Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 14, Number 8, February 20, 1987 Carlos Lehder Rivas: the fall of an 'untouchable' by Valerie Rush A scan of the last five years' writings and interviews given refugeit had provided theunderworld financier, thereby forc­ by Colombia's flamboyantdope czar, Carlos Lehder Rivas, ing Vesco into Caribbean island-hopping. Using the good provides a striking view of his kaleidoscope of ideological offices of a Dutch Antilles shell company undoubtedly cre­ attachments. Lehder's professed admiration for Adolf Hitler, ated for the occasion by Vesco, Lehder and his new friend his association with the Colombian MAS death squad that purchased the privateisland known as Norman'sCay, a mere murdered leftiststudents and labor leaders, his oft-published 200miles from the tip of Florida anda first-class smugglers' denunciations of "Marxism-Leninism," all stand in seeming­ paradise, whereLehder was to live for the next several years. ly stark contrast to his adoration of the Beatles' "peace­ Under the pretextof turningthe island into a tourist resort, loving" John Lennon, his politicalmovement's emulation of Vesco andLehder convertedit into a high-class "pit stop"for the "flower-children" of West Germany's Green Party, his the dope trade. Providing refrigerated warehouses for the lucrative business arrangements with the Cuban and Nicara­ cocaine, airplane hangars for repair and refueling, comfort­ guan governments, and his declaration of common cause able accommodations for weary pilots, and the best in elec­ with the leftist M -19 guerrillas in Colombia. tronic surveillance and killer Dobermans as security, Lehder Schizophrenic? Not at all. As EIR noted more than two rapidly earned a fortune for his services. years ago in its best-selling second edition of Dope, Inc., In a June 1983 interview with the Colombian radio station Boston Bankers and Soviet Commissars: "There is more than Caracol, Lehder asserted: "Part of my great fortune is due to just a marriage of convenience between the old Nazi networks the large investmentsI made in the Bahamas some six years and the Bulgarian-Soviet and Cuban networks which provide ago. Hundreds of Colombians have had access to these ter­ the arms and infrastructure to the narco-terrorists." The ca­ ritories, to conduct transactionsthey found necessary to carry reer of Carlos Lehder offers a clinical view of the phenome­ out. I don't deny for a moment thegreat fortunes emerg­ non of Nazi-communism, a joining of two not-so-irreconcil­ ing today in Colombia, carrying out social acts and bringing able worlds in the underground of Dope, Inc. , the dollars back into Colombia." Norman's Cay had the misfortune to be shut down by 'Rags to riches' U.S. anti-drug forces around 1981, but-reportedly due to When Lehder, a pot-dealing, car-thieving hoodlum in his the influence of Vesco, as well as the hundreds of thousands early twenties, was deporteQ back to Colombia after doing of dollars in bribes paid to the Lynden Pindling government two years in a Connecticut penitentiary, he had learned a in Nassau-Lehder himself was able to escape arrest, return­ thing or two from his juvenile stint in the United States. In ing to his hometown in Quindio, Colombia, where h� was to' possession of significant profits from his earlier criminal ac.­ build himself a feudal empire and link fortunes with the so­ tivities, Lehder moved to the Bahamas around 1976, pur­ called MedelHn Cartel of Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa chasing an airplane, and soon thereafter, setting up an air­ clan. plane rental service for the burgeoning drug trade moving through those islands. The Cuba connection Although Lehder's car- and dope-smuggling links to the Far from ending his lucrative business association with Detroit mob in the early 1970s may have brought the Colom­ Vesco, Norman's Cay proved to be just the beginning. One bian delinquent into contact with the circles of fugitive em­ year later, Vesco had found a bigger and better Norman's bezzler Robert Vesco then, it is more likely that the two Cay in the form of Cuba, where Fidel Castrowelcomed the criminals first crossed paths in the Bahamas, sometime be­ harassed fugitive with open arms-in return for a piece of tween 1977 and 1978. This was when the Costa Rican gov­ the.action. Key to that "action" was Carlos Lehder. Accord­ ernment was pressured into withdrawing the highly profitable ing to investigative journalist Ernest Volkmann, writing in EIR February 20, 1987 Feature 43 © 1987 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. April 1984 for the magazine Famity Weekly: December 1981 letter from the drug trafficker to top Colom­ "The Cubans needed Lehder; they were tryingto run guns bian banker JabIle Michelsen Uribe was discovered. Mich­ to leftist M -19 guerrillas in the Colombian countryside. Leh­ elsen, at the time president of the Banco de Colombia as well der, with his extensive smuggling operation, was perfect for as head of the powerful Grancolombiano financial group, the job, and a deal was struck: Lehder would aid Cuban arms was also first cousin to former President Alfonso L6pez smuggling into Colombia, while the Cubans would provide Michelsen. The text of the letter, published by El Espectador protection, anchorage, and other help for his drug-smuggling on July 5, 1985, read in part: operations into the United States." "In accord with the conversations held in the past few days, I attach here the following documentation . of the already constituted companies and projects to be developed by your organization. We want to ratify our interest in the Grancolombiano Group's being the intermediary for Lehder handled logistics, and channeling our foreign exchange resources, a product of our Vesco thejinances,Jor what rapidly companies abroad, which equal thesum of some $20 million grew into a cocaine trade a year and which we would be prepared to transfer to the country through your correspondent banks under conditions 80% U.S. supplying nearly ojthe stipulated by you. cocaine market. Lehder operated "It would not be too much to add, Dr. Michelsen, our with impunity throughout the sincerest gratefulness for your interest and the magnificent attention lent our representatives. ." country, due to the web oj On New Year's Eve 1985, Jaime Michelsen Uribe was "corruption he and his ilk had forced by President Belisario Betancur to resign all of his succeeded in weaving around positions with the Grancolombiano Group in the face of over­ whelming evidence of his corrupt business practices. Mich­ Colombia's leading" national elsen fled the next morning to Miami, and later from there to institutions. Panama, where he has remained as a fugitive from Colom­ bian justice. A green Nazi Back in Colombia, Lehder continued to expand the Lehder handled logistics, and Vesco the finances, for movement he had launched under the name of "National what rapidly grew into a cocaine trade supplying nearly 80% Latin Movement (MLN)." Lehder bought himself a 4, 000- of the U. S. cocaine market. As Volkmann described it: "Cas­ man army of fanatic youth, a national presence through ex­ tro and Vesco sit at the center of a huge drug-smuggling pensive full-page newspaper adS, and his own weekly news­ operation that is responsible for a significant portion of the paper, QuindioLibre. Lehder's rag, printed in green ink on illegal narcotics coming into the United States ....Accord­ green newsprint, mixed diatribes against extradition, Zion­ ing to admittedly imprecise estimates, believed to be on the ism, and U.S. imperialism with advocacy of drug legaliza­ conservative side, the operation has generated nearly $20 tion, breeding a taller, heavier, and healthier "race" of Co­ billion in profits during the past four years alone." Another lombians, and praise of Adolf Hitler. His self-defense of drug source, Forbes magazine of Sept. 4, 1984, wrote, "The Cas-" traffickers as Colombian patriots seeking to bring the "bon­ tro government is said to get payments of $500,000or more anza" back home was a constant theme in his writings. At perlarge boatload of drugs. " one point, Lehder sent a blank check to Cuba for the release Cuba was not Vesco and Lehder's only Communist ally. of Colombian drug traffickers held in Castro's prisons. In July of 1984, Lehder was named for the first time by a Lehder's rallies were held w�thgiant posters of Hitler and federal grand jury in Miami as one of eleven sought for Mussolini for backdrops. In several 1983 interviews, Lehder trafficking Colombian cocaine into the United States­ described Hitler as "one of the great men of our history, through Nicaragua. Escobar and Lehder put the operation whom the Jews and the imperialists distorted." In a January together, assisted by one Federico Vaughan, identified by 1985 interview, he declared, "Adolf eliminated 21 million the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration then as a top aide Communists and 6 million allied enemies. He is the greatest to the Sandinistas' interior minister, Tomas Borge. warrior mankind has ever had. " The role of Colombia's most prominent financial insti­ Lehder was a fanatic environmentalist, financingecology tutions in laundering Lehder's drug profits came to light movements inside Colombia and denouncing the pollution following the 1984 raid on Lehder's luxurious villa, where a brought by "oligarchic" technology. He regularly compared 44 Feature EIR February 20, 1987 his movement to the West German Green Party, itself a ment. In March of 1984, Lara coordinated a raid on the classic Nazi-communist creation in the service of Soviet de­ traffickers'jungle hideout of Tranquilandia , the world's larg­ stabilization aims.