DRUG TEAM HUNTS CHICAGO'S HEROIN SOURCE

BOGOTA, Colombia - Ask Alejandro what guerrillas here think of
Americans, and an uncomfortable smile spreads across his baby face.

"We wanted to kill the gringos," the 18-year-old said.

Alejandro chuckled at the irony.

He was a soldier in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, a 40-year-old group that grows and sells much of the cocaine and
heroin that make their way to Chicago's neighborhoods and streets.

But FARC's leaders - narco-traffickers now less interested in
communist ideology than in women, cigars and whiskey paid for with
U.S. dollars - hate Americans because we have provided the Colombian
government with billions of dollars to fight the drug war here.

"They talked about equality in Colombia, but they really are looking
for money for themselves," said Alejandro, whose life is in jeopardy
because he defected from the 18,000-member guerrilla army.

The irony is not lost on U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, either.

Hyde (R-Ill.) is alarmed that the Chicago area has ranked No. 1 among
U.S. cities in heroin deaths and emergency room visits. He also is
alarmed that money from drug sales in Chicago is returning to
Colombia, where U.S. citizens and Colombians alike are targets of FARC
and other terrorist groups.

Bogota is perched 9,000 feet atop a plateau. Planes struggle to climb
over the cloud-shrouded mountains that encircle the city of 9 million
people. It is a city where Americans stay on their guard.

One night, Risley and the rest of the Chicago contingent drove into
the hills of Bogota in armored sport-utility vehicles to the U.S.
ambassador's residence, a sprawling white estate overlooking the
lights of the city.

The capital was jittery because FARC was celebrating its 40th
anniversary and attacks were feared. Safe in the heavily protected
mansion, the gathering dined on empanadas and sipped whiskey as
reports came in about two bombings in Bogota and a "mini-riot" in Cali.

No matter where you are in Bogota -- even in the ambassador's house or
at an upscale restaurant -- the terror cells financed by the FARC are
a constant threat.

Last year, FARC members tossed grenades into the Bogota Beer Company
and Palos de Moguer pubs in the swank Zona Rosa, where embassy
employees, off-duty soldiers and journalists hang out.

The attack killed one person and wounded 72, including an American
Airlines pilot from Florida.

Kidnappings are a constant worry. But under hard-line President Alvaro
Uribe, they are happening less frequently, along with political
killings and attacks on villages by FARC and the illegal paramilitary
groups that view FARC as a mortal enemy.

Life in FARC

FARC's drug pipeline to Chicago starts in camps where soldiers like
Alejandro live. He joined FARC three years ago when he was 15. A buddy
recruited him.

He learned to use a .50-caliber machine-gun and an assault rifle, and
he fought against the military. In jungle camps in the southwest part
of the country, where cocaine is the chief industry, he was tutored in
Marxist ideology.

"All they talked about was the inequality of society," said Alejandro,
whose last name is not being used to protect his identity.

But life in FARC was decidedly unequal. "Julian," commander of FARC's
29th Front, lived in a house packed with conveniences. He was fond of
lounging on a cabin cruiser "with girls on it all the time," Alejandro
said, adding that Julian sent his family to Venezuela where they would
be safer.

FARC soldiers like Alejandro cultivated drug plots and transported raw
materials to drug labs, but never were invited into Julian's home.
They lived in tents.

He grew to detest the leaders, who orchestrated kangaroo courts that
handed down death sentences against his friends.

One day, he mustered the courage to escape. He walked to the home of a
woman who gave him civilian clothes.

It took him 12 hours to hike to the nearest town in Narino province,
where he surrendered to police.

"They didn't believe me," he chuckled. "My weapon was in a bag on my
back. I said, 'Hello, how are you?' and he said, 'Who are you?' and I
said, 'I am a guerrilla.' And he said, 'What in the world are you
doing here?' "

Two FARC guerrillas were ordered to kill Alejandro, but they decided
to escape, too. They were killed trying. Another guerrilla who escaped
passed on the news to Alejandro, he said.

The aerial war

Soldiers like Alejandro often came into contact with Colombian police
through the U.S.-backed aerial drug eradication program.

Planes piloted by the Colombian National Police and U.S. contractors
spray a chemical used in the popular herbicide, Roundup, onto coca
leaves, from which cocaine is extracted, and onto fields of poppies,
which contain the opium used in making heroin.

Alejandro recalls spreading molasses on the coca leaves to protect
them from the spraying.

"We would shoot at them but never saw them drop," he said of the
planes, adding that he was soaked with herbicide a few times while
standing in the coca fields.

Often, however, the guerrillas' aim is true.

Three U.S. contractors -- Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas
Howes -- have been held captive by FARC guerrillas for more than a
year.

Authorities believe FARC shot down their single-engine Cessna as they
searched for illegal drug activity in the jungles of southern Colombia.

Their photos are on display in the lobby of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota
with a banner that says, "You Are Not Forgotten." But U.S. officials
say they are not negotiating with FARC for the pilots' release because
the government does not deal with terrorists.

Colombian National Police aircraft frequently are shot at by FARC
members and by paramilitary groups that also control territory where
coca and poppy fields are cultivated.

Col. Carlos Malavar, head of the Colombian National Police aviation
operation in Bogota, pointed out bullet holes that have riddled the
wings of one of his DC-3s. The holes have been patched with sheet metal.

"I've stopped counting," Malavar said when asked how many times his
planes have been struck.

The Chicago area cops met Capt. Jairo Carrera at a Colombian police
hospital in Bogota where he has been recovering after crashing his
helicopter into a mountain.

Carrera was flying a mission over poppy fields when FARC guerrillas
shot him down. Another chopper rescued him, and he has spent the last
1-1/2 years recuperating.

"I will fly again," said the 28-year-old officer, whose wife flies an
airplane for the Colombian National Police.

The Colombian military also fights the FARC, but drug trafficking is
not the focus of its efforts.

Cutting down the fields

Planes sprayed nearly 7,400 acres of poppies last year, and more than
2,200 more were destroyed by hand -- more than in 2002 or 2001,
according to U.S. estimates. But more than 22,800 acres were destroyed
in 2000, the peak of poppy eradication efforts.

The coca-spraying program is much larger: The coca acreage destroyed
last year was almost 35 times larger than the eradicated poppy crop.
Coca destruction is increasingly successful, U.S. officials say.

"We're beyond the tipping point," said James K. Foster, a spokesman
for the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. "We're winning the war."

Still, Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee,
sent a letter Nov. 5 to the U.S. drug czar, John P. Walters, arguing
the United States should do more to destroy poppy fields by hand.

Hyde told Walters that heroin was a crucial problem facing his
constituents, noting sky-high heroin abuse figures in the Chicago area.

Aerial spraying for poppies is difficult because they are grown in
small patches high in the mountains under almost constant cloud cover
- -- as opposed to coca, which is grown in large plots in jungle clearings.

Hyde said he supports a plan to put FARC defectors like Alejandro to
work cutting down poppy fields with weed trimmers and machetes. More
than 4,000 members of FARC have "demobilized" in recent years, and the
Colombian government is training them to return to legitimate society.

"I will go back into that area on any operation for the government,"
said Alejandro, who faces death if he is ever caught by FARC operatives.

Hyde is fighting to supply three DC-3 aircraft -- which only need a
runway as long as a football field -- to the Colombian National Police
to ferry officers and FARC defectors to remote mountain areas where
they can cut down poppy fields.

Another front

The United States, which has provided more than $2.5 billion in aid to
Colombia since 2000, also is fighting to seize drug shipments, destroy
drug labs here and dismantle the cartels sending drugs abroad.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, under threat of
assassination, are paired with Colombian National Police officers to
screen passengers and cargo leaving major airports here for Miami, New
York and Europe.

Three of the agents here are former Chicago Police officers. They all
plan on coming back some day.

"Nothing will faze us," said one of them, a former Belmont District
patrol officer.

Another DEA agent -- stationed on Colombia's rugged west coast where
traffickers load "go-fast" speed boats with dope and deliver it to
fishing trawlers bound for Mexico -- said he cannot take the roads
there because of the risk of being kidnapped or killed at a FARC checkpoint.

"It is deadly," said the former Los Angeles cop, who only travels to
the coast by small aircraft or helicopter.

The DEA's efforts in Colombia have led to a major U.S. indictment
unsealed in May against the Norte Valle Cartel, a collection of small
drug rings based in a valley between Cali and Medellin.

Among the fugitives charged in the indictment are Wilbur Alirio Varela
and Diego Leon Montoya-Sanchez. Varela, reputed to have killed 250
people, is now at war with Montoya-Sanchez for control of the empire,
officials here said.

Colombia is facing a fourth generation of drug traffickers following
the marijuana cartels of the 1970s; the murderous Medellin cartel that
the late Pablo Escobar ran in the 1980s, and the Cali and Norte Valle
cartels that were more discreet in their use of violence, said Col.
Oscar A. Naranjo Trujillo, director of the Central Judicial Police in
Colombia.

"There is no showboating anymore," he said. "It's all
business."

U.S. Ambassador William B. Wood, at the party for the Chicago area
cops at his Bogota residence, said the fight against Colombian drug
traffickers is critical for U.S. cities like Chicago.

"If you want to change life in the streets of America, one of the
places you do it is Colombia," Wood told the Sun-Times. "In 2001, more
American citizens died from drugs coming from Colombia than died in
the World Trade Center towers. That is why we have the largest embassy
in the world here. We have a strong ally in Colombia, and we are crazy
if we don't take advantage of it."

Buying a high on W. Side starts with trip out of jungle

Much of the drugs that end up in Chicago come from the lush jungles
and cloud-shrouded spires of Colombia.

Cocaine is extracted from coca leaves. The pods of red poppy flowers,
which flourish at more than 10,000 feet, contain a milky gum that is
turned into heroin.

The gum from poppy pods is worth up to 1 million pesos a kilogram --
or $3,700.

"We would send it to Cali in vehicles and on mules," said Alejandro,
an ex-soldier with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which
grows poppies and coca to fund its operations.

By the time Colombian heroin reaches Chicago by Mexican shipping and
trucking routes -- or by couriers traveling to U.S. airports -- it's
worth at least $75,000 a kilogram (2.2 pounds) wholesale. Coke is
worth up to $22,000 a kilo.

Almost all heroin leaving Bogota goes to the United States, while most
of the cocaine leaving the capital winds up in Europe. The trends are
different in Cali and other cities, officials say.

Colombian heroin is so pure compared with heroin from Afghanistan and
Mexico that U.S. teens have begun to snort it instead of shooting it
into their veins with a needle.

Police in DuPage County say affluent high schoolers drive to the West
Side to score heroin. Some get hooked and overdose.

The latest U.S. statistics on drug abuse show there were 220
heroin-related emergency-room visits in the Chicago area in 2002 and
352 heroin-related deaths in 2001 -- the most in the country. One
reason: Chicago is the Midwestern drug hub. Baltimore was a close
second with 349 deaths and 203 emergency-room visits. New York had the
third highest level of hospital visits, with 173.

Though drug agents think most heroin coming to Chicago is from
Colombia, they are closely watching Asia, too.

"They are storing tons of heroin in Asia," said Richard Sanders,
special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in
Chicago. "I think that is the next big problem for Chicago."