Pubdate: Sat, 05 May 2001
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2001 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://www.seattletimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Tod Robberson

DOGGING THE DRUG WAR: SECRET MISSIONS AND EXTORTION CLAIMS TROUBLE 
CONGRESS, ANDEAN NATIONS

PANAMA CITY -- A U.S. surveillance plane crashes in a Colombian 
combat zone, killing all aboard. A private U.S. military contractor 
sends Americans into combat against rebels who have downed a police 
helicopter. A civilian aircraft flown by missionaries is shot out of 
the skies after being tracked by a CIA-contracted aircraft over Peru.

These are the types of U.S. operations - all conducted under the 
cloak of secrecy and all in the name of fighting drug traffickers - 
that inadvertently have come under public scrutiny during the past 
two years.

Watchdog groups and members of Congress are demanding answers about 
what they say is an increasingly secret drug war that U.S. government 
personnel and private U.S. contractors are waging in and around 
Colombia, using $1.3 billion in taxpayer funds.

In Washington this week, conservative and liberal members of Congress 
demanded that the U.S. government explain its need for so many secret 
operations related to the counternarcotics mission in the Andean 
region. And if answers are not forthcoming, some members of Congress 
warned, future funding might not be forthcoming either.

"The key word here is accountability," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, 
D-Ill., who has introduced a bill to curtail the use of private 
contractors in policing and military-related missions in the Andean 
region. "If this is a valid mission that we're on then it seems to me 
that to have it shrouded in secrecy and keeping it more than at arm's 
length from the public is a very dangerous process."

Danger Requires Secrecy

U.S. officials say that in a nefarious zone where drug traffickers 
regularly mingle with leftist guerrillas, kidnapping rings, 
paramilitary militias and international money launderers, secret 
operations play a crucial role in America's overall security strategy 
for the Andean region.

Many operations must be kept secret because of the dangers American 
personnel regularly are exposed to, officials say. Would-be 
kidnappers and leftist guerrillas can be found barely a 20-minute 
drive from the Colombian capital or in the jungles of northern 
Ecuador, where the United States is outfitting and expanding an air 
base for counternarcotics missions.

To make public the activities of private defense contractors or 
intelligence personnel involved in these missions would effectively 
make it impossible for them to do their jobs, officials say.

But according to groups that monitor such activities, an increase in 
so-called "black ops" means U.S. taxpayer dollars are going to fight 
a covert war whose expenses are not submitted for public scrutiny. 
Little will be known, and few explanations will be provided to inform 
the American public about their government's activities.

The issue arose anew April 20 after a U.S. counternarcotics aircraft, 
operated by a private company reportedly under CIA contract, tracked 
a single-engine civilian plane over the skies of Peru.

Instead of carrying drugs, the plane turned out to be transporting 
U.S. missionaries. A mother and her infant daughter were killed.

"The history of these black ops doesn't inspire confidence," said 
Andrew Miller, who monitors human-rights issues in Latin America for 
Amnesty International. "If overtly they're shooting down civilian 
planes, it makes you wonder what's being done covertly."

Activities Hidden From Public

Of the $1.3 billion in U.S. counternarcotics and military aid now 
pouring into the Andean region, $55.3 million is devoted to 
classified, intelligence-related activities that are being hidden 
from public view, according to the Washington-based Center for 
International Policy.

Those activities include CIA-run aerial-surveillance missions to 
track drug traffickers and a sophisticated network of radio 
intercepts that allow the National Security Agency to monitor 
guerrilla communications in Colombia, according to U.S. government 
sources.

Last year, secret U.S. satellite intelligence enabled authorities to 
track a major drug shipment from Panama to the coastal waters of 
Ecuador and then to the northern Chilean port of Arica. Without the 
help of U.S. intelligence, Chilean authorities said, authorities 
would never have found the 9.7 tons of cocaine hidden in one of the 
ship's cargo cranes, leading to the third-largest cocaine seizure in 
history.

For some of its most important missions, Schakowsky complained, the 
United States is relying more and more on private contractors who 
employ retired military officers and U.S. Army Special Forces members 
to conduct combat-related tasks that the military is barred by law 
from carrying out.

Employees for one such contractor, DynCorp of northern Virginia, say 
they regularly are exposed to combat situations in Colombia while 
conducting missions such as aerial spraying of drug crops or 
maintaining aircraft in areas where guerrilla attacks occur.

Last February, guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia (FARC) shot down a Colombian police helicopter during a 
U.S.-supported spraying mission in southern Caqueta province. In 
order to rescue the helicopter pilot and crew members, DynCorp 
ordered its combat-trained personnel to assist.

"The FARC were maybe 100 or 200 yards away," the pilot, Colombian 
police Capt. Giancarlo Cotrino, told a Bogota newspaper after his 
rescue. "We were in combat for seven or eight minutes. One of my crew 
had a grenade launcher and I had my pistol. We were under heavy 
gunfire up until the (DynCorp) search-and-rescue helicopter landed 
behind us."

U.S. law allows up to 500 U.S. military personnel and 300 
civilian-contract personnel to be deployed in Colombia at any time. 
They provide counterinsurgency instruction, maintain listening 
outposts, or monitor air traffic from any of five U.S.-built rural 
radar stations, among various other tasks.

Military personnel also are deployed in Peru at three U.S.-built 
radar stations, in addition to hundreds of troops helping to 
refurbish an air base in Manta, Ecuador, and to construct several 
military bases in Bolivia.

"If this is a legitimate U.S. mission, we ought to know exactly what 
it is, and we can't seem to find out," Schakowsky said in a phone 
interview. "What happens if there is a ground skirmish and there are 
casualties? What is the obligation of the United States toward these 
(privately contracted) personnel?"

Nature of Missions Unclear

Similar questions arose in 1999, when a U.S. de Havilland RC-7 
reconnaissance plane crashed in a southern Colombia combat zone, 
killing all five U.S. service personnel and two Colombian military 
officers on board. A subsequent investigation blamed the crash on 
pilot error, but little else was revealed publicly about the nature 
of the mission.

The government sometimes imposes strict rules of secrecy even when 
missions are not technically classified as secret. Last year, Alex 
Pinero, a retired U.S. Special Forces medic who once flew 
search-and-rescue missions for DynCorp, posted his resume on the 
Internet in hopes of finding another job.

When The Dallas Morning News published a story mentioning Pinero's 
credentials and his current work in Colombia, the State Department 
immediately revoked his security clearance. The same day, DynCorp 
notified him that his contract in Colombia was canceled, Pinero said. 
A DynCorp corporate attorney declined to comment.
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe