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Imagine that Pablo Escobar, the world's richest cocaine trafficker, has suddenly been captured in Colombia. The government, fearing the ``Godfather`` will immediately bribe his way to freedom, has decided to extradite him to the United States as soon as possible. Within hours, Escobar is on a plane heading north.
In Colombia even the threat to extradite a major drug trafficker can cause a bloodbath, but this is a risk Colombia is now willing to take. Since the Aug. 18 murder of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, Colombian President Virgilio Barco has decided to destroy the Medellin cocaine cartel no matter what it costs.
But what price will the United States pay? The world's biggest cocaine trafficker is in custody, waiting to go on trial for crimes that likely will put him behind bars for several lifetimes. Will the cartel try to break him out of jail? Will the cartel try to murder his accusers? Will the cartel try to kill the judge, bribe the jurors or kidnap the prosecutor's 11-year-old daughter? Will the cartel bomb the nation's leading newspaper and kill the editor in an effort to influence coverage? How vulnerable, finally, are U.S. institutions and officials to the wrath of Colombia's drug bosses?
With Colombia's post-Galan crackdown in its second month, U.S. law enforcement and the public at large are beginning to wonder whether - or when - the cartel will bring its fight to the United States.
The short answer is that the cartel historically has been willing to try almost anything, and will probably do so again. Earlier this month the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested several Latin Americans in New Brunswick and seized an arsenal of automatic weapons. Police believe the gunmen were organizing a prison break for two accused Colombian cocaine traffickers arrested in April.
This sort of thing has been tried before, most notably in Miami in 1985, when cartel commandoes worked out an elaborate scheme to land a helicopter inside a prison farm to pick up three prisoners awaiting sentencing on a cocaine conviction. The prisoners were sentenced and transferred before the plan materialized.
These would-be feats of derring-do have made an impression over the years, but ultimately they are ephemeral phenomena that develop from the belief that...