U.s. Spy Data, Vigilante Killings Start To Coincide

In the fifth-floor vault at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Centra Spike analysts were not missing the distinct pattern in the Los Pepes hits. The death squad was killing off the white-collar infrastructure of Escobar's organization, targeting his money-laundering experts, bankers, lawyers and extended family - names listed on the very charts that Centra Spike's surveillance experts and the CIA had painstakingly assembled over the previous six months.

Often the hits corresponded with intelligence Centra Spike was turning over to CIA Station Chief Bill Wagner, who was passing it along to Colombian police commanders in charge of the Search Bloc. More and more of the people identified by Centra Spike's Beechcraft spy planes were turning up dead.

Despite this, Centra Spike's operators felt they were well within the legal boundaries of their mission. They gave their information to Wagner, and what happened to it after that was, as far as he was concerned, none of their business. If Col. Hugo Martinez and his men were attempting to enforce Colombia's laws and arrest criminals, whatever they did on their own could hardly be the responsibility of the embassy.

If Los Pepes were working with the Search Bloc, that would explain their apparent access to fresh U.S. intelligence. After the vigilante group's murders and bombings on April 15, a Drug Enforcement Administration memo to Washington summed up the official attitude at the embassy:

While not completely unexpected, the attacks by Los Pepes further demonstrates their resolve to violently retaliate against Escobar each and every time Escobar commits a terrorist attack against the GOC and/or the innocent citizens of Colombia. Although the actions are not condoned nor approved by the CNP nor the BCO, they may persuade Escobar to curb such behavior for fear of losing members of his own family. Too, these types of attacks will seriously cut into those assets owned by Escobar and his associates.

As long as any American linkage with Los Pepes remained circumstantial, the embassy had little to fear.

And as long as the Colombian government did not object, and the new U.S. administration and Congress did not notice, the pursuit of Escobar could proceed as a war. The phrase dirty war was redundant. Innocent people would always get killed in the cross fire, but at least Los Pepes was choosing targets with a great deal more precision than Escobar was.