VIRTUAL TRUTH COMMISSION

Virtual Truth Commission

A. Joint US - Colombian Military Pogram

A1. Program Establishment 1989-1991

July 1989: U.S. State Department announced plans for subsidized sales of military equipment to Colombia, allegedly "for antinarcotics purposes." The training program for Colombian officers became the largest in the hemisphere, and U.S. military aid to Colombia in 1998 amounts to about half the total for the entire hemisphere. Colombia: Culture of Fear

1991. Colombia instituted secret Colombian military intelligence reorganization plan called Order 200-05/91 in which the military institutionalized the key role of civilians in its intelligence-gathering apparatus...Working under the direct orders of the military high command, paramilitary forces incorporated into intelligence networks conducted surveillance of legal opposition political figures and groups, operated with military units, then executed attacks against targets chosen by their military commanders......Human Rights Watch has also documented the disturbing role played by the United States in the military-paramilitary partnership. Despite Colombia’s disastrous human rights record, a U.S. Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) team [beginning in 1990] worked with Colombian military officers on the 1991 intelligence reorganization that resulted in the creation of killer networks that identified and killed civilians suspected of supporting guerrillas. Eyewitnesses have linked the new network run by the Colombian navy to the murders of at least fifty-seven people in and around the city of Barrancabermeja in 1992 and 1993, in incidents documented here. Human Rights Watch Report: Colombia’s Killer Networks--The Military-Paramilitary Partnership

A2. Paramilitary / Death Squad Operations

Assassination Squads in Colombia says CIA agents went to Colombia in 1991 to help the military to train undercover agents in anti-subversive activity. The paramilitaries terrorise remote rural areas such as the Antioquia region in northwest Colombia by staging public killings of suspected rebel sympathisers, many of whom are innocent.

U. S. Military aid to Colombian death squads. CLINTON ADMINISTRATION PROVIDED ARMS FOR SUPPRESSING DISSENT IN COLOMBIA. Leaked U.S. government documents show that the Clinton administration has been providing military aid to Colombian death squads that murder civilians. The Clinton administration has been denying such charges for more than two years.

Frank Smyth writes on current CIA activities resulting in death squads in Colombia: "Still seeing red: CIA fosters death squads in Colombia" in the June 1998 edition of The Progressive.

Two key elements sustain paramilitary activities within the armed forces:

The "strategy of impunity": how the deeds of officers who ally with paramilitaries, brought to light again and again by the government’s civilian investigators, are systematically covered up by the military justice system, allowing these same officers to return to the field and continue their work of organizing, directing, and deploying paramilitary groups. The military high command is complicit in paramilitary atrocities and should be held accountable for them. Human Rights Watch: Colombia’s Killer Networks--The Military-Paramilitary Partnership
Promotions of participants: Far from being punished, the junior and mid-level officers who tolerated, planned, directed, and even took part in paramilitary violence in Colombia in the 1980s have been promoted and rewarded and now occupy the highest positions in the Colombian army. To be sure, a few, linked to well-publicized cases, have been forced into retirement or dismissed. But many more have been awarded medals for distinguished service and lead Colombia’s troops. As commanders, they have not only promoted, encouraged, and protected paramilitary groups, but have used them to provide intelligence and assassinate and massacre Colombians suspected of being guerrilla allies. In fact, many victims community and peasant leaders, trade unionists, and human rights monitors among them have no ties to guerrillas, but have been trapped in a conflict where few wear uniforms or admit their rank. Colombia’s Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership

Corporations and Human Rights for corporate complicity in human rights violations. October 1998, European Parliament debated charges against British Petroleum of complicity in human rights abuses in Colombia through the financing of units of the armed forces of Colombia to protect a jointly owned pipeline. The parliament passed a resolution condemning BP for funding death squads in Colombia. The following day, the company denied all allegations and appeared prepared to take an uncompromising position.

A3. Intelligence Activities

Role of Paramilitaries. In one interview, a retired army major described paramilitaries as the principal source” of army intelligence Colombia’s Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership

20th Intelligence Brigade, Colombia, being dismantled in 1998 following accusations of repeated human rights abuses, and a US decision to deny a visa to former 20th Brigade head Gen. Ivan Ramirez Quintero. [Agencia Informativa Pulsar 5/25/98; El Diario-La Prensa 5/25/98 from AFP] "Hundreds of US Troops Train in Colombia Despite Ban" , Weekly News Update on the Americas, #435, 5/31/98, published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, Site 1 and Site 2. . Write to WNU

Ramirez Qintero, Gen. Ivan, former head of Colombia's 20th Brigade. Ramirez, called a "terrorist" by the US, responded in a May 24 interview with Radio Caracol that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had advised the brigade. CIA agents and US military people "were in Colombia, knew all about the state security organizations' intelligence systems, and now they criticize the actions of these groups," he said. "In the 1960s there was a permanent intelligence adviser, in the 1970s the CIA was there... I met all the CIA heads, until two or three years ago." [Agencia Informativa Pulsar 5/25/98; El Diario-La Prensa 5/25/98 from AFP] "Hundreds of US Troops Train in Colombia Despite Ban" Weekly News Update on the Americas, #435, 5/31/98, published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, Site 1 and Site 2. . Write to WNU.

A4. Provision of Military Equipment

Since 1990, the year a U.S. commission of advisors drafted recommendations for Colombia’s military intelligence reorganization, U.S. weaponry provided to the Colombian army and navy has included 2,020 M9 pistols, 426 M16A2 rifles, 945 M60E3 machine guns, and 255 shotguns, as well as various military vehicles and communication equipment. The year 1991, when the Colombian military’s intelligence reorganization plan was implemented, was a banner one for U.S. arms shipments to Colombia: 10,000 M14 rifles, 700 M16 rifles, 623 M79 grenade launchers, 325 M60 machine guns, 26,000 60mm rifle grenades, 20,000 40mm rifle grenades, 37,000 hand grenades, 3,000 Claymore mines, and about fifteen million rounds of rifle ammunition. Human Rights Watch: Colombia’s Killer Networks--The Military-Paramilitary Partnership

U.S. military authorities have provided weapons ostensibly to fight drugs to Colombian military units with a record of serious and continuing human rights violations and has failed to establish appropriate screening mechanisms to ensure that U.S. aid is not used to commit these violations. According to a U.S. government report, U.S. military aid has gone to the First, Third, Fifth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Brigades, Mobile Brigades One and Two, and the Tarqui, Jose Hilario Lopez, Numancia, Luciano D’Elhuyar, Ricuarte, Palace, and La Popa Battalions. All are implicated in serious human rights violations, including violations associated with paramilitaries, some described in this report.... Another U.S. government report revealed that in 1994 U.S. training and equipment went to Mobile Brigade One and the Fourth Division in Meta; the Third Brigade in Cali; the Fourth Brigade in Medellin; the Sixth Brigade in Ibague; the Eighth Brigade in Armenia, Valle; the Ninth Brigade in Neiva; the Eleventh Brigade in Antioquia; the Sixteenth Brigade in Yopal and Arauca; and three Special Forces units. All of these units are primarily devoted to fighting guerrillas and most have been implicated in human rights violations....Massacres committed by just one of the units that received U.S. military aid, the Palace Battalion, took the lives of at least 120 people since 1990, killings that remain largely unpunished. All told, at least twenty-four Colombian army units comprising a significant percentage of total troop strength have received U.S. weaponry ostensibly to fight drugs. Human Rights Watch: Colombia’s Killer Networks--The Military-Paramilitary Partnership

A5. Training -- School of the Americas

School of the Americas Graduates (Notorious): Colombia

At a press conference in July 1998, Congressman Kennedy showed a video of Colombian soliders beating unarmed farmers participating in a peaceful protest and then turning on camerman Richard Velez, who described his ordeal during the news conference. The soldiers, operating under the command of SOA graduate Nestor Ramirez, left Velez with serious internal injuries. He fled the country as a result of death threats after the attack and has been granted asylum in the U.S. "Colombian Human Rights Abuses Tied to School of Americas Graduates, Wednesday, July 29, 1998

According to the report by the human and civil rights organization Latin America Working Group, almost 40 high-ranking Colombian military officers who attended the School of the Americas have been linked to murders, massacres, disappearances, tortures, and other abuses of Colombian civilians. Among the most notorious graduates is Paucelino Latorre Gamboa, commander of the infamous 20th Brigade, which was implicated in the February 1998 murders of three human rights activists: attorney Eduardo Umana, Medellin Human Rights Committee Chairman Jesus Maria Valle, and political activist Maria Aranga. The Colombian government disbanded the unit in late May after it acknowledged the brigade's involvement in those murders as well as other grave human rights violations, including the May 1998 illegal assault on the offices of the Catholic human rights group Justicia y Paz during which solders held guns to the heads of nuns and other workers and ransacked office files. "Colombian Human Rights Abuses Tied to School of Americas Graduates, Wednesday, July 29, 1998

The Latin America Working Group's report, "The School of the Americas & Colombia: A Dishonor Roll" identified SOA graduates as some of the principal architects of military-paramilitary collaboration in Colombia today. Of 247 military personnel linked in the definitive Colombia human rights report to human rights violations, 124 were SOA graduates. "This report shows the close correspondence between SOA graduates and some of the most horrendous acts of violence in Colombia," said Lisa Haugaard of the Latin America Working Group. "It includes connections to three of the most prominent murders of human rights defenders in 1998." "Colombian Human Rights Abuses Tied to School of Americas Graduates, Wednesday, July 29, 1998

A6. Training -- JCET (Joint Combined Exchange Training in "counter-terrorism"

U. S. troops train Colombian troops despite congressional restrictions.

The Restrictions. Congressional restrictions bar military training because of human rights abuses and drug-related corruption. Under a State Department policy, US soldiers are only allowed to train Colombian units that have been cleared of involvement in human rights abuses. Training was further restricted by the US "decertification" of Colombia in 1996 and 1997 because of the Colombian government failure to meet US standards for fighting the drug trade.
The Ploy. To send hundreds of U S Army Special Froces soldiers to Colombia to train Colombian troops engaged in a civil war with leftist guerrilas, the US government has been using a 1991 law. The training, including "counterterrorism," is done under the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET), a program in which the training is supposedly for the benefit of the US soldiers. The same ploy was used for 41 training exercises with Indonesia in the past seven years despite congressional restrictions based on human rights abuses by the Indonesian military. According to the Special Operations Command of the Southern Command, there were 28 Special Forces deployments in 1996 under JCET, and 29 deployments involving 319 US troops in fiscal 1997. About 24 deployments involving 274 US troops are planned for fiscal year 1998, according to the Special Operations Command. Most of the trainers will come from the 7th Special Operations Group based at Fort Bragg, NC, or from the Navy SEALS. "Hundreds of US Troops Train in Colombia Despite Ban" , Weekly News Update on the Americas, #435, 5/31/98, published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, Site 1 and Site 2. . Write to WNU

Foreign troops trained by U. S. Special Froces: "[F]rom Colombia to Indonesia, our Special Forces have trained foreign troops without regard for who they are or whether they turn around and torture and shoot pro-democracy students," says Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT). "You have to understand we're fighting this war on behalf of the United States," Colombian armed forces head Gen. Manuel Jose Bonett told the Washington Post. "We're fighting for you," he said. "Given the limitations our military has, instead of criticizing us, you should see us as heroes." Weekly News Update on the Americas, #435, 5/31/98, published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, Site 1 and Site 2. . Write to WNU

A7. Counter-narcotics vs. Counter-insurgency

Aug. 19, 1998: Ted Robberson reports in Dallas Morning News that US intelligence and anti-narcotics sources say the Clinton administration has responded to an offensive by leftist rebels in Colombia by launching a multimillion-dollar covert program to support the Colombian armed forces...The progarm involves:

"Strategic redeployment", according to a US embassy spokesman, of all US personnel working under government contract in the zone of conflict since the rebel offensive began on Aug. 3.
US Special Forces participating in training exercises with Colombian soldiers under a Pentagon exchange program in existence since 1991. US officials said those US troops have not been assigned to combat roles, but are authorized to fight if fired upon. Legal restrictions bar other active-duty US military personnel from deployment in zones of conflict.
Avoiding restrictions which bar other active-duty U. S. military personnel from deployment in zones of conflict by hiring retired Green Berets and other private contractors to carry out sensitive jungle operations. Robberson cites several sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying that tens of millions in US taxpayer dollars are going into covert operations across southern Colombia employing, among others, US Special Forces, former Green Berets, Gulf War veterans and even a few figures from covert operations backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Central America during the 1980s. Some have been involved in direct combat with Colombian guerrillas, the sources said.
Use of personnel employed under a State Department contract with Dyncorp and East Inc., private firms based in suburban Washington. Officials of both companies said they were not permitted to discuss their operations in Colombia and referred all questions to the State Department. While the companies officially provide pilot training and technical support for coca and poppy eradication flights, one pilot said he had conducted a number of missions that went well beyond that scope, including assisting in the deployment of Colombian counterinsurgency troops. Two US pilots working for East Inc. were killed on July 27 near a military base at San Jose del Guaviare: the deaths are still under investigation...One US reporter who sought to talk to Dyncorp pilots at San Jose del Guaviare said he was threatened with banishment from the US Embassy if he ever tried to approach Dyncorp personnel again. "Of course they have to keep it secret," said an intelligence operative in Bogota who asked not to be identified. "They're up to a lot of things that they shouldn't be." He did not elaborate. [DMN 8/19/98]
On Aug. 20, a day after the article appeared, a State Department spokesperson issued a denial: "These contractors are not mercenaries," she said. "They are not engaged in counterinsurgency operations or any other activity not fully sanctioned by the US Congress and the executive branch." The Defense Department said in a statement that it has "no covert counterinsurgency program in Colombia" and that the Pentagon "employs no ex-military personnel, private contractors or mercenaries to conduct any covert counterinsurgency program in Colombia." The CIA declined to comment. "We don't discuss covert actions or activities," a spokesperson said. [DMN 8/21/98]
Source: "U. S. Covert Program Exposed in Colombia" , Weekly News Update on the Americas, #447, 8/23/98, published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, Site 1 and Site 2. . Write to Weekly News Update
In the July 29, 1999 Raleigh NC News and Observer, retired soldier Stan Goff (Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Zenezuela, Honduras, Somalia, Haiti, most recently with 3rd Special Forces) writes that US support for "counter-narcotics" efforts is a cover for counter-insurgency. While the enemy FARC are supported to the tuen of $600 million per year through narcotics sales, "those who profit the most by the drug trade are members of the armed forces, the police, government officials and the big businessmenof the urban centers." Goff writes that US foreign policy is motivated by desire to protect billions of dollars in markets for US products in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America. While Colombia has a democratic facade, behind the facade the most egregious and systematic human rights violations currently taking place in this hemisphere are occurring, with right wing paramilitgaries, supported and coordinated by the official security forces, engaged in torture, public decapitations, massacres, destruction of land and livestock, and forced dislocations. Source: Point of View: 'Narco-guerrillas': alibi for intervention

B. Impact of Multi-national Oil Companies

In Casanare department, the location of the Cusiana-Cupiagua oil fields developed by British Petroleum, ECOPETROL, Total, and Triton, contracts came up for renewal in June, as military, paramilitary, guerrilla, and criminal activity increased in the area. The renegotiated contracts between the companies and the Ministry of Defense restructured the flow of funds to avoid direct company payments to state security forces. Payments for security were to be made to the state-owned ECOPETROL as a conduit to the Defense Ministry instead of directly from the companies to the army. At the time of this writing, the oil companies still made direct payments to the National Police. There were also some substantive changes in the contracts. BP, the only consortium member with a human rights policy, reported that human rights clauses were included in the new contract; an auditing mechanism was implemented to monitor the flow of funds; and a committee was established to monitor the performance of the military units providing security for the companies. Human Rights Watch could not assess the effectiveness of these programs because the contract was still not available to third parties. There was apparently no mechanism to ensure that the personnel guarding these installations would be screened for human rights violations. The conduct of private security providers for the BP-led consortium continued to be a problem in 1998. Following allegations in 1997 that the consortium’s private security firm, Defense Systems Colombia (DSC), a subsidiary of the U.K.-based Defense Systems Limited (DSL), had imported arms into the country and trained Colombian National Police (PONAL) in counterinsurgency techniques, a government inquiry was launched to determine the role of this company and the police. DSC refused to cooperate with the investigation. In September 1998, BP reported that it had formed an oversight committee to monitor its private security providers, was developing a code of conduct for DSC, and had urged the company to cooperate fully with the government. At this writing, DSC remained uncooperative. Despite the allegations against DSC and its refusal to cooperate with the government investigation, BP renewed its contract with DSC for one more year. In October, new allegations that DSC and a Israeli private security firm, Silver Shadow, had contemplated providing arms and intelligence services for the Colombian military while they were security contractors for the Ocensa pipeline. Reports alleged that DSC had set up intelligence networks to monitor individuals opposed to the company. BP steadfastly denied these claims and suspended a senior security official while investigating these allegations. The day after these allegations were published, the ELN reportedly blew up the Ocensa pipeline, killing sixty civilians and injuring dozens more. The act of targeting pipelines has been condemned by Human Rights Watch as a violation of the Geneva Conventions and causing unacceptable hardships on civilian populations caught in the middle of Colombia’s decades-old internal conflict. Corporations and Human Rights, a survey by Human Rights Corporation as part of their World Report 1999.
C. Program Impact: Displacement

August 21, 1998: Rural people displaced by the violence in Colombia met President Andres Pastrana today, amid allegations that the paramilitary groups which forced them to flee their homes were funded by transnational mining concerns

Eight delegates representing some 5,000 displaced people, mainly refugees in the northeastern city of Barrancabermeja, met Pastrana to explain the situation they had been suffering for the last two months. The rural people, from the northern department of Bolivar, said they were forced to leave their homes under threats from paramilitary groups who considered them guerrilla collaborators. After a two-hour meeting, agreement was reached to start a process to document complaints and proposals from the displaced people in Barracabermeja tomorrow. Pastrana asked the representatives for "a little patience," saying the problem they faced would not be easy to solve.
Internal displacement is one of the main problems caused by the conflict, said Almudena Mazarraza, director of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees office in Colombia. Various reports state more than a million Colombians have been forced from their homes by war in the last decade. According to Colombia's Silent Crisis, a report released in April by the U.S. Committee for Refugees, all of the displaced, mostly women and children, are victims of one or more of the three major armed groups in Colombia --the military, paramilitary forces which have been linked to the army and the land-owning elite, and the three guerrilla groups.
"Colombia is being ripped apart, its people butchered and uprooted, by sweeping brutal violence associated with multiple conflicts, rampant institutionalized human rights abuse, impunity, and efforts by private groups, including narco-traffickers to expand their economic power and lawlessness," says the report's author, Hiram Ruiz.
Source: "Transnationals allegedly fund paramilitary groups," Friday, 21 Aug, 1998; Colombia Bulletin, from Colombia Support Network; E-mail to csn@igc.apc.org or from Colombia Labor Monitor;

C. Re-defining the Enemy

C1. Miners

On July 23, [1998] dozens of campesinos and miners from northern Colombia began camping out near the gates of the US embassy in Bogota to protest US support for paramilitary violence, which they say is protecting the interests of multinational mining companies. "Colombians Protest US Support for Paramilitaries", from Weekly News Update on the Americas #443, 7/26/98, Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499

The rural people complained that multinationals running gold mines in the south of the department of Bolivar were responsible for creating and funding the paramilitary groups which expelled them from their homes. The delegation provided no names, but indicated that U.S. and British companies were backing the paramilitary groups in order to take over the mineral-rich lands of local people by intimidation. "Transnationals allegedly fund paramilitary groups," Friday, 21 Aug, 1998; Colombia Bulletin, from Colombia Support Network; E-mail to csn@igc.apc.org or from Colombia Labor Monitor;

C2. Legal Opposition

In its report, Human Rights Watch presents evidence demonstrating that the surveillance of legal political groups appears to be among the prime duties assigned to military intelligence, which has apparently used paramilitaries to gather information and later act on it by threatening and killing people. In one interview, a retired army major described paramilitaries as the "principal source” of army intelligence." Colombia’s Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership

Colombia - Page 2

Virtual Truth Commission: Telling the Truth for a Better America
Home Page | Countries | Multinationals | Names | Dates | Topics | Allies
El Salvador | Guatemala | Honduras | Mexico
Colombia -1 | Colombia - 2 | Colombia SOA Atrocities | Death at Curumani
Sign Guestbook | View Guestbook | Translation Service

Subscribe to the Colombia Support Network. To subscribe to CSN-L, send this request to listserv@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu: SUB CSN-L Firstname Lastname. Direct questions or comments about CSN-L to csncu@prairienet.org

Titles "Virtual Truth Commission" and "Telling the Truth for a Better America" © 1998, Jackson H. Day. All Rights Reserved.
This site is the endeavor of one person. As he finds them, links to published material on the web are provided by country, date, and name. This will start small but hopefully increase in usefulness over time. Others are encouraged to start similar web sites. Reference from these pages all that you wish that is not copyright; the more sites that contain this material, the more it will enter into public consciousness and make a positive difference for change.
Contact Jack Day, Webmaster

Updated September 25, 1999

This page hosted by Get your own, Free Homepage