Current, former Colombian Army commanders implicated in terror operation

Colombia's rapidly unfolding 'para-politics' scandal has renewed focus on official links to the country's illegal right-wing terror groups, especially among the armed forces. The flood of recent revelations, stemming in part from the government's paramilitary demobilization program, has also gravely impacted relations with Washington, holding up a trade agreement and jeopardizing millions in US assistance. Now, a 1979 diplomatic report from the US Embassy in Bogotá raises additional questions about the paramilitary ties of embattled Colombian army commander Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe. Montoya came under scrutiny in March after the Los Angeles Times published information from a classified CIA report linking him to a paramilitary group in 2002. The 1979 Embassy cable, released as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive, reveals that a Colombian army intelligence battalion linked to Montoya secretly created and staffed a clandestine terror unit in 1978-79 under the guise of the American Anti-communist Alliance (AAA or Triple-A). The group was responsible for a number of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations against leftist targets during that period. The formerly 'Secret' cable, a review of Colombia's human rights record from US Ambassador Diego Asencio, is also the first declassified evidence that a top Colombian military official directly authorized a paramilitary terror operation. According to the report, then-army commander Gen. Jorge Robledo Pulido approved the plan by the 'Charry Solano' Intelligence and Counterintelligence Battalion (BINCI) "to create the impression that the American Anti-communist Alliance has established itself in Colombia and is preparing to take violent action against local communists." Previously declassified US intelligence reports have revealed that Colombian officers often turned a blind eye to the rightist militias, which are blamed for a large number of massacres and forced displacements in Colombia over the last decade. The Colombian government has long denied official links to paramilitaries, explaining that instances of direct collaboration were isolated and not the result of an explicit strategy. The country's largest paramilitary umbrella organization, the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), was added to the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 2001. The Asencio cable confirms that Gen. Robledo was more than simply acquiescent to paramilitarism and actively promoted the military's direct involvement in rightist terror operations even as the modern paramilitary movement was still taking shape. The document also suggests that many of the young officers involved in those operations like Montoya have risen to influential positions in the Colombian armed forces at a time when the institution is supposedly severing ties with paramilitary groups. Gen. Montoya, now a top military adviser to President Álvaro Uribe, was assigned to BINCI at the time of the Triple-A operation, according to five former members of the battalion who in 1980 detailed the unit's terror operations in the pages of the Mexican newspaper El Día. The officers named then-Lt. Mario Montoya as the mastermind behind the bombing of the Communist Party newspaper Voz Proletaria. The US has examined Gen. Montoya's alleged ties to Triple-A on several occasions as part of a human rights vetting process for recipients of US military assistance. In each case, the US found no evidence to support the charges and dismissed them as leftist slander. In a 2000 evaluation, the Embassy's only reference on Montoya's Triple-A connection was the mostly-unsourced 1992 publication, El Terrorismo de Estado en Colombia (State Terrorism in Colombia), prepared by a coalition of international human rights groups including Pax Christi International. Terrorismo largely repeats the charges made in El Día, citing "the confessions of three former military intelligence agents" who said that "Montoya Uribe was part of the Triple A and took part in some of the dynamite attacks." Likewise, a September 1999 Defense Intelligence Agency report found "no corroborating evidence" to support Pax Christi's charges about Montoya, then a leading candidate to be named the next armed forces intelligence director. The report characterizes the accusations-including the "dynamiting of communications centers," death threats, assassinations, and other actions against political opponents and perceived guerrilla sympathizers-as "a NGO smear campaign dating back 20 years." In fact, it was 20 years earlier that the US Embassy directly linked army intelligence to the terror operation, and specifically identified the December 1978 bombing of the Colombian Communist Party headquarters as an act carried out by BINCI disguised as Triple-A. Mounting allegations The new revelation comes in the wake of a bombshell disclosure by the Los Angeles Times in March of a CIA report that Gen. Montoya engaged in a joint operation with a Medellín-based paramilitary group. 'Operation Orion' was part of a larger military offensive in the city during 2002-03 to attack urban guerrilla networks. The sweep resulted in at least 14 deaths and dozens of disappearances. The classified intelligence report confirmed "information provided by a proven source," according to comments from the US defense attaché included in the document. That report provoked a strong response from US Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that overseas Colombia aid, who in April blocked the release of $55 million in US assistance to Colombian security forces. Earlier this month, the US House of Representatives further increased the pressure, dramatically reducing the proportion of US aid going to the Colombian military. US law requires the Colombian government to take steps to sever links to the illegal terror groups. "[T]he new Congress is not going to be a rubber stamp the way the last Congress was," Leahy said in a statement May 2, in which he announced that assistance would be suspended pending an investigation of the Montoya allegations. "We do not want our aid to go to anyone with links to paramilitaries." Allegations of paramilitary collusion have dogged Montoya throughout his career. The discovery of a mass grave in the southern department of Putumayo in March 2007 has raised questions about Gen. Montoya's actions as commander of Joint Task Force South, the US-funded unit charged with coordinating counternarcotics and counterguerrilla operations in that region from 1999-2001. Investigators estimate that the more than 100 victims of paramilitary violence found in the grave were killed over the same two-year period that Montoya led the Task Force. Declassified documents previously unearthed by the National Security Archive also detail State Department concern that one of the units under Montoya's command at the Task Force, the 24th Brigade, had ties with paramilitaries based in La Hormiga, the location of the recently discovered gravesite. One State Department cable noted persistent allegations that a 24th Brigade unit based at La Hormiga had "been cooperating with illegal paramilitary groups that have been increasingly active in Putumayo." Another allegation charges that Montoya and two other officers allowed paramilitary forces to pass through army roadblocks unhindered before a May 2002 guerrilla-paramilitary clash at Bojoya that left more than 100 people dead. Although officially cleared of wrongdoing, the substantive portions of declassified documents pertaining to Montoya's actions in this case were redacted by State Department censors. 'Unexpected consequences' The revelation of the army's Triple-A operation also underscores the explosive recent testimony of two former AUC paramilitary commanders who said that the Colombian government fomented paramilitary groups in the 1990's, a time when the rightist militias dramatically increased their numbers and influence in the country. The statements are required under the Justice and Peace law, a controversial government program through which many senior paramilitary leaders have demobilized their forces, agreeing to confess their crimes and pay reparations to their victims in exchange for reduced criminal penalties. So far, the testimony suggests that ties between paramilitaries and the government were even deeper than previously imagined, turning the process into a de facto investigation of the state. "Paramilitarism was state policy," said former AUC chief Salvatore Mancuso before a judicial panel last month. Mancuso's statement was an unambiguous indictment of senior government officials-many close to President Álvaro Uribe-in fomenting paramilitarism. The Asencio cable is an important artifact of this hidden history, shedding light not only on a key episode of Colombia's dirty war, but also on how the US confronted the problem of military-paramilitary links during that critical period. The Ambassador's acquiescent approach in 1979 contrasts sharply with the tough line now endorsed by influential members of the US Congress. For his part, Asencio called the Triple-A terror operation a "disturbing development," but felt that the use of tough tactics was a regrettable but inevitable exigency of counter-guerrilla warfare. "In the government's war on subversion the military forces are a blunt instrument," he wrote to Washington, "and military operations may have unexpected consequences." Now, the recent revelations about state-paramilitary collusion has produced some unexpected consequences of its own, and as this process continues, the secret archives of the US Embassy will remain a valuable source on Colombia's paramilitary past.