Source: Dallas Morning News Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com Discussion forum: http://forums.dallasnews.com/dallas Author: Tod Robberson / The Dallas Morning News Pubdate: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 COLOMBIA STRUGGLING TO COUNTER DRUG IMAGE Economic aid, world credibility ride on showing efforts to banish narcotics BOGOTA, Colombia - It was envisioned as an opportunity to convey a vivid image to the American public: White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey standing amid the smoldering ruins of two captured cocaine-processing laboratories. Colombian officials wanted to use a two-day jungle raid in October as tangible proof of Colombia's cooperation in the war on drugs. But when the raid ended, a Colombian police major and another anti-narcotics police agent lay dead inside one of five shot-up helicopters. Police had to abandon the cocaine labs amid an onslaught by as many as 400 Colombian guerrillas. Subsequent anti-narcotics raids were sharply curtailed. And the operation, designed in part to reverse Washington's 2-year-old "decertification" of Colombia as an ally in the war on drugs, ended abruptly as "a disgrace," Col. Leonardo Gallego, the anti-narcotics police commander, conceded. One participant in the raid later described it as "sending two good men to their deaths for the sake of public relations." The raid, largely overlooked amid the media commotion surrounding Mr. McCaffrey's controversial Oct. 18-21 visit to Colombia, underscores the lengths to which Colombian officials have gone to win the Clinton administration's favor ahead of its annual certification review of nations linked to drug trafficking. That review, currently under way for 1998, appears to be going badly for Colombia, with early indications from Washington suggesting that the hemisphere's largest cocaine and heroin exporter will again be decertified. Colombian officials say that not only means enduring another year as an international pariah but also entails the loss of millions of dollars in U.S. economic aid and billions of dollars in lost international investment. Getting off the U.S. decertification list has become something of a national obsession, to the point that President Ernesto Samper has hired European and U.S. public relations firms to reverse Colombia's tainted image. Col. Gallego launched his own public relations offensive last year, insisting that his country had eradicated more illicit crops than any other nation in the world and adding, "Let's hope the international community - especially the United States - clearly recognizes this effort." He began by inviting foreign dignitaries and reporters on anti-narcotics missions. In September, he escorted Tony Lloyd, the British Foreign Office minister for Latin America, and British Ambassador Leycester Coltman on an eradication flight. With the British officials perched nearby, a fumigation plane was swooping down on an opium poppy field when guerrillas opened fire. The pilot was wounded in the leg, but Col. Gallego insisted the Britons were never in danger. Mr. McCaffrey visited one month later. Col. Gallego said in an interview last week that he had hoped to take the drug czar on a tour of a captured drug-production facility. "We had received confidential information about the existence of two large cocaine-processing laboratories," he recalled. "There had been a general idea for . . . [Mr. McCaffrey] to get to know the focus of our operations, and for this reason, a number of places were pre-selected," including a jungle site about 150 miles southeast of Bogota, the capital. On the day Mr. McCaffrey arrived, Col. Gallego dispatched roughly 40 anti-narcotics agents to the riverside site, accompanied by at least two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents. According to one participant in the raid, it quickly became obvious that scores of Colombian guerrillas had been guarding the sprawling site and that they were still nearby when the police arrived. "I repeatedly said to . . . [others present] that I hoped no one got killed," the participant said. Nevertheless, Col. Gallego ordered the agents to remain at the site overnight. As many as 400 guerrillas surrounded the area, according to one police estimate. A U.S. Embassy official said the number could have been as low as 50. Throughout the night, they fired potshots at the police, taunting them with loud music and appatently tried to elicit return fire by making several dozen runs past the site in a motorboat. The police were so fearful of a bloodbath that theydid not dare return fire, the participant said. After surveying the site for himself the following day, Col. Gallego said he realized that not only was it far too dangerous to be visited by McCaffrey, but it also was too dangerous for his own men to remain there. He ordered an immediate helicoptier evacuation. As the helicopters were taking off, the guerillas unleashed a barrage. Five U.S.-supplied helicopters were hit, including one occupied by national police Maj. Jairo Castro and antinarcotics agent Carlos Bolivar Gonzalez, both of whom were killed instantly. "Frankly, they were impacts of bad luck for police and good luck of the guerillas," Col. Gallego said. He insisted that as soon as he realized on the first day how dangerous the site was, he ruled out sending McCaffrey there. The participant in the raid said, "These troops were sent to the lab site to preserve it for McCaffrey's visit. That's why they were ordered to stay there overnight. ... It was planned fromt he beginning for McCaffrey to go there with photographers and reporters." A U.S. Embassy official said the site was never discussed as a possible venue for McCaffrey to visit, and that any visit to a jungle site would have been rulwed out as too dangerous, given the likelihood of guerilla activity. Had the site been reecommended, the official added, "We would have said no." The commander of the national police, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, threatened to dismiss Col. Gallego over the incident, according to one anti-narcotics official. U.S. Embassy and DEA officials requested a wholesale reassessment of the way such anti-narcotics raids are conducted, while Col. Gallego was warned to persue a more cautious approach in the future. "There is no question that we have to make a joint effort to get...[the police] to be more careful," one official said. Ironically, political fallout from the raid apparently has resulted in a sharp reduction in ground assaults by the anti-narcotics police. Col. Gallego, visibly subdued during an interview, denied that there had been any drop-off. But statistics provided by his office shoed that ground assaults on illicit laboratories had fallen nearly 400 percent during November and December, compare with the same period in 1996.