[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 151 (Friday, December 8, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2155-E2157]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            SECRET AGENT MAN

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, December 7, 2000

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following articles, which 
appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 7, 2000 into the 
Congressional Record.

   Secret Agent Man--Fashion Photographer Scores Big Off Pals In The 
                            Narcotics Trade


   Baruch Vega Made Millions As a Federal Informant, But Was Justice 
                 Served?--A Private Jet to Panama City

                           By Jose de Cordoba

       MIAMI BEACH, Fla.--For years, fashion photographer Baruch 
     Vega jetted from Miami to Milan, shooting the industry's top 
     models.
       Few knew of Mr. Vega's off-the-books job, one that was far 
     more lucrative--and dangerous. When he wasn't snapping 
     collections for Versace or Valentino, Mr. Vega, a Colombian 
     by birth and an engineer by training, was covertly meeting 
     with some of the world's most-powerful drug traffickers, 
     trying to persuade them to surrender to U.S. lawmen.
       By most accounts, he was a star operative. ``We regarded 
     Vega as our principal weapon'' in the battle against 
     Colombia's drug cartels, says one former U.S. agent. ``I 
     think he was very successful,'' agrees retired cocaine 
     kingpin Jorge Luis Ochoa, speaking by cellular phone from 
     Colombia, where he recently completed a six-year prison term. 
     ``A lot of people got into his program and cooperated with 
     him, and he with them.''
       So many, in fact, that a meeting brokered by Mr. Vega last 
     year in a Panama hotel drew more than two dozen drug dealers 
     or their representatives, according to Mr. Vega and the 
     lawyer for one of the suspects. Rattled by a new Colombian 
     policy permitting traffickers to be extradited to the U.S., 
     they met in marathon sessions with Drug Enforcement 
     Administration agents, negotiating plea agreements that would 
     potentially net them reduced jail terms in exchange for 
     providing information on drug shipments by other traffickers.
       But in March, Mr. Vega's secret life unraveled. As he was 
     unpacking from a photo shoot, agents from the Federal Bureau 
     of Investigation burst into his penthouse and arrested him on 
     money-laundering and obstruction-of-justice charges. In a 
     criminal complaint filed in Miami federal court, the 
     government accused him of receiving million-dollar fees from 
     drug lords, in return for promising to use his influence with 
     U.S. agents--and even bribes--to help them with their legal 
     problems. The name he gave the operation, according to the 
     complaint: ``The Narcotics Traffickers Rehabilitation 
     Program.''
       Mr. Vega, a trim 53-year-old who favors black T-shirts, 
     readily admits he accepted the traffickers' money, which he 
     says totaled about $4 million, but which others familiar with 
     his midwifery put at as much as $40 million. Mr. Vega says he 
     took the payments as part of his undercover persona, and that 
     his law-enforcement handlers knew it. He also denies paying 
     any bribes. ``The agents I worked with used to joke: `Baruch, 
     we trained to put people in jail, but with you, we get them 
     out,' '' he says.
       However the case sorts out, Mr. Vega's story offers a rare 
     look into the twilight world of the narcotics informant--and 
     into the questionable relationships and accommodations. U.S. 
     authorities sometimes enter into as they pursue the global 
     war on drugs. Already, it is proving an acute embarrassment 
     to the DEA, which has placed two agents on paid leave pending 
     an internal investigation of their relationship with Mr. 
     Vega. And it comes at a delicate time, just as the U.S. 
     government begins to implement a $1.3 billion program to 
     fight the narcotics trade underpinning Colombia's bloody 
     civil war.
       Because of the highly secretive nature of undercover 
     operations--and law enforcement's reluctance to disclose the 
     details of cooperation agreements with drug suspects--it's 
     impossible to answer the central question of whether 
     traffickers who paid fees to Mr. Vega received special 
     treatment from the U.S. justice system. No evidence has been 
     presented that any agents accepted bribes. But what can be 
     pieced together, through court documents and interviews with 
     Mr. Vega and others involved in his career, suggests at the 
     very least a highly unorthodox operation that took on a life 
     of its own, fueled by piles of underworld cash.


                            Red Faces at DEA

       In a brief statement, the DEA says it is ``very concerned 
     about the allegations . . . concerning the conduct of certain 
     DEA agents.'' It declines to comment further, citing a 
     continuing investigation. The Justice Department also 
     declines to comment.
       Mr. Vega became a law enforcement go-between almost by 
     accident. He was working in New York City in 1976 as a 
     structural engineer when a neighbor and fellow Colombian was 
     arrested in a police raid. The neighbor's wife tearfully 
     sought Mr. Vega's help. Mr. Vega, who was studying law at 
     night, had befriended a fellow student then working at the 
     FBI. According to Mr. Vega, his friend said the case against 
     the neighbor appeared weak, and charges would probably be 
     dropped soon. They were.
       The grateful neighbor, who was indeed involved in the 
     cocaine trade, gave Mr. Vega $20,000 for what he believed was 
     a successful intervention. Word of Mr. Vega's supposed clout 
     began to spread, and he soon met many of the future capos of 
     Colombia's drug cartels, most of whom who were then living in 
     New York.
       By 1978, Mr. Vega was dividing his time between New York 
     and Miami, which was immersed in the violence and decadence 
     later made famous by the television show ``Miami Vice.'' 
     ``There were the beautiful people, cocaine, models, the fast 
     life,'' says Sgt. June Hawkins, now a supervisor in the 
     homicide unit of the Miami-Dade police department. There were 
     also lots of unsolved murders involving Colombians with false 
     names. ``They were who-isits, not who-dunnits,'' says Sgt. 
     Hawkins.

[[Page E2156]]

       After finding Mr. Vega's name and number in the phone book 
     of one victim, police discovered he was often able to 
     identify the who-isits. At the time, Mr. Vega was married to 
     the daughter of a real-estate tycoon who counted among his 
     properties the Mutiny Hotel, then a favorite watering hole 
     for many of the city's most-notorious characters.


                         A Yacht Named Abby Sue

       Mr. Vega lived the Miami lifestyle, with a mansion off 
     Miami Beach and a 78-foot yacht named the Abby Sue. ``He was 
     a real charmer,'' remembers Sgt. Hawkins, then a member of 
     Centac 26, a joint federal, state and local police antidrug 
     task force. ``A wheeler-dealer extraordinaire who could sell 
     snow to the Eskimos.''
       Mr. Vega's charm was enhanced by his willingness to fund 
     his own activities, a welcome contrast to most informants, 
     whom police tend to view as money-grubbing low-lifes. Former 
     Centac commander Raul Diaz says Mr. Vega aided in one of the 
     unit's biggest cases ever, at great personal risk, and 
     ``didn't get any money from us for his help.''
       By 1985, the Miami police introduced Mr. Vega to the FBI, 
     where agents determined to make use of his access to the 
     highest echelons of Colombia's drug circles. Mr. Vega--who 
     prefers to be called a ``mediator'' rather than an 
     informant--was perfect for the job of double agent. He had 
     turned a lifelong interest in photography into a career as a 
     fashion photographer and producer of fashion shows. That gave 
     him access to the beautiful women and glamorous social 
     circles that dazzled drug traffickers.
       Meanwhile, a former U.S. official says federal agents 
     helped concoct Mr. Vega's cover: a jet-setting playboy who 
     for a price would exert his influence with U.S. law-
     enforcement agencies. To aid Mr. Vega's deception, the former 
     official says, agents would make leniency recommendations to 
     prosecuting attorneys and judges in the cases of drug 
     traffickers working with Mr. Vega. The result: Colombia's 
     drug barons believed Mr. Vega could do anything.


                       Appearance of Impropriety

       The official insists that defendants received no special 
     favors, but that they truly rendered assistance in 
     investigations and that prosecutors, using their broad 
     discretion, argued for sentence reductions commensurate with 
     the level of cooperation. This official and Mr. Vega add that 
     the appearance of impropriety was part of the act--that 
     hardened criminals were much more likely to take the first 
     step toward cooperating if they thought the U.S. system was 
     rigged in their favor.
       Nevertheless, a senior federal agent familiar with the case 
     says such an arrangement would likely have violated Justice 
     Department guidelines. Allowing Mr. Vega to represent himself 
     as someone with influence over U.S. prosecutors and other 
     officials ``is totally unacceptable,'' he says. He adds that 
     informants shouldn't be in a position to accept cash from 
     drug traffickers without supervision--although he allows that 
     such oversight is hard to maintain when the case involves 
     work in dangerous foreign countries.
       Among the people Mr. Vega says he helped is Luis Javier 
     Castano Ochoa, now a federal deputy in Colombia's Congress. 
     In 1988, Mr. Castano Ochoa pleaded guilty to U.S. money 
     laundering and drug charges and was sentenced to 16 years. 
     But three years later, the same Miami judge who sentenced him 
     let him off with time served. Mr. Vega says he met with Mr. 
     Castano Ochoa in prison, charging him $40,000 to help him 
     work out a cooperation agreement with the government.
       Reached by telephone in Bogota, Mr. Castano Ochoa says he 
     never paid Mr. Vega a cent, but knew him as a lawyer who 
     visited prison ``to ask Colombians for money to advise us.'' 
     Mr. Castano Ochoa says he never cooperated with the U.S. 
     government, and says he was freed because the judge 
     ``realized there was nothing against me.''
       That the drug dealers were paying Mr. Vega for his 
     purported services was an open secret among the U.S. agents 
     working with him, says one former official. Indeed, some saw 
     it as a plus, given their tight budget. ``The drug 
     traffickers paid him to be their representative,'' say the 
     former official. ``We didn't have to spend any government 
     funds; we never could have afforded the level he was 
     spending.''
       In any case, Mr. Vega's results seem to have outweighted 
     any misgiving. In 1987, when cartel hit men almost killed a 
     former Colombian attorney general, Mr. Vega was able to learn 
     the names of the would-be assassins, says the former 
     official. In 1989, the FBI asked Mr. Vega to look into 
     reports that drug dealers were planning to blow up President 
     George Bush's plane during a trip to Colombia, says the 
     former U.S. official. The feedback: The hit was off.


                        Playing a Horse Rancher

       Mr. Vega even lived the life of a country squire, courtesy 
     of the U.S. government, which set him up from 1988 to 1991 in 
     a fancy ranch in Eustis, Fla., that had been confiscated from 
     a drug dealer. Renamed ``El Lago,'' the ranch boasted Paso 
     Fino show horses, highly prized as status symbols among 
     Colombian drug dealers. In fact, the operation was really an 
     undercover sting conducted by a task force composed of 
     members of the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and the Lake 
     County Police Department.
       During those years, Mr. Vega entertained a long stream of 
     drug capos at El Lago. ``Drug dealers used to drop off their 
     horses and say, ``Train them for me, Baruch,''' says an 
     active U.S. law-enforcement official. The task force mostly 
     gathered intelligence, and Mr. Vega helped induce an 
     importance money launderer to cooperate with U.S. 
     authorities, says a federal law-enforcement official.
       ``Baruch is a brave man,'' says retired Lake County Police 
     Capt. Fred Johnson. ``I think the world of this guy.''
       He was also industrious. Under Mr. Vega's management, the 
     El Lago facility became one of the largest Paso Fino ranches 
     in the U.S. The ranch remained government property, but Mr. 
     Vega says he paid for numerous capital improvements, 
     including new corrals and stables. During this time, Mr. Vega 
     says he did receive about $70,000 as his percentage of the 
     haul from money-laundering stings, but added that he also 
     continued to receive fees from drug traffickers.
       In 1997, Mr. Vega's work came to the attention of David 
     Tinsley, a senior supervisor at the DEA's Miami office. 
     People who know Mr. Tinsley describe the 27-year veteran of 
     law enforcement to be a hyperkinetic, dedicated and sometimes 
     zealous agent. With Mr. Tinsley, an expert on drug-money 
     laundering. Mr. Vega's work picked up considerably--
     especially so after a Miami federal grand jury indicted 31 
     Columbian drug traffickers in October last year.


                        A Stampede of Colombians

       Billed as an enormous blow to Colombia's drug cartels, the 
     so-called Millennium indictment came at a time of great 
     confusion in the narcotics trade. Colombia's congress had 
     recently changed the law to allow drug traffickers to be 
     extradited to the U.S., where they couldn't readily pay off 
     judges. A stampede of Colombians arrived at Mr. Vega's door; 
     some had already been indicted and others feared they could 
     be next. All sought the sort of edge that Mr. Vega purported 
     to offer.
       ``There were 200 drug dealers who wanted to surrender to 
     American justice and make a deal,'' says Mr. Vega.
       For the DEA's Mr. Tinsley, the panic was a one-in-a-
     lifetime opportunity to strike a crushing blow against the 
     drug trade, says Richard Sharpstein, his lawyer. ``Tinsley 
     believed they had the highest-level drug dealers in the world 
     willing to cooperate at a level never seen before,'' says Mr. 
     Sharpstein.
       In the following months, Mr. Vega was constantly on an 
     airplane, shuttling between Panama and Miami, brokering 
     meetings between DEA agents and drug traffickers anxious to 
     make their peace with the U.S., according to interviews with 
     meeting participants and statements by lawyers for drug 
     dealers submitted to the FBI. He was such a frequent flier 
     that last November, he plunked down $250,000 toward the 
     lease-purchase of a seven-passenger Hawker jet, Mr. Vega 
     says.
       Panamanian flight manifests show that on many occasions he 
     was accompanied on his jet by DEA agent Larry Castillo of the 
     agency's Miami office. Mr. Castillo has been placed on 
     administrative leave with pay, pending the result of an 
     internal DEA probe, along with Mr. Tinsley. Mr. Castillo's 
     lawyer declines to comment.
       The FBI complaint says that soon after the Millennium 
     indictment, Mr. Vega orchestrated a meeting at Panama's 
     Miramar Intercontinental Hotel between an alleged drug dealer 
     and U.S. agents. ``Vega told the CW [confidential witness] 
     that he had U.S. officials in the hotel room next door and 
     arranged for the CW to meet with them. The CW then met with 
     four DEA agents and a Miami police officer.''
       During the meeting, the confidential witness--whom Mr. Vega 
     and several other individuals familiar with the case say is 
     Carlos Ramon, an alleged drug trafficker known as ``the 
     Doctor''--discussed with the agents the procedures for his 
     possible surrender, the complaint says.
       Mr. Ramon, under indictment in Miami for conspiracy to 
     import and distribute cocaine, wasn't alone. More than two 
     dozen Colombian traffickers or their representatives were 
     locked in similar marathon meetings in a suite of rooms 
     rented by Mr. Vega on various floors of the Miramar, 
     according to meeting participants.
       Four months later, Mr. Ramon surrendered to authorities in 
     Miami, but only after a farewell dinner at the trendy China 
     Grill, for which Mr. Vega says he picked up the $1,000 tab. 
     After spending a month in jail, Mr. Ramon, who is cooperating 
     with U.S. authorities, posted bail. He now lives in Miami 
     Beach's luxury Portofino Tower, according to court papers.
       Federal investigators are now trying to trace the path of 
     the money Mr. Vega generated from traffickers. Mr. Vega says 
     more than $5 million wound up with Daniel Forman, a well-
     respected Miami defense lawyer, as legal fees to represent 
     Mr. Ramon and 18 other accused traffickers.
       Mr. Forman appears to have played an important role in Mr. 
     Vega's final months as an informant. The defense attorney was 
     brought into the case at the insistence of the DEA's Mr. 
     Tinsley, who needed someone who would move the plea 
     negotiations along without raising a lot of objections, 
     according to Mr. Vega. The informant says he quickly became 
     ``50-50 partners'' with the defense attorney, with Mr. Vega 
     herding in clients and splitting the fees with Mr. Forman. 
     Flight manifests show that Mr. Forman flew several times from 
     Panama to Florida in the company of Messrs. Vega and 
     Castillo.
       Mr. Forman, in an e-mail, strongly denied that Mr. Vega 
     relayed legal fees to him, adding that ``Mr. Vega is not, and 
     has never

[[Page E2157]]

     been, my partner in any sense of the word.'' He declines to 
     comment on his clients, except to say that the government 
     didn't attempt to interfere with his representation of them.
       Mr. Tinsley's lawyer, Mr. Sharpstein, says his client 
     brought Mr. Forman into the case because he had worked with 
     Mr. Forman when the latter was a federal prosecutor and then 
     as a defense attorney. ``He trusts Forman and still believes 
     in him,'' says Mr. Sharpstein.
       As for the financial arrangements, Mr. Sharpstein says Mr. 
     Tinsley had no idea Mr. Vega was receiving money from 
     traffickers, and wouldn't have allowed it had he known. Mr. 
     Tinsley's understanding was that Mr. Vega would receive a 
     percentage of the value of assets seized by law enforcement, 
     a more-traditional method of compensating informants, says 
     Mr. Sharpstein. ``Unfortunately,'' he adds, ``it's not in 
     writing.''
       Apart from the controversy over money, Mr. Vega's wheeling 
     and dealing caused rising tension in the law-enforcement 
     community. Under a 10-year-old program, all cooperation 
     agreements with major drug traffickers are supposed to be 
     cleared through the Justice Department's secretive ``Blitz 
     Committee'' to ensure that criminals don't pit one agency or 
     prosecutor against another in search of the best deal. A 
     senior committee member declines to comment on Mr. Vega.
       But federal agents outside Mr. Tinsley's small DEA group 
     grew increasingly upset as Mr. Vega breezed through their 
     turf. One was Ed Kacerosky, a driven and highly decorated 
     U.S. Customs agent known for his work leading to the 1997 
     indictment of the Cali cocaine cartel.


                         $60 Million for Visas

       Now a supervisor in the agency's Miami office, Mr. 
     Kacerosky didn't take it well when Mr. Vega tried to help the 
     daughter of late Cali drug load Jose Santacruz obtain U.S. 
     resident visas for her family. At a meeting brokered by Mr. 
     Vega and attended by Mr. Kacerosky and other U.S. officials, 
     Sandra Santacruz offered to give the U.S. half of some $120 
     million her family held in accounts around the world in 
     exchange for the visas, say U.S. officials. The U.S. turned 
     down the offer.
       Last year, Mr. Kacerosky became enraged upon learning that 
     Mr. Vega had approached Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, a former 
     leader of the Cali cartel, in a Colombian prison. People 
     familiar with the matter say Mr. Vega offered to help Mr. 
     Rodriguez Orejuela's son William--under indictment in Miami 
     on U.S. drug charges--in return for information on possible 
     high-level Colombian police corruption.
       Mr. Kacerosky, these people say, blames William Rodriguez 
     for the brutal 1995 torture and killing of the wife of a key 
     informant. After the prison meeting, these people say, Mr. 
     Kacerosky wrote an eight-page memo to his superiors sparking 
     the investigation of Mr. Vega.
       Mr. Vega's activities also played into a growing feud 
     between the DEA's Bogota detachment and Mr. Tinsley's Miami-
     based crew. The Colombia-based agents largely responsible for 
     last year's Millennium indictment were unhappy that the 
     alleged criminals they had long been stalking were working 
     out deals with Miami-based agents appearing to poach on their 
     turf with Mr. Vega's help.
       Hearing on Oct. 21, 1999, that Bogota-based DEA agents were 
     heading for Panama to crash the Miramar dealer summit, Mr. 
     Vega says he and Mr. Tinsley cleared the traffickers out of 
     the hotel for fear of their arrest.
       ``There's a common distrust between DEA Bogota and DEA 
     Miami,'' says Mr. Sharpstein, Mr. Tinsley's lawyer. ``The 
     Bogota agents were jealous of Miami agents racking up these 
     cases.''
       Today, Mr. Vega is officially off limits to U.S. law 
     enforcement. When the FBI charged him in March, authorities 
     froze a Miami bank account in his name containing $1.5 
     million. Though most condemn Mr. Vega's alleged illegal 
     enrichment some agents believe his fall is undeserved after 
     such a long career in a world whose common coin is often a 
     violent death.
       As fear and controversy swirl around him, Mr. Vega sits in 
     his Miami Beach penthouse, wearing an ankle monitoring device 
     and fielding phone calls from models in Greece and designers 
     in Paris. ``I will be in Miami for the rest of the season. 
     Same place, same apartment,'' he tells a model who calls to 
     commiserate, ``I have a bunch of pictures for you. They used 
     the one with the bathing suit. It looks very nice.''

     

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