LEADER IN COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARY SENTENCED FOR DRUG TRAFFICKING

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Colombian Paramilitary Leader Sentenced to More Than 15 Years in Prison for International Drug Trafficking

A senior paramilitary leader and one of Colombia’s most notorious drug traffickers was sentenced today to serve 190 months in prison for leading an international drug trafficking conspiracy that imported into the United States ton-quantities of cocaine.  Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Acting Deputy Administrator Jack Riley of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) made the announcement.

“Through his leadership position in the AUC, Salvatore Mancuso-Gomez directed the manufacture and shipment of over 100,000 kilograms of cocaine into the United States and elsewhere,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell.  “In addition to enriching himself, Mancuso-Gomez and the AUC used this drug money to raise and arm a paramilitary force of more than 30,000 fighters and cement his control over regions of Colombia.  This case is yet another example of our continued commitment to collaborating with our international partners to prosecute criminals and warlords who traffic in illegal narcotics, violence and intimidation.”

“DEA is committed to relentlessly attacking global criminal networks who use drug trafficking as a means to finance their terrorist activities,” said Acting Deputy Administrator Riley.  “The arrest and prosecution of Salvatore Mancuso-Gomez clearly illustrates this dedication.  As a senior leader in the AUC, Mancuso-Gomez controlled huge amounts of cocaine production in Colombia, and oversaw its movement to the United States and other parts of the world.  Proceeds from his drug trafficking enterprise were used to acquire weapons and further the AUC’s violent criminal agenda.  DEA is pleased that this significant narco-terror leader has faced justice in a U.S. court of law.”

Salvatore Mancuso-Gomez, aka El Mono and Santander Lozada, formerly of Monteria, Colombia, pleaded guilty in October 2008 to one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine knowing and intending that it would be imported into the United States.  U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of the District of Columbia imposed the sentence.

According to the statement of facts agreed to as part of his guilty plea, Mancuso-Gomez held one of the highest level leadership positions within the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self Defense Forces of Colombia or AUC), a terrorist and paramilitary organization in Colombia.  In September 2001, the AUC was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Department of State.  In May 2003, the AUC was placed on the Significant Foreign Narcotics Traffickers list by order of the President, pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.  In February 2004, Mancuso-Gomez individually was designated as a Tier II Kingpin by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, subjecting him to severe economic sanctions under the Kingpin Act.

The statement of facts also established that the AUC consisted of approximately 30,000 armed soldiers organized into blocs (or regions) with commanders for each bloc.  In connection with his guilty plea, Mancuso-Gomez admitted that, from the mid-1990s through 2004, he directed thousands of soldiers in two blocs of the AUC, controlling large areas where cocaine was produced.

Mancuso-Gomez admitted that the AUC produced approximately 2,000 kilograms of cocaine per month during the conspiracy, and that he and members of the organization transported the cocaine to the coastal areas of Colombia where it was loaded onto go-fast boats and other vessels for ultimate transportation to the United States and Europe.  Mancuso-Gomez also admitted that he levied taxes on other narcotics traffickers who needed passage through AUC-controlled territories, and that he used proceeds from his drug trafficking activities to purchase weapons and other supplies for AUC activities.  Mancuso-Gomez further admitted that he and the AUC maintained tight control of their territories in Colombia through intimidation of corrupt members of the Colombian government, including law enforcement and military personnel and politicians.

Today’s sentence does not account for violations of Colombian human rights-related laws allegedly committed by Mancuso-Gomez, which are being addressed in Colombia through the Justice and Peace process – a legal framework enacted in 2005 to facilitate the demobilization of its paramilitary organizations – and Colombian criminal justice system.

The case was investigated by DEA’s Bogotá and Cartagena, Colombia, Country Offices, and the DEA Special Operations Division.  The government of Colombia provided unprecedented assistance through the investigation, prosecution and sentencing phase of this case.

The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Paul W. Laymon and Carmen Colon of the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section (NDDS).  NDDS Judicial Attachés in Bogotá, Colombia; the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs; and the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic of Colombia (Fiscalia), including the Fiscalia’s Transitional Justice program, provided significant assistance.

SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS AT LAW ENFORCEMENT MEMORIAL WALL

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 

Remarks at the Dedication of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Memorial Wall

Remarks

John Kerry

Secretary of State

21st Street Entrance

Washington, DC

June 12, 2014

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Bill, thank you very much. Good morning, everybody, distinguished guests all, and particularly the members of the Bynum family and extended clan. We’re delighted to be able to honor you here today. As Bill just mentioned to you, on the other side of this building – and I hope you have a chance to see it if you haven’t seen it already when you came in – we have the AFSA, the American Foreign Service plaque, which proudly honors our fallen Foreign Service officers. But from this day forward, at this very spot, as Bill has described, in a place that is a thoroughfare for the moment of all of the people who work here in this family, with just as much solemnity and with just as much reverence we honor the men and women – contractors and federal employees alike – who gave the full measure of their capacity of their service to country, of their commitment to the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement mission abroad.

This is much more than a list of names. It’s a legacy of stories, individual stories, each one with a human face that tells the story of a brave person who served their country. In the name of making the rule of law stronger, of making the world a little bit more free from the drugs and the crime and the web of horrors that come with it that threatens the civilized world everywhere. Believe me, this is personal for everybody here. It’s particularly personal for Assistant Secretary Bill Brownfield, who could tell you by memory exactly where on the wall you would find the name and the date of his friend Kris Kriskovich, who Bill knew when they both served in El Salvador and who we lost in Bosnia struggling in the service of the effort to re-establish a police force and take back order from the streets of random and wanton violence. Nothing motivates this fellow, Bill Brownfield, more than the memory of Kris’s sacrifice.

Kris is one of 87 heroes on this wall. And now today his name is linked forever, as are the others, with that of Kevin Bynum, the newest name on the INL wall – a man that we’re here to remember together with his family. We’re delighted to welcome Kevin’s mother, Rebecca, his brother, Lawrence, and fiancee Chaille are all here, as are their children, Josiah Cross, Lazarus Cade, and Luke; his nieces, Sandy and Pam, his nephew-in-law, Doug, and his cousins, Mickie and Howard – they’re all in the audience, and we thank you so much for being here. I know it was a very difficult, long travel with weather delays, and you got in literally early in the morning. And we appreciate the special effort to be here.

Michael Botticelli from the White House is here too along with Michele Leonhart from DEA and Charles Samuels from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And I also want to acknowledge all of our international partners who were here today to honor the fallen. We thank you.

For a year now, the INL memorial wall has been without a home. Today we give it a permanent display in, as I said, one of the busiest lobbies in this building so that each and every day the thousands of people who pass through here and visitors who come will be reminded of the sacrifices that people do make for the mission that we engage in here in the State Department.
Now I remember a time when some people questioned whether INL’s mission was the work of diplomats, whether law enforcement, crimes, and drugs overseas matter to our interests here at home. But as I travel the world today, I’m amazed by the degree to which corruption and crime are stealing opportunity from entire nations and standing in the way of the march of values that we care about and believe in so deeply. And that should concern every single person because wherever and whenever the rule of law is broken, whenever crime and corruption take root, that is a failure that literally endangers all of us. It is a threat to America and to Americans and to our allies and our friends and partners.

Narcotics grown halfway around the world are too often sold on our streets to our kids. People who are forced to pay bribes are likely to turn to extremism and illegal trafficking of elephant tusks and rhino horns. All of these things threaten the most vulnerable species and threaten communities, because it is criminal activity. It is outside of the rule of law.

What happens overseas matters here at home, and INL is leading our effort to fight back in order to bring order out of chaos. These issues are transnational. There’s no way to fight them by putting your head in the sand and just staying here at home. There’s no way to protect America by pretending that things that happen elsewhere don’t affect us here. None of these threats stop at any border, and they certainly can’t be stopped by one single government.
So if we are to turn the tides in the battle against organized crime and against drug traffickers, then we need to build cooperation and be innovative in our approaches. We in the United States believe that the rule of law has to be renewed every single day and it has to be renewed by people who work here in this Department and elsewhere in our government, sometimes in courageous and lonely efforts.

On this wall are the names of people who gave their lives in service to that principle, that they’re getting up every single day and committing to something much bigger than themselves. Today, with heavy hearts we add the name of Kevin Todd Bynum.

Now let me tell you a little bit about Kevin. For years Kevin worked for a crop dusting company in his native Mississippi, maintaining and loading the prop planes that sprayed the fields of soy beans and wheat. But Kevin didn’t want to just support the pilots. He wanted to be one. So Kevin got his pilot license and he became the man behind the controls. Then Kevin decided to use his license to fly for a bigger mission. He signed up to fly for his country in one of the most dangerous assignments that a pilot can imagine – flying anti-drug missions over the jungles of Colombia, becoming one of the brave pilots who have destroyed 1.5 million acres of coca trees and 7.9 million kilos of cocaine.

While Kevin took this mission very seriously, I can tell you and I think his family knows this, he always found the opportunities to have some fun. Whenever Kevin was working and his company called to check on him, Kevin would answer the phone the same way, with an order for cheeseburger and fries. Kevin’s fellow pilots called him “Boomer,” and they will tell you when you were working with Kevin, you had to check your shoes for rocks or for knotted laces every single morning.

Kevin was also one of our bravest pilots. Each time he went to Colombia, he asked to fly over some of the most dangerous regions. He dodged bullets fired from the rainforest below, and he was also the maintenance test pilot. When no one knew whether a repaired plane would be able to get off the ground and fly or break up over the jungle, Kevin took that first intrepid flight. He was always making sure that everyone came home safely.

Kevin’s name will now forever be honored at the entrance of this building named after President Harry Truman, a president who told us that “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage and on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.” President Truman could have just as easily been talking about Kevin and the other 86 patriots who are on this wall with the courage to fight against chaos and negativity, nihilism; the guts to imagine a more just world and the special resolve individually to try to get something done. That’s what makes us the indispensable nation. We look outward. We respond to the call of duty, even at the risk to ourselves, and we embrace the responsibility to lead.

In that spirit, we remember Kevin Bynum and everyone on this wall, whether they were contractors, federal employees, foreign nationals. We honor each of them for their dedication to the American mission abroad and for their willingness to put country and duty above themselves.

It’s now my honor to present the flag to Kevin’s mother and to lay a wreath at the wall.

INTERNATIONAL CRACKDOWN ON DRUG TRAFFICKERS

FROM:  AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE
Colombian naval forces arrest alleged drug traffickers May 6, 2012 and net 5,000 pounds of cocaine. U.S. Navy photo.  


Interagency Task Force Mounts Aggressive Counter-drug Effort
By Donna Miles
KEY WEST, Fla. , May 30, 2012 - The interdiction of a drug-trafficking speedboat carrying almost 5,000 pounds of cocaine with a street value of more than $363 million played out like a motion-picture thriller.
The action followed a carefully choreographed script, from the moment U.S. Customs and Border Protection pilots spotted the speedboat El Kike on May 6 from their P-3 Orion aircraft. They passed the mission to USS Nicholas, a guided-missile frigate patrolling the region with an embarked U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement team. Nicholas dispatched a helicopter to track the speedboat, while maneuvering into position to intercept.
El Kike's crew, recognizing their plight, jettisoned half of their cargo, then adjusted course and hit the throttle toward Colombia.

Nicholas followed, while calling on the USS McClusky, an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate, and the Colombian navy ship ARC 20 de Julio operating nearby for assistance. McClusky launched a helicopter to maintain surveillance, diverting El Kike it into Colombian territorial waters, where the Colombian navy intercepted it.

"With the help of some friends, we accomplished what we set out to do: disrupt the drug trade," said Navy Cdr. Stephen Fuller, Nicholas' commanding officer. "Interdictions are challenging, but with the help of McClusky, [U.S.] Customs and the Colombian navy, we executed a successful operation."

It was latest in a recent string of operational successes for the Joint Interagency Task Force South and its regional partners since they kicked off an aggressive counterdrug effort earlier this year.

In a small, largely symbolic gesture of pride, the JIATF staff hoisted their "cocaine flag" outside their headquarters here to mark the second of many successful interdictions this month. Fluttering in the tropical breezes, it offered a tangible expression to members of what Coast Guard Rear Adm. Charles D. Michel, the task force commander, calls "the most effective and efficient counter-illicit trafficking, detection, monitoring and law enforcement organization the planet has ever known."

Last year alone, JIATF South facilitated the interdiction of 117 metric tons of cocaine, Michel reported. That's 58 percent of all cocaine seized in the East Pacific and Caribbean transit zones last year. It's almost six times the net of all U.S. law enforcement border apprehensions -- the efforts of federal, state, city and tribal efforts combined, he noted. Collectively, they netted 20 metric tons.

"We are the most efficient cocaine removal organization that I am aware of, by far," Michel said. "The taxpayer gets a huge bang for the buck down here, through the interdiction of cocaine, the protection of our neighbors, the stability of the hemisphere and the protection of our citizens on the street."

Sitting with American Forces Press Service, Michel and his vice director, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent John Murphy Jr., said they're convinced these seizures still amount to just 25 percent of the cocaine trade trafficking through the region.

To put a greater squeeze on the traffickers, JIATF South launched Operation Martillo, which translated, means "Operation Hammer," in January. The mission specifically targets illicit trafficking routes in coastal waters along the Central American Isthmus -- the route for more than 90 percent of the cocaine destined for the United States.

"Operation Martillo is designed to take pressure off these Central American countries," Michel said. Particularly in the northern triangle area of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, "thousands of their citizens are being murdered," he said. "Government officials are being corrupted. Institutions are being rotted from the inside out. Portions of their territory are no longer effectively under their control."

"That is instability," the admiral said, "and that is a national security threat, right in our backyard."

Operation Martillo represents "a different way of doing business in employing this entire enterprise to achieve a strategic effect," Michel said. "And that strategic effect is to protect Central America from these [drug] flows currently causing all the murder, death, destruction, corruption."

While all trafficking causes concern, Michel called the lucrative cocaine trade the No. 1 threat. "Cocaine is king down here," he said, with transnational criminal organizations running an $88 billion-a-year global market.

The incredibly high profit margin -- an estimated $84 billion -- funds everything these groups need to support their efforts: fleets of aircraft, go-fast boats, semi-submersible vessels and increasingly, fully submersible vessels, he said. It also allows them to operate with near impunity in many parts of the region as they buy off government officials and intimidate or kill anyone who stands in their way.

"There are tens of thousands of Central Americans being murdered each year because of drug trafficking," Michel said. "It is a shocking statistic to me. And it's also shocking because it doesn't get the attention that it should."

Michel contrasted the huge resources available to drug traffickers with those of regional governments that seek to counter them. "Those guys are just outgunned and outspent by the traffickers," Michel said. "These are organizations of such magnitude that they can actually challenge nation states."

That makes these organizations and their drug trafficking operations a major national security threat, as reflected in President Barack Obama's national strategy released in July, Michel said. "The No. 1 cause of regional instability throughout Central America, which is our closest neighbor, is the cocaine trade," he said. "There is no question about it."

As the stakes get ever-higher, Michel cited a clear realization that no single nation or agency can stand up to this scourge alone. Partner nations share that recognition, and have participated in 83 percent of all illicit trafficking disruptions since Operational Martillo kicked off in January, he noted.

JIATF South has embraced this inclusive approach since it initially stood up 23 years ago as Joint Task Force 4 as a new model of intergovernmental cooperation.

"This was not an overnight success," Michel conceded. Members of different governmental organizations had to learn to overcome their different backgrounds, ways of doing business and their historical practices of competing for resources, authorities and responsibilities.

"The No. 1 ingredient that you need in order to make this work is trust, and that only gets built up with time," he said. "I wish there was an easy way that you could just flash a magic wand and make people trust each other. But coworkers have to learn to work together, to trust that others are going to protect their information, are going to protect their equities and that others are actually going to act as team players."
More than two decades later, Michel praised JIATF South's evolution into what has been described as "the gold standard for interagency and international cooperation."

"In all my travels and experiences working through the government in different forms, this is the best working model of the whole-of-government solution to a problem set I have ever seen that produces consistent results," he said.

The staff includes representatives of all five armed services, including the National Guard and reserves, members of various federal law enforcement entities, the intelligence community and their counterparts from 13 partner nations.

This brings a wealth of experience to the effort, Michel said. "We can match any capability, competency, authority or partnership that is available in the national inventory to deal with this particular problem set," he said. "Plus, by leveraging contributions from the international partners, we can make this all work together in this joint international interagency task force that we have put together."

As JIATF South evolved, Michel said its staff has become "much smarter" about the way it operates. "We achieve results that are magnitudes better than we used to when this first started, with just a fraction of the assets in place," he said. "And that's because of the way we leverage all those international and interagency partnerships and capabilities that we bring to the table. That is the power of the whole-of-government approach."

These capabilities are critical, he said, as traffickers employ increasingly sophisticated methods. Of particular concern is their use of low-profile semi-submersible vessels that are extremely difficult to detect and more recently, submersibles that operate completely underwater.

JIATF South and its partners have confiscated about 30 semi-submersibles so far, with one now positioned on the lawn outside its headquarters building here and another at the U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Miami.

Almost all were discovered operating in the Eastern Pacific. "But this summer, for the first time, we saw them on the Caribbean side, which is a disturbing trend," Michel said. "That means they have exported that technology to another building area and other people are operating this type of craft."

Michel reported signs that more evasive submersible vessels have come into favor. The only ones JIATF South has confiscated to date have been discovered on land, but Michel said he's sure they're operating underwater.

Looking ahead, Michel called traffickers' deep pockets and adaptability one of JIATF South's biggest challenges. "Their conveyances have gotten better, their security procedures are better, they dig themselves more and more into governments, they corrupt more and more and they have become more and more violent in their tactics," he said. "Our adversary is incredibly nimble."

But almost as daunting, Michel said, are budget realities that give these adversaries a leg up.

"My No. 2 challenge is the resource challenge, particularly for ships and aircraft," he said. Michel cited cases when JIATF South had "high-confidence that drugs are moving," but no law-enforcement assets available to interdict them.

"I can be as smart as I possibly can," he said, "but if there is no ship or an aircraft to come up with an end game, the traffickers get a free pass."

Michel said he'll continue to press for more assets dedicated to the JIATF South mission. "If we had more assets, we would be able to make an even bigger dent into this effort," he said. "You give me assets, and I'll show you results."

Meanwhile, JIATF South will continue to make the most of every capability made available to it.

"We have limited assets, but because of what we have built down here, we can use those limited assets very smartly and achieve results in a magnitude of what we used to get in the past, for just a fraction of the investment," he said.
(Navy Lt. Matt Phillips from USS Nicholas contributed to this story.)

U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS DRUG TRAFFICKING THREATENS NATIONAL SECURITY

Photo:  Narcotics Pick-up.  Credit:  U.S. Navy.  
FROM:  AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE
Drug Trafficking Threatens National Security, Official Says
By Donna Miles
WASHINGTON, May 17, 2012 - Narcotics trafficking, because of its links to other forms of transnational organized crime, has become a major national security challenge that demands continued close collaboration among the Defense Department and its interagency and international partners, a senior defense official told Congress yesterday.

"A network of adversaries requires a network to defeat it," William F. Wechsler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics and global threats, told the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.

Wechsler joined State Department and Drug Enforcement Administration officials at the caucus session to discuss broad federal cooperation under the umbrella of the national drug control strategy and national strategy to combat transnational crime.
The Defense Department supports law enforcement in three major ways, Wechsler explained: detecting and monitoring drug trafficking; sharing information, intelligence and analytic support; and helping countries build their own capacity to confront drug trafficking and related forms of transnational organized crime.

In addition, all six geographic combatant commands incorporate elements of the DOD counternarcotics program into their theater campaign plans, he said.

DOD, working through the combatant commands, military departments and defense agencies, provides "unique military platforms, personnel, systems and capabilities that support federal law enforcement agencies and foreign security forces involved in counternarcotics missions," Wechsler told the panel.

These efforts, in concert with U.S. law enforcement officials, also target terrorist groups worldwide that use narcotics trafficking to support terrorist activities, he said.

Noting the U.S. government's long history of helping to stem the flow of illicit drugs into the United States, Wechsler reported growing recognition that the focus must expand to encompass the broader challenge of transnational organized crime.

That concept is embodied in the national strategy to combat transnational organized crime, released in July. Wechsler called the strategy "a significant step forward" that recognizes transnational crime as a national security threat and seeks to galvanize every available tool to confront it.

"What we now see around the world are loose criminal networks that have diversified their illicit activities and also may have connections with other hostile actors, including terrorist groups, insurgencies and elements of rogue or hostile states," he said in his written testimony. As a result, he said, "these networked adversaries are able to have greater impact on the global security environment than in previous times."
Meanwhile, these networks are expected to evolve to exploit gaps in the global economy and in the defenses against them, he said.

The U.S. government's effectiveness in countering these hostile actors depends largely on its ability to operate as a network, Wechsler said, incorporating all its national security and law enforcement capabilities.

For the Defense Department, that will require continual adaptation to deal with the problem, he told the panel.

"Just as the Department of Defense has long sought to understand how hostile states support the armies that may confront us, we now have to understand how nonstate adversaries use narcotics trafficking and other types of crime to finance their terrorist and insurgent activities," he said.

This understanding, he said, will be needed to support what's expected to be a long-term challenge.

"For the foreseeable future," he said, "drug trafficking will continue to be the world's most lucrative criminal enterprise and therefore, the one with the greatest ability to fund terrorists, insurgents and other threats to our national security."