Pubdate: Sun, 25 Mar 2007
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Paul Richter and Greg Miller

COLOMBIA ARMY CHIEF LINKED TO OUTLAW MILITIAS

The Allegations Come As Congress Reviews Aid To The U.S. Ally. The 
CIA Says The Intelligence Hasn't Been Fully Vetted

WASHINGTON -- The CIA has obtained new intelligence alleging that the 
head of Colombia's U.S.-backed army collaborated extensively with 
right-wing militias that Washington considers terrorist 
organizations, including a militia headed by one of the country's 
leading drug traffickers.

Disclosure of the allegation about army chief Gen. Mario Montoya 
comes as the high level of U.S. support for Colombia's government is 
under scrutiny by Democrats in Congress. The disclosure could 
heighten pressure to reduce or redirect that aid because Montoya has 
been a favorite of the Pentagon and an important partner in the 
U.S.-funded counterinsurgency strategy called Plan Colombia. The $700 
million a year Colombia receives makes it the third-largest 
beneficiary of U.S. foreign assistance.

Montoya has had a long and close association with Colombia's 
president, Alvaro Uribe, and would be the highest-ranking Colombian 
officer implicated in a growing political scandal in the South 
American country over links between the outlawed militias and top 
officials. The scandal already has implicated the country's former 
foreign minister, at least one state governor, legislators and the 
head of the national police, and has shaken Uribe's government.

President Bush called Uribe a "personal friend" two weeks ago during 
a visit to Bogota, and his government is one of the Bush 
administration's closest allies in Latin America.

The intelligence about Montoya is contained in a report recently 
circulated within the CIA. It says that Montoya and a paramilitary 
group jointly planned and conducted a military operation in 2002 to 
eliminate Marxist guerrillas from poor areas around Medellin, a city 
in northwestern Colombia that has been a center of the drug trade.

At least 14 people were killed during the operation, and opponents of 
Uribe allege that dozens more disappeared in its aftermath.

The intelligence report, reviewed by The Times, includes information 
from another Western intelligence service and indicates that U.S. 
officials have received similar reports from other reliable sources.

In addition to his close cooperation with U.S. officials on Plan 
Colombia, Montoya has served as an instructor at the U.S.-sponsored 
military training center formerly called the School of the Americas. 
The Colombian general was praised by U.S. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, now 
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when Pace directed the 
regional military command for Latin America, and Montoya has been 
organizing a new Colombian counternarcotics task force with U.S. funds.

There have been rumors that Montoya has worked with the 
paramilitaries, but no charges have been lodged by authorities.

For decades, Colombia has been wracked by a civil war pitting 
left-wing militias against the government. An estimated 3 million 
Colombians have been forced from their homes and thousands killed 
during the course of the fighting. Right-wing paramilitary groups, 
long suspected of links to the government, joined the fight in the 
1980s. They were formed ostensibly as defensive forces against 
leftist groups, but soon became involved in massive land grabs, drug 
trafficking and takeovers of businesses.

After his election in 2002, Uribe offered a plan to end the civil war 
under which about 31,000 right-wing fighters have given up their 
weapons and dozens of their leaders have surrendered in exchange for 
the promise of light sentences.

But Uribe has faced a steady stream of disclosures about links 
between the paramilitaries and officials close to him. Allegations 
that the militias' links reached to the top of the military are 
likely to intensify efforts by Democrats to cut the Colombian 
military's portion of a pending $3.9-billion multi-year aid package, 
congressional aides and regional analysts said. Eighty percent of 
U.S. aid to Colombia goes to the military and police.

In addition to the aid package, the administration is also seeking 
congressional approval of a separate U.S.-Colombian trade deal that 
already has met stiff opposition from Democrats.

The CIA document alleging Montoya's ties to the paramilitaries was 
made available for review by The Times by a source who refused to 
identify himself except as a U.S. government employee. He said he was 
disclosing the information because he was unhappy that Uribe's 
government had not been held more to account by the Bush administration.

The CIA did not dispute the authenticity of the document, although 
agency officials would not confirm it. At the CIA's request, The 
Times has withheld details of the document that agency officials said 
could jeopardize intelligence sources and methods. A spokesman urged 
against disclosure of the findings, saying that some are considered 
to be "unconfirmed" intelligence.

"By describing what it calls a leaked CIA report containing material 
from another intelligence service -- and unconfirmed material at that 
- -- the Los Angeles Times makes it less likely that friendly countries 
will share information with the United States," said Paul Gimigliano, 
a spokesman for the agency. "And that ultimately could affect our 
ability to protect Americans."

Douglas Frantz, a managing editor of The Times, responded: "We 
listened carefully to the CIA concerns and agreed to withhold details 
that the agency said jeopardized certain sources and ongoing 
operations, but our judgment is that the significance of the issues 
raised in this story warrant its publication."

A key finding in the CIA document was that an allied Western 
intelligence agency reported in January that the Colombian police, 
army and paramilitaries had jointly planned and conducted the 
military sweep in 2002 around Medellin, known as Operation Orion.

The allied intelligence agency said its informant was a yet-unproven 
source and cautioned that the report was to be treated as raw intelligence.

But the document also included a comment from the defense attache of 
the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Col. Rey A. Velez: "This report confirms 
information provided by a proven source."

According to the document, the attache said information from the 
proven source "also could implicate" the head of the Colombian armed 
forces, Gen. Freddy Padilla de Leon, who commanded the military in 
Barranquilla, in northern Colombia, during the same period.

After Uribe was elected in 2002 on a platform of tough measures 
against the rebels, he quickly organized the Medellin offensive. It 
was commanded by Montoya, 57, who hails from the same northern region 
of Colombia as the president.

Operation Orion sent 3,000 Colombian army soldiers and police, 
supported by heavily armed helicopter gunships, though a vast 
shantytown area controlled by Colombia's largest left-wing rebel 
group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The operation has been widely considered a success and has been a key 
to Uribe's popularity. But there have long been allegations that 
after the army swept through, the paramilitaries filled the power 
vacuum, asserting their control with killings, disappearances and other crimes.

The Organization of American States and the United Nations have 
investigated the reports. Recently, Colombian Sen. Gustavo Petro, a 
political opponent of Uribe, publicly charged that 46 people 
disappeared during the operation.

The informant cited in the CIA document reported that in jointly 
conducting the operation, the army, police and paramilitaries had 
signed documents spelling out their plans. The signatories, according 
to the informant, were Montoya; the commander of an area police 
force; and paramilitary leader Fabio Jaramillo, who was a subordinate 
of Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, the head of the paramilitaries in 
the Medellin area.

Murillo, known as Don Berna, took control of the drug trade around 
Medellin after the death of fabled drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. He is 
now in a Colombian jail, and U.S. authorities are seeking his extradition.

In an interview, U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity 
said they have closely investigated whether Uribe himself has 
collaborated with the right-wing paramilitaries in illegal activities 
and have so far found no proof that he has. But they emphasized that 
they also could not rule it out.

One of the officials said that it would have been "unusual" for Uribe 
to be personally involved in the details of a military activity such 
as Operation Orion, even though the president conceived the campaign. 
"You don't see him typically involved in that sort of detail," the 
official said.

One longtime Colombia analyst, Adam Isacson of the Center for 
International Policy, a Washington think tank, said that any 
collaboration between Montoya and paramilitaries "would bring the 
army right into the heart of the scandal." U.S. and Colombian 
officials have insisted that any links between the Colombian military 
and the militias involved only low-level, renegade officers.

Already, eight members of the Colombian Congress have been jailed in 
the scandal, and the foreign minister, a close Uribe ally, has been 
forced to resign. Colombia's former secret police chief, Jorge 
Noguera, was arrested last month for allegedly giving paramilitary 
leaders information on left-wing labor organizers, some of them later 
killed. He was released Friday on a procedural issue but is subject 
to rearrest, government officials said.

At a news conference in Bogota, the capital, during his visit this 
month, Bush expressed confidence that Uribe's government could carry 
out a thorough investigation of the ties between officials and the 
paramilitaries.

"I support a plan that says that there be an independent judiciary 
analyzing every charge brought forth, and when someone is found 
guilty, there's punishment," Bush said. He said Uribe supported the 
same approach. Bush administration officials say Uribe deserves 
credit for being willing to seek the truth about the growing scandal.

Many Democrats in Washington have been less confident. Sen. Patrick 
J. Leahy, (D-Vt.) has argued that the scandal shows the need for a 
reassessment of U.S. support for Uribe. Many in Congress have 
contended that if aid to Colombia is not cut, it should at least be 
shifted so that more goes to non-military purposes.

One of the U.S. officials interviewed said there were signs that the 
scandal would be increasingly focusing on the military, including Montoya.

"A lot of people in the political class are very nervous," he said.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman