Washington
D.C., July 1,
2007 - As a growing number of
Colombian government officials are investigated for ties to illegal
paramilitary terrorists, a 1979
report from the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá raises
new questions about the paramilitary past of the current army
commander, Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe.
 |
Colombian
army commander Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe.
(Source: www.ejercito.mil.co) |
The declassified cable, the focus of a new article
being published today on the Web site of Colombia's Semana
magazine, answers long-simmering questions about a shadowy
Colombian terror ogranization responsible for a number of violent
acts in the late-1970s and early-80s. Long suspected of ties to
the Colombian military, the cable confirms that the American Anticommunist
Alliance (Triple-A) was secretly created and staffed
by members of Colombian military intelligence in a plan authorized
by then-army commander Gen. Jorge Robledo Pulido.
Gen. Montoya was first tied to Triple-A
by five former military intelligence operatives who detailed the
group's operations in the Mexican newspaper El Día.
The new evidence tying the Army's 'Charry Solano' intelligence
battalion to the terror group is likely to refocus attention on
Montoya's role in that unit. The new information follows the publication
in March of a secret CIA report linking Montoya to a paramilitary
terror operation in 2002-03 while commander of an army brigade
in Medellín.
Along with previous Archive postings, the article,
also published in English on the Archive's Web site, is part of
an effort by the Colombia documentation project to uncover declassified
sources on Colombia's armed conflict, particularly the illegal
paramilitary terror groups now engaged in a controversial demobilization
and reparations process with the government.
Read the article in
Spanish at Semana.com or in English below.
The
Truth about Triple-A
By
Michael Evans, Director, Colombia Documentation Project
[Published in Spanish at Semana.com,
July 1, 2007]
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 U.S. assistance.
Now, a 1979 diplomatic
report from the U.S. 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 U.S. 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
U.S. 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 U.S. has examined Gen. Montoya's alleged ties to Triple-A
on several occasions as part of a human rights vetting process
for recipients of U.S military assistance. In each case, the U.S.
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 (DIA) 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 U.S. 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 U.S. defense attaché included in the
document.
That report provoked a strong response from U.S. Senator Patrick
Leahy, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that overseas Colombia
aid, who in April blocked the release of $55 million in U.S. assistance
to Colombian security forces. Earlier this month, the U.S. House
of Representatives further increased the pressure, dramatically
reducing the proportion of U.S. aid going to the Colombian military.
U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 counterguerrilla
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 U.S. Embassy
will remain a valuable source on Colombia's paramilitary past.
Documents
The
following documents are in PDF format.
You will need to download and install the free Adobe
Acrobat Reader to view.
Document
1
1979 February 6
U.S. Embassy Colombia, cable
Human Rights: Estimate of the Present Situation in Colombia
Source: Freedom of Information Act request
U.S. Ambassador Diego Asencio reports on the worsening human
rights situation in Colombia as the government continues "a
massive operation against the M-19 terrorist group" under
a state of siege decreed by President Julio Turbay Ayala.
Among other activities associated with the anti-guerrilla crackdown,
the Ambassador notes "the delineation of a plan" by
the Army's intelligence battalion, and approved by Army Commander
Gen. Jorge Robledo Pulido, "to create the impression that
the American Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA) has established itself
in Colombia and is preparing to take violent action against Colombian
Communists." AAA, or Triple-A, was a shadowy, anti-communist
terrorist organization responsible for a number of bombings, killings
and other violent acts in the late-1970s.
The document attributes the operation to the Army's Battalion
of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (BINCI), also known as
the "Charry Solano" battalion. BINCI was the Army's
primary counterintelligence unit, with agents attached to Army
elements throughout Colombia and under the operational control
of the E-2 Army intelligence directorate in Bogotá. Several
young officers reportedly assigned to BINCI at this time, including
current Army Commander Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe, have since risen
to senior positions in the Colombian Armed Forces. (see Document
2)
Asencio calls the Triple-A operation "a disturbing
development," but does not believe that the group's actions
constitute human rights violations. Terrorist acts like the December
12, 1978, bombing of Colombian Communist Party headquarters were
"more appropriately characterized as dirty tricks,"
according to the ambassador's report.
"The plan was born of the frustration the military felt
last fall when little headway was being made in combating terrorist
activities and is likely to remain inoperative so long as the
armed forces are successful in dealing with the problem by other
means."
The ambassador further reports that some M-19 detainees were
"roughed up" and that security forces threatened one
woman "with becoming a missing person if she did not cooperate
with the authorities." But Asencio adds that the human rights
violations that have occurred are the "result of harsh interrogations
performed by individuals acting on their own, rather than as torture
or the application of a conscious policy to extract information
by torture." "[M]ilitary forces are a "blunt instrument,"
the ambassador adds, "and military operations may have unexpected
consequences."
Document
2
1980 November 29
[Open letter to the President of Colombia, et al.]
Source: "Militares colombianos presos denuncian
crímenes de colegas," El Día (Mexico),
November 29, 1980. Obtained at the Library of Congress (microfilm)
Five imprisoned members of the Army's Intelligence and Counterintelligence
Battalion (BINCI) describe actions carried out by the unit under
the guise of the American Anticommunist Alliance in an open letter
published in the pages of the Mexican newspaper El Día.
The officials name then-lieutenant Mario Montoya Uribe among many
other Colombian Army officers implicated in terrorist actions
directed against leftist political targets.
Document
3
Circa 1992
Pax Christi International, et al.
El Terrorismo de Estado en Colombia [Excerpt]
This 1992 publication states that "Montoya Uribe was part
of the Triple A and took part in some of the dynamite
attacks" attributed to the group, citing "the confessions
of three former military intelligence agents." U.S. officials
evaluating Montoya's human rights record have frequently cited
and dismissed the allegations contained in Terrorismo--apparently
their sole source on the Triple-A allegations--as leftist
propaganda.
Document
4
1998 July 01
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Information Report
Biographic Report - Colombia, Colonel Mario ((Montoya)) Uribe,
Colombian Army, Director of Intelligence
Source:
Freedom of Information Act request
According to the DIA's biographic report, Gen. Montoya received
training at several U.S. military institutions, including the
U.S. Army School of the Americas (where he was also a guest instructor),
the U.S. Army Armor Advanced Course at Fr. Knox, and other "unspecified"
training. His early posts included several stints in Bogotá,
Antioquia and in the field of military intelligence. The 1998
report only covers career postings after Montoya attained the
rank of major, and thus says nothing about Montoya's assignment
to the BINCI battalion as a relatively young army lieutenant.
Document
5
1999 September 14
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Information Report
Three Leading Candidates to Become Next Military Intelligence
Chief
Source:
Freedom of Information Act request
This 1999 report from the U.S. defense attaché
in Colombia states that Montoya, then the "top candidate"
to become director of military intelligence, "has been the
target of a baseless NGO smear campaign."
Calling Montoya "the most highly decorated" and "most
widely respected" candidate for the job, the attaché
says that that the then-colonel had been subject to a "smear
campaign by the Belgium-based 'Pax Crist'" human rights group."
Their 1992 book, Terrorismo de Estado en Colombia, lists
Montoya as a "member, from 1978-79, of a so-called 'paramilitary
structure known as the American Anticommunist Alliance (Alianza
Americana Anticomunista)-otherwise known as the 'Triple A.''
Contained in its six sentences of uncorroborated allegations,
Pax Cristi accuses the Triple-A of 'dynamiting communications
centers, death threats against members of political opponents
and assassinating members and sympathizers of insurgent groups.'
Furthermore, the report charges that three ex-military intelligence
agents who were former members of the "Charry Solano"
intelligence and counterintelligence battalion, indicated that
Montoya was a member of the Triple A, and took part in the dynamiting.
The report provided no corroborating evidence to support these
allegations.
Document
6
2000
February 04
U.S. Embassy Colombia, cable
Human Rights: Review of Unit Proposed Under End-Use Monitoring
Agreement: Colombian Army JTF-S ("Joint Task Force South")
Command Element
Source: Freedom of Information Act
request
Under a 1997 agreement, the U.S. required units and individuals
slated for U.S. assistance to be vetted for human rights violations.
In this cable, the U.S. Embassy requests that State Department
officials in Washington undertake a review of the human rights
records of the "command element" of Joint Task Force
South, a U.S.-funded military unit with "operational command"
of several important counternarcotics and counterinsurgency brigades
in southern Colombia. The document dismisses the charges made
against Gen. Montoya in Terrorismo de Estado, calling
them "unsupported" and "baseless."
Document
7
2000 June 26
U.S. Embassy Colombia, cable
Part of the 1st CN Battalion Deployed to Southern Putumayo;
Logistical Support from 24th Brigade
Source: Freedom of Information Act request
On May 11, 2000, the first company of soldiers from the U.S.-supported
First Counternarcotics Battalion was deployed to southern Colombia
and was under the operational control of Joint Task Force South
(JTF-S), then under the command of Gen. Montoya. The unit was
then spearheading the military’s counternarcotics campaign
in Putumayo and other areas. In this cable, U.S. Ambassador Curtis
Kamman feels compelled to flag for the State Department that the
battalion is operating alongside and with the support of the army’s
24th Brigade, a unit denied U.S. security assistance in 1999 due
to human rights concerns.
The counternarcotics battalion’s “Bravo Company”
“has been operating in the 24th Brigade’s area of
operations since May 11,” the cable reports, “and
will remain there indefinitely.” The company is “bedding
down” with the brigade’s 31st Battalion “which
has been tasked to provide Bravo Company with logistical support.”
While operational control rests with the vetted commanders of
JTF-S, “the 24th Brigade would provide any quick reaction
force needed to reinforce Bravo Company should the need arise.”
Because of the 24th Brigade’s “questioned vetting
status” Kamman wants to “note this deployment for
the record.”
Document
8
2000 July 05
U.S. State Department, cable
Approach to MOD [Minister of Defense] on 24th Brigade
Source: Freedom of Information Act Release to the
National Security Archive
In this cable, the State Department forwards talking points to
U.S. Ambassador Curtis Kamman detailing how he should approach
the Colombian Minister of Defense about U.S. concerns over allegations
of human rights violations by members of the Army’s 24th
Brigade, then a component unit of Joint Task Force South, the
U.S.-funded unit led by Gen. Montoya.
The Brigade, considered a vital component of U.S. counternarcotics
strategy in southern Colombia, had recently been accused of several
human rights crimes, including the execution of three campesinos
detained at a roadblock near San Miguel, Putumayo. The 24th Brigade
was denied U.S. assistance in September 2000, but continued to
act as an integral part of Joint Task Force South, the command
spearheading the first phase of “Plan Colombia,” and
which would eventually include all three U.S.-supported counternarcotics
battalions.
Kamman is to stress that “the participation of the 24th
Brigade is critical for counternarcotics operations and the success
of Plan Colombia,” but that the U.S. “cannot provide
assistance to the 24th Brigade” until the Colombians finish
their investigation of the incident, and only then if the investigation
is “thorough and either disproves the allegations or recommends
appropriate sanctions for those involved.”
In his talking points, the ambassador is told to stress “persistent
reports that the 24th Brigade, and the 31st Counterguerrilla Battalion
in particular, has been cooperating with illegal paramilitary
groups that have been increasingly active in Putumayo.”
As noted in the previous document, the Bravo Company of the U.S.-backed
First Counternarcotics Battalion had been bunking with, and receiving
logistical and other support from, the 31st Counterguerrilla Battalion
and the 24th Brigade since it arrived in Putumayo on May 11, 2000.
