ALVARO URIBE VS. THE PRESS

Facts Reported by Narco News & Newsweek Explode in Colombian
Presidential Debate

Colombian Journalist Who Reported Uribe's Narco-History Threatened
with Assassination

Journalist Fernando Garavito: Now in Exile in the United States

Uribe: "You have come here to smear my political career"

Part II of a Narco News Investigative Report

On March 19th, the day that Narco News and the March 25th issue of
Newsweek published stories reporting the narco-history of Colombian
presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe (See Narco-Candidate in Colombia,
March 19, 2002 and "I Have Been Honorable," the Newsweek interview
with Uribe, March 25, 2002), a presidential debate was held in Bogota
with the five candidates and a panel of journalists.

Narco News reported information verbatim from U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration documents that the DEA had seized 50,000 kilos of
potassium permanganate - a necessary chemical in the production of
cocaine - in 1997 and 1998 destined for a company owned by Uribe's
campaign manager Pedro Juan Moreno Villa.

Mr. Moreno's unreported shipments of what the DEA calls a List II
Controlled Substance constituted a volume sufficient to make half-a-
million kilos of cocaine hydrochloride, with a street value of $15
billion US dollars. Because potassium permanganate is not produced in
South America, where the coca leaf grows on trees, whomever controls
the chemical's market in Colombia thus controls the cocaine trade. DEA
chief Donnie Marshall noted in an August 3, 2001 DEA document that Mr.
Moreno's company, GMP Chemical Products, was the single largest
importer of the chemical from 1994 to 1998, roughly the same years
that Uribe was governor of the state of Antioquia and Moreno was his
chief of staff.

That official document exploded like a bomb in Colombia this
week.

Rafael Santos, the representative of the daily El Tiempo on the debate
panel, asked Uribe this question:

"Doctor Uribe, at the end of your interview with the prestigious
magazine Newsweek you said there was a campaign of disinformation
against you. Was the irritability you showed with the magazine
reporter a gimmick to sidestep the debate about your very
controversial positions such as your defense of the CONVIVIR
(paramilitary squads), your participation in the homage to General
Fernando Millan, your friendship with Cesar Villegas or your 'case
closed' defense of someone close to you like Pedro Juan Moreno?
Shouldn't the country have a president with the character of one who
has the lucid serenity to clear the air over any doubts about his past?"

Uribe's response:

"I have always answered everything the people have asked me through
the media, with the microphones turned on and available to public scrutiny.

"The interview by the Newsweek editor was to offend me, to judge me.
There came a moment in which I told him: Look, Sir, I cannot answer
more questions.

"I have answered on all the issues including what you have asked me
for many years. The Attorney General and Comptroller of the Nation
have examined some of them. They have always absolved me."

Reporter Juan Gossain, a debate panelist, then asked Uribe:

"The columnist Maria Isabel Rueda says that you have a bad image
abroad, a black legend, and she counsels you to travel and confront
it. Are you disposed to do that?"

Uribe Responded:

"I have always done that. I also want to say this night to the
national community that my security program has generated a lot of
controversy. They have used all the elements of dirty warfare to
confront it. My security policy for the Colombian people has no
retreat. To the international community, I want to say that this
security policy will be conducted with all firmness, but with
transparency. There will be security for the Colombian people,
recuperating human rights."

The Newsweek Interview: "We have nothing to discuss"

For a glimpse of what a narco-candidate like Alvaro Uribe considers as
"transparency," consider the following verbatim text from an interview
by Newsweek correspondent Joseph Contreras with the embattled
presidential frontrunner, with additional analysis provided by Narco
News:

Newsweek: In 1997 and 1998, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration [DEA] seized 50,000 kilos of a chemical precursor used
in the processing of cocaine. Those chemicals had been allegedly
purchased by a company belonging to Pedro Juan Moreno, who served as
your cabinet chief when you were governor of Antioquia.

Uribe: I became aware of that only after my term as governor ended. If
the charges are true, he should go to jail. If they are groundless,
the DEA should rectify that error. I believe that an error was made in
his case.

Narco News Publisher's Note: Moreno, the trafficker of chemicals that
produce cocaine, the man that many Colombians are calling the future
Montesinos of Colombia, remains at the helm of Uribe's campaign today.

Newsweek: According to a best-selling book about the drug trade
entitled "The Jockeys of Cocaine," you spoke out on behalf of a low-
income housing program in Medellin that was funded by drug lord Pablo
Escobar when you were mayor of that city in 1982...

Uribe: I asked the attorney general's office to investigate that
matter, and I was completely cleared of those charges. That housing
program was well underway when I became mayor. I had nothing to do
with that.

Narco News Publisher's Note: The charge was that Uribe personally
presided over the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Houses that Escobar
Built after he became mayor. Uribe's answer obfuscates in such a
manner as to confirm the original accusation.

Newsweek: Well-informed sources say that a record number of pilot's
licenses and airstrip construction permits were issued by the civil-
aviation authority when you headed that agency in the 1980s, a period
when drug trafficking was on the rise...

Uribe: Let's not talk further. I see that you have come here to smear
my political career.

Newsweek: Your deputy at the aviation authority was a man named Cesar
Villegas, later sentenced to five years in prison for his links to the
Cali cartel and murdered earlier this month...

Uribe: I refuse to accept that you foreign correspondents come here to
ask me these kinds of questions and repeat slanders made against me.
All I say is this: as a politician, I have been honorable and
accountable. We have nothing else to discuss.

This same week, the world saw a clear example of how Uribe and his
supporters "discuss" the facts with domestic journalists in Colombia.

Colombian Journo Flees Country After Threats

Foreign journalists don't get their questions answered, but domestic
journalists who critique Uribe are not allowed to live in peace - or
live, period.

Last week, Narco News reported that El Espectador columnist Fernando
Garavito was the first journalist to break the news about Uribe, the
candidate of the narco.

Within days, Garavito was forced to leave the country as a direct
result of threats stemming from his reporting about Uribe. He is now,
according to the news agencies El Espectador, EFE, AP and the Miami
Herald, in exile in the United States.

The Spanish news agency EFE reported on Thursday:

Colombian journalist Fernando Garavito, a columnist for the weekly El
Espectador, said Friday that he had been forced to flee to the United
States after receiving death threats.

Garavito, whose pen name is Juan Mosca, has been very critical both of
President Andres Pastrana and of dissident Liberal candidate Alvaro
Uribe Velez, whom the polls show as the favorite to win the May 26
presidential elections.

The columnist decided to leave Bogota after two unknown individuals
claiming to be members of a non-governmental organization made
inquiries at the University of Sergio Arboleda about his teaching schedule.

Garavito is the latest in a long line of Colombian journalists forced
into exile, a phenomenon that has caused a serious "brain drain" on
Colombian journalism and thus allows a narco-candidate like Uribe to
escape real scrutiny at home. Uribe's complaints about "foreign
journalists" must be analyzed in the context that he is partly
responsible for the forced exile of Colombia's best domestic
journalists to foreign lands.

31 Journos Assassinated Under Narco-State's Watch

Enrique Santos Calderon, codirector of the Colombian daily El Tiempo,
told a gathering of journalists in Bogota last week that, "In almost
every case of a dead colleague, there is the stamp of impunity,"
meaning that the assassins know full well that the Colombian
government, which benefits from their dirty work, will do nothing to
apprehend the journo-killers. He said that in 31 cases of journalists
assassinated in Colombia "not a single intellectual author of the
crime has been captured."

According to El Tiempo's coverage of last week's meeting of the World
Association of Newspapers in the Colombian capital, "Maria Teresa
Ronderos, of the Foundation for Freedom of the Press, recalled that
twenty reporters have had to leave the country in the past year. Fidel
Cano, director of El Espectador referred to the case of columnist
Fernando Garavito, who had leave the country due to threats against
him, and said, 'In Colombia, it is impossible to stop the bullets when
free ideas are discussed.'"

Authentic Journalist Fernando Garavito

Through the daily El Espectador, where his column appears, Fernando
Garavito spoke on Saturday from exile. His newspaper described him as
"an ironclad critic of presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe" who "left
the country after being threatened with death by unknown persons."

"In this country the dark forces that don't want peace persist, but
from exile I will continue writing my column for El Espectador because
it is a commitment I have to the country," Garavito declared from the
United States.

"With 40 journalists killed in the past 10 years, another 50 kidnapped
in the past three years, and nearly thirty forced into exile, Colombia
holds the record of violence in all categories," according to
Reporters Without Borders' 2001 annual report.

Unable to brand the Colombian born Garavito as a "foreign journalist,"
Uribe instead called Garavito to a meeting last week and made a big
show of calling for the Colombian government to protect his
journalistic critic, when, as stated above by Enrique Santos Calderon,
the government has already proven itself useless in the protection of
journalists' lives. Uribe's cynical call was akin to asking the
proverbial fox to protect the livestock.

After meeting with Uribe, the columnist Fernando Garavito thought it
wiser to leave his country.

Garavito thus joins the ranks of authentic journalist Alfredo Molano,
another critic of the right-wing paramilitary death squads forced to
leave his homeland. Molano was interviewed in Barcelona, in July 2000
by Narco News about The Hidden Agendas Behind Plan Colombia.

Narco News informs the United States government, Secretary of State
Colin Powell, and Ambassador Anne Patterson in Colombia that we hold
them personally responsible for the safety of journalist Fernando
Garavito and other Uribe critics both within, and outside, of U.S.
borders. Due to the economic weight of Plan Colombia's billions and an
intense intelligence apparatus, U.S. officials have absolute control
over the Colombian government, its paramilitary organizations, and the
Uribe campaign that Washington continues to support.

This is not merely a rhetorical call: The U.S. Departments of State,
Justice and Defense each subscribe, openly, to The Narco News
Bulletin's free mailing list. We allow them to subscribe gratis just
like any other citizen precisely for moments of moral crisis like this
one, in which they must be held accountable for the consequences of
their actions or inactions.

Uribe Lets His Fist Do the Talking

Newsweek's Contreras reported, in an article accompanying the Uribe
interview, "there is a whiff of the arrogant about Uribe that surfaces
from time to time. In his book about the Colombian drug trade,
'Whitewash,' British journalist Simon Strong recounts a 1994 interview
with the then senator that turned sour when the reporter asked a
question about one of Uribe's political proteges who had once enjoyed
the backing of the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. According to
Strong, the senator stormed out of the Bogota restaurant where the
meeting was taking place. When Strong later emerged, the journalist
encountered a belligerent Uribe waiting for him outside, surrounded by
bodyguards as he waved his fist in front of Strong's nose and
challenged him to resume the interview (in his interview with
NEWSWEEK, Uribe said he has never 'intimidated' or 'threatened' any
journalist).

"The thin-skinned politician apparently hasn't mellowed with time,"
reports Newsweek. "Uribe personally phoned the Bogota correspondent,
Gonzalo Guillen, of Miami's Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo
Herald, two weeks ago to complain about his investigation of Uribe's
past ties to the notorious Ochoa clan. The Ochoas were major players
in Escobar's Medellin cartel during its heyday, and Uribe has
acknowledged his father's long friendship with the recently deceased
patriarch Fabio Ochoa, but Uribe maintains he parted ways with Fabio's
sons many years ago. Nevertheless, Uribe didn't appreciate Guillen's
inquiries and made his displeasure known by pointedly asking whether
the journalist lived in Bogota or Miami."

We urge readers and colleagues in journalism to pay close attention to
the two step process of avoiding press scrutiny inherent in Uribe's
strategy: First exile the best reporters from Colombia, then claim
that only reporters still inside the nation's borders can have their
questions answered.