Pubdate: Mon, 25 Mar 2002
Source: Daily News Journal  (TN)
Copyright: 2002 Mid-South Publishing Company
Contact:  http://dnj.midsouthnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1709
Note: Include name, address and phone number on LTEs
Author: Robert Novak

WAR ON TERROR EXCLUDES ACTS IN COLOMBIA

WASHINGTON - On Thursday, 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 travelling 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 not connected with terrorism, but 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 informers. 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 U.S. 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.

Secrecy and inattention surround the deaths. Associated Press Online 
reported the murders the day they were committed, attributing the news to 
"a Cali police official" talking "on condition of anonymity." The only 
American newspaper account was a one-paragraph AP report on page A-24 of 
the March 17 Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel.

In response to my questions, the State Department said that the U.S. is 
"cooperating with Colombian authorities" in investigating the murders. In 
fact, the State Department has 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 last 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 policymaking posts in the Clinton 
administration and was nominated for the Colombian post by Bill Clinton in 
his last months as president.

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 - Reps. 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.

(Robert Novak is author of "Inside Report" and a CNN political commentator.)
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens