COLOMBIA FAILS IN TRY TO IMPRESS DRUG CZAR

BOGOTA, Colombia -- It was envisioned as a chance to convey a vivid image
to the American public: White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey standing amid
the smoldering ruins of two captured cocaine-processing laboratories.

Colombian officials wanted to use a two-day jungle raid last October as
tangible proof of Colombia's cooperation in the war on drugs.

But when the raid ended, a Colombian police major and another
anti-narcotics police agent lay dead inside one of five shot-up
helicopters. Police had to abandon the cocaine labs amid an onslaught by up
to 400 Colombian guerrillas. Subsequent anti-narcotics raids were sharply
curtailed.

The operation, designed in part to reverse Washington's 2-year-old
``decertification'' of Colombia as an ally in the war on drugs, ended
abruptly as ``a disgrace,'' Col. Leonardo Gallego, the anti-narcotics
police commander, conceded.

One participant in the raid later described it as ``sending two good men to
their deaths for the sake of public relations.''

Attempt to win favor

The raid, largely overlooked amid the media commotion surrounding
McCaffrey's Oct. 18-21 visit, underscores the lengths to which Colombian
officials have gone to win the Clinton administration's favor ahead of its
annual certification review of nations linked to drug trafficking.

That review, currently under way for 1998, appears to be going badly for
Colombia, with early indications from Washington suggesting that the
hemisphere's largest cocaine and heroin exporter will again be decertified.

Colombian officials say that not only means enduring another year as an
international pariah but also entails the loss of millions of dollars in
U.S. economic aid and billions of dollars in lost international investment.

Getting off the U.S. decertification list has become something of a
national obsession, to the point that President Ernesto Samper has hired
European and U.S. public-relations firms to reverse Colombia's tainted
image.

Gallego said in an interview last week that he had hoped to take the
American drug czar on a tour of a captured drug-production facility.

``We had received confidential information about the existence of two large
cocaine-processing laboratories,'' he recalled. ``There had been a general
idea for (McCaffrey) to get to know the focus of our operations, and for
this reason, a number of places were pre-selected,'' including a jungle
site about 150 miles southeast of Bogota, the capital.

On the day McCaffrey arrived here, Gallego dispatched roughly 40
anti-narcotics agents to the riverside site, accompanied by at least two
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents. According to one participant
in the raid, it quickly became obvious that scores of Colombian guerrillas
had been guarding the sprawling site and that they were still nearby when
the police arrived.

Throughout the night, they fired potshots at the police, taunted them with
loud music and apparently tried to elicit return fire by making several
dozen runs past the site in a motorboat. The police were so fearful of a
blood bath that they did not dare return fire, the participant said.

After surveying the site for himself the following day, Gallego said he
realized that not only was it far too dangerous to be visited by McCaffrey,
it was too dangerous for his own men to remain there. He ordered an
immediate helicopter evacuation. As the helicopters were taking off, the
guerrillas unleashed a massive barrage.

Two killed in attack

Five U.S.-supplied helicopters were hit, including one occupied by national
police Maj. Jairo Castro and anti-narcotics agent Carlos Bol(acu)var
Gonzalez, both of whom were killed instantly.

The participant in the raid said, ``These troops were sent to the lab site
to preserve it for McCaffrey's visit.''

A U.S. Embassy official said the site was never discussed as a possible
venue for McCaffrey to visit, and that any visit to a jungle site would
have been ruled out as too dangerous, given the likelihood of guerrilla
activity. Had the site been recommended, the official said, ``We would have
said no.''