Blog

On February 19, 1986 government informant and CIA operative Barry Seal was assassinated at a Salvation Army Halfway House in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Six Colombians were quickly arrested for the murder: Miguel Valez, Bernardo Vasquez, Carlos Louis Quintero-Cruz, John Cardona, Elberto Sanchez, and Jose Renteria. A seventh suspect, Rafa Cardona, managed to escape but was murdered later that same year in Colombia.
John Cardona and Elberto Sanchez were quickly released from custody and deported to Colombia. Jose Renteria, who photographed Seal’s dead body in his bullet-riddled Cadillac, was detained a brief period during which he was questioned by the FBI. Renteria told the FBI that the weapons used to kill Barry Seal had been supplied by Jose Coutin and that he was linked to the “Contra scandal” operative Oliver North. Coutin has been linked in other media reports as a “CIA asset.” Renteria was also deported to Colombia.
Valez, Vasquez, and Quintero-Cruz were tried, convicted, and sentenced to life without parole. Richard Sharpstein, one of the attorneys who defended the assassins, informed the press:
“All three Colombians who went to trial always said they were being directed, after they got into this country, on what to do by an ‘anonymous gringo,’ a U.S. military officer, who they very quickly figured out was Oliver North.”
I first met Valez, Vasquez, and Quintero-Cruz in the East Baton Rouge Parish prison in November 1986 where I was briefly held as a “government witness” after exposing a massive pardons-selling scheme in the Louisiana prison system.
But it was after I was transferred to the David Wade Correctional Center in 1994 and assigned to the same unit with Vasquez and Quintero-Cruz that I came to know them quite well.
They were known simply as the Colombians.
They controlled the N5 special protection unit. They had the money and outside support to do it.
I don’t know if these two Colombians, like so many other Colombians imprisoned in America, cooperated with the United States Government in its concerted efforts in the 1990s to track down and kill Pablo Escobar.
But I believe they did – and that is why they were transferred to the Wade protection unit.
Why would a prison system put Colombian drug cartel assassins, who gunned down the nation’s most prized government informant, in a protection unit with high profile government informants?
It defies penal logic.
The Colombians never trusted me, and I never trusted them. We co-existed. But I posed a serious threat to them: I was intelligent. I did not fear them, and I was not impressed with their money.
I learned one thing through these Colombians, however.
Never trust the Government.
The Secret Service and FBI nearly got me killed because I trusted them.
The next time I hear someone say they are going to kill the President of the United States, I will keep my mouth shut!
Information in his article was gleaned from court decisions, news reports, books, and the Colombians themselves.

In April 1948 a popular leftist leader named Jorge Gaitan was assassinated in Bogotá, Colombia. The city erupted into a violence called “El Bogotazo.” It quickly spread throughout the country assuming the name “La violencia.” Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the bloodbath – the army against paramilitary leftists, industrialists against unionists, Catholics against liberal heretics, and bandidos running rampant in pursuit of plunder. The violence ended in 1953.
In his book “Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw” (Penguin Books 2001), Mark Bowden said the bandidos became heroes. The masses bestowed worship and glamour upon them. The country began to breed outlaws. They would eventually be needed to keep up with America’s demand for illicit narcotics.
By the mid-1970s the American “pot generation” had re-discovered cocaine – the drug that once made Coca-Cola and dozens of other drinks so popular at the turn of the 20th century. In that era the drug earned the praises of famed psychologist Sigmund Freud and Scotland Yard detective Sherlock Holmes. Holmes who said the drug was “so transcendentally stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.” Sherlock’s reaction was shared by President William McKinley, the Czar of Russia, the Prince of Wales and Pope Leo XIII – all of whom used in the drug in a wine mixture called “Vin Mariani.”
The demand for the white powder skyrocketed throughout the American middle and upper classes in the 1970s. By 1975 a kilo of cocaine in Miami sold for $40,000. That kilo would generate approximately $600,000 in “street sales.” Ruthless crime bosses in Colombia – like Pablo Escobar, Fabio and Jorge Ochoa, Carlos Lehder and Jose Rodriquez Gacha – formed “cocaine cartels” to meet the insatiable American demand for cocaine. By 1980 these drug lords controlled half of the cocaine traffic into America, bringing them billions of dollars in profit.
According to Bowden, bank deposits in Colombia’s four leading cities doubled between 1976 and 1980. It was said that Gacha was the richest of the drug barons but Pablo was clearly the most ruthless and dangerous of the lot. Daring and murderous, Pablo followed the lead of his idol, Poncho Villa, by killing off all competition and any cops who tried to arrest him.
By the mid-1980, Pablo owned 19 residents in Medellin alone, as well as a fleet of boats, planes, and proprieties throughout the world – all of which were accumulated through drug trafficking. The violence the drug baron used to obtain their wealth was staggering. One example was the forty people left dead in one weekend after the authorities seized 600 kilos of cocaine in Cali.
Bowden reported that Pablo Escobar reached his peak of power in 1982 when he used drug wealth to get elected to the Colombian Congress. He flaunted the legislative immunity of that position by traveling to America where he was wanted on drug charges. He was considered a hero by many in his country for such audacious displays.
In 1983, according to CIA reports, Leftist guerillas joined the drug traffickers. These terrorists reaped tremendous profits trafficking in cocaine and protecting other traffickers. Marxism and cocaine, said then U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs, became synonymous in Colombia.
But it was three unrelated events that would trigger the inevitable violent downfall of the drug lord, Pablo Escobar.
First, some rogue Leftist guerillas kidnapped for ransom (the Leftists’ crime of choice in the days before cocaine trafficking) a sister of the Ochoa brothers. Pablo went into an insane rage. He declared war on the guerillas, propelling the country into a cauldron of violence. Stunned by the sheer enormity and indiscriminate nature of this violence, the nation’s power elite turned against the drug lord.
Pablo was stripped of his Congressional seat. Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara launched a political and law enforcement attack against the drug kingpin, his cartel, and his drug wealth. Pablo responded by doing the unthinkable: he had Lara assassinated.
“Killing the Justice Minister was an act of war against the state,” Bowden wrote.
Pablo, the Ochoa brothers, Lehder, and Gacha were forced into exile in Panama following the Lara assassination.
The second event came in November 1984 after Adler “Barry” Seal (who had already become a DEA informant against Escobar) gave a Baton Rouge television investigative reporter named John Camp an interview in which he described how he had smuggled tons of cocaine into America for the “Medellin drug cartel” and linked the cartel’s leaders to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Seal’s revelations in the Camp interview entitled “Uncle Sam Wants You” were not only politically explosive but also identified him publicly as an informant against Escobar.
I had met Camp that same year, a top notch WBRZ reporter who regularly produced “The Camp Reports.” He was visiting his son at Angola where he was serving a life sentence for murder. The former CNN reporter and a recovering alcoholic, Camp had landed a major journalistic coup with the Seal interview. The Seal interview enabled the reporter to resurrect a career ruined by alcohol abuse.
While the Lara assassination had forced Pablo into exile, it was Barry Seal who brought the drug kingpin into the public spotlight in what Mark Bowden called a “dramatic fashion.”
“A rotund American pilot and cocaine trafficker named Barry Seal had been busted by the DEA in Florida,” the author wrote, “and, facing up to fifty-seven years in prison, had begged the DEA to take him on as an informant. He flew a C-123 transport plane to Managua on June 25, 1984, to pick up a 750-kilo shipment of cocaine. A camera hidden in the nose of his airplane captured images of the exiled Pablo and Rodriquez Gacha as they supervised the loading. The DEA intended to use Seal to set up a big sting, one that would lure Pablo, Rodriquez, and maybe even Lehder and the Ochoa brothers to Mexico, where they would all be arrested and brought to the United States to stand trial. It was clear that Pablo, at least, intended to continue working with Seal. He had given the informant a list of goodies to bring him from the States. Life on the run had evidently cut into El Doctor’s lifestyle. He wanted Seal to bring him video recorders, ten-speed bicycles, Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch, Marlboro cigarettes, and one more thing … $1.5 million in cash.
“Pictures of Pablo and Gacha loading drugs at a Nicaraguan airport caused quite a sensation in Washington. It proved a connection between the Marxist Sandinista regime and to top Colombian cocaine traffickers. Oliver North, the National Security Council adviser, coordinating the Reagan administration’s efforts (legal and illegal) against the Sandinistas, saw the photos as a tremendous public relations coup. He wanted to release them immediately but was asked not to by Ron Caffery, chief of the DEA’s cocaine desk in Washington. But it proved impossible to keep the pictures quiet. The administration was trying to convince Congress to continue funding for the Contras, the pro-democracy rebel forces battling the new Sandinista regime. The presence of Colombian narco kingpins shipping cocaine from Nicaraguan soil was very helpful to their case. The information leaked, first to the head of the U.S. Army Southern Command, General Paul Gorman, who told a chamber of commerce crowd from San Salvador that ‘the world will soon be given proof’ that the Sandinista regime was abetting drug trafficking, and then to the Washington Times. The stories appeared only after Seal had delivered Pablo his goodies.”
It was these two events, the Lara assassination and Barry Seal’s revelations, that made Pablo Escobar the world’s most hunted fugitive. He could not hide, or run from the world’s media attention. The downfall noose around the drug kingpin’s neck was squeezed tighter by yet a third incident that probably never garnered a moment of his concern – the 1986 cocaine overdose of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias. Following the tragic death of this basketball star, cocaine abruptly lost its glamorous appeal as the American drug of choice. It became a source of evil, produced and distributed by evil Colombians. Cocaine, and Pablo Escobar, became the number one priority in the American law enforcement community.
While Rodriquez Gacha may have been the most powerful and richest drug baron in the world, the face of Pablo Escobar became synonymous with the face of cocaine trafficking and its violence after these three events.
The feared drug baron, however, was determined not to go down quietly.
“It seems we have decided to live with crime and declare ourselves defeated,” El Espectaador newspaper editor Guillermo Cano wrote, directing his comments at Escobar. “[His] drug cartel has taken over Colombia.”
Pablo’s henchmen assassinated the newspaper editor one week later.
With Barry Seal’s testimony, a Miami federal grand jury indicted Escobar and Jorge Ochoa in 1984 for their part in the 750-kilo shipment of cocaine into the United States from Nicaragua. American law enforcement lauded it as a major blow against narco-violence.
Pablo flexed his muscle. He exploded a car bomb outside the Bogota residence of U.S. Ambassador Tambs. The tough-talking diplomat fled the country. He was not as confident as the DEA.
Barry Seal became Pablo’s next target.
In December 1984, less than a month after the Camp interview with Seal aired, Max Mermelstein and Raphael Cardona-Salazar, two members of Pablo’s cartel, met with Miguel Valez (also known as “Cumbamba” for his chin, or simply “Chin”) and several other members of the Medellin cartel in Miami to discuss business. Mermelstein, Cardona-Salazar, and a Fabio Ochoa cartel lieutenant privately watched the Camp interview following this meeting. Cardona-Salazar told Mermelstein that he had been tasked with either kidnapping and returning Seal to Colombia for a sum of $1,000,000, or killing him for $500,000. During this private meeting Cardona-Salazar called both Pablo and Ochoa on the telephone and the two drug barons personally thanked Mermelstein for taking the Barry Seal “contract.”
Following three trips to Louisiana and unsuccessful attempts to locate Seal, a second meeting was held in February 1985 in Miami during which Cardona-Salazar and Valez informed Mermelstein that they were being “pressured” by Pablo and the Ochoas to have Seal killed. After that meeting Valez privately told Mermelstein that he was displeased because he had not been included in the previous attempts to locate Seal in Louisiana. “Chin” told Mermelstein that he would kill Seal even if it meant taking out Seal’s wife and children in the process. That meeting produced results.
On February 12, 1986 Bernardo Vasquez took an Eastern Airlines flight from Miami to New Orleans where he checked into the Airport Hilton. He rented a late model Oldsmobile for seven days from a local car rental agency. Four days later Valez arrived in New Orleans from Miami. He was accompanied by Heriberto Sanchez Cardenas and John Jairo Cardona Garcia. They checked into the same Airport Hilton. On the day of Chin’s arrival, Vasquez rented a Lincoln Town Car from yet another car rental agency. Meanwhile, Carlos Luis Quintero-Cruz arrived in New Orleans after entering the country illegally through Mexico.
Two days before the Seal assassination Vasquez arrived at the Holiday Inn South in Baton Rouge shortly after midnight. He was driving the Lincoln Town Car. He and a companion checked into the hotel. Between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. that morning Vasquez and his companion also checked into the Jay Motel which was located next to the Salvation Army’s halfway house. From that motel room, Vasquez had a direct view of the parking lot where Seal arrived and departed each day. Satisfied, he and his companion checked out of the Holiday Inn South at 8:00 a.m.
The two men returned to New Orleans where Vasquez paid $6500 cash for a Buick Park Avenue at a local car dealership. He purchased the vehicle in the name of a fake girlfriend. He and Jose Renteria Campo picked up the Buick the following day, February 18. Campo had checked into the Airport Hilton earlier that day. He had brought with him the Mac-10 machine gun that killed Seal and a Uzi pistol – both of which had been supplied by Jose Coutin, the reported CIA asset.
That day and the following day, the 19th, Vasquez purchased a rain slicker, baseball caps, and luggage from Anthony’s Department Store in Kenner, Louisiana. He returned later that day to buy more clothing, including a western plaid shirt. A short time later he spent $341.00 at Radio Shack in Kenner for two walkie-talkie radios. His fingerprints would later be discovered on the batteries in one of the radios.
Everything needed for the hit had been purchased. The assassination team then left New Orleans and drove to Baton Rouge during the afternoon of the 19th. An East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s deputy named Dennis Debate testified at the trial of the assassins that at approximately 5:45 p.m. he observed the Buick Park Avenue stop and park in the middle of the road adjacent to the Belmont Hotel which was near the Salvation Army’s halfway house. He stated that a lone individual, wearing an orange baseball cap and t-shirt, remained in the vehicle smoking a cigarette. Valez was the individual sitting in the Buick.
No one ever explained why Deputy Debate was in the vicinity of the Salvation Army’s halfway house observing the assassination team or why he didn’t intervene.
Like clockwork, Seal arrived at the appointed time of 6:00 p.m. as he was required to do per a federal court order. After backing his Cadillac into its normal parking space, he opened the door to get out but before he could exit the vehicle Quintero-Cruz bolted from behind a donation drop box and opened fire with a full volley of .45 caliber bullets from the Mac-10 machine gun. Seal was killed instantly. Quintero-Cruz and another assassin fled to the waiting Buick which sped away. The assassins abandoned the Buick a short distance down a service road where they jumped into a waiting red Cadillac.
This car switch was observed by two by East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s deputies named Hardy and Bonnette. They testified at the assassins’ trial that the car switch was done in “great haste.”
Again, no one ever explained why deputies Hardy and Bonnette were in the vicinity of the Salvation Army’s halfway house, or why they did not investigate the unusual car switch.
Ineptly, the assassins left the two weapons, clothing from the department store, one of the walkie-talkie radios, and other items in the getaway Buick. The red Cadillac was later recovered at the Airport Parking Garage. The fingerprints of Valez, Vasquez, and Quintero-Cruz were found in both the Buick and Cadillac.
Approximately 90 minutes after the Seal murder Vasquez and Renteria Campo checked out of the Airport Hilton and tried unsuccessfully to get a flight out of New Orleans. Both men were briefly detained by the FBI but released. Valez met with Vasquez a short time later at the Hilton. Chin learned that a flight out of the city was impossible, so without checking out of the hotel he hired a taxi to take him to Montgomery, Alabama. He paid $235.00 in advance for the fare. But to his misfortune the taxi struck a deer in Mississippi prompting the cab driver to summon the state police. Even a Mississippi trooper knew that a Colombian wearing a dark trench coat and taking a taxi from New Orleans to Alabama was probable cause for an arrest.
Two days after the Seal murder, Vasquez was arrested in New Orleans at the residence of Gonzalo Jaramillo. The FBI had been tipped by Jaramillo shortly after Vasquez arrived at his home. The federal agents put Vasquez under surveillance. They observed him abandon the Lincoln Town Car in the parking lot of a local business where he placed a number of objects in a trash bin. The FBI recovered the Lincoln’s car keys, a pair of gloves, car rental agreements, and a baseball cap from the trash bin. Vasquez then took a taxi to the general area of Jaramillo’s home and walked the rest of the way to the residence.
A few hours later Vasquez left Jaramillo’s residence and went to another residence on Glasco Street where Quintero-Cruz and Cardona Garcia had been taken by Alberto Villada-Zapata at Vasquez’s instruction. He then returned to Jaramillo’s residence where he was arrested. Cruz and Garcia were both later arrested at the Glasco street residence. Cruz had $3000 in cash, plus some Mexican and British currency while Garcia had $2000 in cash.
*****
Barry Seal became an informant for the DEA in 1981. The agency quickly realized he was not a petty street informant. He was part of the world’s largest and most violent drug smuggling cartel.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Campbell knew Seal. The former Chief of the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime/Drug Enforcement Task Force in Nevada returned to a private attorney practice in Las Vegas after Seal’s assassination.
“[Barry Seal did] what no other living human being was able to do,” Campbell said. “He made cases on the [world’s] most significant drug dealers.”
That was true.
Seal developed drug cases against nearly two dozen smugglers in Nicaragua, Colombia, Miami, and Las Vegas. His cooperation with the government earned him a reduction of a 10-year federal sentence imposed on him in Florida.
In 1985, the informant appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Norman C. Roettger, Jr. for the sentence reduction.
“I would clearly have given Mr. Seal more than 10 years maximum at the time of sentencing because from the evidence I saw he struck me as being a man who was evil,” the judge said as he explained his change of opinion. “I am delighted to hear these appraisals by people whom I have a lot of respect for.”
Roettger then reduced Seal’s sentence to probation.
Two months later, December 1985, Seal was in Baton Rouge to face charges that he possessed with an intent to distribute 462 pounds of cocaine. He was also charged with four counts of causing financial institutions not to report currency transactions which totaled more than $50,000. He received a suspended sentence and a $25,000 fine on the drug conviction and a six-month sentence in a halfway house on the bank charges.
Unlike Roettger, U.S. District Court Judge Frank J. Polozola was not impressed with Seal’s cooperation with the federal government in its “war on drugs.” Polozola was aware that the informant had smuggled tons of cocaine into Baton Rouge in the early 1980s. The prevalence and use of cocaine among the city’s young professionals and political establishment reached epidemic proportions during that era. Because of Seal’s protected status as a DEA informant, and CIA operative, local law enforcement could not touch him.
Polozola was bent on revenge. Without even reading the transcripts of Seal’s cooperation with federal officials in Florida, the judge assumed his usual hardnosed, arrogant attitude toward criminals, saying that Seal was not fit for society.
“As far as I’m concerned,” the judge pontificated from the bench, “drug smugglers like Mr. Seal are the lowest, despicable type of people I can think of, because they have no concern for the public. In my opinion, people like you, Mr. Seal, ought to be in a federal penitentiary. You all ought to be there working at hard labor. Working in the hottest sun or the coldest day wouldn’t be good enough for drug dealers like you.”
Polozola, and the Baton Rouge FBI, knew Seal’s life was in danger. The informant was a Baton Rouge resident who supported a wife, four children, his mother and mother-in-law. He was an easy target. He told Polozola he was concerned about his personal safety and asked for permission to retain his bodyguards. Court transcripts disclose the following exchange between Polozola and Seal. The record reflects the judge’s bias against Seal.
“I don’t possess a gun, and I don’t intend to,” Seal said. “But I do intend to have bodyguards.”
“”Well, your bodyguards are going to have to be without guns,” Polozola responded.
“Well, why is that?” Seal asked. “If they have legal permits to carry them?”
“You take your chance, Mr. Seal,” Polozola threatened. “Take your chance. Have bodyguards with guns, and take your chance. If it’s a violation of your probation, if it’s a violation of the law, all I’m doing is alerting you and [your attorney] to the fact that it would be constructive possession [of a firearm by a convicted felon]. If people around you have guns, if you control these people and those guns.”
Polozola not only prohibited Seal from having bodyguards, he told the informant he could not leave the court’s jurisdiction without the judge’s written permission.
“And I can tell you right now,” the judge threatened again, “I don’t care if it is the Drug Enforcement Administration, I don’t care if it is the CIA, I don’t care if it’s the State Department, I don’t care if it is the U.S. Attorney, I don’t care who it is, you don’t go anyplace, anyplace without getting my personal written permission in advance.”
Polozola effectively sentenced Barry Seal to death. He knew it. The question remains to this day about how far up the government chain did the “conspiracy” to kill Seal reach, or if it was simply one hard right-wing federal judge who regularly abused his judicial powers.
“What happened to Barry Seal was a very unnecessary tragedy caused by law enforcement authorities who refused to recognize the danger,” said Lewis Unglesby, Seal’s attorney. “I have to say that, universally, their attitude to Mr. Seal was one of disinterest, irritation and resignation that he had done a great deal of work for the federal government. They said things as, ‘I don’t care what Barry Seal did in Florida or Nevada, he hasn’t done anything around here, so what do we get out of it’.”
Seal had not “done anything” for Baton Rouge law enforcement because Assistant U.S. Attorney Stanford Bardwell had turned down Seal’s offer to provide information.
Bardwell had a reputation of being rather dim-witted.
“Barry Seal had originally come to Stan Bardwell to offer his cooperation twice, and Bardwell twice turned him down,” said Thomas Sclafani, Seal’s Miami attorney. “It turned out to be a major embarrassment to Stan Bardwell and local federal authorities because Barry Seal turned out to be the most important witness in the United States and made two of the most significant cases in DEA’s history in one year.”
Bardwell countered that criticism by saying he offered to place Seal in the federal Witness Protection Program but the informant refused to enter the program. Seal’s attorney, however, pointed out that the informant had spent four months in the program and had been a virtual prisoner who was not even allowed to see his family.
“It was the most harrowing experience he ever had,” Sclafanti said.
Don Campbell agreed.
The former U.S. Attorney said he never knew of a family the size of Barry Seal’s family being successfully placed in the Witness Protection Program.
“Barry Seal [was] the single most important witness against narcotics traffic, and he is dead, and you can draw your own conclusions,” Campbell said.
The “conclusions” have been many, and varied.
Conspiracy theorists gathered even before Seal’s body turned cold in the morgue. Some said the CIA ordered the hit. There was some basis for that belief because the gun that killed Seal came from the Miami CIA asset named Jose Coutin. The assassins themselves said Oliver North arranged and orchestrated the hit. There was some basis for the North connection because then Vice-President’s George H.W. Bush’s telephone number was in Seal’s car trunk at the time of his murder. The FBI arrived at the Baton Rouge police headquarters and confiscated all the physical evidence. The agency returned it only after being ordered to do so by a local judge.
Local law enforcement obviously had some advanced knowledge that Seal would be “hit.” There were three sheriff’s deputies in the vicinity of the Salvation Army’s halfway house, and, by their own testimony, effectively watched the “hit” take place – without intervening. The FBI had Vasquez and Renteria-Campo in custody less than two hours after the hit but let them go. Renteria-Campo was released from custody even though he brought the murder weapons from Miami to New Orleans.
Barry Seal was indeed involved in some deep-cover government hit. Some conspiracy theorists believed he did the Camp interview in 1984 in an attempt to ward off a government hit.
Perhaps.
What was certain is that the CIA operative’s clandestine activities involved powerful people all the way to the White House. That alone was sufficient for the nation’s intelligence and federal law enforcement communities to want him neutralized.
The “government’s view, however, is that the “DEA informant” was killed by Pablo Escobar because he was a “snitch.” That’s a cruel irony because Escobar himself was reportedly a snitch. He supposedly told the Colombian police about a party Carlos Lehder was staging in February 1987. Ledher was arrested, put on a plane in Bogotá, and flown to Tampa on a DEA plane. Lehder knew Pablo had snitched him out. He would not forget it as he served a 135-year sentence in a federal prison.
*****
With Barry Seal dead, Pablo Escobar had to be next.
Ten months prior to Pablo’s betrayal of Lehder, President Ronald Reagan effectively signed Escobar’s death warrant when the president issued Directive 221 which declared drug trafficking a threat to national security.
President George H. W. Bush followed Reagan’s lead.
In 1989, the president appointed William Bennett to be the nation’s drug czar. The moral majority spokesman immediately made his feelings known about Escobar. He said the military should send “hit squads” to Colombia to “take out” the drug kingpin.
President Bush responded by doubling anti-drug spending between 1989 and 1991 ($300 million to $700 million, according to Mark Bowden). These expenditures did not include the money being pumped into secret military and CIA efforts to kill the elusive drug lord.
Washington began pressuring the Colombian government. They responded by putting Col. Hugo Martinez in charge of that country’s efforts to track down and kill the Medellin drug baron. The Colonel took the appointment seriously. He led 80 men in ten cars into Medellin in a show of force. Pablo was not impressed. His gunmen killed 30 of the Colonel’s men during the first fifteen days they were in the city.
Bowden reported that “the FBI had made some headway infiltrating the cartel with informants captured in the United States. [These] traffickers [were] offered a chance to avoid long prison terms by returning to Colombia to play the very risky game of double-cross.”
In 1989 Escobar and Gacha went too far in their campaign of terror and violence. They brought down an Avianca flight killing 110 passengers, including two Americans. While those bodies were still being removed from the burning wreckage, Pablo’s men were trying to buy 120 stinger missiles on the black market. President Bush reacted to the increasing Escobar threat level. He interpreted a 1974 executive order (Executive Order 12333) to allow for clandestine and covert military action against drug traffickers. The word traveled down the government pipeline: Pablo Escobar had to be hunted down and killed.
Between 1988 and 1990, there were 1500 drug-related killings in Colombia, most of them attributed to Escobar. During the first six months of 1991, an average of twenty drug-related murders were carried out each month in the country. Over one six-month period Pablo’s gunmen killed sixty-five of the policemen assigned to tracking him down.
But it was the murders of Gerardo Moncada and Fernando Galeano that provided the authorities the means necessary to kill the drug lord. The two brothers had buried $20 million of Pablo’s drug money, but the earth destroyed it. Pablo invited the two young drug dealers to the private prison in which he had been placed following a “friendly surrender” to the government. He tortured them, hanging both upside down before burning them alive. The Moncada and Galeano families joined forces, vowing revenge against the entire Escobar organization.
Rodolpho Ospina, a member of one of Colombia’s most powerful political families, had gotten involved in drug-trafficking in the 1970s. He crossed Pablo during his drug trafficking days. The drug baron twice tried to kill this heir of a Colombian president. The murder attempts forced Ospina to begin cooperating with American authorities. He also knew the Moncada/Galeano families. He provided details about the torture killings of Gerardo and Fernando to the authorities. Because of this, Pablo wanted Ospina dead worst than he had wanted Barry Seal dead. He put a $3 million bounty on the Colombian informant.
The Moncada and Galeano families formed a vigilante group called the Les Pepes. They put Fidel Castano, a popular right-wing paramilitary leader, in charge of the vigilante group. The first thing the group did was kill Brance “Tyson” Munoz, Pablo’s most feared gunman. That 1992 killing marked the beginning of the end of Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel.
Pablo responded with typical brute force. Members of Ospina’s family were kidnapped and killed. Ospina then met with Les Pepes. The informant laid out a blueprint (a blueprint that originated in Washington) to bring down the drug kingpin.
The five-point Ospina blueprint called for (1) the killings or arrests of Pablo’s key cartel members; (2) Pablo’s attorneys should be killed (and they were); (3) Pablo’s important assets and proprieties should be destroyed; (4) Pablo’s prized possessions should be destroyed; and (5) Les Pepes should court the Colombian media.
To successfully implement and execute the Ospina blueprint, the FBI, DEA, and CIA were charged with gathering all the background information and data possible about Pablo Escobar.
*****
The government agencies, I believe, had three valuable information assets sitting in maximum security at the Louisiana State Penitentiary – the Barry Seal assassins.
I first met the three Seal assassins – Valez, Vasquez, and Cruz – in November 1986 in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison. I had been transferred to the parish prison from the state penitentiary as a federal protected witness after my role in the “pardons-for-sale” investigation had been revealed by the media.
Warden Hayden J. Dees ordered that I be placed on the same tier with the Colombians. They had the tier to themselves for “security reasons.” Dees convinced the battery of attorneys representing the Colombians that I posed no threat to their clients.
I talked extensively with Velez during the three week confinement I shared with the Colombians at the parish prison. “The Chin” was eager to obtain information about Angola – its landscape, its security, and its day-to-day operations. He was clearly the leader of the three, and the more dangerous.
Velez had effectively pushed Mermelstein out of the Seal murder contract. He personally recruited Vasquez and Cruz to help him carry out the hit. Vasquez’s family had close ties in the Escobar drug cartel. He was chosen as the front man for the Seal operation. Cruz was picked to be the triggerman. Semi-illiterate, he came from a small Colombian village with a history of producing assassins for the country’s drug cartels.
The three Colombians lived by a philosophy of violence and corruption endemic in the drug cartel world. They were embraced in East Baton Rouge Parish prison system. They were treated by underpaid sheriff’s deputies working as jailers as powerful, important people. I suspect some of the special treatment came at federal government instruction. The assassins quickly spread their unlimited supply of drug money around, buying special privileges and favors in the jail system. They developed a sense of entitlement to special treatment.
By the time I arrived at the parish prison – some nine months after their arrest – the Colombians owned the jail. They had both the jailers and inmate trusties on their payroll. They had their own color television, unrestricted telephone access (daily hour-long calls to Colombia), and food delivered to them every night either from the prison kitchen or from a local fast-food outlet. Both keeper and kept were intimidated by them, always paying special deference to their needs and concerns.
Chin kept me supplied with a radio, batteries, and food in exchange for the information I gave him. He would not let Vasquez or Cruz interact with me. They were clearly subservient to his command. They had to get his approval to use the telephone, change the television channel, and even when to eat their special meals.
My prison path crossed with the Colombians again in 1994 when I arrived at Wade Correctional Center. They had been transferred there in 1993 from Angola’s maximum security lockdown where they were placed in a Wade “special protection unit” known as N5. It struck me as odd that the prison system would transfer three high-profile informant killers to a protection unit where high-profile government informants were housed.
Chin was not in the protection unit when I arrived in 1994. He had quickly discovered that the unit was controlled by Gilbert Gauthe, a serial pedophile ex-priest who had the powerful support of Henry Politz, the Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Gauthe situation chafed “the Chin” who was not about to share power with a child-molesting priest. He voluntarily left the protection unit and entered the general inmate population at Wade. He did not last long there either. He got busted trying to arrange a shipment of cocaine into the prison. The prison “grapevine” said he had been set up. He was returned to Angola in 1995 where he was once again placed in lockdown. He died there in 2015 at age 66.
I always suspected the Colombians secured the transfer out of Angola because they became government informants against Escobar. The CIA, DEA, and FBI were compiling every kernel of information from Colombians imprisoned in America about Escobar. The Seal assassins knew that the Les Pepes was going to eventually track down and kill their former boss. Gacha was dead (he was killed in a shootout with the police in 1989); Lehder was in a federal prison; and the Ochoas had broken ranks with Pablo. The two brothers had cut a deal with the Cali cartel leaders. Lehder by then was also providing information to the feds about Pablo (his revenge for Pablo’s 1987 betrayal).
The Seal assassins, I believe, decided to get on the “kill Pablo” bandwagon.
In exchange for their cooperation, they were transferred to the protection unit at Wade. They were sitting in that protection unit when Martinez’s forces finally cornered and killed Pablo on a rooftop in Medellin.
The “kill Pablo” campaign had been costly for all sides.
Bowden reported that Pablo’s forces killed Les Pepes leader Fidel Castano in 1994. They also killed 147 police officers and 129 other people they believed were working against Pablo’s cartel. Martinez’s forces killed 129 cartel members while Les Pepes killed another 300.
There was no rational penological objective for placing the Seal assassins in a protection unit with ex-cops and high profile government informants. The quasi-official reason given for the protection unit assignment was “security concerns.” It was rumored that a contract had been placed on their heads. If indeed a “contract” had been placed on them, it came only after they decided to cooperate with efforts by American authorities to kill Escobar.
*****
That belief was reinforced by the events that occurred in March 2004.
I was visited at the Wade penal facility by a United States Secret Service agent and an FBI agent. The visit was in response to a December 2003 letter I had sent to the Shreveport office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In that letter I provided information that I had heard Cruz make at least two threats to kill President George W. Bush. I also reported that a fellow inmate named Gillespie Ethridge had told me that another convicted murderer named Roy Lee Casey, a Cruz associate, had also made threats against the life of the president.
I made it clear to the FBI that I did not have any specific information that the contract killer could, or would, carry out the threats. I pointed out that then U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft had recently warned that American prisons were potential breeding grounds for terrorists. The threats, I felt, should at least be reported to the FBI.
In 2003 Cruz had secured Casey’s assignment to the prison laundry. A former Shreveport cop and a wife-killer, Casey was a psychotic gun fanatic who, like Cruz, hated George Bush. He openly spoke how the president should be killed.
Since the 2000 election of President Bush, I had heard Cruz make a number of death threats against the president. I dismissed them as idle inmate chatter. But then Casey joined the Colombians’ prison network. He and Cruz became close associates. A source working in the laundry told me Cruz and Casey were plotting an escape. Cruz’s final appeals of his conviction had recently been exhausted in the federal courts.
“They’re planning something,” the source told me. “Cruz has some security uniforms stashed in his work area. Whatever it is, it involves Casey – he has joined forces with the Colombians for a reason. He’s been talking about escaping, or die trying, for the past six months.”
Several other unrelated events spurred my interest in a possible escape plot. There had been a recent mass escape from a Texas prison during which a policeman had been killed. The “Texas Seven,” as they became known, had used their special work assignments in the prison’s maintenance department to orchestrate their escape.
The Wade laundry, which was under the Colombians’ complete control, presented the same opportunity. One low-level cartel member had already escaped from the laundry only to be captured after stealing a three wheeler from a nearby residence of a prison employee. I was told that escape had been a “test run” for Cruz and others.
It was against this backdrop that I decided to inform the FBI about the death threats Cruz and Casey had made against President Bush.
My wife followed up my letter to the FBI by sending the agency a recording she made of a telephone conversation with me. During that conversation, I detailed criminal wrongdoing at the Wade facility involving the Colombians. She had already made that recording available to the corrections department’s Internal Affairs Division and the Claiborne Parish Sheriff’s Office.
My wife called the Shreveport FBI office several weeks after my letter had been mailed to find out if the office received it. She spoke to the agent-in-charge who was both rude and disinterested in the matter. After the FBI’s botched handling of critical terrorism information before the 9/11 tragedy, it was stunning that the Shreveport FBI office was not interested in death threats against the President of the United States by a drug cartel assassin.
“We fulfilled our civic responsibility by reporting the threats,” my wife said during a visit.
“Yes, we did,” I said.
On the morning of March 24, 2004 I was informed by a unit security officer that I had a “legal interview” scheduled that morning. Since I had a March 29 trial date set in federal court in Baton Rouge on a civil rights lawsuit I had filed concerning my 1994 transfer from the State Police Barracks to the Wade facility, I assumed the legal interview was another pretrial conference with a federal magistrate in that matter.
But the moment I saw Roy Casey walking toward me dressed in his “visiting clothes” I knew the legal interview had something to do with the FBI letter.
“Did Sgt. Davis tell you that you have an interview, too, Billy?” he asked nervously. “I don’t know what this could be about – I mean, I don’t have a lawyer or nothin’.”
Vasquez walked by. He was the undisputed leader of the Colombians’ prison cartel. He was acting suspicious, leading me to believe he had more information than I did.
“Don’t fret, Roy Lee,” I said, half-heartedly. “It’s probably about that lawsuit concerning your son’s death”
“Yeah, that’s it, I bet,” he said, seizing any logical possibility.
The conversation was interrupted when I was summoned back to the unit’s control center by Sgt. Davis.
“The interview,” he said, “is really the FBI – just wanted to give you a ‘heads-up’.”
That security breach told me Vasquez had also been told the FBI was there to talk to me and Casey. The Colombian was trying to pick up any morsel of information from me. The presence of the FBI had aroused his paranoia.
I was escorted to the prison’s administration building by a security captain. That was a definite signal of the level of official interest in the interview. Normally a regular corrections officer would perform such escort duties. Associate Warden Jerry Goodwin was waiting outside the interview room for us – another signal of the official concern about the agents who had come to see me.
“How you doing, Billy,” the warden said more as a statement than a question. The warden was reserved, and concerned. I had always respected Goodwin.
“There’s some people here to talk to you,” he continued. “They will be with you in a few minutes.”
The few minutes turned into an uncomfortable 30-minute wait. I was then led into the interview room. The federal agents introduced themselves. The Secret Service agent was named Shawn Kirk, and I did not catch the FBI agent’s name. Both agents were based in New Orleans. The only distinctive thing I noticed about the FBI agent was the difficulty he had keeping his shirt tucked into his pants over a protruding belly. He was not impressive, or memorable. Kirk was clearly in charge.
“Do you know why we’re here, Mr. Sinclair?” Kirk asked.
He was a neatly-dressed, silver-haired man who took copious notes during the interview.
“I assume it’s about the letter I wrote to the FBI in Shreveport last December,” I said. “I had forgotten about it. I figured the FBI didn’t have any interest in it. The agent-in-charge was rude to my wife when she called to inquire about it.”
Kirk reached into his stack of papers.
“Is this the letter?” he asked, extending a faxed copy of the letter to me. “Read it if you like.”
“Yes, that’s it,” I said, glancing at the letter before handing it back to Kirk.
“Look at the fax time and date on the letter,” he said. “It shows I received your letter yesterday, the 23rd, and I’m sitting here today. That should tell you how ‘serious’ I take it.”
The Shreveport FBI had sat on the letter for three months without taking any action on it until it was announced that President Bush had a trip scheduled for Baton Rouge on May 20, 2004. The Secret Service was conducting its standard sweep for any presidential “threats.” The Shreveport FBI office was compelled to fax my December 2003 letter to the New Orleans Secret Service office.
I proceeded to detail for Kirk the chronology of events that led to my letter to the FBI, especially the context in which the Cruz/Casey threats against the president were made. The chronology was interrupted by Kirk several times with questions about my political beliefs, my personal feelings about President Bush, and my marriage.
“I am a conservative,” I told him. “My wife is a liberal. I like President Bush, but I have some problems with his re-election because of Halliburton and the false information about WMDs in Iraq.”
At one point while I was trying to provide Kirk with an overview of the Colombians’ criminal influence in the protection unit, the FBI agent interrupted me.
“Let’s try to stay focused on the issue here,” he said.
The remark angered me. Their investigation protocol had already endangered me, and they did not seem to have a real interest in developing information about the assassination threats. While I was explaining how I first learned about the Casey threat against the president, the FBI agent interrupted again.
“Will this Gillespie Ethridge back up what you are saying?” he asked.
I did not like the guy.
“I feel certain he would,” I answered. “I haven’t talked to him about it. I mean, I didn’t tell him I was writing a letter to the FBI.”
I made every effort to be factual and straightforward.
“Let me say this for the record,” I said, speaking to Kirk. “Do I think Cruz or Casey pose a real threat to the president? No. But Attorney General Ashcroft has said that American prisons are ‘breeding grounds for terrorists.’ Here, you have two inmates, both convicted of murder, in a small protection unit making threats against the life of the president of the United States. The issue, I believe, is whether those threats were actually made – not whether they could, or would, be carried out.”
Kirk looked at me intently. He was assessing me as much as I was assessing him.
Then the interview was over.
I was escorted back to the protection unit. I passed Casey being escorted to his interview. By the time I got back to the unit, Vasquez already had information that I had made some kind of “charges” against Cruz to the FBI. He was strutting around the unit, angry, pulling cartel soldiers into secret meetings in the unit’s hobby craft room.
Casey’s interview was over about the time Cruz returned to the unit from his laundry job assignment. Casey joined the Colombians in the hobby craft room for a meeting to discuss what the agents said to him during his interview.
Ethridge was the third inmate interviewed by the agents. Before Ethridge returned to the unit, Cruz was summoned for his interview. He had already been briefed by Casey about what to expect.
The Secret Service and the FBI had put a flashing “snitch” target on my back. Apprehension and paranoia smothered the unit. All the cartel soldiers were aware that an “investigation” was underway. Other inmates who did not know the specifics were aware that something “big” was going down.
I was thoroughly pissed with the Secret Service and the FBI. They had received “confidential information” about threats against the life of the President of the United States and they had betrayed their statutory obligation to keep that information confidential. The agents effectively told the Colombians, “Sinclair is the source of the information against you.”
Basic law enforcement protocol, spelled out in agency regulations and federal law, require that confidential sources be protected. The Secret Service should have conducted a preliminary interview with me to access the information I had provided about the threats. That assessment could, and should, have included a polygraph examination of me to determine the veracity of the information I provided.
Once a determination had been made that I was telling the truth, the Secret Service should have interviewed Ethridge in confidential setting. He told me after his interview that he had confirmed the Casey threat. With minimal pressure the Secret Service could have secured a confession from Casey against Cruz.
It was a botched, incompetent investigation. It had the potential of putting the President’s life at risk, not to mention my own. The inept Shreveport FBI bureau had sat on my letter three months before they faxed it to Kirk. Bush’s impending trip to Louisiana forced Kirk into an accelerated mode to determine the credibility of the threats.
Maintaining a source’s confidentiality, or even protecting my life, was not a matter of concern at that point by the Secret Service. Their only concerned was assessing the credibility of the Cruz/Casey threats as they were required to do by law.
The Secret Service and FBI left me to face the angry Colombians and infuriated prison officials. I found myself in a very vulnerable situation. I prepared for any attack that might come. I could not display weakness or fear. I spent the rest of the afternoon casually reading the New York Times. That was my normal routine. Casey and Ethridge were paralyzed with fear. Ethridge was trying to worm his way into the safe graces of the cartel.
“I had nothing to do with this,” he assured Vasquez. “I really don’t know what’s going on.”
Romalis Stukes stopped at the table where I was sitting.
“Casey doesn’t know whether to shit or go blind,” he said. “He’s so scared – that’s a pitiful excuse of a man.”
Later that afternoon I was summoned to the prison’s main security office. The shift captain who escorted me to the interview was present in the office.
“I called you over here, Sinclair,” a security colonel said, “to find out if you need protection because of the meeting today.”
I stared directly at him. My personal protection was the least of his concerns.
“Colonel, that meeting today was confidential,” I said. “Whatever was said in the meeting was a law enforcement matter between me and those agents. I do not need, nor do I want, protection. If anyone poses a threat to me, he should be locked up – not me. And if you have any information that there is a threat against me, you have an official responsibility to act against whoever is making that threat.”
The colonel did not react. He was in unchartered waters.
“Okay,” he said, “but if you change your mind, let me know.”
By the time I returned to the unit, the Colombians had already been provided with information that I was going to be transferred out of the unit. I learned about the decision later that night. The Colombians, and their soldiers, had retreated to their cells. A silent, death-like pall had settled over the entire unit. I sensed an ominous decision had been made. I just didn’t know by whom – the administration or the Colombians.
I called my wife after the evening news at my normal time. I told her about the day’s events, including the way the Secret Service had set me up and the Colombians reaction to it.
“Are you safe, darling?” she asked, her alarm instinctive, immediate. “What are the Colombians doing?”
“Yes, I’m safe,” I said, knowing I could not tell her if I wasn’t. “The Colombians, and their posse, have stopped scurrying about. Earlier they were meeting, scheming – getting their stories straight. They are now in some kind of low profile mode.”
“How could the FBI be so stupid, so goddamn incompetent?” she asked, anger rising at the realization of what had been done.
“I believe it comes natural to them,” I replied. “I’ve been fuming all afternoon about how this matter was handled.”
After that telephone conversation I went to Wednesday night Catholic Mass as I normally did. I refused to retreat, or alter my schedule.
“Casey is stupid,” Stukes told me as we walked to Mass. “He told me how he boasted to the Secret Service about his knowledge and experience with weapons. I don’t know what’s going on, Billy, but I know Casey is involved in something – he smells like guilt.
After Mass, I called my wife again. A unit officer approached me cautiously, secretively.
“Sinclair, you’re being transferred to the Hunt Correctional Center in the morning,” he almost whispered as I held the telephone receiver away from my ear.
Paranoia went off in my head like a fire alarm. My wife always sensed my reactions before I even had them.
“What does it mean, Billy?” she cried. “What are they doing now?”
Those questions scrambled around in my brain like spooked chickens.
After the call with her, I asked the guard to find out what kind of transfer was being made – a court-ordered transfer for the impending civil trial or a permanent transfer.
“It’s a court-ordered transfer,” the guard told me after speaking to his supervisor. “The warden’s office said for you to take all your legal papers and four sets of personal clothing.”
I called my wife again.
“They are now telling me it’s a court-ordered transfer,” I said. “It could be either the administration or the Secret Service who want me out of here while the ‘investigation’ takes place. I don’t know. I don’t trust any of them.”
Uncertainty, and a fear induced by sudden helplessness, resonated in my voice.
“Oh, God, baby, I don’t know if you will make it through the night,” my wife said, voice breaking. “Tell me you’re okay.”
I really did not know what to tell her.
“I’m safe,” I said. “I’m okay.”
I felt safe, but I was no longer sure of my prison instincts. I knew that whatever lay ahead would not be pleasant.
I was transferred from to the Hunt Correctional Center on March 25, 2004 where I was placed in a harsh, punitive lockdown. I remained in that lockdown for two months before I was transferred to the C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center where I was placed in general population.
The Secret Service and FBI had chosen to protect the Barry Seal assassins once again at my expense.