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Jimmy Carter's Colombia Blacklist Revealed

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Washington, D.C., April 15, 2024 - A highly sensitive blacklist of allegedly corrupt Colombian officials assembled by the U.S. government and presented to Colombian President Alfonso López Michelsen in July 1977 as a way of gaining leverage over Colombian drug policy is the focus of a new Electronic Briefing Book published today by the National Security Archive. Located among records from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the full text of the secret intelligence dossier, including the names of some three dozen officials believed to have ties to the drug trade, is published here today for the first time.

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, who will be one hundred years old in October, is known around the world as the president who negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel, reached a major arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, signed the Panama Canal treaty, faced daunting foreign policy challenges in Iran and Afghanistan, and who has engaged in numerous acts of charity and goodwill in the 43 years since he left office. Less well known is President Carter's personal involvement—and that of his wife, First Lady Rosalynn Carter—in for the first time focusing U.S. policy toward Colombia on narcotrafficking and its corrupting influence among government officials, an issue that would come to define the relationship.

The episode culminated in Carter's authorization of what the CIA called an "unprecedented" briefing for President López in which he was presented with a dossier of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement information that linked "ministerial and judicial officials, military and law enforcement personnel, and other high-level figures" to the drug trade.

Key officials named in the document include the defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, the minister of labor, Óscar Montoya Montoya, and Col. Humberto Cardona Orozco, then the head of INDUMIL, a military weapons manufacturer run by the Colombian government (See Document 29). The most serious allegations—those against Varón, Montoya and presidential candidate Julio César Turbay, who became president later that year—were revealed in an April 1978 broadcast of the CBS television show 60 Minutes, which had obtained a copy of a June 1977 White House memo sent to President Carter by Peter Bourne, his chief narcotics adviser. Bourne had urged Carter to hold up the sale of three military helicopters to Colombia and attached a one-page summary of Colombian officials believed to be involved in cocaine trafficking, which was the focus of the 60 Minutes report. (See Document 11).

While a number of key documents from the episode have been declassified previously, including in the State Department's 2018 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volume, today's posting features several top-level documents from the Carter White House that have never before been published, including frank policy recommendations from key advisers. Some of the memos bear President Carter's own handwritten annotations advocating for tougher drug policies and a more confrontational approach on corruption. These include the extraordinary decision to assemble and deliver an intelligence briefing to the Colombian president.[1]

Some of these records were part of the Remote Archives Capture (RAC) program at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. The RAC was a security review activity dating back to 1995 during which the CIA, National Archives, and other U.S. agencies scanned hundreds of thousands of records from Presidential Libraries for sensitive material and, in many cases, provided declassified copies. The Carter RAC files were later obtained in bulk by the National Security Archive when the Carter Library made a large tranche available in digital form.

More than 2,500 additional high-level memos from the Carter White House, mined from the RAC collection, are now available in U.S. Foreign Policy in the Carter Years, 1977-1981: Highest-Level Memos to the President, the most recent collection added to the Digital National Security Archive series from ProQuest, part of Clarivate.

Highlights from today's posting include:

* * * * *

U.S. concern about high-level drug corruption in Colombia emerged early in the Carter administration, and a key moment occurred in late April 1977 when the President was apprised of intelligence on the rapidly increasing pace of Colombian cocaine smuggling. Carter's response, according to National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's April 27 memo to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was that the U.S. "should raise this officially and strongly with the Colombian Government." (Document 4)

President Carter's reaction set off a chain of events that after several months of preparations resulted in what the CIA said was an "unprecedented" high-level intelligence briefing in which the U.S. confronted the Colombian president, Alfonso López Michelsen, with information linking top Colombian officials—including two of his cabinet members, a leading presidential candidate, and ranking members of the security forces—to drug trafficking. (Document 29)

Revealed here for the first time, the long-hidden memo is a summary of information acquired by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement sources on narcotics corruption in the Colombian government and seems to address the Colombian president personally.[2] López is told that narcotics traffickers and their operations "are greatly facilitated by the cooperation and protection of influential Colombian officials" and that "further investigation by your Government would most valuable," especially in cases of "high-level figures."

The document lists some three dozen Colombian officials thought to have links to the illegal narcotics business, including prominent figures from political, judicial, law enforcement and military circles. The most well known person on the list, Julio César Turbay, who would go on to win the next election and serve as president from 1978-1982, is linked to narcotrafficking through his nephew, Anibal Turbay Bernal, who the report says is linked to narcotics traffickers who believed they would "be able to choose the heads of the Colombian law enforcement agencies should Julio Cesar Turbay become president."

Top Colombian officials named in the report include two members of López's cabinet: the Colombian defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, who the report says had "received narcotics and contraband payoffs," and the minister of labor, Óscar Montoya Montoya, who is said to "have discussed illicit traffic in cocaine and coffee" with a known narcotics trafficker. Another key military official singled out in the report is Col. Humberto Cardona Orozco, then the head of INDUMIL, a military weapons manufacturer run by the Colombian government, a position that "lent itself to narcotics-related corruption," according to the intelligence briefing. The former police intelligence chief in Cali, Capt. Harold Lozano Jaramillo, is said to be "operating a [cocaine] laboratory in his residence in Cali," among other charges. The briefing also says that the former chief of the National Police, Gen. Henry García Bohórquez, used "his influence to facilitate the activities of several important Colombian narcotics traffickers."

While some of the information in the dossier is derived from DEA investigations, other information would have come by way of the CIA, explaining why one of the Agency's top officials for Latin America, Lawrence "Larry" Laser, participated in the López briefing. In a later interview, Robert Drexler, the Chargé d'affaires who led the U.S. Embassy during much of this period, described an early CIA counternarcotics operation that relied on "a very small number of trusted Colombian law enforcement officials" who the U.S. "could monitor closely" and through which the U.S. "collected intelligence on the contacts between the drug traffickers and high-level Colombian officials." The intelligence was "horrifying," Drexler recalled in an oral history interview with the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, "because it detailed the rapid spread of corruption."

Whatever its exact origin, the alarming intelligence that sparked Carter's heightened interest in Colombian corruption arrived at a transitional time for the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, amid what Drexler describes as a chaotic Embassy environment and growing diplomatic tensions over the naming of a new U.S. ambassador.

The previous ambassador, Philip Sanchez, who was appointed by President Gerald Ford, left the post on April 5, leaving Drexler in charge of the embassy. Sanchez, a Republican political appointee, was "a disaster" who "did virtually nothing," according to Drexler. "[W]hile we could not get our act together, the Medellin Cartel did get its own act together." The budding narcotics syndicate had begun to acquire "sophisticated equipment, planes, telecommunications, money, organization, and made better use of Colombian officials for their purposes than we could for ours," Drexler recalled of his time working under Sanchez. On top of that, Sanchez had simply assumed that Carter, as the new president, "would keep him on because he was a Latin." Drexler said that Sanchez "finally had to be ordered out of Bogota" by the State Department. Meanwhile, narcotraffickers grew in strength, numbers, and capabilities. "[A]s we got into 1977, they were well advanced in the cartelization of the supply side, and we were way behind in even recognizing, to say nothing of meeting[,] the problem."

Carter's first replacement for Sanchez, José A. Cabranes, a political appointee with personal ties to Secretary of State Vance, was "another slap in the face" to López, who for months refused to issue him credentials, and by the time he finally did so, Cabranes had withdrawn himself from consideration. It was thus left to Drexler, as Chargé d'affaires, to run the U.S. Embassy, as he put it, "for about 10 months in 1977" during "a formative period for the drug cartels." As the ranking official, Drexler was a participant, notetaker and eyewitness as the Carter administration's emissaries attempted to gain Colombia's cooperation in narcotics enforcement by pressuring the Colombian president to clean house.[3]

Carter's hands-on approach to López during this tumultuous time combined an apparent gesture of goodwill—Carter was sharing highly sensitive information from U.S. narcotics investigations with the Colombian president—with an intimidating show of strength—the U.S. was building law enforcement dossiers on corrupt officials in the López government. The Carter administration made clear that U.S. cooperation on other issues important to Colombia—the delivery of promised military helicopters; a favorable U.S. decision over disputed Caribbean islands—was contingent on the U.S. receiving assurances from López that Colombia was serious about taking on drugs.

Just as unprecedented as the presidential intelligence briefing was the role of First Lady Rosalynn Carter in setting the stage for the President's confrontational approach to drug corruption in Colombia. The idea of employing Mrs. Carter to deliver a "substantive" message to López during her seven-country tour of Latin America in June 1977 seemed to surprise the Colombians during preparations for her visit, irking Drexler, who, in a cable to Washington, accused the López government of doing the "bare, protocolary minimum" for the First Lady's planned stop in Bogotá and for treating her visit it as a "ladies-only social event." (Document 10)

In fact, Mrs. Carter's talks with López covered a wide range of policy issues, including nuclear nonproliferation, the Panama Canal treaty negotiations, U.S. relations with Cuba, and a new U.S. approach to foreign relations, emphasized by President Carter, that for the first time made human rights a factor in national security policymaking. (Document 15)

But her most important message to the Colombian president was about the alarmingly widespread nature of drug-related corruption at senior levels of the Colombian government and the need for López to act if he wanted to improve U.S.-Colombia counternarcotics cooperation. Mrs. Carter encouraged López to meet the following month with the head of the White House drug control office, Peter Bourne, and Mathea Falco, the State Department's senior narcotics official, to discuss the matter further. It's not clear from the available U.S. records whether Mrs. Carter mentioned—as López later claimed—that the U.S. emissaries would deliver him a dossier on narcotics corruption. The available evidence suggests not.[4] In any case, it is clear that corruption was a central focus of her meeting with the Colombian president, and that she told López to expect a more detailed briefing from the President's emissaries soon.

Coming in the first few months of the Carter administration, the First Lady's visit set the stage for a transformative period in U.S.-Colombia relations, as the new U.S. focus on human rights coincided with increasing U.S. pressure for Colombia to crack down on drug trafficking and narcotics-related corruption. But while Colombia's human rights record at the time looked pretty good compared to some other countries, reports of widespread narcotics-related corruption in Bogotá made it necessary, in Carter's view, to extract certain commitments from the Colombian president before the security relationship could resume.

At the time, the focus for Colombia was on three military helicopters promised by President Ford but held up by Carter as his administration reviewed the appropriateness of U.S. security commitments around the world. Narcotics had not been an important issue in U.S.-Colombia relations during the Ford administration, though the two countries did reach an initial agreement for the U.S. to provide the helicopters with the expectation that they would help Colombia find and destroy narcotics-related sites.

In a September 1975 meeting with Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, it was President López who brought up the subject of narcotics, lamenting how The New York Times had "blamed us" for the narcotics problem, while admitting that, "because of our situation, we are the center of traffic." He said that Colombia was a "small country" that had been "invaded by people with and without passports, by planes, boats, etc." and that were "heavily financed from within the U.S." Throughout that year, the Times had published a four-part series on the international drug trade with Colombia as a primary focal point.[5]

"We don't have the materials to fight back," López said, leading Ford to ask, "How can we help?" The Colombian president did not hesitate: "We could use technology and economic help. We could use helicopters to find where the planes land. We catch them all the time." Previous anti-narcotics aid had been too little, López said, noting that $900,000 from the U.S. was nothing compared to millions of dollars in bribes handed out by the traffickers. "The drug operators are worldwide," said López. "You can't deal with the problem by just dealing with it in the U.S." (Document 1) The next day, Ford told López that there would be $1.3 million in narcotics aid to Colombia in 1976, which he called "a huge increase," and that his administration would also "look into the purchase of helicopters if necessary." (Document 2)

Records from the first months of the Carter administration reveal that Carter took an active role in the initial decision to hold up delivery of the helicopters until they were confident that the Colombian government would crack down on corruption. Documents found in the RAC collection indicate that the issue came to a head during the first week of June and that Bourne, in particular, helped push the President to strike a more confrontational posture. Bourne's June 2 memo to the President on "Cocaine trafficking in Colombia" provided talking points on the matter for the First Lady's upcoming meeting with President López and pleaded with Carter to use the helicopter issue, "one of the only points of leverage we have," lamenting that, "Some people at the State Department are willing to just give them the helicopters to avoid conflict." Attached to Bourne's memo was a one-page summary of "Colombian Officials Allegedly Profiting from Cocaine Traffic." In the margins Bourne's memo, Carter wrote: "Do not send helicopters - Give me CIA info." (Document 13) Around the same time, on June 3, the President asked the CIA director "if the Columbians [sic] were using the helicopters we gave them to run drugs," according to a June 10, 1977, memo from Sayre Stevens, the Deputy Director for Intelligence at the CIA.[6] (Document 16)

The First Lady thus arrived in Colombia just as the Carter administration's new tougher approach to Colombia, including a halt in the delivery of promised security assistance, was taking shape, and her trip was seen as a moment to begin a frank dialogue about corruption. In a reporting cable, the U.S. Embassy under Robert Drexler complemented Mrs. Carter's diplomatic skills, saying that the First Lady "was especially effective in the manner in which she raised with Lopez and [Foreign Minister Indalecio] Lievano, firmly and forcefully, the [U.S. government's] concern over corruption in the [Colombian government] … while not offending the thin-skinned Lopez's sensibilities, which could well have caused a curtailment in [the Colombian government's] cooperation in narcotics interdiction." Drexler's comment no doubt reflected his concern, expressed in an oral history, that taking too hard a line with the Colombian government on corruption could have derailed the entire U.S. counternarcotics effort there. (Document 17)

Several other documents from the RAC program published here for the first time show that the President continued to be personally involved in Colombia policy decision-making as the Intelligence Community prepared to brief López about narco-corruption in the Colombian government. Peter Bourne's memo to Carter ahead of a June 20 Cabinet meeting on Colombia said that the group—consisting of officials from the White House Office of Drug Abuse Policy (ODAP), DEA, NSC, CIA and the Department of Justice—should consider what kinds of pressures the U.S. could apply toward Colombia and what "guarantees" the U.S. should "extract from the President of Colombia before releasing helicopters and other support." Bourne noted that "Colombia has been a particular problem" with respect to "the lack of government effort in controlling narcotics and widespread corruption." (Document 18)

One meeting participant, William Luers, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs (ARA), wrote in a memo that "the discussion centered around corruption: which ministers and high officials are involved and how much does Lopez Michelsen know himself." Luers' notes indicate agreement that Carter would send a "not timid" letter to López saying that "the President has knowledge of high level corruption" and warning that "the good name of Colombia" could be "damaged." The letter, which would be hand-delivered to López during the upcoming visit of Bourne and Falco, would propose "the establishment of a high level joint commission to develop maximum cooperation and exchange intelligence information on trafficking and corruption." (Document 20)

Later that day in his "Evening Report," NSC Latin America adviser Robert Pastor noted how it had been Carter, at the June 20 Cabinet meeting, who had "asked us [Pastor and Falco] to revise the letter which Peter Bourne will deliver to President Lopez Michelsen on Wednesday." The President wanted the letter and his emissaries "to make clear to Lopez that the President is aware of the degree of corruption in the Colombian Government and feels that further cooperation between our two governments will depend on whether President Lopez addresses this issue effectively." According to Pastor, it was Carter who had wanted to name the Colombian defense minister. "[T]he President was so much stronger on this issue than the rest of us," Pastor wrote in a June 27 memo, "that Mathea [Falco] and I thought we should include it." According to Pastor, Carter himself thought "that it was curious that he should be bolder than his advisors." (Document 19)

But Brzezinski was concerned that the letter drafted by Pastor and Falco and desired by Carter was too inflammatory, noting, in a June 21 memo to the President, that it made "a very serious accusation … but without any convincing proof." The National Security Advisor shared his "strong reservations about the desirability of pointing so directly at a minister in President Lopez's Cabinet," recommending instead that Carter "state the proposition that we have cause to believe that 'a number of high officials in the Colombian Government may be benefitting from the drug traffic, and go on to indicate that we are in a position to provide such information." Brzezinski suggested that Bourne "could then point the finger more directly, and hopefully with greater effect." (Document 21)

Dated June 21, the letter signed by Carter and later delivered to the Colombian president did not mention any Colombian officials by name, instead referring to "information which has come to my attention indicating that a number of high officials in the Colombian Government, and several important political figures, may be benefitting directly or indirectly from the illicit drug traffic" and offering him "a complete briefing" on the matter.

During their subsequent trip to Colombia, presidential envoys Bourne and Falco delivered the toned-down version of Carter's letter to López (which he "immediately opened and read") and told him that "President Carter has a list" of high-level Colombian officials involved in trafficking and "would be happy to arrange a private briefing" for López by "representatives of the Intelligence Community in Washington." (Document 22)

Accepting the offer, the Colombian president, who was well aware of the Carter administration's new emphasis on international human rights, seemed to draw a distinction between Colombia and the military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina that were increasingly at odds with the Carter administration over its new emphasis on morality and justice in foreign policymaking. López explained that "if Colombia were a military dictatorship, action could be faster, but Colombia cannot move as easily as a country where there is no rule of law." Interestingly, in his report to President Carter on the meeting, Bourne observed that the Colombian president "made no move to demand large amounts of money, as we thought he might" but it is not clear what sort of request they were expecting from López.

In any case, the Carter administration was pleased enough with the the outcome of the Bourne/Falco visit to approve delivery of the long-pending U.S. helicopters and several other items that had been held up while Carter sought the Colombian president's assurances on narcotics corruption.[7] Some of these appear to be related to intelligence, including discussions of a "regional communications project" that got underway shortly after the Bourne/Falco visit, and the idea to include in the briefing for López additional intelligence on opium cultivations. The latter, according to Drexler, was "in the spirit of Bourne/Falco offers of intelligence sharing, would enlist necessary support at highest level for effective enforcement action," and would prepare the way "for necessary political and bureaucratic decisions for cooperative development of further intelligence and for eradication efforts." (Documents 24, 26 and 27)

The intelligence briefing was given to López on July 21 in Bogotá by Bourne, Bensinger, and Lawrence "Larry" Laser of the CIA. Bensinger told the Colombian president "there is no question that traffickers are helped and protected by some influential GOC officials," adding that the U.S. government "wanted to share with President Lopez information which we had developed on such corruption, knowing that his sincere interest in attacking [the] narcotics problem will lead him to make further investigations of his own into these matters." Bensinger then handed the Colombian president "information on about thirty cases which exemplified narcotics-related corruption involving ministerial and judicial officials, military and law enforcement personnel and high-level figures," according to the Embassy's cable on the meeting. (Documents 29 and 31)

Bourne's memo to Carter on the López briefing said the Colombian president "did not flinch at any of the information" they gave him but that he pushed back on allegations against the defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, who, as Bourne noted, "was the one person on the list he could not move against directly." Regarding the "F-2" police intelligence directorate, the subject of various corruption allegations in the briefing, López called it "a nest of criminals" and promised "to move aggressively against these people." Bourne characterized López as "a tired embattled old man depressed by his failure to accomplish more than 20 per cent of his administrations [sic] original program, who is not particularly popular with the people, and who was badly stung by accusations that his sons were involved in illicit financial transactions."[8] López "had planned to drift through his remaining year in office," according to Bourne, who credited Carter with reenergizing the Colombian president. "[T]he interest you and Rosalynn have taken in him has lighted a fire under him and given him the energy, clear goals and inspiration to try to redeem himself in the time he has left," he said, adding, "We have also placed in his hands some powerful weapons." (Document 32)

The news media and U.S. lawmakers continued to spotlight Colombia's growing role in the international drug trade throughout 1977, and early the next year, first Le Monde and later 60 Minutes published stories in which they revealed the identities of several people named in the list that had been given to López, including presidential candidate Turbay and defense minister Varón. The leak prompted an exchange of letters between the U.S. Embassy and the two officials and considerable embarrassment for all involved. 60 MInutes correspondent Harry Moses said the episode "may turn out to be the Carter administration's biggest diplomatic blunder in Latin America," and at least some of Turbay's supporters thought the revelations may have actually boosted their candidate's chances in the upcoming election. By then, the U.S., with a new ambassador finally in place, had eased the pressure on Colombia, hoping to start fresh with Turbay, whose victory, by that point, seemed certain. (Documents 37-42)

For his part, Drexler said he had come to regret being among those who had tried to tone down the Carter administration's tougher approach to Colombia and corruption, fearing that a confrontation on the issue would jeopardize what progress they had made in focusing Colombia on the narcotics problem. Referring to Rosalynn Carter's visit, Drexler said he had "pleaded with her to not follow her husband's instructions "to take a very hard line with Colombia" and felt that, in the end, he had successfully persuaded the First Lady to downplay the issue: "She met with the President, she touched on the subject of corruption lightly, and went on with confirming that the helicopters would come, as they did."

"Later I regretted this," Drexler continued, "and I think I made a mistake, that they were right all along in Washington, that they should have drawn the line then, that it would have been better to have a confrontation with Lopez at that point." After receiving the helicopters, Drexler said he "was immediately invited on a joy ride with the Colombian Military high command, who it was clear to me thought that they were getting some marvelous new toys, and that they were likely going to divert these helicopters to their own pursuits, rather than have them used for drug interdiction."

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