Source: Washington Post Contact: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Pubdate: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 Author: Douglas Farah and Laura Brooks COLOMBIAN ARMY'S THIRD IN COMMAND ALLEGEDLY LED TWO LIVES General Reportedly Served as a Key CIA Informant While Maintaining Ties to Death Squads Financed by Drug Traffickers For years Colombian Gen. Ivan Ramirez Quintero was a key intelligence source for the United States. After training in Washington he was the first head of a military intelligence organization designed by U.S. experts to fight Marxist guerrillas and drug traffickers, and served as a liaison and paid informant for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to U.S. and Colombian intelligence sources. But during many of the years he was funneling information to the CIA, according to U.S. and Colombian intelligence officials, Ramirez, now the army's third in command, maintained close ties to right-wing paramilitary groups who finance much of their activities through drug trafficking. "We began to hear of Ramirez's ties to drug trafficking, paramilitary activities and human rights violations in the mid-1990s," said a knowledgeable U.S. official. "That was reported back to the appropriate consumers. The [CIA] severed contact with him because of that in 1995." In May the United States took the unusual step of revoking Ramirez's U.S. visa because of alleged "terrorist" activities. Ramirez, according to knowledgeable sources, is also under investigation by the Colombian prosecutor general's office for ties to paramilitary violence. In a move welcomed by U.S. officials, Colombian President Andres Pastrana on Sunday --two days after taking office-- dismissed the entire military high command, in part because the military has suffered a string of humiliating defeats by Marxist guerrillas. Ramirez, while not in the high command, will be retired soon because of his strong ties to Colombia's outgoing military leadership and strong U.S. pressure, sources in Washington and Bogota said. A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the Ramirez case. Ramirez's story underscores the dilemma the United States faces in working with the Colombian military, which is under siege by well-funded and well-trained Marxist guerrillas. The guerrillas of the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) now number about 20,000 and control almost half the national territory. The rapid expansion of the guerrillas in recent years is due in large part to growing profits from protecting and aiding drug traffickers who operate in areas they control. While many U.S. policymakers are anxious to step up aid to the military and say the line between the guerrillas and drug trafficking is blurred, there is little stomach in Washington for helping a military with an abysmal human rights record and whose senior leaders are suspected of ties to paramilitary groups and, at least indirectly, to drug trafficking. Underscoring the problem, the Colombian prosecutor general's office yesterday announced that Gen. Fernando Millan, commander of the 5th Brigade, is under investigation for recent collaboration with paramilitary forces in Santander, a province in central Colombia. The office also announced that Gen. Rito Alejo Del Rio is under preliminary investigation for suspected collaboration with such groups when he was commander of the 17th Brigade in the northwestern region of Uraba, where paramilitary forces in recent years have used selective killings to rid the area of suspected guerrilla sympathizers. When word leaked to the Colombian press in May that Ramirez's U.S. visa had been revoked, his response was angry and bitter. "All I have done for the 36 years of my career is fight terrorists," Ramirez, the army's inspector general, told a news conference on May 15. "So it is impossible that, at the end of my career, I am suddenly turned into the terrorist. It is not true. People know how I have acted, my actions have been clear and my conscience is clear." In numerous telephone calls to his office, reporters were told he would be unavailable to answer any further questions. Paramilitary groups, often operating under the protection of the military, were responsible for 70 percent of the political murders in Colombia in 1997, according to the State Department's annual human rights report. Intelligence sources in Colombia and the United States say paramilitary groups are now operating large cocaine laboratories in Casanare and Meta provinces in central Colombia. How to break the ties between the paramilitary groups and the military, which often supplies them weapons and protection, is a top priority for the United States in dealing with the Pastrana government. "We view the paramilitaries as a serious problem, they are a real factor," said one U.S. official. "Dealing with the military-paramilitary tie is where Pastrana will have to start. It is an aspect of the problem he can and must deal with, and we think he will." Ties between senior military officials and paramilitary groups, which control at least 15 percent of the national territory, date to the 1960s, when the military helped form the units to aid the army in combating the guerrillas. The groups were outlawed in the 1980s following a series of massacres and after they had become increasingly reliant on drug barons. "Far from being punished, the junior and mid-level officers who tolerated, planned, directed and even took part in paramilitary violence in Colombia in the 1980s have been promoted and rewarded and now occupy the highest positions in the Colombian military," said a 1997 Human Rights Watch/Americas report on paramilitary activities." Ramirez was one of those officers who rose through the ranks. Ramirez received intelligence training in Washington in 1983, according to his service record. From 1986 to 1988 he was commander of the 20th Brigade, an intelligence unit that was disbanded in May because of overwhelming evidence the group had carried out scores of assassinations and "disappearances" in the 1980s and1990s. In 1991, seeking to beef up the Colombian military's capabilities, the United States sent an intelligence assessment team to help redesign the military's intelligence structure. The following year, when the military began implementing the U.S. recommendations, Ramirez was named the first commander of military intelligence. The appointment came at a key time, when drug baron Pablo Escobar had escaped from prison, and U.S. and Colombian police and military were making his recapture or elimination their highest priority. Because of his position, U.S. officials said, it was natural for the CIA to deal with Ramirez, despite strong intelligence linking him to death-squad activities. "It was known he was a bad guy, but who else were we going to deal with?" said a U.S. official with direct knowledge of Ramirez's case. According to U.S. and Colombian officials, Ramirez already had established a close relationship to Carlos Castano, leader of Colombia's largest paramilitary organization known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. Castano has been identified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as "major" drug trafficker, and human rights organizations identify the group as one of the most violent in the nation. In 1992, Castano, with financing from the Cali cocaine cartel, Escobar's main business rival, attacked Escobar and his family's properties and passed on intelligence to the police and military. One of the main conduits to pass the information to the military, according to Colombian and U.S. sources, was Ramirez. Escobar was killed by police in December 1993. By 1994, U.S. and Colombian officials said, the CIA had cut back its dealings with Ramirez because of human rights concerns. In 1995, they said, the relationship ended. U.S. officials, including Barry R. McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's anti-drug policy chief, in private meetings earlier this year warned the military high command that Ramirez and several other generals would have to be removed if American support for the military was to go forward. Farah reported from Washington; Brooks from Bogota. Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company - --- Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)