[NYTr] Drug trafficker helps US bug FARC guerrillas

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

[Here's another reason the US Government wants to keep drugs illegal.
Dealers and traffickers can easily be extorted and coerced into doing
the USA's coert dirty work. -NY Transfer]

sent by Jane Franklin

The Miami Herald - May. 10, 2006

COLOMBIA
Ex-con helps U.S. deliver satellite phones to FARC

BY GERARDO REYES AND STEVEN DUDLEY

COMBITA, Colombia - It sounds like a spy novel: Using a cooperating drug 
trafficker, U.S. officials put several supposedly untraceable satellite 
phones in the hands of Colombia's FARC guerrillas, then listened to their 
chatter.

But the sting of Latin America's most secretive insurgency -- accused of 
direct involvement in cocaine smuggling to the U.S. and European markets -- 
really did take place, several U.S. officials told The Miami Herald.

U.S. intercepts of FARC communications were mentioned in a March U.S. 
indictment of the FARC's seven top leaders and 43 other commanders on 
charges of running a $25 billion drug trafficking network responsible for 60 
percent of the cocaine on U.S. streets.

Other U.S. indictments have implicated mid-level commanders and couriers. In 
all, at least 55 members of the 50-year-old, 17,000-fighter Revolutionary 
Armed Forces of Colombia are facing U.S. charges ranging from drug 
trafficking and extortion to kidnapping and terrorism.

It's not known whether the eavesdropping on the U.S.-provided satellite 
phones contributed to the indictments of the FARC members. But it is clear 
that the phones were delivered to top FARC leaders, including its top 
military commander, a notorious commander better known as Mono Jojoy.

COOPERATION

U.S. officials say the sting began when Drug Enforcement Administration 
(DEA) agents won the cooperation of Nelson Urrego, a Colombian 
communications specialist who allegedly helped coordinate cocaine shipments 
that totaled 10 to 15 tons per month for the North Valley Cartel.

Urrego was captured, convicted and jailed in Bogotá's La Picota prison in 
1998. While there, he met Yesid Arteta, a high-ranking FARC member who also 
had been captured, as well as Ferney Tovar, an alleged FARC courier who 
visited Arteta on occasion.

At the time, Tovar was general manager of Contrafluvial del Caguán, a 
company based in his hometown of Cartagena del Chairá that used its 65 motor 
boats to transport people and supplies on the Caguán River -- the main 
transportation route in that part of southeastern Colombia.

Until a massive military offensive in the region launched in 2003, Cartagena 
del Chairá had long been a FARC stronghold as well as a key coca-growing 
region. Tovar was captured last year and is facing extradition to the United 
States for conspiracy to traffic and distribute cocaine.

An affidavit filed by U.S. prosecutor Juan Antonio Gonzalez in Miami as part 
of the indictment against Tovar describes him as a ``broker/facilitator [for 
higher ranking members of the FARC organization] and distributor of 
narcotics for the FARC organization."

Miami DEA agent Rufus Wallace wrote in another affidavit that Tovar promised 
to supply unidentified ``cooperating government witnesses every 15 to 45 
days with between 1,000 and 2,000 kilograms of cocaine which would be 
obtained from the FARC drug laboratories."

Tovar denied he was a FARC member during a recent interview with The Miami 
Herald at the Cómbita prison in the windy highlands of central Colombia. But 
he openly confirmed several aspects of the satellite phone deals.

U.S. officials, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the 
case, said the jailed Urrego first offered his FARC contacts to smuggle 
cocaine from FARC-controlled areas to the United States. Tovar told The 
Miami Herald he refused. His indictment claims he accepted and arranged for 
several loads to be shipped to Miami.

Tovar said he and Urrego kept in touch, and sometime in 2001 or 2002, after 
Urrego had served his sentence and been released from prison, Urrego offered 
him four NERA-brand satellite telephones -- which allow users to make 
telephone calls from the most isolated areas.

Urrego claimed that the phones' location, ownership and call records could 
not be traced because they were specially outfitted by some "Middle 
Eastern" people, according to Tovar. What's more, Urrego said they would 
never see a phone bill.

In fact, the satellite phones were provided by the DEA, which knew their 
phone numbers and arranged for U.S. eavesdroppers to easily listen in, the 
U.S. officials said.

Tovar told The Miami Herald he sent a messenger to pick up the four phones 
in Panama. Upon return, one of the telephones was confiscated by Colombian 
customs; Tovar kept one for himself and gave the others to a FARC commander 
in the Caguán river area known as Orlando Porcelana and to José Benito 
Cabrera Cuevas, second in command of the rebels' Southern Bloc.

Cabrera and his brother, Erminso Cuevas Cabrera, were among the 50 FARC 
members recently indicted in the United States. Tovar said he believes 
Cabrera later passed his NERA to a lower ranking FARC member, and that both 
phones are still in use. Tovar said that in 2004 Urrego provided him with 
four more satellite phones, this time manufactured by the Thrane&Thrane 
firm, but with supposedly the same untraceable protections as the NERAs.

After the new phones made it to the Caguán River region, Tovar added, he 
gave one to Jorge Briceño, alias Mono Jojoy, the FARC's head of military 
operations and a member of its overall high command. Suárez was also named 
in the recent U.S. indictment.

Tovar took one set for himself, gave another to Cabrera and passed the last 
to a FARC chieftain only known as Jairo Martínez, he said.

The scheme to sting the FARC with U.S.-monitored communications equipment 
was first revealed by the website narconews.com when it published a 2004 
memo written by then Justice Department attorney Thomas Kent partially 
describing the operation. A subsequent article by El Nuevo Herald revealed 
Urrego's role -- and the fact that he even supplied the DEA with a video he 
shot surreptitiously of his jailhouse talks with FARC's Arteta about the 
phones -- apparently in an effort to prove his ability to infiltrate the 
rebel organization.

Tovar's account also was verified to The Miami Herald by a FARC member who 
participated in the satellite phone deals but remains at large and did not 
want his name published for fear of capture.

RELEASED

Urrego was released from jail in September 2001 and could not be located for 
comment on this story. Arteta remains in a Colombian prison. And Tovar, who 
was injured when he was captured last year, is still in prison, not feeling 
so good now about the telephone deal.

He says that he used his phones only for "friendly conversations, to talk 
to family and friends, not to talk drugs." And he insists the FARC 
commanders did the same.

But when told that the U.S. indictment against the guerrilla commanders were 
based in part on U.S. intercepts of FARC communications, he seemed to become 
resigned.

"I was tricked and entrapped," Tovar told The Miami Herald. ``Whatever 
happened, happened."