Amid the current controversy swirling around Atty. Gen. Janet Reno’s refusal to name a special prosecutor on White House fundraising, Reno’s steadfastness in defense of her boss is hardly unique. Indeed, no current Clinton Cabinet-level officer has more openly sacrificed professionalism in pursuit of careerism than drug czar Barry McCaffrey.
The case of the retired four-star general who now heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy has become a national embarrassment and worse. His meeting Oct. 20 in Bogota with Colombian President Ernesto Samper, whom the State Department believes to be a shill for drug kingpins, was but the latest in a long list of White House miscues regarding international drug trafficking.
McCaffrey’s approach has been to bury concerns about international narcotics under trade objectives in Mexico and, now, the putative defense of democracy in Colombia. Given that the White House decision that McCaffrey meet with Samper was opposed by the State Department, the first question to ask is whether the administration even has a policy on cross-border drug trafficking.
Did someone say “tone deaf”? Bring up the issue of massive shipments of drugs in Mexican trucks at U.S. ports of entry, as I have, and McCaffrey answers that “shutting down the border” and freezing trade are unacceptable, especially in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But that response ignores the prudent middle-ground approach of increasing the number of customs personnel to ensure more and more efficient inspections.
McCaffrey also ignores another grim reality. U.S. law enforcement agencies dealing with Mexico and drugs, especially the Drug Enforcement Administration, are convinced that sharing drug-related intelligence with Mexican officials can endanger the lives of U.S. agents because corrupt officials have been known to share such information with drug traffickers. In deep-sixing or downplaying these concerns, McCaffrey has at the very least demonstrated incompetence.
Item: Earlier this year, McCaffrey’s stock fell faster and further than the Thai baht because of his misplaced faith in Mexican officialdom. Shortly after hosting Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo’s handpicked drug czar, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, in Washington–and giving him a confidential briefing at the White House–the Zedillo government acknowledged that its drug czar was in cahoots with Mexico’s premier drug trafficker, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who later died.
After surviving the embarrassment of having been played for a fool by Zedillo’s drug czar, McCaffrey has dusted off his cap and bells for similar treatment at the hands of President Samper.
Before leaving Washington, Clinton’s man in Bogota explained his meeting with Samper by pointing out the need to “defend democracy.” According to McCaffrey, Colombian democracy is threatened by anti-Samper leftist insurgents who finance their movement through drug trafficking. But in Colombia, insurgency is a way of life. The current leftist disaffection is about 30 years old and long before that there was a prolonged festival of bloodletting called la violencia.
It is especially perplexing that the administration should try to put a Cold War template over what is now a post-Cold War insurgency. And if the issue is the rebels’ reliance on drug money, what about the State Department’s brief against Samper? If one accepts the State Department’s criticism of Samper for having ties to drug elements, McCaffrey and the White House have now embarked upon the defense of narcodemocracy, while mouthing transparent platitudes about democracy.
The administration’s policy should logically be to oppose both Samper and the rebels. Otherwise, what could be interpreted as Clinton’s policy of rapprochement because of McCaffrey’s meeting with the Colombian president may one day have Clinton, or a like-minded successor, addressing the Colombian House of Drug Lords. Meanwhile, having consolidated his position as shill-de-camp to his commander in chief, McCaffrey’s potential role in what figures to be a replay of the sham counternarcotics alliance with Mexico may win him the title of supreme allied patsy.
