Jimmy Carter's Colombia Blacklist Revealed
National Security Archive Publishes “Ultra Secret” 1977 Narco Dossier for First Time
“Unprecedented” Intelligence Briefing for Colombian President Detailed Corruption Among Top Officials
Carter to Staff: “Do not send helicopters - Give me CIA info”
Washington, D.C., April 15, 2024 – A highly sensitive blacklist of allegedly corrupt Colombian officials assembled by the U.S. government and presented to Colombian President Alfonso López Michelsen in July 1977 as a way of gaining leverage over Colombian drug policy is the focus of a new Electronic Briefing Book published today by the National Security Archive. Located among records that were temporarily removed from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library for security review but later returned, the full text of the secret intelligence dossier, including the names of some three dozen officials believed to have ties to the drug trade, is published here today for the first time.
James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, who will be one hundred years old in October, is known around the world as the president who negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel, reached a major arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, signed the Panama Canal treaty, faced daunting foreign policy challenges in Iran and Afghanistan, and who has engaged in numerous acts of charity and goodwill in the 43 years since he left office. Less well known is President Carter’s personal involvement—and that of his wife, First Lady Rosalynn Carter—in for the first time focusing U.S. policy toward Colombia on narcotrafficking and its corrupting influence among government officials, an issue that would come to define the relationship.
The episode culminated in Carter’s authorization of what the CIA called an “unprecedented” briefing for President López in which he was presented with a dossier of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement information that linked “ministerial and judicial officials, military and law enforcement personnel, and other high-level figures” to the drug trade.
Key officials named in the document include the defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, the minister of labor, Óscar Montoya Montoya, and Col. Humberto Cardona Orozco, then the head of INDUMIL, a military weapons manufacturer run by the Colombian government (See Document 29). The most serious allegations—those against Varón, Montoya and presidential candidate Julio César Turbay, who became president later that year—were revealed in an April 1978 broadcast of the CBS television show 60 Minutes, which had obtained a copy of a June 1977 White House memo sent to President Carter by Peter Bourne, his chief narcotics adviser. Bourne had urged Carter to hold up the sale of three military helicopters to Colombia and attached a one-page summary of Colombian officials believed to be involved in cocaine trafficking, which was the focus of the 60 Minutes report. (See Document 11).
More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/colombia/2024-04-15/jimmy-carters-colombia-blacklist-revealed
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Look how long ago former President Carter had their number!
What a shame Reagan committed treason to trick the nation into not re-electing Carter. He could have made a vast difference in cocaine policy with Colombia.
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