who was transferred a few days after the ruling, has become
disillusioned. "I met him when he was a colonel and he was friendly.

Now he is arrogant--all he cares about is his image."

Serrano does not discuss the incident, but his supporters say he has good
reason to suspect attempts to undermine his reputation. In the midst of
their operations against the Cali cartel, Montenegro recalled, intelligence
agents discovered that drug traffickers had set up bank accounts in the
Cayman Islands in the names of Serrano and Montenegro in an attempt to make
it appear that the police officials had taken bribes.

Further, corruption is a sensitive issue for Serrano, who has dismissed
more than 6,500 officers suspected of ineffectiveness or dishonesty. The
campaign began five years ago, when half the Cali force was on the drug
traffickers' payroll.

"Dishonesty makes him angry," Herman Bustamante said. "He takes drastic
measures when corruption is involved."

Serrano's anti-corruption campaign has made him enemies among the dismissed
officers, who Bustamante said are as much a threat to the general and his
family as the criminals he has captured.

As a result, the Serranos must travel with escorts at all times.

All have apartments in the same building--the general's is the
penthouse--with police security in the lobby and a roadblock at the end of
the street.

They have lived this way for more than a decade.

"Our life changed," Jorge Serrano said. "I had few friends--only those who
dared to be my friends.

I had to go everywhere in an armored car. With five bodyguards around all
the time, a person feels inhibited."

Even so, they do not feel safe. Jorge Serrano and his family recently
joined his brother and sister in exile.

"We understood that we had to make sacrifices," the younger Serrano said
during an interview on his last day in Colombia. "All that he has done for
the country is reflected in us. He is a dedicated person who believes that
the more he sacrifices, the harder he works, the better things will turn out."