Washington Post
February 22, 2002
By Karen DeYoun

The Bush administration hopes to begin providing the Colombian military with sophisticated intelligence information on guerrilla insurgents within "a matter of days," authorized in part under a presidential anti-terrorism directive adopted after Sept. 11, administration officials said yesterday.

In a statement issued last night after it was cleared with the traveling White House in China, the State Department said, "We are looking at specific ways to continue to support the Government of Colombia during this difficult period." It cited "increased terrorist attacks" in recent weeks by the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Colombia has urgently asked the United States to provide intelligence information, including intercepts from guerrilla satellite telephones and other communications as well as aerial surveillance and satellite photographs of FARC installations, so it can plot rebel movements and anticipate attacks.

U.S. intelligence-sharing with Colombia is restricted to counternarcotics activities under a directive, signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000, that prohibits intelligence involvement with Colombia's larger guerrilla war. Congressional restrictions similarly limit the use of U.S.-provided military equipment in Colombia.

But government lawyers are examining whether the sharp escalation of the Colombian conflict this week, and President Andres Pastrana's labeling Wednesday of the FARC as "terrorists" for the first time, provide maneuvering room.

The lawyers are looking at whether expanded intelligence cooperation can be allowed under a National Security Presidential Directive, signed by President Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, that provided new guidelines for sharing U.S. intelligence in the worldwide hunt for terrorists.

Although the U.S. government long ago branded the FARC a terrorist organization, its activities have been confined to Colombia. At the same time, Pastrana had been reluctant to call the guerrillas terrorists as long as he was conducting peace negotiations with them, and Congress had made clear it would not support direct U.S. involvement in a foreign counterinsurgency effort with echoes of Vietnam.

Congress has repeatedly imposed restrictions on military assistance on the grounds that the Colombian military violates human rights and is closely allied with the other major party to the Colombian conflict -- an outlawed anti-guerrilla paramilitary army held responsible for numerous civilian massacres and other rights violations.

Clinton's directive on intelligence-sharing, signed at the launch of the current counternarcotics assistance program, was strongly supported by the CIA, which shared congressional concerns and did not want to be tied to such abuses.

But events this week appear to have altered a number of calculations. Pastrana declared an end to three years of inconclusive peace talks with the FARC on Wednesday, after the guerrillas hijacked a commercial airliner, forced it to land on a deserted Colombian highway and kidnapped a Colombian senator who was aboard.

He ordered the military to reoccupy a 16,000-square-mile area in the south-central part of the country that he had ceded to the guerrillas as a "safe zone" during peace talks. Colombian Air Force fighters pounded guerrilla installations inside the zone on Wednesday night, while ground forces massed around its borders in apparent preparation for routing as many as 8,000 rebels believed to be inside.

Civilian officials in the Pentagon have headed a faction that contends the United States should drop its distinction between counternarcotics assistance and counterinsurgency cooperation, especially since the guerrillas are deeply involved in the drug trade. If not enthusiastic support, that argument has gained new acquiescence in other parts of the administration as Colombian democracy is increasingly threatened.

"There's a general feeling that this would be the right thing to do," another senior official said yesterday of the intelligence-sharing plan. "But we want to make sure that it's a legal thing to do."

He predicted that the decision would be made "in a matter of days . . . not weeks," as soon as Bush and his senior foreign policy advisers return from Asia this weekend.