Pubdate: Sun, 06 Jun 2004 Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL) Copyright: 2004 The Sun-Times Co. Contact: http://www.suntimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/81 Author: Frank Main, Crime Reporter Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) DRUG TEAM HUNTS CHICAGO'S HEROIN SOURCE BOGOTA, Colombia - Ask Alejandro what guerrillas here think of Americans, and an uncomfortable smile spreads across his baby face. "We wanted to kill the gringos," the 18-year-old said. Alejandro chuckled at the irony. He was a soldier in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a 40-year-old group that grows and sells much of the cocaine and heroin that make their way to Chicago's neighborhoods and streets. But FARC's leaders - narco-traffickers now less interested in communist ideology than in women, cigars and whiskey paid for with U.S. dollars - hate Americans because we have provided the Colombian government with billions of dollars to fight the drug war here. "They talked about equality in Colombia, but they really are looking for money for themselves," said Alejandro, whose life is in jeopardy because he defected from the 18,000-member guerrilla army. The irony is not lost on U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, either. Hyde (R-Ill.) is alarmed that the Chicago area has ranked No. 1 among U.S. cities in heroin deaths and emergency room visits. He also is alarmed that money from drug sales in Chicago is returning to Colombia, where U.S. citizens and Colombians alike are targets of FARC and other terrorist groups. Bogota is perched 9,000 feet atop a plateau. Planes struggle to climb over the cloud-shrouded mountains that encircle the city of 9 million people. It is a city where Americans stay on their guard. One night, Risley and the rest of the Chicago contingent drove into the hills of Bogota in armored sport-utility vehicles to the U.S. ambassador's residence, a sprawling white estate overlooking the lights of the city. The capital was jittery because FARC was celebrating its 40th anniversary and attacks were feared. Safe in the heavily protected mansion, the gathering dined on empanadas and sipped whiskey as reports came in about two bombings in Bogota and a "mini-riot" in Cali. No matter where you are in Bogota -- even in the ambassador's house or at an upscale restaurant -- the terror cells financed by the FARC are a constant threat. Last year, FARC members tossed grenades into the Bogota Beer Company and Palos de Moguer pubs in the swank Zona Rosa, where embassy employees, off-duty soldiers and journalists hang out. The attack killed one person and wounded 72, including an American Airlines pilot from Florida. Kidnappings are a constant worry. But under hard-line President Alvaro Uribe, they are happening less frequently, along with political killings and attacks on villages by FARC and the illegal paramilitary groups that view FARC as a mortal enemy. Life in FARC FARC's drug pipeline to Chicago starts in camps where soldiers like Alejandro live. He joined FARC three years ago when he was 15. A buddy recruited him. He learned to use a .50-caliber machine-gun and an assault rifle, and he fought against the military. In jungle camps in the southwest part of the country, where cocaine is the chief industry, he was tutored in Marxist ideology. "All they talked about was the inequality of society," said Alejandro, whose last name is not being used to protect his identity. But life in FARC was decidedly unequal. "Julian," commander of FARC's 29th Front, lived in a house packed with conveniences. He was fond of lounging on a cabin cruiser "with girls on it all the time," Alejandro said, adding that Julian sent his family to Venezuela where they would be safer. FARC soldiers like Alejandro cultivated drug plots and transported raw materials to drug labs, but never were invited into Julian's home. They lived in tents. He grew to detest the leaders, who orchestrated kangaroo courts that handed down death sentences against his friends. One day, he mustered the courage to escape. He walked to the home of a woman who gave him civilian clothes. It took him 12 hours to hike to the nearest town in Narino province, where he surrendered to police. "They didn't believe me," he chuckled. "My weapon was in a bag on my back. I said, 'Hello, how are you?' and he said, 'Who are you?' and I said, 'I am a guerrilla.' And he said, 'What in the world are you doing here?' " Two FARC guerrillas were ordered to kill Alejandro, but they decided to escape, too. They were killed trying. Another guerrilla who escaped passed on the news to Alejandro, he said. The aerial war Soldiers like Alejandro often came into contact with Colombian police through the U.S.-backed aerial drug eradication program. Planes piloted by the Colombian National Police and U.S. contractors spray a chemical used in the popular herbicide, Roundup, onto coca leaves, from which cocaine is extracted, and onto fields of poppies, which contain the opium used in making heroin. Alejandro recalls spreading molasses on the coca leaves to protect them from the spraying. "We would shoot at them but never saw them drop," he said of the planes, adding that he was soaked with herbicide a few times while standing in the coca fields. Often, however, the guerrillas' aim is true. Three U.S. contractors -- Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes -- have been held captive by FARC guerrillas for more than a year. Authorities believe FARC shot down their single-engine Cessna as they searched for illegal drug activity in the jungles of southern Colombia. Their photos are on display in the lobby of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota with a banner that says, "You Are Not Forgotten." But U.S. officials say they are not negotiating with FARC for the pilots' release because the government does not deal with terrorists. Colombian National Police aircraft frequently are shot at by FARC members and by paramilitary groups that also control territory where coca and poppy fields are cultivated. Col. Carlos Malavar, head of the Colombian National Police aviation operation in Bogota, pointed out bullet holes that have riddled the wings of one of his DC-3s. The holes have been patched with sheet metal. "I've stopped counting," Malavar said when asked how many times his planes have been struck. The Chicago area cops met Capt. Jairo Carrera at a Colombian police hospital in Bogota where he has been recovering after crashing his helicopter into a mountain. Carrera was flying a mission over poppy fields when FARC guerrillas shot him down. Another chopper rescued him, and he has spent the last 1-1/2 years recuperating. "I will fly again," said the 28-year-old officer, whose wife flies an airplane for the Colombian National Police. The Colombian military also fights the FARC, but drug trafficking is not the focus of its efforts. Cutting down the fields Planes sprayed nearly 7,400 acres of poppies last year, and more than 2,200 more were destroyed by hand -- more than in 2002 or 2001, according to U.S. estimates. But more than 22,800 acres were destroyed in 2000, the peak of poppy eradication efforts. The coca-spraying program is much larger: The coca acreage destroyed last year was almost 35 times larger than the eradicated poppy crop. Coca destruction is increasingly successful, U.S. officials say. "We're beyond the tipping point," said James K. Foster, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. "We're winning the war." Still, Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, sent a letter Nov. 5 to the U.S. drug czar, John P. Walters, arguing the United States should do more to destroy poppy fields by hand. Hyde told Walters that heroin was a crucial problem facing his constituents, noting sky-high heroin abuse figures in the Chicago area. Aerial spraying for poppies is difficult because they are grown in small patches high in the mountains under almost constant cloud cover - -- as opposed to coca, which is grown in large plots in jungle clearings. Hyde said he supports a plan to put FARC defectors like Alejandro to work cutting down poppy fields with weed trimmers and machetes. More than 4,000 members of FARC have "demobilized" in recent years, and the Colombian government is training them to return to legitimate society. "I will go back into that area on any operation for the government," said Alejandro, who faces death if he is ever caught by FARC operatives. Hyde is fighting to supply three DC-3 aircraft -- which only need a runway as long as a football field -- to the Colombian National Police to ferry officers and FARC defectors to remote mountain areas where they can cut down poppy fields. Another front The United States, which has provided more than $2.5 billion in aid to Colombia since 2000, also is fighting to seize drug shipments, destroy drug labs here and dismantle the cartels sending drugs abroad. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, under threat of assassination, are paired with Colombian National Police officers to screen passengers and cargo leaving major airports here for Miami, New York and Europe. Three of the agents here are former Chicago Police officers. They all plan on coming back some day. "Nothing will faze us," said one of them, a former Belmont District patrol officer. Another DEA agent -- stationed on Colombia's rugged west coast where traffickers load "go-fast" speed boats with dope and deliver it to fishing trawlers bound for Mexico -- said he cannot take the roads there because of the risk of being kidnapped or killed at a FARC checkpoint. "It is deadly," said the former Los Angeles cop, who only travels to the coast by small aircraft or helicopter. The DEA's efforts in Colombia have led to a major U.S. indictment unsealed in May against the Norte Valle Cartel, a collection of small drug rings based in a valley between Cali and Medellin. Among the fugitives charged in the indictment are Wilbur Alirio Varela and Diego Leon Montoya-Sanchez. Varela, reputed to have killed 250 people, is now at war with Montoya-Sanchez for control of the empire, officials here said. Colombia is facing a fourth generation of drug traffickers following the marijuana cartels of the 1970s; the murderous Medellin cartel that the late Pablo Escobar ran in the 1980s, and the Cali and Norte Valle cartels that were more discreet in their use of violence, said Col. Oscar A. Naranjo Trujillo, director of the Central Judicial Police in Colombia. "There is no showboating anymore," he said. "It's all business." U.S. Ambassador William B. Wood, at the party for the Chicago area cops at his Bogota residence, said the fight against Colombian drug traffickers is critical for U.S. cities like Chicago. "If you want to change life in the streets of America, one of the places you do it is Colombia," Wood told the Sun-Times. "In 2001, more American citizens died from drugs coming from Colombia than died in the World Trade Center towers. That is why we have the largest embassy in the world here. We have a strong ally in Colombia, and we are crazy if we don't take advantage of it." Buying a high on W. Side starts with trip out of jungle Much of the drugs that end up in Chicago come from the lush jungles and cloud-shrouded spires of Colombia. Cocaine is extracted from coca leaves. The pods of red poppy flowers, which flourish at more than 10,000 feet, contain a milky gum that is turned into heroin. The gum from poppy pods is worth up to 1 million pesos a kilogram -- or $3,700. "We would send it to Cali in vehicles and on mules," said Alejandro, an ex-soldier with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which grows poppies and coca to fund its operations. By the time Colombian heroin reaches Chicago by Mexican shipping and trucking routes -- or by couriers traveling to U.S. airports -- it's worth at least $75,000 a kilogram (2.2 pounds) wholesale. Coke is worth up to $22,000 a kilo. Almost all heroin leaving Bogota goes to the United States, while most of the cocaine leaving the capital winds up in Europe. The trends are different in Cali and other cities, officials say. Colombian heroin is so pure compared with heroin from Afghanistan and Mexico that U.S. teens have begun to snort it instead of shooting it into their veins with a needle. Police in DuPage County say affluent high schoolers drive to the West Side to score heroin. Some get hooked and overdose. The latest U.S. statistics on drug abuse show there were 220 heroin-related emergency-room visits in the Chicago area in 2002 and 352 heroin-related deaths in 2001 -- the most in the country. One reason: Chicago is the Midwestern drug hub. Baltimore was a close second with 349 deaths and 203 emergency-room visits. New York had the third highest level of hospital visits, with 173. Though drug agents think most heroin coming to Chicago is from Colombia, they are closely watching Asia, too. "They are storing tons of heroin in Asia," said Richard Sanders, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Chicago. "I think that is the next big problem for Chicago." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek