From: [t--ub--o] at [shore.net] (Theodore Dubro)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,talk.politics.libertarian,rec.drugs.cannabis,rec.drugs.misc
Subject: Re: DEA Implicated In Colombia
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 1995 14:05:01 -0400

And now, the Reuters version:

------

         BOGOTA (Reuter) - A Colombian congressman said Wednesday he 
had recordings of tapped telephone conversations of the top U.S. 
anti-drug agent in Colombia that link the agent to an alleged 
anti-government conspiracy.  
         Representative Carlos Alonso Lucio, a former leftist 
guerrilla, said the tapes were of Tony Senneca, head of the U.S. 
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) office in Bogota, talking 
about sensitive topics such as covert operations and  Colombia's 
political situation.  
         Lucio said he would reveal the contents of the tapes in 
Congress late on Wednesday.  
         ``It is important for the country to know this,'' Lucio said 
in an interview with the Caracol radio station. ``Colombians 
should know that we're the victims of a conspiracy,'' he said.  
         Lucio did not reveal the origin of the tapes. But he said 
they showed ``how these men of the DEA view Colombians'' and 
demonstate how ``the petty interests of a very particular (group 
of people) have jeopardized and destabilized the relations 
between our country and the United States.''  
         The U.S. Embassy declined to comment on Lucio's 
allegations.  
    President Ernesto Samper's government has been thrown into 
crisis by charges that his 1994 campaign was partly financed by 
the Cali drug cartel.  
         The radio station played part of a conversation Senneca 
allegedly held with Fabio Vargas, brother-in-law of Guillermo 
Pallomari, the reputed Cali cartel treasurer who handed himself 
in to DEA agents last month in Washington with potentially 
damaging evidence about Samper's campaign.  
         In the conversation, Vargas asks a man with a thick American 
accent if he had any news about Pallomari's wife, Patricia, who 
has alternately been reported kidnapped in Colombia or under the 
protection of U.S. agents.  
         The American says he has no news, but promises to see to it 
that the phone number Vargas gave him is passed on to Pallomari 
so he can call Vargas himself at a prearranged time.  
         Lucio said Senneca also discussed Interior Minister Horacio 
Serpa, who drew a storm of protest from Washington last week by 
stating that the DEA may have had a role in a conspiracy against 
Samper.  
         Serpa has since denied linking the DEA to any conspiracy.  
         But Lucio said the tape recordings would vindicate the 
interior minister, who has been Colombia's acting head of state 
since late Tuesday when Samper left the country on an official 
visit to Germany.  
         ``In his (Serpa's) specific remarks about an international 
conspiracy he was right, and this proof is going to make that 
clear ... There's a conspiracy in Colombia, of that there's no 
room for doubt,'' Lucio said.  

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- [t--ub--o] at [shore.net]
Damned Enterprising Americans.