Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 4, 1990 TAG: 9005040171
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
President Bush, reaffirming previous administration denials, said at a news conference Thursday that U.S. troops were not involved in the Gacha operation. "U.S. troops in Colombia? No. That's the answer," the president told reporters.
The government of Colombian President Virgilio Barco also has said that no U.S. troops were involved in the Dec. 15 helicopter attack, praised by the two governments as a landmark victory in the fight against narcotics traffickers. And in an interview in Bogota last week, the head of the Colombian secret police repeated that government's assertion that it was purely a Colombian operation.
But a special operations officer familiar with details of the raid and a congressional source who received a briefing after the mission told Newsday that a small U.S. special operations team both planned and carried it out with an elite Colombian police unit. Three other defense sources and a House aide confirmed that at least three U.S. military personnel took part in the helicopter assault.
The mission was covert, meaning that American involvement was intended to be concealed and protected through "plausible deniability," the sources said.
A military intelligence source said that the Colombian police presence in the operation was characterized as "window dressing."
"Officially we say they did it," the congressional source said, "but in fact it was us."
Administration officials are mindful of the potential political fallout in Colombia if direct U.S. military involvement became a matter of public knowledge there. The plan, according to the special operations source with detailed knowledge of the events, was to capture Rodriguez Gacha and to bring him to trial in the United States on narcotics charges.
Another source described one of the Americans as an Army officer who had been detached to the CIA for several years.
The special operations source said that after one of the helicopters in the mission was fired upon by a fleeing Rodriguez Gacha and his guards, the commanding officer, identified by one source as an American, gave the order to fire back.
This source said that the death of Rodriguez Gacha initially caused consternation among U.S. officials, especially in the military, who blamed the American team leader for the failure to capture the drug kingpin alive. He said that the team leader, whom two sources identified as the overall commander of the operation, feared that his military career was over and "was packing his bags and wondering what he was going to do next." But the concerns faded quickly with the outpouring of favorable public reaction.
Accounts by the U.S. sources varied somewhat on the extent of the U.S. role, though they all agreed only a small number of Americans was involved.
In a briefing, according to a House aide, officials said only that a small number of Special Forces troops accompanied the Colombians aboard an unspecificed number of helicopters.
Both the House and Senate intelligence committees were notified of the operation through a presidential "finding" that the mission was in the national interest, according to two congressional sources who would not provide further details.
by CNB