Word: colombia
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Like the lowly garbage barge that no nation would accept, the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy last week was sailing off Pensacola, Fla., 1,500 miles short of its original destination: the coast of Colombia, where it was assigned to detect drug-running planes and boats. News leaks that the Kennedy and an accompanying task force were heading for South America triggered an outcry from Latins already upset about the U.S. invasion of Panama. After George Bush telephoned Colombian President Virgilio Barco to apologize for the "misunderstanding," the Kennedy's picket duty was aborted...
...least, the troubles are all in Noriega's corner. The twelve-count racketeering indictment alleges that between 1981 and 1986 Noriega received payments of more than $4.6 million from Colombia's Medellin cartel. Prosecutors claim that in return he permitted the drug lords to use Panama as a refining and transshipment point for cocaine and as a sanctuary for themselves while the profits were laundered in Panamanian banks and false- front companies, usually with a suitable cut for the general...
...while Noriega would assist in the seizure of large amounts of narcotics -- cynics suggest as a way to punish traffickers who did not pay him off. But if charges filed against him are proved, those efforts were far outweighed by the assistance he gave the drug lords of Colombia's Medellin cartel...
...Panama. In 1985 he made an offer to Marine Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, then on the National Security Council staff, to assassinate Nicaraguan Sandinista leaders and carry out sabotage inside the country. All the time, though, Noriega was allegedly running arms to the Sandinistas and to leftist rebels in Colombia and El Salvador, supplying CIA information to Cuba and helping Cubans smuggle U.S. high- technology equipment through Panama to the Soviet bloc. Said Jose Blandon, a former intimate of Noriega's: "Contras, Sandinistas, Cubans, the CIA, he deals with them all to make money...
Last September President Bush vowed to enlist the armed forces in preventing illegal drugs from being smuggled into the U.S. Recently, he approved plans to station a naval task force off the Caribbean coast of Colombia to monitor sea and air traffic. The task force might consist of an aircraft carrier, up to eight support vessels, and E-2C Hawkeye aircraft equipped with sophisticated radar that can track hundreds of planes at a time. Rather than shoot down suspected smugglers, the force would observe planes flying in or out of Colombia and notify Colombian authorities or the U.S. Coast Guard...