Pubdate: Sun, 03 Jun 2001
Source: Bergen Record (NJ)
Copyright: 2001 Bergen Record Corp.
Contact:  http://www.bergen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/44
Author: Glenn Garvin, Special from the Miami Herald

AN ALLIANCE OF MURDER

KILLING PABLO, by Mark Bowden; Atlantic Monthly Press, 296 pp., $25.

"Killing Pablo," the tale of how the U.S. government used a death squad to 
hunt down and murder Colombian drug traffickers, is probably just a 
footnote in the story of official counternarcotics mayhem generated by the 
United States.

But what a footnote! In brisk prose and compelling detail, Philadelphia 
Inquirer reporter Mark Bowden documents the murderous impulse that lies at 
the heart of U.S. counternarcotics programs in Latin America.

The story begins in 1989, when Washington sent a top secret Army 
intelligence unit known as Centra Spike to help the Colombian government 
neutralize the mighty Medellin cocaine cartel -- especially its top man, a 
pudgy little psychopath named Pablo Escobar.

Using small spyplanes to intercept communications -- particularly cellphone 
calls -- Centra Spike pinpointed the locations of cartel leaders and passed 
them to the Colombians.

It wasn't innocent police work. The first time Centra Spike produced a 
narcotrafficker's address, the Colombians sent a squadron of T-33 
fighter-bombers to annihilate him.

Washington neither complained nor backed away. Instead, it dived in deeper. 
Eventually the FBI; CIA; DEA; the National Security Agency; the Bureau of 
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the Army's Delta Force; the Navy; and the 
Air Force would all be lending a hand.

The aid to Colombian security forces continued even when U.S. operatives 
saw them torturing suspects. And even when the Colombians organized a death 
squad known as the People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar, or Pepes.

The Pepes murdered suspected drug barons, and their lawyers, cabdrivers, 
real estate agents, apartment building managers, horse trainers, and maids 
- -- perhaps as many as 300 in all.

It's a complicated tale that might have overwhelmed a lesser writer, but 
Bowden skillfully weaves a narrative studded with anecdotes that are 
hilarious, horrifying, and tragic, sometimes simultaneously.

Escobar was eventually killed -- probably murdered by a Colombian cop as he 
lay helpless from a leg wound. And his death barely caused a blip in 
Colombia's cocaine trade, which passed to the country's Marxist guerrillas.

But then, the U.S. drug warriors were never under any delusion that they 
were going to stop cocaine from flowing in.

"It was about democracy, the rule of law, standing up for justice and 
civilization," Bowden writes about America's involvement.

In other words, by trampling Colombia's constitution and subverting its 
already shaky criminal justice system, the U.S. government sought to 
civilize Colombia.

As we used to say about Vietnam, sometimes you've got to destroy the 
village in order to save it.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens