NELSON ASKS PERU TO REOPEN CASE OF REPORTER'S DEATH

LIMA, Peru - He was a strapping and fearless reporter originally from
Tallahassee who wanted to earn his stripes to become a foreign correspondent.

So Todd Smith headed to the drug-trafficking hub of Uchiza in central
Peru and photographed the small planes loaded with semi-refined
cocaine bound for Colombia.

Smith did not leave Uchiza alive. His body, tortured and with a sign
denouncing him as a U.S. undercover agent, was found in a Uchiza
playground on Nov. 21, 1989. He was 28 years old and worked for the
Tampa Tribune. He is the only U.S. reporter who has been killed while
covering Peru's drug trade.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida is asking President Alan Garcia to reopen
the investigation because the man believed by authorities to have
ordered Smith's execution, Fernando Zevallos, has never been charged
with the crime. Nelson visited Peru in late February.

"I told President Garcia that it was important to me because we need
to give closure to the parents of Todd Smith," Nelson said in an interview.

Smith came with his two younger sisters to Tallahassee in 1975 when
his father, Robert P. Smith, Jr., was appointed to be a judge on the
state District Court of Appeal. Smith got his start in journalism at
Leon High School.

Under the tutelage of legendary teacher Judy Steverson, he drew
cartoons, wrote stories and became co-editor of the High Life his senior year.

After his 1979 graduation from Leon, he went on to Washington & Lee,
and after graduating from there, he got a job at the St. Petersburg
Times and began to work his way up the journalism ladder. By 1989, he
was making a name for himself covering local government for the Tampa Tribune.

But he burned to be a foreign correspondent.

So he went to Peru on vacation to investigate the country's role as
the world's biggest producer of the raw coca leaf that is the
essential ingredient for cocaine.

Smith had already been to hot spots in Nicaragua and Colombia and
figured that he knew how to manage working in an area where asking
the wrong question to the wrong person could get you killed.

Uchiza, a jungle town about 250 miles northeast of Lima, was too
dangerous for the police to patrol when Smith went there. Drug
traffickers held sway, paying off everyone from the mayor on down
from their enormous profits. They even paid off the Shining Path
guerrillas in the area, in exchange for protection.

Americans in the area were assumed to be with the CIA or the Drug
Enforcement Agency, sworn enemies of the drug traffickers and the
Shining Path alike.

Sharon Stevenson, then a free-lancer for Time magazine, met with
Smith. Stevenson had been to Uchiza, accompanied by another reporter,
and advised Smith that if he insisted on going that he stick only
with the coca growers, who were not violent.

Traveling alone, Smith instead gathered information from all sides
and shot incriminating photos of the semi-refined drug being loaded
onto planes. Smith was about to fly out when four armed men in a
pick-up truck grabbed him at the airport. His body was found three
days later in the playground. The sign tied around his neck made it
seem as if he had run afoul of the Shining Path.

A peasant named Reynaldo Beltran later fingered Zevallos. Beltran had
tried to sell Smith an alligator in an accidental encounter in Uchiza.

The men first grabbed Beltran, then Smith. Beltran escaped when they
untied his legs to use the rope to strangle Smith.

In 1992, Beltran gave secret testimony to Peruvian police in which he
said he overheard the criminals discuss how Zevallos had ordered
Smith's execution, believing that Smith worked for U.S. government
anti-drug operations and had seen and heard too much.

At the time, Zevallos operated a fleet of small planes that operated
out of Uchiza and other jungle towns. Zevallos has repeatedly denied
any role in Smith's death. He is in prison today, sentenced in 2005
to 20 years for money laundering and drug trafficking.

In 2004, the U.S. had called him one of the world's biggest drug "kingpins."

Sen. Nelson is hoping the new investigation will lead to Zevallos'
extradition to the U.S. where he could be jailed for life.

In Tallahassee, meanwhile, Robert P. Smith Jr., now retired from the
Hopping law firm, expressed appreciation that Nelson and others
remain interested in what happened to his son.

"I hope Peruvian authorities get to the bottom of it," he said.