Gonzalo Gallegos, spokesman for the US State Dept. for the Western Hemisphere, said about Castano: “We have not been in contact with that individual. We don’t know where he is, and we don’t know where the information came from.”
The information he’s referring to is the information that Castano was smuggled — by Americans — out of Colombia and into Israel, via Panama. An official denial from the State Department and an official denial from the Israeli Ambassador in Colombia are enough to make a person really suspect that Castano is in Israel.
Gonzalo Gallegos, spokesman for the US State Dept. for the Western Hemisphere, said about Castano: “We have not been in contact with that individual. We don’t know where he is, and we don’t know where the information came from.”
The information he’s referring to is the information that Castano was smuggled — by Americans — out of Colombia and into Israel, via Panama. An official denial from the State Department and an official denial from the Israeli Ambassador in Colombia are enough to make a person really suspect that Castano is in Israel.
Another AFP story that came out yesterday quoted Wilson Borja, a very decent and courageous Colombian member of Congress who made the case that Castano’s being in Israel was plausible: First, because a retired Israeli colonel, Yair Klein, trained Colombian paramilitaries, including Castano himself, in the 1980s. Second, because Castano himself spent at least a year, perhaps three, training in ‘anti-terror’ techniques in Israel. Borja figures Bush wouldn’t want Castano in Miami to have to explain why someone on the terrorist list is sitting pretty in his brother’s home state during electoral season. If Borja’s right, then so is Stephen Zunes (author of ‘Tinderbox’), who frequently talks about the various ‘services’ Israel provides the US war machine — plausible deniability being a key one. Taking Castano off of US hands for a while would be a service as well.
