- 2 months ago
How the drug cartels in Medellín and Cali have become part of Colombia's political and economic life.
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00:00Frontline is made possible by the financial support of viewers like you and by the Corporation
00:14for Public Broadcasting. In Colombia there is a war between the government and the drug
00:22traffickers. The cartel of Medellin since the beginning have been fighting with the government.
00:30They kill everybody. The government says it is fighting back by capturing or killing the drug
00:35lords. They had to kill him. It could have been very inconvenient to capture him alive because
00:40he would have had many things to say about his relation with certain sectors of the armed forces
00:46of the government. Jail drug lord Carlos Lader tells Frontline about the ties between
00:54drug traffickers and the Colombian military. The secret service of the Colombian army got
01:00a strategical alliance with some of the cocaine smugglers. From the U.S. to Medellin, Frontline
01:08investigates the politics of the drug trade. Tonight, Inside the Cartel.
01:16From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York,
01:28WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston, this is Frontline with Judy Woodruff.
01:38Good evening. Last month, a car bomb in the Colombian city of Medellin killed 14 people. Then another
01:49exploded in a crowded Bogota shopping mall, killing 19 and injuring nearly 200. Then for the third time
01:57in less than a year, a presidential candidate was gunned down. Every week, there is news of more
02:04violence in Colombia. At war, it appears, are the Colombian government and the narco-traficantes,
02:11the drug lords who control the multi-billion dollar cocaine trade. At least, that's what it seems like
02:18from the outside. Except that the real story is much more complex. Frontline investigative reporters
02:25Leslie and Andrew Coburn have spent months in Colombia gaining access to sources close to the
02:31drug lords and exploring the ways in which the narco-dollars have penetrated deep into the Colombian
02:38economy. The drug cartel, it turns out, is not monolithic, and the Colombian government may not
02:45be as dedicated to the drug war as it appears, even with the support of hundreds of millions of dollars
02:52of U.S. military aid. The program was produced by Andrew and Leslie Coburn. It is called Inside the Cartel.
03:14Here in the Amazon, deep in Colombia's cocaine country, people have never heard of America's war
03:20war on drugs. They live with a real war between their army, guerrillas, and the drug lords.
03:44From the beginning, the Bush administration has declared that drugs are America's greatest threat,
03:59and the enemy is in Colombia.
04:03Primary objective is to help the Colombian government continue to do what it has been doing so successfully
04:11for the last six months, a year, even more in, for the first time in history, really putting the drug
04:17traffickers seriously on the run, disrupting their industry and having effects throughout South America.
04:28Last December, half a ton of dynamite ripped apart a city block of Colombia's capital.
04:42It was morning rush hour in Bogota. 63 people died. Over 200 were wounded. A major drug trafficker
05:00had ordered the bombing to kill just one man. I called it a mini-atomic bomb. In my office,
05:11the glass panes, which were bulletproof, one of them was torn out of its frame and landed on my desk.
05:16Had it been hurled at the chair where I work, it would have crushed me.
05:19The target was General Miguel Massa, chief of DAS, Colombia's internal security police.
05:27We realized the extent of the damages, the loss of life, and had no doubt that this had been the most
05:33horrifying attack that we Colombians had ever suffered.
05:35General Massa was a prime target because he was not open to threats or bribes. He was not just hunting
05:42the major drug traffickers. He was uncovering their networks of power and influence that reached deep into
05:48the Colombian state. How many attempts on your life have there been?
05:58On my life, serious ones too. Perhaps I've been able to escape because I'm aware of the danger I face.
06:05And this has led me to adopt a lifestyle surrounded by many security measures. I go out very little and
06:11now have a social life which I would say has been reduced approximately 90 percent. So all of that does
06:17not make it easy for them. The first attempt on his life depended on intelligence supplied from
06:23inside the army, a fact that surprised few people in Colombia. General Massa has support because
06:30people believe he's honest. The drug lords earned their popularity another way. They buy it. This is the
06:37man who paid for that bomb, here handing out cash stored in the police van behind him to victims of an
06:43earthquake. Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, a shrewd and ruthless businessman, came from nothing to make as
06:50much as a billion dollars in less than 10 years in the cocaine trade. No ordinary criminal, he used cash
06:57and brutality to build up his power until he threatened the government itself. At the end, he frightened even
07:03his allies. Two weeks after the bombing, Massa's men caught up with him. He was hunted down with his son and
07:11bodyguards in a remote district in northern Colombia. His death came as a relief to many.
07:23They couldn't capture him alive. It could have been very inconvenient to capture him alive because he
07:29would have had many things to say about his relation with certain sectors of the armed forces,
07:34of the government, and of different stratas of Colombian society. They had to kill him.
07:44After Gacha's death, bank records were found detailing multi-million dollar payoffs to whole brigades of
07:50the Colombian army. He believed he had bought a license to kill. Obviously, some of these people are
07:57irresponsible psychopaths who no reasonable person would want to have any contact with. On the other hand,
08:03you'd be surprised that some of them are simply business people who are in a business that we have
08:09one view of and their culture and their history has another view of. It is in Medellin where Miami lawyer
08:16Bill Moran has landed his biggest clients among the top members of the Medellin cartel. I've had a lot of
08:22contact with people that are allegedly major narcotics traffickers since 1977. And I guess it's just sort of the,
08:29you know, the natural fall of the Roman Empire sort of a syndrome. I mean, there was simply no unified,
08:38articulated effort by the government of Colombia to deal with it as a problem. To them, it wasn't a problem.
08:46It became a problem when, you know, the violence began to affect not only the people here, but the people in Colombia.
08:58But religion offers more than consolation to the congregation here in the church of Sabaneta,
09:16on the outskirts of Medellin. Colombians call her the narco virgin, diamond stutter halo, offerings from
09:23grateful traffickers for successful shipments north to the markets of the United States.
09:32Say you have someone who's not the biggest, just someone who's in the business doing okay,
09:37how much money would they make in a year? A little man. Okay, a little man. Two, three million dollars
09:45a year. Most cartel executives we met would not agree to speak to us on camera. Nevertheless, this man,
09:53an active cartel member, eventually agreed to talk to us from the shadows about life on the other side
09:59of the drug war. So how's business right now? Right now, it's a, it's a pretty good business.
10:07You don't want to retire? No. If you start with a kilo a month, you can be a big guy in a little while.
10:17If you stay alive? Yeah.
10:22That's the dream in the poor barrios of Medellin, where the drug lords got their start, as car thieves,
10:28kidnappers, even gravestone robbers, before they struck it rich. How did these people who came to
10:36dominate the business? How do you think they did it? I don't think they know themselves.
10:39When you stop and think about it, it's kind of like McDonald's, you know. In the early 70s,
10:44no one even knew about these people, because they didn't exist. And it's all a matter of,
10:50you know, from, say, 1975, we're only talking about something that's been in existence 12, 13 years.
10:56And it all happened so quick, nobody even knew what it was.
11:00It just went from a situation where people were importing marijuana into this country,
11:06and they used to add 10 kilos of cocaine in the shipment. And before you know it, it totally
11:12swallowed the business. And it went to the, you know, 7,000, 8,000 kilos a week that it's at now.
11:21These account books detailing immense shipments of cocaine to major distributors across the US
11:27belonged to Pablo Escobar, the richest man in the cartel. Last year, General Masa's men found them
11:34at Pablo Escobar's headquarters.
11:39Many documents were found there because he had installed his main offices there.
11:44Well, above all, the documents showed the economic development of his criminal activity,
11:48lists of friends, in fact, what you find in an office. All of this is being investigated.
11:53With their new money, cartel families with names like Gacha, Ochoa, and Escobar spent lavishly.
12:03They built houses on a scale that dwarfed the old haciendas of the coffee, oil, and banking families.
12:09They built racing stables. But for cartel executives, it was not enough.
12:14Former gravestone robber and golf caddy Pablo Escobar built a zoo,
12:19his first drug plane astride the entrance. It boosted his popularity with the locals,
12:25with the added benefit that wild animal dung in a drug shipment puts off the dogs.
12:31The new rich also wanted land. They bought up 12 million acres, one quarter of all Colombia's prime
12:38farmland. With the land came political ambition. Pablo Escobar, like other drug lords,
12:45began turning cocaine profits into political clout.
12:54Confident enough to become a public figure, Escobar even got into Congress, elected as a member for
12:59Medellin. Pablo Escobar was involved in politics. He wanted to be a political leader, as he wanted to be a
13:08sort of Robin Hood leader in Medellin. And he wanted to have social positions.
13:17Jorge Child is a Colombian historian who has observed the rise of the cartels.
13:22His curiosity has earned him a place on the narco death list.
13:26He was in love with a very famous, with a very famous TV entertainer and so on. He just wanted to
13:37play a very high society, high bourgeoisie role in Colombia.
13:43One of the founding bosses of the Medellin cartel has left the big houses behind. Carlos later was
13:52captured three years ago and is now in maximum security in Illinois. His sentence, life without
13:58parole, plus 135 years. How much money did you contribute to political campaigns?
14:05I would say I put up a couple million dollars. A couple million dollars? Yes, myself.
14:13But there's many other people that just by themselves, they put much more than that.
14:18Most of these were very famous people, either on the organized crime, either mafia or smugglers.
14:27Drugs? Drugs smugglers.
14:29Uh, Colombia exports only cocaine, so I would say cocaine smugglers.
14:35Who can you buy?
14:36Everybody. You can buy everything in Colombia if you want.
14:41Could you buy an army general?
14:45Of course.
14:47A police general?
14:49Everybody tells you.
14:50It's easy, because money can do anything.
14:57Three-star general Manuel José Bonet runs the army's third brigade.
15:03He commands all of southwest Colombia. His troops are trained to fight guerrillas,
15:08but have been assigned to take on the drug lords as well.
15:13Unlike many of his peers, General Bonet has never been accused of accepting cartel payoffs.
15:19But for badly paid soldiers, the money is hard to resist.
15:22There are people, very few, but there are people with contact with the narcotraficantes.
15:30We know that.
15:31Money is money.
15:33And they can buy persons.
15:40Not you.
15:41Not you, not me.
15:45They've backed the campaigns of major candidates.
15:48For politicians they could not buy, the cartel had another option.
15:52They killed them.
15:56The cartel of Medellin have been fighting with the government.
16:00They killed the Minister of Justice.
16:02They killed everybody.
16:04So, since five years ago, they have been fighting against the government.
16:10Always escaping.
16:11Always under the ground.
16:13In Colombia, because of all this war going on, people got the tendency to use self-defense
16:20teams or hit squads or hitmen or like that, because it's a matter of survival.
16:29But it's a very dirty, cold war going on there.
16:40If you're going to kill someone, you're going to kill someone.
16:43Prices vary.
16:44It depends on the person.
16:46A journalist like you is worth a lot.
16:51Young and poor, the frontline soldiers in the narco-traffickers' wars are the hitmen or
16:56sicarios.
16:58We'll call him Miguel.
16:59He's 22 years old and a paid killer.
17:03Sicario is a hitman.
17:09Colombia is a country where a policeman makes $100 a month.
17:13A teacher makes $150.
17:16A judge makes $200 a month.
17:19You see someone who works in this business with this gorgeous car and two beautiful
17:22chicks in the back and you go driving.
17:26And they show you their farm.
17:28And they say, oh yeah, that's my farm.
17:30And then there's a great big swimming pool.
17:33So a young guy might say, geez, I really want that, you know?
17:37So maybe in order to get it, someday I'm going to have to do the same thing.
17:40I gotta kill.
17:42I gotta kill.
17:44Or maybe somebody does something to you and you think, geez, in order to get there,
17:47I gotta kill the first one.
17:49I gotta kill the first one in order to get rid of the fear.
17:52And after the first one, you're disposed to do it.
17:54You're more disposed to do it.
17:57Let's be realistic.
17:58If there are people working in the business, of course there are going to be people who are
18:01willing to quote unquote, work for them.
18:03And the people willing to work in that business will come to them like ants.
18:17There is a culture of death in Medellin.
18:21The sicarios have their own band, the bastards with no name.
18:32Half the founding members are dead.
18:33It is easy to die here.
18:36Fifty people are murdered every day.
18:40Working for the cartel is a high risk profession.
18:44Those who cause problems are easily disposed of.
18:46Sometimes the people don't want to pay.
18:51Sometimes people know too much.
18:53This is a dirty business anyways.
18:56It's a dirty business.
18:57Is it a dangerous business?
18:59Yes, it's very dangerous.
19:01Do you know a lot of people who have been killed in it?
19:05All my friends.
19:15Four hundred miles to the south, the death and violence of the drug war seem very far away.
19:26Yet Cali is home to another vastly rich and formidable cartel, who according to cartel sources,
19:33ship three tons of cocaine to the United States every day.
19:36Local society appreciates the fact that their cartel is more discreet than their rivals in Medellin.
19:47Everyone is talking about the drug lords from Medellin and the Medellin cartel,
19:53and the people here are doing probably a tremendous amount of business,
19:58and they're not being bothered in the same way,
20:00because they get around in a more intelligent way, I would say.
20:06Francisco Castro is a successful banker and entrepreneur in Cali.
20:10The Panamanian branch of his bank was indicted last year for laundering drug money.
20:16The city and the area is very controlled.
20:18As a matter of fact, the cartel, the so-called cartel here in Cali,
20:24has been around in a very different way than the Medellin cartel, which is more famous.
20:30The cartel here understands that this is something political,
20:35and if they can do around in their business without contaminating society and without creating violence,
20:43they'll be treated in a more preferential way.
20:48Like a medieval Italian city-state, Cali guards its borders from intrusion by Medellin.
20:54The bosses from the so-called cartel of Cali, they are more clever than the others.
20:59They are not so violent, not so brutal.
21:05They help, of course, the politicians, but they don't want to get involved themselves personally in politics.
21:15The cartel of Cali, they don't love much the cartel of Medellin because of the problem of the cartel
21:23of Medellin with the government, which compromised the cartel of Cali without making they anything.
21:32I mean, it's bad for business, you know.
21:35If you're in the cocaine smuggling business and you're trying to do that as a business,
21:39obviously, you know, disrupting the society and causing people to
21:46engage in public acts of violence is bad for business.
21:51The amount of money that they have invested in this area is big, very, very big.
22:01In houses, in estates, and very expensive areas, residential areas.
22:08That costs more than one billion dollars.
22:12They live in the best quarter of Cali with the other people of the society.
22:19But they're not in the country club.
22:20Not in the country club, no.
22:25The city's old elite is not yet ready to admit the local drug families to their clubs.
22:31But when Chepi Santa Cruz Londoño was turned down for the exclusive Club Colombia,
22:36he hired the same architect and built a replica for himself.
22:41Last year, this and other cartel mansions were occupied and stripped by the army.
22:46They've since been given back.
22:48The army had a glimpse of luxurious lifestyles,
22:51including art collections carefully chosen for their investment value.
22:56Just as they prefer to educate their children in English schools,
22:59the cartel executives like to give the impression of good taste.
23:04Somebody told me that it was because of the decorators.
23:08The decorators?
23:12This is the cultural advisor to the Rodriguez brothers,
23:15the top cartel family.
23:17Alvaro Bejarano, an old friend, tutors them in art history.
23:22What about the old masters, classic renaissance art? Could they collect that?
23:28Without a doubt.
23:29In fact, they have connections over in Europe, which have something to do with classic art.
23:34The connection is the Italian mafia, who sold the metition paid for in Coke.
23:39The U.S. government sold the former American consulate,
23:43now used by cartel leaders for board meetings.
23:46How did the Rodriguez family succeed in opening up markets in the United States?
23:54In Queens, in New York, there were already a lot of Colombians who were crucial for marketing any
23:59product over there. The United States may be right to try and stop the distribution and sale
24:05of cocaine. But it should also render homage to those heroes who were able to start what is now
24:10the biggest business, bigger even than the oil industry, by selling door to door.
24:16One cartel executive told us that their biggest problem today is finding good middle management
24:21in the United States. That's not a problem at home.
24:25They invest in their country.
24:29How do they invest?
24:31Oh, they have great investments in Colombia.
24:33I would say that they are among the greatest investors in this country.
24:39They invest in banking, construction,
24:44industry, agricultural development, etc., etc., etc.
24:50Cartel executives told us that creating jobs was the best way to help the people of the city.
24:57The banks on every corner in Cali are a telling sign of what cocaine means to the Colombian economy.
25:03Everyone wants to help scoop up the flood of narco dollars.
25:07Cocaine is the country's biggest export. The two to four billion dollars that come back every year
25:13have helped save Colombia from the runaway inflation and debt that are crushing the countries around it.
25:19That's why Colombian presidents like to announce tax amnesties, allowing people to shift money to Colombian
25:25banks from abroad, with no questions asked.
25:30The Rodriguez brothers also bought up Colombia's legal pharmaceutical industry.
25:35They have drug stores and drug laboratories, not of cocaine, but of Alka-Celtzer, for instance.
25:42Yes, all the persons that drink in Alka-Celtzer helped the Rodriguez in Colombia.
25:47Everywhere, Cali bears the signs of the cartel's success as a major business enterprise.
25:55According to sources close to the cartel, this local landmark is their corporate headquarters.
26:00If the Cali cartel can have its corporate headquarters sort of up and running, is there really an energetic war on drugs going on in Colombia?
26:08Well, the answer is there is an energetic war on drugs going on in Colombia.
26:12And the priority choices that the government makes as to who it goes after first and who it goes after second is
26:19is largely the business of the Colombian government, as long as they're successful.
26:23I mean, I don't know which building exactly they pointed out to you, but
26:29all the evidence is that the Colombian government is pursuing the traffickers energetically.
26:35But the most energetic assault on the Cali cartel right now is coming from their competitors in Medellin.
26:47The two cartels have been at war for over two years.
26:51The drug stores are in the front line.
26:54Out of 150 of Cali's Rabaja stores in Colombia, over 50 have already been bombed.
27:00Three weeks ago, Medellin invaded Cali, hitting the biggest store in the chain.
27:06What is that war about?
27:08It's about markets.
27:10It's really a war about markets, about production, distribution, transportation, but mainly about markets.
27:17It's a business rivalry.
27:18Yes, it is.
27:19I think it's a war that grew out of the immense ambition of the Medellin people.
27:33I think the United States is such a big country.
27:35There are markets for everybody.
27:37But the Medellin people want the United States market entirely for them.
27:42That's the problem.
27:44That's it.
27:45That ambition led Medellin to sink their billions into property, buying up huge estates across Colombia.
27:56I will say that the cocaine bonanza, a lot of it is invested on land.
28:03We Colombians are agriculture people and ranchers.
28:07That's the primary industry of Colombia, agriculture and cattle.
28:15We don't produce weapons.
28:16We don't produce nuclear warheads.
28:19We got no industry.
28:21We got no technology.
28:22We're just campesinos.
28:26The cartel invested much of its money in a region called the Magdalena Medio,
28:31and effectively cut Colombia in half.
28:34These drug lords, the mafia, bought lands in about 350 counties of the country.
28:44That's like one-third of the total counties of this country.
28:49At the beginning, they bought lands in the same areas where guerrilla activity was most active.
28:56They went through the main guerrilla areas of the country.
29:05There are now three major guerrilla groups here,
29:07fighting from the sanctuary of vast stretches of jungle.
29:12They've established an uneasy relationship with the drug business,
29:16because they control the territory where much of Colombia's coca crop is grown.
29:20At the base of our society, the peasants who are involved in cultivating the coke plant
29:30have a direct relation with the guerrillas.
29:34There are masses of peasants in this country who have to cultivate coke,
29:40because they have no other possibility in their lives.
29:43There is no infrastructure.
29:44There are no roads.
29:45There are no markets.
29:47There's no electricity.
29:48There's no water.
29:49There's no education.
29:50What can they do?
29:52It doesn't take much to find out that as long as these farmers have no other crops
29:59and that now the coca leaf has a market value over and above their traditional usage,
30:07that they don't have much else to do but to use that, especially when we don't have anything
30:16to help them replace it with.
30:18If they cultivate other things, these things will rot, because they won't have any way of taking
30:23them to a market.
30:25How can you tell a peasant of the Amazon to stop cultivating coke?
30:29What can he do?
30:30Die of hunger with his family.
30:33And it is obvious that in those areas where the peasants cultivate coke,
30:38the guerrillas that come into contact with them, help them in their everyday life.
30:44And they establish a real relation that has to do with coke.
30:49There are alliances that are merely protection rackets, as we say,
30:55where it's more a head tax or a coca tax that is charged by a specific guerrilla group that exists
31:02in a specific area against the specific groups of coca growers or traffickers.
31:08Then you have the more formal relationships.
31:10You have relationships which are friendly.
31:13You have relationships which are tense.
31:16They are in league in a great many areas.
31:20And in any event, they are problems for the government of Colombia.
31:25And helping to fight guerrillas who are in league with narcotics traffickers is,
31:31in our view, fighting narcotics.
31:33For the State Department, the business dealings between the guerrillas and the drug traffickers
31:38make the two groups political allies.
31:41A former U.S. ambassador even coined a phrase to describe it, the narco-guerillas.
31:46The guerrillas' anti-U.S. sentiments are conveniently folded in with the war on drugs.
31:52But Colombians know that things are not that simple.
31:57I think the guerrilla groups have gone into different understandings with the traffickers.
32:03But I don't think that is a threat because I think that is trying to put together like water and oil.
32:11They do not mix the narcotraffickers as a group.
32:14They are extreme right.
32:16I mean, they come from way down.
32:19They think that through great effort they have grown to obtain several tangible things.
32:25And they are not willing to put that in danger through the guerrillas' activities.
32:29For example, if there was a town somewhere on the jungle that is being attacked by the guerrillas,
32:38well, the major of the town or the economic leaders of the town had the right to form a self-defense group to defend the town from attacks.
32:49See, we are talking about war.
32:51We are talking about – and that hasn't actually been told neither to the American people nor to the world.
32:58There is a war going on there for 40 years, so there is violence involved.
33:05But isn't that the cartel is inventing violence or what you call the cartel is inventing violence or creative violence?
33:13The thing is, they wanted to make a small state in the Magdalena Medio.
33:18For some time they have been investing in that region.
33:21They bought up the best properties, cattle ranches, farms and mines.
33:25The second step in their plan was to set up well-trained armies in order to defend their interests.
33:39This is a cartel home movie of their death squads and training.
33:43Israeli and British advisors, along with arms from Miami and Tel Aviv, made for a professional operation.
33:50The political effect of the cartel of Medellin has been precisely to make an implicit alliance
34:00with the armed forces in many regions to destroy guerrillas.
34:13The paramilitary groups who are working for the drug lords, in fact, were licensed by the Ministry of Defense.
34:21In Colombia, self-defense groups was authorized by law around 10 or 15 years ago.
34:31There were groups of citizens that reunited to fight against the guerrilla threat.
34:37And it was a legal matter. But from a time, from a few months to now,
34:44those auto-defense groups have been declared not legal anymore.
34:51But was it legitimate for those years to have self-defense forces
34:55in the cases of the drug lords because they were protecting their land?
34:59No, because they were protecting their land, their properties, their lives, against the threat of the guerrillas.
35:06There was a war between the M-19 guerrillas
35:11against some of the new millionaires that were coming out into Colombian society.
35:21And what happened was that a list was found with over a hundred names
35:28that these people had in mind to kidnap.
35:32So the guerrillas wanted to kidnap these hundred people?
35:37About a hundred people, a hundred millionaires, or their families, right?
35:44On my personal case, they kidnapped me.
35:47I was kidnapped, and I managed to escape, and then I took it very seriously.
35:54We fought back and assisted by the military, assisted by the secret police,
36:01and we fought back for about six months, and most of them eventually ended up overseas.
36:09Or?
36:11Well, I mean, the ones that didn't die.
36:15This movement was formed in response to kidnapping in Medellin.
36:19That group became stronger until it turned into what are called the self-defense or paramilitary groups.
36:24It was a small group whose aim was to prevent those drug traffickers
36:27from becoming the object of any attack, kidnapping, or what have you.
36:31Then, when they began to buy up the cattle ranches,
36:34the self-defense groups grew so as not to have to pay tax to the guerrillas.
36:38But the time came when the self-defense groups no longer just defended their interests vis-à-vis the guerrillas.
36:44They also began to go against the civilian population, which had nothing to do with this conflict.
36:54Hundreds of bodies have turned up in mass graves like this one near San Vicente,
36:59victims of the paramilitary death squads.
37:01According to Amnesty International, many of these killings have been carried out with the cooperation of the armed forces.
37:09We have had almost 1,000 deaths, which include two members of the House of Representatives,
37:16two senators, many mayors, state deputies, city councilmen, etc., etc., etc., all over the country.
37:25Well, you're a senator. Are you at risk now?
37:27Yes, of course.
37:31I go around in a bulletproof car.
37:35I have several bodyguards, which may range from 6, 7 to 10.
37:42Sometimes we have people from DAS, the Administrative Department of Security,
37:47from the police, and from our own organization.
37:51Is this why you're wearing a bulletproof vest?
37:52Oh, yes, I have a bulletproof vest.
37:55Of course, it's one of the measures.
37:57When do you wear it?
37:58Always. Always.
38:02Sometimes. Well, I take it off when I go to bed, of course.
38:04But we are not exempt of attacks in our homes.
38:09One of our senators who was killed in Medellin over a year ago, a year and a half ago,
38:16was assassinated in his own home.
38:19They broke down his garage door with a jeep in a commando operation.
38:24Eleven men broke into his house.
38:26It was 6 in the morning, and they assassinated him when he was just waking up.
38:31The traffickers were anti-communist 100%, see?
38:38But you have been accused of being a Nazi.
38:40Is that a crime?
38:46Not in Colombia.
38:53The fact that some members of the army had links with the drug lords became official two years ago,
38:58when General Massa's DAS security police began to leak documents giving specific details of this alliance.
39:06But although the Colombian government had the evidence of who was involved and fired some officers,
39:12the killing went on.
39:13When a death squad entered the town of Segovia, the army stood by and watched.
39:33According to a judicial inquiry, the local army commander helped plan the attack.
39:37They killed 43 persons just at the center of the town.
39:44Anybody who was close to that place was shot to death.
39:52They were defenseless people, common people of the town.
39:58In the days before that massacre, there have been threats against the whole population,
40:04because that town had voted for the Union Patriotica, the leftist party,
40:15so that it was a kind of sanction against the whole town for their political vote.
40:23So they killed 43 people because they'd voted the wrong way?
40:27Yes.
40:30What has the U.S. done with regard to the extensively documented links between elements in the military
40:38and the narco-traffickers?
40:40Well, we know that such things are going on.
40:43The government of Colombia knows that such things are going on.
40:46We discuss this on a constant basis.
40:49It's part of United States policy, not just in Colombia, but throughout the world.
40:53We are insistent in our conversations with foreign governments
41:00that human rights is a basic tenet of U.S. foreign policy.
41:05Even so, U.S. policy is to work closely with the Colombian military.
41:11The Colombian model is the integration of the armed forces into the anti-narcotics fight.
41:19The mix of equipment, of training, of other things that we do with the Colombian government
41:26is not decided in some back room of the Pentagon or the State Department in Washington.
41:32It's done very much in consultation with the Colombian government, with the president,
41:37with his staff people, with the foreign ministry, the Ministry of Defense,
41:42and the various agencies that are involved. And we and they are confident that we are providing
41:49the right kind of mix. The Colombian model is, in fact, a pretty good model for the right kind of mix.
41:57What are they doing here?
42:00The United States?
42:02Yes.
42:02I don't know. We don't receive any information of what are the Americans doing.
42:12I think that in my area, nothing.
42:15For his area, General Bonnet is in charge of the drug war.
42:20When President Bush met with Colombia's President Barco at the Cartagena Summit last February,
42:26they pledged continued cooperation. There had been successes.
42:3014 traffickers had been extradited. Tons of cocaine had been seized.
42:35Money laundering networks had been closed off.
42:38Colombia would now receive economic aid as part of the anti-drug package.
42:42And they would continue to receive military aid.
42:45By the end of 1991, the Bush administration will have sent nearly half a billion dollars
42:51in aid and guaranteed loans to the Colombian armed forces to buy military equipment.
42:57But when 65 million dollars worth of American equipment arrived in Colombia last September,
43:02the chief of police complained that it was not suitable for fighting narcotics.
43:06We're quite satisfied. President Bush has said it many times. We are satisfied that they understand
43:15the purposes for which our Congress is appropriating money and that their goals,
43:22their objectives, their use of these funds and the materiel is consistent with that.
43:27U.S. military equipment intended for the war on drugs has been welcomed by the Colombian Ministry of Defense
43:35for use in the ongoing war against the guerrillas.
43:43Refugees from the fighting find shelter at this camp in Barranca Barmea.
43:47They feel fear and anger when they see these helicopters because they know they come to attack.
44:00Father Flores Miro looks after refugees who have fled the countryside in the Magdalena Medio.
44:10The armed helicopters come to attack and the sound itself of the helicopters is terrible for anybody,
44:16the peasant especially. The peasants flee when they hear the helicopters. They know it isn't a sign of welcome.
44:26We came out because of the bombardments. We've been bombed five times.
44:34What were you bombed by?
44:35The helicopters, they shot, dropped bombs on top of us and just razed the area.
44:40They burned up my house. I don't have any clothing. The only thing I have left are my four daughters.
44:51Everybody says the army is supposedly going after the drug traffickers,
44:54but I don't understand this because here in these areas there's not any marijuana, not any coke.
44:59They say they're going after the drug traffickers and they're really going after the civilian population.
45:05We're the ones that are being bombarded, not the drug traffickers.
45:09Congressman, are people here on Capitol Hill aware that the Colombian military is using U.S. military equipment,
45:16supposedly going to fight the war on drugs, to bomb civilians?
45:21Well, there have been reports that would bring it to the attention to many of the members of Congress.
45:30I would imagine that everybody does know about that.
45:34We found in Barranca Burmea a large number of refugees who had left their homes as a result of
45:42aerial bombardment from helicopters, they said. They said, and I found police sources to confirm this,
45:49this area was not an area of drug activity. And they said, why is the U.S. sending stuff to do this to
45:59us when we're not part of the drug problem? Well, once again, I can't give you a percentage figure,
46:07but we are satisfied, the Colombian government is satisfied that the mix is the correct one,
46:13that it's primarily being used for anti-narcotics purposes. But if you expand that just a little bit
46:18further, if you have a government with very limited resources, as we have the Colombian government,
46:25it has to fight not only the narcotics cartels, Medellin, Cali, etc., but it has to fight guerrillas.
46:35If we provide assistance to the Colombian government, which relieves it of resource pressures,
46:44no matter how the government uses that equipment or funding, it is relieving it of resource pressures,
46:52which it then can shift to other areas. The Colombian government is not shifting it to this area.
47:11In Cali, it's business as usual. The economy is booming thanks to cocaine. Along with the car dealers,
47:20bankers and lawyers in the crowd, we found the two top pilots of the Cali cartel.
47:26You're in a position where you're trying to fight a drug war. You're getting a certain amount of
47:32pressure from the United States to do so as well. And yet we're sitting here in Cali, home of a major
47:41cartel, where a large number of the legitimate businesses here, the banks, the hotels, the pharmacies,
47:52shops, car dealerships, are thriving because of drug money.
47:58Well, that's what they say that is happening in the United States. Most of the money
48:02of the drug businesses in the United States. You also have bankers and you also have politicians
48:09that are involved in the drug dealing. Remember Mr. Marion Barry. So this is not only a thing that
48:17is exclusive for Colombia. The drug dealers, the drug business is so powerful. They have such a
48:24quantity of money that things like that are possible. But of course, we are searching what is happening
48:31with the drug dealers' money in the Colombian banks. But it would be very useful if you in the United
48:38States do the same, because most of that money is in there. I would like to see some American big banks
48:44indicted. It's very easy to take a small South American bank and indicted. It's like taking a child
48:50and putting it underwater. The only defensive activity that you have after you're almost
48:55grounded is putting your hand up and saying, foul, no? But why don't they get around with a big East
49:02New York bank? I mean, that would create probably a problem within the system and that would create
49:08and touch very, very sensitive issues. But that is what I'm talking about. You cannot hold a double
49:15morale to treat this problem. I mean, if you're trying to be conscious and trying to do something
49:20about it, you have to start doing it by your own self, your own attitude and in your own things.
49:24And I don't think Americans are doing enough in it. We've been told that time and time again. The
49:31the actual laundering does not go on in Bogota. The final processing of the cocaine goes on and the
49:43transshipment. But the money is laundered mostly or frequently in American financial institutions and
49:52then the Colombian share is returned, which adds to their national budget at least. They admit 15 percent
50:05and some suspect that it could be even larger. So the problem all too frequently, even when we go abroad,
50:15is we find the locus of it is back home. 15 percent of the cocaine money that runs in this country
50:25goes to the Colombian cocaine smugglers and producers. 85 percent stays here for the Colombian smugglers,
50:37for the American smugglers, for the American dealers, for the American banking system and whatever else.
50:43That's, it's like the coffee. What does Colombia get? 10 percent. 10 percent. And we produce the coffee.
50:51But you're saying. It's always like that. We, we always end up with the, if they give Swiss cheese,
50:58we end up with the holes. Supposing that the war on drugs worked in Colombia, supposing they could stop
51:05the cartels, would that stop cocaine coming to the US? No. Why not? It's a good business because it's a
51:16good business. Everybody, everybody want to be in the business. You know, if Colombia is not in the
51:24business, maybe Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina.
51:33In fact, the Colombians are already moving across their borders,
51:36which will stretch the administration's anti-drug budget still further.
51:40When you take nine billion dollars and spread it around the world, very, very little in terms of
51:48meaningful programs have come out. And when we challenged the, the, the drug czar's administration
51:58on this, they said, well, we haven't, we haven't had enough time to get the results in from our programs.
52:05So then we said, well, are you monitoring the programs so that we can measure whatever it is
52:10that you're, you're putting toward them? They said, well, we haven't got the monitors in place. When
52:14we get to phase two, just wait. Uh, we will then have feedback from phase one and we'll know how to
52:22move for phase three. Have we had success in, in the streets of Detroit or New York or Miami or Chicago?
52:27Not yet. But I think for the first time, we've got a, um, uh, a reasonable, um, proposition on our
52:35hands that if we continue with the, at the current, uh, rate of, of working with these countries,
52:40it's not spitting in the wind and these governments have not been totally, uh, uh, corrupted and that,
52:45and that these, these connections, these links can be reversed.
53:01We found General Massa still working out of the shattered remains of his headquarters.
53:09Last week, there were more deaths in Bogota from bombs set off by traffickers.
53:15Most people in your job would have quit by now.
53:24Yes, I believe they would have, but somebody had to do this job and it happened to be me.
53:34Pablo Escobar is still at large. Reports from Colombia say that he has avoided arrest by Massa's men
53:40on at least one occasion, thanks to a tip-off from the army. But General Massa will have to leave his post
53:47when President Barco hands over power to a new administration on August 7th. The general will then
53:53lose his protection, leaving him vulnerable to the drug lords, unless he finds them first.
53:59The field for this Sunday's presidential election in Colombia was narrowed by two assassinations this
54:20spring. The man most likely to win, if he survives, is Mr. Cesar Gaviria, a 43-year-old liberal economist
54:29who has supported President Virgilio Barco's battle against the drug barons. Regardless of who wins,
54:36few expect radical changes in the way Colombia's drug war is waged.
54:41Thank you for joining us. I'm Judy Woodruff. Good night.
54:49Behind the gleaming face of Dallas lies a war zone.
54:53There's gunshots every night, every single night.
54:59The police spend half a billion dollars a year fighting drugs, but in South Dallas, they're losing
55:05the war. It could be that I'm naive and I don't know how the police department fights crime,
55:14but I believe I could do a better job. Get your hand out of your pocket. What are you doing back here?
55:18Dallas's black community and the mostly white police force are also fighting each other
55:22over a legacy of police shootings and racial tension.
55:25I'm a racist, my child.
55:28You are the racist. You are the racist, ma'am.
55:31You are the racist. So the people of South Dallas are taking matters into their own hands.
55:37We're challenging the pushers and the drug houses directly.
55:41The Dallas Drug War, next time on Frontline.
56:01You are the racist.
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56:55Frontline is made possible by the financial support of viewers like you and by the Corporation
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