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The Bush administration is getting desperate for good news out of Colombia.
Despite promises each year that the war on coca cultivation is turning
the corner, about to bear fruit (pick your favorite metaphor, the drug czar
has tried them all), the supply of cocaine remains more or less stable, with
prices still far below their pre-Plan Colombia levels. The Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC in its Spanish initials) appears no closer to defeat
despite major U.S.-backed military offensives against them. And word is slowly
but surely beginning to spread about the overwhelming corruption of U.S. law
enforcement agents in the country, thanks to Bill Conroy’s reports in
Narco News.
Now the U.S. Justice Department has “indicted” 50 members of the FARC.
“This is the largest narcotics trafficking indictment ever filed in U.S.
history,” said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at a press conference last
week, triumphantly giving the illusion of some kind of progress in the war on
drugs.
Only three of the 50 accused are actually in custody; the other 47 are active
fighters in Latin America’s largest and strongest insurgent army, with
no more likelihood of capture than before the March 22 announcement. And given
that agencies implicated in the cover-up of the DEA’s corruption in Colombia
were at the lead in this “investigation,” its findings are highly
questionable…
As the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC in its Spanish initials)
completes its “demobilization” and right-wing paramilitarism moves
from the fringes of the law into the legal mainstream of Colombian society,
both the U.S. and Colombian governments are now trying to wipe them from the
public memory as the major drug trafficking force in country.
The press release from Justice is peppered with language referring to the
FARC as a “criminal enterprise,” claiming it is responsible for
supplying “more than 50 percent of the world’s cocaine and more
than 60 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States.” While a
great deal of the FARC’s revenue obviously comes from taxing production
and other types of involvement with the drug trade, if the group really had
such a monopoly over the business its profits would be in the billions of dollars,
something that no
serious observer of the conflict from either side of the political spectrum
has found any evidence of.
But given the alleged relationships uncovered by Narco News between DEA and
other U.S. agents and figures in the Colombian drug mafia — based on evidence
that the Justice Department and other agencies have covered up and failed to
investigate or disprove — how seriously can any of this be taken anyway?
According to the Justice Department’s March
22 press release:
The investigation culminating in the indictment announced today was led
by the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s
Office for the Southern District of New York; the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug
Section (NDDS) of the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice, along
with law enforcement officers from the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE), and the Internal Revenue Service, working together as part of the New
York OCDETF Strike Force, or “New York Strike Force.” The New
York Strike Force is composed of law enforcement officers from the DEA; ICE;
the IRS; the FBI; the New York City Police Department; the New York State
Police; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and
the U.S. Marshals Service. The investigation and prosecution are supported
by trial attorneys from the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous
Drug Section and by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colombia.
Narco News readers may recognize some familiar names in there. Most significantly,
the Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section (NDDS) is
the same agency that Thomas M. Kent worked for when he wrote the now-famous
memo that would expose the accusations of corruption against the Bogotá
DEA office. The NDDS leadership is part of the same web of officials that did
all they could to cover up these accusations.
From the January
9, 2006 report by Bill Conroy:
On Dec. 19, 2004, Thomas M. Kent, an attorney in the wiretap unit of the
Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs Section (NDDS), sent
off a memo to his section chief. Law enforcement sources tell Narco News that
a number of other high-level officials within Justice and the DEA soon received
copies of the same memo. In it, Kent raised a series of corruption allegations
centering on the DEA’s office in Bogotá.
Kent is no longer with the Washington, D.C.-based wiretap unit of NDDS.
He has been transferred to Nashville, according to sources familiar with the
memorandum. Ironically, the NDDS chief to whom Kent addressed the memorandum,
Jodi L. Avergun, is now the chief of staff for DEA.
Until the DEA and Justice department respond to the overwhelming evidence cited
in Conroy’s reports, can anything these agencies say be taken at face
value?
