Pubdate: Mon, 25 Mar 2002
Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Copyright: 2002 The Sun-Times Co.
Contact:  http://www.suntimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/81
Author: Robert Novak
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/colombia (Colombia)

UNFULFILLED FOREIGN POLICY

On Saturday, March 14, in the Colombian city of Cali, two American citizens 
were shot to death. They had been negotiating with FARC leftist guerrillas 
for the release of their kidnapped father. U.S. authorities in Colombia 
learned of the killings but issued no statement. Indeed, they did not even 
inform their newly installed superior, Otto Reich, assistant secretary of 
state for inter-American affairs.

I was told about the killings last Wednesday by Congressional sources, who 
had been alerted Tuesday by a U.S. Embassy official in Bogota. I contacted 
Reich, who was traveling with President Bush in Latin America. It was the 
first Reich knew of the killings seven days earlier, and he was not happy 
about being in the dark.

Colombian police, following the U.S. Embassy's example, said nothing 
publicly. One police official told congressional contacts in Washington 
that the embassy "suppressed" news of the killings. State Department 
officials informed me this was part of internal drug wars-- contradicting 
Colombian police sources. A U.S. drug enforcement officer said the brothers 
were "party to" a money-laundering investigation, possibly as witnesses and 
informants. Whatever the truth, the U.S. government kept the murder of 
American citizens under cover.

This fits a pattern established during the Clinton administration and 
continued by the Bush administration's Clinton holdovers in Latin American 
policy positions. Since 1990, 73 American citizens have been taken hostage 
in Colombia (more than 50 by narco-terrorist guerrillas). Since 1995, 12 
have been murdered. These atrocities go unmentioned as the United States 
minimizes the tragedy of a Western Hemisphere neighbor left prostrate by 
terrorists.

The 11th and 12th murders stemmed from the FARC kidnapping last Dec. 20 in 
Colombia of an American citizen held for ransom. His sons, Jaime Raul 
Orejuela, 30, and Jose Alberto Orejuela, 28, residents of Fort Lauderdale, 
Fla., arrived in Cali March 13 to negotiate the release of Jaime Sr. One 
day later, as the brothers left a fast-food restaurant, motorcycle-riding 
gunmen shot them in the back.

The Orejuela family once dominated the Cali drug cartel, but Colombian 
police sources say it is not clear how the two murdered brothers and their 
father were related to major drug kingpins. A State Department spokesman 
said Jaime Sr. was indicted in a 1992 U.S. drug case, but a Justice 
Department source found no such indictment. A police official told my 
congressional sources the killings followed a botched attempt to kidnap the 
brothers after ransom negotiations collapsed.

In response to my questions, the State Department said that the United 
States is "cooperating with Colombian authorities" in investigating the 
murders. In fact, the State Department has largely ignored Americans held 
prisoner and murdered in Colombia, dating back to three missionaries 
abducted by the FARC nine years ago and probably killed since then.

The missionaries' families have been frustrated in failing to receive a 
report needed to obtain death certificates. "These families have suffered 
enough and should not be held hostage to the bureaucratic indifference that 
would further delay this overdue notification," Chairman Dan Burton of the 
House Government Reform Committee wrote the State Department Dec. 15.

"Bureaucratic indifference" has been the watchword. With Reich's assumption 
of command delayed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, Clinton holdovers 
remain in key posts. News about the Cali killing was suppressed by the 
Bogota embassy on orders of Ambassador Anne Patterson, a career diplomat 
who held Latin American policy-making posts in the Clinton administration.

The decision at the White House Feb. 26 not to extend the war on terrorism 
to Colombia has yet to be reversed. On March 6, a bipartisan resolution was 
introduced by the Republican chairman and senior Democrat on the House 
International Relations Committee-- Representatives Henry Hyde of Illinois 
and Tom Lantos of California-- calling for a change in policy. "Any attack 
on an American citizen is an attack on America," George W. Bush has 
declared. So far, however, Colombia is excluded.
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