When I arrived in Bogota to begin my assignment, Pablo Escobar had organized a group of Medellin-based traffickers facing extradition to the United States to press the Colombian government to abolish the extradition treaty. The group called themselves the “Extraditables,” and they initiated a terror campaign to force the government to heed their demands using assassinations and indiscriminate car bombings. Everything was fair game. Supermarkets, restaurants, shopping centers, and public buildings were being targeted. Many men, women, and children were either killed or horribly mutilated by these cowardly attacks.

I lived on the north side of Bogota, like every other American associated with the embassy. The drive from my apartment to the Embassy at four in the morning, the time I usually went to work, took about seven minutes. At six in the evening, when I usually went home, the same route took from an hour to an hour and a half to make. Traffic was, to say the least, gridlocked. On one occasion, I had just driven past a popular pizza joint a half hour before a car bomb was detonated in front of it. That was the closest I ever was to getting caught in one. That’s not to say I wasn’t close to other car bombs when they went off, I just wasn’t that close. One time, I was home in bed when the concussion caused by a car bomb rattled my windows, waking me.

The CNP and the DAS always involved me in their investigations of these bombings. I analyzed the devices, identified signatures, and developed other intel I could from the post blast investigation. I secured equipment and provided training for the labs and bomb techs with the help of ATF’s National Laboratory and Explosives Technology Branch. What I learned through my analysis of these bomb scenes and my association with the remarkable individuals confronting the bombings enabled me to give an expert assessment of bomb threats and advise the Embassy.

At the same time, the guerrillas were also engaged in a campaign of their own, targeting police and military outposts with antitank rockets, grenades, and mortars. I became heavily involved in assisting the national police, DAS, and military in identifying and tracing the ordnance used in these attacks. I traveled to the scenes of the attacks to collect spent rocket tubes, mortar fragments, and other bits and pieces to identify the manufacturer and the likely source. One thing I learned, not everything was as it seemed. It was the easiest thing for a sensationalist-prone reporter or politician to blame the United States for the war matériel being used in the attacks. After careful analysis and tracing, I was able to identify the real culprits, supply sources, and likely supply lines. I provided my findings to the police and military, who used the information to address the problem more effectively.

You might ask how I was able to identify and trace the ordnance used in these explosives attacks when, presumably the mortar, grenade, or antitank rocket had been destroyed in the explosion. It would amaze you to know just how simple it is. Contrary to what most people think, not all the explosive device is destroyed in the explosion. Fragments of the mortar’s fuse are left in the bomb crater that can be pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. Also, mortars, like antitank rocks have a tailfin assembly that contains a lot number that gets ejected with the explosion. Find the tailfin, and you can identify and trace the device. Grenades are even easier. The spoon containing the lot number often gets left behind. Grenades are thrown on the run, and guerrillas don’t bother trying to pick up the spoons in a firefight. The same can be said for the antitank rocket tubes that have the lot number stamped on it. Find the tube and the device can be traced.

The strength of my program was in the intelligence that I was able to develop by analyzing patterns, cataloguing lot numbers from the supply sources I identified, and identifying supply lines through post seizure analysis and debriefings of the police or military personnel involved as well as informers and the people living in the affected areas. I documented my findings and passed it on to the national police, the DAS, and the military units that requested the traces. They in turn, referred me to their intelligence services which developed into a whole new relationship with my Colombian counterparts.

I went from just training rank and file policemen, soldiers, and marines in weapons and ordnance identification to training and working with police and military intelligence officers. By June 19, 1991, the day Pablo Escobar ‘surrendered’ after the Colombian government abolished the extradition treaty, I was fully involved working intelligence with the national police, the DAS, the army, and the marines.

In the year between Escobar’s surrender and his escape from La Catedral, the five-star luxury prison he built for himself and his cronies in Envigado (located south of El Poblado in Medellin). I became heavily involved in training national police and military officers and agents in developing weapons trafficking and interdiction intelligence. I worked extensively with the Colombian Army’s 20^Th Brigade (Intelligence), the Colombian Naval Infantry (Marines) intelligence Unit, and the Colombian National Police’s Illegally Armed Groups Investigative Unit. The DAS dedicated an analyst to coordinate their intelligence program regarding international trafficking in firearms and explosives.

Among the more interesting projects I handled during this period included working with the national police, DAS, and naval infantry intelligence units, gathering and developing intelligence relating to Nicaraguan-sourced AK47 and M16 rifles being trafficked to the FARC guerrillas. I traveled to the Island of San Andres, a Colombian possession off the coast of Nicaragua to collect intelligence relating to military rifles, grenades, and rockets being brought to the island in cigarette boats from Bluefields on the Nicaraguan Caribbean coast. I traveled to Panama and Buenaventura on Colombia’s west coast to gather intelligence relating to fishing boats bringing Nicaraguan-sourced weapons down the Pacific to Colombia. I worked with the national police and Colombian army’s intelligence units to gather intelligence relating to mortar and grenade shipments filtering into Colombia’s eastern and southwestern borders.

I exchanged actionable intelligence with these Colombian intelligences services relating to three conspiracies in South Florida, Michigan, and Los Angeles that were supplying a significant number of commercial semiautomatic assault rifles to the Medellin Cartel and an associated rightwing paramilitary group. I also looked into an alleged plot by a Colombian businessman to travel to South Florida to acquire U.S. commercial firearms for the 19^TH front of the FARC. This was not the first-time insurgents from a foreign country had exploited the U.S. commercial firearms market to buy guns to further their purposes. In 1988 to 1990, a Muslim extremists group obtained over a hundred firearms from gun dealers in South Florida. They would go on to try and overthrow the government of Trinidad and Tobago on July 27, 1990.

In the weeks leading to Escobar’s escape, I was conducting regular training for the Ministry of Defense at the Colombian War College for army intelligence personnel and various naval infantry intelligence units in Bogota, Santa Marta, Cartagena, and Buenaventura.

Because of the relationship I had developed with the intelligence services of the national police, the army, and marines, I had earned the confidence of the Colombian Ministry of Defense. That confidence resulted in the Ministry of Defense requesting that I be one of the two American agents sent to Medellin to assist the Cuerpo Élite (Elite Corps) in their effort to recapture Pablo Escobar after his escape from his self-built prison in Envigado on July 22, 1992.

I will discuss my participation in Operation Envigado in the next segment.