"A Bloody, Expensive and Prolonged Coercive Effort" | National Security Archive
Washington, D.C., 24 August 2022 - As the U.S. contemplated a more aggressive drug war strategy in Colombia in the 1980s, top intelligence officials said success there would require “a bloody, expensive, and prolonged coercive effort” that, even then, was not likely to have an impact on the U.S...
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Truth Commission Launches Declassified Database on Colombia's Conflict and U.S. Role
Art Installation “Sheds Light” on Former State Secrets
Art Installation “Sheds Light” on Former State Secrets
Washington, D.C., 24 August 2022 - As the U.S. contemplated a more aggressive drug war strategy in Colombia in the 1980s, top intelligence officials said success there would require “a bloody, expensive, and prolonged coercive effort” that, even then, was not likely to have an impact on the U.S. drug market, according to a declassified report published today by Colombia’s Truth Commission and the National Security Archive.
The 1983 Special National Intelligence Estimate, featured in the Washington Post, is among a massive trove of declassified U.S. records gathered and organized for the Commission by the Archive that is the focus of a special event today in Bogotá to introduce the Truth Commission’s digital library to the academic community. Archive senior analyst Michael Evans joins Truth Commissioner Alejandro Valencia Villa and other distinguished panelists at Colombia’s National University to celebrate the launch of the platform and to share highlights from more than 15,000 previously classified documents on Colombia’s conflict.
The event also features a light projection designed by visual artist Mireaver (Diana Pareja) that literally “sheds light” on dark chapters from Colombia’s history, using a light projector to beam enlarged images of former U.S. national security secrets onto an exterior wall at the university. The new work “takes fragments from U.S. declassified archives and reconfigures the materials in an experience of sound experimentation and video mapping.”
Today’s posting focuses on the 15 records, described in detail below, that are featured in her extraordinary work. The documents are drawn from three document collections prepared by the Archive and published by the Commission earlier this month as special annexes to its final report. These document readers explore three central themes of the conflict, reflecting the views of U.S. diplomats, policymakers and intelligence analysts across three decades and underscoring some of the Commission’s major findings and recommendations. Researchers from the Commission cited hundreds of declassified documents in the narrative reports and case studies on the conflict.
Documents 1-5 are selected from an annex of declassified documents from the period when the U.S. first began to treat international narcotics trafficking as a national security issue, deepening the U.S. role and initiating drug war strategies that the Truth Commission says worsened the conflict. These records, including intelligence estimates and high-level policy papers, show U.S. officials at times struggling to identify non-corrupt actors to work with in Colombia, while concerns about official ties to drug cartels and the emergence of new, more agile, trafficking groups often overshadowed drug war “successes.”
The second set of records (Documents 6-10) are drawn from the annex on Plan Colombia, the multi-billion-dollar U.S. aid package that greatly expanded the fumigation of drug cultivations and the U.S. footprint in Colombia’s war. Records featured here underscore the Commission’s findings about the dramatic human cost of these more aggressive operations, detailing, in one U.S. Embassy cable, U.S. concerns that they would “contribute to the social protests, and perhaps violence, that likely will follow in the wake of planned aerial eradication efforts.” In another memo, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld considers options for direct U.S. military intervention in Colombia, asking advisors “to decide what victory would be, and then think through a plan to achieve what we decide to characterize as victory.”
Documents 11-15 derive from an annex that look at links between Colombian state security forces and illegal paramilitary groups that the Truth Commission says constituted “the most violent armed actor,” responsible for “47% of the dead and disappeared victims of the armed conflict.” The records support the Truth Commission’s finding that the groups were born of an alliance between ranchers, local elites, narcotraffickers and members of the police and military who used the cloak of anti-communism to seize land and aggrandize their personal wealth. One U.S. Embassy report, for example, described how anti-guerrilla paramilitaries backed by ranchers and the army were “used to drive peasants off the land … permitting the major ranchers to consolidate and expand their landholdings.”
The database, the annexes and other National Security Archive declassified resources on Colombia and the conflict are available as part of the Truth Commission’s Truth Clarification Archive (Archivo del Esclaracimiento de la Verdad). The new platform provides various ways to explore the declassified records. In addition to the annexes, users can browse the complete database or navigate through 52 thematic research files (the “carpetas”).
Of special interest is a March 2021 letter in which Truth Commission President Francisco De Roux asks President Biden to order the accelerated declassification of U.S. federal records on various aspects of the conflict. The request, which remains pending as the Commission prepares to close its doors, is a to-do list of declassification priorities for the U.S. government as Colombia moves to consolidate peace and implement the recommendations of the Commission—among them, a recommendation to relax and reform restrictions that keep most of Colombia’s own intelligence archives hidden from the public.
click the above link for the documents.
