IS BARR ONLY ONE FOCUSED ON AMERICA'S NEGLECTED WAR IN COLOMBIA?

WASHINGTON - The capture and murder by narco-guerrillas of U.S. intelligence
operatives in Colombia was a disaster waiting to happen. It was predicted in
a report submitted a month ago by visiting congressmen, who described the
U.S. government's multi-billion-dollar Plan Colombia as an expensive
failure. The incident signified that the Colombia crisis is getting worse.

Details of the mission and crash of the single-engine Cessna 208 are
obscure, thanks to the U.S. government's reluctance to talk about secret
operations. Sources in Colombia, however, report that the plane contained
four contract employees of an office in the U.S. embassy in Bogota under CIA
control. Their fate was sealed by multiple security blunders, in the opinion
of special operations experts.

With the U.S. preparing for combat in Iraq and trying to avoid it in Korea,
Colombia is America's forgotten war. The U.S. investment of $2.2 billion in
Plan Colombia, badly in need of congressional oversight, is largely ignored
on Capitol Hill.

An exception is former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Canton), who after his defeat in the
Georgia Republican primary made a fact-finding mission to Colombia late last
year as his congressional valedictory. In a report to Speaker Dennis Hastert
Jan. 10, Barr concluded: "With billions of tax dollars invested in Plan
Colombia, there is no active peace process and the drug-funded killing
continues at a disturbing pace." He was prophetic: "Force protection for
U.S. military and contractors now serving under Plan Colombia is
inadequate."

Just how inadequate was found Feb. 13 by four U.S. civilians employed by
California Microwave Inc, of Sunnyvale, Calif., a communications service,
when their plane crashed. Government officials deny they were CIA agents,
and technically they were not. In fact, they were under contract to the
Office of Regional Administration in the Bogota embassy, a covert CIA
operation.

U.S. officials called this crash accidental, but other sources claim the
plane was shot down by FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)
guerrillas. They would have reason. While the cover story had the plane
monitoring coca production, embassy sources said the plane was an ELINT
(electronic intelligence) operation monitoring the FARC's notorious 15th
Front to gather information on the whereabouts of guerrilla commandantes.

Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador in Bogota, was reported by associates as
"coming unglued" after the incident. A single-engine plane on an
intelligence mission is considered unacceptable. Nor was there a "chase"
plane following to quickly come to rescue the intelligence aircraft if
necessary.

Last Oct. 15, when Barr was on his Colombian mission, he was informed by
U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Richard Baca of a foolproof "search and rescue"
plan if any of the American planes went down. "Instead," a veteran special
operations officer told me, "this was amateur hour."

While one U.S. civilian and a Colombian army sergeant (the fifth man in the
crashed plane) were immediately shot to death by FARC, intercepted radio
conversations Monday indicated the other three Americans also might be
doomed. Until the incident, 80 Americans had been taken hostage since 1990
and 12 had been murdered since 1995.

In the wake of the latest attack on Americans, Barr's ignored report should
be scrutinized. He was assigned the fact-finding mission last fall by Rep.
Dan Burton, then the House Government Reform Committee chairman. A veteran
of many visits to Colombia, Barr found no good news.

The Barr delegation "found the security situation in Colombia ... has
continued to deteriorate in the past decade" and that "the chaos has
increased markedly" over the last decade. The report contended that the
Bogota embassy's "cheery good news" is not justified or accurate. The
delegation's report lists 15 failings, including lack of protection for
contract employees.

Barr is no longer in Congress, Republican term-limits have removed Burton as
committee chairman, and Burton's successor, Rep. Tom Davis, has gotten rid
of committee staffers specializing in Colombia. Davis left Washington
Tuesday on his own mission to that bloodstained country. He could start by
looking into the latest disaster.

Robert Novak appears on CNN's "Capitol Gang."