The pilots got permission to go.
This opened the door slightly for Gen. Garrison. He sought to send Centra Spike's skilled operators, with their portable direction-finding equipment, out with an American pilot on the Search Bloc helicopters.
Steering a raid to a specific spot required smooth coordination between the technician and the pilot, something the Americans had perfected. Here Garrison saw an opportunity to get official permission to send Delta operators out on raids. He argued that with an American pilot and technician accompanying the Search Bloc, then Delta needed to go along, too, to provide protection.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the request in the summer of 1993, but the Defense Department would not concur without approval from the White House. Defense officials were waiting at the White House for a meeting with Clinton's staff when a colonel on the Joint Chiefs' staff called to say they had decided to withdraw the request.
There were those working for the Joint Chiefs who, like Gen. Sheehan, weren't especially keen on sending Delta out on raids in Colombia, so they weren't about to take such a fight to the President. And as the mission evolved, Sheehan began to object more strongly.
In the late summer of 1993, Sheehan took his concerns to Powell. The chairman, who would be leaving the job in late September, asked him to look into it further. Sheehan also discussed his concerns with Brian Sheridan, the principal deputy secretary of defense for special operations. Sheridan began asking pointed questions about possible connections between the American effort in Colombia and Los Pepes.
In November, two CIA analysts met with Sheehan and other top brass at the Pentagon to report that Los Pepes were, in fact, Col. Hugo Martinez's Search Bloc. The analysts claimed that the vigilantes had been paid for and trained and, in part, led by Delta Force, and were receiving intelligence from the CIA and Centra Spike. "These guys have gone renegade, and we're behind it," one analyst told Sheehan.
Others at the meeting sharply contradicted the report.
"Bull----," one of them said, explaining that Ambassador Busby had been monitoring the situation and was convinced the Search Bloc was not involved with Los Pepes.
Gen. Sheehan believed the CIA report. He said he was taking the matter to the new Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. John Shalikashvili, and would ask that all American special forces engaged in the hunt for Escobar be pulled out of Colombia. Sheridan backed Sheehan. He expressed concern that revelations, or even suspicions, of an American military link to Colombian death squads would harm Clinton.
It was late on a Friday afternoon in mid-November, and the only hope supporters of the mission against Escobar had of stalling the immediate withdrawal of American forces was to find someone on the Defense Department staff to oppose Gen. Sheehan. Before the night was over, a position paper had been produced that rebutted the CIA analysts' claims. That effectively countered Sheehan and Sheridan by forcing the question to a higher level at the Department of Defense.
Busby and his staff in Bogota had weighed in on the position paper, denying the CIA analysts' findings, which was enough for the Defense Department to decide to delay pulling out Delta and Centra Spike until further information was gathered.
As it happened, that mid-November delay was all that was needed. At the very moment the issue was heating up inside the Beltway, matters were finally coming to a head inside Colombia.
The special Colombian police squad sent to Medellin with its curious little portable direction-finding kits was having no luck finding Pablo Escobar. The Search Bloc was continuing to provide security for the men, but the unit itself was considered a joke. Things got so bad that Col. Hugo Martinez, the Search Bloc commander, finally sent the unit's leaders back to Bogota.
The new commander, a lieutenant put in charge by Col. Martinez himself, was the colonel's son, also named Hugo. Because of the unit's failures, and young Hugo's role in them, he was regarded with amused contempt by the men who worked for his father.
Determined to redeem themselves, Hugo and the other men began working round-the-clock shifts with the CIA's electronic-surveillance experts, monitoring the known frequencies on the radio used by Juan Pablo, the son of Pablo Escobar. Juan Pablo, holed up in an apartment building in Medellin with his mother and sister, used code words to communicate by radio with his fugitive father.
Hugo's unit had been presented with an opportunity in August 1993, when Centra Spike was ordered out of Colombia temporarily to assist with the U.S. military operation in Somalia. With Centra Spike gone, the Colombians placed an antenna on a hilltop just outside the city that helped the mobile units fix on the signal from Juan Pablo's radio.
This round-the-clock surveillance quickly showed that Escobar restricted his radio communications to one hour each evening, roughly between 7:15 and 8:15. So each day at that time, Hugo's unit began trying to zero in on the signal the minute Escobar started talking. Hugo assigned one scanner to monitor the frequencies most often used, and another to scan the entire 120-140 MHz range that could be used by Juan Pablo's radio.
Eventually, through patient trial and error, they were able to break the code employed by father and son. If Pablo said, "Let's go up to the next floor," or "the evening has ended," it was a signal to shift to a specific frequency. Once the police units knew the code, they were able to follow the signal as it shifted. It was clear to Hugo that the Escobars believed their precautions made it impossible for their conversations to be tracked for more than a few moments at a time.
Still, in early October 1993, the Colombians experienced more setbacks.
Working with the CIA officials, Hugo's team tracked Escobar's location to San Jose Seminary in Medellin. The drug boss had a long-standing relationship with the Catholic Church in Medellin, and Juan Pablo had attended San Jose's elementary school. It was considered a promising target, and so Col. Martinez began planning a major raid.
The next day, Pablo Escobar's voice came up on the radio at the appointed time. The signal on the screen and in his headphones told Hugo that Escobar was speaking on the radio inside the main building in the seminary complex.
The raid was launched as Hugo listened to Escobar talking. Doors were blown off, flash-bang grenades exploded, police assault forces loudly descended . . . and the fugitive kept talking, as though nothing were happening. When the leaders of the assault teams told Hugo they hadn't found anything at the seminary, Escobar was still talking calmly on the radio.
"He's in there!" Hugo insisted, trusting his equipment and his ability to read the signals.
"He's not in there," the major in charge of the raid said. "We're in there. We've done our search."
Escobar was still talking. There was no background noise, and he still seemed unperturbed. Hugo had to conclude that the raid had not even come close.
The assault teams were more convinced than ever that they were wasting their time. With deepening scorn for the colonel's son, the CIA and their worthless gizmos, the teams continued searching on the chance that Escobar had a secure hiding place somewhere on the grounds. Five hundred men proceeded over the next three days to take apart the seminary and an attached school. They poked holes in walls and ceilings, probed the buildings, looked for secret rooms and tunnels. They found nothing, and left behind furious officials from the archdiocese.
It was not possible to fail more spectacularly. Hugo was a laughingstock at the Search Bloc base. He was demoralized. He gave up his command over the surveillance teams, turning the main effort back over to the CIA officials.