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| <title> - OVERSIGHT OF UNITED STATES COUNTERNARCOTICS ASSISTANCE TO COLOMBIA</title> | |
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| [House Hearing, 105 Congress] | |
| [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] | |
| OVERSIGHT OF UNITED STATES COUNTERNARCOTICS ASSISTANCE TO COLOMBIA | |
| ======================================================================= | |
| HEARING | |
| before the | |
| SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, | |
| INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE | |
| of the | |
| COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT | |
| REFORM AND OVERSIGHT | |
| HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES | |
| ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS | |
| FIRST SESSION | |
| __________ | |
| FEBRUARY 14, 1997 | |
| __________ | |
| Serial No. 105-7 | |
| __________ | |
| Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight | |
| U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE | |
| 39-818 WASHINGTON : 1997 | |
| ____________________________________________________________________________ | |
| For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office | |
| Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800 | |
| Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 | |
| COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT | |
| DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman | |
| BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California | |
| J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois TOM LANTOS, California | |
| CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia | |
| CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York | |
| STEVEN H. SCHIFF, New Mexico EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York | |
| CHRISTOPHER COX, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania | |
| ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida GARY A. CONDIT, California | |
| JOHN M. McHUGH, New York CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York | |
| STEPHEN HORN, California THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin | |
| JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington, | |
| THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia DC | |
| DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania | |
| MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania | |
| JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland | |
| JOHN SHADEGG, Arizona DENNIS KUCINICH, Ohio | |
| STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois | |
| MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois | |
| Carolina JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts | |
| JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire JIM TURNER, Texas | |
| PETE SESSIONS, Texas THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine | |
| MIKE PAPPAS, New Jersey ------ | |
| VINCE SNOWBARGER, Kansas BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont | |
| BOB BARR, Georgia (Independent) | |
| ------ ------ | |
| Kevin Binger, Staff Director | |
| Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director | |
| Judith McCoy, Chief Clerk | |
| Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director | |
| ------ | |
| Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal | |
| Justice | |
| J. DENNIS HASTERT, Chairman | |
| MARK SOUDER, Indiana THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin | |
| CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California | |
| STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico BOB WISE, West Virginia | |
| ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida GARY A. CONDIT, California | |
| JOHN McHUGH, New York ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois | |
| JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York | |
| JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland | |
| STEVE LaTOURETTE, Ohio JIM TURNER, Texas | |
| BOB BARR, Georgia | |
| Ex Officio | |
| DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California | |
| Robert Charles, Staff Director | |
| Sean Littlefield, Professional Staff Member | |
| Ianthe Saylor, Clerk | |
| Ronald Stroman, Minority Professional Staff | |
| C O N T E N T S | |
| ---------- | |
| Page | |
| Hearing held on February 14, 1997................................ 1 | |
| Statement of: | |
| Busby, Morris, former Ambassador to Colombia; and Major F. | |
| Andy Messing, Jr., United States Army (Ret.), executive | |
| director, National Defense Council Foundation.............. 80 | |
| Gelbard, Robert S., Assistant Secretary, Bureau of | |
| International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, | |
| Department of State........................................ 4 | |
| Serrano, Major General Jose Rosso, director, Colombian | |
| national police; and General Harold Bedoya Pizarro, | |
| commander, Colombian Armed Forces.......................... 51 | |
| Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: | |
| Bedoya Pizarro, General Harold, commander, Colombian Armed | |
| Forces, prepared statement of.............................. 63 | |
| Busby, Morris, former Ambassador to Colombia, prepared | |
| statement of............................................... 83 | |
| Gelbard, Robert S., Assistant Secretary, Bureau of | |
| International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, | |
| Department of State: | |
| Information concerning assistance furnished under the | |
| authority of section 506(a)(1) of the FAA.............. 48 | |
| Information concerning extraditions...................... 47 | |
| Information concerning ``river patrol boats''............ 50 | |
| Prepared statement of.................................... 8 | |
| Messing, Major F. Andy, Jr., U.S. Army (Ret.), executive | |
| director, National Defense Council Foundation: | |
| NDCF Colombia Report 1997................................ 95 | |
| Prepared statement of.................................... 91 | |
| Serrano, Major General Jose Rosso, director, Colombian | |
| national police, prepared statement of..................... 55 | |
| Valdivieso, General, prepared statement of................... 70 | |
| OVERSIGHT OF UNITED STATES COUNTER-NARCOTICS ASSISTANCE TO COLOMBIA | |
| ---------- | |
| FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1997 | |
| House of Representatives, | |
| Subcommittee on National Security, International | |
| Affairs, and Criminal Justice, | |
| Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, | |
| Washington, DC. | |
| The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:08 a.m., in | |
| room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. J. Dennis | |
| Hastert (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. | |
| Present: Representatives Hastert, Schiff, Mica, Souder, | |
| LaTourette, Barr and Barrett. | |
| Staff present: Robert Charles, staff director and chief | |
| counsel; Sean Littlefield, professional staff member; Ianthe | |
| Saylor, clerk; Ronald Stroman, minority professional staff; and | |
| Ellen Rayner, minority chief clerk. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The Subcommittee on National Security, | |
| International Affairs, and Criminal Justice will come to order. | |
| First of all, I want to bid everyone good morning and thank | |
| you for coming today. This is the subcommittee's first hearing | |
| of the 105th Congress. This is also my first hearing as | |
| chairman of this subcommittee. I think we have our work cut out | |
| for us, especially what we are going to talk about today, the | |
| drug war, in this country, in our southern hemisphere, and, of | |
| course, in the world. | |
| The drug usage rates of our young people clearly show the | |
| drug war must continue. Frankly, that is why we are here today. | |
| I want to pause long enough to welcome all our new members | |
| and our returning members and to extend a special welcome to | |
| our ranking member, Mr. Tom Barrett. I look forward to working | |
| with Tom and developing a very, very fine relationship. I hope | |
| over the next 2 years in the many important oversight | |
| challenges we face that we can do it together on a bipartisan | |
| basis. | |
| The title of today's hearing may lead one to believe that | |
| this hearing is only about Colombia. It is certainly about the | |
| heroic efforts of certain Colombians in the drug war, including | |
| General Serrano, General Bedoya and Prosecutor General | |
| Valdivieso; but it is also about the youth of America, our | |
| children, and, frankly, our future. | |
| In the last 3 years, six homicides in Aurora, IL, the town | |
| of my birth and the town I represent, have been drug related. | |
| As recently as June, Claudia Remos and Juan Medina were killed | |
| and their bodies dumped on a road side. Six-year-old Nicholas | |
| Contreras was shot and killed in his sleep in a drug-related | |
| crime. We must stop the effect of drugs in our country. | |
| The overwhelming majority of the cocaine and heroin that | |
| leaves Colombia is headed straight to cities and towns like | |
| Aurora, IL; and the target population for the growing and | |
| diversifying drug cartels is mainly our youth. The | |
| international drug onslaught is the most insidious national | |
| security threat we face as a Nation. This is why it is so vital | |
| that we provide ample counternarcotic support to the brave and | |
| honest men and women who work hard in the drug war in this | |
| country and in Colombia. Those individuals are fighting not | |
| only for Colombia's survival but also for ours. | |
| The timing of this hearing, just weeks prior to the annual | |
| recertification decision by the President, is not a | |
| coincidence. I am concerned that last year's decision to | |
| decertify Colombia impeded foreign military sales to Colombia. | |
| If the President decides to decertify Colombia for the second | |
| year in a row, I am at least hopeful that he will present | |
| Congress with the legislation that will allow the military | |
| sales for the limited purpose of counternarcotic missions. | |
| I also plan to work with the Department of State and the | |
| Committee on International Relations to find a way to expedite | |
| the transfer of these tools that are needed to fight this war. | |
| Every day that a DC-3 or a Huey or Black Hawk helicopter is not | |
| flying, more drugs reach our streets. We cannot afford to have | |
| any more delays in the transport of equipment or spare parts in | |
| our counternarcotics support for Colombia. | |
| International drug trafficking organizations based in | |
| Colombia are the world's leading producers of cocaine. | |
| Colombian traffickers also continue to supply marijuana to the | |
| United States, and recent indications are that Colombian drug | |
| trafficking organizations are making quantum leaps in the | |
| production and trafficking of heroin. | |
| Colombia is engaged in a drug war, and its outcome affects | |
| all Americans. Some of the bravest men and women in the world | |
| are entangled in a war against the narcotraffickers and the | |
| guerillas that support them. | |
| There should be no mistake. The guerillas of Colombia long | |
| ago abandoned ideology. They work with the international drug | |
| traffickers--providing security, cultivating crops and manning | |
| cocaine labs. The guerillas engage in some of the most ruthless | |
| behavior in our hemisphere. They kidnap, they kill, and they | |
| sustain their carnage with drug money provided by American | |
| consumers, most of them kids. | |
| Today's hearing will focus on what the United States can | |
| and should do to generally support the counternarcotics efforts | |
| in Colombia to stop these deadly drugs and violent drug | |
| traffickers before they get to the United States shores. | |
| Let's lay it on the line. There can be no doubt that | |
| Colombia's political and judicial systems are confronting | |
| corruption. Sentences for drug traffickers need to be | |
| strengthened, and a re-examination of money laundering and | |
| extradition needs to take place now. | |
| However, honest Colombian Government officials like General | |
| Bedoya and General Serrano should be applauded and certainly | |
| fully supported. How can we ask honest Colombians like these | |
| men to continue putting their lives on the line every day | |
| without basic United States support for the international drug | |
| effort? The truth is that such support is both good government | |
| and cost-effective to us at home in the United States. | |
| Before proceeding with our first witness, I am pleased to | |
| turn to my colleague, the subcommittee's ranking minority | |
| member, Tom Barrett of Wisconsin, for any opening remarks he | |
| might have. | |
| Mr. Barrett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and congratulations | |
| on heading this subcommittee. I am looking forward to working | |
| with you, and I am very optimistic that we will be able to work | |
| closely on a lot of these issues which are basically | |
| nonpartisan in nature. I think that this committee plays an | |
| important role; and, as evidenced by the hearing today, this is | |
| a committee that will look into issues that have tremendous | |
| importance to our country. | |
| The issue of drug trafficking in America is clearly one of | |
| the most serious issues we face as a Nation; and, as the father | |
| of three young children, I share with you the concern of easy | |
| access of drugs to American youth and will do everything I can | |
| to make sure we have the tools necessary to combat drug use | |
| both internationally and domestically. | |
| The cost to our society of illegal drug use is staggering. | |
| Substance abuse and addiction cost is now estimated at $400 | |
| billion a year. Two million Americans use cocaine at least once | |
| a week, and 500,000 are addicted to crack cocaine. | |
| Colombia has a close relationship to this problem, because | |
| the threat to the United States from Colombia is significant. | |
| Eighty percent of the cocaine available in the United States is | |
| produced in Colombia, and 60 percent of the heroin being seized | |
| in the United States can be traced to Colombia. | |
| This is a timely hearing since the administration will be | |
| making many important decisions in the future, including the | |
| very important issue of whether to continue decertification of | |
| Colombia. I am very excited and very interested to hear from | |
| our witnesses today because I think this issue of how we deal | |
| with a foreign government and how we deal with the drug problem | |
| in another country is a very thorny issue; and I think all of | |
| us agree that we, as a country, have to do everything we can to | |
| stop the drug trafficking from Colombia and other countries but | |
| also make sure we are doing it in a prudent way. | |
| So I look forward to this hearing and turn it back over to | |
| you. | |
| Mr. Hastert. At this time I would ask, without objection, | |
| that all opening statements be submitted for the record. Any | |
| objection? So ordered. | |
| I would like now to welcome Assistant Secretary of State | |
| for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, | |
| Ambassador Gelbard. Ambassador Gelbard has been involved in our | |
| foreign relations with Latin America since his service with the | |
| Peace Corps. In addition to his assignments to European and | |
| African issues, Ambassador Gelbard served as Ambassador to | |
| Bolivia from 1988 to 1991, and most recently is the Principal | |
| Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs. | |
| I think probably when you find a tough place to deal with, | |
| Ambassador Galbard tends to be there; and it shows the great | |
| confidence our administration has in him. | |
| Ambassador, we are pleased to have you here. If you would | |
| stand and raise your right hand, the committee's rules require | |
| me to swear you in. | |
| [Witness sworn.] | |
| Let the record show the witness responded in the | |
| affirmative. Thank you. | |
| Please proceed with your opening statement. I assume you | |
| have an oral statement. Anything else will be submitted for the | |
| record. | |
| STATEMENT OF ROBERT S. GELBARD, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU OF | |
| INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT | |
| OF STATE | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Please let me also congratulate you on your chairmanship. I | |
| think it is worth stating that, thanks to your efforts, in | |
| addition to some others, the budget for my bureau dedicated to | |
| counternarcotics and anti-crime measures throughout the world | |
| was substantially increased for this fiscal year; and I | |
| appreciated your efforts very much, sir. | |
| As you said, sir, I do have a written statement that I | |
| would like to submit for the record. I am pleased to have this | |
| opportunity to discuss with you the United States | |
| counternarcotics policy toward Colombia. | |
| President Clinton denied certification to Colombia last | |
| year because the efforts of Colombia's honest officials were | |
| being undermined by corruption at the highest levels of the | |
| Colombian Congress and Government. Our challenge was to | |
| maintain pressure on a president we believe to have been | |
| influenced and even corrupted by traffickers, while also | |
| supporting constructive Colombian anti-drug efforts. | |
| The strategy has produced progress on some of our key | |
| objectives over the last 12 months. We have maintained support | |
| for essential counternarcotics programs and institutions in | |
| Colombia. In fact, from fiscal year 1996 to fiscal year 1997, | |
| we have doubled our assistance, most of which is destined for | |
| the Colombian national police. | |
| At the same time, we pressed the government to take | |
| specific policy and legislative actions to strengthen the law | |
| enforcement and judicial sectors. These include strengthening | |
| money laundering laws and enacting tough asset forfeiture and | |
| sentencing laws; extradition of Colombian nationals wanted for | |
| crimes abroad; supporting investigations and prosecutions | |
| targeting corrupt public officials; stepping up coca | |
| eradication and opium eradication; agreeing on a bilateral | |
| maritime agreement; continuing law enforcement and judicial | |
| action against traffickers, along with their prosecution, | |
| conviction and sentencing to prison terms commensurate with | |
| their crimes; dismantling of their organizations; and | |
| forfeiture of their front companies and ill-gotten proceeds. | |
| These objectives should not have come as a surprise to the | |
| Colombian Government. In 1994, shortly after his election, | |
| President Samper promised to increase the penalties for drug | |
| traffickers, remove plea bargaining loopholes and send the | |
| political cronies of the cartels to jail. In fact, he put these | |
| promises as well as many others in a letter he sent to Members | |
| of the U.S. Congress. | |
| Instead of following through, however, Samper publicly | |
| attacked the Prosecutor General's Office for its far-reaching | |
| investigation of political corruption known as the ``Case | |
| 8,000.'' An investigation in which he himself was implicated as | |
| well as other top administration and congressional figures. | |
| Despite credible evidence that his political campaign had | |
| accepted more than $6 million in drug money, President Samper | |
| was exonerated by the Colombian Congress through a patently | |
| flawed process. | |
| From our standpoint, however, the evidence that Samper | |
| aided and abetted drug traffickers was sufficient to warrant | |
| the revocation of his visa last year. The denial of | |
| certification, international pressure and the threat of | |
| economic sanctions has produced some progress on key | |
| legislation, a maritime agreement this year and expanded the | |
| eradication program. | |
| The Government of Colombia has failed, however, to follow | |
| through on promised counternarcotics action or to confront | |
| fully the drug interests that contributed millions of dollars | |
| to President Samper's campaign. In concrete terms, the | |
| Colombian Government effectively ignored United States warnings | |
| that the Cali kingpins continued to run their operations from | |
| prison. | |
| In late January, a few weeks ago, top drug lords Gilberto | |
| and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela were sentenced to absurdly short | |
| prison terms, accompanied by ridiculously small fines. Given | |
| the mandatory sentence reductions under existing Colombian | |
| sentencing guidelines, these international criminals could | |
| ultimately serve only 4 or 5 more years apiece in prison. | |
| If President Samper had acted promptly on his own 1994 | |
| commitments that he put in writing to this Congress, these | |
| sentences might have reflected the seriousness of their crimes. | |
| In stark contrast to the Colombian sentences, a United States | |
| Federal judge on January 31st of this year sentenced Mexican | |
| drug lord Juan Garcia Abrego, a long-time associate of the | |
| Rodriguez Orejuelas, to 11 life terms, a fine of $128 million | |
| and forfeited assets worth $350 million. Interesting contrast. | |
| Despite the obvious inadequacy of Colombia's law, the | |
| Samper administration has made so serious an effort to | |
| reinstate the case for reinstatement of extradition or to | |
| launch a constitutional reform initiative. | |
| We will hold the Government of Colombia to the promise its | |
| new Ambassador just made to President Clinton when he presented | |
| his credentials that the government will introduce such a bill | |
| next month. Meanwhile, our request for four top Cali | |
| traffickers have gone unanswered, and we have learned that the | |
| government has never filed them in the Colombian Supreme Court | |
| as promised. | |
| The asset forfeiture law passed in December is a good one. | |
| However, the legislation must stand a review of the | |
| constitutional court, a test which some Colombians observers | |
| believe the law was designed to fail. Moreover, the first | |
| attempt at implementation of the law failed when the hold on | |
| assets placed in the names of the family and friends of the | |
| Rodriguez Orejuela brothers was lifted at the time of their | |
| sentencing. | |
| We can only judge the Colombian Government by its concrete | |
| actions. As recently as late last year, while the investigation | |
| and trial of the Cali kingpins was under way, Samper and | |
| Interior Minister Serpa were actively pursuing negotiations | |
| with the Cali mafia kingpins, which clearly would have | |
| undermined the efforts of the Colombian police and the | |
| Prosecutor General's Office. This revelation was merely another | |
| reminder that President Samper's commitment to take on the top | |
| traffickers must be evaluated on the basis of specific results | |
| rather than on stated intentions. | |
| While failing to address certain issues, the Samper | |
| administration sought to recover international legitimacy by | |
| improving cooperation on other fronts, including its agreement | |
| to the United States-funded expansion of the coca crop | |
| eradication and its initialing, several weeks ago, of a | |
| maritime interdiction agreement. | |
| Private sector leaders have begun to press the government | |
| to pass key legislation, and Colombian industry has sought more | |
| direct cooperation with the United States to counter the drug | |
| trade. The Colombia Flower Growers Association has taken a | |
| particularly courageous stand in favor of the asset forfeiture | |
| law and extradition. | |
| Unprecedented application by the President of the | |
| International Emergency Economic Powers Act against the Cali | |
| mafia front companies also stimulated the private sector, and | |
| particularly the private bankers association, to implement | |
| tighter voluntary controls over its members. | |
| At the operational level, our counternarcotics cooperation | |
| with the Colombian national police and its leader, General | |
| Serrano, the Prosecutor General's Office and the elements of | |
| the armed forces remain very good. In the past year, we doubled | |
| our assistance to Colombia from $22.6 million to some $44 | |
| million this fiscal year to support interdiction law | |
| enforcement and eradication operations. Part of this increase | |
| will be devoted to purchasing nonlethal military equipment and | |
| spare parts. | |
| We also have dramatically increased our aviation support to | |
| the Colombian national police, including the provision of 12 | |
| additional helicopters and the use of additional spray and | |
| support aircraft. We will soon deploy five upgraded spray | |
| aircraft worth $84 million by the end of next month and 12 more | |
| UH-1H helicopters associated with the President's 506(a)(2) | |
| drawdown package. We have also allocated for the first time | |
| funds to support the army and the rest of the armed forces in | |
| counternarcotics efforts. | |
| Combined police-military interdiction efforts in 1996 | |
| focused on denying drug cultivators and processors the | |
| chemicals used to process cocaine. This effort produced a | |
| substantial increase in precursor chemical seizures and in the | |
| number of laboratories destroyed. At the same time, the shift | |
| in focus of interdiction operations and the devotion of more | |
| resources to the eradication program resulted in a significant | |
| drop in the seizure of drug trafficking aircraft, cocaine, and | |
| heroin as compared to 1995. | |
| We have worked more closely than ever with the Colombian | |
| police to carry out a much-enhanced aerial eradication program. | |
| Our expanded aerial eradication program in 1996 presented | |
| significant challenges which the Colombian police have accepted | |
| without hesitation. The military also rose to this challenge, | |
| increasing their support to the police eradication effort. | |
| However, despite the clear commitment of the Colombian | |
| police to the eradication program, the Colombian Government has | |
| strongly opposed the testing of safe granular herbicides, such | |
| as hexazanone, which we know to be significantly more effective | |
| in killing coca than the current herbicides being used. | |
| Colombia's coca crop expanded by over 30 percent last year. | |
| This is in contrast to Peru, where there was an 18 percent | |
| decrease. It expanded from almost 51,000 hectares to over | |
| 67,000 hectares, in spite of our efforts to expand the | |
| eradication program and make it more effective. Cultivation | |
| increased by 13 percent between 1994 and 1995 and has also | |
| tripled since 1987. | |
| Colombia now provides 32 percent of all coca produced in | |
| the world. This continued expansion points to one of the | |
| greatest challenges Colombia and we together face in stamping | |
| out the drug trade. | |
| The crop has been steadily expanding since 1987, and we | |
| must recognize the decisive role played by some of Colombia's | |
| insurgent guerilla groups. They identified an economic | |
| opportunity--the insatiable desire of drug traffickers for a | |
| reliable source of cocaine products--and carved out a | |
| significant portion of that market for themselves. | |
| The increased self-sufficiency of Colombia's drug industry | |
| has significant implications for our efforts to eliminate this | |
| scourge. Those guerilla fronts engaged in the industry now have | |
| a proven source of income and a vested interest in expanding | |
| and protecting the trade. These guerilla fronts constitute a | |
| real threat to Colombian anti-drug forces deployed to eradicate | |
| fields and the American personnel who support them, including, | |
| sadly, the loss of one American life late last year. | |
| In this environment, Colombian counternarcotics cooperation | |
| and the government's clear support of its own police and | |
| military, prosecutors, judges, and other government officials | |
| on the front line of this struggle are more important than | |
| ever. We have implemented a strategy that is producing some | |
| progress on key legislation, and that has galvanized the | |
| private sector in taking a more active role in pressing for | |
| action. We have seen results clearly from decertification last | |
| year. | |
| We must continue to provide a high level of direct support, | |
| assistance and encouragement to those in Colombia dedicated to | |
| ending this drug scourge and the corruption it has engendered. | |
| Above all, we must continue to make clear to the Colombian | |
| Government that the American people expect concrete results. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| [The prepared statement of Mr. Gelbard follows:] | |
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| Mr. Hastert. Thank you very much for your testimony. I | |
| think we understand very clearly why the administration used | |
| the tool of decertification to try to move the Government of | |
| Colombia into areas that they seem to lack and should be | |
| improved upon, but after President Clinton announced Colombia's | |
| decertification on March 1, 1996, it seems to me that there was | |
| a lack of the State Department's perception of what effect | |
| decertification would have on assistance programs. As a matter | |
| of fact, the State Department did not announce their decision | |
| that only foreign military financing was prohibited and that | |
| foreign military sales were not, which involved some of the | |
| spray planes and the helicopters and some of the things that | |
| were necessary to make those, that equipment fly. | |
| From March until September, the State Department prevented | |
| all assistance from reaching Colombia, and only in September | |
| did the State Department announce that FMF, or financing, and | |
| not sales assistance was blocked by decertification. Can you | |
| help us or enlighten us as to why that decision to decertify | |
| was taken when no one seems to have understood, basically, the | |
| ramifications, at least in the movement of equipment, to | |
| General Serrano and others that needed that equipment after | |
| decertification? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. The President made the decision to decertify | |
| Colombia because there was a clear unwillingness on the part of | |
| the Government of Colombia to cooperate with the United States | |
| in counternarcotics efforts. All indicators were very clear in | |
| their failure to comply with the commitments that Samper | |
| himself had made, as I mentioned earlier, to the Congress of | |
| the United States, in an unsolicited letter he sent in July | |
| 1994. | |
| Just running through the various commitments he gave made | |
| it very clear they did not comply. So it was a clear-cut | |
| decision that the President made. It was a difficult decision | |
| because it was the first time a President of the United States | |
| had ever decided to decertify a democratic government, but it | |
| was based on the unanimous recommendations of the President's | |
| relevant Cabinet members to him. | |
| The decision to decertify did not in any way affect the | |
| support provided to the police. It did not in any way affect | |
| that support, I want to be very clear. Nor did it affect this | |
| provision, the provision of spray planes, for example, which | |
| are flown by the Colombian police. Now, because the spray | |
| program was stalling, we have provided, with the agreement of | |
| the Colombian Government, American pilots to spray and to | |
| train, while they are spraying, Colombian pilots in what is a | |
| very difficult endeavor. | |
| However, the clear-cut interpretation of the law, the | |
| Foreign Assistance Act, was that under decertification it was | |
| not possible to provide military assistance to the Colombian | |
| armed forces under FMF and FMS. We supported efforts in the | |
| Congress to change that law last year, and unfortunately, the | |
| Congress was unable to vote in favor of that change. We | |
| continue to support a change in that law so that we could | |
| provide FMF and FMS assistance to the Colombian armed forces. | |
| Nevertheless, what I am doing in this fiscal year, as I | |
| mentioned in my testimony, is for the first time providing | |
| funding to the Colombian military from my own budget; and we | |
| have in our Congressional presentation for fiscal year 1997 | |
| budgeted $5 million to support their counternarcotics efforts | |
| out of the $44 million that is currently in the budget. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Well, let's just try to clear some things up | |
| here. | |
| As you well know, I was in Colombia last year, last spring, | |
| and met with the Ambassador and tried in a limited period of | |
| time to see what the operation was, and I had a meeting with | |
| General Serrano and others. It seems to me that was the time, | |
| right after that decision was made, early April, the decision | |
| was made in March, the decertification decision, due to the | |
| judgment of the State Department lawyers, and others did delay | |
| critical counternarcotics aid under FMS. Is that right or not? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. It wasn't just State Department lawyers, it | |
| was Pentagon lawyers and Department of Justice lawyers; and | |
| with all due respect to the lawyers on the committee--I am not | |
| one--I too was quite frustrated by the lack of movement and | |
| decision on this. But as a result, we did support the desire to | |
| change the law. As I say, we were quite frustrated by the | |
| inability to do so. | |
| Mr. Hastert. So there was a delay in the movement of the | |
| equipment. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. To the military, not to the police. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The police--well, let's work on it. We will | |
| hear testimony later and certainly try to clear that up. | |
| Also, in your opinion, the police--General Serrano was | |
| complying, and he happens to be the lead commander in beating | |
| back the narcotics traffickers in my opinion and I think many | |
| other opinions. Do you feel he had all the assistance he | |
| needed? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have strongly supported General Serrano, | |
| whom I have known for all the time he has been in his job, even | |
| before he was promoted to this position. I strongly supported | |
| his being named to this position and urged the Government of | |
| Colombia to appoint him. We have worked very closely with him | |
| to try to provide everything we could. Unfortunately, the | |
| Government of Colombia itself has significantly reduced the | |
| budget of the military and the budget of the police, so they | |
| have decreased their support to these entities. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Well, I think it is our purpose here to | |
| certainly try to work together, and we are not trying to find | |
| any indictments of the past. We are trying to find how we can | |
| work through this thing in the future. | |
| As you well know, and in my opening statement, not giving | |
| these people the tools to do the job means there are more drugs | |
| and more death in our districts here in the United States, and | |
| certainly we want to find that solution and that answer. It is | |
| encouraging in your testimony hearing you say that you are | |
| suggesting and advising an increase in that budget; is that | |
| correct? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. It is more than suggesting and advising. We | |
| have targeted $44 million of support to Colombia to the | |
| military and police in this fiscal year, and that was what was | |
| provided to the Congress in our congressional presentation | |
| for---- | |
| Mr. Hastert. For this coming fiscal year. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Yes, sir. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I will yield my time to the gentleman from | |
| Wisconsin. | |
| Mr. Barrett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Ambassador Gelbard, you stated your frustration with the | |
| delays in getting assistance to the military. I look at | |
| something that happened under the first decertification | |
| process. If Colombia is decertified again, will we face a | |
| similar problem, or was that the result of a first-time | |
| decertification? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We are working and would like to work with | |
| this Congress to work together in a very cooperative way to | |
| effect the kinds of changes that I mentioned earlier to permit | |
| the transfer of such equipment in FMF and FMS cases. | |
| Mr. Barrett. So the decertification measure still provides | |
| barriers to you in what you think you should be doing. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Yes, sir. Let me just say, the legislation | |
| which would have amended the law was defeated in the final days | |
| of the last Congress, so that's why we are not able to move the | |
| equipment under those cases. | |
| Mr. Barrett. Specifically what would that legislation do? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. That would provide waiver authority so that | |
| the administration would have the authority to approve such | |
| cases. | |
| Mr. Barrett. I assume there will be some who would argue | |
| that, lacking that authority, we should not decertify. What are | |
| the benefits of decertification even without the ability to | |
| move that military? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. As I alluded to earlier, it is crystal clear, | |
| very sadly, that the Colombian Government under President | |
| Samper took very little action from the time he was sworn in on | |
| August 7, 1994, until March 1, 1996, when they were | |
| decertified. | |
| We have seen significant efforts in the last year to make | |
| progress, both right before the decertification decision and, | |
| oddly enough, in the last few weeks. The maritime interdiction | |
| agreement was just initialled a few weeks ago. The asset | |
| forfeiture agreement was just approved in late December, and | |
| there will be a special session of the Colombian Congress | |
| opening up next week to consider, finally, a much harsher | |
| sentencing law. This is clearly because of their concerns about | |
| possible decertification again. It's a sad story that there's | |
| only a positive response under threat or when there is actually | |
| decertification, but we have seen in the face of this | |
| corruption that that is the only thing that has produced | |
| results from the government itself. | |
| Mr. Barrett. My sense, from the questioning of the chairman | |
| and others, on this issue is that the transport of military | |
| equipment is the issue here. Is that correct or are there more | |
| issues underlying the issue of decertification? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. That has not been--that has been an adverse | |
| consequence of decertification. | |
| The other adverse consequences are that under the law there | |
| is a prohibition of the use of OPIC and Eximbank financing to | |
| countries that are decertified. We obviously don't like that | |
| because that hurts American companies. It hurts their | |
| competitiveness overseas. But in terms of all the rest of the | |
| consequences of decertification, we feel it has proved helpful, | |
| sadly. | |
| Mr. Barrett. OK. Again, if we were to put together the | |
| perfect policy for you so as to provide you with the best tools | |
| for fighting drugs in Colombia, would that entail--and I assume | |
| from your comments that at a minimum the administration is | |
| leading toward decertification again--but would decertification | |
| plus a change in the law, would that, do you think, make this a | |
| more effective battle? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. This has been, in fact, a relatively small | |
| part of the total amount of assistance provided to Colombia, so | |
| overall we don't feel that it's had an overwhelming effect. | |
| One important positive element that I should mention is | |
| that General Bedoya is now willing to dedicate Army units just | |
| to programs involving counternarcotics. That was not the case | |
| before in the Colombian military with his predecessors. One of | |
| the restrictions we have had in my own budget has been that our | |
| assistance has to go 100 percent for counternarcotics, it can't | |
| go for multiple purposes. | |
| General Bedoya and I discussed this just last night, and on | |
| the basis of this, we already, as I said, had budgeted $5 | |
| million in assistance for the Colombian military outside of the | |
| FMF, FMS issue. So we can provide assistance to them that way. | |
| Mr. Barrett. If you again could just go over the level of | |
| assistance and the changes, that would be helpful to me. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. This fiscal year we are increasing commodities | |
| to the Colombian police--aircraft parts, tools, avionics, field | |
| investigative equipment--from $7.4 million to $12.6 million. | |
| Training is at $1.5 million. Aircraft operations and so on are | |
| doubling from $4.1 million to $8 million. Military assistance | |
| would involve $2.5 million in commodities, $1 million in | |
| training and $1.5 million in other programs. | |
| Judicial sector reform, we are now picking up support for | |
| this very important program of $250,000, and we're providing | |
| aviation services. We will be providing aviation programs at | |
| $14 million, and in addition, new equipment this year involving | |
| UH-1H helicopters valued at $10.8 million, Bell 212 helicopters | |
| valued at $9 million, and OV-10 Bronco aircraft valued at $84 | |
| million. So actually that is a total of $147.8 million. | |
| Mr. Barrett. How does this compare to other countries? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Far and away greater in terms of equipment and | |
| support to the interdiction law enforcement authorities. | |
| Mr. Barrett. Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Just a quick followup. That's for this coming | |
| fiscal year; is that correct? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. The current fiscal year, sir. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Let me just--another quick followup. The | |
| President could have had a 614 waiver; is that correct? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. The President theoretically could. We are | |
| studying that possibility right now. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you. The vice chairman of this | |
| subcommittee, Mr. Souder from Indiana. | |
| Mr. Souder. Good morning. I've got a couple of questions. I | |
| thought I heard you say a minute ago that the Colombian | |
| Government had reduced support for the national police and | |
| General Serrano. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. General Bedoya told me that the budget | |
| provided to the armed forces and the police has been | |
| significantly reduced. | |
| Mr. Souder. Do you know what, when you say significantly? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I would suggest you ask him when he appears. | |
| Mr. Souder. OK, because one of the core questions that's | |
| hard for a lot of people to understand here is, we have a | |
| democratic government in Colombia, and yet you are praising the | |
| national police, you are praising the attorney general, you are | |
| praising to some degree the military of Colombia, saying they | |
| are fighting with us, they have been courageous, they have | |
| obviously lost many lives in trying to do this. | |
| How do you explain that balance? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. In the case of the prosecutor general, he is | |
| independent from the government. He is actually part of the | |
| judiciary, and under the 1991 constitution, is independent. | |
| In the case of General Serrano and the Colombian police, as | |
| I say, we were actually quite instrumental in getting President | |
| Samper to remove a highly corrupt predecessor head of the | |
| national police, General Vargas. | |
| Mr. Souder. Was that enacted by the decertification? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. This was earlier than that, this was in 1994, | |
| and I personally provided the then minister of defense, who is | |
| now incarcerated himself for corruption, with significant | |
| information about General Vargas' corruption. | |
| General Serrano was appointed in his stead. He was at that | |
| time the police attache here, had worked very closely with | |
| government agencies such as DEA, and we felt at that time | |
| enormous confidence in him. It has been very clear that General | |
| Serrano has been heavily criticized by his own government, by | |
| his own congress, but he has shown enormous courage, both | |
| physical and moral, by continued to pursue the right course. | |
| Mr. Souder. What is kind of curious to me is, it seems like | |
| the most critical--I'm trying to sort through the | |
| decertification process--the most critical thing, ideally, and | |
| it's very frustrating, I know, when we were in Colombia, their | |
| frustration with the court process--they get somebody, and then | |
| they get off, and the sentencing problems you've talked about. | |
| But the most critical thing in this is the fact that we | |
| have the police, the defense and the attorney general on our | |
| side, and we are trying to put pressure on the rest. Would you | |
| agree that that--in a decertification process, is that | |
| something you look at? | |
| For example, if a country has a bigger problem in their law | |
| enforcement and police and defense, would that make them more | |
| or less likely to be decertified? Because corruption--I mean, | |
| we're looking in almost all these countries at mixes of this, | |
| and obviously one of the things I am hinting at, in Mexico we | |
| have a huge problem with the attorney general, we have a huge | |
| problem with corruption of the police, we have a huge problem | |
| with corruption in the military, and I am trying to sort out | |
| how you are making your decision of who you are certifying and | |
| who you are not certifying. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. When I announced the President's decision on | |
| certification last year, first of all, I made it a point to | |
| single out the excellent cooperation and work done by the | |
| Colombian police and by Prosecutor General Valdivieso and his | |
| staff. The test of the law, as I said then--and under the law, | |
| it's very clear; you can ask Congressman Mica, because I think | |
| he helped write that law--is whether the government has | |
| cooperated with us. | |
| The government, in this case, is the one headed by | |
| President Samper. We did not believe then that it was | |
| cooperating with us. The President still has not made his | |
| decision, obviously, on this year's certification process, but | |
| will. | |
| We tried to be very careful in terms of separating out the | |
| cooperation, the extraordinary cooperation we have received in | |
| working with General Serrano and his police, now with the army, | |
| with the prosecutor general, and with some others, from the | |
| undermining that has taken place on a consistent basis by | |
| others in the government. | |
| As I mentioned in my oral statement, the government has not | |
| even yet pursued what President Samper promised in his letter | |
| to the Congress in terms of extradition. He promised in this | |
| letter--he said we will present to Colombia's Congress | |
| stringent new anticorruption legislation. Well, it comes as no | |
| surprise that he hasn't done that. | |
| So we have seen, on the one hand, efforts by serious, | |
| patriotic people, but--and then they themselves have come out | |
| and thanked us for our support, but then they have been | |
| undermined by corruption. So the decision had to be made, based | |
| on the final results, and the final results we see in terms of | |
| the pathetic and just discouraging sentences for the Rodriguez | |
| Orejuelas, who continue to run their businesses from jail. | |
| Mr. Souder. I am not interested in trying to defend the | |
| President of Colombia, where he takes his money and what he's | |
| done. What I am saying is, the concept of the government here | |
| is nebulous when there are independent parts of the government; | |
| and what you are saying is, you would rather have the support | |
| of the president even if the police are corrupt, the defense | |
| may be corrupt, and there's changes in attorney general. But | |
| you would rather have the support of the president than, in | |
| Colombia's case, where we don't have the support of the | |
| president, but we have pressure in parliament and we have the | |
| support of the people actually cracking down in the drug war, | |
| who are dying and fighting for it. That's what I am trying to | |
| sort out. | |
| If it's just the President and what he is promising to do-- | |
| in fact, in your statement, you said the measure is what is | |
| being done, and in Colombia, they are fighting and dying; and | |
| part of my concern is that in some of the other countries that | |
| we're dealing with, they don't seem to be at the enforcement | |
| point, but they seem to be giving us some of the lip service. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Congressman, what we're interested in, as I | |
| said many times in my statement, are concrete results. When we | |
| look at the concrete results, as I outlined some of them in the | |
| statement, and this was clearly the case by March 1st of last | |
| year, the concrete results, the bottom line, were inadequate. | |
| In spite of efforts by the police, in spite of efforts by | |
| General Valdivieso and others, but the concrete result, bottom | |
| line, were clearly inadequate. | |
| There is as much cocaine coming into the United States or | |
| being produced in Colombia as ever before. As the chairman | |
| said, there is more heroin being produced in Colombia than ever | |
| before. So that's the bottom line we've got to look at. We've | |
| got to look at the commitments that the government and the | |
| president himself made, and the kinds of laws that are | |
| necessary to produce the concrete bottom line results. | |
| Mr. Souder. Thank you, I am looking forward to working with | |
| you. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you. I just want to say the gentleman | |
| from Indiana will serve as the vice chairman of this | |
| subcommittee. We're very proud of the work that he has done. He | |
| travelled with me last year to Mexico, Panama, Colombia, | |
| Bolivia, Peru, and certainly is a person we'll depend on a | |
| great deal to follow you through with on these issues. | |
| It's my pleasure to turn to the next gentleman on the | |
| panel, somebody who is very astute in the law and very famous | |
| in that area, the gentleman from New Mexico, Mr. Schiff. | |
| Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; thank you for holding | |
| this hearing. | |
| Mr. Ambassador, I'd like to ask a very basic question | |
| first. Every nation's government has a constant fight with | |
| corruption and influence of the criminal elements of one form | |
| or another. As you know, our own government is not immune from | |
| such infiltration. But yet, at least as is popularly | |
| understood, the Government of Colombia seems to have the worst | |
| problem virtually in the world in that regard. Again, that's | |
| the image of the Government of Colombia. | |
| What I'd like to ask is, is that an accurate perception of | |
| the Government of Colombia, and if so, can you explain why the | |
| Government of Colombia, the Nation of Colombia, seems to have a | |
| worse problem with such criminal infiltration than other | |
| governments do, acknowledging that the problem is universal? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Well, first of all, Congressman, I wouldn't go | |
| so far as to say they have the worst corruption problem in the | |
| world. I think Nigeria may have that honor, but it's | |
| interesting, Transparency International just did some rankings | |
| on it, and I'd be happy to see if I could get them to you, | |
| because there is an interesting correlation between nation- | |
| states where the rule of law does not prevail, and where there | |
| is significant drug corruption--Nigeria, Burma, Colombia, a | |
| number of others. | |
| The tragedy of Colombia has been violence for many decades, | |
| going back many, many years; and particularly, I think one of | |
| the really dramatic and serious problems that we and the rest | |
| of the international community need to focus on more is-- | |
| particularly in the post-cold war period, we have new | |
| international security threats which are affecting democratic | |
| institutions, social and economic institutions. Transnational | |
| crime is clearly one of the most extraordinary that has | |
| developed. Drug trafficking and transnational crime are | |
| corrupting institutions everywhere, and Colombia, sadly, is one | |
| of the most dramatic cases, as you say. | |
| We have seen that the extraordinary financial power of the | |
| drug traffickers has now enabled them to corrupt a government, | |
| and lots of other elements throughout that society, including | |
| economic and social institutions. This is one of the great | |
| tragedies because it's one of oldest democracies in the Western | |
| Hemisphere. | |
| I think, once again, our--the decision by the President to | |
| decertify and the extraordinary decision by the President to | |
| revoke Samper's visa have caused a lot of elements and sectors | |
| in the Colombian society to really focus on this problem more | |
| than ever before. As I mentioned, we now have the Colombian | |
| Bankers Association, who actually came to us last year because | |
| they knew that the Colombian Government was doing nothing | |
| against money laundering, and the Colombian Bankers Association | |
| came to us to ask for training. That helped shame the Colombian | |
| Government into doing things against this, too. That is just an | |
| example. | |
| I mentioned the Flower Growers' Association. There are lots | |
| of other elements in the Colombian private sector and there are | |
| lots of American companies who do business in Colombia who are | |
| also trying to help provide this kind of influence to urge | |
| cleaning up their institutions. We think that is important. | |
| Mr. Schiff. That leads, I think, to the second question and | |
| that is this hearing is very important because it points out, | |
| particularly with the witnesses that will follow, that even in | |
| countries that are on the high end of the list, which Colombia | |
| is among at least the group you have mentioned, there are | |
| individual nationals in those countries, including high-ranking | |
| officials themselves, who don't want to tolerate the | |
| infiltration of crime and corruption---- | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Absolutely. | |
| Mr. Schiff [continuing]. And who at great risk, great | |
| personal risk, wage that fight. We all saw here in Washington, | |
| DC, just a few nights ago, how dangerous it is to be a police | |
| officer in any country; that the threat of death is, again, | |
| another universality, unfortunately. Nevertheless, in Colombia | |
| I understand that thousands of police and antidrug law | |
| enforcement officers have been assassinated in that country, | |
| which demonstrates how many people don't want to tolerate that | |
| situation. | |
| That leads me to what seems, to me, the inconsistency that | |
| you may have explained with the other pressures in Colombian | |
| society. You have spoken well and I think with every | |
| justification of Generals Bedoya and Serrano, and you said that | |
| we were able to influence the appointment of General Serrano as | |
| the head of the police in Colombia. If we believe that General | |
| Samper is closely allied with the criminal elements in | |
| Colombia, frankly, how are we able to do that? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. First, before I answer that, I would like to | |
| just add a point to what you started out talking about. I fully | |
| agree with what you say. I could not agree with you more in | |
| terms of the extraordinary courage of people in the Government | |
| of Colombia and in the private sector of Colombia, who really | |
| have--are extraordinarily patriotic in doing this. But I would | |
| also like to mention the people in our own government who do | |
| this, people in our Embassies in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and | |
| other places around the world because it takes extraordinary | |
| courage for those people, including former Ambassador Busby, | |
| who is sitting here, to have lived under threat for extended | |
| periods of time. | |
| As I mentioned earlier, a contract employee of the American | |
| Government was recently killed in Colombia while he was | |
| involved in eradicating coca. I think our own people, as I know | |
| you will agree, sir, deserve equal support. | |
| Mr. Schiff. I am glad you added that, Mr. Ambassador. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. In terms of your question, we have tried--we | |
| have recognized very clearly through the extraordinary step of | |
| the revocation of a sitting democratically elected President's | |
| visa. Revoking a sitting President's visa is, as I said, an | |
| amazing step. The only other case I can think of where this has | |
| been done in memory is Kurt Waldheim. Revocation of visas is | |
| not, one could argue, an enormously important step, but it is a | |
| sign of shame and it is taken as that, because holding an | |
| American visa is important. | |
| We are not going to try to interfere in Colombia's internal | |
| affairs. They elected him. They knew what they were getting. | |
| His record has been clear for decades. What we have tried to | |
| do, though, is establish standards under which we are prepared | |
| to cooperate and support Colombia in many other ways. It is up | |
| to the Colombian people, obviously, to decide how they want to | |
| be ruled, but it is up to us and the rest of the international | |
| community to decide how we are going to deal with those kinds | |
| of individuals. | |
| Mr. Schiff. I have one last question, Mr. Ambassador. | |
| If we could set aside the legalese, I wonder if you could | |
| explain in direct terms what you feel the goal of our policy | |
| should be in terms of the ability for decertification, but then | |
| the recommendation, if I understood you correctly, for a | |
| waiver. I mean, if the President decertifies a country under | |
| the law, but then has a waiver, what then can the President do | |
| and not do? What is the goal you are striving to achieve with | |
| that? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. By decertification, what we are trying to | |
| achieve--we outline in very clear ways to that government in | |
| very explicit terms the measures that we hope they will | |
| undertake to have a cooperative relationship with us. We did | |
| that with Colombia in 1995, in 1996 and we have done it again | |
| this year. | |
| We hold them to certain standards and we ask them to | |
| undertake certain measures and accomplish those measures. Then, | |
| as I said, the test of the law is whether that government is | |
| cooperating with us or whether it is fulfilling the measures of | |
| the 1988 Vienna Convention. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I thank the gentleman. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. The only problems I see in the law right now, | |
| really, are this issue about military assistance, that we would | |
| be--that I would be delighted to have changed and that we | |
| supported. | |
| Similarly, as I mentioned to Congressman Barrett, the | |
| effects, the negative effects, it has on American business. All | |
| our other programs have not only continued, as I say, they have | |
| increased and even doubled. So we are trying to be able to | |
| focus very clearly on our objectives. | |
| Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I thank the gentleman from New Mexico. | |
| Now it is my privilege to introduce the gentleman from | |
| Florida, who has been writing pertinent legislation, one of our | |
| senior Members and he was writing that legislation probably | |
| while many of us were just cutting our teeth on legislation, | |
| that is. Mr. Mica from Florida. | |
| Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Ambassador Gelbard, welcome back. We have been in this | |
| battle, I guess, for more than a decade and a half together and | |
| I appreciate your leadership. | |
| I have some questions, though, today. Maybe I ought to | |
| cover, first, the question of certification and waivers. As you | |
| mentioned, I was active in helping to draft the certification | |
| law and I just had staff check over the evening to see if we | |
| had originally included the waiver when we wrote it, and we did | |
| not. It was added as an amendment in 1988 and it was an | |
| amendment contained in the International Narcotics Control Act | |
| of that year. In fact, it did provide a waiver--I think it is | |
| pretty clear. You said you have had trouble, I guess, with | |
| Justice and DOD attorneys as far as interpretation. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Yes, sir. | |
| Mr. Mica. Well, we have had, I think, through this | |
| committee, and the chairman of the full committee wrote back, I | |
| believe it was in November, a request that a waiver be granted, | |
| and no action--I think that went to General McCaffrey--which | |
| disturbs me. | |
| In checking also on waivers that have been granted under | |
| this Section 614 authority, I find waivers have been granted by | |
| the administration to Serbia and Montenegro on almost a half a | |
| dozen occasions; at least twice to Somalia, to Haiti, to | |
| Rwanda. There are two pages of waivers that have been granted. | |
| There seems to be plenty of precedence when, in fact, it is in | |
| the national interest for waivers to be granted. | |
| I can't believe the administration doesn't consider this | |
| instance as in the national interest and has been dragging | |
| their feet. I will provide you with copies of those. That is | |
| the first point. | |
| The second point that concerns me is I see the PR that | |
| Colombia is doing getting ready for their certification | |
| campaign. They have got this ad that is appearing about how we | |
| are well on the way to making drug traffickers suffer as much | |
| as the people they supply. Then they talk about how they are | |
| making them suffer. The pounds of cocaine have--that have been | |
| seized have actually been reduced from 1995 to 1996. The acres | |
| of coca destroyed have actually been reduced from 1995 to 1996. | |
| It sounds like some serious suffering. | |
| What concerns me also is in your testimony you said at the | |
| same time the shift in focus of interdiction operations and | |
| devotion of increased resources to eradication programs, that | |
| is on page 9. So you would think that we had gone from | |
| interdiction--actually interdiction has increased. We have gone | |
| away from interdiction--to eradication. | |
| Page 10, then, you testified, the Colombian coca crop has | |
| expanded over 30 percent last year from 51,000 hectare acres to | |
| 67,000 hectare acres. So it seems that the emphasis, area of | |
| emphasis that they are taking is also a failure, eradication | |
| and interdiction. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Well, let me respond to several points you | |
| made, Congressman. As you say, you and I have known each other | |
| a long time and I have enormous respect for your background and | |
| experience in these issues. | |
| I have to say that I obviously noticed this media blitz. I | |
| think the timing is clearly geared to certification. | |
| I also noticed this lovely color supplement that is 17 | |
| pages in Forbes Magazine on Colombia called, ``The Leading | |
| Latin American Economy.'' It is a multifaceted economy, | |
| obviously. That costs about $1 million to put that in here, as | |
| we understand it. | |
| What we also understand is that all of these newspaper ads | |
| cost about $252,000. We also understand they have provided | |
| about $2 million to public relations firms around here to | |
| improve their image. I think what Colombia ought to be focusing | |
| on are accomplishments instead of their image. | |
| Some of that money perhaps could have been added to the | |
| military and the police, instead of reducing their budgets, and | |
| I think that would have been for the good of the Colombian | |
| people and the international community. | |
| Mr. Mica. Well, the information you have provided, the | |
| information I have, shows that both interdiction is down and | |
| eradication is down. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Well, the interdiction results have decreased. | |
| As you said--I, too, noticed that in these ads, I was surprised | |
| that they show--that they would take out full page ads to show | |
| that the results have gotten worse. That is amazing. | |
| Mr. Mica. Well, the whole thing is alarming, Mr. | |
| Ambassador. | |
| The other ad that they don't see is the headlines that I | |
| see in my district, and I have held this up before. When we | |
| were in--when we were in Colombia, Mr. Hastert, Mr. Souder and | |
| others, we were told that there are 10,000 hectare acres now of | |
| heroin growing, that heroin will be cheaper on the streets of | |
| our cities than cocaine in short order. This is what is | |
| happening in my central Florida suburban area. We are not | |
| talking about urban ghettos of Detroit, New York, Los Angeles. | |
| So I am not interested--we are not interested in PR. We are | |
| interested in some action also. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I understand. Let me say, on opium poppies, I | |
| think the area under cultivation, we have just completed our | |
| survey and I mentioned the coca crop up 32 percent. We think | |
| the opium poppy crop is about 6,300 hectares, which is a slight | |
| increase over the past. | |
| However, you are absolutely right, Congressman, because | |
| almost all of the heroin that is being produced in Colombia is | |
| coming to the United States. The Cali Cartel has now used the | |
| same mechanisms that it has used to distribute cocaine for | |
| distributing heroin. They are using loss leaders to sell heroin | |
| at very high purity levels at a very low price and they have | |
| taken ownership of the heroin distribution all through the East | |
| Coast. | |
| When I talk to the DEA in New York, in Baltimore, in | |
| Philadelphia and other places in the East Coast, Hartford, you | |
| can't find Southeast Asia heroin on the streets of those cities | |
| anymore. It is Colombian heroin. That shows that it has | |
| continued to increase even while--the police have made strong | |
| efforts. The military are making strong efforts. But absent the | |
| kind of governmental support that we were discussing, | |
| Congressman, earlier, absent the framework of laws, absent | |
| other kinds of support, they are going to be--they are going to | |
| be able to continue to pump this stuff out. | |
| We have only now been able to negotiate a maritime | |
| interdiction agreement, and we have seen a significant shift in | |
| the use of ships from airplanes as a way of getting drugs to | |
| our shores now and to Europe, where there is a significant | |
| increase, too, in cocaine and heroin coming from Colombia. | |
| Mr. Mica. I have other questions but my time has expired. | |
| We will get back. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I will advise the gentleman, we will come back | |
| for a second round to anyone who may have another question or a | |
| round of questions. | |
| I just have a quick followup question or observation on | |
| this. On a couple of statistics that we have been throwing back | |
| and forth here today, basically, you have said that the | |
| interdiction is down of drugs coming out of Colombia, and one | |
| of the reasons that some people have said that is because we | |
| have been doing more spraying and the Colombians have been more | |
| effective at killing hectares of cocaine. | |
| Also, it was interesting to see that some people predicted | |
| the amount of cocaine moving out of Colombia is actually up, no | |
| matter what the interdiction is. That also is explained by some | |
| folks that there has actually been a huge decrease in the | |
| amount of cocaine or coca paste coming up from Peru because of | |
| the success of the air bridge, and that is no longer a | |
| dependable market or at least as dependable as it was. So the | |
| narcotraffickers are really concentrating on growing their own | |
| crop in a sense. Is that valid? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. You are absolutely right on Peru. It is a | |
| combination of the support we have given to the Peruvian | |
| military and police on interdiction and law enforcement on the | |
| one hand and the support we have given to--we and other nations | |
| have given to Peru for alternative development on the other. | |
| The price of coca went way down. We are providing funds for | |
| other livelihoods and people are literally walking off the | |
| land. So there is an 18 percent decrease nationwide. | |
| In Colombia, I don't think there has been a real shift from | |
| interdiction to eradication. There has been a significant | |
| increase in eradication efforts, but interdiction and law | |
| enforcement efforts have continued. | |
| The problem has been, I think, overall corruption. Once | |
| again, the statistics are not ours. These are statistics | |
| provided by the Colombian Government themselves. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you, Ambassador. | |
| The next gentleman I would like to introduce is certainly | |
| somebody who has distinguished himself on this panel and | |
| others, the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Barr. | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Ambassador, I don't really necessarily have any problem | |
| with the administration's decision last year on | |
| decertification, and I have heard your testimony today and have | |
| read a great deal of material and I think it is admirable that | |
| this administration has reached the conclusion that campaign | |
| financing scandals involving foreign leaders are very serious | |
| matters, worthy of very extraordinary action, even hampering | |
| our war against drugs by cutting off certain types of | |
| assistance and taking the extraordinary step of denying a visa | |
| to a leader of a foreign country because of a campaign | |
| financing scandal. But I am somewhat concerned about what | |
| appears to be inconsistencies in the way the administration is | |
| approaching these matters and in particular some | |
| inconsistencies that appear to me certainly to be | |
| inconsistencies with regard to the International Narcotics | |
| Control Strategy Reports, or INCSR. | |
| For example, I know under that process, and pursuant to the | |
| law, Colombia and Mexico, among many other countries, fall into | |
| the very same categories of major drug producing and drug | |
| transit countries. Both Colombia and Mexico fall under the same | |
| categories as major money-laundering countries, yet the action | |
| of this administration last year, in terms of the extraordinary | |
| step of decertifying and then not even applying for a waiver | |
| and, as my distinguished colleague from Florida has said, | |
| waivers have been requested in, I think, far less important | |
| circumstances, that is, if the administration places | |
| counternarcotics activities at a high priority. Yet, with | |
| regard to looking at Colombia and Mexico, for example, which | |
| have a great deal in common in terms of the pervasive | |
| corruption in their societies and in terms of their preeminent | |
| role in sending drugs into this country, action was taken last | |
| year only against Colombia and not against Mexico. | |
| I don't know whether this has anything to do with the money | |
| that we have extended to Mexico--and I am glad that the | |
| President highlighted in his State of the Union that they | |
| repaid us in record time or something--but the fact of the | |
| matter is, I think Mexico does not have a great deal to be | |
| proud about and I think that this administration ought to be | |
| doing more to talk not so much about Mexico paying us back in | |
| record time for money extended to them, that a number of us | |
| think we had no right to do anyway, with Mexico's increasingly | |
| sorry record of corruption and direct massive involvement in | |
| sending drugs into this country. | |
| I would like your explanation of why action was taken | |
| against Colombia in terms of decertifying them and not against | |
| Mexico. Second, I would appreciate, again, an explanation of | |
| something that a couple of the other members of the panel have | |
| touched on, and that is why the administration has failed to | |
| take advantage of the very, very broad authority that I presume | |
| lawyers on your staff, and I know you are very familiar with, | |
| under, for example, 22 U.S.C. Section 2364. It is very broad | |
| authority for the President to, simply by notifying the | |
| specified Members of Congress of his intention, very, very | |
| broad authority to continue or expand military assistance, | |
| which is, as you said, to these countries that can be used for | |
| eradication and counternarcotics efforts, why the | |
| administration has not sought to take advantage of that. | |
| Obviously, they are aware of it, because it is a | |
| longstanding statute provision, the waiver provision, going | |
| back 36 years. There were two Members of this Congress last | |
| year that wrote to General McCaffrey specifically requesting | |
| that that action take place. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I know nobody here is going to sit and | |
| question the decision of the President to have decertified | |
| Colombia led by a clearly corrupt President who has had a | |
| history of involvement with drug traffickers, of soliciting and | |
| receiving drug money going back to 1982, a clear history, no | |
| question. All of the information is out there. | |
| I personally sat down with then Candidate Samper in | |
| November 1993, and told him we had exquisite intelligence which | |
| indicated from lots and lots of sources, now out in the public | |
| domain, that he and his associates were soliciting and | |
| receiving drug funds for their campaign. He denied it, of | |
| course. | |
| I told him he needed to stop right then, because we would | |
| know if it continued and the relationship with him, if it | |
| continued and he were elected President, would be bad. | |
| He went back to Colombia and it continued. The proof is out | |
| there now about soliciting and receiving more than $6.6 million | |
| in drug funds. We have seen the consequences. | |
| The President took the decision to decertify Colombia, a | |
| very important decision based on the test of the law, which was | |
| whether the government was cooperating with us. The government | |
| was not cooperating with us. | |
| The test of the law was also applied in the case of Mexico | |
| and the President believed, and I believe, that President | |
| Zedillo was cooperating with us. | |
| The President hasn't made his decisions for this year for | |
| 1996. That will come out toward the end of this month. But | |
| there have been clear-cut cases, examples of progress in terms | |
| of our cooperation with Mexico during President Zedillo's | |
| administration. | |
| The lack of institutional capabilities in Mexico, I think, | |
| were fairly clear compared to Colombia. We have a strong, | |
| honest police with strong, dedicated, honest leadership. | |
| Mr. Barr. In Mexico? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. In Colombia. | |
| Mr. Barr. OK. Good. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have the same in the Prosecutor General's | |
| Office. We now have in General Bedoya, a serious, honest person | |
| who wants to work with us in closer ways than ever before on | |
| counternarcotics and, as I mentioned, for that reason we have | |
| taken the step of now allocating funds directed to the armed | |
| forces for the first time out of my budget. | |
| President Zedillo and many of his ministers have now been | |
| trying to push for much better results in Mexico, and over the | |
| course of 1996, I think, we have already seen some dramatic | |
| changes. | |
| For example--and, Congressman, knowing your distinguished | |
| record as a prosecutor, you would understand this--they have, | |
| for the first time, started extraditing their own nationals, | |
| without precedent. They deported to the United States Juan | |
| Garcia Abrego, who I mentioned earlier, who has now received, | |
| as I mentioned, 11 life terms and many others. These are very | |
| important, unprecedented steps. | |
| We have begun cooperation with Mexico in counternarcotics | |
| with their army and we are seeing very strong, positive results | |
| as a result of that military-to-military cooperation, now | |
| engaged in interdiction as they had already been engaged in | |
| eradication. | |
| We are seeing seizures up significantly in Mexico as a | |
| result of cooperation that we have with the Army, with the Air | |
| Force and with certain police elements. | |
| They have now passed a major money-laundering law for the | |
| first time and they have implemented it and already making | |
| cases. They have passed an organized crime law, modernizing the | |
| tools that you, as a former prosecutor, are familiar with, that | |
| in most countries are novel ideas, such as allowing evidence | |
| from wiring tapping that is court authorized to be used in a | |
| court of law, which had not been allowed before. | |
| Arrests are up of drug traffickers, arrests are up--both | |
| domestic and foreigners who are in the country. Seizures are up | |
| of heroin. They are up something like 79 percent in Mexico. | |
| Seizures of cocaine are up. | |
| So we think there has been progress under President | |
| Zedillo, but in terms of the contrast--and I obviously can't | |
| predict where the President is going to come out on | |
| certification. In fact, the recommendations haven't even gone | |
| to him yet. | |
| Mr. Barr. The second question that I had, please, about why | |
| the President has not sought the waiver and what---- | |
| Mr. Gelbard. First, what we did--what we were--what we did | |
| concur with were the efforts in the House International | |
| Relations Committee to get an amendment to the law to permit | |
| this. As I said earlier, unfortunately, the Congress failed to | |
| pass that amendment, and I regret that. | |
| Mr. Barr. I am talking about the existing law. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I am talking about the existing law--of trying | |
| to change the existing law about prohibition on FMF and FMS. We | |
| have been working with the issue of a 614 waiver. I also know | |
| that the Congress in the past has criticized the administration | |
| for over use of the 614 waiver. | |
| So we do hope to be able to provide assistance to the | |
| military. But once again, this is a relatively small part of | |
| overall assistance to Colombia. The more important issue, I | |
| think, is that we, through my budget, which is the main source | |
| of funds far and away to Colombia, are going to be providing | |
| this year equipment and support worth $147.8 million to | |
| Colombia. That is an extraordinary amount. | |
| Mr. Barr. But why hasn't the administration sought the--and | |
| I maybe disagree with you. I think the waiver in 22 U.S. 2364 | |
| is very broad. Why hasn't the administration used that as a | |
| tool to get assistance directly to the military and the police | |
| in Colombia? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Assistance to the police has gone through. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I think we will come back with a second round | |
| and be able to ask those questions. | |
| Mr. Barr. OK. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The gentleman from Ohio. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for | |
| having this hearing. | |
| Mr. Ambassador, in preparing for this hearing I was struck | |
| by some of the strength of the remarks made by various | |
| officials in our government about President Samper. In your | |
| testimony on page 4 and again you repeated it, I think, in | |
| questioning with Mr. Barr, that you reached the conclusion that | |
| the President has aided and abetted drug traffickers and that | |
| led to, in part, to the decision to revoke his visa. | |
| I was reading an observation by our Drug Czar, I think our | |
| new national Drug Czar, Drug Policy Director, Mr. McCaffrey, | |
| who indicated that he has been--the President has been | |
| complicit with international criminals. I think even our | |
| Ambassador to that country made the observation that although | |
| he says all sorts of things, he has done very little and he has | |
| no friends in Washington. | |
| As someone who is coming to this committee afresh, I have | |
| read and I have heard you say today that there is an | |
| observation that $6.6 million found its way apparently into | |
| President Samper's campaign coffers from drug traffickers. I | |
| have heard you--I hadn't read it before, but I heard you say | |
| for the first time that apparently you have uncovered a history | |
| of that type of transaction since 1982. | |
| Is it the conclusion of the administration that the | |
| acceptance of these funds from questionable characters equals | |
| he must be complicit and therefore coddling or caving into drug | |
| traffickers, narcotraffickers, or is there additional evidence | |
| that that is, in fact, the case? | |
| I guess what I am getting at is, I suppose one could make | |
| the argument that he has accepted a campaign contribution. He | |
| wrote a letter to Congress saying that he would do certain | |
| things; he didn't do it. Therefore, it must be the campaign | |
| contribution equaled he didn't get the money laundering | |
| statutes passed through his Congress. Or is there other | |
| evidence that you are familiar with that leads you to that | |
| conclusion? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. The Cali Cartel has never been known to have | |
| provided support without a quid pro quo. We believe that there | |
| are--there is information which causes us to believe that there | |
| were direct consequences of the receipt of these funds. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. OK. I think that is an important--at least | |
| to me, it is an important question, because I don't think that | |
| you would argue that merely, as Mr. Barr, I think, was asking | |
| you, the mere acceptance of campaign contributions from people | |
| of questionable character equals that you do what they want you | |
| to do in contravention to the best interest of your Nation, | |
| certainly. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. The President made the decision to revoke the | |
| visa under a provision of the law which deals with individuals | |
| who aid and abet drug traffickers. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. OK. If I could fast forward now to the | |
| present day, and I was very interested in Mr. Mica's | |
| questioning and also your showing us the Forbes Magazine piece. | |
| I don't think there is anything wrong with a country promoting | |
| itself and saying that it is a nice place to visit, has a | |
| strong economy. But there have been other things in the news | |
| recently. In particular I was interested in a raid that | |
| apparently occurred down at the end of January in Colombia at a | |
| drug manufacturing center, and I have observed two spins put on | |
| that. | |
| One is that it was a huge distribution or manufacturing | |
| center that could have supplied up to half the manufactured | |
| cocaine down in Colombia on an annual basis. I have also read | |
| sort of a sarcastic piece that says, well, they knew about it | |
| for a long time and they waited until the recertification | |
| decision was coming up here in the United States in March and | |
| that is when they sprung it. | |
| Do you have an observation as to whether this is window | |
| dressing or whether or not this is evidence of increased and | |
| enhanced drug enforcement activities and the redoubling of the | |
| effort by the Colombian Government? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I don't believe that the Colombian police or | |
| the Colombian Army or the Colombian Air Force would undertake a | |
| laboratory raid because of any proximity to certification. We | |
| have a great deal of trust in them and their leadership and | |
| that is why we work with them so closely. But I think this goes | |
| to, in fact, part of my own experience. | |
| I was Ambassador to Bolivia when during part of that time-- | |
| this goes to also some of your questioning, Congressman--we had | |
| a President then in Bolivia, Jaime Paz Zamora, who had been | |
| corrupted by the drug traffickers, and his visa was also | |
| revoked, by the way. | |
| We were working very closely with the Bolivian police and | |
| Bolivian Air Force on some significant counternarcotics | |
| achievements, on a separate track from what the government | |
| itself was doing and the governmental leadership, and it is | |
| possible to do that. | |
| We have a very close collaborative relationship with the | |
| police, the Army, the Prosecutor General's Office. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. Likewise, I assume the activity that | |
| occurred maybe a week ago, I understand there was an 11-city | |
| sweep that occurred down in Colombia relative to rooting out | |
| suspected trafficking activity, that you would put in the same | |
| category? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Well, what I would say is that, as I mentioned | |
| earlier, I don't think it is a coincidence that suddenly the | |
| government has moved at the end of December to get the asset | |
| forfeiture law passed; that suddenly we have seen them | |
| initial--agree and initial the maritime interdiction agreement, | |
| which we have been pursuing for a few years; that suddenly they | |
| are having an extraordinary session of their Congress next week | |
| to try to discuss a sentencing law. | |
| We happily will take the results. They are important | |
| results. But the timing isn't coincidental. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. That was what I was going to ask you. | |
| Although you may question their timing, you consider them to be | |
| significant progress on the part of the Colombian Government? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. On those issues, once again, I think the | |
| certification process helps. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. OK. If I could just ask you a technical | |
| question relative--on the extradition question. Am I correct in | |
| my understanding that in order for Colombia to modify their | |
| policy on extradition there would have to be a change to their | |
| constitution? Am I correct on that? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. There are two interpretations. There is one | |
| school of thought which says they have to modify the 1991 | |
| constitution and in that case, the Cali Cartel clearly was able | |
| to buy enough votes in the constitutional convention to exclude | |
| that. | |
| There is another school of thought which says that the | |
| bilateral--the treaty we have with Colombia, which I think is | |
| the 1979 treaty, would override the constitutional provision | |
| and that apparently is going to be taken to the highest court | |
| in Colombia soon. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Thank you, sir. | |
| Mr. Hastert. A couple of quick questions and then I think | |
| we will go on a round of quick followup questions, if we could. | |
| Mr. Ambassador, one of the obvious things of the whole drug | |
| war, multinational drug war, you can grow coca leaf, turn it | |
| into paste, transport it, remanufacture it into cocaine, crack; | |
| same with heroin, and the poppy and the heroin. It comes in-- | |
| most of it at least comes into this country wholesale, | |
| retailed, retailed again, sold on the street, literally | |
| multiplying its value not by tens or by hundreds but by | |
| thousands, sometimes millions of factors. | |
| That money--in order for all that work to be done, there is | |
| no value in all of that movement unless the money comes back to | |
| the person who is in charge. Money laundering probably is one | |
| of the--is the tie to this. What nation in the world is No. 1 | |
| in money laundering? Can you give me a crack at that. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. The United States. | |
| Mr. Hastert. What country is No. 2? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Hard to say. Let me say, I fully agree with | |
| you. This is why we have tried to put major emphasis on a money | |
| laundering initiative that is included in Presidential | |
| Directive 42 on international crime. | |
| We have tried now to marshal all of our resources in the | |
| U.S. Government through Treasury, Federal Reserve, Justice, and | |
| the State Department and others, to work with countries to put | |
| major emphasis on antimoney laundering, much more than ever | |
| before. | |
| Secretary Rubin, in fact, chaired a little over a year ago | |
| a hemispheric conference on money laundering and we are | |
| pressing governments such as Colombia to take the strongest | |
| possible action. | |
| An example of Samper's cynicism was at the Miami | |
| Hemispheric Summit, where he called for a hemispheric | |
| convention on money laundering and Colombia hadn't even | |
| criminalized money laundering yet. | |
| They subsequently passed a weak money laundering law. We | |
| are now pressing them to toughen that law and then to take | |
| other measures. | |
| We are doing the same with other governments in the region, | |
| whether they are large governments, such as Venezuela, Mexico, | |
| which, as I say, has now adopted a tough money laundering law. | |
| Or even small Caribbean countries which are used as centers for | |
| dirty money, such as Antigua. But we are doing the same also | |
| around the world, and this has been a Presidential initiative. | |
| Mr. Hastert. In fact, the United States is No. 1. Mexico is | |
| probably No. 2. Panama is probably No. 3 and, you know, | |
| Colombia is down there No. 4 or 5 or 6, which doesn't validate | |
| anybody or give them a license. | |
| The fact is, all the money comes into this country and we | |
| are doing a very poor job, because the money--drugs wouldn't | |
| come into this country unless the money could flow out again. I | |
| think one of the emphases that I would say that this Congress | |
| ought to do is take a look at how we can make our laws better | |
| and enforce those laws. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Can I say, I agree with you. What's happening, | |
| though, when I talk to DEA and other law enforcement | |
| organizations, which work inside the United States, what they | |
| are telling me is now the tough--there are very tough | |
| antimoney-laundering laws in the United States and enforcement | |
| has been dramatic. The result is that drug traffickers are now | |
| shipping their money out by--in cash and they are shipping it | |
| out in containers. | |
| Jim Milford, who is now the Deputy Administrator of the DEA | |
| and was previously the head of their Miami office, has told me | |
| about seizures of tens of millions of dollars that they have | |
| picked up in Miami of money going out of the country on its way | |
| back to Colombia. We have got to be able--the hard part is | |
| getting a handle on those containers. That is very hard. | |
| Mr. Hastert. We even had testimony that, as a matter of | |
| fact, it is more difficult to pack street dollars, street cash | |
| into those containers; it takes more container volume than the | |
| drugs that come in on them. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. The other thing, if I could say, sir, is that | |
| we have been working for a number of years, since the Financial | |
| Action Task Force, which is the multilateral organization that | |
| deals with this, based in Paris, which was set up a number of | |
| years ago, to try to establish international standards against | |
| money laundering. We and some of our allies in Europe and Japan | |
| have been working together to urge countries such as Colombia, | |
| Mexico, Panama and others, including the European countries | |
| such as Austria, which has never ratified the Vienna | |
| Convention, to take strong action on money laundering. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I have one quick question before my round is | |
| up here. During our period of time on decertification, the | |
| Colombian military and police continue to fly excess United | |
| States Huey helicopters. Five of them were shot out of the sky | |
| by the narcotraffickers and guerilla armies. It took the | |
| administration about 6 months to replace these excess | |
| helicopters, based chiefly on trying to get legal opinions | |
| whether it was right or wrong during this period of time. | |
| Just as there have been sometimes delays of months in | |
| trying to find spare parts to make the DC-3s fly, which got | |
| materials out into the jungles, and also the herbicides that | |
| were needed, we also delayed the delivery of the Blackhawk | |
| helicopters. I am not even sure they are on the shores of | |
| Colombia yet. This has all happened since basically the | |
| decertification of Colombia. | |
| In view of the numbers of Americans dying from violence on | |
| American streets because, in part, this happens, how can we | |
| expect that not to happen again? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. First of all, that had nothing to do with | |
| certification. The Blackhawk transaction is a commercial | |
| transaction and, in fact, we and the Pentagon got Sikorsky to | |
| agree to jump Colombia to the front of the line to get their | |
| helicopters. The first helicopters are, in fact, arriving | |
| tomorrow in Colombia. | |
| Second, last year we provided 12 more helicopters, 12 Huey | |
| helicopters to them. We have provided three Bell-212 | |
| helicopters and are about to provide three more. | |
| We have given them all the spray planes we have got | |
| worldwide. As I mentioned, we have lost two, one to ground fire | |
| and one when tragically an American pilot crashed. We are about | |
| to provide five more OV-10 Bronco aircraft; two this month, | |
| three by the end of March. We will be providing 12 more Huey | |
| helicopters within the next month or so. So we feel we are | |
| moving this as rapidly as we can and as rapidly as their | |
| absorptive capacity can handle. | |
| I would point out that the operating rate in Colombia for | |
| aircraft is lower. It is about 65 percent. It is lower than we | |
| have in Peru and Bolivia, about 85 percent. So it is not just a | |
| question of pumping equipment in. It is also a question of | |
| maintaining that equipment well and being able to use the spare | |
| parts. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Getting the spare parts there? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have provided $4 million in spare parts | |
| this last year, too. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Barrett. During the course of this conversation this | |
| morning, we have heard you praise the political leadership in | |
| Mexico, but not have such great praise for the military or | |
| police in Mexico and, in contrast, in Colombia there has been | |
| strong praise here for the police and military, but obviously | |
| no praise at all for the political leadership. | |
| Can you site some examples where some of the higher regions | |
| of the government and Colombia has undermined the hard-working | |
| efforts of the police and the military? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I think the primary examples would rest in | |
| cutting their budget, first of all. | |
| Mr. Barrett. How much is the budget? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I don't have any answers on that, but I would | |
| suggest you might want to ask General Bedoya about that. But | |
| one would think that if, as even President Samper says, the | |
| fight against the guerilla terrorists and the fight against | |
| drug trafficking are as high priorities as he says they are, | |
| then their budget would go up, the way ours did. | |
| Second, they did nothing to try to move expeditiously on a | |
| new sentencing law that was promised almost 3 years ago. That | |
| would, I think, have helped enormously in terms of not just the | |
| morale, but the rule of law for the police, who had superb | |
| performance in capturing the leadership of the Cali Cartel. So | |
| here they captured all of these people, but then they were | |
| brought to jail and, as I said earlier, they have received | |
| ridiculous sentences; no forfeited assets because the law was | |
| just passed now. | |
| Money laundering, the money-laundering law that was finally | |
| passed was weak and the government made no effort to make it a | |
| serious law. | |
| The kind of stringent anticorruption legislation, and those | |
| are President Samper's words, that he promised has never been | |
| presented, and on and on. | |
| Meanwhile, a very interesting example is the cooperation | |
| between the Minister of Interior and a German citizen, an | |
| apparent German espionage agent, named Werner Mauss. They were | |
| apparently looking to have the German Government, which | |
| ultimately refused, broker a deal for the Cali Cartel, which | |
| would have resulted in them getting off scot free and keeping | |
| 20 percent of their assets. That is an amazing example. | |
| This man, Mauss, working with the Interior Minister, was | |
| also trying to corrupt the contracting process and hurting | |
| American companies and was also trying to make deals with the | |
| guerrillas. He was trying to free German hostages, but he was | |
| getting the ransom raised and getting a percentage of that. | |
| That endangered the lives of American citizens who were held | |
| hostage. | |
| So this is all part of what the government and President | |
| Samper have been doing. | |
| Mr. Barrett. OK. Thank you. | |
| We have heard some criticism of the administration's | |
| actions today, but I don't think we have heard any criticism of | |
| the decision to pull the visa of President Samper. | |
| Is there a way to turn the heat up even more? Have you | |
| considered pulling his diplomatic visa? Is that something that | |
| could be considered? What is the next way to put the spotlight | |
| or keep the spotlight on him? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have revoked the visas of a large number of | |
| Colombian Government officials, of ministers or former | |
| ministers, Members of Congress. We have frozen the assets, as I | |
| say, of a lot of the front companies. | |
| We have considered other measures and are considering other | |
| measures, but I would rather not get into them today. | |
| Let me also add, though, that I think it is not coincidence | |
| at all that when Secretary Albright recently presented our | |
| human rights report, Colombia was clearly targeted as one of | |
| the leading offenders. One of the examples that we have looked | |
| to is the fact that President Samper has also put into place a | |
| very harsh censorship law against the press and I think that is | |
| another example of this overall atmosphere we have seen. But we | |
| are considering others--other measures. | |
| Mr. Barrett. I am glad you mentioned the human rights | |
| concerns because that is something we haven't talked about this | |
| morning. In your analysis, where have the majority of the human | |
| rights violations occurred, by government officials? | |
| Specifically, where are we seeing the human rights violations | |
| in Colombia? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have been very concerned, as have | |
| nongovernmental organizations, by human rights problems, | |
| particularly through the military. | |
| General Bedoya, I think, has been making a major effort, as | |
| did the former Minister of Defense and now Ambassador in | |
| Washington, Esguerra, to try to improve that situation. In | |
| fact, General Bedoya and I discussed that issue yesterday. We | |
| feel that General Bedoya is making serious efforts on this | |
| problem. | |
| I have to say, though, that there is no question that the | |
| real human rights problem has also been at the same time what | |
| the guerilla terrorist groups have also been undertaking, the | |
| FARC, ELN and other groups. They have kidnapped foreigners and | |
| their own citizens. They have murdered hundreds upon hundreds | |
| of other people. Once again, we think the institutions are | |
| trying to make improvement. We regret very deeply that | |
| President Samper is trying to curtail press freedom and we have | |
| spoken out quite strongly about that. | |
| The Congress of the United States, in its last session, | |
| approved a new law called the Leahy amendment, under which | |
| funds from our budget have to take into account human rights | |
| elements. We are stringently, of course, obeying that law and | |
| are working very closely with the Colombian Government to | |
| assure that our assistance takes into account all appropriate | |
| and serious violations. | |
| Mr. Barrett. So you have drawn up lists of offending units | |
| or you will be drawing up lists? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Sorry? | |
| Mr. Barrett. Have you drawn up lists, then, of offending | |
| units or will you be doing that? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Ambassador Frechette has been working very | |
| closely with General Bedoya and the new Minister of Defense on | |
| this issue, yes. | |
| Mr. Barrett. OK. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Hastert. A quick followup. You mentioned press | |
| censorship. One of the things we try to do here is to try to | |
| keep updated on what is going on in Colombia from the Colombia | |
| press. One of the major papers, El Tiempo, that comes out of | |
| Colombia, apparently, at least, in our reading, doesn't say-- | |
| they seem to be speaking out quite bravely on a lot of issues | |
| and it really doesn't seem that there has been a lot of | |
| censorship, at least in our view of this. Any comment on that? | |
| Do you think El Tiempo, for instance, has been severely | |
| hampered? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. El Tiempo is very brave. El Espectador and | |
| others have taken very strong stands. The censorship law, if I | |
| remember correctly, is particularly directed at television and | |
| radio and the idea is that their licenses can be revoked. | |
| Mr. Hastert. OK. That narrows that down. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Yes. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Significantly. | |
| Mr. Souder. I want to restate the obvious here before I | |
| start out, and that is that none of us have any interest in | |
| defending the actions of the President of Colombia. Partly in | |
| discussions with you, when we went down there, we didn't meet | |
| with him. We met with President Zedillo and others. | |
| At the same time, one of our obligations--and, quite | |
| frankly, I find this whole advertising campaign very insulting, | |
| about how we make decisions here, and they got pretty bad PR | |
| advice, that--but one of our jobs here is to make sure that | |
| there is fairness. We want to make sure that Colombia isn't | |
| just being used as a whipping boy solely when the problem is | |
| far beyond that. | |
| I want to sort through one of the difficult issues that | |
| faces us in almost all these nations, and that is the problem | |
| of the mixing, as President Zedillo told us, of narcoterrorists | |
| and, in fact, the revolutionary movements in those countries | |
| and how the different governments can deal with that. | |
| For example, we get mixed up in the human rights questions | |
| and the narcotics questions and the revolutionary groups, and | |
| those things are not separated from each other. Often, the | |
| human rights restrictions that--so, for example, we have had | |
| problems with President Fujimori in the past; and when you | |
| shoot down airplanes you aren't necessarily reading the Miranda | |
| rights as you are shooting down the airplanes, although they | |
| make some attempts to do that; that in Burma we have a problem | |
| there both in the electoral process but also, up in the | |
| northern part of Burma, in trying to get cooperation. | |
| When we cutoff any relations, we are having trouble getting | |
| control. You see it going into the Yunnan province in China | |
| and--because of the Muslims there. It is not even clear that | |
| the National Government of China can control that. | |
| In Mexico, we have corruption down at the regional levels | |
| and in their police departments, and Zedillo is concerned that | |
| that is going to be a revolutionary--tied in with the | |
| revolutionary movements. | |
| The question comes as to how are you distinguishing--and | |
| let me put this in a provocative way. Is some of the reason we | |
| are isolating Colombia, which--clearly, we have seen the movie | |
| Clear and Present Danger. Ambassador Busby, I think, made the | |
| funniest statement when we were there, which was, I asked him | |
| how accurate the movie was; and he said, very accurate, except | |
| I died in the movie. | |
| While we see that and it is easy to focus on Colombia, we | |
| need to make sure that the only reason we aren't isolating | |
| Colombia is that flowers and coffee may not be as potent as the | |
| trade that we want to do with China or Mexico and that we | |
| balance--and I want to see an even type of approach to all of | |
| these different countries. | |
| I would like you, in particular, to comment on how you see | |
| the drug trafficking and the revolutionary movements and the | |
| human rights mixing in four of the most explosive and major | |
| drug areas of the world: Peru, Colombia, Burma and Mexico. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Nobody is picking on Colombia, Congressman. | |
| Mr. Souder. They deserve being picked on. The question is | |
| on being isolated. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I am disliked in lots of places around the | |
| world. We have--this hearing happens to be on Colombia. If this | |
| hearing were on Nigeria, you would hear me say the same things | |
| but maybe more. If this hearing were on Burma, you would hear | |
| me saying the same things about the SLORC; and I will talk a | |
| little bit about that, if you would like. | |
| Mr. Souder. OK. What about Mexico and China? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We feel very strongly--I am not sure how much | |
| the Mexicans like me, either. | |
| My job relates to trying to develop stronger | |
| counternarcotics cooperation and results worldwide. I feel very | |
| strongly about it. This is not the easiest job in the world, | |
| obviously; and it is sure not the most enjoyable. | |
| We have taken a very strong stand on these issues | |
| worldwide, worldwide. When I came into this job, and knowing | |
| that Congressman Mica was now a Member of Congress and would be | |
| watching me very carefully, I looked at the certification law | |
| and I said that as long as I am the person responsible for | |
| managing this, I am going to take this very seriously. We have | |
| seen--I think if you examine the results, you will see that | |
| there has been a significant change in the way that this | |
| administration has dealt with certification, has dealt with | |
| money laundering, has dealt with a whole range of these issues | |
| than ever before. | |
| We are, obviously, concerned about trying to work a balance | |
| on many of these issues. If you read through the various laws-- | |
| and we have to be guided by the letter and the spirit of the | |
| laws--there are often conflicts in the laws, and there are | |
| often conflicts among Members of Congress as they interpret the | |
| laws. | |
| I am tremendously concerned, for example, about the fact | |
| that an enormous amount of heroin that comes into the United | |
| States comes from Burma, as are you. But there are also Members | |
| of Congress who are very concerned about impeding our ability | |
| to deal with that problem. | |
| What I am trying to do is work with the United Nations Drug | |
| Control Program, through that kind of program, to develop a | |
| program with integrity to deal with eradicating opium poppies | |
| and having crop substitution, particularly in the Wa area. I | |
| have been in the Yunnan province in China. I have spent a lot | |
| of time with the Chinese authorities and with others. We also | |
| see an enormous amount of corruption in the SLORC and in lots | |
| of other places in Burma. | |
| In Colombia, we have been trying to develop serious | |
| programs to deal with the ever-increasing problem, the overlay | |
| between the guerilla terrorist movements, drug trafficking and, | |
| increasingly, cultivation. | |
| The phenomenon of the involvement of the guerilla terrorist | |
| groups in drugs isn't new. In 1985, when I became involved with | |
| this for the first time professionally, it was quite apparent | |
| then. The FARC at that time were guarding drug laboratories and | |
| benefiting from it. The M-19 at that time apparently was on | |
| contract from the Medellin Cartel when they murdered a large | |
| number of members of the Colombian Supreme Court. | |
| This is--but the law also says that any assistance from my | |
| budget has to go 100 percent against drug trafficking. It can't | |
| be used for multiple purposes. But this--this is what General | |
| Bedoya and General Serrano and I were discussing just last | |
| night, how we can work together in certain regions of Colombia | |
| where it's clear that the guerrilla terrorist groups are | |
| involved very clearly in drug trafficking, in cultivation, | |
| protecting cultivation, and we can have programs that will | |
| fully be in concurrence with American law. We had some detailed | |
| discussions about that last night. | |
| That is also why we have now explicitly put $5 million in | |
| our budget specifically for the military of Colombia. But, at | |
| the same time, we have to be very clear in our own minds about | |
| our own standards and our own beliefs as well as the law | |
| regarding human rights. | |
| In Peru, if I can just say, yes, there were obviously a | |
| great deal of concerns about human rights. They have less to | |
| do, in my mind, with forcedown and shootdown of aircraft; but | |
| we also were faced with a law that may or may not have had a | |
| certain meaning regarding civil aircraft. | |
| As you probably know, Congressman, I led the fight to make | |
| sure that we would be able to provide realtime intelligence | |
| support to the Air Forces of Colombia and Peru. We are doing | |
| that now. We are doing that with great results. But we have had | |
| to be very careful, in part because we fundamentally believe in | |
| the rule of law and the need to have effective programs that | |
| won't be undermined over the medium and long term. | |
| Mr. Souder. You know, once again, I want to reiterate that | |
| I believe that you have been committed and have been pushing in | |
| this administration for that. I want to make sure that you | |
| understand, too, that in addition to the countries that are-- | |
| quite frankly have less financial clout in the world, Burma, | |
| Colombia and some of the others, compared to some of the bigger | |
| countries, that some of us want to see the same pressures | |
| across the board. We are not faulting--we want to keep pushing | |
| you, but we are not necessarily faulting where you have been. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I thank the gentleman. | |
| The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mica. | |
| Mr. Mica. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Gelbard, one of the problems | |
| with the decertification law as we wrote it--and we wrote it | |
| back in the 1980's--was it tied foreign aid into drug | |
| eradication or drug efforts by nation; and many of the nations | |
| were poor and were dependent on U.S. assistance, received large | |
| U.S. assistance. | |
| One reason I don't think it worked with Colombia too well | |
| is, actually, it's a pretty wealthy nation. It's one of the | |
| wealthiest in the western hemisphere. | |
| I think our subcommittee and Congress needs to look at | |
| imposing some further pain on countries that don't need this. I | |
| think Senator Grassley is looking to multidecertifications; | |
| like the second strike, if they decertify Colombia that we look | |
| at some real pain for that country. So that is one thing that | |
| we may need to look at, that we talked about. | |
| Ambassador, the members of the committee went down; and we | |
| went to Colombia, we went to Peru, we went to Bolivia, other | |
| areas, Panama, Mexico. If this administration had really | |
| emasculated the interdiction program and even some of the | |
| eradication programs, if we came back and we put together all | |
| the resources that everyone needed or asked for--I don't think | |
| there wasn't anything that you all didn't ask for that we | |
| didn't deliver. We felt that policy was a disaster. Our | |
| experience in looking at it proved that it was a disaster. | |
| Then in September--and you alluded, too, in your testimony, | |
| too, the problem now with some of the air cover and other | |
| things that now these folks are going to--riverine strategy, | |
| taking the stuff out in boats and ships. In September, Barbara | |
| Larkin, Assistant Secretary of Legislative Affairs, sent the | |
| chairman, I think Mr. Gilman, notifying them of a drawdown for | |
| funds. This is--I talked about the other pot, the FMS pot. This | |
| is your pot, under State. That was to buy patrol boats, because | |
| we saw the problem now with this new pattern of trafficking and | |
| other equipment. | |
| It's my understanding that even in September, when you told | |
| us that this was going to be done, that nothing has been done | |
| in ordering this equipment. Is that correct? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. No, that is not correct. | |
| We have moved to provide--this is the program under Section | |
| 506(a)(2), if I am not correct--is that right? | |
| Mr. Barr. Yes. | |
| Mr. Mica. Yes. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have moved to try to establish the proper | |
| agreements with the nations involved so we can send the | |
| equipment there. | |
| The Colombian--we have needed two provisions under the law. | |
| One is an end user agreement and the second is an agreement on | |
| human rights. We finally received that agreement from the | |
| Colombian Minister of Defense on February 11th. We were delayed | |
| by the Colombian Government. | |
| Mr. Mica. So it's the agreement? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. That is done. | |
| Mr. Mica. But these still haven't been ordered, right? This | |
| equipment? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. No. It is all ordered, and it is ready to move | |
| now that we have---- | |
| Mr. Mica. I would have to disagree with that. I have the | |
| manufacturer back--in the back of the hearing room here, and he | |
| tells me nothing has been done. | |
| The same thing for Peru. If you turn to the | |
| administration's letter--and I don't know of any | |
| decertification in Peru--we will also furnish three river | |
| patrol boat craft to Peruvian security. We are asking for a | |
| drawdown of $13.75 million. This stuff hasn't even been ordered | |
| yet. They tell me it will take, after the order, 120 days, half | |
| a year, before this is produced. | |
| So we went down in April. You requested this in September; | |
| and nothing is done, at least as far as ordering the equipment. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I don't order the equipment. This is--excuse | |
| me. This is the Department of Defense. I am sorry, but I can't | |
| answer for the Department of Defense on this one. | |
| Mr. Mica. Mr. Chairman, I would ask that our staff look | |
| into this. This is absolutely uncalled for. | |
| Now, we have talked about moving to eradication; and we--I | |
| have a confidential report here that we had 12 aircraft in the | |
| air on eradication. Then we went down to eight, and now we are | |
| down to five. Is that correct? Are we now flying only five or | |
| is this wrong? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. No, that is not right. | |
| Mr. Mica. How many are we flying? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I have said several times today, Congressman, | |
| that we have nine spray planes there. We had 11. Two were | |
| destroyed, including the loss of life. We have increased the | |
| number of helicopters substantially in Colombia, and we now | |
| provide something like two-thirds of---- | |
| Mr. Mica. What about the eradication? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Can I give you some details? | |
| Mr. Mica. How many eradication planes are flying today? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I am just about to give you the details. | |
| We have nine U.S. Government-owned Turbo Thrush spray | |
| planes. We have---- | |
| Mr. Mica. That are flying today? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Yes, sir. | |
| Mr. Mica. What about---- | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have a Casa-212 transport aircraft, a | |
| Cessna 208 helicopter or aircraft, three Bell-212 helicopters. | |
| Plus we have a very large number of helicopters that we have | |
| provided to the Government of Colombia, to the police, | |
| including 12 additional helicopters that we gave them last | |
| year. | |
| Mr. Mica. What about the status, finally--I guess, my time | |
| is running out here. It's my understanding, in 1994, that the | |
| Department of State installed an individual without any prior | |
| practical or technical experience in counternarcotics operation | |
| as the director of the NAS, Narcotics Affairs Section, of the | |
| Embassy. Is that individual still there or the same person in | |
| charge since 1994, do you know? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. The individual who is heading the narcotics | |
| assistance section has been doing an outstanding job. | |
| Ambassador Frechette obviously feels that this is the highest | |
| priority in his work; and he spends personally a great deal of | |
| time on these issues, as does his deputy. | |
| We have a very large staff in that Embassy. In fact, we | |
| just hired a retired colonel, whom I personally know, to run | |
| all of our air assets. The total amount of air assets that we | |
| have, as I say, is extraordinarily large. | |
| Mr. Mica. So we have the same person in charge of the air? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have the same person in charge. | |
| One point I want to make on the 506(a) program, by law the | |
| equipment provided under that law--under that program--comes | |
| from stocks and inventories in the U.S. Government. So I am | |
| confused as to whether anything would be ordered from any | |
| private companies. But the law states, as I understand it, and | |
| I could be wrong, that it's a drawdown authority from stocks | |
| and inventories. | |
| Mr. Mica. Well, when this is over, I would like to | |
| introduce you to the vendor, who is in the back. It is also | |
| stated in here what you would be purchasing. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The gentleman from Florida, it is time to move | |
| on. | |
| The gentleman from Georgia. | |
| I might add, just for the record, too, you characterized | |
| that as a confidential report. That was a private sector report | |
| and not a government report. Is that correct? | |
| Mr. Mica. Yes. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you. | |
| The gentleman from Georgia. | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Previously, when we were having a discussion, Mr. | |
| Ambassador, you mentioned that at some length, as I recall, the | |
| great steps that Mexico has taken, the laws and so forth; and | |
| you were very kind to mention the work that my office had done | |
| in Atlanta in drug cases. Prosecutorial offices, of course, | |
| wherever they are located, whether they are located in Mexico, | |
| Colombia or Atlanta, the success of their efforts can be | |
| measured only by the willingness and the ability of | |
| prosecutorial offices to carry out the laws that are passed. | |
| Passing laws that look great on the surface really means | |
| very little and sometimes can be worse than not passing them at | |
| all because then it becomes a smoke screen that is held up as | |
| evidence of great progress that is being made simply because | |
| they passed these tough laws, but that is not being used, then | |
| we still have a very serious problem. We all know, I think, | |
| today that the problem that we have is with extradition and | |
| that no progress has been made on that. I know the | |
| administration is trying to get the Government of Colombia to | |
| do something about that. | |
| But I think you mentioned Mexico, and I am not really sure | |
| that Mexico's--that the track record of the Mexican Government | |
| in recent years really merits a great deal of compliment. Isn't | |
| it true that we really have just over the last 4 years | |
| requested literally dozens of extraditions that they have only | |
| complied in three cases, the Mexican Government, that is? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We obviously feel that extradition is one of | |
| the fundamental tools worldwide, and we have been pressing | |
| nations around the world to negotiate, implement, ratify, | |
| implement world class, up-to-date extradition treaties. Let me | |
| say that we have been very pleased under Attorney General | |
| Reno's leadership in particular that we have now been | |
| successful in negotiating a series of new extradition treaties. | |
| Recently one in Bolivia came under force---- | |
| Mr. Barr. That is fine. I will put into the record that the | |
| administration has done a great job in these areas. I am | |
| talking about Mexico. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. What has happened with Mexico, as I said | |
| earlier, is that they started for the first time to extradite | |
| nationals early last year, and this was important because it | |
| was without precedent. Under their law, it says they can | |
| extradite people under exceptional circumstances. We obviously | |
| would like to see them extradite an awful lot more people. I | |
| don't have the exact numbers that they have extradited so far, | |
| but we clearly would like to see many more. | |
| Mr. Barr. It is my information that there have been only | |
| three, and one of those was a U.S. citizen. So I--but---- | |
| Mr. Gelbard. In terms of U.S. citizens and other nationals, | |
| I believe--and I would be happy to get you the statistics on | |
| this--that they have extradited a great deal more. The question | |
| is really how many of their own nationals have they extradited, | |
| how many they are prepared to do. | |
| [The information referred to follows:] | |
| In 1996, there were 13 extraditions altogether. Two of | |
| these were Mexican nationals; the others were U.S. citizens or | |
| other nationalities. | |
| Mr. Barr. That is the question, and it is my information | |
| that they have only extradited two. If you have differing | |
| information, I would be happy to receive it. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have been pressing them to do more. When | |
| the new Attorney General was just here 2 weeks ago, the | |
| Attorney General, I, and others, General McCaffrey, have been | |
| putting them at the very top of our priority list. | |
| Mr. Barr. I appreciate that, and I understand we have been | |
| pressing the Colombian Government to do more, notwithstanding | |
| the problems we have been having with the president himself | |
| down there. Again, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I | |
| feel, and I think you can gather, that maybe some other members | |
| of the panel share my concern here that we are applying one | |
| standard to Colombia and a very different standard to Mexico. | |
| I would like to, in the remaining short period of time that | |
| I have, to return to an area that we left unfinished earlier, | |
| although in subsequent discussions you touched on some of the | |
| things that I was going to mention also. The letter from | |
| September 1996 concerning the waiver under 506(a)(2), and that | |
| is fine, although I am concerned, as Mr. Mica is, that there is | |
| a big difference between the documents being sent forward and | |
| the action being actually taken to get the equipment in the | |
| hands of the folks down there in Colombia. | |
| But again, has there been no effort to look at the other | |
| waiver authority contained in the same section in the earlier | |
| paragraph (a)(1) in terms of assistance? I think it is | |
| particularly important not so much in the large picture but in | |
| the small picture that our military, if the President would | |
| look at this, could be getting some much needed equipment down | |
| there very, very quickly. We know that we are having--they are | |
| having a problem with the helicopters and delays in getting | |
| them repaired, the DC-3, the mini-guns which they have expended | |
| the money on their own because apparently somebody made the | |
| decision that the use of mini-guns would violate human rights | |
| or something. But isn't the authority that the President could | |
| be exercising under (a)(1) a tool that could help here? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Let me just get back to the issue under | |
| (a)(2). According to law, we have to have guarantees about the | |
| use of equipment, and we now also have to have guarantees about | |
| human rights provisions. The Colombian Government only gave us | |
| those assurances on the 11th of this month. We are now moving, | |
| and we have, the military are moving to move that equipment to | |
| Colombia rapidly. | |
| Mr. Barr. Could I just suggest, to help you all out, that | |
| we have the gentleman here today, and you deal with him on | |
| regular basis, and he has stated, I think, very accurately that | |
| tremendous--and he has worked with us in this area; why does it | |
| take that long? You have the men here. You deal with them on a | |
| regular basis. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Because Ambassador Frechette felt he needed | |
| assurances from the Minister of Defense, and the Minister of | |
| Defense just gave it to him now. I am--in the terms of | |
| 506(a)(1), I have got to study that, and I would like to give | |
| an answer for the record on that. | |
| Mr. Barr. I would appreciate that very much. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I would like to state we are going to ask that | |
| the authorities submit written questions and have those | |
| questions answered and have the record left open. | |
| [The information referred to follows:] | |
| In order to direct that assistance be furnished under the | |
| authority of section 506(a)(1) of the FAA, the President would | |
| have to first determine and report to Congress that: (a) an | |
| unforeseen emergency exists which requires immediate military | |
| assistance to a foreign country or international organization; | |
| and (b) the emergency requirement cannot be met under the | |
| authority of the Arms Export Control Act or any other law | |
| except this section. On the other hand, in order to provide | |
| assistance under section 506(a)(2) of the FAA, the President | |
| would have to determine and report to Congress that it is in | |
| the national interest of the United States to direct a drawdown | |
| for, among other things, the purposes and under the authorities | |
| of chapter 8 of part I of the FAA (relating to international | |
| narcotics control assistance). | |
| The assistance being provided to the CNP and the Colombian | |
| military for CN assistance in accordance with a section | |
| 506(a)(2) FAA drawdown directed by the President on September | |
| 31, 1996, is part of a large package of CN assistance designed | |
| to strengthen and maintain the CN efforts of a number of | |
| countries in South America and the Caribbean, including | |
| Colombia. Under these circumstances, it was determined that | |
| section 506(a)(2) was the most appropriate authority under | |
| which to authorize this drawdown, although it is not | |
| inconceivable that CN assistance could be provided under the | |
| authority of section 506(a)(1), given the appropriate | |
| circumstances. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The gentleman from Ohio. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. Thank you, and I will be as brief as | |
| possible. | |
| In your earlier testimony, you talked about increased | |
| levels, principally from your budget, dealing with the-- | |
| although if I broke it down--22.6 going to 440 million, if I | |
| remember that correctly. Will the certification decision | |
| upcoming on March 1st affect the State Department's commitment | |
| to increasing these dollar amounts in this next fiscal year? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. No. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. There is also a---- | |
| Mr. Gelbard. There is a waiver authority, one, against, I | |
| don't know what the decision will be, but there is a waiver | |
| authority under the law so we can continue to provide | |
| counternarcotics assistance. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. Something that hasn't been touched on yet | |
| in response to the certification decision in 1996 and in | |
| response to the polling, and I understand we have a blacklist | |
| of some little over 300 Colombians that are considered to be | |
| front companies. Has there been retaliation by the Colombian | |
| Government either in trade advantages or other activities vis- | |
| a-vis the United States Government or American businesses? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. I think to a degree there has been. But I | |
| think it is hard to disaggregate that from the standard high | |
| levels of corruption which exist. One example was a contract | |
| recently for their national civil registry which alluded to | |
| earlier where a German company, Siemens, appears to have found | |
| ways to gain unfair advantage on the contract, perhaps by | |
| bribing. Bribes are tax deductible under German law, amazingly. | |
| They were continually disqualified after they had won the | |
| contract, by coincidence. Then it came down to between a French | |
| and an American company, and my understanding was the American | |
| company was clearly best qualified. | |
| Ultimately they decided not to award the contract. We have | |
| seen other cases, and I have heard of other cases from American | |
| companies, but I think they would prefer I not mention them by | |
| name. | |
| Mr. LaTourette. I understand. | |
| I want to yield the rest of my time to Mr. Mica, but this | |
| is a published report that it talked about. Even though you | |
| declined to mention specifically other measures the U.S. | |
| Government may take, there is a published report today that | |
| talks about airline flights in Colombia and other things that | |
| may or may not occur in the course of the certification | |
| process. If you put--I would appreciate the opportunity to send | |
| a written inquiry about that. My particular question is the | |
| impact that it would have on American concerns doing business | |
| in Colombia. I will be glad to supply this in writing to you, | |
| Mr. Ambassador. | |
| With that, I would like to yield the balance of my time to | |
| Mr. Mica. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Without objection. | |
| Mr. Mica. Bob, back to this reason that we can't seem to | |
| get this equipment. We are trying to get things down to these | |
| countries that have been cooperating also, and here is a letter | |
| from the Department of State, September 14th. It says Peru has | |
| been cooperating, and talks about the great cooperation, and | |
| they want to get river patrol boats to the Peruvian security | |
| forces to intercept the cocaine base, asked for the money. You | |
| said somebody in DOD is holding up some of this. This is your | |
| money; this isn't FMF. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. As I said, I don't have the letter in front of | |
| me, so it is hard for me to answer. Is this the 506(a)(2) | |
| program? | |
| Mr. Mica. Yes. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. That is from military inventories and | |
| drawdowns. It is off the shelf. Under the law, it is off the | |
| shelf---- | |
| Mr. Mica. That is not what it says here, because it talks | |
| about some specifics that will be acquired to--in any event, | |
| Bob, is there somebody at DOD that is not cooperating that we | |
| can talk to? We want to get this equipment to them. I don't | |
| care if it's off the shelf. It is not in the Yungay, where it | |
| needs to be, or in the Riverine program. So what is the | |
| problem? You wrote us asking for this in September, or the | |
| State did, and it is still not there. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. This is done by the Defense Supply Agency. I | |
| will be happy to get you specific answers on this within the | |
| next few days. | |
| [The information referred to follows:] | |
| The ``river patrol boats'' will be provided to Peru for | |
| counternarcotics (CN) assistance as part of the FAA section | |
| 506(a)(2) drawdown directed by the President on September 31, | |
| 1996. This drawdown included CN assistance for a number of | |
| countries, including Peru. Prior to delivery of any of the | |
| assistance, we needed to assure ourselves that appropriate end- | |
| use, security and retransfer assurances were in place from all | |
| recipient countries, and that end-use monitoring systems would | |
| be effective. Once that process was completed, DSAA was | |
| authorized to begin to execute the drawdown. On February 21, | |
| DSAA ordered the Special Operations Command to draw down three | |
| Boston Whalers, which are scheduled to be delivered to Peru in | |
| March, 1997. | |
| Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Let me just add I am as frustrated as you on | |
| this because, when the bureaucracy doesn't move, I know who | |
| eventually gets blamed. But I also want to see the equipment | |
| out there, more importantly. I want to see them having this | |
| stuff that they could use, whether it is airplanes or boats or | |
| anything else; and it is a source of eternal frustration for me | |
| when they don't move faster. | |
| Mr. Mica. Thank you. I will yield my few remaining seconds | |
| to Mr. Souder. | |
| Mr. Souder. In a fairness question, you have rejected the | |
| ability of the President of Colombia to travel on a visa. We | |
| have a report here that suggests that one of the Governors of | |
| Mexico has been also in--implied that he is involved with a lot | |
| of drug money and drug trafficking. Would you be willing to | |
| look at revoking his visa as well? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We look at numerous examples with frequency. | |
| Our bureau does try to examine this with seriousness, so we are | |
| prepared to look at all information. | |
| Mr. Souder. We will followup. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Just two very quick questions before our time | |
| is done. First of all, there has been a lot of talk. You talked | |
| about the efforts of the--some aspects of Colombian Government, | |
| especially people like Mr. Valdivieso or and General Serrano | |
| and others. Will you brief the new Secretary of State on the | |
| progress that Colombia has made, certain aspects before the | |
| decision on certification or decertification is made? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Yes, sir. | |
| Mr. Hastert. That will happen? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. Yes, sir. | |
| Mr. Hastert. In the process, whether Colombia is certified, | |
| decertified, whether there are waivers, whether there are | |
| certain areas of aid moved forward, as you talked about, what | |
| exactly will be the issue or the determinant factors of whether | |
| there is certification or decertification that will take place | |
| in this coming year? | |
| Mr. Gelbard. We have been outlining, as we have each of the | |
| last several years, specific measures for the Government of | |
| Colombia which we hope they will undertake during the course of | |
| this calendar year to improve performance. We have--I can, for | |
| example, give you a list of things we asked them to do for | |
| 1996. We asked them to attack corruption, pass strong laws and | |
| regulate the finance industry, insure key traffickers don't run | |
| their empires from jail, expose front companies, convict major | |
| traffickers with serious sentences, reconsider the current | |
| policy of non-extradition of nationals, improve eradication and | |
| look at granular herbicides, enhance interdiction including | |
| rapid response by the military, better cooperation and expand | |
| courts and customs, and so on. | |
| We are very transparent about this, and we have periodic | |
| discussions. Ambassador Frechette meets regularly, thanks to | |
| the excellent cooperation we have had with the foreign minister | |
| and others, and they go over this every couple of months. I | |
| have had periodic conversations here with their charge before | |
| the Ambassador came. We have gone over it in very clear | |
| specific terms. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I thank you for your testimony today. It has | |
| been very candid, and we wish you great success in your work. | |
| As we welcome two very distinguished generals, I also want | |
| to recognize two others in the audience, two senators are with | |
| us today. The two senators have a response to the law for the | |
| asset forfeiture and the current proposed amendment to the | |
| Constitution on extradition. We would like to welcome Senator | |
| Herman Vargas and Senator Claudia Blum. Thank you and thank you | |
| for being with us today. | |
| At this time, it is a great pleasure and honor to introduce | |
| General Serrano. The general has combated internal corruption | |
| in the police force, captured six of the seven leaders of the | |
| Cali Cartel. The people of Colombia and the people of the | |
| United States are indebted to him for his great service on the | |
| war on drugs. | |
| With him today is General Bedoya, the decorated, certainly | |
| accomplished commander in his field. He leads the national | |
| military. He has brought his forces into the fray to support | |
| the war on drugs and certainly is a very fine complement and | |
| leader in this area and works arm and arm with General Serrano. | |
| We thank both of you gentlemen for being here today, and we | |
| look forward to your testimony. Because you are a national of | |
| another country, we will not ask you to swear your testimony. | |
| We would ask you to begin your testimony, General Serrano. We | |
| also welcome the translator, Mr. Acevedo. | |
| STATEMENTS OF MAJOR GENERAL JOSE ROSSO SERRANO, DIRECTOR, | |
| COLOMBIAN NATIONAL POLICE; AND GENERAL HAROLD BEDOYA PIZARRO, | |
| COMMANDER, COLOMBIAN ARMED FORCES | |
| Mr. Serrano. Thank you, Chairman Hastert and friends of | |
| Colombia. It is an honor for me to be here with you today. | |
| Together with other Colombians, amongst them Mr. Herman Vargas | |
| and Senator Claudia Blum, those senators that were in charge of | |
| proposing the bill for the asset forfeiture. Thank you, Mr. | |
| Hastert and Mr. Mica, for having gone to Colombia to understand | |
| the problems firsthand. | |
| From my position as head of the Colombian police, we have | |
| been charged with carrying out the fight against the | |
| international narcotics organizations. In less than 6 months we | |
| incarcerated the heads of the most important criminal | |
| organization in the world. For those purposes, we had the aid | |
| and support of the United States, especially with the help of | |
| members of the CIA and the DEA that work with us shoulder to | |
| shoulder. We also received help from the Department of State | |
| through the NAS. | |
| I have got to tell you, however, that the narcotics trade | |
| in Colombia is extremely complex. Because having two coasts | |
| that can be used to bring in precursor chemicals, a coast that | |
| we, of course, do not build or otherwise--these coasts also | |
| allow and facilitate the exit of the drugs from Colombia. | |
| Additionally, we are able to transfer and transport money, | |
| and it is also very easy for the narcotics traffickers to | |
| travel by plane. All this means that we have an international | |
| problem. | |
| We are all, in part, responsible. The way I believe that we | |
| need to solve this problem, after having fought the fight for | |
| more than 10 years, is that we all recognize our own errors and | |
| we don't start putting the blame on our neighbor. Sometimes I | |
| hear some countries saying that I'm only a transit country. But | |
| also in those countries there are people that allow those | |
| planes to arrive and then they turn around and send the drugs | |
| on to the countries in which it is consumed. | |
| I am well aware of many of the details of what is a war. We | |
| have always received tremendous help from the United States. If | |
| we had not received that help, the problem today would be even | |
| greater. There are some people here that do understand this | |
| very well. For example, General McCaffrey, Mr. Constantine, and | |
| others as well as many Members and Representatives and Senators | |
| of this important Congress that understand well the dimensions | |
| of this problem. | |
| The work that we do, we do because we believe in it, | |
| because we are aware of the fact that narcotics trafficking is | |
| evil. It has injured the world community, and it is the worst | |
| plague this century has known. We do not want to see our | |
| children or our grandchildren as drug consumers, nor do we want | |
| their lives to be taken because they have fallen to drug | |
| trafficking. | |
| In Colombia, along with the Colombian Armed Forces, a | |
| tremendous effort is being undertaken, of course, under the | |
| direction and leadership of President Samper, because he is the | |
| commander and chief of the Colombian Armed Forces. Little could | |
| be done, in reality, if he did not personally support these | |
| efforts. | |
| This year a special tax has been imposed--a war tax, $74 | |
| million will be--$74 million will be received through this | |
| mechanism, and they will be invested in communications | |
| equipment and other vehicles and in strengthening our | |
| intelligence apparatus. Those resources, added to the resources | |
| that we get from the United States, will allow that in the year | |
| that is before us the final results will be even better. | |
| You all well know that Colombia has three principle | |
| problems in relation to narcotics trafficking. Unfortunately, | |
| we have marijuana that we find through eradication. When we | |
| approached the end of that problem, cocaine appeared. Now as we | |
| approach the end of the cocaine problem, the opium poppy | |
| appears. It is the only country in the entire world where all | |
| three of these problems have appeared. For these reasons, our | |
| job is difficult and complex, but in this fight we have | |
| obtained some satisfactory results. | |
| In Colombia, the narcotics organizations are true | |
| multinational entities. They have administrative staff, they | |
| have managers, they have legal representatives, they have heads | |
| of security. This is the type of organization that we have had | |
| to fight, and that is what we have to do. | |
| I would ask that greater efforts be done on the part of the | |
| United States to impede the flow of precursor chemicals. | |
| Without acetone, caustic acid, or sulfuric acid there would be | |
| no drug production. As far as that is concerned, no efforts | |
| have been had in that area. | |
| The amount of money that is moved around and the precursor | |
| chemical trade is perhaps as big as the amount of money | |
| produced by the drug trade itself. For these reasons, beyond | |
| asset forfeiture and money laundering, an effort must be made | |
| on the part of the international banking community so that not | |
| as many dollars find their way into this trade. | |
| One particular narcotics trafficker had $150 million in | |
| barrels and no bank noticed its movement. Last year tremendous | |
| efforts were made to eradicate. Mr. Hastert, you personally | |
| know how difficult it is to actually fumigate in the Colombian | |
| jungle. Despite all of these difficulties, we have fumigated | |
| over 40- and 17,000 acres of amapola, or opium poppy, and we | |
| have destroyed more than 800 laboratories. Last week we | |
| destroyed a laboratory that had--that was more than 4 | |
| kilometers wide. Last night I was informed of the destruction | |
| of another large laboratory in the south of Colombia. | |
| This means that our work is ongoing and permanent and that | |
| with good help and good understanding this war will be won. The | |
| capture of different criminals was spectacular last year and | |
| the year before. After drawing up extensive plans with the CIA | |
| and the DEA, actions were had against the Cali Cartel, and the | |
| cartel was brought to its knees. One particular narcotics | |
| trafficker, Santacruz Londono, was able to initially avoid | |
| actions of the police; but after 40 days of running from us, he | |
| died fighting the police. Let that be a lesson to all the other | |
| narcotics traffickers because we will fight them, and we are | |
| controlling them. | |
| But in this war, economic aid is very important. Our | |
| countries are poor countries, and we do not have all the means | |
| and resources to throw at this fight. While it is true that we | |
| do receive aid, it would be important that this aid be | |
| increased so that we can increase the fumigation efforts and | |
| the eradication efforts. The only country in the world that | |
| fumigates is Colombia. In these fumigation efforts we have lost | |
| five helicopters and two airplanes that have been shot down by | |
| the illicit narcotics traffickers. | |
| I would like to clarify something about the presence of | |
| guerilla groups in the areas in which there are illicit crops. | |
| It is undeniable that the Colombian guerilla groups have lost | |
| any remnant of political ideology and that they have now become | |
| allies of narcotics traffickers. This clarification is very | |
| important when considerations are being dealt with on helping | |
| the Armed Forces help us in the fight. If they had helicopters | |
| or different resources, they could protect us so we are not | |
| killed while we carry out our activities. | |
| I would also like to briefly mention the impact that the | |
| decertification has had. For me it has been very difficult to | |
| explain to my men that fight--the daily fight and convince them | |
| and tell them that, while they support our efforts, while they | |
| admire our efforts and our sacrifices, they still have | |
| decertified us. I am not a politician nor do I understand | |
| political considerations, but what I do know is that in my | |
| country we feel stigmatized because of this decertification. My | |
| 11,000 police officers would be more motivated to continue in | |
| this fight because, before being police officers, we are | |
| Colombians. | |
| On the other hand, the decertification has affected us | |
| severely in the FMS cases that have to do with the procurement | |
| of spare parts for helicopters, munitions and explosives, and | |
| training. I believe that those resources have been sorely | |
| missed, and I have always believed that the less aid, the more | |
| narcotics trafficking. | |
| We have always used all the aid and resources that have | |
| been granted us as transparently as possible. The results are | |
| well known to you, Mr. Hastert, and, above all, you know that | |
| we are committed to this fight. We will not abate. We will win | |
| this war. We are going to win this fight in spite of the pain | |
| that visiting the different funeral services of my men that I | |
| have to go to. One given day I had to go to four funerals, and | |
| at the end of the day I could no longer cry. I no longer had | |
| words to explain to the widows of my men why it is that the | |
| narcotics traffickers have killed their husbands. | |
| My men are killed in the jungles of Colombia, and they are | |
| willing to sacrifice their lives because they recognize that | |
| narcotics trafficking is a plague because it brings tremendous | |
| stigmatism to Colombia. But rest assured, Mr. Hastert, that the | |
| great majority of Colombians are honest and are committed to | |
| fighting this fight. Not even death has kept us from this | |
| fight. Let me tell you that since 1980, more than 3,000 of my | |
| men have died. Pablo Escobar in Medellin in 1 year alone had | |
| 500 killed. He used to pay $2,000 per policeman. In spite of | |
| this situation, we have never, never fallen back. On the | |
| contrary, we remain vigorous, we remain motivated in the fight. | |
| You have heard us in the past, and we are willing to continue | |
| in the future. | |
| I would like to end giving you a message not as a policeman | |
| but as a Colombian citizen. My country needs to be certified. | |
| My men are more motivated when they work as certified. Thank | |
| you very much. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you, General. | |
| [The prepared statement of Jose Rosso Serrano follows:] | |
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| Mr. Hastert. I might ask that we are kind of bumping up | |
| into some time constraints, so if General Bedoya could | |
| summarize his statement. | |
| General Bedoya. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, | |
| thank you for having invited me to this meeting. I would like | |
| to, as the oldest soldier in Colombia and commander of the | |
| Colombian Armed Forces, express to you the friendship that the | |
| Colombian Armed Forces have with the United States. That is not | |
| new, but that was born when many years ago together we fought | |
| together to defend liberty, freedom, democracy in Korea. | |
| I want to let you know that the Colombian Armed Forces | |
| entered into the narcotics fight completely last year. The | |
| government considered at that time that it was an aggression, | |
| an attack against the people of Colombia and against the | |
| country as a whole. It was also decided that the police did not | |
| have the capacity nor the means to fight groups such as the | |
| ones that they were fighting. | |
| Additionally, in the jungles of Colombia, which comprises | |
| about a third of all of Colombia, it was discovered that the | |
| large cocaine or drug processing laboratories were protected | |
| and guarded by groups that have now become terrorist narcotics | |
| traffickers themselves. | |
| Last year, last August 30th in the Caqueta region, we lost | |
| 26 soldiers in the battles with the narcotics traffickers. | |
| Right now we have more than 60 soldiers that are currently | |
| kidnapped and are in the hands of these narcotics traffickers. | |
| This is without mentioning the other efforts and other | |
| activities that we have done in other regions such as the | |
| Guaviare and Putumayo. | |
| But this human sacrifice has not been in vain. Beyond this | |
| we have made significant improvements in the destruction of | |
| laboratories and in the capture of different allies. With the | |
| national police, we have been able to work together to fight | |
| and to defeat the different elements of the narcotics trade. We | |
| as Colombians understand that we need to destroy the | |
| laboratories and the plantations of illicit crops wherever they | |
| may be found in Colombia. But we also understand that the | |
| problem of illicit narcotics is a regional problem. | |
| Many other countries such as Peru and Bolivia also fight | |
| this plague. The United States itself deals with the problem of | |
| drug consumption. Still other countries produce the chemical | |
| precursors that are necessary to produce illicit drugs. An | |
| entire infrastructure has been put into place to continue this | |
| illicit trade. | |
| We the people of Colombia have suffered at hands--we have | |
| suffered at the hands of illicit narcotic traffickers. However, | |
| our tradition is of freedom, of working toward ending this. | |
| That is why it is so important that this fight, this war | |
| against illicit narcotics, that is why it is so important that | |
| we find allies, that we find co-workers, that we find the | |
| understanding necessary to eliminate the problem. | |
| The Colombian Armed Forces have suffered from the | |
| decertification decision. Our young officers have been unable | |
| to return to the training courses here in the United States. | |
| The different types of sales amongst them, the FMS cases are | |
| currently suspended or otherwise have been suspended. It is | |
| difficult to understand how it is that in this fight, in which | |
| all of us must work toward the solution, those of us who are | |
| fighting the fight in the jungles and in the mountains are the | |
| ones that actually suffer the effects of the decertification. | |
| In some areas we don't even have the munitions necessary to | |
| fight the fight, much less helicopters. | |
| On the other hand, our common enemy, the narcotics | |
| traffickers, had at their disposition a fleet of airplanes and | |
| other equipment, and they have no restrictions on how they | |
| might purchase things or where they get their money. | |
| In a frontal fight, you have to clearly determine who your | |
| enemy is. We are now the enemy. The enemy is internal narcotics | |
| that is prevalent in the entire world. | |
| The Colombian people can be characterized as noble, a | |
| working people, and they also have suffered. We consider the | |
| United States as our ally in this fight and hope that together | |
| we will continue to fight and win the battle. | |
| Last year alone in the activities that were carried out in | |
| the south of our country, the Colombian Armed Forces spent over | |
| $24 million of their budget. We destroyed laboratories, we | |
| destroyed laboratories and other elements that would have been | |
| able to produce 45 billion cocaine doses, with a possible | |
| street value of $284 billion. | |
| Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be before | |
| you today, and with General Serrano, we are ready to answer any | |
| of your questions. | |
| [The prepared statement of General Bedoya follows:] | |
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| Mr. Hastert. I thank both of the distinguished gentlemen | |
| for being with us here today, and certainly it is an | |
| unbelievable story to tell. Unfortunately, your colleague | |
| General Valdivieso could not be with us today, however, we have | |
| received his statement and that will be included also in the | |
| record. | |
| [The prepared statement of General Valdivieso follows:] | |
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| Mr. Hastert. Again, gentlemen, we thank you very, very much | |
| for your presentations. | |
| General Serrano, one of the things that happened in this | |
| city just last week was the death and burial of a very | |
| courageous policeman. You talked about the deaths of many of | |
| your valiant and courageous men. How many men have you lost in | |
| the last year? | |
| General Serrano. In 1996, we lost 36 policemen and 61 were | |
| injured. | |
| Mr. Hastert. General Bedoya, how many men did you lose? | |
| General Bedoya. Last year the Colombian Armed Forces lost | |
| 330 soldiers in action. | |
| Mr. Hastert. What about the year before? | |
| General Bedoya. The year before the figures are basically | |
| the same, but added to this, you have to consider the 60 | |
| soldiers that are currently kidnapped in the south of Colombia | |
| and 10 who are kidnapped in the Uraba region. | |
| Mr. Hastert. How about General Serrano? | |
| General Serrano. The year before, 27 or 28 policemen were | |
| killed, and these numbers are getting better because the | |
| Colombian police are learning to defend themselves. But the | |
| attacks, the ferocity of the attacks has increased. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you, I certainly award anybody's comment | |
| at all of you. | |
| General Serrano, President Clinton's decision to decertify | |
| Colombia on March 1, 1996, it certainly had detrimental effects | |
| on the economy and your efforts to fight the war on drugs. How | |
| did it affect your ability to do your job? | |
| General Serrano. We were unable to receive $8 million in | |
| spare parts and munitions, which is what we most use and need | |
| to fight this fight. We also lost training. Many policemen had | |
| been coming to the United States to prepare themselves for the | |
| war. However, there have been efforts on the part of the State | |
| Department to send us 12 helicopters. It is hoped that those | |
| helicopters will eventually arrive in Colombia sometime this | |
| semester. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The process, the equipment that you needed | |
| last year, and of course the DC-3 aircraft that you use for | |
| support and for some of the drug eradication, how do you use | |
| those DC-3 aircraft and how many are in your inventory and what | |
| are their approximate ages? | |
| General Serrano. We have two DC-3s. These DC-3s are World | |
| War II vintage, but they have been souped up. They have been | |
| given new turbines, and it is a reliable airplane, but without | |
| the constant flow of spare parts, they only last 1 or 2 months | |
| before they need repair. | |
| Mr. Hastert. How do you use them? | |
| General Serrano. These are used basically to transport | |
| personnel to the jungle regions, because they can land on short | |
| airstrips. They are also used to transport chemicals that are | |
| needed to carry out the fumigation. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Have the spare parts that are needed to keep | |
| these airplanes flying been available? | |
| General Serrano. Yes. While the spare parts must be asked | |
| for, eventually they are forthcoming. | |
| Mr. Hastert. In 1995, you lost a DC-3 in a rather serious | |
| accident in August. How did that affect your counternarcotic | |
| activities? | |
| General Serrano. That airplane was out of service for more | |
| than a year. It had to be sent to the United States to be | |
| repaired and was sorely missed while it was not in service. | |
| However, it has begun to help again. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Mr. Mica. | |
| Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Welcome, General. We are pleased to see you here and | |
| appreciate your tremendous effort. | |
| I have a question relating to mini-guns. It is my | |
| understanding that you began a purchase from the United States | |
| in 1991 of these mini-guns. Could you tell us what the status | |
| of that program is and what the need of those weapons is for? | |
| General Serrano. The story of the mini-guns is a long one. | |
| Mr. Mica. Well, I have 5 minutes. | |
| General Serrano. When I was Director, when the General was | |
| Director of the Antinarcotics Police, the mini-guns arrived, | |
| but they did not arrive--all of the mini-guns did not arrive. | |
| The complete equipment that they needed did not arrive. | |
| Efforts were made to purchase the remaining elements that | |
| were needed for the mini-guns with our own moneys; but it was | |
| impossible. I even proposed that from our budget money be set | |
| aside, and about this I spoke with Mr. Hastert. We are still | |
| waiting for the authorizations to use them because now | |
| something has been said about the police being unable to use | |
| these weapons because they might possibly violate human rights. | |
| But they are extremely important in the fumigation activities | |
| and the fumigation runs in which we have lost five helicopters | |
| and two airplanes. | |
| Mr. Mica. How would the mini-guns be used again? Can you | |
| explain that? | |
| General Serrano. The mini-guns would be used in the | |
| helicopters, in the 206 helicopters to provide effective | |
| response when the other helicopters are attacked, in an attempt | |
| to dissuade these attacks from occurring. | |
| Mr. Mica. General Bedoya, can you tell me your perspective | |
| of the problem with these mini-guns, and maybe also the | |
| timeframe? Was some of this equipment--well, this equipment | |
| order goes back to 1991, and I guess that some of these | |
| problems predate the decertification; is that correct? Can you | |
| give us a little explanation of what took place and the timing? | |
| General Bedoya. These special machine guns that are being | |
| referred to here are support weapons that are used to provide | |
| support to the units that actually fight. Generally, these | |
| weapons--these are weapons that were used to support troops as | |
| they exit from the helicopters. These are used to suppress the | |
| attacks while the soldiers themselves are leaving the | |
| helicopters. | |
| Mr. Mica. The problem relating to the acquisition of | |
| weapons, the parts, predates certification, decertification? | |
| General Bedoya. Yes, we have had different sorts of | |
| problems in the different sorts of sales that we have been | |
| trying to get from the United States, among them the FMS cases, | |
| for about 4 years. Before decertification came around, the | |
| problem was some sort of human rights issues that were being | |
| raised. This has made it impossible for us to receive around | |
| $35 million of elements that we would either have purchased or | |
| elements that would have been given to us. | |
| Mr. Mica. You talked about the guerillas and ELN. Aren't | |
| they violating human rights, don't they have, at least, last | |
| count, I thought we had five American hostages? | |
| General Bedoya. These terrorist groups that you refer to | |
| last year kidnapped more than 1,000 Colombian citizens and they | |
| killed another 1,000. These groups carry out illegal | |
| activities, and of course they do not respect any international | |
| convention or they do not respect any human rights. | |
| In the different areas and regions where the narcotics | |
| production is carried out, there are many people that are | |
| employed in this production, and when the armed forces arrive | |
| in the area, these people complain to the armed forces of the | |
| human rights violations that are perpetrated by these narcotics | |
| trafficking and guerilla groups. | |
| Mr. Mica. The mini-guns that we talked about, would they be | |
| used in this fight against the narco-terrorist guerillas? | |
| General Bedoya. Yes, these guns would be used to fight the | |
| narcotics-terrorist insurgence groups. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Mr. Barr. | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I thank both of the generals, not only for being here | |
| today, but also for their tremendous work on behalf of all | |
| ciitzens of both our countries who believe in the rule of law | |
| and in personal freedom and in continuing the fight against the | |
| plague of drugs. | |
| In your view, and I say this to both generals, is the fight | |
| against narcotics simply a matter of treating it as a disease, | |
| or is it, in fact, a war against forces of evil who seek to | |
| destroy the very foundations of our societies? | |
| General Serrano. To me, it is an all-out war, a war of | |
| money that comes from illicit sources and destined to the | |
| injury of our youth. It is a war in which there are no ethical | |
| values. | |
| The only thing that really matters is the opulence, without | |
| heeding the consequences that the people that consume these | |
| drugs have to face. Narcotics trafficking has indeed changed | |
| the course that the world has taken. Today many people want to | |
| get rich quickly through narcotics trafficking instead of | |
| working. The worse thing is that there are many people that | |
| believe that narcotics trafficking is a business and not a | |
| crime. For this reason, it is a war that has to be fought | |
| because of the effects that it has, the malicious effects that | |
| it has in world society. | |
| General Bedoya. Narcotics trafficking began sometime in the | |
| 1980's. We are not traditionally and never have been narcotics | |
| traffickers. It is drug activities that has made the people of | |
| Colombia poorer, and has distorted, in many cases, local | |
| economies and has contributed to the spreading of many | |
| diseases. | |
| In this war that has been brought, Colombians have had to | |
| fight the hardest fight, where we have had to fight an | |
| international Mafia that uses our country as a production | |
| center, but that has its foundations in many other places in | |
| the world as well. To fight this war, just as the term implies, | |
| we need special laws to fight this war. To destroy not only the | |
| laboratories and the illicit crops themselves, but also that | |
| would allow us to capture those that benefit from this terrible | |
| trade, be they in Colombia or abroad. | |
| For this reason, it is so important that the United States, | |
| being the country that it is that is the leader in the fight | |
| against narcotics, that they understand that the people of | |
| Colombia are victims of the activities of an internal Mafia | |
| that benefits from narcotics trafficking. | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you. | |
| I think both Generals made statements that recognized, or | |
| indicating that they recognize that there is a very close | |
| connection between the narcotics organizations and the | |
| guerillas. Has that information been made known to the U.S. | |
| Government? | |
| General Serrano. Yes, because the Government of the United | |
| States has worked with us. In my experience, wherever there is | |
| cocaine or coca crops or opium poppy, or laboratories, these | |
| guerilla groups provide protection. We have definitive proof. | |
| The guerilla has established percentages that they charge per | |
| kilo of cocaine that is produced. | |
| They have also established fees for the entry of chemical | |
| precursors and they have established fees for the use of | |
| clandestine airstrips and also for the transportation of the | |
| different elements. All told, we estimate that their share is | |
| about 25 percent of the value of the cocaine that is produced | |
| and transported in the areas in which they operate. | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Chairman, will there be a chance to ask just a couple | |
| of additional questions? | |
| Thank you. | |
| How many guerillas do you estimate are active in Colombia | |
| right now? We have seen published reports here of 14,000. | |
| General Bedoya. In order to complement the answer that was | |
| given to your previous question, I want to let you know that | |
| here I have documents that have been made known both to the | |
| Colombian media and the international media, and I personally | |
| want to give these documents to you so that you can see | |
| firsthand how it is that the relationship, the old relationship | |
| between the guerillas and the narcotics traffickers actually | |
| is. Even though they are dressed in the old ideologies of | |
| political fight and political insurgency, and unfortunately | |
| some other countries in the region respond to that disguise, | |
| they try to justify many times their crimes. | |
| In response to your current question, currently there are | |
| approximately 10,000 narcotics terrorists that used to be | |
| called guerillas. | |
| Mr. Barr. Is military aid from the United States to | |
| Colombia being used to defeat the narco-guerillas? | |
| General Bedoya. The terms under which the military | |
| assistance from the United States is supplied to Colombia does | |
| not allow its use in the fight against guerillas. That is | |
| because there has not been established in the eyes of the | |
| public a relationship, a direct relationship between guerilla | |
| groups and narcotics traffickers. | |
| Mr. Barr. But it is our government leaders that make these | |
| decisions, and in your view, have our leaders in this country | |
| been given sufficient information to clearly understand that | |
| these are one and the same enemy that we are fighting? | |
| General Bedoya. Locally, it is understood and a well-known | |
| fact that this relationship exists. Regionally, it is well- | |
| understood and recognized that this relationship exists. Many | |
| times, much information has been given to the United States | |
| Embassy in Colombia, and some of that information showing this | |
| relationship, setting out how it operates, the General has here | |
| with him, and wishes to give it to the subcommittee so that | |
| relationship can be more clearly understood. | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Chairman, might I ask unanimous consent those documents | |
| be made part of the record. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Without objection, so ordered. | |
| [Note.--The information referred to can be found in | |
| subcommittee files.] | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you. | |
| Would it be or is it a mistake to block the use of funds | |
| from the United States to be used against narco-guerillas | |
| simply because some people may say there is no connection | |
| between the guerillas and the narcotics traffickers? | |
| General Bedoya. It is a mistake, because in Colombia the | |
| groups that used to call themselves guerillas are now narcotics | |
| traffickers. We have films that have been produced by these | |
| same groups, in which they show themselves producing, | |
| processing, and trafficking in these illicit substances. That | |
| is why these groups get so much funding and that is why these | |
| groups have airplanes and are able to use tremendous resources | |
| to fight us. | |
| Mr. Barr. Just one very quick final question, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I appreciate the extra time. | |
| Speaking of weapons, can you tell us what sort of weapons | |
| the narco-guerillas have available and are using to kill your | |
| men and to stop your efforts to go after them? | |
| General Bedoya. These groups principally use the AK-47 | |
| that, as you know, has European origin, Eastern European | |
| origin. They even have rockets and different sorts of munitions | |
| that come from the same source. There are other types of | |
| munitions that come from other sources, but they are secondary | |
| sources. | |
| Mr. Barr. So would it be fair to say that these groups are | |
| very well armed, and that your inability to continue to get | |
| ammunition and defensive weapons systems, such as the mini-gun, | |
| is putting your men at a real disadvantage? | |
| General Bedoya. These narcotics traffickers get their | |
| weapons from the international arms dealers and many times it | |
| is a drugs-for-weapons exchange. | |
| Mr. Barr. Insofar as they purchase their weapons with | |
| money, is that money that is coming directly from drug | |
| consumers? | |
| General Bedoya. Yes. Basically the moneys that they use to | |
| purchase these weapons comes from the areas of cultivation, the | |
| areas of production, and there is some evidence that they even | |
| have some exporting capacities. | |
| Mr. Barr. Do we see any evidence that other terrorist | |
| groups outside of Colombia are involved? | |
| General Bedoya. The specific evidence we have is | |
| specifically related to the FARC, that is definitive. Regarding | |
| other groups, it is very possible that they also participate. | |
| We don't have specific evidence as of yet, but we do know that | |
| they do gain their funds and they do supply the funds that they | |
| acquire through kidnapping. | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I thank the gentleman. | |
| I would like to finish with just a series of questions | |
| that, if you could just answer them very briefly, what we are | |
| trying to do is to establish something in the record that I | |
| think pulls together a lot of your testimony today. | |
| First of all, on the issue of the guerillas, ELN and FARC, | |
| originally, my understanding is these groups were freedom | |
| fighters in their own minds, leftist guerillas that were | |
| ideologically trying to overthrow the government because they | |
| believed that their philosophy was superior. Is that still the | |
| truth today or are they still an ideological group, or are they | |
| driven by narco-funds, in your opinion? | |
| General Bedoya. At the end of the cold war they no longer | |
| could get their funds from other sources, including the Soviet | |
| Union. Now they get their resources from drug traffickers. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The other part of that question is, however | |
| they get their money, are they still driven by an ideology, in | |
| your opinion? | |
| General Bedoya. They no longer are driven by ideology. They | |
| have converted themselves into common criminals and now move | |
| along those lines. | |
| Mr. Hastert. To follow up, you say in your testimony today | |
| that they take approximately 25 percent of the proceeds from | |
| the drugs grown, manufactured, transported in their areas of | |
| operation; is that true? | |
| General Serrano. Absolutely true. The truth is, the sad | |
| truth is that in that area, the tax collector is the FARC. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Is it also true, from other testimony that we | |
| have had prior to today, that these organizations have | |
| committed transgressions against humanity, they, in a sense, | |
| have no regard for people's civil rights, and the operation of | |
| protecting drugs and the growing of drugs, the manufacture of | |
| drugs and the transportation of drugs is the No. 1 importance; | |
| human rights are not important to these people? | |
| General Serrano. They violate all sorts of rights, | |
| including human rights. In the cocaine processing laboratories, | |
| we find young children of 13 years old that have been pressed | |
| into labor. They also exploit women and children, and whoever | |
| attempts to communicate to the legitimate authorities the | |
| existence of any movement of cocaine or the existence of a | |
| processing laboratory is immediately assassinated. | |
| Each group of these different organizations has a band of | |
| assassins that they use to make sure that the law of silence is | |
| enforced and that the different debts are paid. But the worst | |
| violation they commit is the poisoning of Colombia's youth. | |
| Mr. Hastert. To follow up on that, could you give me--we | |
| know that the kidnappings are rampant, that civilian murder is | |
| rampant. Can you give us a number about in the last year how | |
| many murders have been committed and how many kidnappings have | |
| been perpetrated, to the best of your knowledge? | |
| General Serrano. Last year, in Colombia, there were 1,200 | |
| kidnappings. We were able to rescue 250. Sixty percent of the | |
| kidnappings that occur in Colombia are carried out by the | |
| narcotics guerillas. | |
| Mr. Hastert. How about murders? | |
| General Serrano. About 10 percent of these kidnappings end | |
| in the assassination of the people that have been kidnapped. On | |
| a general level, all told, per year, there are about 28,000 | |
| murders. | |
| Mr. Hastert. 28,000 murders. | |
| General Serrano. Yes, 28,000 murders per year. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Second point. According to other testimony | |
| that we have been able to accrue, is it not true, systematic | |
| recruitment of children and kidnapping the children by the FARC | |
| and ELN have taken place to press these children into service | |
| for narco-trafficking purposes? | |
| General Bedoya. In the different documents and in the video | |
| that we will be giving to you, you will find children of | |
| different ages that are kidnapped from 10 or 11 years old and | |
| are kept within the criminal organization all their lives. This | |
| is a reality that is ongoing in Colombia. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Is it true that an area known in your country | |
| as Miraflores, which is approximately the size of the State of | |
| Texas, that that area is virtually overrun with guerillas and | |
| narco-traffickers? | |
| General Serrano. While it was true in the past, ever since | |
| we started the operations last year, the control of this zone | |
| by the narcotics traffickers and the guerillas is being | |
| eliminated. That situation will come under control. It is | |
| specifically in that area where the efforts to fumigate are | |
| concentrated. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The capability to move into that area and to | |
| control it and the FARC, to fight the guerillas and narco- | |
| traffickers depends upon the use of DC-3s and Huey helicopters | |
| and other equipment you have got; is that true or not true? | |
| General Serrano. As far as the police are concerned, the | |
| ability to carry out these efforts relies on the airplanes that | |
| are used for the fumigation and on the DC-3s and on the | |
| helicopters. | |
| A brief example so that you might understand further: When | |
| an airplane leaves on a fumigation run, the actual illicit | |
| crops are to be found more than an hour's flight away and the | |
| plane must hastily perform the fumigation runs and return so | |
| that it will have enough fuel to make the entire run. It is a | |
| completely--it is an area that is completely overrun by jungle | |
| and that is very far away from the normal means of | |
| transportation. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Any holding up of that equipment because of | |
| decertification by our country to your country has a serious | |
| consequence of the transportation, the growing, manufacturing | |
| and transportation of drugs back into this country; is that | |
| true or not, in your opinion? | |
| General Serrano. The decertification affects not only | |
| Colombia's morale but it also affects the logistics of the | |
| operation. It also divides the countries into supposedly, good | |
| guys, and supposedly, bad guys. It has a direct effect on the | |
| ability to procure spare parts, in the procurement of weapons | |
| and explosives. | |
| Mr. Hastert. In effect, you are facing, basically, a civil | |
| war within your nation because of this constant turmoil driven | |
| by the profits from narcotics. How much longer, with limited-- | |
| maybe this is not a fair question. With limited ability to | |
| fight these problems, how much longer can you sustain this | |
| without added help? | |
| General Serrano. It is a war that is being fought between | |
| the narcotics traffickers and the Colombian Armed Forces. We do | |
| not know how long it will take to see what effects the | |
| reduction in the entry of precursor chemicals, on the reduction | |
| in consumption. All of these different elements, we do not know | |
| how long it will take for them to have an effect on the war. | |
| Without help, narcotics trafficking will rise, and without | |
| help, without aid, we will not be able to last for very long. | |
| The antinarcotics division of the police is--uses fundamentally | |
| the assistance that is received from the United States. Without | |
| that assistance, they could not function the way they do. | |
| General Bedoya. In Colombia, there is no civil war as such. | |
| What we are talking about are simple criminal activities of | |
| narcotics traffickers and terrorists that direct their | |
| activities against the Colombian institutions and the Colombian | |
| people themselves. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I think the use of civil war is probably a bad | |
| choice, but it is an imperative struggle between, in essence, | |
| good and bad. | |
| For the record, so that the record is clear, and whatever | |
| other record that we have been able to establish here today, | |
| has President Samper ever prevented either one of you from a | |
| wholesale attack on narco-traffickers? | |
| General Serrano. Never. In the 2 years that I have been the | |
| director, there has never been any interference in our | |
| activities. Quite to the contrary, before we were able to | |
| capture the members of the Cali Cartel, there was a lot of | |
| pressure that we get that done. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you. | |
| I want to put myself out on a limb, two things I would like | |
| to say. First of all, I try not to put myself on a limb very | |
| often, but General Serrano and General Bedoya, certainly your | |
| efforts, I think, have been heroic. That is in the reports we | |
| have had, I was able to confirm that visiting your company, I | |
| was able to talk to many, many people in your country, in the | |
| southern hemisphere, and in this country. | |
| General, your efforts are certainly our best hopes for the | |
| plague that is upon us, upon our children, upon this country, | |
| and upon the citizens that want to live a decent life. It | |
| affects our people almost as badly as it affects your people. | |
| We hope that we can win this war and that we can have peace | |
| from the plague of drugs. | |
| It takes a great effort on nations and politicians, elected | |
| officials, and people who serve your country such as yourself. | |
| I think, I don't know how you would ever put together a | |
| nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, but I think you are | |
| certainly deserving by your fine effort. I hope that we can say | |
| we support you and this country is behind you all the way. When | |
| you have to talk to the next widow in the next funeral you go | |
| to, I hope you express that we stand behind you as well. | |
| Thank you for your testimony. | |
| At this time, I would ask for our final panel to come | |
| forward. Certainly it has been an overwhelming experience today | |
| to have the first two panels before us, but you will not be | |
| disappointed in the third panel, I can tell you that. | |
| I would like to welcome at this time, Ambassador Morris | |
| Busby and Major Andy Messing. Ambassador Busby served as the | |
| United States Ambassador to Colombia. I have been able to visit | |
| Colombia, have the privilege and the benefit of his insights. | |
| Major Messing has retired from the Army after 21 years of | |
| distinguished service, including service in Special Forces and | |
| Special Operations for over 18 years. He has had firsthand | |
| experience in the jungles of Colombia. | |
| Gentlemen, if you will both stand and raise your right | |
| hands, our committee rules require me to swear you in. | |
| [Witness sworn.] | |
| Mr. Hastert. Let the record show that the witnesses | |
| responded in the affirmative. | |
| STATEMENTS OF MORRIS BUSBY, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO COLOMBIA; AND | |
| MAJOR F. ANDY MESSING, JR., UNITED STATES ARMY (RET.), | |
| EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL DEFENSE COUNCIL FOUNDATION | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you and please proceed with your | |
| statements. And, Ambassador Busby, if you will begin. | |
| Mr. Busby. Mr. Chairman, thank you. | |
| I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to | |
| appear here today. I have submitted for the record a short | |
| statement, and, since the hour is going on, perhaps I could | |
| just hit some of the high points. | |
| I was in Colombia at the time that President Samper was | |
| elected and participated in the early moments of disintegration | |
| of the relationship between the United States and Colombia. | |
| I am, as you will notice from the statement, somewhat | |
| critical of our handling of United States-Colombian relations | |
| in the ensuing couple of years. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Mr. Ambassador, would you pull your mike up a | |
| little bit closer, please. | |
| Mr. Busby. Sure. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Busby. In saying that I am somewhat critical of the way | |
| we have handled this, let me also say that certainly Mr. Samper | |
| gets no kudos from me. I would also like to take this | |
| opportunity to add my voice to those of the many brave and | |
| thoughtful Colombians who have called for him to relinquish the | |
| office of the presidency so the country can begin healing | |
| itself. | |
| Having said that, it is awfully easy to sit here and | |
| criticize what others have done. | |
| I firmly believe that the tools which you, the Congress, as | |
| well as the administration have given to the hands of our | |
| policymakers are inadequate. There was a lot of talk here this | |
| morning about the certification process. I greatly fear that, | |
| as it has evolved, the certification process tends to dominate | |
| useful policy. We see what was described here today, million- | |
| dollar ads in Forbes Magazine, lots of public relations. | |
| The kind of strictures and restrictions that are placed on | |
| our policymakers in that legislation I think need to be | |
| reviewed. | |
| I was, at one time, the deputy chief of mission in Mexico | |
| when Enrique Camarena, our DEA agent, was killed. I was | |
| Ambassador to Colombia for 3 years, and I will tell you that in | |
| circumstances such as those, strict adherence to the | |
| legislation as it is currently drafted is a hindrance rather | |
| than a help to rational policymaking. | |
| As my first statement, I would like to say that I would | |
| recommend that you and the administration review that | |
| legislation to make sure that, as you are currently applying | |
| it, and it has the intent that originally was designed. That's | |
| not to say that I am critical of congressional oversight and, | |
| in fact, as a former member of the executive branch, I will | |
| tell you that I very much recommend to you that you exercise | |
| congressional oversight. It is just that policy has tended to | |
| be made in a public forum where I think oftentimes subtle and | |
| delicate initiatives die a very sure death. | |
| Mr. Chairman, you asked me to specifically comment on the | |
| types and amounts of support that the U.S. Government should | |
| provide to the Government of Colombia. I greatly fear that, | |
| given the animosity that we currently feel toward the Colombian | |
| administration, that the situation in Colombia is not going to | |
| improve as long as Mr. Samper is in office. I would certainly | |
| hope that, until that occurs, we do not abandon the cause for | |
| which so many Colombians have given their lives. I have the | |
| greatest admiration for the gentlemen who just appeared before | |
| you, and I think they deserve our support. In fact, I do | |
| believe that it is essential that we as a government continue | |
| to support the Colombian counternarcotics forces. | |
| As much as we disapprove of Mr. Samper, we should recognize | |
| that it's unlikely that he is going to depart before the end of | |
| his term. There's no doubt about our animosity toward him. We | |
| have taken away his visa. What more public demonstration could | |
| there be? I think it's ludicrous to argue that giving aid to | |
| the counternarcotics forces is going to help him politically or | |
| that to withhold it is going to weaken him further. The die has | |
| been cast, and we should act in what is our own self-interest. | |
| I also could not help smiling as I heard some of the | |
| questions and answers relating to the so-called guerrillas in | |
| Colombia. I will tell you with certainty, Mr. Barr, and Mr. | |
| Chairman, that during the entire 3 years I was there, I sent | |
| reams of paper and facts and figures laying out for the | |
| government, our government, the relationships between the FARC | |
| and the ELN and the narcotics traffickers. I made countless | |
| recommendations that we should, in fact, recognize that | |
| relationship in policy and that we needed to work with the | |
| Colombian military and the Colombian police in combating the | |
| ELN and FARC. I had these mental images of the Washington | |
| establishment sort of levitating and shaking every time I would | |
| send these cables up. | |
| My sense has been that the problem is twofold. One, there | |
| is a broad perception that, if we were to work with the | |
| Colombian military and police on the FARC and the ELN problem, | |
| that somehow we are going to get ourselves immersed in a | |
| terrible human rights problem. The second problem is that I | |
| think that we, as a government, recognize the complexity of | |
| this situation and have decided not to get involved in it. | |
| But to my mind, I will tell you that I am firmly convinced | |
| that, so long as the FARC and the ELN continue in the numbers | |
| that they are and so long as they continue their relationship | |
| with the narcotics traffickers, we can pour money into Colombia | |
| on counternarcotics. But if we continue to say it can only be | |
| used for counternarcotics purposes, and we have these very, | |
| very tight, end-use provisions that we have to adhere to, you | |
| will not solve that narcotics problem in Colombia. | |
| That may not be true elsewhere, but in Colombia, the two | |
| are so inextricably linked that it is a true head-in-the-sand | |
| attitude to think you can look at counternarcotics and not look | |
| at the FARC and the ELN in that relationship. I think that is | |
| something which this committee could perhaps take a leadership | |
| role in. | |
| Finally, Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a point that | |
| has been alluded to but no one has addressed it directly, and | |
| that is I would like to recommend that you and your colleagues | |
| consider the funding levels for some of the infrastructure | |
| development programs. By that, I am referring to programs to | |
| aid in the administration of justice and, in particular, | |
| military and police training. I think that these are programs | |
| which have tended to fall by the wayside as a part of the | |
| certification process and there's nothing that we do in these | |
| countries which is as valuable and which has such long-term | |
| benefits as bringing Colombian police and military officers to | |
| the United States for training, having a true interaction | |
| between our military and police, who function in a truly | |
| democratic society, setting an example for them and providing | |
| them with the tools that they need. The same thing is true with | |
| the administration of justice program. There was a $34 million | |
| program when I was in Colombia. I was very strongly supportive | |
| of it. | |
| The institutions of government, and in particular the | |
| institutions of justice in these countries, are very weak and | |
| it is something that we need to work on if we truly are looking | |
| for a longtime solution. | |
| Mr. Chairman, again, thank you for the opportunity to | |
| testify before you, and I will respond to any of the questions | |
| that you or any other members may have. | |
| [The prepared statement of Mr. Busby follows:] | |
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| Mr. Hastert. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. | |
| Mr. Messing, Major. | |
| Mr. Messing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to | |
| testify. As the executive director of the National Defense | |
| Council Foundation in the study of antidrug operations, I have | |
| been to Colombia nine times since 1985, my last trip being in | |
| mid-January. Coincidentally, since you mentioned Miraflores, | |
| that's one of the end points that I went to. | |
| Colombia is 1 of 15 countries that I have been to in | |
| analyzing this dark side capitalist phenomenon which adversely | |
| affects America on socioeconomic, political and security | |
| levels. | |
| In my first trip to Colombia, the American Embassy staff | |
| arranged for me to visit the then ``special anti-narcotics | |
| unit,'' SANU. This group of heroic men were in the first | |
| element of drug fighters which were supported by American | |
| agencies. Ironically, at the time, they were not really | |
| supported by their own government, and most of the men I met | |
| with then have since been killed. | |
| However, times have changed. In my latest visits, it is | |
| clear to me that the key government elements are dedicated to | |
| reducing the drug threat to their society and ours. | |
| Accordingly, the catalytic event to their metanoia was the | |
| assassination of a Presidential candidate in 1989. That rocked | |
| their nation and awakened their nomenclature. They finally | |
| understood that this was no longer just a Gringo problem but | |
| their problem, too. It actually became a threat to their | |
| national security, their sovereignty and their way of life. | |
| They then understood that this tiny group of narcissistic and | |
| hedonistic criminals were impacting their ability to have a | |
| democracy and operate a positive light side capitalist | |
| structure. Because I bifurcate capitalism into dark side and | |
| light side capitalism, and it gives you an ability to talk in a | |
| different level when you do that. | |
| Every part of their society, i.e., their politics, their | |
| sociocultural and economic being, and their safety was in | |
| jeopardy. It was no longer--it no longer was a cash cow to | |
| jump-start their economy, as their economy had its own | |
| vitality, as has already been testified to. Plain and simply | |
| put, it became a contest of survival. | |
| Fortunately, there was a stalwart and honest core of | |
| Colombians that were prepared to lead the counterattack against | |
| this strong and greedy foe. Men like General Serrano, who just | |
| testified, and women like Foreign Minister Emma Mejia, | |
| understood the risks and acted in the best interests of all. | |
| Now, they need our help to press this counterattack on this | |
| transforming and growing scourge. | |
| In the late 1980's, the initial drug operators were urban | |
| based, dark side businessmen. By the mid-80's, their buying | |
| power allowed them to rent key guerilla elements to provide | |
| them security, buy off authorities, they were able to buy off | |
| authorities and buy into legitimate businesses. When they | |
| committed acts that went beyond the pale in the late 1980's and | |
| into the early 1990's, the key groups in government which were | |
| led by the then-vetted national police, went after this heinous | |
| leadership. | |
| As this management group was rolled up in the early 1990's, | |
| America's support, which had been increasing and as a matter of | |
| fact, under a lot of the leadership of Ambassador Busby sitting | |
| next to me, reduced markedly beginning in January 1993 with the | |
| election of a new administration. At the same time, the rural | |
| based guerrillas who had been the apprentices to these drug | |
| lords filled the void left by apprehended drug lords. | |
| As this all occurred, America effected a reduction in | |
| support and even applied decertification into the mix, because | |
| of the Samper equation. This--because of this, a scandal | |
| emerged focusing on Colombian President Samper having taken | |
| some $6 million into his election efforts from drug sources. | |
| Like our own President Clinton, who is caught up in a | |
| similar problem with the Indonesian Lippo Bank, and now we are | |
| finding out the Chinese Government infusing money into-- | |
| allegedly infusing money into the democratic mechanism, party | |
| mechanism, Samper has allowed antidrug forces to strike at the | |
| heart of drug apparatus in the interests of all concerned. | |
| Meanwhile, as a distortion of this picture, the State | |
| Department and select others have harped on a flawed strategy | |
| of bifurcating the now drug guerrillas from the drug trade in | |
| spite of overwhelming open source evidence to the contrary. | |
| This is an important point I might bring up, and even a U.S. | |
| Interagency Intelligence Report proving this fact, which the | |
| administration is not releasing until apparently after the | |
| March certification issue is settled. | |
| This affects our support and modus operandi in addition to | |
| interjecting the Presidential politics of both countries. Alas, | |
| and in a curious fashion, nowhere is to be seen the United | |
| States or international environmental or animal rights groups, | |
| as thousands of square miles of virgin, triple canopy jungle | |
| and millions of animals and fish have been eradicated while | |
| rivers have been polluted from drug chemicals because of the | |
| drug trade. Furthermore, human rights groups seem reluctant to | |
| comment on the rights of victims of the drug trade or against | |
| the drug guerrillas. Additionally, and in that regard, four | |
| Americans are being held hostage by these elements as we speak. | |
| Several--three of the hostages have been held for over 4 years. | |
| In conclusion, the confusing combination of politics, | |
| economic interests and other factors should not hide the | |
| salient fact that to not help the good guys in Colombia and | |
| elsewhere, those in the first trench of the drug war, will mean | |
| America will have to deal with the problem closer to home, | |
| initially on our border but then in our neighborhoods. Each | |
| time it gets closer to us, it is more expensive in terms of | |
| lives and money. To be even more plain, to not help our | |
| friends, maybe even hurt them, means an additional 40 to 50 | |
| tons of cocaine and 1 to 2 tons of heroin, worth over $500 | |
| million, on to our streets in the next 12-month period. | |
| This will cause an additional $50 billion to $60 billion | |
| worth of collateral damage to America. The question to this | |
| august body, are you prepared to act to prevent this? | |
| America can engage in antidrug actions while not | |
| sacrificing our principles and promoting better conduct on the | |
| part of our allies. We need to not act like a kid taking away | |
| the football so the game stops, causing volumes of good guys | |
| and innocents to die in Colombia and paving the way for | |
| increased turmoil in our own country. Therefore, this | |
| foundation recommends that the certification of Colombia go | |
| forward immediately, as it is in the best interest of both | |
| countries. This, with the understanding made with Colombia, | |
| that the rule of law and human rights are an important aspect | |
| in the conduct of this conflict. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I would also like to ask that a confidential report that we | |
| had made in the past few days, which we have embargoed until | |
| today, be admitted into the testimony. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Without objection. | |
| Mr. Messing. Thank you, sir. | |
| [The prepared statement of Mr. Messing, and the report | |
| referred to follow:] | |
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| Mr. Hastert. Thank you, gentlemen. | |
| Representative Barr. | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Ambassador Busby, were you here for the testimony earlier | |
| today? | |
| Mr. Busby. Yes, sir. | |
| Mr. Barr. OK. Then both by way of that and by way certainly | |
| of your own personal background in service to our country, you | |
| are well aware of the things that we have been talking about, | |
| including the references to the--let me get the citation here-- | |
| 22 U.S.C. Section 2364, the provisions under both (a)(1), | |
| regarding the President's ability to furnish assistance | |
| notwithstanding other findings and other laws, as well as | |
| subsection (a)(2), regarding sales. In your experience and with | |
| your knowledge of these sorts of authorities and how they have | |
| been used or not used in the past, is it appropriate to | |
| recommend consideration by the President of the authority under | |
| (a)(1), as well as under (a)(2), to try and get as much as we | |
| can to the enforcement authorities in Colombia to meet the | |
| challenge posed to them by the narcotics and grower groups? | |
| Mr. Busby. Well, I confess to you that I am not as familiar | |
| with the law as what you give me credit for. In the broadest | |
| sense, let me just say that I think that absolutely we need to | |
| find a mechanism, either within that law or we need to modify | |
| that law, which will permit us to express our extreme | |
| displeasure with the political leadership of a country such as | |
| Colombia, and we are displeased with them and we should be | |
| displeased with them, but at the same time permit us to go | |
| forward with assistance to gentlemen like Generals Bedoya and | |
| Serrano. Absolutely that is what we should do if there is | |
| agreement, from a policy point of view, between the | |
| administration and you gentlemen. | |
| Now, how one goes about doing that and whether you can do | |
| that within the structure of the legislation as it currently | |
| exists, I am not sure. That would be something which the | |
| lawyers would have to examine. | |
| I will also say that in my experience, often people on both | |
| sides of that question hide behind that law. I think that if | |
| everyone agreed, we would always find a way to get around the | |
| restrictions of the law. But from a policy point of view, | |
| absolutely what you are suggesting is what I would recommend; | |
| yes, sir. | |
| Mr. Barr. Thank you. | |
| I have really been quite impressed with the imaginative use | |
| and interpretation of Federal laws by this administration when | |
| they want to. For example, last year, we heard testimony from | |
| some individuals from this administration with regard to how it | |
| is that the resources of the FBI can be used to investigate a | |
| purely domestic crime in Haiti. There are a number of folks, | |
| including myself, that suspected that decision was made for | |
| purely political reasons, not under Federal laws. And I have a | |
| serious question about their very imaginative and very broad | |
| interpretation of that particular statute. | |
| Yet in this case they seem to be relying on very, very | |
| pinched legalistic definitions and interpretations of these | |
| laws such as prevents, for example, as we heard from the last | |
| panel, the use of even the limited military assistance that | |
| this administration is willing to provide to the army and to | |
| the police forces down there, telling them they can only use it | |
| to go after the narcotics people and not the guerrillas when, | |
| in fact, I think that it is very, very well documented and well | |
| known to this administration and prior administrations that the | |
| two groups really are operating hand in hand. I don't know if | |
| there's a question in all of that, but something that you said | |
| triggered that. | |
| Mr. Busby. Let me put myself back into one of my previous | |
| incarnations. | |
| I went through something very similar to this, about 3\1/2\ | |
| or 4 years ago, and I was very, very intent on gaining some | |
| public recognition from the U.S. Government that there was a | |
| linkage between the narcotics traffickers and the guerilla | |
| groups. I mean, that was my objective, to do that, because if-- | |
| once we could establish that, then, of course, the next step, | |
| which was beginning to work with them on the guerilla problem, | |
| became easier. | |
| People basically said: Well, if you want to do that, you go | |
| right ahead but expect to be sued, expect someone to come up | |
| and use the law against you as a public official for not | |
| adhering to the end-use provisions that are built into the law | |
| that say you will not use this equipment for anything other | |
| than counternarcotics purposes. If you want to make the policy | |
| determination that going after the FARC is a counternarcotics | |
| purpose, do so at your peril. | |
| Those are the kinds of problems that you run into when you | |
| have conflicting legislation and people who take various | |
| positions on various issues. That's a serious thing. | |
| Mr. Barr. Not exactly a standing-tall foreign policy type | |
| decisionmaking process. | |
| Mr. Busby. I like to think that I stood as tall as anyone; | |
| but when someone tells me that I am going to jail because I | |
| make a policy determination, I tend to listen to what they say. | |
| Mr. Barr. Well, I would question that sort of advice. I | |
| mean, when I was in the executive branch at the CIA, for | |
| example, we would go to legal counsel to make sure that there | |
| is a way within the bounds of the law to do something. If you-- | |
| if the question is posed to these folks, give me a reason not | |
| to do something, now that's a lot easier. But I am somewhat | |
| disturbed, particularly in light of what the former two | |
| witnesses, the two generals from Colombia have told us, that | |
| there is very, very clear documentation, well known to this | |
| administration, that these two groups, the guerilla groups and | |
| the narcotics trafficking groups, are operating essentially as | |
| one organization, one paying the other a large percent of the | |
| profits, and yet they rely on these very pinched | |
| interpretations. I suspect it's for policy reasons they have | |
| made that decision because they want to. | |
| With regard to the specific--the specific point--one other | |
| specific point that I forget which one of the generals made, | |
| that it would help them tremendously if we could take a look | |
| here in this country at perhaps strengthening or modifying in | |
| some way our laws to prevent the introduction of precursor | |
| chemicals into Colombia, are you familiar with that? Are there | |
| some specific things, perhaps from a policy standpoint, in your | |
| experience, that you could tell us that we should specifically | |
| be looking at there? | |
| Mr. Busby. Yes, sir. We in the United States some years ago | |
| began to recognize that tracking precursor chemicals and | |
| tracking money was really a very effective way to get at the | |
| organizational infrastructure of the traffickers. We, the | |
| Americans, have done a pretty good job at that, in my opinion. | |
| Where you run into problems, in my experience, and I saw | |
| this in Colombia, is when you try to take the next step and | |
| engage the international community, when you go to the Germans, | |
| to the French, to the Swiss, to other manufacturers and say | |
| that we want you to impose on your industries all of these | |
| tracking provisions and end-use provisions for chemicals that | |
| are precursors. That has been an international initiative | |
| which, in my experience, has gone virtually nowhere. | |
| We have tried to do that with the Colombians and certainly | |
| under Cesar Gaviria, the previous president, they were very | |
| much in support of that. | |
| I am not aware, frankly, that we, the United States, are | |
| deserving of any rocks being thrown our way on that. We have | |
| taken some really very effective measures. But I do believe | |
| that the international community--that it's an initiative which | |
| we need to pursue and pursue very strongly. | |
| I tend to believe in the efficiency of that. I do think | |
| that if you could cutoff the flow of chemicals--money without | |
| saying, but if you could cutoff the flow of chemicals or put | |
| some real strictures on that, you could put--you could put the | |
| traffickers at considerable risk. A lot of those chemicals come | |
| up river from Brazil. | |
| Mr. Barr. There is no initiative from the administration at | |
| this point to even look at that, much less propose legislation, | |
| is there? | |
| Mr. Busby. I am sorry. I have been out of the government | |
| for a couple of years. I really don't know the current state of | |
| play. | |
| Mr. Barr. OK. There isn't. | |
| Mr. Messing, you, as Mr. Busby, have experience in a lot of | |
| different countries, including Colombia and another country | |
| mentioned today, Mexico. From your background and knowledge of | |
| the--both the political and the police and military situations | |
| in both of these countries, could you just very, very briefly | |
| compare the integrity and the efforts of the Colombian anti- | |
| narcotics efforts, particularly General Serrano and his troops | |
| and General Bedoya and his troops, to their counterparts in | |
| Mexico? | |
| Mr. Messing. Well, you have to understand that these | |
| organizations will always have some thin layer of corruption, | |
| as our own police forces do and our own military does in some | |
| respect. I mean, there will be a very thin layer of corruption | |
| in both of the militaries. You will have some group that will-- | |
| a cellular group that will be involved in death squad | |
| activities. You will have some very small group that will be | |
| involved in corruption; they have been corrupted by the drug | |
| lords. But for the most part, the Colombians have had an | |
| aggressive program, particularly in the police, to vet their | |
| elements. As a matter of fact, several years ago, there were, | |
| you know, literally 6,000, to 7,000 police vetted from their | |
| national police force over a period of time. | |
| This is a good indicator. It shows progress toward them | |
| doing the right thing. So in terms of whether I am comfortable | |
| with the Colombian national police versus the Mexican national | |
| police, who haven't gone through this severe vetting program | |
| like the Colombian national police, I would prefer to work with | |
| the Colombian national police. | |
| But having said that, you always have to encourage them to | |
| continue vetting and, you know, the police and the military. | |
| One of the programs that the Ambassador mentioned has an | |
| astounding effect on the viability of these forces. It is joint | |
| training that we have with those elements. It's very important, | |
| because they learn through osmosis and directly that human | |
| rights is important; that proper conduct is important. They | |
| learn civic action. They learn a whole plethora of ideas from | |
| us that they take back to their country, and these ideas will | |
| help the police and military move toward the democratization of | |
| their country while lowering levels of violence. That's what | |
| this is all about. | |
| Mr. Barr. You did mention the term civil rights--human | |
| rights and we talked about that, as you know, from being here | |
| during the previous two panels. Would you and, Ambassador | |
| Busby, if you could both just comment very, very briefly on | |
| this human rights issue, and in particular where should the | |
| real focus of our concern over human rights violations in | |
| Colombia be with regard to the narcotics traffickers and the | |
| narcotics organizations and the guerrillas or with the police | |
| and military forces, which we all know in any country, as you | |
| said, are not perfect. Where ought to our concern over human | |
| rights be? | |
| Mr. Busby. Well, let me just say several things about that, | |
| because it was an issue that was of great concern the whole | |
| time I was there. First, I think it is indisputable that there | |
| are human rights problems within the police and the military in | |
| Colombia. The evidence is clearly there. | |
| Having said that, it is also indisputable that the | |
| leadership of those organizations neither condones it nor | |
| supports it and, in fact, are working very, very hard to try | |
| and root out human rights abuses. They do try and train their | |
| people. There is no institutional bias toward human rights | |
| abuses but, rather, the contrary. | |
| Mr. Barr. That, I think, is a very important distinction. | |
| Mr. Busby. Yes, sir. | |
| My feeling is that many of the human rights abuses in | |
| Colombia occur because they are--it may not be a civil war, but | |
| they are a country at war with themselves. Because of the | |
| immaturity of the justice system, both civilly and within the | |
| military, that police and military many times feel enormous | |
| frustration, that they can go arrest somebody or they can do | |
| these things and nothing ever really happens. And, therefore, | |
| out of frustration---- | |
| Mr. Barr. Something else may happen. | |
| Mr. Busby. Something else happens. | |
| Mr. Barr. Like the frustration in this country sometimes. | |
| Mr. Busby. That goes to the point I tried to make at the | |
| end of my very brief statement. | |
| I think one of the focuses of our efforts should be on | |
| building those institutions up so that, in fact, you remove | |
| that level of frustration and, in fact, you bring the rule of | |
| law to these countries. | |
| It's very, very underdeveloped in Colombia, although they | |
| have made some attempts to overhaul their justice system. But | |
| there's a long way to go. | |
| Mr. Barr. Excuse me. Does decertification help that process | |
| or hamper it? | |
| Mr. Busby. Oh, I think it hurts it. I mean, I think the | |
| whole certification process, as I have said to Congressman | |
| Mica, who helped draft that legislation, I am rather critical | |
| of that because I think it does, in many ways, hinder our | |
| ability to pick and choose what we want to do. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The gentleman's time has expired. | |
| Mr. Busby. Let me say one additional thing, just following | |
| up on the previous question. I think that one of the | |
| initiatives that we had under way, and I spoke to President | |
| Gaviria about it many times when I was there, is that the | |
| process by which we select our police officers and train them | |
| or our military officers or our government officials is very | |
| different from what you have in these countries. If you--as you | |
| well know, if you want a security clearance in the United | |
| States, you get investigated. You have people talk to your | |
| family. They talk to your neighbors. There is an extensive | |
| background investigation that is done on you before you are | |
| given access to sensitive information, and there is | |
| psychological training for policemen, and so forth. None of | |
| that exists. None of that exists. | |
| I went to see a ranking cabinet officer once in Colombia, | |
| and she said, ``I am really very worried about, you know, | |
| information leaking out of my office, and so forth, and I think | |
| it's my secretary.'' | |
| I said, ``Well, who is she?'' | |
| I don't know. I don't know, you know. | |
| I went into, well, how are these people selected? | |
| Well, they are just hired. | |
| So you have to understand, it's also a very, very difficult | |
| proposition to work in some of these countries trying to decide | |
| who do you work with, who do you not work with, who is corrupt, | |
| who is not corrupt. You only decide that over a period of some | |
| time, sometimes years, making decisions on who you think you | |
| can trust. | |
| So all of these things are correctable, and I think that | |
| they are something that deserves some emphasis from a policy | |
| point of view on our part. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The gentleman from Florida. | |
| Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Ambassador Busby, I heard your comments relating to the | |
| certification law, and I probably have to agree with you that | |
| it hasn't been that effective with Colombia because we don't-- | |
| we really don't even have a handle on that country that the | |
| legislation was originally intended to give us leverage with. | |
| But I am wondering what you think could be an action by | |
| this Congress or this administration to show the Colombians and | |
| others that we mean business. How can we get their attention on | |
| this matter? | |
| Mr. Busby. Well, sir, with regard to the Colombian | |
| leadership, as I said, I find it hard to think of anything else | |
| we could do to display our animosity toward Mr. Samper and the | |
| people around him. I mean, we have taken his visa. We have | |
| publicly castigated him. We have done virtually everything | |
| possible to let him know that we don't like him. As I said | |
| earlier, he gets no kudos from me, either. | |
| The problem I have is that the structure of the | |
| legislation, as I understand it, oftentimes does not allow you | |
| to pick and choose what you are going to do in a particular | |
| country. I think it is--has been not very helpful to cutoff FMS | |
| sales to Colombia. I think that that's just--we should have | |
| avoided that somehow. | |
| I also think that, although there are certain times when | |
| public debate on things like this is very useful, sometimes it | |
| is a hinderance to trying to solve the problem because | |
| everybody tries to make political points. | |
| What I think should happen is that the Congress and the | |
| administration should sit down and look at the whole range of | |
| interconnecting legislation that applies to these kinds of | |
| situations and try to perfect it, try to make it better, more | |
| useful, more flexible, perhaps. I know that implies a certain | |
| level of working together that isn't always there, but I | |
| sincerely believe that. | |
| Mr. Mica. Well, another one of the problems we have, and | |
| Mr. Hastert saw it and his predecessor, Mr. Zeliff, who chaired | |
| this subcommittee, saw the same thing, is this approach and the | |
| legislative remedy or the administrative remedy covers a number | |
| of legislative committees of jurisdiction, a number of | |
| agencies. | |
| We had written to the drug czar asking that the President | |
| request a waiver, and I think that he doesn't--the drug czar | |
| really doesn't have any authority. He is sort of a fancy | |
| coordinator. But we face the same problem here because the | |
| solutions are handled by State, by the Department of Defense, | |
| by the Department of Justice and by other Federal agencies. | |
| Do you see any solution to our jurisdictional problem, any | |
| recommendations? | |
| Mr. Busby. Well, I know, of course, of your long record and | |
| the chairman and other members on this committee of trying to | |
| resolve some of these organizational issues. I will tell you | |
| what I honestly think, and that is that the only person who can | |
| really bring order out of this and make it work is an elected | |
| official, and that's either the President or the Vice | |
| President. | |
| I tend to believe that the Secretary of State is never | |
| going to tell the Secretary of Defense how to spend his money. | |
| Nor do I think that General McCaffrey for all of his abilities | |
| is going to tell the Secretary of State how to conduct foreign | |
| policy, no matter what his so-called title might be. But you | |
| correctly, I think, perceive it, that it is just a coordination | |
| role. | |
| Mr. Mica. Well, I think it has been a lack of executive | |
| leadership, and that's definitely a problem; no interest in the | |
| issue, or limited interest until of late. Then we see the | |
| bureaucratic morass. | |
| Now, State had--we talked about FMS and the President does | |
| have authority to grant a waiver. I cited examples of where | |
| waivers have been granted in much less national interest than | |
| this instance, and nothing still is done as far as FMS and that | |
| military pot. But then I gave examples here and cited back in | |
| September they had asked--or had notified us, they didn't have | |
| to ask--they notified us that State was going to move forward | |
| on providing the Colombians and Peruvians and others with | |
| equipment, and still nothing has been done with that. | |
| How do you get a handle on this? | |
| Mr. Busby. Well, I mean, sir, I think you know the answer | |
| to the question. These are policy issues. These are policy | |
| determinations. Again, my recommendation for some time has been | |
| that we need to look at the organization under which we conduct | |
| counternarcotics--well, our entire drug policy arena, | |
| everything from treatment to demand reduction to our | |
| international programs and everything. | |
| My frustrations, and I worked on this for 15 years or more, | |
| is that it--the same frustration you have. How do you, in fact, | |
| get a handle on all of this and really begin to resolve the | |
| problem? It's a very, very difficult thing to do, the way we | |
| are currently organized and the way you are currently | |
| organized. | |
| That, to my mind, is something that is really worthy of | |
| some effort on the part of the Congress and the administration, | |
| how you do this. | |
| Mr. Mica. One more important thing. Again, I am really | |
| frightened for this country and for every community, knowing | |
| what we saw last year, and you were with us on the trip when | |
| the chairman and others went down to Colombia and we were told | |
| there were 10,000 hectare acres of poppies under production | |
| now. | |
| Is there anything that we can do in this heroin area--and | |
| now it is starting to stream in. We heard testimony today, | |
| Ambassador Gelbard talked about the production, but you are | |
| going to be able to get heroin on the streets of this country | |
| as cheaply as crack in the near term, and availability is | |
| dramatically increased, plus use among the most vulnerable, our | |
| youth. | |
| Is there anything you can do--now, you have been there. You | |
| have been to Colombia as Ambassador. You know the situation | |
| better than anyone. Is there anything you recommend that we can | |
| do to get a handle on this now? | |
| Mr. Busby. Sir, I think that the best thing we can do in | |
| the short term, the best thing we can do, is support General | |
| Serrano and General Bedoya, begin to work with them. Most of | |
| that--most of that opium poppy cultivation, it's a very | |
| organized thing, and the guerrillas are very involved in it. | |
| The FARC is very involved in the heroin production. | |
| In the short term, we need to make sure that the aid is | |
| flowing to these people who are fighting it. | |
| In the long term, I think we need to take a very hard look | |
| at our overall policy of how we are conducting our business | |
| with regard to interdiction, eradication, demand reduction and | |
| all of that, because that's the long-term solution. | |
| Mr. Mica. Finally, I guess you would support then that this | |
| administration, when they come out with their strategy for | |
| 1997, drug policy strategy, that interdiction and eradication | |
| would be, I guess, included in that agenda, which has been sort | |
| of cast aside in their past plan? | |
| Mr. Busby. Well, I must say, I tend to agree with General | |
| McCaffrey. I think it's a waste of effort to come out with a | |
| yearly strategy. We ought to have a 10- or 20-year strategy. | |
| Mr. Mica. It is also--as you well know, it's interdiction, | |
| it's education, it's treatment. | |
| Mr. Busby. I was just going to say, I think---- | |
| Mr. Mica. But when it is missing--one of the legs of the | |
| stool is missing, and you have had that policy, it's time to | |
| realize that you have got to approach it from all aspects. | |
| Wouldn't you agree? | |
| Mr. Busby. Yes, sir. | |
| I think--I would say two things. One, organizationally we | |
| need to be able to bring the full power of U.S. capability | |
| against this problem and do it in a focused way, which I don't | |
| think we do very well. | |
| Second, there is no silver bullet to this, and you have to | |
| do all of it. Any administration that thinks that treatment is | |
| going to work and we can do away with the interdiction or the | |
| interdiction is going to work and we can do away with demand | |
| reduction, simply doesn't understand the problem. You have to | |
| do all of these things, and you have to do them over some | |
| extended period of time and destroy the infrastructure by which | |
| the traffickers have been able to build these empires. That's | |
| what we should be doing. | |
| Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I thank the gentleman from Florida. | |
| To both of you gentlemen, I appreciate, first of all, your | |
| long endurance this morning to sit through a lot of testimony | |
| and now enduring it yourself here. But to get through this last | |
| round, I would like to ask both of you a couple of questions. | |
| First of all, Ambassador Busby, could you assess previously | |
| the threat posed to our security by narcotraffickers in | |
| Colombia? What do you see? | |
| Mr. Busby. Our security in Colombia? | |
| Mr. Hastert. Our security here, what happens to this | |
| country because of the narcotraffickers? | |
| Mr. Busby. I am sorry? You are talking about what happens | |
| to the United States? | |
| Mr. Hastert. Yes. | |
| Mr. Busby. Well, I admit to being a little bit of a radical | |
| about that. I think, if you look at the history of the United | |
| States, you are hard-pressed to come up with a phenomenon that | |
| has affected us as deeply and adversely as drugs have. I don't | |
| mean just trafficking. I am talking about the use of drugs, | |
| everything that surrounds it. | |
| I think it is, in its purest sense, a real threat to our | |
| society, not necessarily to the institutions of government or-- | |
| drug traffickers are not going to overthrow the U.S. | |
| Government. But seriously, the deterioration that takes place | |
| at various levels of our society I think is marked and | |
| measurable, and therein lies some of the frustration that I | |
| have in our failure to be able to focus all of the capabilities | |
| we have to try and bring about some resolution of the problem. | |
| So I think it's a very clear threat. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Do you feel that the narcotics assistance | |
| section at the Colombian Embassy has been effectively | |
| administrated? | |
| Mr. Busby. It was--it was certainly effectively | |
| administrated when I was there. | |
| I don't know enough about it to really comment on that. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The drug czar has asked, and this is for your | |
| opinion, obviously, has asked that maybe he would have 10 | |
| percent flexibility in his budget, that he can act upon that | |
| budget and implement those funds at his discretion. Do you | |
| think that would be a positive tool? | |
| Mr. Busby. Yes, sir, I do. I do. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Why? | |
| Mr. Busby. I tend to think that a little more centralized | |
| control over budget and policy is what is needed. | |
| Now, again, having said that, I am not so sure that the | |
| President is ever going to be enabled--is never going to be | |
| able to empower one Cabinet officer over the other and, | |
| therefore, Presidential leadership is absolutely essential to | |
| make it happen. But having some more centralized view of all of | |
| this, that is not law enforcement, it is not health, it is not | |
| international but, rather, something else, I think, would be a | |
| good thing. | |
| Mr. Hastert. There has been some questions previously today | |
| trying to compare Mexico to Colombia, and I know that you have | |
| had some experience in both countries, especially the oversight | |
| job that you had as Ambassador on terrorism. How would you | |
| compare General Serrano's record, I guess you would say, of the | |
| Colombian national police on the counternarcotics efforts | |
| compared to what's going on in Mexico at the same type of | |
| level? | |
| Mr. Busby. Well, the history in Colombia is very, very | |
| different from Mexico. The Colombians decided back in the early | |
| 1980's that they were going to accept and seek and use United | |
| States assistance. As a result, the Colombian national police, | |
| in particular, have been the recipient of a lot of help from us | |
| which was freely given and which was freely accepted. | |
| Therefore, the working relationships that we have had | |
| historically have had their ups and downs but, nonetheless, | |
| have been very close. | |
| That is not in any way the case in Mexico. In fact, our | |
| relationships with the police in Mexico and with the Mexican | |
| military have been far, far more standoffish, and I think that | |
| the results clearly speak for themselves. | |
| We work and have always worked closely with the Colombians. | |
| I had very high respect for their professionalism and integrity | |
| when I was there. I think the record with Mexico has been far, | |
| far more spotty. | |
| Mr. Hastert. One of the things that General Serrano said, | |
| and he said it in passing, and I am really sure if anybody | |
| picked it up, he said one of the most injurious things that has | |
| happened since the decertification was the inability for--to | |
| get his men training, to get--in how to do things; and they | |
| have had that luxury before with the cooperation from the | |
| United States and, I would imagine, our agencies, DEA, CIA and | |
| other agencies that do that. | |
| In your opinion, has President Clinton's decision to | |
| decertify Colombia on March 1, 1996, had a significant | |
| detrimental effect on the levels of counternarcotics support | |
| Colombia is receiving from the United States via the Department | |
| of State on foreign military sales? | |
| Mr. Busby. Certainly on foreign military sales because it | |
| is my understanding that there are restrictions placed on that. | |
| That's a serious problem, I must say, because you lose IMET, | |
| the training programs, you lose military assistance, you lose a | |
| whole lot of things. | |
| As far as characterizing it as serious or nonserious, and | |
| so forth, I don't have the figures in front of me. I am not | |
| really competent to speak to that. | |
| I have the impression, although it may be anecdotal, that | |
| that is a true statement. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Major Messing, before I recognize you for a | |
| couple of questions, I would like to also recognize, and I see | |
| him in the audience, another dedicated member of the National | |
| Defense Council, Gil Macklin. We certainly appreciate him being | |
| here today. | |
| Let me ask you one of the same questions. Do you feel that | |
| the national assistance section at the Colombia Embassy has | |
| been effectively administered? You have been down there, been | |
| in the jungles. How do you feel about that? | |
| Mr. Messing. Well, I agree with Congressman Mica in terms | |
| of that there's a leadership flaw here. I mean, I go back to El | |
| Salvador. I had 57 trips in El Salvador between 1982 and 1991, | |
| and I saw Ambassador Dean Hinton and Ambassador Tom Pickering | |
| act, and I also worked at the State Department under Ambassador | |
| Rich Armitage. They would pick up the phone, and they would | |
| holler into the phone. All of a sudden a C-141 or a C-5A would | |
| show up and have what the Salvadorians needed or, in the case | |
| of Rich Armitage, when he was working in the NIS section at | |
| State, a C-5A would be landing in Russia, you know, chock full | |
| of medical supplies or whatever was the case. | |
| The point is that the leadership involved is not providing | |
| the pressure and guidance, pressure to their people and | |
| guidance to their people, to get things done. | |
| You know, this failure results in lives of Colombian | |
| policemen being lost, and that's later translated into | |
| additional cocaine on our streets; and it involves collateral | |
| damage to the United States. | |
| So, you know, without this enthusiastic, directed | |
| leadership from Washington, from the Ambassadorial level, from | |
| the section level, you can't get things done. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Can I ask you a question then to followup on | |
| that? | |
| Mr. Messing. Yes. | |
| Mr. Hastert. I think I inferred from your answer, and I am | |
| not trying to put words in your mouth, but are you saying that | |
| people aren't getting out and doing the job they should do, in | |
| your opinion, or are they? | |
| Mr. Messing. Well, there's a whole section in the U.S. drug | |
| control policy and international operations paper that I gave | |
| to you a couple of months ago that talks about personnel | |
| selection. Failure to staff all levels of the drug control | |
| program correctly virtually foredooms it to failure. You know, | |
| when you hire a guy who has just been with the Department of | |
| Agriculture to run a criminal--anticriminal element, who should | |
| be versed--well versed in anti-narcotics operations and who | |
| doesn't mind putting on a bulletproof vest and going out to | |
| Miraflores, and when you hire an agronomist or an agriculture | |
| guy or whatever, you are not going to have the kind of results | |
| that you need. | |
| Fortunately, I heard recently that one of our sterling | |
| State Department anti-narcotics people is being transferred | |
| from another country into Colombia, but he won't be there for a | |
| few months. So you can't have this failure of lack of correct | |
| personnel selection and expect to have results. I mean, it just | |
| doesn't work that way. | |
| You have to have the brightest, the best and the bravest | |
| that are put into a hybrid team, and this talks about it also-- | |
| let's see. There's another section in here. It talks about that | |
| you have--maybe it's in the recommendations portion. But you | |
| have to have a hybrid team of gutsy men and women that are | |
| knowledgeable and experienced to go in and that have the backup | |
| from the United States to go in there and thwart the drug lords | |
| and the drug guerrillas. You have to have this kind of | |
| combination of effort. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Let me ask you a another question that's very | |
| similar to the question I asked Ambassador Busby. How do you-- | |
| as someone that's been underground in Colombia, how do you | |
| assess the national security threat, both to Colombia and the | |
| United States, from narcotraffickers? | |
| Mr. Messing. Well, it is clear to me. I mean, when you have | |
| got---- | |
| Mr. Hastert. Let me interrupt you just for a second. I used | |
| the framework before and I misspoke in addressing the letter | |
| to--or question to the general, I said civil war. I don't mean | |
| civil war, but certainly there's a huge war going on between | |
| two forces. How do you assess that? | |
| Mr. Messing. Well, again, I have to go back to the dark | |
| side/light side capitalist example as one of the things. When | |
| you have dark side capitalist elements that are antidemocratic, | |
| they are monopolistic, and they are a very small element that | |
| tries to take control of the country and impact on its | |
| sovereignty. It's the tail that starts to wag the dog of the | |
| sovereignty of Colombia, in that regard. Their narcissistic | |
| enterprises wind up impacting on us on the streets of America. | |
| Like I said earlier, if you--if this decertification--if | |
| this certification doesn't come through, even a certification | |
| with a waiver of some sort, it will translate directly into 40 | |
| to 50 tons of cocaine on your streets, on Congressman Mica's | |
| city and district, and on the other Members of Congress, where | |
| you feel the impact. The collateral damage is in an exponential | |
| way worse than the amount of assistance that you can provide. | |
| I mean, we are talking $50 billion to $60 billion worth of | |
| collateral damage to the United States as a result of not | |
| certifying, not boosting the morale, not giving them the | |
| equipment they need, not supporting them in the first trench, | |
| the most inexpensive part of the drug war versus--the border | |
| versus our neighborhood. I mean, it's almost goofy, it is | |
| almost goofy not to understand that American interests are | |
| first. | |
| There's a part in here that talks about strategy. This was | |
| written in 1990, because we were critical of the Bush | |
| administration. The point is that in strategy you have to | |
| understand the first priority is the war on drugs, and that | |
| translates into America; and the second is the maintenance of | |
| the country's democratic institutions. | |
| Mr. Hastert. To followup on that, we just had a note handed | |
| to us from our district office that today in Waukegan, IL-- | |
| that's not very far from my district--they just had a bust of | |
| 400 pounds of cocaine. That sounds like a tremendous amount of | |
| drug. But in the whole scheme of things, it's just a very small | |
| fraction of what comes out of Colombia. But that did come from | |
| Colombia. | |
| Mr. Messing. Mr. Chairman, drug dealers just tried to buy a | |
| Soviet submarine for the transportation of drugs. | |
| Mr. Hastert. One last question I would like to address to | |
| you, Ambassador. In your opinion, do we face, I guess to coin a | |
| phrase, a chemical laundering problem? We had General Serrano | |
| talking about precursors. We understand that many of these | |
| products come from places like Germany and Holland and other | |
| places, but even from the United States, if we can ship--if | |
| somebody wants to ship a product, tons or thousands of gallons | |
| of product to Poland or the Bahamas or Germany and then it | |
| finds its way back to Colombia, is that a problem? If it is, | |
| how can we start to get a handle on that? | |
| Mr. Busby. Yes, sir, that is a problem. In the tracking of | |
| precursor chemicals, I think DEA and FBI both have whole | |
| sections that do nothing but that. | |
| It is a very difficult proposition because you are talking | |
| about a legal commercial product. | |
| How we get a handle on it? I go back to what I responded to | |
| Mr. Barr. I think the only way you get a real handle on it is | |
| to work with the producing countries of those chemicals to put | |
| some tracking restrictions and end-use restrictions on them, | |
| and also work with Colombia and other countries that produce | |
| drugs to track the importation of those kinds of chemicals. | |
| Mr. Hastert. The question is: How much of that chemical | |
| comes from this country and goes to other countries? | |
| Mr. Busby. I don't know. DEA could give you those figures. | |
| Mr. Hastert. But is it significant? | |
| Mr. Busby. The impression that I have, and I had it from | |
| the time that I was in Colombia, is that we have made some | |
| substantial progress. We, Americans, have made some substantial | |
| progress on that. We have made no progress in terms of | |
| chemicals produced in Brazil, Germany, France, places like | |
| that. | |
| Mr. Hastert. Thank you very much. I certainly appreciate | |
| both of you gentlemen being here today. As I said, we have had | |
| a lot of questions and a lot of answers, and I hope we have | |
| made some headway, No. 1, in understanding and, No. 2, | |
| establishing a record, that we need to move forward. | |
| We need to have better ideas. We need to think outside the | |
| traditional square to solve this problem. If we didn't have the | |
| courageous people like General Serrano and others, General | |
| Bedoya who was here today, and others, we wouldn't even be able | |
| to get a toehold to solve the problem. | |
| We appreciate your testimony. This is not the last hearing | |
| that we will have on this issue. We will continue to work at | |
| it. | |
| This hearing of the Subcommittee on National Security, | |
| International Affairs, and Criminal Justice is adjourned. Thank | |
| you. | |
| [Whereupon, at 2:02 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] | |
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