WHAT IS MIAMI SOUTH COM?
 
 

In recent years, the US directed war in Colombia has increasingly been coordinated from the US Southern Command, located at 3511 NW 91st Avenue in Miami. The military installation in West Dade is a nine acre site. Formerly housed in Panama, the US Southern Command moved to Miami in 1997, when the Pentagon signed a 10 year lease. According to Wilhelm, Southcom's new home in the West Pointe business park is ``the most technologically advanced military intelligence facility in the world." The complex is about four miles west of the Miami International Airport. No troops are stationed at the office, which will serve as a headquarters where command personnel gather information and make decisions. The only outward mark of a military facility will be the signs identifyingit and the military security guards outside.

Shortly after opening, Miami South Com staff numbered 780, including 230 civilian employees. According to South Com commander Charles Wilhelm,``We are in the right place to implement our strategies - Miami is widely accepted by the nations of this hemisphere as the de facto capital of Latin America" (Miami Herald, June 23, 1999). Miami South Com is responsible for all US military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, encompassing a region which covers twelve and a half million miles, contains 32 countries with a population of over 411 million men, women, and children. In 1998, Miami South Com got $566 MILLION DOLLARS OF US TAXPAYER MONEY to fund its operations. Where does all this money go? Despite this immense sum, it would seem that many staff at Miami South Com are barely making ends meet. According to the Miami Herald for May 11, 1998, army sergeants with as many as 10 years of service are forced to double or triple up in apartments and send their spouses and children to live with relatives in cheaper parts of the country. Low-ranking members are applying for food stamps, taking second jobs or plowing through savings, while some military spouses who used to work in

Panama now stay home to save on transportation and child care costs. Divorce rates are high, with at least 25 of 470 couples seeking legal help with divorce late 1997 and the first few months of 1998-- a rate more than twice the national average. Not all of Southcom's personnel are living hand to mouth, however. In 1998, Wilhelm, the top officer, earned a package of nearly $138,000 annually, and the lowest officer took in $40,662 in salary and benefits.
 

MIAMI SOUTH COM’S THEATER OF OPERATIONS

Leading Miami South is none other than General Charles Wilhelm. In the name of prosecuting the drug war, Wilhelm, Commander in Chief of Miami Southern Command, would like to increase our military collaboration with the Colombian army, which has turned Colombia into a slaughterhouse in recent years. Over the past year, Wilhelm has reportedly tried to mobilize support in other Latin American countries for a possible intervention force in Colombia, which would presumably hope to destroy Colombia's left wing insurgents and win the war for the military (the press accounts have been vehemently denied by Wilhelm, who calls such claims preposterous). In accordance with this, Miami South Com will train Colombian officers in management, logistics, planning, intelligence and even public relations. In tandem with efforts to boost the combat readiness of Colombia’s police and army, Miami South Com helped persuade Peru and Ecuador to beef up their troop presence along their Colombian borders. Military officials say Peru recently added 1,200 men to its northern frontier. Ecuador has deployed special forces but declined to give numbers. In February of 1999, Miami South Com had 160 US soldiers in Ecuador, 136 in Venezuela, and 181 in Peru. Wilhelm has also remarked recently that with the closing of bases in Panama, military

units - including Special Operations and anti-drug forces - are being deployed this year to Puerto Rico, the Netherlands Antilles islands of Curacao and Aruba, Ecuador and Central America. In Puerto Rico, Miami South Com is not welcomed by all. According to El Nuevo Herald, the majority of the Puerto Rican population oppose the presence of the Southern Command on the island. According to an article published August 25, 1999, 73% of Puerto Ricans want the US army to leave the municipality of Vieques, and 44% rejected the presence of the Southern Command. The survey was carried out by the newspaper El Nuevo Dia, and was carried out between the 24^th of July and the 11^th of August, with respondents from the entire island, except Vieques and Culebra. 1,000 adults were surveyed.

Meanwhile, according to the Miami Herald for May 7, 1999, Ecuador and the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curacao and Aruba will be the new front lines in the U.S. military's war on drugs, the result of the American troop withdrawal from Panama under the 1977 Panama Canal treaties. ``We started counterdrug air operations effective May 1 from all three sites,'' Raul Duany, spokesman for the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, told the Herald. Unlike Howard air force base in Panama, which is a U.S. military base, the Curacao, Aruba and Ecuador sites and one other eventual site, possibly in Costa Rica, will operate under access agreements with the local governments, using existing civilian airfields. Duany said about a dozen permanent personnel will be assigned to each of the sites, with up to 200 additional temporary personnel at any given time, depending on aircraft rotation. The permanent personnel would be assigned for air traffic control, communications and maintenance.

Simultaneously, General Charles Wilhelm has also been leading efforts to "protect" Panama from Colombian guerrillas and drug traffickers. According to the Miami Herald (June 24, 1999), the Panamanian government rejected U.S. intervention along the Panama-Colombia border to guarantee the security of the Panama Canal, qualifying as ``inadmissible'' a suggestion made with respect to the matter by the head of the U.S. Army Southern Command, Gen. Charles Wilhelm. Panamanian Foreign Minister Jorge Ritter told reporters that his country rejects as ``unacceptable'' statements made before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which Wilhelm suggested that the threat of drug trafficking and incursions by Colombian guerrillas could warrant U.S. intervention in Panama. It is ``inadmissible'' to cite the drug trade and problems along Panama's border with Colombia to suggest that the Canal is in danger, Ritter said.
 

WHO IS GENERAL CHARLES WILHELM?

In many ways, the Cold War shaped General Wilhelm. In fact.,the so called menace that provoked him into military service now falls under his watch and purview at the Southern Command: Cuba. In fact, while Wilhelm was at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, the Cuban missile crisis flared. A staunch reactionary, Wilhelm remarked to the Miami Herald on December 6, 1998, ``We were absolutely committed to going down there and serving if it had come to that." In 1965, Wilhelm went to Vietnam. In hindsight, Wilhelm does not sound terribly critical about the war and his place in said effort. In fact, in the same Miami Herald interview, Wilhelm remarked, ``There's a thing called commitment. We did what we were trained to do.'' Always a firm believer in the US role in Vietnam, Wilhelm signed up for a second tour in Vietnam. Wilhelm came home from Vietnam in 1970, but the onslaught of negativism surrounding the war was deeply disappointing for Wilhelm. Unlike many other Vietnam vets, who turned against the war, Wilhelm remained a believer to the bitter end. ``I would have gone back for a third tour, a fourth,'' he remarked to the Herald. Even after the US left a wake of catastrophic human suffering and misery in Vietnam, Wilhelm could still remark, ``I felt we were backing out, leaving unfinished business. I felt a lot let down.'' Later, Wilhelm took assignments to Europe, the Middle East and the Philippines.

Named director of operations of Marine Corps headquarters in 1988, he became a deputy assistant secretary of defense in 1990. In 1997, he was nominated by President Clinton to become general and head of Southern Command when the 1,000-member staff relocated from Panama to Miami. For Wilhelm, the marines proved to be a home away from home. "I've always liked order," he told The Herald. In our household, rules were not challenged or discussed a great deal. I played baseball, and what the coach said stuck. In the Marines, it was the same."
 

WILHELM, MIAMI SOUTH COM, AND COLOMBIA

Currently in Colombia, the US will provide 300 US Special Forces trainers, plus CIA experts in electronic intelligence, to help set up a US backed counternarcotics battalion. The anti-drug battalion will be based in southern Caqueta or Putumayo provinces, long standing strongholds of the FARC guerrillas. Miami South Com’s Charles Wilhelm says the FARC poses a threat to the stability of the entire region, and there is little doubt that the US trained force will see action against the guerrillas. An additional concern of US military strategists such as Wilhelm is securing access to Colombian and Venezuelan oil for the United States, as revealed by Wilhelm's testimony in March of 1998 before the House:
 
 

No one questions the strategic importance of the Middle East,

but Venezuela alone provides the same amount of oil to the

U.S. as do all the Persian Gulf states combined. The discovery

of major oil reserves in Colombia, and existing oil supplies in

Trinidad-Tobago and Ecuador, further increase the strategic

importance of this region's energy resources.

For Wilhelm and the US military establishment, the Colombian guerrillas are a nuisance and interfere with US economic interests abroad. In recent years, Colombian insurgents have threatened oil installations in the country, and have filtered over the border into Venezuela. When the guerrillas dynamite oil pipelines, this interferes with multinational oil companies' profits.

Although Miami South Com will not come straight and admit how much of its money is going towards operations in Colombia, it has become increasingly clear that the Andean nation figures as one of General Wilhelm's foremost priorities. After a series of army defeats at the hands of the FARC, U.S. officials began speaking of Colombia as a threat to regional security and in need of direct assistance to the military to combat guerrillas. In testimony before the House International Relations Committee on March 31, 1998, Gen. Charles Wilhelm called Colombia "the most threatened country in the United States Southern Command area of responsibility." Following a visit to Colombia in 1998, Wilhelm preferred not to discuss Colombia's serious human rights situation, and told journalists that criticism of violations by the military was "unfair" and that guerrillas abuse human rights more frequently than the security forces or paramilitaries, an assertion that not only displays a profound misunderstanding of human rights law, but also seriously misrepresents the facts, contradicting even the State Department's grim assessment of Colombia (Wilhelm's remarks were confirmed to Human Rights Watch by Col. Vicente Ogilvy, a U.S. Southern Command spokesperson, on May 28, 1998).

WILHELM'S REMARKS ON COLOMBIA, ANALYZED IN LIGHT OF THE FACTS:

US commanders like Miami South Com Commander General Wilhelm, then, downplay army abuses and the atrocious human rights record of the Colombian army. Wilhelm tries to sound a note of optimism, when referring to the collaboration of Miami South Com and Colombian counterparts. In testimony before the House in March of 1998, Wilhelm remarked, "for the long term, we at US SouthCOM are working with Colombian military leaders to build a stronger base of professionalism within their armed forces and an enduring code of military ethics." Recently, before the US Senate, Wilhelm gave an upbeat assessment of developments in Latin America in recent years, citing the growth of democracy in 31 of 32 countries and the willingness of military leaders to accept civilian authority. Wilhelm told Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, that even with the recent resignation of Colombia's defense minister, Rodrigo Lloreda, Colombia’s military leaders are a``solid, confident leadership team'' capable of tackling the guerrilla and drug threat (Miami Herald, June 23 1999).

Soldiers, claim the US military establishment, have purged human rights violators within their ranks, an assertion which is hardly credible in light of the facts. For years, Colombia's security forces, particularly the army, have used these paramilitaries to fight the hemisphere's dirtiest war. The forces of Carlos Castano, one of the leading paramilitary figures in the country, are believed responsible for half of the 196 massacres registered by authorities in 1998. Most victims were civilians not combatants, killed in cold blood and often mutilated. Repeatedly, observers - government investigators, human rights groups, church officials, even police - report that paramilitaries acted with the tolerance and on some occasions open support of the army.
 

GENERAL WILHELM AND TIES WITH HAROLD BEDOYA NAVA, REPORTEDLY ONE OF THE COLOMBIAN MILITARY’S WORST HUMAN RIGHTS OFFENDERS:

According to ANNCOL, Agencia de Noticias Nueva Colombia (New Colombia News Agency), Miami South Com’s Charles Wilhelm met with former Colombian Defense Minister Harold Bedoya Nava back in 1997, to discuss the need for growing US military involvement in Colombia. Bedoya Nava was reportedly one of the worst human rights offenders in the military. Bedoya Nava studied military intelligence at the US army’s School of the Americas in 1965 and was invited back to teach it as a guest professor in 1978 and 1979. A coalition of European human rights groups and others have accused him of running death squads made up of joint military and paramilitary forces. More recently, Bedoya has mapped out "intelligence planning regarding the country’s internal political situation," through El Diario de Bedoya ( "Bedoya’s Daily"), a classified analysis with general orders from Bedoya himself, periodically sent to all division and brigade commanders (Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1997. One prominent journalist of Colombian affairs, Anna Carrigan, has remarked that, "Throughout Bedoya's entire career, he has been implicated with the sponsorship and organization of a network of paramilitary organizations. Bedoya, who has never undergone any investigation for his involvement in the massacres of non-combatants or other dirty-war crimes, is an articulate proponent of the continued "legal" involvement of local populations in counterinsurgency operations." (Ana Carrigan, NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 1995). According to School of the Americas Watch, Bedoya was believed to be the founder and chief of the paramilitary death squad known as "AAA" (American Anti-communist Alliance). In 1997, the Colombian government forced the retirement of Gen. Harold Bedoya, whose hostility to human rights and career-long association with the dramatic increase in joint army-paramilitary operations was notorious. "We took Bedoya out because of human rights," former President Ernesto Samper told Human Rights Watch in an interview.

GENERAL WILHELM AND COLOMBIAN GENERAL FERNANDO TAPIAS

General Wilhelm has been associating with some unsavory characters in Colombia. Take, for example, Colombian General Fernando Tapias, who has done his best to obstruct human rights in his country. Tapias, in fact, prevented prosecutors from questioning fellow Colombian General Fernando Millán, who had been in command of the Fifth Brigade based in Bucaramanga, Santander department. General Millán set up and supported the Las Colonias association in Lebrija, which regularly extorted money from residents and allegedly committed a series of killings, robberies, and death threats. Among its members, before its dismantling, were several known paramilitary members from the Middle Magdalena region. Tapias, who deals with Miami South Com General Wilhelm, argued that the Millan case involved official acts and should be tried before a military tribunal.

MORE ON TAPIAS, AND OTHER COLOMBIAN COMMANDERS

General Fernando Tapias, a close associate of US General Wilhelm's in Colombia, says that his forces no longer work with right wing paramilitaries and that officers who engage in atrocities are punished. But there is little evidence to support this claim. Only after sustained international pressure did President Andres Pastrana on April 9 finally cashier Gens. Rito Alejo del Rio and Fernando Millan, each facing trial for alleged support for paramilitary atrocities. This long-awaited action was bitterly opposed by army commander Gen. Jorge Mora and has yet to lead to a broader purge. Meanwhile, Gen. Mora continues to shield officers who violate human rights, such as Gen. Jaime Uscategui. For five days in 1997, Gen. Uscategui ignored pleas from a judge in Mapiripan as Mr. Castano's men shot and hacked their way through 30 people. According to prosecutors, soldiers under Gen. Uscategui's direct command had actually helped the paramilitaries unload their weapons at the air base where the United States kept most of its drug-fighting airplanes. Instead of clapping Gen. Uscategui in irons, the army is maneuvering to keep his case before a military tribunal, whose notorious tolerance of human rights abuses has demonstrated beyond doubt its inability to render justice. Surely, dozens of low-ranking soldiers accused of murder and torture have been handed over to civilian courts for trial. However, their superiors, who order, plan, and facilitate atrocities, face, at most, a rap on the knuckles. Several, like Gen. Uscategui, have even been rewarded with promotions. According to the Colombian military's own statistics, no high-ranking officer has ever faced trial in a civilian court for a human rights violation. The recent reform of the military penal code failed to address the problem, including the ability of officers to elude responsibility by arguing that they were simply following orders. In recent years, army officers who organize, tolerate, and fail to arrest or even pursue paramilitaries continue to be shielded from prosecution and even promoted. The army's attitude towards the forces responsible for the majority of atrocities against civilians is one of the principal obstacles to establishing respect for human rights in the conflict. Human Rights Watch recently identified the following units with a pattern of support for paramilitaries, an estimated 75 percent of the Colombian army: the First, Second, and Fourth Divisions; the Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, Fourteenth, and Seventeenth Brigades; Mobile Brigades One and Two; and the Barbacoas, Bárbula, Batín No. 6, Bomboná, Cacique Nutibara, Caycedo de Chaparral #17, Héroes de Majagual, Joaquín París, La Popa, Los Guanes, Girardot, Palonegro #50, Rafael Reyes, Ricuarte, Rogelio Correa Campos, and Santander Battalions. Officers implicated in human rights violations and paramilitary activity who were at last check still on staff include (in descending order of rank):

MORE ON GENERAL JORGE ENRIQUE MORA, ANOTHER IMPORTANT COUNTERPART OF GERNAL CHARLES WILHELM IN COLOMBIA:

Another important counterpart of General Charles Wilhelm in Colombia is none other than Gen. Jorge Mora Rangel. Currently head of Colombia's Army, General Mora authorized an illegal search of the offices of Justice and Peace, a respected human rights group, based on information provided by the Twentieth Brigade, an intelligence unit implicated in dozens of targeted killings and threats against human rights defenders. On May 13, 1998, soldiers forced employees to kneel at gunpoint, in order, they claimed, to take their pictures, an act more likely intended to inspire terror and evoke a summary execution. During the search, soldiers addressed employees as "guerrillas" and filmed them and documents in the office. At one point, soldiers told the employees they wanted precise details of the office in order to later construct a scale model, apparently to plan further incursions. Soldiers also set up a camera to film human rights defenders gathered outside to show concern. More recently, Mora has been an ardent supporter of Defense Minister Rodrigo Lloreda, who resigned in protest when President Andres Pastrana moved to hand over a vast swathe of territory to the FARC guerrillas, in order to further the peace process and national reconciliation. Like his peer, Fernando Tapias, Mora has defended some of the Colombian army’s worst human rights offenders, including Army General Rito Alejo del Rio and General Fernando Millan Perez. In April, President Pastrana moved to fire the two commanders, who had been accused of sponsoring militias involved in brutal ``cleansing'' campaigns against leftists. Both officers were under investigation by the federal Prosecutor General's Office for alleged human rights abuses and faced criminal charges. Radionet, an independent network, said Colombia's army chief, Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora, opposed the moves to retire the two and met with other members of the high command at army headquarters.
 

GENERAL CHARLES WILHELM AND GENERAL JOSE MANUEL BONETT
 
 

General Wilhelm has traveled to Colombia from Miami to meet with Colombian officers with dubious human rights records. For example, General Wilhelm has met with the likes of Colombian General Jose Manuel Bonett, up until recently the commander of the Colombian armed forces. Wilhelm has spent considerable time with General Bonett, touring recent areas of conflict in Colombia, surveying coca production in southern Colombian departments, and discussing planned operations and the intelligence training and equipment support needs of the armed forces.

Who is this Bonett, and what is his record?

Bonett, like many of his counterparts, is a graduate of the notorious US Army School of The Americas. Bonett was a protégé of Gen. Harold Bedoya Pizarro, Colombia’s former Armed Forces Commander. Bedoya, who studied military intelligence at the US School of the Americas in 1965, and who was invited back to teach in 1978 and 1979, has been accused of running death squads comprised of joint military and parmilitary forces. Bonnett got his start in the Middle Magdalena region, where he served as Second Division Commander. In a 1995 memo addressing army strategy, Bonett instructed his troops to focus intelligence-gathering on towns and strike civilian "support networks" since guerrillas "reclaim their sick and wounded there, their weapons caches, their tailors, their bank accounts, their businesses, and other types of logistical activities essential to subversive combat." Targeting civilians, Bonett stressed, would "noticeably weaken [the guerrillas'] capability." Nowhere in the letter does this officer, later promoted to the position of commander in chief of Colombia's armed forces, caution his men that these same tailors, bankers, and medical professionals are not themselves combatants and are therefore protected under the laws of war. This attitude had led, among other things, to repeated threats and attacks against elected officials.

Later, when Bonnet went up in rank, he was influential in clearing his fellow officers of rampant human rights abuses. For example, Bonett cleared another Colombian General, Farouk Yanine Diaz, of charges that the latter was involved in paramilitary death squad activity in the Magdalena Medio region in the 1980's. Yanine Diaz was accused of ordering dozens of disappearances, multiple large scale massacres, and the killing of judges and court personnel sent to investigate previous crimes. Despite the fact that the Colombian Public Prosecutor's office said ample evidence demonstrated Yanine's role in coordinating a massacre of 19 merchants in 1987, General Bonnet upheld a military court decision absolving Yanine. Bonnet's decision gave rise to much criticism from the US government, as well as numerous Non Governmental Organizations.

Bonnet also backed the civilian militias known as Convivir, armed groups linked to the Colombian state. Said groups have recently been responsible for scores of killings within the country, and have been soundly denounced by human rights organizations. Similarly, Bonnet resisted attempts to bring military officers up for prosecution in relation to two egregious massacres of the civilian population, one at Mapiripan and the other at Miraflores, despite direct pressure from the Clinton administration. Also, Bonnet resisted efforts to capture the leading 180 paramilitary figures for whom arrest warrants have been issued. Though Bonnet was not directly named in human rights massacres, nevertheless in 1990 the famous Trujillo massacre, which occurred in Valle del Cauca, in which more than 100 civilians were killed, occurred in the exact area where he was working as III Brigade Commander. Beginning in April 1990, over 250 people were tortured and murdered by police, army and hired paramilitary killers that

worked for locally based drug-traffickers (despite the Colombian government's international acceptance of responsibility for the massacre, no one has been punished, including US School of the Americas-trained Major Alirio Uruena Jaramillo, who personally tortured victims with a blowtorch and cut them to pieces with a chainsaw). Meanwhile, Bonnet admitted in an interview that informal collaboration between soldiers and paramilitaries might have taken place in "some isolated cases" ( a gross understatement). Recently, a human rights delegation from the Colombia Support Network went to Colombia and asked Bonnet about Carlos Castano, a leading paramilitary figure charged with murder. Why couldn't the military apprehend Castano? Because, Bonnet replied, he had only limited resources to do the job(120,000 men, apparently, was not enough). And what of Bonnet' record of reining in rogue commanders in the army? Less than a month after Armed Forces Commander General Bonett told Human Rights Watch that the army had revised the way it measured success and planned to put a black mark on an officer's record if massacres were registered in his jurisdiction, Gen. Iván Ramírez summarized the work of his First Division, responsible for much of northern Colombia, by releasing to the press long lists of people claimed killed in action by his troops. Absent from the review was any measure of the chaos and terror produced by the paramilitary groups that soldiers under Ramírez's direct command allowed and often helped massacre civilians.

When Human Rights Watch asked General Bonett if officers who failed to act to prevent paramilitary massacres would be punished he cited the case of Gen. Jaime Uscátegui, commander of the Seventh Brigade during a series of paramilitary assacres in his jurisdiction in 1997. In the Mapiripán massacre, detailed in the paramilitary section, General Uscátegui failed to act despite repeated requests for assistance from the Mapiripán judge and is currently under investigation by Internal Affairs(Procuraduría).For this "omission," General Bonett said, Uscátegui had been relieved of his command and would be called to retire. Nevertheless, later not only was General Uscátegui still on active duty, but in 1998 he was chosen as second-in-command for an army offensive in the department of Caquetá.

It may be that Bonett had even more serious ties to paramilitaries. Let us refer, for example, to the case of the El Aracatazo massacre of August 12, 1995, when a group calling itself the "People's Alternative Command" (Comando Alternativo Popular) carried out a massacre of eighteen people - including two children - at the El Aracatazo bar in the El Bosque neighborhood of Chigorodó, Antioquia. Armed gunmen surrounded the bar with its patrons inside, then systematically shot into the premises

and executed some of the patrons at point blank range. Subsequent government investigations linked the "People's Alternative Command" to the army's Voltígeros Battalion, which shares a base with the Seventeenth Brigade and is under that unit's command, and amnestied EPL guerrillas with ties to the Hope, Peace, and Liberty party (Esperanza, Paz y Libertad), the political party they formed. An internal army investigation determined that Voltígeros soldiers had allowed at least two former guerrillas who were working as informants to leave the base two days before the El Aracatazo massacre. One of them, Gerardo Antonio Palacios, was later convicted of having taken part in the massacre. Another, José Luis

Conrado Pérez, known as "Carevieja," was identified by eyewitnesses as also having taken part. Three months before the massacre, Carevieja had appeared in a photograph published in the magazine Cambio 16, uniformed, heavily armed, and speaking directly to then-Army Commander General Bonett. A humanitarian aid worker told Human Rights Watch that it was well known that Carevieja worked for the army and took part in joint army-paramilitary operations. The Human Rights Unit of the Attorney General's Office is investigating the civilians believed responsible for the massacre, but the soldiers have

gone unpunished.

General Wilhelm's ties to General Bonett have been warm indeed. In fact, last April Wilhelm sent a letter to Bonett, which read, "at this time the Colombian armed forces are not up to the task of confronting and defeating the insurgents. . . . Colombia is the most threatened in the area under the

Southern Command's responsibility, and it is in urgent need of our support." Bonett, who made the letter public, agreed, saying the Colombian armed forces are in "a position of inferiority" to the rebels and

adding that he would gladly accept U.S. military aid, even "atomic bombs."

It would appear that Wilhelm's former associate Bonett was determined to frustrate the country's peace process. Prior to Colombian President Pastrana's inauguration, Colombia's military voiced strong objections to government plans to order a troop pullout from five municipalities in southeastern Colombia, a requirement for peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). President Pastrana said he would order the pullout by the end of 1998. Military sources confirmed the authenticity of the document, entitled "Expectations for Peace"; they said it was a white paper or "analysis" drafted by the armed forces high command at Pastrana's request. However, Defense Minister Rodrigo Lloreda told a news conference that the document was drawn up before Pastrana's Aug. 7 inauguration, apparently on orders from then-armed forces commander Gen. Manuel Jose Bonett. Lloreda added that the document had been leaked to the newspaper El Tiempo by people clearly seeking to "frustrate the peace process." New armed

forces commander Gen. Fernando Tapias, who accompanied Lloreda at the news conference, insisted that "the armed forces are committed to the peace process."

OTHER COLOMBIAN GENERAL WITH WHOM GENERAL CHARLES WILHELM HAS HAD WARM DEALINGS WITH:

GILBERTO ECHEVERRI

General Wilhem has met with Colombia's minister of Defence, Gilberto Echeverri. Echeverri, lauded as a man of reason by Colombia’s conservative media, a major player in the business world and touted as one of the five most important men in Antioquia department, has in fact enjoyed warm ties to General Harold Bedoya Pizarro. The warm relationship seems to have developed, when Echeverri served as Governor of Antioquia department in 1990-91, and Bedoya was serving as Commander of the army 4^th Brigade based out of Medellin. Bedoya, a graduate of the US Army School of the Americas, has been linked to paramilitary death squad activity, and is believed to be the founder and chief of the paramilitary death squad known as "AAA" (American Anti-Communist Alliance).) As for Echeverri himself, the revered man of reason and statesmanship often fails to stand up for human rights. Take, for example, the case of a massacre in Puerto Asis, in February of 1998. In that case, soldiers did nothing to stop paramilitary gunmen who descended on the southern city of Puerto Asis and methodically killed at least 48 suspected guerrilla sympathizers, according to the city's mayor. Mayor Nestor Hernandez said he warned army commanders posted in a garrison outside the town of impending bloodshed when the gunmen moved into

the region Jan. 30. But according to the mayor the death squads -- operating in groups of eight to 10 and often wearing ski masks -- continued gunning down people after plucking them from their homes or from cars and buses. According to Hernandez, 38 people were killed in Puerto Asis, 335 miles south of Bogota, while at least 10 others were slain in outlying areas. Hernandez traveled to Bogota to ask government officials to provide protection for the residents of Puerto Asis, a city of 65,000

people with only a 17-man police force.``Unfortunately, they have done nothing,'' the mayor said. In a statement, Defense Minister Gilberto Echeverri did not explicitly deny Hernandez's accusations but said: ``The information of state authorities, the police, prosecutors and commanders in the area do not coincide with what the mayor has declared'' (Miami Herald, Feb 13 1998).
 
 

RODRIGO LLOREDA

Another associate of Charles Wilhelm’s is Ex Minister of Defense, General Rodrigo Lloreda. Lloreda, One of General Wilhelm's favorites, met with Wilhelm in Miami. In February of 1999, in fact, General Wilhelm remarked upon the "courage and great risks which high officials in the military have undertaken, for example the Minister of Defense Rodrigo Lloreda Caicedo." Lloreda, in actual fact, represents perhaps the army’s most reactionary elements. When President Andres Pastrana, himself of the ultra right wing Conservative Party, proposed that the government hand over a vast swathe of territory to the FARC guerrillas in South Eastern Colombia, in a move to further the peace process and bring about national reconciliation, Lloreda balked. Criticizing the government’s moves, Lloreda resigned from his post in protest, in April of 1999.

GENERAL WILHELM’S MEETING WITH PERUVIAN MILITARY PERSONNEL AT MIAMI SOUTH COM, APRIL 20-24, 1998

Between April 20 and 24^th, 1998, Miami South Com and Commander Charles Wilhelm organized an international symposium in Miami related to defense and other themes related to "hemispheric security." 173 generals, from North, South, and Central America attended the event. Among the participants were some human rights violators, such as Peruvian General Nicolas de Bari Hermoza Rios. According to School of the Americas Watch, General Hermoza Rios graduated from the School of the Americas in 1976. As Commander of the Peruvian army, Hermoza refused to let the Peruvian Congress question officers involved in the "La Cantuta" disappearance and murder of 9 university students and a professor in 1992. Hermoza Rios issued public threats against the commission investigating the case and paraded tanks through the streets of Lima to back up his words. Later, a top governmental security adviser claimed Hermoza himself was involved in the formation of the death squad that carried out the murders (Americas Watch Report: Anatomy of a Cover-up: The Disappearances at La Cantuta, 1993). More recently, Hermoza Rios directed the assault of the Japanese Ambassador’s residence in Lima, following a hostage crisis involving Tupac Amaru rebels. All of the rebels were killed in the assault by Hermoza Rios’s troops.

THE FUTURE FOR MIAMI SOUTH COM: JUNGLE BASE IN ARGENTINA?

According to El Nuevo Herald for 6 Sept 1999, Miami South Com is interested in establishing links with an Argentinian military training base located in the jungles of Misiones, 1000 miles north of Buenos Aires near to the Brazilian border. According to the article, last year Argentinian Minister of Defense Jorge Dominguez was sounded out about possible US collaboration during a meeting at Miami South Com headquarters. It would seem that, with the departure from Panama of US troops now imminent by the end of 1999, Miami South Com is looking for alternative sites in Latin America from which to exert an influence. According to the article, Argentina is looking to receive US Green Berets at the Misiones training school, specializing in counterinsurgency operations. The Green Berets would train commandos in jungle warfare. Who originated the idea? Some sources within the Argentinian government indicated that the Misiones program was "an original North American idea," and was conveyed to Dominguez during the latter’s trip to Miami. The Misiones program, located so close to the Brazilian border, has Brazilian authorities concerned. The Misiones proposal must be considered within the context of Argentinian bids to appeal to Washington and join NATO "as an associate member." Such Argentinian moves to join NATO have been criticized by Brazil and members of the Argentinian opposition party Alianza UCR-Frepaso, both of whom appear worried that such a move would create a note of instability within the Mercosur nations. On Sept 7, Raul Duany, the spokesman for Miami South Com, denied that the US was seeking a jungle base in Misiones. "The information that we have," remarked Duany, "is that this is an Argentinian initiative…We don’t have any type of conversations with Argentina which would seek to establish a joint training base." However, Duany was quick to add, "But this doesn’t mean that Argentina may not establish a center and invite other countries to participate" (Reuters, Sept 7 1999).
 

Local champions of the US Southern Command in Miami: US REP ILEANA ROS LEHTINEN

QUOTE FROM ILEANA ROS LEHTINEN'S SPEECH BEFORE THE HOUSE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS COMMITTEE, 31 March 1998.

REP. ROS-LEHTINEN: Thank you so much. I wanted to welcome

General Wilhelm to our committee hearing. We are so fortunate and

blessed in Miami to be the new home of SouthCOM (ph). It's a

wonderful center. Along with my colleague, Congressman Lincoln

Diaz- Balart, we had an opportunity to tour SouthCOM just the last

week. Wonderful men and women who make up that center. Of

course, strategically located in Miami because that's the place where

you can get the updated information about what is going on,

especially in the Caribbean.

We had a heated exchange, Lincoln and I, with the general about the

new report that we expect to be coming out soon about whether

Castro is or is not a threat to the United States. And, although we did

not agree, I know that we do agree on the fact that drugs is a never-

ending threat to our national security, and we believe Castro's

complicity is ever-present. And we know that it's been a problem for

Colombia as well, but no group of people have valiantly fought

against drug traffickers as the Colombian people have. And we're

very pleased to have SouthCOM in our community. We're very

honored to have General Wilhelm here, and there will be other times

when we will agree more than we have this past few days. And I

welcome the free exchange of ideas. Welcome so much to our

committee, General.

THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS (SOA), AND MIAMI SOUTH COM COMMANDER CHARLES WILHELM (TAKEN FROM WILHELM’S SPEECH TO THE 1998 GRADUATES OF THE COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF OFFICER COURSE, DEC 17 1998):

"As you know, some people, and I will be charitable and I will say that perhaps these people are well intentioned. Well intentioned does not mean well informed. These well intentioned but not well informed people have made some critical statements about this School and what it does. Their statements do a disservice to the School of the Americas and do a disservice to the community of nations in this hemisphere who the School supports. So what I would ask you to do is simply this: When you return to your countries take every possible opportunity to communicate to the citizens of your country about what really happens here at Fort Benning: the subjects that you learned; the fellowships and friendships that you have developed during the 48 weeks that you served together here; that you sit side-by-side; that you debate important issues. I would ask that you focus their attention to the very powerful section of the curriculum which is devoted to the subject of Human Rights, which is important to all of us. I have stated to a great many audiences that if this school would cancel today, tomorrow I will assemble my staff and simply recreate it. That would be a foolish waste of experience, of time, of money and of resources. The School of the Americas is a School for good and we all know of that. The example I use…it’s the priest in his pulpit. Every Sunday he gets into the pulpit and looks out across his congregation and he tells his people to go outt during the coming week and do good things and sin no more. It’s a good message but he’s talking to human beings. Some of them sleep through the sermon, others don’t listen. And some of them do sin, that’s true enough. But that’s not an indictment of the Church. That’s and indictment of the people who attend the Church. And for every bad person who has attended this School, look at the legions of not only good, but great people who have attended."

CHARLES WILHELM’S STATEMENT ON THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS, IN LIGHT OF THE FACTS:

Charles Wilhelm is being slightly disingenuous, with his pulpit and flock metaphor, and when he claims that only a few bad apples have graduated from the School of the Americas. Let us refer for a moment to the case of Colombia, and Wilhelm’s cherished military establishment there. In fact, recently out of a list of 247 Colombian military officers implicated in specific human rights cases, 124 of them received training at the US School of the Americas. The few "bad apples" argument is not very convincing, given the weight of the evidence about the involvement of SOA graduates in other human rights abuses -- two of three officers cited in the assassination of Archbishop Romero; three of five officers cited in the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen; ten of twelve cited for the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians, etc etc.. Furthermore, the full scope of atrocities committed by SOA graduates will likely never be known because members of Latin,American militaries are generally above the law. It is rare that crimes by members of these militaries are investigated and rarer still when the names of those suspected are released.

Wilhelm’s remarks about the SOA and human rights won’t hold water. As the organization SOA Watch has pointed out, the SOA has always claimed that it didn't teach its students how to torture or how to commit other human rights abuses. Now after the truth has been revealed by the release of the training manuals, the SOA claims that it has changed. Despite proponents' assertions that the School of the Americas has reformed, SOA continues as a combat training school that focuses on courses with titles such as "Combat Arms Officer," Psychological Operations," "Battle Staff Operations," and "Commando Course." Only one of 42 courses in the 1996 course catalogue -- "Democratic Sustainment" -- centers on issues of democracy and human rights. It is interesting to note that in 1997, only 13 students took this course, compared with 118 who took "Military Intelligence". The "mandatory human rights component" of other courses comprises only a very small portion of the total course hours. Former SOA human rights instructor Charles Call has reported that human rights training is not taken seriously at the school and human rights training makes up an insignificant amount of students' overall training.
 
 
 

WHERE DOES YOUR LOCAL SOUTH FLORIDA LEGISLATOR STAND? SOME OTHER LOCAL CHAMPIONS OF US COUNTERINSURGENCY EFFORTS AND THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS:
 
 

South Florida legislators, many of whom have supported Miami South Com, have also, not surprisingly, been fervent champions of the School of the Americas. Let us take, for example, the case of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican House member from Miami, who voted twice to keep the School of the Americas open. The same is true for local House Representatives, Clay Shaw and Carrie Meek. Lincoln Diaz Balart, Republican House member from Miami, voted to keep the SOA open, both in 1993 and 1994. On Sept 17, 1998, Rep Joe Kennedy (MA) tried to introduce a measure on the floor of the House which would have cut $1.5 million from a State Department program which partially funds the SOA. Kennedy’s measure was blocked, but a few minutes later the Massachusetts legislator was able to insert the amendment in the House foreign appropriations bill and force a vote. The effort was defeated, 212 to 201. As one might have predicted, Lincoln Diaz Balart, Ileana Ros Lehtinen and Clay Shaw all voted against Kennedy’s amendment.

When South Florida activists mailed local politicians, to ask them to clarify their positions on the SOA, Senator Bob Graham sent back an evasive letter, in which he wrote cynically, "Human rights violations are often the result of poor accountability and weak governmental systems, not the specifics of military training." Predictably, neither Ileana Ros Lehtinen nor Lincoln Diaz Balart chose to answer our queries on the SOA. Carrie Meek, however, wrote back the following: "I am strongly opposed to curriculum that teaches torture or other forms of abuse." But then she continues, "However, I do not believe it is wise public policy to hold educational institutions responsible for the actions of their graduates." But Representative Meek, who in their right minds would call the SOA "an educational institution"? Who would be so crass as to claim that institutions do not share responsibility for what they do and teach? Rep Meek doesn’t stop there, but resorts to another fallacious argument, claiming that "educational institutions," such as the torture school, should not be held accountable for the actions of graduates, because, "If this were the standard, there would almost certainly be some serious questions raised about many of this nation’s most distinguished colleges and universities." Presumably, what Rep Meek is trying to argue here is that graduates of Harvard and Yale have become criminals. But what Meek completely denies here is the difference in SCALE. If Harvard, Yale, or Princeton turned out assassins and murderers at the same rate as does the School of the Americas, there most certainly would be a call to close said institutions.

On 30 July, 1999, Congress voted 230 to 197 in support of the Moakley amendment, and to cut funds to the SOA. It was the first ever Congressional victory for opponents of the school.. If this vote holds in the Conference Committee it will cut about $2 million from the SOA training funds -- probably not enough to close the School, but a significant bite that sends the message that the SOA's days are numbered. How did South Florida legislators vote on the amendment? Predictably enough, Ileana Ros Lehtinen, Clay Shaw, and Lincoln Diaz Balart all voted against. Carrie Meek, to her credit, seems to have made an about face and voted in favor.