A Terrorist Regime Waits in the Wings***During the 1990s, the Clinton administration looked the other way as the FARC grew stronger. In 1995, according to a recent Rand study for the Pentagon, it had 7,000 fighters on 60 fronts; five years later, there were 15,000 to 20,000 FARC combatants on more than 70 fronts. The huge increase was financed with money from American cocaine and heroin users, but the Clinton administration reversed long-standing bipartisan policy and drew a distinction between drug traffickers and guerrillas. On condition of anonymity, a senior State Department official assured Insight with a straight face in 1999 that "there is no such thing as narcoterrorists." ***
Colombian rebels say they hold Americans*** BOGOTA - For the first time, Colombian guerrillas Saturday acknowledged seizing three U.S. government contractors after their plane went down in the southern mountains on Feb. 13. In response to the kidnapping, scores of U.S. troops have poured into the South American nation, bringing the number to record levels and drawing the United States further into Colombia's prolonged civil conflict.
n a communiqué, leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said they could guarantee the safety of the three men only if the Colombian military stopped running patrols in a southern region considered rebel territory. Complying, however, would mean calling off the massive search for the men whose small Cessna plunged into a mountainous jungle nearly two weeks ago. President Alvaro Uribe rejected the deal Saturday, and the notion that the government would bow to rebel demands. ''Operations are managed by the [Colombian army] . . . not the FARC,'' Uribe said.
Some U.S. sources familiar with U.S. operations in Colombia privately expressed fears that the men might have been killed already by an elite rebel unit called the Teofilo Forero Brigade, which apparently seized the hostages. One defense industry source said the fears were based on communications overheard by U.S. intelligence indicating that the Forero unit had received permission to carry out ``executions.'' The information, however, could not be confirmed.
…………… Bob Barr, a four-term conservative congressman from Georgia who is now a lobbyist, visited Colombia last fall and issued a scathing report on operations under the $2 billion aid package known as Plan Colombia. The aid package provides money to fight Colombia's drug industry, which supplies 90 percent of the United States' cocaine. The FARC earns money off taxes from coca growers. In the past five years, 12 Americans -- including six government contractors -- have died in Colombia because of lax safety measures, Barr said in his report. A ''little shot of reality here: Today in Colombia, the FARC has a bounty on the heads of Americans working with the Colombian National Police and military,'' he said. `They are all targets.''***