By Michael Isikoff and
Gregory Vistica, with Steven Ambrus
NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE

Only last summer, the White House seemed wary of greater U.S. involvement in Colombia's vicious drug war. Republicans on Capitol Hill wanted to add muscle to Colombia's anti-drug forces, but administration officials favored more diplomacy. A top State Department official returned from a visit to Bogota and described himself as "sobered, but certainly not panicked." Then, two months ago, the president announced a stunning $1.3 billion aid package, including 63 U.S.-made helicopters and other military hardware. If approved by Congress, the massive program would be the largest single increase in drug-war spending since Bill Clinton took office. Critics - including some inside the administration - fear a nasty entanglement. "When I first saw this," says a veteran U.S. anti-drug official, "my reaction was, 'What, are they nuts?'"

Why did Clinton suddenly change tack? The answer, according to a Newsweek reconstruction, is a surprising Washington tale of the pressures that influence White House foreign policy in an election year. (In other words, it is a tale about the corruption of the Executive Government. WFI Editor) No one doubts that Colombia is a serious policy challenge, and many strongly believe the aid package is a vital response. But a series of other factors also came into open play. Domestic politics was one - and lobbying efforts by arms producers may have been another.

According to the White House version of the story, it was Clinton's drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey - the former commander of all U.S. forces in Latin America - who convinced Clinton something had to be done about Colombia. In White House meetings and in memos, McCaffrey repeatedly pointed to Colombia's surging coca crop and increasing ties between the country's Marxist guerrillas and its drug lords. By last spring, the guerillas were making daring raids into government-controlled territory. The U.S. drug czar prodded Colombia's new president, Andres Pastrana, to take more aggressive action, telling him the guerrillas would be "outside his window" if his military didn't strike harder. McCaffrey was similarly blunt with his own boss, warning President Clinton that his legacy was at stake. If the administration failed to act against Colombia's narcoguerrillas, he told Clinton last summer, the United States would soon face a blizzard of Colombian cocaine more intense than anything seen before. "The country will say you let this go," McCaffrey said to the president. (To blame Clinton for the upsurge in cocaine is to dismiss a century of U.S. presidents intervening in the affairs of Colombia, starting with Theodore Roosevelt, who bluntly declared, "I took the isthmus!" meaning the territory that now constitutes Panama, but which used to be northern Colombia. McCaffrey's warning also pointedly illustrates the fact that the billions spent on the so-called War on Drugs have been wasted, since the only thing that could cause a "blizzard of Colombian cocaine" to hit the streets in the U.S. is higher prices, which is exactly the economic impact one could have expected when the U.S. coerced Colombia to join its ill-conceived Drug War, and destroyed coca plantations. Reduce the supply, and the price goes up, causing an influx of new producers… Isn't it ironic how the people who are supposedly running the biggest "free market" in the world, don't appear to understand the most basic of free market principles, that demand and supply have an effect on prices! WFI Editor)

But it wasn't McCaffrey alone who prodded Clinton into action. Despite the drug czar's warnings, officials say, few in the White House paid much heed until last September, when Democratic pollster Mark Melman showed up with worrisome news: the public perceived that "drug use" was on the rise and was inclined to blame Democrats. (In fact, government figures show overall drug use has been static for the past five years). Drugs, according to Melman's polling, were one issue where Republicans had a clear edge in the upcoming election. "This issue is an Achilles' heel" for the party, Melman warned. (Of course, this is to overlook the reality that drug abuse, like alcohol abuse, are health and medical issues, the causal factors of which are the old master-servant tensions that have existed in the republic since its founding. WFI Editor)

As it turned out, the poll was hardly the idea of a disinterested party: Newsweek has learned that it was commissioned by Lockheed Martin, the giant defense contractor. As the maker of P-3 radar planes used to track drug smugglers, the company had been pushing for heavy increases for drug interdiction. But Lockheed was facing resistance, especially from "liberal" Democrats on Capitol Hill, a company official says. Melman's findings - based on telephone interviews with 800 registered voters - concluded that "56 percent" of the electorate would support a $2 billion increase in funding for "tracking planes to be flown in drug producing areas."

Other powerful interests also weighed in. Occidental Petroleum, which has large investments in Colombia, pressed for greater U.S. engagement, and the Colombian government retained the powerhouse Washington law firm of Akin, Gump, to push for increased aid. Lobbyists from two U.S. helicopter companies were even more aggressive: Textron, the maker of the Bell Huey, and United Technologies Corp., whose Sikorsky Aircraft division makes the Black Hawk. Both firms sent choppers to Washington's Reagan National Airport to impress congressional members with gut-twisting rides.

The companies also made large campaign contributions. Federal election records show that Textron and United Technologies donated $1.25 million to both parties between 1997 and 1999. (Pointing up, once again, that the powerful hedge their bets by donating to the Democrats as well as the Republicans, because both parties share certain fundamental assumptions about the exercise of power under the republic, and neither political party is based on a foundation of principles. WFI Editor) Last year UT made a strategic shift: having long favored gift-giving to Republicans, the Connecticut-based firm earmarked two thirds of its "soft money" to the Democrats, writing four checks totaling $125,000 to various Democratic committees. The bulk of that money, $75,000, was deposited in party accounts on one day, Dec. 31, 1999 - 11 days before the Colombia package was announced. (The company and the Democratic National Committee deny any link between the events: "We didn't even know the Black Hawks were going to be in there" until the plan was released, a UT spokesman said. Lockheed and Textron officials also denied trying to influence the White House).

Republican operatives have pointed to the role of Sen. Christopher Dodd, a former DNC chair. The aid deal includes $400 million for 30 new Black Hawks, which are made in Dodd's home state of Connecticut. Even administration officials acknowledge the Colombian Army lacks enough hangars and pilots to handle so many choppers. "A year ago we couldn't get them to fund three Black Hawks - and now they want 30?" says one GOP staffer. Dodd, who visited Colombia last December, denies ever mentioning his home-state choppers to administration officials (as if he had to, WFI Editor) - or knowing anything about the company's last-minute campaign infusion.

McCaffrey acknowledges that it will be some time before the Colombians will be able to use the choppers, even if the package survives the scrutiny of Republicans in Congress. "This is a five-year engagement," he says. By then, Clinton's Colombia troubles will be in someone else's hands.

SOURCE: Excerpted from the 3 April, 2000, issue of Newsweek Magazine, from an article entitled, "The Other Drug War." Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.