'91 U.S. Report Calls Colombian Leader Ally of Drug Lords -NYT

[goforit]

"'91 U.S. Report Calls Colombian Leader Ally of Drug Lords"

By JUAN FORERO

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/international/americas/02colo.html?pagewanted=all>

Published: August 2, 2004


BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Aug. 1 - A recently declassified American intelligence report from 1991 says that President Álvaro Uribe, now a staunch ally in Washington's war against drug trafficking, was at that time a close associate of Colombia's most powerful drug lord and an ardent ally of the cocaine traffickers then engulfing this country.

A spokesman for Mr. Uribe denounced the findings in the 13-year-old report, by the Defense Intelligence Agency, on Colombia's biggest drug traffickers as "the same information" presented in a smear campaign by political opponents in the 2002 presidential election. Senior American intelligence officials and diplomats cautioned that such reports might not be accurate. However, the statement issued by the spokesman for the president did not directly address the report's most damaging assertion: that Mr. Uribe was linked to the top drug kingpin of the era, Pablo Escobar.

The report, dated Sept. 23, 1991, and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archives, a private, nonpartisan research group based in Washington, says Mr. Uribe, then a senator from the northern state of Antioquia, was "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel at high government levels."

The report, which the archives is making public on Monday, calls Mr. Uribe a "close personal friend" of the cartel's leader, Mr. Escobar, and says Mr. Uribe took part in the drug lord's successful efforts to secure a seat as an auxiliary congressman. It said Mr. Uribe was linked to an unidentified business involved in narcotics in the United States, that as a senator he opposed extraditing traffickers to the United States and that his father, Alberto Uribe, was killed because of his drug ties.

CON'T.................

[TahitiNut]

1. I'm shocked, shocked there's gambling going on here!

Gee, an ambitious politician who's friendly with the guy who's has control of the country's largest single import and biggest contributor to Colombia's GNP? Go figure. Maybe Uribe just wanted to survive long enough to hold higher office?

It's just business, after all. Where there's a market, there will be a supplier. When the risk goes up, so do the profits.

I don't know of any product that someone could grown in their own back yard that would yield major profits for a supplier without being made illegal. It's laws that make such products profitable, draconian laws that limit the number of suppliers and heavily penalize do-it-yourselfers. Is it any wonder that suppliers would be collaborators with 'friendly' lawmakers? :shrug:

[aneerkoinos]

2. Search Narconews

Al Giordano did a lot of in depth articles on Uribe's narco connections at the time his election.

http://www.narconews.com

[Voltaire99]

3. Pay no attention to that '91 report behind the curtain.

The g-great and p-powerful Establishment has spoken!

Meanwhile, Kerry should end his shameful support for the drug war. We need to abandon that failed savage policy which has cost us so much in lives and money.