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Venezuela's Drug-Trafficking Role Is Growing Fast,
U.S. Report Says
By Juan Forero,
Washington Post Foreign Service
Bogota, Colombia - A report for the U.S.
Congress on drug smuggling through Venezuela
concludes that corruption at high levels of
President Hugo Chávez's government and state aid to
Colombia's drug-trafficking guerrillas have made
Venezuela a major launching pad for cocaine bound
for the United States and Europe.
Since 1996, successive U.S. administrations have
considered Venezuela a key drug-trafficking hub, the
Government Accountability Office report says. But
now, it says, the amount of cocaine flowing into
Venezuela from Colombia, Venezuela's neighbor and
the world's top producer of the drug, has
skyrocketed, going from an estimated 60 metric tons
in 2004 to 260 metric tons in 2007. That amounted to
17 percent of all the cocaine produced in the Andes
in 2007.
The report, which was first reported by Spain's El
Pais newspaper Thursday and obtained by The
Washington Post on Friday, represents U.S.
officials' strongest condemnation yet of Venezuela's
alleged role in drug trafficking. It says Venezuela
has extended a "lifeline" to the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which the United States
estimates has a hand in the trafficking of 60
percent of the cocaine produced in Colombia.
The report, scheduled to be made public in
Washington on Monday, drew an angry response from
Chávez, whose government has repeatedly clashed with
the United States. Speaking to reporters in Bolivia
on Friday, the populist leader characterized the
report as a political tool used by the United States
to besmirch his country. He also said the United
States, as the world's top cocaine consumer, has no
right to lecture Venezuela.
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"The United States is the first narco-trafficking
country," Chávez said, adding that Venezuela's
geography -- particularly its rugged 1,300-mile
border with Colombia -- makes it vulnerable to
traffickers. He also asserted that Venezuela had
made important gains in the drug war since expelling
U.S. counter-drug agents in 2005, a measure the GAO
says made Venezuela more attractive to Colombian
traffickers.
"Venezuela has begun to hit narco-trafficking hard
since the DEA left," Chávez said, referring to the
Drug Enforcement Administration. "The DEA is filled
with drug traffickers."
Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) commissioned the GAO
study in February 2008, asking the nonpartisan
agency to determine whether Venezuela was "in the
process of becoming a narco-state, heavily dependent
[on] and beholden to the international trade in
illegal drugs."
In a statement about the GAO report, Lugar, the
ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, said the findings "have heightened my
concern that Venezuela's failure to cooperate with
the United States on drug interdiction is related to
corruption in that country's government." He said
the report underscores a need for a comprehensive
review of U.S. policy toward Venezuela.
The release of the report is expected to provide
ammunition to some Republican lawmakers who have
criticized the Obama administration's efforts to
reinstate the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel
Zelaya, a close ally of Chávez. U.S. diplomats have
said that despite his ties to Chávez, Zelaya should
be returned to power to serve the six months left in
his term.
A Democratic aide in Congress who works on Latin
American policy issues suggested that the call for a
review of U.S. policy toward Venezuela could
interfere with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton's bid to improve relations with Caracas,
which were badly frayed during the Bush years. "The
administration inherited a messy bilateral
relationship and deserves a chance to put it on a
more even keel," the aide said.
The GAO report describes how cocaine produced in
Colombia is smuggled into Venezuela via land and
river routes, as well as on short flights
originating from remote regions along Colombia's
eastern border. Most of the cocaine is then shipped
out on merchant vessels, fishing boats and so-called
go-fast boats. Though most of it is destined for
U.S. streets, increasing amounts are being sent to
Europe, the report says.
The GAO contends that corruption in Venezuela,
reaching from officers in the National Guard to
officials in top levels of government, has
contributed to the surge in trafficking.
In September, the Treasury Department's Office of
Foreign Assets Control designated three Venezuelan
high-ranking officials, all close aides to Chávez,
as "drug kingpins" for protecting FARC drug
shipments and providing arms and funding to
Colombian guerrillas. They are Hugo Armando Carvajal
Barrios, director of the military's Intelligence
Directorate; Henry de Jesús Rangel Silva, head of
the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention
Services; and Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, former
interior and justice minister.
News of the GAO report came as Colombian officials
in Bogota released an internal FARC video in which
the rebel group's second-in-command, Jorge Briceńo,
reads the deathbed manifesto, written in March 2008,
by the then-supreme commander, Manuel Marulanda. In
the video, seized in May from a FARC operative and
obtained by the Associated Press, Marulanda stresses
the strategic importance of "maintaining good
political relations, friendship and confidence with
the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador."
Marulanda's letter also laments that a trove of
internal e-mails, many of them compromising
Venezuelan and Ecuadoran officials, fell into the
hands of Colombian authorities that month. Briceńo,
reading the letter to a group of guerrillas in a
jungle clearing, announces that among FARC "secrets"
that were lost is information about the "assistance
in dollars" to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa's
2006 presidential campaign.
Venezuela did not immediately respond to the video.
But on Saturday, Correa, an ally of Chávez, denied
receiving campaign funds from the FARC and suggested
the video was a "setup."
"There is a setup to damage the image of the country
and the government," he said in a radio address.
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