Jimmy Carter’s Colombia Blacklist Revealed

President Gerald Ford begins his 1975 Oval Office meeting with President Alfonso López Michelsen of Colombia by noting that, “We have already agreed that we have no problems.” President López agrees that the two countries “have no problem at all.” Almost before they are seated, the two leaders have neatly captured the state of U.S.-Colombia relations in the mid-1970s. For years the U.S. had poured money into Colombia, much of which was managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) mission, which, in addition to development projects, ran a wide-ranging “public safety” program that reorganized and revamped Colombian police and intelligence forces. “[W]ith your AID we have decided that we don’t need your help any more [sic],” López says. “You can use the funds for needy countries.” Ford replies, “We readily appreciate your cooperation,” citing “experiences where countries having no obvious need keep on asking” for aid.

After a brief discussion, it is López who raises the issue of narcotics in Colombia, which had been the subject of several articles that year in The New York Times, with reports of widespread corruption damaging Colombia’s reputation as a democratic haven in Latin America. “It is a worldwide problem,” he says, “but because of our situation, we are the center of traffic.” Colombia is a “small country,” López says, that had been “invaded by people with and without passports, by planes, boats, etc., heavily financed from within the U.S. We don’t have the materials to fight back.” Ford asks: “How can we help?” López asks for “technology and economic help.” Helicopters would be especially useful, he says, to “find where the planes land.”

When Kissinger says the U.S. had given them “$900,000 for that,” López compares that to some $250 million in bribes that the narcotraffickers had handed out: “It is too little.” Kissinger says that he had asked Brent Scowcroft “to look into the possibility of helicopters.” Ford asks: “Are helicopters the best way?” López replies: “Yes, to locate airfields and boats.”

On September 26, Ford and Kissinger meet with Colombian President López in the Oval Office for the second time in two days. Returning to a topic from the previous meeting, Ford says he “had a check made on the narcotics,” telling López they would appropriate $1.3 million for the coming year, which he says “is a huge increase” that “gives us an opportunity to charter boats and aircraft.” The President adds that his administration would “look into the purchase of helicopters if necessary.”

A CIA memo encloses notes and 8x10 slides for use in briefing Rosalynn Carter on the mission and functions of the CIA and the broader U.S. Intelligence Community, reflecting the First Lady’s keen interest in foreign affairs. The fascinating briefing notes show the extent to which the Agency tried to reassure Mrs. Carter about its mission and operations in the wake of major disclosures about CIA involvement in assassination plots and other illegal acts.

Brzezinski informs Vance that President Carter had “noted a recent intelligence item” about Colombian cocaine exports, adding that, “the President stated that we should raise this officially and strongly with the Colombian Government.” Carter also wanted the head of the White House Office on Drug Abuse Policy, Peter Bourne, who is copied on Brzezinski’s memo, involved in the issue.

Director of Central Intelligence Adm. Stansfield Turner, the head of the CIA, tells his deputy to “stay in touch with” First Lady Rosalynn Carter’s staff “so we can provide her adequate support” during her trip to Central and South America.

The Deputy Secretary of State tells President Carter that the State Department is “taking action on the disturbing reports that official corruption in Colombia is contributing to traffic in cocaine.” Christopher describes a series of steps, beginning with an approach by Terence Todman, the new Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, on May 9. Todman’s meeting would be followed by the visit of Vance’s narcotics adviser, Mathea Falco, after which the Embassy would propose “specific actions [Colombian President] Lopez can take to deal with the problem.” Until then, the Department would “hold up delivery of three helicopters scheduled for shipment to Colombia under our narcotics program.” In the margin, Carter’s handwritten annotation reads: “ok”.

An undated three-page memo, apparently produced by the DEA in the first few months of 1977, reports awareness of “several levels of corruption in Colombia fed by tradition, socioeconomic pressures and the availability of large amounts of cash.” Corruption is found among “high level” political officials, “all agencies of law enforcement at all levels,” and in the judicial system. Most of the political allegations “converge on one figure in particular,” Julio César Turbay, a leading Liberal Party figure who would be elected president in 1978. Although this document includes significantly fewer names than the July 15, 1977, blacklist, several members of the security forces, including Capt. Harold Lozano Jaramillo, the police intelligence chief in Cali, customs agents, members of the DAS intelligence group, Colombian naval officers, judicial officials, and others.

“A decision has been made to hold up, at least temporarily, delivery of the helicopters pending demarche on the high level corruption issue,” according to this cable from the State Department to the U.S. Embassy in Colombia. The issue is to be discussed during the upcoming visit to Colombia of State Department narcotics official Mathea Falco.

In his “Monthly Narcotic Report” to President Carter, Bourne says that his office is “devoting considerable time and effort to formulating an appropriate strategy for dealing with Colombian cocaine traffic and the pervasive government corruption,” adding that he would like to “discuss this issue with Rosalynn before she leaves” on her trip to Latin America.

Regarding difficulties it has had in making arrangements for Rosalynn Carter to meet with Colombian President López, the Embassy says that, “frankly, we were not prepared for Lopez’ decision to do no more that [sic] bare, protocolary minimum in hosting Mrs. Carter’s visit. Moreover, the ladies-only social event, like [the] decision to have Mrs. Lopez go to the airport, apparently reflects president’s idea that this visit is to be treated outwardly at least as a wives’ affair, despite our emphasis on its substantive purpose.”

On the corruption issue, Drexler says that, “Added care … should be taken in handling the narcotics/corruption issue, if it has to be raised. And I think it would be better not to raise it now.”

Attached to White House drug policy director Peter Bourne’s memo about priorities for Rosalynn Carter’s visit to Colombia is a highly redacted copy of a document titled “Colombian Officials Allegedly Profiting from Cocaine Trade.” Unredacted names on the list include the leading presidential candidate at the time, Julio César Turbáy (“cocaine traffic involvement”); the National Police commander in Magdalena Department (“Colonel Salazar”), who is said to own a marijuana plantation; and Capt. Harold Lozano Jaramillo, the commander of National Police forces in Cali, who is said to run a cocaine lab.

Following up on the matter discussed in his May 14 “Monthly Narcotic Report #3,” Bourne lists four things that First Lady Rosalynn Carter should stress in her upcoming meeting with President López: 1) that the President and the First Lady were “seriously concerned about drug abuse,” 2) that Colombia has a serious problem with narcotics-related corruption, 3) that the U.S. wanted “a closer collaborative relationship” with Colombia, including high-level discussions; and 4) that helicopters promised to Colombia would not be delivered until Colombia makes a credible commitment to attacking the drug trade. Bourne writes that, “Even with commitment I doubt drug crop substitution programs will work because cocaine will grow easily almost anywhere in these countries.”

Noting the continuing delay in delivery of three helicopters promised to Colombia by the previous administration, Vance reminds the President that the holdup “was occasioned by recent intelligence reports indicating that Colombian government officials are extensively involved in cocaine trafficking and that corruption is proving a serious obstacle in the narcotics interdiction effort in that country.” Vance recommends, and Carter agrees (see his handwritten annotation), “to withhold deliver of the helicopters” pending the outcome of an upcoming visit by White House drug chief Peter Bourne and State Department narcotics adviser Mathea Falco.

Attached to this memo is President Carter’s annotated reaction to Bourne’s June 2 memo recommending that Carter link the delivery of promised military helicopters to “highly specific commitments” by President López, “including vigorous moves against those in government who are known to be involved in the trafficking.” In the margins of Bourne’s memo, Carter has written:

To: Cy [Vance]

Stan [Turner]

Do not send helicopters - Give me CIA info.

J.C.

The State Department acknowledges “the President’s reaction to Dr. Peter Bourne’s memorandum and his decision not to deliver the helicopters promised Colombia under our international narcotics program.” Secretary Vance has “reconfirmed the decision he made on May 3 to withhold delivery pending the outcome of a visit to Colombia by Dr. Bourne and Ms. Mathea Falco” in June.

The First Lady’s talks with Colombian President López cover a wide range of policy issues, including nuclear nonproliferation, Panama Canal treaty negotiations, U.S. relations with Cuba, and the new U.S. approach to foreign relations that emphasized respect for human rights. López told Carter that the U.S. should not “act as a ‘protector’ of human rights” in Latin America, since this was something under the purview of the OAS and UN. Speaking of efforts by Southern Cone military governments “to form a bloc countering US efforts on behalf of human rights,” López assured Carter that “Colombia had not been welcome as a participant.”

Regarding narcotics, López told the First Lady “that there were few things that had disappointed him as much as his experience with the [U.S. government] with regard to narcotics control. He said the question was whether Colombia was corrupting the US or vice versa,” and complained that the U.S. had delayed for three years the delivery of three helicopters promised by President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Carter told López that “it was impossible to confine responsibility in such a matter to one country” and “went on to observe that the narcotics trafficking had had a corrupting influence on the [Colombian government].” The Colombian president and his foreign minister, Indalecio Liévano, “entirely agreed with Mrs. Carter,” but said that Colombia “does not have the resources to fight back against the traffickers and that the promises [U.S. government] help had never come.” Carter again emphasized “that corruption was limiting the effectiveness of Colombian enforcement action” and encouraged López to meet and discuss the matter with Peter Bourne, head of the White House Office on Drug Abuse Policy, and Mathea Falco, the State Department’s top narcotics official, during their upcoming visit to Colombia.

In response to a query, the Deputy Director for Intelligence, Sayre Stevens, reports to the Director of Central Intelligence that the CIA had “no intelligence information suggesting that Colombian helicopters are, or ever have been, involved in narcotics smuggling” and that “US AID Mission advisors” had found “no evidence of any misuse by Colombia of AID funds and commodities.”

First Lady Rosalynn Carter raised “a number of substantive issues of high priority to the US” in her meeting with Colombian President López, according to this cable from the U.S. Embassy. Although the Colombians had initially “tended to downgrade the importance of the visit,” this “tendency was gradually overcome as reports arrive of Mrs. Carter’s high-level reception at previous stops” on her tour of Latina America. “Mrs. Carter bore down most heavily on the [U.S. government’s] concern over drug abuse in the US, its corrupting influence in the [Colombian government], and in particular, that corruption’s impact on the effectiveness of the [Colombian government’s] enforcement program.” Agreeing with the First Lady, López said that Colombia needed “more and better equipment” that had been promised but never delivered by the previous U.S. administration and which was now being held up by Carter.

“She was especially effective in the manner in which she raised with Lopez and Lievano, firmly and forcefully, the [U.S. government’s] concern over corruption in the [Colombian government] with regard to Colombian narcotics enforcement action, while not offending the thin-skinned Lopez’s sensibilities, which could well have caused a curtailment in [Colombian government’s] cooperation in narcotics interdiction with USG agencies.”

This briefing memo for President Carter comes ahead of a Cabinet meeting on “the narcotics environment in Colombia” and “ways to improve” Colombian counternarcotics efforts. Noting that “Colombia has been a particular problem” in term of “the lack of government effort in controlling narcotics and widespread corruption,” Bourne suggests the group consider what kinds of pressures the U.S. could apply toward Colombia and determine what “guarantees” the U.S. should “extract from the President of Colombia before releasing helicopters and other support.”

Interestingly, Bourne mentions how U.S. “efforts in Colombia have been hampered by an ongoing conflict between CIA and DEA over the collection of intelligence data”—a conflict that would not soon be resolved.

Pastor writes: “The President asked us [Pastor and Falco] to revise the letter which Peter Bourne will deliver to President Lopez Michelsen on Wednesday, 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.”

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Luers provides a summary of a White House meeting focused on narcotics-related corruption in Colombia and the U.S. approach to Colombian President López. “Much of the discussion centered around corruption: which ministers and high officials are involved and how much does Lopez Michelsen know himself.” It was decided that President Carter would send a “not timid” letter to López telling him that “the President has knowledge of high level corruption,” warning “about the prospect of the good name of Colombia being damaged,” and proposing “the establishment of a high level joint commission to develop maximum cooperation and exchange intelligence information on trafficking and corruption.” The letter would be hand-delivered to López during the upcoming visit of Bourne and Falco.

Carter’s letter to the Colombian president, which was hand delivered to López by Bourne and Falco during their June 24 meeting in Bogotá, says that his administration had decided to make “international drug abuse control a high priority.” Carter asks the Colombian president for information on “the involvement of United States citizens in the drug traffic” and says he wanted to provide López with “some 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.” Carter offers López “a complete briefing” on the matter. Carter says he is “concerned that future cooperation between our two countries will be jeopardized” by the corruption problem and proposes a “joint commission” to “share information” on “the illicit drug traffic.”

Attached here is a revealing June 21 memo to Carter from Brzezinski, who tells the President he has “strong reservations about the desirability of pointing so directly [in the draft letter] at a minister in President Lopez’s cabinet,” presumably referring to the minister of defense. Noting “the question of the reliability of our information” and also “Latin American sensitivity to U.S. interference,” Brzezinski thinks Carter’s letter should simply refer to “a number of high officials in the Colombian Government” who “may be benefitting” from the drug trade and say that the U.S. was prepared to provide López with the details in a follow-up “briefing” by top officials.

The memcon from Bourne and Falco’s meeting with President López follows an initial summary provided the previous day and that is published in FRUS. This more-detailed readout of the meeting indicates that the lead item on the agenda was the delivery of President Carter’s letter on high-level narcotics corruption in Colombia, “which Lopez immediately opened and read.” López lamented that previous “constructive ideas in the narcotics field” had “come to nothing,” and that the U.S. continued to delay the delivery of long-promised helicopters. López also noted Carter’s new policy on human rights, saying, according to the memcon, “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.” After discussing other matters, Bourne “called attention to the involvement of persons at high levels in the [Colombian government] in trafficking,” adding that “President Carter has a list of such individuals and he would be happy to arrange a private briefing” for López by “representatives of the Intelligence Community in Washington.”

In a memo to President Carter, with copies to First Lady Rosalynn Carter and National Security Adviser Brzezinski, the director of the White House Office on Drug Abuse Policy, Peter Bourne, credits First Lady Rosalynn Carter with laying “the ground work” for an “extremely successful” recent meeting with Colombian President López. “He immediately read your letter,” said Bourne, and “responded very favorable to it.” The Colombian president agreed to a number of bilateral steps to deepen anti-narcotics cooperation and, “most importantly he suggested that he would assign a narcotic liaison officer to their embassy here in Washington to work exclusively on the drug issue.”

Bourne also relayed Carter’s “concern over corruption,” telling López that Carter was “aware of information on many people in high positions in Colombia benefitting from the drug traffic.” López “immediately accepted” Carter’s “offer to provide him a confidential briefing” on the matter. Bourne told the President he was arranging for DEA Administrator Peter Bensinger and CIA deputy director E. Harold Knoche (“Hank Knocke”), who had served as acting CIA director during the first two months of the Carter administration, to take the lead on the corruption briefing for López and that they would provide “specific names.” Interestingly, Bourne reported that the Colombian president “made no move to demand large amounts of money, as we thought he might.”

Not long after the “positive outcome” of the Bourne/Falco visit with President López, the State Department in this message approves the visit of another U.S. official to discuss the “regional communications project.”

A comment included at the bottom of this memo to Brzezinski from NSC Latin America staffer Robert Pastor sheds some light on how Carter’s letter to López was crafted, revealing that it was Carter himself who favored a tougher, more confrontational approach with the Colombian president. At the bottom of a memo that is mostly about Chile, Pastor tells Brzezinski about something he overheard at the State Department. Upon reading a draft of the proposed Carter letter to López on narco-corruption, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs William Luers had said “I don’t think we should mention the Minister of National Defense,” referring to intelligence linking the Colombian defense minister to narcotrafficking, “but that seems to have been the President’s wishes [sic].” Indeed, Pastor tells Brzezinski that “the President was so much stronger on this issue than the rest of us … that Mathea and I thought we should include it, and if he had second thoughts, it would be easier for him to delete it than to rewrite it in order to add it.” Carter himself had said “that it was curious that he should be bolder than his advisors,” according to Pastor. Brzezinski seems to have been unaware that the defense minister’s name would be included in the draft, since Pastor adds, “If you had called me to ask, I would have be glad to tell you … [B]ut it was finished at 10:00 p.m., and you were gone.”

After a briefing from Bourne on the “successful outcome” of their meeting with President López, “The President has authorized the delivery” of long-awaited helicopters to Colombia.

The U.S. Embassy, under Chargé d’affaires Robert W. Drexler, recommends that the U.S. also provide President López U.S. intelligence related to “opium cultivation” during the upcoming intelligence briefing on official corruption to help push “for elimination of opium cultivation in Colombia.” This would be done “in the spirit of Bourne/Falco offers of intelligence sharing and would enlist necessary support at highest level for effective enforcement action.” The Embassy “strongly recommends that forceful presentation be made directly to President Lopez” on Colombian opium production to set the stage “for necessary political and bureaucratic decisions for cooperative development of further intelligence and for eradication efforts.”

Bourne’s Monthly Narcotic Report to President Carter says, “We are scheduled to provide the promised briefing to President Lopez-Michelsen in Bogota on July 21, 1977. It will be conducted by Peter Bensinger of DEA, a representative of the Central Intelligence Agency under State Department cover and myself.” “The material to be presented has been prepared with exceptional care,” Bourne indicates in the memo, adding that, “consistent with your instructions we will carefully qualify the information we provide making it particularly clear the degree of certainly we attach to it.” Evidence shared with the Colombian president would also include “photos of opium poppies” growing in Colombia, as suggested in the Embassy’s July 6 cable. Bourne also says they will recommend that López “set up, with our help, an Internal Security Division to further investigate corruption.”

This untitled report, found among the RAC documents at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, appears to be the text of the intelligence briefing on official corruption in Colombia that was delivered to President López during his July 21 meeting in Bogotá with DEA head Peter Bensinger, White House drug policy chief Peter Bourne, and Lawrence “Larry” Laser of the CIA. While some of the more prominent allegations in the briefing would come to light in a 1978 broadcast of 60 Minutes—which had obtained a copy of Peter Bourne’s June 1 memo (see Document 11)—the full López corruption briefing document, as far as this author knows, including the identities of some three dozen allegedly corrupt officials, has never before been published. The text of the López briefing even somehow evaded the finely honed searches of the State Department’s history staff, who reported the list as “not found” in their 2018 volume covering Latin America during the Carter presidency. One reason for this could be that the document was removed as part of the RAC program at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and then later returned.

The 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.[9] Noting President López-Michelsen’s “sincere interest in attacking the narcotics problem,” the Colombian president is told that the “extent of official corruption in Colombia, especially in the law enforcement and judicial sectors, renders effective enforcement and legal action in the narcotics field very difficult.” Narcotics traffickers and their operations “are greatly facilitated by the cooperation and protection of influential Colombian officials,” without which “they would find it very difficult to operate.”

The briefers inform the Colombian president that the information they are sharing is derived from “law enforcement and criminal intelligence activities in the United States as well as those conducted by foreign governments” and “ranges in quality from solid and detailed to somewhat sketchy” and suggest 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 prominent 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 reports says, “belongs to the narcotics network of Jose Manuel Parra Urrea.” The report says that Turbay’s presidential run “is anticipated by Parra’s organization,” which, as a result of its “multi-million peso investment in Anibal Turbay,” believed it 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-Michelsen’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. Cardona, the former head of the Uniformed Customs Police had been “removed” from that position “for narcotics-related corruption,” according to the briefing, which said that Cardona “took bribes from many of Colombia’s leading narcotics smugglers with who he was personally acquainted.” The new position at INDUMIL also “lent itself to narcotics-related corruption,” according to the intelligence briefing,

Other Colombian officials included in the report are:

• Harold Lozano Jaramillo, the former police intelligence chief in Cali, who is said to be “operating a [cocaine] laboratory in his residence in Cali and supplying cocaine hydrochloride at night, traveling in uniform and escorted by his F-2 [police intelligence] bodyguards.” Lozano is said to have been involved in protecting another lab near Cali and to have arranged the release of detained narcotraffickers.
• The former chief of the National Police, Gen. Henry Garcia Bohorquez, who used “his influence to facilitate the activities of several important Colombian narcotics traffickers.”
• Another F-2 official, Capt. Marcos A. Bonilla, who “owned a finca in Florencia where a cocaine laboratory was operating,” according to the report.
• Another police F-2 commander, Lt. Jorge Eliecer Arroyave Zapata, who is said to be “one of the biggest traffickers in Tumaco.”
• Fidel Duarte Sotelo, “a Justice Ministry official” and “brother of Hilda Duarte Sotelo de Robayo,” a known narcotrafficker.
• Arcesio Sánchez Ojeda, a member of congress from Nariño Department who went on to serve as senator and later governor of Nariño. Sánchez “was involved in cocaine trafficking with his brother, Lt. Carlos Vicente Sanchez Ojeda,” a Customs Office official in Buenaventura.
• DAS intelligence officials around the country had been “identified as being directly involved in narcotics trafficking or in supplying information to traffickers,” including Samuel Gutierrez, the DAS chief in Nariño.
• Orlando Ceballos Pineda, the city comptroller of Santa Marta.
• Orlando Noguera, brother-in-law of the governor of Magdalena Department.
• Several Colombian officials who are said to have facilitated the release of narcotrafficker Norberto Moreno Carrillo, including Minister of Defense Varón Valencia, Henry García Orozco, a Supreme Court magistrate in Cundinamarca Department, Martín Suarez Sarabia, a senate official, and Gilardo Ospina, a colonel in the National Police.
• A number of judicial officials accused of having taken bribes from narcotraffickers.
• A naval officer behind a purported scheme to smuggle some 48 kilos of cocaine aboard the Colombian naval training vessel Gloria.

The CIA says that U.S.-Colombia drug control relations have strengthened “as a result of last month’s meeting between First Lady Rosalynn Carter and President Lopez.” The U.S. has agreed to $3.7 million in security assistance, including the long-awaited helicopters, “to try to curb the flow of cocaine and other drugs to North America.” For his part, Lopez “agreed to a meeting this week with high-level officials from Washington to discuss the sensitive issue of drug-related corruption in his government.”

The Embassy cable on López-Michelsen’s meeting with DEA Administrator Bensinger, White House drug chief Bourne, and Lawrence Laser of the CIA, says the Colombian president was “receptive, candid and forthcoming,” pledging to “set up an elite civilian law enforcement unit to cope with crime and corruption, replacing the F-2 (detective) unit of the National Police.” Bensinger told López-Michelsen that narcotics problems “must be solved jointly by producer and user nations” but that “such cooperation is threatened by narcotics-related corruption,” adding, “[T]here is no question that traffickers are helped and protected by some influential GOC officials.” For that reason, Bensinger said, 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 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.”

For his part, López-Michelsen “acknowledged that the problem was very bad and indicated that his own reports and information general supported the thrust of the briefing,” though he expressed doubts that the allegations about his defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, chalking them up to “attempts by Varon’s enemies to blacken his reputation and standing with the president.” Still, López-Michelsen admitted that, in Colombia, they were essentially “fighting crime with criminals,” singling out the National Police intelligence directorate (F-2), a key focus of the U.S. dossier, as especially corrupt. The F-2 was “directly involved in murders and kidnappings,” according to the Colombian president, sharing with his U.S. interlocutors his plans to disband the unit and fold its functions into the DAS intelligence organization, which responded to the president, not the military, as was the case with the National Police.

Peter Bourne’s memo to President Carter on the López-Michelsen briefing says the Colombian president “did not flinch at any of the information we provided” about narcotics-related corruption in Colombia but pushed back on allegations against the defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia. Bourne says he “had the feeling” that López-Michelsen “not only wanted us to know that he knew a great deal more about Varon than we did, but that this was the one person on the list he could not move against directly.” Regarding the F-2 police intelligence directorate, López-Michelsen called it “a nest of criminals.” Bourne tells Carter, “It is clear also that he plans to move aggressively against these people.”

The Colombian president, according to Bourne, “is 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.” Bourne says he thinks that López-Michelsen “had planned to drift through his remaining year in office,” but credits 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,” adding that, “We have also placed in his hands some powerful weapons,” probably referring to the promised military helicopters.

In a short letter to President López-Michelsen, Carter says that Bourne has told him of “the considerable progress that we have been able to accomplish together,” since the visit to Colombia of First Lady Rosalynn Carter in June. Carter says that López-Michelsen “can be proud of the aggressive steps” he had taken on dealing with narcotrafficking and expresses a “desire to continue to work closely with you” on narcotics.

“President Carter’s offer to provide President Lopez with evidence compiled by US agencies on official corruption in Colombia was unprecedented,” according to this CIA analysis. His meeting in July with a U.S. delegation about the matter was a sign of “steadily improving relations in joint drug control efforts,” according to the report.” For instance, the report notes that, “after hearing information on cases involving ministerial and judicial officials, military and law enforcement personnel, and other high-level figures, Lopez stated that he planned to set up an elite civilian law enforcement unit to cope with crime and corruption in Colombia.” But ultimately the Colombian president’s effectiveness against drugs will be limited by political constraints, according to the report. The same article appeared in the August 6, 1977, edition of the National Intelligence Daily.

In a memo to the top State Department narcotics official, State Department assistant legal adviser Louis Fields describes recent U.S. efforts to gain Colombia’s cooperation in the pursuit of Colombians indicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges. Among the items listed are the “possible narcotrafficking activities” of the son of President López-Michelsen, Alfonso López Caballero, who was believed to be working at the United Nations in New York City. Fields says that federal prosecutors were being careful with the case, and that, “No indictment will be sought in EDNY [Eastern District of New York] or further action involving this individual without prior consultation” with key officials in the State Department.

Also listed are “Griselda Blanca”—which is almost certainly a reference to Griselda Blanco, the infamous, Miami-based narcotrafficker—and her husband Alberto Bravo, who are said to be “sources and financiers” of the drug trade.

The memo also references so-called CENTAC cases that stem from the DEA’s Central Tactical Investigations program, established in 1973 to mount conspiracy investigations against groups “at the top of the criminal hierarchy.”

Having eventually reached a modus vivendi with the lame duck President López-Michelsen, the U.S. was soon faced with the harsh reality that a candidate with widely rumored ties to narcotraffickers, Julio César Turbay Ayala, would become the next Colombian head of state. The analysis from the newly installed U.S. ambassador, Diego Asencio, is both reassuring with respect to Turbay—“he is probably an honest politician operating in a corrupt milieu”—and bleak on the general outlook for Colombia—“It seems more likely … that the social and political milieu of Colombia has developed to a point that it is vitually [sic] impossible to organize a political group that would not contain elements associated with traffickers.” The situation was “not all bad,” according to the Embassy, as “the fact that traffickers have enormous liquidity and are becoming politically active … is scaring any number of traditional politicians.” The U.S. ambassador said he was “inclined to believe that [Turbay] is basically a sound individual, functioning pragmatically in a corrupt milieu.”

After the foreign and Colombian press reported on allegations that the U.S. had given López-Michelsen a list of corrupt officials that included Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, the defense minister, the U.S. Embassy’s deputy chief of mission, Robert Drexler, was approached by the prosecutor general of the Colombian armed forces, Vice Admiral Melendez, who said that Varón was “obviously innocent” based on a supposedly strong record against narcotraffickers. According to Melendez, López-Michelsen had told Varón that he had first learned about that allegations about him in a report from a U.S. congressional delegation (“the CODEL Wolff report”), but a subsequent story in Le Monde had indicated that there was another report, presumably the secret report given to López-Michelsen by Bourne and Bensinger in July 1977 (but erroneously assumed by Varón and Melendez to have been delivered earlier by Mrs. Carter). After learning of the second report, “Varon went to see the president again,” according to the cable, and “Lopez acknowledged that the [U.S. government] had given him further information (in addition to the Wolff report)” but told the defense minister that “he did not take [the allegation] seriously and that Varon should not worry about it.”

Melendez suggested that the U.S. might allow López-Michelsen to make the intelligence report public “so that the flimsiness of the charges against Varon would be revealed.” The DCM replied that the “quality and the reliability of the data naturally varied and it had to be held closely to protect innocent people, to safeguard sensitive sources and also to avoid compromising ongoing or future investigations and prosecutions,” but that, ultimately, “It was up to President Lopez himself to decide how to handle any information and reports that we had provided him personally. This particularly applied to their dissemination to other Colombian officials.”

In the “Comment” section, the Embassy notes that Varón is unlikely to let the matter go and further that “Ambassador needs to consult with Varon on several issues,” including “military cooperation in bilateral narcotics control efforts,” adding that, “Varon himself may decide to be especially helpful and cooperative in these matters in order to help disprove the allegations against him.”

In an aide-mémoire to the U.S. government, forwarded in this Embassy cable, President López-Michelsen outlines his concerns about revelations in Le Monde and in the Colombian media of the existence of a secret U.S. list of Colombian officials corrupted by the drug trade. Here the Colombian president’s message is being forwarded on to the State Department with copies delivered to Mathea Falco (State Department narcotics adviser), Peter Bensinger (DEA administrator) and Peter Bourne (White House drug adviser).

López-Michelsen opens his message with what appears to be a vague threat. Recalling First Lady Rosalynn Carter’s June 1977 visit, the Colombian president notes that she was the first person to tell him that the U.S. was preparing to share with him a list of Colombian officials linked to narcotrafficking. “It should be noted,” he adds, that Mrs. Carter had also asked him “to accelerate the judicial processes against American citizens involved in such crimes,” including “a person with connections to an influential North American senator, a friend of President Carter.” Citing “limitations proper to the separation of powers,” López-Michelsen implies that there is little he can do to help Carter’s friend.

The rest of the document explains the Colombian president’s concerns about specific allegations in the “ultra secret document” that had been given to him by Carter’s representatives the previous year and in a report issued later by a U.S. congressional delegation. Noting the allegations against Gen. Varón Valencia and the son of presidential candidate Julio César Turbay Ayala, López-Michelsen upbraids the U.S. government for giving “the appearance of truth to gossip picked up in Bogota,” saying that the U.S. “has limited itself to delivering to the government of Colombia possible clues on narcotics traffickers in some cases, and in others, political stories that have circulated for some time and have been collected without any analysis.” Saying that “the good name of Colombia has been compromised by the publication of these reports,” the president ends by noting that “the Communist Party” was “the principal beneficiary of the speed with which such unfounded reports have been leaked”—reports that make it appear that the so-called ‘establishment’ and the government itself is a syndicate of delinquents.”

In a cable directed to Bourne, Bensinger, Falco, and others, U.S. Ambassador Diego Asencio evaluates the impact of news stories based on leaked information revealing that the U.S. had given President López-Michelsen a secret list of corrupt Colombian officials. The Colombian president had given Asencio “a personally drafted and closely held aide memoire, which is a species of defense of the GOC’s position in the matter and which he intends to use if further disclosures are forthcoming.” Asencio characterizes the aide-mémoire as “a slipshod document refutable on any number of points and drafted for the sole purpose of creating a political impact.”

Ambassador Asencio nevertheless sees the downside of freezing out the minister of defense, Gen. Varón Valencia, whose name had appeared in the recent news stories. To do so “would risk the current narcotics program which is now beginning to show promise after a sometimes difficult gestation period. The present cooperative framework would probably disappear. We would abandon our objective of building a viable narcotics unit, now with potential to survive presidential elections.” Asencio says that he intends “to meet with the minister of defense privately and encourage him and his agency to become more active participants in the narcotics program as a means of demonstrating his bona fides.”

Bourne is concerned about news circulating in Washington that the 60 Minutes television program was planning a story on corruption in Colombia. The story is to be based in part on leaked copy of Bourne’s June 2, 1977, memo to President Carter, which included a one-page summary of some of the more notable names on the longer list that was eventually given to López-Michelsen. Bourne here describes it as “a list of high ranking individuals in Colombia whom we knew to be involved in drug trafficking.” The 60 Minutes story would ultimately air in April 1978.

Bourne is worried about the White House’s handling of classified information, recalling that he had previously raised with Lipshutz “the problem of xeroxed copies of classified memos circulated for comment in the White House ending up in the agencies,” as he thinks happened in this case. Bourne incorrectly assumes, however, that the memo, one copy of which even bears Carter’s handwritten annotation, “was circulated only to the NSC” and not to the President.

After leading presidential candidate Julio César Turbay and the defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, published letters to and from the U.S. ambassador about charges of drug corruption that had aired the previous day on the 60 Minutes TV program, U.S. Ambassador Diego Ascencio met with his “own kitchen cabinet” of Colombian political operatives who were divided over whether the allegations hurt or helped Turbay’s campaign. Asencio also reports that he spoken with Varón “and berated him mildly for violating the terms of our agreement,” presumably to not react in a way that would upset U.S.-Colombia relations.

This cable reproduces an exchange of letters between U.S. Ambassador Diego Ascencio and two individuals named in a recent 60 Minutes television program about narcotics corruption in Colombia: the leading presidential candidate Julio César Turbay and Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, the minister of defense. Turbay and Varón had made the letters public on April 6, the day after the program aired.