Escobar's surrender in 1991 had allowed Gaviria to claim a political victory. Not only was the drug boss behind bars, at least technically, but the long and bloody bombing campaign directed by Escobar and his fellow narcos had been halted. Thousands of Colombians had died. Millions lived in terror. The country was exhausted by violence.
But now, a year later, Gaviria had decided to move Escobar to an actual prison on a military base in Bogota, a two-hour helicopter ride from Escobar's power base in Medellin. The president was embarrassed by newspaper exposes of Escobar's lavish life behind bars. And he was under pressure from the Americans, who had covertly pumped millions of dollars into the Colombian police pursuit of Escobar that had helped compel his "surrender."
At the presidential palace in Bogota, in front of the American ambassador and his top staff, Gaviria vented his frustration about Escobar's escape and the army's failure to stop him.
"Such a stupid thing!" he said.
The president was exasperated. He had been living with the threat of Pablo Escobar for years. During his entire campaign for president in 1989, he had expected to be killed by the drug boss. Escobar had tried several times to kill him. Gaviria had taken the place of front-running presidential candidate Luis Galan - Gaviria's good friend - after he was assassinated by Escobar's hit men.
Once he was elected, Gaviria's fondest hope was for the Escobar problem to just go away, at least for a while. Colombia was rewriting its constitution, an enormously important and historic task that could establish a stable and peaceful undergirding for the nation for the first time since civil war, La Violencia, had erupted more than 50 years before.
The last thing Gaviria needed was for Escobar to be running loose again, setting off his truck and car bombs and unleashing his sicarios, or hired assassins. Ever the pragmatist, the president put aside whatever anger he felt toward the murderous drug boss and struck the deal that had sent Escobar to prison. That Escobar had been able to simply vanish from it now confirmed all of the worst international assumptions about the country. It made Colombia look like a narcocracy.
The scene at La Catedral remained chaotic. One soldier had been killed in the raid. Two Bureau of Prisons guards had been wounded. Five of Escobar's henchmen had been captured, but nine had walked out with him.
Gaviria feared the Americans would assume that Escobar had gotten his way again because all Colombians were corrupt. It was hard for outsiders to understand, he believed; they did not feel the full aura of menace around this man. The Americans came and went. They served their two- or three-year stints in Bogota, living behind high, well-patrolled walls, and then returned home.
For Colombians, the menace of Pablo Escobar and the other narco killers was constant. Between January and May of 1991 alone, Pablo's sicarios killed four hundred police in Medellin. He killed journalists, judges, politicians. Power was no protection; it just made you a more likely target.
Now Gaviria was sure of one thing: This escape was Escobar's last. There would be no more investigations, negotiations, trials or imprisonments. He did not expect Escobar to be taken alive again.
The president paced the room furiously as he spoke.
Busby was used to the president's temper. He admired Gaviria's courage, campaigning for president in defiance of Escobar's threats, but he did not find Gaviria a charismatic man. There was little about Gaviria that seemed presidential, Busby believed, even though he was almost classically handsome, with his dark hair and strong chin.
Both Busby and Wagner, the CIA man, saw Gaviria and the others in his administration as pleasant, well-educated, idealistic and hopelessly naive in their polite upper-middle-class ways. They hadn't stood a chance bargaining with a tough, streetwise gangster like Escobar. Even so, Busby believed that Gaviria, if frustrated and angry enough, was capable of turning cold and calculating. If they were going to get Escobar, they would need a president like that.
Busby knew this opportunity wouldn't last, and he was determined to make the most of it. It was the kind of task he was cut out for.
He was originally a military man, joining the Navy after graduating from college. Busby had served with a Navy Special Forces unit that predated the Seals, but he was often described as a "former Seal," a mistake he was always quick to correct but which nevertheless added to his mystique.
Busby did have close connections with American Special Forces, but they stemmed less from his military service than his years as ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism in the State Department, a job that involved coordinating American diplomatic and covert military action throughout the world.
He was a military man who had adopted diplomacy as a second career. That made him a new kind of diplomat.
As the Cold War world collapsed, America's enemies became drugs and thugs. Diplomats in previously unimportant parts of the world found themselves at the cutting edge of U.S. foreign relations. In certain hot-spot nations, ambassadors now functioned as field commanders, orchestrating law enforcement, military and diplomatic efforts, both covertly and in cooperation with host governments.
In that respect, Busby seemed made for the job in Colombia. To Colombians, he looked like Uncle Sam himself, minus the white goatee. He was tall, lean and tan, with graying sandy hair and the powerful arms and hands of a man who was a skilled carpenter and who loved to sail the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
There was something about Busby that responded to the moral simplicity of confrontation. He was an American patriot, a true believer, and few circumstances in his career were more clear-cut than the challenge posed by Pablo Escobar, a man he considered a monster.
Now, as he listened to Gaviria, he knew the time for action had arrived.
There had always been restrictions on what American military forces were allowed to do in Colombia. But now, insulted and embarrassed, Gaviria said that as far as he was concerned, the door was wide open. Despite Colombian constitutional barriers and widespread public opposition to foreign troops on their soil, especially American troops, Gaviria said he would welcome any and all help they could give to find Escobar.
"This is critical, please," he told the ambassador. "Help us get this guy as soon as possible."
EIGHT YEARS AGO, at the request of the Colombian government, U.S. military and spy forces helped fund and guide a massive manhunt that ended with the killing of Pablo Escobar, the richest cocaine trafficker in the world.
While portraying the pursuit of Escobar as essentially a Colombian operation, the United States secretly spent millions of dollars and committed elite soldiers, law enforcement agents and the military's most sophisticated electronic eavesdropping unit to the chase.
The full extent of the U.S. role has never before been made public. Details of the 15-month operation, which began during the administration of President George Bush and continued under President Clinton, are revealed in a serial beginning in The Inquirer today.
A two-year Inquirer investigation has found that:
The Army's top secret counterterrorism unit, Delta Force, along with a clandestine Army electronic surveillance team, tracked the movements of Escobar and his associates and helped plan raids by a special Colombian police unit called the Search Bloc. The former American ambassador to Colombia directed the U.S. effort with assistance from agents of the CIA, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and National Security Agency.
Midway through the operation, the Search Bloc began collaborating with vigilantes, who assassinated Escobar's associates and relatives. U.S. soldiers and agents said they witnessed the cooperation. The United States continued to supply intelligence, training and planning to the Search Bloc even as the assassinations continued.