Visit with Colombian leader was misguided

By Richard Estrada / The Dallas Morning News

GOP critics routinely suggest that Attorney General Janet Reno's sudden
allergic reaction to special prosecutors actually is an expression of
gratitude for President Clinton's decision to retain her after the 1996
election. Maybe, maybe not. But if the topic at hand is obsequiousness in
pursuit of patronage, no current Clinton Cabinetlevel officer has more
brazenly sacrificed professionalism than drug czar Barry McCaffrey.

The case of the retired fourstar general who now heads the Office of
National Drug Control Policy has become a national embarrassment and worse.
His decision to meet recently with Colombian President Ernesto Samper is
but the latest in a long list of White House miscues regarding
international drug trafficking.

True, Mr. McCaffrey's use of the bully pulpit in challenging domestic drug
abuse has been praiseworthy. But when it comes to addressing the spiraling
challenge of international drug trafficking, he has become dangerously
irresponsible.

Mr. McCaffrey's approach has been to subsume concerns about international
drug trafficking to trade objectives and, perhaps, political dividends in
the form of business support for the administration. At a time when the
White House is locking horns with its own State Department on the issue of
how to deal with nations whose governments are corrupted by drug money, it
is appropriate to ask whether the administration even has a policy on
international narcotics.

Did someone say "tone deaf"? Bring up the question of massive shipments of
drugs in Mexican trucks at U.S. ports of entry, and Mr. McCaffrey suggests
that "shutting down the border" and freezing trade are unacceptable. True
enough. But the prudent middleground approach of increasing the number of
customs personnel to ensure greater inspections while minimizing delays is
seldom the administration's first response.

In addressing the attitude of the Mexican government, Mr. McCaffrey has
become the dutiful straight man in a longrunning tragicomedy. Virtually
every U.S. law enforcement agency dealing with Mexico and drugs is
convinced that sharing drugrelated intelligence with Mexican officials
poses a danger to the lives of U.S. agents. At the very least, Mr.
McCaffrey has been incompetent in overlooking those reports or downplaying
their significance.

Item: Earlier this year, the stock of the former commander of the U.S.
Southern Command in Panama fell to its nadir. Shortly after he hosted
Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo's handpicked drug czar, Gen. Jesus
Gutierrez Rebollo, in Washington and gave him a confidential briefing at
the White House the Zedillo government came clean with the news that its
drug czar was dirty. Gen. Rebollo was charged with being in cahoots with
Mexico's premier drug lord, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who later died.

After surviving the embarrassment of having been played for fools by Mr.
Zedillo's drug czar, Mr. McCaffrey and the White House almost can be
forgiven for their latest misadventure: the renewal of a dialogue with
Colombian President Samper, whom the State Department refuses to allow into
the United States on the grounds that he likely accepted $6 million in
political donations from drug kingpins.

Mr. McCaffrey explained his initiative by pointing out the need to "defend
democracy" in Colombia against leftist insurgents who finance their
movements through the drug trade. But if one accepts the view of the State
Department, Mr. McCaffrey and the White House now have embarked upon the
defense of narcodemocracy rather than democracy. That raises the specter of
a future Clinton address to the Colombian House of Drug Lords.

Does the administration really think that getting closer to the Samper
government will do either the United States or Colombia any good? If the
U.S. goal is the defense of democracy, shouldn't the administration be
oppposing both Mr. Samper and the rebels?

In renewing highlevel contacts with the narcodemocratic powers in
Colombia, Mr. McCaffrey has let down the American people but done his duty
by his boss. His visit to Bogota consolidates his position as shilldecamp
to the commander in chief, even as his role in what figures to be a sham
counternarcotics alliance may yet win him the title of supreme allied
patsy.