DECLASSIFIED! Jimmy Carter’s Colombia Blacklist Revealed
Carter to Staff: “Do not send helicopters - Give me CIA info”
Photo: First Lady Rosalynn Carter meets with President Alfonso López Michelsen of Colombia, June 10, 1977. Mrs. Carter was the first in a series of presidential emissaries to deliver a tough message to López on drug corruption in the Colombian government. (U.S. National Archives)
National Security Archive Publishes “Ultra Secret” 1977 Narco-Dossier for First Time
“Unprecedented” Intelligence Briefing for Colombian President Detailed Corruption Among Top Officials
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 to gain 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. Some of the most serious allegations—those against Varón, Montoya and presidential candidate Julio César Turbay, who went on to win the election—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, in which he identified some of the more prominent officials believed to have profited from the drug business, but many of the names on the blacklist are revealed here for the first time.
While several key documents from the episode have been declassified previously, including in the State Department’s 2018 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volume, today’s posting features several top-level documents from the Carter White House that have never before been published, including frank policy recommendations from key advisers. Some of the memos bear President Carter’s own handwritten annotations advocating for tougher drug policies and a more confrontational approach on corruption. These include the extraordinary decision to assemble and deliver an intelligence briefing to the Colombian president.
Highlights from today’s posting include:
The full text of the long-secret intelligence dossier delivered to President López by three top U.S. officials on July 21, 1977.
President Carter’s handwritten annotation on White House drug adviser Bourne’s memo recommending linking the delivery of promised military helicopters to corruption: “Do not send helicopters - Give me CIA info.”
White House drug adviser Peter Bourne’s briefing memo for Rosalynn Carter’s meeting with the Colombian president, including a one-page summary of “Colombian Officials Allegedly Profiting from Cocaine Traffic” that months later would be leaked to members of the international news media.
A State Department memo citing the “possible narcotrafficking activities” of Alfonso López Caballero, the son of President López, who went on to have a long career as a diplomat and policymaker and to hold top positions in a number of Colombian presidential administrations, serving most recently as ambassador to Russia from 2016-2022.
A memo from NSC Latin America specialist Robert Pastor indicating that “the President was so much stronger” than his staff on the Colombian corruption issue and was the person who most wanted to include the names of corrupt Colombian government Cabinet officials in his letter to López. Carter himself said “that it was curious that he should be bolder than his advisors,” according to Pastor.
U.S. Embassy speculation that Defense Minister Varón “may decide to be especially helpful and cooperative in [narcotics] matters in order to help disprove the allegations against him” in the narco dossier.
Chargé d’affaires Robert Drexler’s cable complaining that the López government had at first done the “bare, protocolary minimum in hosting Mrs. Carter’s visit” in June 1977, treating it as a “ladies-only social event.”
Photo: Several Colombian officials on the list are linked to the narcotics network led by Griselda Blanco, who was then the head of a Miami-based narcotics smuggling operation and is now, 20 years after her murder in Colombia, the subject of a Netflix series.
Behind the paywall:
In the drug world, most stories revolve around men. But this one is about women. Some caught in the middle, some in the mix. And one, a true queenpin.
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