For a while, Carlos Lehder Rivas was America's public enemy No. 1. With business skills as strong as his taste for violence, Lehder had turned Colombia's chaotic cocaine trade into the Medellin cartel, an efficient and murderous operation responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine that came into this country a decade ago.
When Lehder was finally captured in a Colombian jungle in 1987, then-U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese hailed it as a major victory in the war on drugs. Lehder would be extradited and become the first foreign drug lord to face the full force of American justice.Not mentioned in the burst of publicity was one curious fact: Lehder had already begun cutting a deal from his remote hideaway, an arrangement that would eventually land him in the federal witness protection program.
How could the man who ran the world's biggest drug operation, a man wanted for years by the American government, wind up as a federally protected witness? Because the Justice Department desperately wanted Panamanian President Manuel Noriega, a smaller player in the drug trade but a bigger political fish.
In exchange for his testimony against Noriega, the U.S. government cut Lehder's sentence from life plus 135 years to 55 years. Lehder claims he had an additional deal that would have further reduced his sentence and made him eligible for deportation and freedom. He complains that the government reneged.
The Lehder case illustrates how far the federal government's use of the witness protection program has moved from its original intent of protecting innocent victims or informants who testify against major crime figures. Lehder was rewarded for turning in someone who was, in effect, an underling in his operation.
Lehder got special treatment in prison, a drastically reduced sentence and protection in this country for his family. Only a small fraction of his $2.5 billion cocaine fortune was seized.
Robert Merkle, originally in charge of Lehder's prosecution, believes the deal between the government and Lehder was a travesty. Merkle contends Noriega would have been convicted without Lehder.
"First of all, Lehder's testimony was entirely gratuitous and unnecessary for a conviction of Noriega. Secondly, they gave a deal to the guy who was directing the bad activities to convict someone who was following directions."
Merkle, U.S. attorney in Tampa at the time, is appalled by the Lehder case.
"I never contemplated any kind of deal with Carlos Lehder. It never entered my head to even think about it."
But Merkle was overruled. Justice Department bosses in Washington were intent on putting away Noriega.
A look at Lehder's life raises the question about why the government would deal.
Lehder, born to a German father and Colombian mother, began his life of crime as a low-level drug dealer in Michigan. After doing time for a drug-related car theft, he decided to seek his fortune in Colombia.
Barely eking out a living as a car dealer, he decided to cash in on the U.S. burgeoning demand for cocaine. Using an efficient, high-tech approach to smuggling, Lehder was soon a rising star. He secured a remote landing strip at Norman Cay, the southern tip of the Bahamas, by bribing officials and running off the inhabitants.
Jets loaded with cocaine would land there. Drugs would be reloaded onto smaller planes and dispatched to northern Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, unexpected destinations. Authorities were watching only the southern borders.
The smuggling operation was an overnight success. Court papers show the first load reaped $1 million in profits for two days of work.
Shortly thereafter, Lehder talked other drug lords into forming a cooperative that became the Medellin cartel. At the peak of power, every hour of every day a jet loaded with as much as 300 kilograms would fly from Colombia to the Bahamian air strip.
Court papers say Lehder profited by $250 to $300 million a year. He owned 15 cars and trucks, three airplanes, a helicopter, 12 haciendas, an apartment building and nine other properties, including a huge Bavarian-style tourist complex in Colombia's Armenia City.
By 1987, his net worth was estimated at more than $2.5 billion.
Violence was as crucial to the cartel's success as Lehder's shrewd ideas for transporting cocaine. The U.S. government says Lehder and others were responsible for assassinating Colombia's justice minister in 1984; for the 1985 armed attack on Colombia's Supreme Court building that killed 11 justices and 84 others; for assassinating two newspaper editors in Colombia and 26 other journalists; for shooting the Colombian ambassador to Hungary in 1987; and for a long list of murders of police officers, informants and other government officials.
Lehder once threatened to kill one federal judge a week if he was caught, prompting U.S. officials to put narcotics agents, their families and other officials on worldwide alert after his arrest.
During Lehder's trial, U.S. marshals parked outside the homes of prosecutors and other agents involved. But none of this dissuaded the government from making a deal.
Lehder got special handling from the start. Instead of being held in Florida, where he was originally charged, Lehder was housed in a two-cell unit with a phone at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Ill. He made contact with aides to Vice President George Bush, who had run the Central Intelligence Agency during the early years of the cartel.
Over the next 18 months, senior officials from the FBI, CIA and other investigatory agencies interviewed Lehder. Merkle knew none of this.
Lehder's trial proceeded normally and ended with a conviction on drug distribution and related crimes. He got life plus 135 years. Merkle felt justice was served. Later, he found that Lehder was scheduled to testify against Noriega in exchange for a reduced sentence.
In April 1992, Noriega became the first leader of another nation to be convicted in the United States. He and 17 associates were found guilty on two counts of racketeering, conspiracy to import cocaine and a variety of other related crimes. Lehder admitted he had no direct contact with Noriega, but said the Medellin cartel paid millions to the Panamanian president.
Lehder was not an impressive witness. Much of his testimony, laced with rambling tirades about American imperialism, was so incoherent the judge considered ordering a psychiatric examination.
Merkle says Lehder "got a very large quid for a very small quo. He would have done the United States a lot more good if he had forked over millions and millions of dollars he made selling coke."
Lehder is not satisfied. He contends he's the victim of a double cross. Last fall he wrote U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler of Miami, the man who presided over the Noriega case, and asked to recant his testimony because, he said, the government reneged on a deal that would have cut his sentence to 30 years. That would have made him eligible for extradition to Germany or Colombia.
Within weeks of sending that letter, Lehder was whisked away into the night, several protected witnesses at the Mesa, Ariz., unit say. No one has heard from him since.
Court papers do not show any further sentence reductions. German and Colombian officials say they know nothing of his whereabouts. Justice Department officials refuse to acknowledge that Lehder is even in the witness program.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)