BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A high-level U.S. Department of Defense official strongly suspected that Colombia's then-President Álvaro Uribe — now under house arrest — had a history of dealings with violent paramilitaries, according to a newly declassified memo from his early years in office.
The document is among a batch of records shared with The Associated Press by the nonprofit National Security Archive, which contends it is the first to show that concerns about Uribe's potentially unsavory ties with armed groups hired by wealthy landowners to protect them from guerrillas reached the highest levels of the Pentagon.
"Uribe almost certainly had dealings with the paramilitaries (AUC) while governor of Antioquia," Peter Rodman, then a top Pentagon deputy, wrote Bush-era Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a confidential 2004 dispatch. "It goes with the job."
The missive adds to suspicions — which Uribe has vehemently denied — that the man credited with turning the tide in Colombia's long war with Marxist combatants himself engaged with violent actors while leading the province that includes Medellin in the 1990s. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by their Spanish acronym AUC, were declared a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2001.
The Supreme Court is investigating allegations Uribe pressured ex-paramilitaries into retracting statements linking him to their militias in a case that has divided the nation and brought tensions over Colombia's peace process to the surface.
The documents don't include any specific description of direct interactions between the former president and paramilitaries, and there is little to show whether or how deeply the U.S. tried to determine if any ties did in fact exist. But dozens of lawmakers — including numerous Uribe allies — have been jailed and convicted for ties with paramilitaries, establishing a clear connection between politicians and the illegal armed groups.
A spokesman for Uribe said in a statement that, "The only dealings President Uribe had with paramilitaries was to throw them in jail," and highlighted several instances in which senior U.S. officials praised his leadership and human rights record.
"Every action taken at the highest levels of the U.S. government proved that there was never any doubt about President Uribe's integrity and commitment to human rights and the rule of law," the statement adds.
The U.S. Embassy cables, CIA reports and confidential notes were obtained by the National Security Archive research institute through Freedom of Information Act requests.
The behind-the-scenes look at the U.S. government response to Uribe's first years in his 2002-2010 presidency show officials overwhelmingly pleased with his aggressive approach to conquering guerrilla groups engaged in murder, kidnapping and large-scale drug trafficking. These were the early years after 9/11, and the George W. Bush administration saw defeating Colombian rebels as in tune with a larger mission of combatting terrorism around the world.
In one memo, a high-ranking Pentagon official touted that Uribe's military had killed 543 rebels with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and captured 1,063 more in the first half of 2003 – a dramatic increase compared to his predecessor. In another, an official highlighted favorable coverage of Uribe's battlefield triumphs in the media.
Rumsfeld himself seemed keen on seizing the moment to "deal a crippling blow to narcoterrorists," he wrote in a memo offering talking points to a deputy.
"President Uribe only has a few years left to complete this task," he added.
But also woven in the dispatches are recurrent, not so subtle hints that the Colombian military, key Uribe allies — and possibly the president himself — had entered into alliances with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the umbrella paramilitary group.
One 1997 Defense Intelligence Agency report noted that military cooperation with paramilitaries had "gotten much worse" under Gen. Rito Alejo del Río, who served as commander of the Army's 17th Brigade toward the end of Uribe's time as governor. The same report notes that two other officers "never allowed themselves to become directly involved in encouraging or supporting paramilitary activities, but they turned their backs to what was happening."