Pubdate: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 Source: Reuters Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited. U.S. INVESTIGATING BOGOTA EMBASSY STAFF - REPORT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is investigating as many as eight U.S. embassy employees and dependents in Colombia to determine whether they used the mission's postal system to smuggle drugs, the Washington Post reported Saturday. The investigation was sparked by a review of the Bogota embassy's mailing records that was undertaken after the wife of the officer in charge of the U.S. military's counter-drug efforts in Colombia was charged with shipping cocaine to the United States, the newspaper reported. A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment. The report was particularly embarrassing for the United States because most of its $289 million in annual aid to Colombia is spent to combat drug trafficking. It was unclear whether the people under investigation were connected to the previously disclosed case of Laurie Hiett who was arraigned in Brooklyn Aug. 5 on charges of shipping $235,000 worth of cocaine to the United States. Hiett is the wife of U.S. Army Col. James Hiett, who headed U.S. efforts in Bogota to train Colombian military in counter-drug operations. She admitted mailing the packages but denied knowing what was in them. Her husband was cleared and has since been reassigned to another post. The U.S. State Department began a congressionally requested review of its Colombia program several months ago to determine if congressional guidelines were being met. The review centered on millions of dollars of U.S. aid given to the Colombian National Police in the past two years. Most of the funds were spent on 40 helicopters and some fixed-wing aircraft. "Their performance has been very poor," the newspaper quoted one official as saying about the embassy. "They are shutting down -- they seem unable to drive forward any new policy initiatives. It is an embassy that sees itself as being under siege and it is acting like that." News of trouble at the embassy came as U.S. drug chief Barry McCaffrey called for increased U.S. spending in Colombia, the world's top cocaine producer and home to the longest-running civil conflict in the Western hemisphere. Half the country is controlled by armed groups, and heroin and cocaine output is up sharply, producing profits that drug traffickers share with leftist guerrillas, McCaffrey said earlier this week. McCaffrey proposed raising U.S. aid to the area to $1 billion in 1998. - --- MAP posted-by: Thunder