Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

I liked her. I trusted her. More important, I already felt totally comfortable with her. I hadn’t told her about the satellite photos-that, I could never do. But I had shared with her my theories about what might have happened to Janet, Grace, and Michael if they’d been picked up. That included letting her read the State Department document that Dalton Dorsey had faxed to me.

Some of the data therein were as discomforting; some, I found fascinating. Why hadn’t I heard the data before? The data read in part: ECONOMICS OF THE INTERNATIONAL FLESH TRADE According to [AGENCY DELETED] the global trade in the smuggling of humans is a $12 billion a year business, and the third largest source of profit for organized crime, including international terrorists. The flesh trade is surpassed only by drugs and the illegal arms trade in estimated annual earnings. It has become a favorite investment of criminals and international terrorists because the profits are high, the risk of being caught low, and the punishments much less severe than some crimes that are not nearly as profitable. The discovery of fifty-eight Fijians in the back of a refrigeration truck in Dover, England, all dead of suffocation, focused international attention on this brutal business. And, in late 1999, U.S. Immigration officers arrested Algerian terrorist Ahmed Ressam when he tried to enter the United States with a trunk full of explosives. He had been smuggled into Canada where he applied for refugee status, and his financial backing has been linked to cocaine and a white slavery operation in South America and Brunei. It is estimated that, each year, hundreds of thousands of illegals-many from China, North Africa, and the Middle East-pay up to $50,000 US per person to “Snakeheads.” A Snakehead is often a Chinese-American or an Arab-American stationed in New York City or Bangkok. A Snakehead provides illegals with false identities and passports and transports them inside the twelve-mile limit that marks the end of international waters and the beginning of the United States’s territorial sovereignty.

Like me, Amelia found the statistics very surprising. “I didn’t know it was such a big business,” she said.

The paper also touched on another form of the flesh trade that was even more astonishing. We both read: Another very different, but related, type of business that deals in the buying and selling of humans is what is known, generically, as the white slave trade. The term white slave trade has been passed down from a previous century, and it accurately describes what was then a booming illegal business: the kidnapping and transport of Caucasian women to foreign soil, where they were then sold to wealthy buyers. Over the last two decades, this business has grown faster than both trade in drugs and weapons, though Caucasian women are no longer the only acceptable form of human currency. Any woman who is young and attractive is a very valuable commodity. The United Nations estimates that 4 million women throughout the world are trafficked each year-forced through lies and coercion to work against their will in many types of servitude, particularly as sexual slaves. The International Organization for Migration has said that as many as 500,000 women from the former Soviet Union are annually trafficked into Western Europe alone, and then onto other foreign lands-most often North Africa, Brunei, and the Middle East. Because some of the women have already immigrated illegally, and because some percentage of the women choose to work as prostitutes, statistics are difficult to assess.

Amelia whistled softly when she read that. “My God! Four million? I had no idea it was even going on, but four million women a year! Amazing.”

In a way, though, we both agreed: The sobering statistics also provided us with some hope. If Janet and Grace had been kidnapped for profit, it explained why we had not heard from them. They were a valuable commodity. It meant that they could still be out there somewhere, alive.

Just as I could not tell Amelia about the satellite photos, there was a second letter I had in my possession that I could not allow her to read. Some of the information in it was from a consular research paper, but it also contained classified data that I could not share.

It was from a U.S. State Department intelligence guru named Hal Harrington. I’d met Harrington the year before when I’d helped get his daughter out of some trouble. Turned out that Hal and I had more in common than I was comfortable admitting. That meeting had resurrected aspects of my past that I’d thought were long behind me. Trouble is, the memories, the aftershocks, of a violent, clandestine life are impossible to forget, so they never really go away.

Harrington belonged to a highly trained covert operations team that was known, to a very few, as the Negotiating and System Analysis Group-the Negotiators, for short. Because the success of the team relied on members blending easily into nearly any society, each man was provided with a legitimate and mobile profession.

Harrington was trained as a computer software programmer and made a personal fortune by sheer intelligence and foresight. Other members of that elite team included CPAs, a couple of attorneys, one journalist, and at least three physicians. There was also a marine biologist among them, a man who traveled the world doing research.

Harrington is now one of the most powerful and influential staff members at the State Department, and he specializes in Latin-American affairs. Because I had his private numbers, and because we share a mutual interest in the well-being of his daughter, Lindsey, it was not difficult for me to get in touch with the man.

The night before Amelia and I left for Miami, Harrington’s letter arrived via special courier. The first two pages were background, and it was good for me to refamiliarize myself with the complicated politics of the country we were about to visit. It was also good to be reminded that it is one of the most dangerous places on earth. Colombia illustrates the stark contrast between the rich and poor, and the widespread neglect of human rights. This problem is compounded by extraordinary violence. Colombia has the highest murder rate in the world. Armed conflict has led to the mass displacement of innocent citizens by political violence-many thousands of Amazon Indians and farmers have been forced off their land as a result of conflict between the national, guerrilla, and paramilitary groups. The main source of the conflict, of course, is strife created by the drug trade. In recent years, however, Colombia has also become a center of two other very profitable international businesses: the sale of illegal weaponry and the transporting of illegal immigrants and kidnap victims for sale.

I hadn’t heard that before. Harrington had included the information for a reason.

The paper went on to say: Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Colombia’s illegal drug trade grew steadily, as the drug cartels amassed huge amounts of money, weapons, and influence. The 1970s also saw the formation of such leftist guerrilla groups as the May Nineteenth Movement (M-19) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The violence continued, and many journalists and government officials were killed.

After going into specific detail about FARC, and the politicians believed to be associated with the movement, Harrington’s paper continued: The notorious Medellin drug cartel was broken in 1993, and the Cali cartel was later undermined by arrests of key leaders. Drug traffickers continue to have significant wealth and power, however, and many leftist guerrilla groups remain active, perpetuating a condition of instability. In November 1998, the country’s president ceded a state-sized region of land in South Central Colombia to FARC’s control as a goodwill gesture, but the rebels negotiated with the government only fitfully and continued to mount attacks. That region is now one of the most lawless and dangerous on earth. It has become the safe harbor for Islamic extremists and other terrorists. It has also become the center of a power struggle between the different factions of guerrilla groups, the paramilitary forces (vigilante groups formed usually by wealthy landowners protecting their own interests), and the state itself. Also sometimes involved in the fighting there are U.S. drug interdiction forces, the CIA and the DEA. The conflict has become the dirtiest of wars, in which each side resorts to whatever tactics are necessary to gain an advantage. Summary executions, disappearances, extortion, intimidation, and torture are all part of daily reality.