COLOMBIA DRUG KINGPINS TO FACE TRIAL IN MIAMI

In a few days, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, known as "The Chess
Player" for his shrewdness in building Colombia's Cali cartel into the
world's dominant cocaine supplier, will step off a Drug Enforcement
Administration plane in Miami to face U.S. justice.

Younger brother Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, known as "El Senor," is
likely to follow soon.

So will begin one of the biggest drug and money-laundering cases ever
prosecuted in Miami's federal courts.

It is an ironic turn for the brothers, who never thought they would
set foot inside a U.S. courtroom. As insurance, they allegedly
financed a successful 1994 presidential campaign to keep
cartel-friendly faces running Colombia's government. In the end, their
efforts to avoid extradition helped make it happen.

Federal law enforcement officials consider the brothers their biggest
trophy in the war on drugs since Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar
was gunned down by Colombian police in 1993.

But some experts say the extradition is more of a moral victory than a
practical one. "They don't get any bigger than this, but it is largely
symbolic," said Adam Isacson, director of programs for the Center for
International Policy in Washington. "Gilberto is no longer a player."

Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela face an indictment that alleges
four conspiracies, to import and distribute cocaine, launder money and
obstruct justice through bribery and murder from 1990 through July
2002. The indictment also seeks to seize $2.1 billion in drug money
and assets.

Rumors of a plea bargain are rampant in Colombia. This month, Gilberto
Rodriguez Orejuela , 65, told the weekly magazine Semana he had not
cut a deal, but left open the possibility. "U.S. justice is
practical," he said. "If we are important to them then surely there
will be some kind of proposal, but the problem is we only have our
liberty to give them."

Law enforcement veterans of the wild cocaine-cowboy era say a U.S.
trial for the brothers has been a long time coming.

"Now it's payday. Let's hope so," said Joe Toft, who headed the DEA's
office in Bogota from 1988 to 1994 when he exposed the corruption,
quit his post and labeled Colombia a "narcodemocracy."

"It's hard to believe," said Tom Cash, who ran the DEA's Miami office
during the cartel's heyday. "These people were the untouchables in
Cali."

Cash credited the cartel's long run to its low profile and business
acumen. "It's one of those proof positives that these cocaine
traffickers were far from cowboys, much more like Wall Street
businessmen who used their stealth and their brains and were extremely
successful for a very long time," he said.

Now the Cali cartel has been replaced by smaller, more dangerous "baby
cartels." Experts estimate as many as 300 mini cartels operate in Colombia.

Still, the prosecution of the Cali cartel leaders carries huge
political and diplomatic stakes. Colombia is the largest recipient of
U.S. aid outside of the Middle East. President Clinton launched a
program called Plan Colombia aimed at stemming the flow of drugs.

Between 2000 and 2005, the United States will have spent nearly $4
billion, but Plan Colombia will end next year unless Congress approves
additional funding.

Unlike the Medellin cartel, which fought the Colombian government with
murders, kidnappings and bombings, Cali was the country-club cartel.
Its leaders bought the government while cloaking themselves in
respectability.

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela is a banker by trade, with a taste for
soccer, Colombian poets, and friends in high places. Miguel Rodriguez
Orejuela holds a law degree from a prestigious university and has been
described as a Type-A workaholic.

Together they built a sophisticated, $7 billion-a-year empire that by
the mid-1990s supplied 80 percent of the world's cocaine, according to
the DEA. They came up with creative ways of hiding cocaine in cement
pillars and frozen broccoli and pioneered sophisticated methods to
launder drug cash through businesses that appeared legitimate. Chief
among them, a chain of discount pharmacies called Drogas la Rebaja,
which the Colombian government seized.

Things began to unravel in the mid-1990s. The cartel's contribution of
nearly $6 million to the campaign of Colombia's newly elected
president, Ernesto Samper, created an international scandal that
stained Samper's presidency, convinced the United States to yank his
visa, and brought international pressure that ultimately led to the
brothers' high profile arrests in 1995.

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, captured that June, was hiding in a
secret compartment in an entertainment unit in his white stucco home
in the hills of Cali. He had eluded the army and police for weeks and
was rumored to have been arrested after female undercover agents
followed the scent of his cologne. "I'm a man of peace," he told them.
"Don't kill me."

Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela , 61, was nabbed in his underwear three
months later, scrambling for his secret, panic room. He praised police
for the quality of their intelligence, unaware his own intelligence
chief had betrayed him.

By that time, U.S. authorities say, the brothers were restructuring
the family business, turning the day-to-day operations over to Miguel
Rodriguez Orejuela 's lawyer son, William Rodriguez Abadia, 40. He is
a fugitive.

The U.S. government's evidence is spelled out in a 64-page affidavit
included with the extradition request. The document, by Immigration
and Customs Enforcement Agent Edward Kacerosky, relies on the word of
the cartel's former accountant and intelligence chief, as well as
seized financial ledgers, computer disks and hundreds of hours of
taped conversations.

"Beginning approximately four years ago," Kacerosky wrote, "I began to
receive new information and evidence from a wide variety of sources
and witnesses relating to the continued criminal activities of the
Rodriguez-Orejuela brothers and a number of their associates."

Perhaps the most damaging new witness is Fernando Flores Garmendia,
known as El Gordo, who moved cocaine through Venezuela. After his
extradition in 1999, Flores Garmendia provided the evidence that
finally convinced a Colombian court to issue extradition orders for
both brothers.

The Rodriguez Orejuelas thought they were protected by a 1997 amnesty
agreement with the United States. But according to Flores Garmendia
and other witnesses, they continued to run the cartel from behind bars
long after the agreement, making them eligible for
extradition.

Court documents allege that they bribed prison officials and used an
elaborate system of runners, cell phones and landlines to escape
detection. They also paid subsidies to the families of jailed co-
conspirators to ensure their loyalty.

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela denies it.

The February 2004 indictment is an offshoot of Operation Cornerstone,
an investigation that racked up more than 75 convictions during the
1990s. Among them, two former Miami federal prosecutors and a former
Department of Justice lawyer who crossed the line between adviser and
accessory by laundering money and buying off witnesses for the cartel.

"We had two kinds of lawyers in Miami, criminal lawyers and lawyer
criminals," recalled Cash, Miami's former DEA chief.

Now, Operation Cornerstone is producing the government's most powerful
witnesses against the brothers, including once high-ranking cartel
insiders. Some cooperated because they feared for their lives. Others
hope to shorten their prison sentences.

With his wife and best friend missing and presumed dead and a murder
contract on his head, Guillermo Pallomari Gonzalez surrendered to DEA
agents in August 1995. He pleaded guilty to racketeering and money
laundering.

He testified as a top government witness at three trials in Miami, and
provided information to authorities in Colombia, Mexico and
Switzerland, producing ledgers and decoding computer disks.

Jorge Salcedo Cabrera, the cartel's former intelligence chief, bugged
the cartel's enemies, informants and government officials, but began
secretly cooperating with U.S. agents in July 1995. After he led
police to Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela 's hideout, he was placed under
protection in the United States, eventually pleading guilty to
racketeering.

Julio Jo-Cipriano, a Cuban-American, was arrested by Colombian police
in 1995, and served as the brothers' personal assistant in prison. He
says they paid him for his silence, providing money for his family
until 2002.

Flores Garmendia's mother, chauffeur and bodyguard also received
payments as long as he remained loyal and silent, according to the
affidavit.

"I can state that many of the criminal activities of the major Cali
cartel leaders who were jailed in 1995 and 1996 continued from within
Colombian prisons," ICE agent Kacerosky wrote. "The pattern of these
activities was consistent in many respects with the pattern of prior
trafficking and criminal activities of these cartel
chieftains."