We gathered around the conference table and I began to brief the president in my crappy Spanish, muddling along, mangling the syntax. Embarrassed, I said to Gaviria, “Con su permiso, quiero hablar ingles.”
“Certainly,” said Gaviria, who spoke perfect English.
Relieved, I went on to explain the composition of our element and how our people were positioned. Then I concluded. “Senor Presidente, the United States is offering a $2 million reward for Escobar. We are prepared to train your people, and support them with all the intelligence we can gather on Escobar’s whereabouts. We will stay as long as we have to.”
“Thank you very much, Colonel,” Gaviria said. “We need your support. I think you understand the importance of finding Escobar. This is in the best interests of both our countries.”
While I was meeting with Gaviria, Gary and Jack Alvarez met with two senior Colombian military officers, including Lieutenant Colonel Lino Pinzon who would be in charge of the “Search Bloc,” the military component tasked with hunting Escobar.
Gary and Pinzon immediately despised each other.
Pinzon, with his salt-and-pepper crew cut, was considered a bit of a Casanova and had a reputation as a careerist who saw other people as stepping stones to the next rank. He was exactly the kind of leader Gary couldn’t stand. At their first meeting, Gary sized Pinzon up as unserious about the mission—at best afraid of failure, at worst on the take. And it quickly became clear Pinzon resented Gary’s good-ol’boy, take-charge manner. Clearly, Pinzon wanted to be deferred to. And Gary wasn’t interested in deferring to a man he considered no better than a bureaucrat.
For credibility’s sake and to avoid offending our hosts, Gary introduced Jack Alvarez as “Colonel Santos.” Delta was working with a very aggressive ambassador who expected us to convince the Colombians to undertake a task that to them meant certain death. We could not force them to act, and so had to rely on persuasion, and on the Colombians’ confidence that we were a highly trained force. Jack Alvarez was one of the world’s elite warriors. But none of the Latin American countries had a professional NCO corps. If the Colombians thought Alvarez was an enlisted man, they would likely have dismissed his advice as that of an untrained grunt.
Back at the embassy, I got comms set up in the CIA station. With my radio operator and intel analyst, I could receive SIGINT reports from NSA, and human intel from Bill Wagner and Joe Toft. From there, I also had radio comms with Gary, SouthCom, and the guys up at the observer position. The next morning, I called SouthCom to update Joulwan on what we’d done to that point.
Joulwan’s operations officer got on the phone and immediately went on the offensive. “What are those guys doing up there at La Catedral?”
“Just observing,” I said.
“Are they armed?” the J-3 demanded.
“Yes, they’re armed.”
“Do they have rules of engagement? Are they allowed to engage targets?”
“No. It’s purely a defensive position.”
“Who else is up there with them?”
“There are a couple of Colombian soldiers up there for force protection.”
“Okay. Don’t do anything until we get back to you.”
Oh, good, I thought as the line clicked dead in my ear. Now I can go back to watching soaps and eating bon-bons.
Three hours later the J-3 called back. “Your observers up at La Catedral? Just make sure they understand they’re in an observer role. They’re not up there to engage any cartel people unless it’s in self-defense.”
“We understand the rules, sir,” I said.
That annoyed the crap out of me. First, I felt like the folks at SouthCom didn’t trust Delta, that they were convinced we were down there freelancing, gunning for Escobar ourselves. Second, I felt Joulwan didn’t trust Morris Busby, thought he was too aggressive. I knew SouthCom was concerned about the legal and public relations issues associated with Americans getting involved in ground ops. The South American media—particularly those on Escobar’s payroll—could certainly be counted on to call the use of any U.S. firepower an American invasion of Colombia, whether we were there to liberate them from under Escobar’s boot heel or not.
Still, I thought SouthCom’s reluctance was very strange: usually it was the other way around, with the generals ready to launch, but frustrated by foot-dragging diplomats.
I brushed my irritation aside, and all of us began working the intel really hard. Escobar liked to use a cordless phone, not radios. From the embassy, SouthCom, and from the air, analysts monitored all cordless calls, listening for the drug lord’s voice. We relied very heavily on a couple of analysts who had listened to him again and again on tape, until they could recognize his voice instantly. And on the second day, Pablo Escobar made a phone call.
6
AN INTEL AIRCRAFT INTERCEPTED THE CALL and immediately transmitted coordinates to Mafnas, who trained cameras on the target and then fired imagery to Gary, who called Pinzon. It was a hot lead, Gary told the Colombian commander. He should order the Search Bloc to strike.
But Pinzon seemed bored by it all. “We get leads all the time,” he told Gary. This one would be another dry hole like the rest. Hours passed as Pinzon sat on his hands. When he finally ordered his men to move, it was only because Gaviria called and intervened. Even then, Pinzon’s response wasn’t so much a strike as a slow-motion farce that crawled loudly up the hill where the cordless call carrying Escobar’s voice had come from. A deaf drug lord could’ve heard them coming. And surprise: When the Search Bloc found Escobar’s hideout, Escobar was gone.
Gary was livid. He called me to vent his frustration. “I don’t think this guy has any intention of going after Escobar. I’m not sure whether he is scared or on the payroll.”
The next day, new phone calls generated a new fix and a new opportunity for a strike. Instantly, Gary asked Pinzon to start prepping for a raid. Pinzon initially agreed, but again showed no signs of action.
Again Gary called me. “This mission ain’t gonna go.”
“Why not?” I said.
“When it looked like Pinzon wasn’t moving again, I went to his house. He answered the door in his pajamas.”
From that day on, we hung Pinzon with a new nickname: “Pajamas.” And after that, there was more discussion about whether he was on the take. In the end, we gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided he was more likely a coward.
On the third day, we brought the P-3 down from SouthCom to do some pinpoint geo-locating. So the citizens of Medellin wouldn’t spot it, we directed the aircraft commander to orbit above ten thousand feet. But at that altitude, the geo-locating gear wasn’t returning precise coordinates, so Busby decided we should bring the bird lower. Somebody saw it and the next day, a Miami paper helpfully ran a headline that went something like “U.S. spy planes flying over Medellin.”
SouthCom went nuts. The J-3 called me, machine-gunning questions: “What were you thinking?” “What was the purpose of lowering the altitude?” and my personal favorite, “Who authorized you to direct that aircraft to fly so low?”
“Ambassador Busby,” I said, playing my trump card.
“Well, the P-3 is outta there. We’re ordering it back to Panama.”
“You’ll have to talk to the ambassador about that.”
At that moment, I was grateful Busby was the kind of man he was. Between Pinzon, the reluctant Search Bloc and SouthCom’s constant mothering, I already felt like a pinball, and the mission was only three days old.
Busby prevailed. We were able to keep the P-3 as long as it stayed high. During the first week, the SIGINT kept rolling in. Several times we tried to get the Colombians to launch assaults, but they wouldn’t. We couldn’t blame them entirely. Many had seen friends and family members die on Escobar’s orders.
About halfway through week two, the SIGINT dropped off completely. Human intel also dried up. Escobar either went underground or fled. We decided we’d better concentrate on turning the timid
Search Bloc into a more formidable force.
7
BOTH GARY HARRELL AND LUIS PINZON rotated out of the operation. Gary was a squadron commander with other soldiers back at Fort Bragg so I let him return to his primary duties. Pinzon was replaced by Colonel Hugo Martinez, a Colombian colonel who originally founded the Search Bloc to hunt Escobar down after the drug lord in 1989 ordered the murder of Martinez’s friend, Waldemar Franklin, chief of the Antioquia police.4 After a bloody war between the Search Bloc and the cartel that ended with Escobar’s farcical imprisonment in La Catedral, Martinez accepted a diplomatic appointment in Spain. Now, stoically, he said yes to an invitation to replace the useless Pinzon.
Among the Americans involved in the drug war to this point, Martinez had a reputation as a man with integrity and resolve. It was widely known that Escobar once offered Martinez $6 million to stand down the Search Bloc. Martinez turned it down.5 When I met with him the second week we were there, I found him to be cool and aloof. But it was also clear he was prepared to pursue Escobar to the end even if it meant his own death. That was a likely possibility: In his earlier war with the Search Bloc, Escobar’s sicarios more than once came close to killing Martinez, and his son, Hugo, Jr.
With Busby’s support, we decided to start a vigorous training program for both the police and the military. I sent some trainers down to Tola Maida, a Colombian army camp in the lowlands south of Bogota, and I went down to join them. In contrast to Bogota’s cool, mountainous terrain and hilly city streets that reminded me of San Francisco, Tola Maida was steamy and tropical, like being back in Panama. The camp itself was a compound of simple stucco and wood-frame buildings laid out in rows tucked in among jungle foliage. Open bohios, or pavilions, dotted the camp. And while the American Navy paints its structures gray and the Marine Corp paints them gold, the Colombians painted everything in the tropical parrot colors of a Cheeva bus. Not the buildings, but pretty much everything else—the security bar on the camp entrance, the bohio posts, even the rocks.
The Colombian soldiers’ normal training routine called for lots of drills, but nothing realistic. We quickly learned they were not good marksmen. Ammo being expensive, they probably shot only about twenty rounds per year. Also, their idea of room clearing was to stand outside a building and empty their magazines through the windows. They had no concept of an organized assault, of covering each other, of shooting only the bad guys and letting the good guys live. And there was no such thing as a helicopter assault.
I called down more operators from Bragg. Using sixteen trainers, including aviators, we put about a hundred men through a three-week mini assault course that included marksmanship, CQB (close quarters combat), sniper/observer ops, explosives, communications, emergency medical treatment, and integrated assault. The Colombians soaked it up, increasing every day in skill and confidence. Three weeks later, we held an exercise, a live-fire night helo assault. Busby and Colonel Martinez came down to watch and went away impressed.
After that, we set up for the long haul, beefing up our surveillance capabilities and increasing our numbers in both Bogota and Medellin. The hunters were in place. Now we would go after the hound.
8
FOR THE REST OF 1992, I bounced back and forth between Bogota and Bragg, going south about every eight weeks. I kept about a dozen people in Colombia equally split between the Embassy, and the police and Army quarters in Medellin.
In the U.S., in early 1993, news reports began to trickle out about a strange cult that had barricaded itself in a compound in Waco, Texas. They called themselves the Branch Davidians, and were led by a nut named Vernon Howell, a high school drop-out who renamed himself David Koresh and convinced about a hundred men, women, and children that he was the Christ. Word was the Branch Davidians were some kind of doomsday cult and that Koresh taught his followers that they would all someday die in a violent clash with “unbelievers.” After significantly sized shipments of weapons and weapon-building components began arriving with regularity at the cult’s Waco compound, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms launched an investigation.
Because it was a domestic matter, Delta followed the case like everyone else—by watching the news. Details began to emerge: Koresh had joined the Branch Davidians, a small sect that began in the 1930s, in 1984. After a dispute with the cult’s leader, he was driven from the 78-acre Waco compound at gunpoint, but later returned to seize control of the cult in a shootout.
Koresh and his followers then settled into a weird blend of apocalyptic theology and survivalism, stockpiling food and weapons in preparation for their fiery last stand. Cult members lived a spartan, military lifestyle that included physical training, strict food rationing, and monklike conditions in which men and women—even married ones—lived separately and pledged themselves to celibacy. Except for Koresh, who had sexual access to all the women, designating numerous “wives” among them, including girls as young as twelve. Koresh dealt out harsh discipline to the children and preached long, scary sermons that lasted late into the night.
Eventually, ATF acquired a house near the Waco compound; an agent even infiltrated the Davidians’ worship services. By late February, based on intel and shipments to the compound, the bureau was convinced the cult was preparing to build an arsenal of automatic weapons. Also, former cult members alleged child abuse and molestation, and there was growing concern about whether Koresh would initiate a mass suicide, taking the children with him. It had happened before. In 1978, People’s Temple leader Jim Jones had induced 913 of his followers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid.
On the night of Sunday, February 28, I heard on the news that a hundred ATF agents launched a surprise raid on the compound. What was supposed to be a simple infiltration action to subdue the cult and take Koresh and his leadership into custody erupted into a firefight that lasted nearly an hour. The instant ATF agents entered the compound, the Branch Davidians attacked with a hail of small-arms fire, shooting through doors, walls and windows. After a 45-minute firefight, four ATF agents and six cult members lay dead.
The raid touched off the longest law enforcement standoff in American history. The FBI joined ATF, and the siege on the compound spun out for weeks.
Delta was directed to send technical support to help the FBI. I sent three Delta operators to the scene, where their role was to provide cameras and audio devices and advice on how to use them. The U.S. Constitution prohibited them from getting involved in the actual operation. Then, after about six weeks, the Justice Department decided that America’s standoff with David Koresh had gone on long enough.
9
I HAD WORKED A LOT with the FBI’s hostage rescue team, and particularly with an HRT commander, Dick Rogers, a man I considered to be one of the finest FBI agents I’d ever met. He was serious and technically proficient, going through all the same training and exercises his guys did. And unlike some federal agents, Dick was very supportive of the military.
He called me one day in April. “You up to speed on Waco?”
I said that I was. “Our guys are still down there in a support role.”
“I’ve got to go up to Justice for a meeting with Janet Reno and William Sessions over this thing,” he said. “We’ve put together a plan on how to take down Koresh’s compound and they want a briefing. I want to swing by Fort Hood first and pick up Pete Schoomaker, then come up to Bragg and get you.”
William Sessions was the FBI director. Janet Reno was the brand new American president’s brand new attorney general: Both she and Bill Clinton had been in office less than four months. Dick’s idea was that Pete, as the former Delta commander, and I, as the current commander, could certify to Reno and Sessions the soundness of any hostage rescue plan. We trained with the FBI, knew their capabilities. Dick wanted credible, outside voices who could speak to the merits of the operation.
“I’ve got to get clearance to do this,” I told him. “Let me call you back.”
I called Garrison and told him what the FBI want
ed. A few hours and several Pentagon generals later, the request came back approved. The next morning, I drove to Pope AFB, hopped on a King Air with Dick and Pete, and headed for D.C.
On the way up, Dick laid out the FBI’s assault plan. “We’re going to use CEVs to drop CS into the main building.” Agents would drive up next to the building in Combat Engineering Vehicles, a configuration of an M-60 tank, punch holes in the roof and begin injecting CS, a form of tear gas.
“If Koresh and his people don’t start surrendering after that,” Dick went on, “we’re going to use a bulldozer to take off the front of the building, then go in and get them.”
Dick told us he was very concerned with the possible effects of the CS tear gas on the Branch Davidian children. There would be an expert at Justice who would address that issue during the meeting with Sessions and Reno.
Although Pete and I agreed to help, we wanted firm limits on our involvement. “We need to be sure it’s understood that Pete and I are here in an advisory capacity only,” I said. I was concerned that any whiff of military entanglement in this operation could be perceived by the press and public as a violation of posse comitatus, the constitutional prohibition on using U.S. troops for any kind of domestic law enforcement.
“Absolutely,” Dick said. “Also, your involvement will be kept strictly confidential. Sessions and Reno have already agreed to that.”
We flew into Davidson Army Airfield at Fort Belvoire, were picked up by the FBI, and driven into D.C. to the Department of Justice. Sessions’s office was on an upper floor, his name engraved on a large bronze plaque on the door. The office was large with a row of windows overlooking Constitution Avenue.
Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent Page 22
