Afghanistan? DynCorp? Record poppy yields? Naah, that's crazy talk. Gotta be a coincidence.
But there's that business down in Colombia....DynCorp's Drug ProblemJason Vest
The Nation
July 10, 2001Could the State Department's antidrug contractors in South America possibly be dabbling in narcotics trafficking? A key part of the U.S.'s $1.3 billion contribution to Plan Colombia -- the scheme that will supposedly expedite the end of Colombia's civil war -- calls for the use of private contractors (as opposed to actual U.S. military assets) to fly airborne missions against both the fields that grow coca and poppy and the labs that process them. While some contractors, like Aviation Development Corporation of Montgomery, Alabama, fly surveillance missions for the CIA, those that fly on retainer for other U.S. government agencies are a bit more expansive in their missions.
Consulting giant DynCorp's private pilots in the Andes fly everything from fixed-wing fumigation runs to helicopter-borne interdiction missions ferrying troops into hot spots. If you take DynCorp's word for it, any notion of the organization's being involved in drug trafficking is ludicrous. "Whether or not you believe this, we are a very ethical company," said a senior DynCorp official, who insisted on being quoted off the record. "We take steps to make sure the people we hire are ethical."
Yet the existence of a document that The Nation recently obtained (under the Freedom of Information Act) from the Drug Enforcement Administration -- combined with the unwillingness of virtually any U.S. or Colombian government agency to elaborate on the document -- has some in Washington and elsewhere wondering if, like virtually every other entity charged with fighting the drug war, DynCorp might have a bad apple or two in its barrel. According to a monthly DEA intelligence report from last year, officers of Colombia's National Police force intercepted and opened, on May 12, 2000, a U.S.-bound Federal Express package at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport. The parcel "contained two (2) small bottles of a thick liquid" that "had the same consistency as motor oil." The communiqué goes on to report that the liquid substance
"tested positive for heroin" and that the "alleged heroin laced liquid weighed approximately 250 grams." (Freebase heroin, it bears noting, is soluble in motor oil, and can therefore be extracted without much trouble.)
But perhaps the most intriguing piece of information in the DEA document is the individual to whom it reports that the package belonged: an unnamed employee of DynCorp, who was sending the parcel to the company's Andean operations headquarters at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida.
More interesting still is the reluctance of DynCorp and the government to provide substantial details in support of their contention that this situation isn't really what it seems.
http://www.alternet.org/story/11162DynCorp: Beyond the Rule of LawDespite the fact that a company contracted by the US government to carry out its program of fumigating and eradicating coca crops in Colombia has been
caught smuggling heroin out of the country, no attempts have been made to bring it to justice. For more than a year the Office of Prosecutions has failed to render a decision on the case, while the police official responsible for setting the whole process in motion has since retired from active duty. This is not the first time a case against DynCorp employees has disappeared in the labyrinth known as Colombia's judicial system.
On May 12, 2000, according to an official US Drug Enforcement Administration document obtained by The Nation magazine under the Freedom of Information Act,
Colombian police intercepted a parcel sent from DynCorp's Colombia offices to its air base in Florida.Colombian authorities discovered two small bottles of a thick liquid in a package which, when tested, was found to be
laced with heroin worth more than $100,000. When authorities discovered the name of the company responsible for shipping the heroin they turned the results of the 'narcotest' over to the Immediate Reaction Unit, which then set into motion prosecution procedure 483064. However, the heroin bust remained a secret for more than a year until The Nation began its investigation and
now it seems the evidence has simply disappeared.
http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/Solidarity%206/dyncorp.html
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