U.S. EMBASSY IN COLOMBIA IN DRUG PROBE

U.S. officials are investigating six to eight American Embassy employees
and dependents in Colombia for possibly using the mission's postal
system to smuggle illegal drugs or other contraband to the United
States, according to sources in Washington and Bogota.

The investigations began after the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation
Division charged the wife of the Army officer in command of the U.S.
military's counter-drug efforts in Colombia with illegally shipping
cocaine to the United States via the seldom-inspected government mail
system.

The new inquiries were triggered during a follow-up review of embassy
mailing records and have not yet led to criminal charges. But U.S.
officials described them as particularly embarrassing because Colombia
produces 80 percent of the world's cocaine and most of the $289
million in annual U.S. aid to the South American country goes to
combat drug trafficking.

Several months ago, the inspector general's office in the State
Department began a congressionally requested review of the
department's Colombia program, according to congressional and State
Department officials.

The review centers on millions of dollars in U.S. aid given to the
Colombian National Police over the past two years. Most of the money
has gone to the police air wing, including about 40 helicopters and a
handful of other aircraft. The review is focusing on whether the State
Department followed congressional guidelines.

"We have a very important embassy that has a lot of serious internal
problems, and that is something we can't afford," said a congressional
staffer who deals with Colombian issues. "It is just too important a
country to allow ourselves to be embarrassed like this."

U.S. officials acknowledged that embassy postal systems are easy to
abuse because mail, delivered through the Army Postal Service (APO) by
the U.S. Postal Service, is seldom inspected. In Bogota, the APO is
located inside the embassy and is only available to embassy employees
and their dependents.

An embassy spokesman in Bogota declined yesterday to comment on this
story and added that Ambassador Curtis Kamman also would not comment.