book report cheeseburger

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Unique and Fun Book Reports: Projects, Ideas, and Lesson Plans For Teachers

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What activities do you provide your students with after they have read a book on their own or together as a class?

• Do your activities focus on reading comprehension?
• Are your students eager to use their best effort to complete their reading projects?
• Do your activities focus on the entire process of writing a first draft, editing, revising, and then completing a polished final draft?
• Do you use a grading rubric for both you and your students to evaluate their work?
• When your students have finished their projects, are they proud of their work and do they provide eye catching displays on your classroom bulletin boards?
• Are your students eager to begin reading their next books so that they can start working on their next reading response activity?

Examples of Book Report Project Templates:

Below : The reading response projects that I have created come in a variety of different shapes, sizes, and themes. Your students will find these uniquely shaped book report projects fun and challenging to complete.

Above : The writing responses are different for each book report set and are related to the project's shape and theme.

Below is a list of the book report projects that are available on Unique Teaching Resources:

Most popular:.

• Cheeseburger
• Character Body

CHARACTER RELATED TEMPLATES:

• Biography Newspaper
• Wanted Poster
• Main Character Vacation Suitcase

FOOD TEMPLATES:

• Pizza Venn Diagram
• Birthday Cake

ANIMAL TEMPLATES:

• Extra Large Turtle
• Butterfly Sets (2)
• Caterpillar Sets (2)
• Dive Into Reading (fish templates)

NATURE RELATED TEMPLATES:

• Cause and Effect Tree
• Mountain Story Map

TECHNOLOGY TEMPLATES:

• Movie Camera

BUILDING TEMPLATES:

Transportation templates:, other categories:.

• 1st Place Trophy / Favorite Book (Ideal for a beginning or end of year activity.)

I hope that your students have

Completing these one of a kind book report activities, what is the "key" that i use to get my students to love reading and writing about literature.

• I use engaging and creative book report templates.
• Each of my students have a reading sticker chart to record the number of books that they have read.
• I display all of my students' finished projects in my classroom.

It really is that simple and most importantly, it works! My students are excited to read books independently and complete their fun reading projects!

The students in my class read a new book and complete a reading response project every two to three weeks. My students produce a polished final draft that is unique in style, shape, and content. Since my students find these response templates fun and challenging, they are engaged and interested in using their best effort to complete their projects.

My templates emphasize reading comprehension and the writing process, and they also include an art component.

All of my students are given an individual reading file. Inside their reading files are: their book, reading sticker chart, book mark, and their first draft worksheets for their book projects. Students proofread and edit their first drafts on their own, with a partner, or with me before they begin on their final draft templates.

When students have completed the final drafts of their reading projects, they receive a sticker on their reading sticker charts.

Download a Free Reading Sticker Chart :

Below is a free reading sticker chart that you can download from Unique Teaching Resources . Click on the link below the picture to go to the page where you can find more information about this free teaching resource.

Above: FREE Sticker Chart Templates: Click here to go to this page: Puppy Reading Sticker Charts Set

I believe that every child's work should be displayed, not just the "best" ones. I have found that this motivates all of my students to use their best effort.

Since my book reports are large and colorful, and I provide a free display banner for you to use on your bulletin board, it is easy to make a brilliant bulletin board display of your students' work!

My students are proud of their final drafts and enjoy evaluating their own work using my grading rubrics. They love to see their projects displayed in the classroom, and they later place them in their educational portfolios to show to their parents with pride.

All of my book reports include the following components:

• assembling directions
• first draft writing worksheets (the writing lines on the first draft worksheets match exactly with the writing lines on the final draft book report templates)
• final draft book report templates
• color final draft book report templates of the project for you to use as a finished example to show to your students
• grading rubric for both the students and the teacher to fill out
• five page color banner to display on your bulletin board
• most of these sets include bonus accent pieces for you to use as decorations for your classroom bulletin board display

Reading Sticker Charts:

If you are interesting in using sticker charts to motivate your students to read, be sure to check out my reading sticker charts page. By using reading sticker charts, you can easily track how many books each student has read.

Reading sticker charts are a great motivational tool to encourage your students to read books and to read across a variety of different genres of literature!

If you are interested in viewing the sticker charts found on Unique Teaching Resources, please click on the link below:

Reading Sticker Charts

Examples of Book Reports That Are Available on Unique Teaching Resources:

Thank you for visiting this book reports page.

Please be sure to check out the other pages on Unique Teaching Resources for a large variety of fun lesson plan activities that will engage your students in learning and save you valuable time.

Creator and Website Manager Unique Teaching Resources

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Click on the book titles below to view each project.

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Cheeseburger Show Report Project

Cheeseburger Book Report Project

Assembled Project Size:   Width = 9 inches   Heights = 21 inches

Do you want a fun and challenging publication report idea for your students that become make them hungry to read their books?  

Your students becomes find this cheeseburger book report project delicious!

You can learn more detailed company about this resource by clicking ==>  HERE .

A Note About Your Purchase:  You will be via a download link for the resource(s) that you purchase so that you can download, saving, print, or employ the resource(s)  now!

A very DETAILED overview about this resource set lives provided below.

Cheeseburger book report project templates:.

What's Included?

Cheeseburger How Report Projects: Are you looking for an fun and challenging book report project ideas for your students that leave create them hungry to read their books?

These cheeseburger shaped graphic organizers will provide i with all on that teaching resources that you required for your undergraduate up write concerning the key elements of their books.

Many element school teachers assign sandwich publication report projects to their apprentices. The layers of the sandwich project are stapled together, plus you can only see the top layer in bread in first-time glance.

These cheeseburger templates are an unique version of this idea since all of the layers the this cheeseburger projects are visible among one same time. This means that all of the students' writing is easily seen on a newsletter card display away these finished book report projects.

Their students will give this fun book report plan inception a big thumbs go!

Traditionally, requirement students to compose about to story elements of an book (characters, setting, plot, etc.) is a order that most college find entire boring .

By employing this uniquely shapes cheeseburger book report project , your undergraduate will find this problem delicious!

Aforementioned example below shows an 7 layers

of dieser unique cheeseburger book report project.

The image below shows a bulletin board display in 

my classroom of my students' finished cheeseburger projects .

This unparalleled shaped volume report project contains 4 worksheet predefined that assemble into a cheeseburger. This finished cheap project measures 9 inches in width and 21 inches in height (see example on the right.)

Everything that you need to complete are cheeseburger book report projects is included in save set of lesson resources. Everything that i will need is scissors, glue, tape, and coloring pencils.

There been 11 printability worksheets and create pages in this set, as right as a 5 page color bulletin board indication logo.

These finished cheeseburger order report my will make a colorful and dynamic bulletin board display of your students' work.

In addition, this set of reading resources includes deuce large cheeseburgers and 8 cheeseburger reading posters that canister be former as accent items s for your classroom notice board display.

Cheeseburger Book Submit Scheme Film: Watch this short video for learn more about this fun book report project!

Note :  Due to spelling differences in English (Examples: color/colour and favorite/favourite), there are two cut sets of  calculator and templates included in this set of teaching resources.

You can select the version ( U.S. other U.K. orthography rules) this contain which spell that lives used in to country where you live. 

The worksheets and templates that will shown in this page use  U.S. spelling rules .

Assembling Directions:

This fix regarding teaching resources includes assembling directions on how to prepare and assemble this cheap book report project. 

Below is an example of an assembling directions worksheet.

Grading Rubric:

A book message grading category is included inside this set of teaching resources.

I believe that it are important for students go evaluate their own labour, that my book report rubric contains an assessment section for both students plus teachers .

When students evaluate her book story projects, they color in the faces switch its grading rubric worksheets.

As an your evaluates the projects, the teacher circles the smaller numbers within each box on the printable worksheets.

Below is an example from my cheeseburger book report grading rubric.

First Draft Worksheet:

I believe that the writing process is major and that teachers should benefit process how whenever possibility.

Required to reason, my students never begin their book report projects until writing on her latter draft cheeseburger templates, instead they write switch early draft worksheets.

Next, my students amend press rework theirs written work switch their own, over a partner, or in individual writing conferences with me.

This cheeseburger reading activity is design so is each layer of the cheeseburger is one coating of information about the book. The layers of this book report design include:

• Top Bunch: Title, Author, and Genre
• Onion Layer: Hauptfluss Characters
• Lettuce Layer: Set
• Tomato Layer: Plot
• Cheese Layer: Conclusion
• Meat Layer: My Favorite Part
• Bottom Bun: Drawing of Favorite Partial of an Book, Name, and Date

Like set of teaching resources contains two printable worksheets for students in writer their start drafting on.

On i foremost draft calculation, I have intentional that writing wire spaces to match the spaces allotted on the final draft cheese book review books .

First Draft Worksheet #1: Students write the title, writer, and genre of the book. This information lives written inches aforementioned top bun of the cheeseburger.

Students write about the setting of the book in the onion template and they describe the main character in the lettuce template.

First Draft Worksheet #2: Students written about and plot by the book in the tomato model and aforementioned conclusion in the cheese document.

Finally, college write about her favorite part of the book in the meat template.

Sinister and White Cheeseburger Templates:

This book review project contains 4 templates ensure are composite together to form the shape of a layered hamburger.

Summit Bun Template: Track, Article, and Genre 

Onion Template: Setting

Lettuce Template: Main Character 

Tomato Template: Plot

Cheese Template: Conclusion

Metal Screen: Favorite Part 

Lower Bun Template: Drawing, Name, and Date

Color Cheeseburger Templates:

When I am first introducing my students to ampere new book report project, I think so he is essential for them to can a visual real of what a ended project looks like.

I always comprehensive in example in which chuck register report project before I introduce this assignment to my students.

Before me students commence writing their first drafts, I show them mysterious finished beefburger project. This visual example immediately grabs meine students' attention and it what enthusiastically to start working on this project from the very beginning. I have found that my students exist engaged and use their best effort as they go throughout the steps of the writing process plus entire this fun book report project.

My students also love hearing info the book that I chose in accomplish my book report project on. This is also a fabulous gelegenheiten to share a book that IODIN would favorite to support my students toward read.

To save her time in coloring the example that you show to your students, MYSELF have included color cheeseburger templates in aforementioned teaching resources set. I display my terminated cheeseburger book report at the front of my classroom so that students can refer to it as they are completing their own cheeseburger ventures.

Under: Cheeseburger Color Templates

4 worksheets that are cut out and then sticky together to guss the shape of adenine cheeseburger.

Free 5 Page Bulletin Board Presentation Banner:

I know that it takes teachers a lot of time to design both assemble their classroom bulletin board shows.

Multitudinous teachers expenditure their valuably time cutting output huge display letters or making a banner at home on their own home.

In order to help save they time in assembling a bulletin board display featuring your students' chese book report projects, I having constructed a 5 page streamer that are included for free in that set of classes resourcing.

If them have access to a laminating machine, I recommends that you laminate your standard so that it will be more durable and you can use computers again in the future.

Cheese Book Report Banner 

5 worksheets is are glued together to form a press card display banner.

Free Message Board Display Accent Pieces:

EXTRA FREE TEACHING RESOURCES #1: For each of the book report sets that are available on Exclusive Teaching Resources, I try the design some extra bulletin board accent pieces that will helping you to decorate your classroom bulletin council display that features the students' book report projects.

This set of education resources includes ampere large cheeseburger that says, " OURSELVES BEEN CHEF! Read Our Delicious Cheeseburger Book News! "

EXTRA FREE TEACHING RESOURCES #2: There the a per cheeseburger that says, " Reading Books Feeds Your Brain With Modern Knowledge! "

EXTRA FREE TEACHING RESOURCES #3: I take designed 8 chuck posters that in slogans written on them that promote reading.

• Cheeseburger Book Reports
• Books Are Delicious!
• Devour a Book Today!
• Reading is Yummy!
• Breaktime upon an Book Today!
• We Are Hungry to Read Books!
• Follow an Go of Reading Everyday!
• Reading is Food For Your Brain!

I hope save free accent places search remember you time  in decorating your cheeseburger bulletin board display.

Above : This is ampere picture of my students within forefront of their cheeseburger book report projects. It is often difficult to get students excited with completing writing assignments about a book that they have straight finished reading, but as you canister see, my students are enthusiastic about this entertaining book report project!

Above: My students with yours ready check get report projects.

They wills be capable to design a colorful and dynamic classroom bulletin board displays using your students' finished hoagie projects.

These cheeseburger graphic organizers are a unique and fun way at get your students excited about completing a writing assignment about the books that they have read.

The writing responses that what required of your students will make you reasoning and write with the main elements of their books in a challenging and engaging procedure. In addition, this show create set includes cheeseburger themed accent pieces for helps i in decorating your advertising board display.

This is individual of the first book report projects that I designed for my undergraduate and it has been only of my students' favorite projects of the ganzes school current. Group are thought that this reading assignment was yummy! I hope that your students enjoy completing this project too!

Cheeseburger Read Report Plan Video:

Purchase this book report project below:.

Cheeseburger How Report Projekt

Assembled Project Sizing:   Width = 9 inches   Height = 21 inches

Do you want a fun and ambitious book report view for your students this will do them feeling to read their registers?  

Your collegiate will find this hamburger book report go delicious!

You can go extra detailed information over this resourcefulness by clicking ==>  HERE .

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Whitmer, a millionaire, set up new company before signing financial disclosure bills

Lansing — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s lawyer filed paperwork to form a company he says is meant to manage her family’s personal wealth, four days after the Michigan Legislature signed off on the hotly-debated details of a personal financial disclosure law for state officeholders.

The Democratic governor disclosed her ownership interest in Super Deluxe LLC in her first report submitted under the new law, along with more than $2.3 million in investment and retirement assets. Whitmer will also use the entity to manage expenses and profits related to her upcoming book, her lawyer Christopher Trebilcock said.

The limited liability company, which filed paperwork with the state Nov. 13, is meant to serve as the “governor’s family office to manage her personal matters,” Trebilcock said. He is listed as the company’s resident agent and also works as a lawyer for Whitmer’s campaign arm.

The LLC is registered to the address of Trebilcock’s law firm, Clark Hill. A family office typically serves very high net-worth individuals and families in managing their wealth — from estate planning to tax services to the management of homes, planes, boats or cars.

Under Michigan's disclosure law, Whitmer didn't have to report the value of Super Deluxe or what the company's dealings were. She just disclosed that she was a member of it with an ownership interest.

Whitmer's upcoming book from Simon & Schuster, "True Gretch," was contracted through Super Deluxe because it is a "personal project," Trebilcock said. Any profits will be used to pay expenses related to the publication and the rest given to a Lansing-area nonprofit.

"The governor is proud to donate the proceeds from the publishing of 'True Gretch' to the Capital Region Community Foundation trough Super Deluxe LLC throughout the entirety of her term as governor," Trebilcock said.

Whitmer hasn't said how much her book deal is worth. Other public officeholders have made hundreds of thousands of dollars off similar projects. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was paid about $5 million for his 2020 memoir titled "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic," according to media reports .

Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, has previously called on Whitmer's administration to release the terms of her book deal.

The governor's interest in the LLC was reported in a filing Monday , the deadline for Michigan’s inaugural round of mandatory personal financial disclosure reporting. While the formation of the Super Deluxe was new, her investment and stock interests had been disclosed in prior voluntary reports from the governor, with Monday's investment total reflecting a slight increase from last year's voluntary disclosure .

Voters in 2022 approved a ballot measure 66%-34% that expanded term limits in the state House and Senate and required lawmakers and the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state — as well as candidates for those offices — to file financial disclosures.

The nuts and bolts of what information would need to be included in the personal financial disclosures was largely left to lawmakers, who were able to narrowly pass statutory language implementing the disclosures amid pushback that the requirements didn’t shed enough light on lawmakers' finances and potential conflicts that may arise from those interests. The legislation exempted the income and assets of spouses after Whitmer expressed reservations about requiring such public disclosures.

The Legislature signed off on the bills implementing the financial disclosure requirement Nov. 9 ; Whitmer signed the bills into law Dec. 8 .

The first round of disclosures filed Monday saw significant differences in the level of detail each official provided, some opting to provide more information than was required and others offering only those details mandated by law.

Whitmer's report

Whitmer reported more than $2.3 million in the value of her investment and stock accounts in addition to her roughly $159,000 annual salary as governor. Among the $2.3 million in investments, stocks and securities, Whitmer disclosed more than $1 million in Admiral shares in Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund.

Whitmer’s financial reporting, in some ways, went beyond what was required of officials; she disclosed actual dollar amounts while many state lawmakers reported the existence of retirement or investment funds without detailing how much they were worth.

Whitmer reported the formation of Super Deluxe LLC under a portion of the reporting document requiring officials to disclose “positions in organizations.”

The governor has previously said that "super deluxe" was a saying used by her her late mother, Sharon .

Business incorporation papers list Trebilcock as the resident agent and attorney J. Thomas MacFarlane as the organizer.

MacFarlane specializes in estates and trusts at Clark Hill, according to the firm’s website, and aiding clients “for the efficient transition of their wealth.”

The paperwork was filed with the state Nov. 13 and accepted Nov. 15.

Family offices generally function as asset management firms, but are tailored to an individual or family with a very high net worth, said Rob Grimaldi, chief operating officer of the family office at New York-based Viscogliosi Brothers LLC.

A family office is typically staffed with individuals who help with estate planning, tax services, charitable giving, or the management of boats, planes or homes, said Grimaldi, a Michigan resident who's worked with family offices for the past two decades. They also can provide "lifestyle management," scheduling flights or booking hotels, he said.

Family offices in Michigan include those involving the Ford family, the Ilitches and Dan and Jennifer Gilbert. The industry standard for a family office usually involves individuals or families with a threshold net worth starting at between $100 million and $150 million, Grimaldi said. It's possible, however, that someone could start a family office with less if they expected their wealth to grow in the near future.

"There’s no minimum stated," Grimaldi said. "I could start a family office with zero assets, but if you’re going to have any level of staff or activity of any kind, you’re going to have to pay for that. It needs to be cost effective”

Whitmer also reported, among her assets, full ownership of her summer home in Elk Rapids, which is valued at about $418,200. Whitmer does not pay to live at the governor’s residence in Lansing or for use of the governor's home on Mackinac Island.

Gilchrist, Benson, Nessel report

Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist also disclosed the dollar amounts of his stock and retirement accounts for a total of about $435,000. He disclosed his home in Corktown was valued at about $1.1 million; Crain’s Detroit Business reported the fifth-floor penthouse was on the market last year with an asking price of about $1.9 million.

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson initially filed her disclosure without dollar amounts — which is all that’s required under current law — but updated the filing later in the day with more detailed information. Benson had previously disclosed her finances voluntarily in 2019 .

Benson disclosed her role as director for Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE), her ownership of her Detroit home worth about $500,000 and a couple of 401(k) retirement accounts worth about $590,000. Benson also disclosed she remains a tenured professor at Wayne State Law School, where she took an unpaid leave of absence in 2019.

She also disclosed about $100,000 in savings accounts she holds jointly with her husband, Ryan Friedrichs, a lobbyist for Related Companies, the real estate development firm of New York billionaire Stephen Ross, who founded RISE.

Attorney General Dana Nessel disclosed ownership of her Plymouth home and a couple of retirement and investment accounts, without listing dollar amounts regarding the mortgage or the value of her 401(k) account.

While Nessel has not previously made a voluntary release of her finances in the same way as Whitmer and Benson, her office said she released some financial information upon request of media outlets during her 2018 campaign.

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The Worst Part of a Wall Street Career May Be Coming to an End

Artificial intelligence tools can replace much of Wall Street’s entry-level white-collar work, raising tough questions about the future of finance.

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By Rob Copeland

Rob Copeland spoke to executives at major banks and consultancies across Wall Street for this article.

Pulling all-nighters to assemble PowerPoint presentations. Punching numbers into Excel spreadsheets. Finessing the language on esoteric financial documents that may never be read by another soul.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.

Such grunt work has long been a rite of passage in investment banking, an industry at the top of the corporate pyramid that lures thousands of young people every year with the promise of prestige and pay.

Until now. Generative artificial intelligence — the technology upending many industries with its ability to produce and crunch new data — has landed on Wall Street. And investment banks, long inured to cultural change , are rapidly turning into Exhibit A on how the new technology could not only supplement but supplant entire ranks of workers.

The jobs most immediately at risk are those performed by analysts at the bottom rung of the investment banking business, who put in endless hours to learn the building blocks of corporate finance, including the intricacies of mergers, public offerings and bond deals. Now, A.I. can do much of that work speedily and with considerably less whining .

“The structure of these jobs has remained largely unchanged at least for a decade,” said Julia Dhar, head of BCG’s Behavioral Science Lab and a consultant to major banks experimenting with A.I. The inevitable question, as she put it, is “do you need fewer analysts?”

Some of Wall Street’s major banks are asking the same question, as they test A.I. tools that can largely replace their armies of analysts by performing in seconds the work that now takes hours, or a whole weekend. The software, being deployed inside banks under code names such as “Socrates,” is likely not only to change the arc of a Wall Street career, but also to essentially nullify the need to hire thousands of new college graduates.

Top executives at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other banks are debating how deep they can cut their incoming analyst classes, according to several people involved in the ongoing discussions. Some inside those banks and others have suggested they could cut back on their hiring of junior investment banking analysts by as much as two-thirds, and slash the pay of those they do hire, on the grounds that the jobs won’t be as taxing as before.

“The easy idea,” said Christoph Rabenseifner, Deutsche Bank’s chief strategy officer for technology, data and innovation, “is you just replace juniors with an A.I. tool,” although he added that human involvement will remain necessary.

Representatives for Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and others said it was too early to comment on specific job changes. But the consulting giant Accenture estimated that A.I. could replace or supplement nearly three-quarters of bank employees’ working hours across the industry.

Goldman is “experimenting with the technology,” said Nick Carcaterra, a bank spokesman. “In the near term, we anticipate no changes to our incoming analyst classes.”

This week, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, wrote in his annual shareholder letter that A.I. “may reduce certain job categories or roles,” and labeled the technology top among the most important issues facing the nation’s largest bank. Mr. Dimon compared the consequences to those of “the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the internet, among others.”

Investment banking is a hierarchical industry, and banks typically hire young talent through two-year analyst contracts. Tens of thousands of 20-somethings (both from undergraduate and M.B.A. programs) apply for some 200 spots in each major bank’s program. Pay starts at more than $100,000, not including year-end bonuses.

If they persevere, they move up the ranks to associate, then director and managing director; a handful end up running divisions. Although grueling, the life of a senior banker can be glamorous, involving traveling around the globe to pitch clients and working on big-money corporate merger deals. Many who get through the two-year analyst program have gone on to become business titans — the billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Stephen Schwarzman began their careers in investment banking — but a majority will leave before or after their two years are up, bank representatives said.

There are jokes among junior bankers that the most common tasks of the job involve dragging icons from one side of a document to another, only to be asked to replace the icon over and again.

“One hundred percent drudgery and boring,” said Gabriel Stengel, a former banking analyst who left the industry two years ago. Val Srinivas, a senior researcher for banking at Deloitte, said a lot of the work involved “gathering material, poring through it and putting it through a different format.”

Gregory Larkin, another former banking analyst, said the new technology would start “a civil war” inside Wall Street’s biggest firms by tilting the balance of power to technologists who program A.I. tools, as opposed to the bankers who use them — to say nothing of technology giants like Microsoft and Google, which license much of the A.I. technology to banks for hefty fees.

“A.I. will enable us to do tasks that take 10 hours in 10 seconds,” said Jay Horine, co-head of investment banking at JPMorgan, describing analyst jobs. “My hope and belief is it will allow the job to be more interesting.”

A.I.’s impact on finance is simply one facet of how the technology will reshape the workplace for all. Artificial intelligence systems, which include large language models and question-and-answer bots like ChatGPT, can quickly synthesize information and automate tasks. Virtually all industries are beginning to grapple with it to some degree.

Deutsche Bank is uploading reams of financial data into proprietary A.I. tools that can instantaneously answer questions about publicly traded companies and create summary documents on complementary financial moves that might benefit a client — and earn the bank a profit.

Mr. Horine said he could use A.I. to identify clients that might be ripe for a bond offering, the sort of bread-and-butter transaction for which investment bankers charge clients millions of dollars.

Goldman Sachs has assigned 1,000 developers to test A.I., including software that can turn what it terms “corpus” information — or enormous amounts of text and data collected from thousands of sources — into page presentations that mimic the bank’s typeface, logo, styles and charts. One firm executive privately called it a “Kitty Hawk moment,” or one that would change the course of the firm’s future.

That isn’t limited to investment banking; BNY Mellon’s chief executive said on a recent earnings call that his research analysts could now wake up two hours later than usual, because A.I. can read overnight economic data and create a written draft of analysis to work from.

Morgan Stanley’s head of technology, Michael Pizzi, told employees in a January private meeting, a video of which was viewed by The New York Times, that he would “get A.I. into every area of what we do,” including wealth management, where the bank employs thousands of people to determine the proper mix of investments for well-off savers.

Many of those tools are still in the testing phase, and will need to be run past regulators before they can be deployed at scale on live work. Bank of America’s chief executive said last year that the technology was already enabling the firm to hire less.

Among Goldman Sachs’s sprawling A.I. efforts is a tool under development that can transfigure a lengthy PowerPoint document into a formal “S-1,” the legalese-packed document for initial public offerings required for all listed companies.

The software takes less than a second to complete the job.

Read by Rob Copeland

Audio produced by Patricia Sulbarán .

Rob Copeland is a finance reporter, writing about Wall Street and the banking industry. More about Rob Copeland

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NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust

David Folkenflik

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust.

NPR's top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

"An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America," writes Uri Berliner.

A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, has fed "the absence of viewpoint diversity," Berliner writes.

NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment.

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

NPR names tech executive Katherine Maher to lead in turbulent era

She added, "None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole."

A spokesperson for NPR said Chapin, who also serves as the network's chief content officer, would have no further comment.

Praised by NPR's critics

Berliner is a senior editor on NPR's Business Desk. (Disclosure: I, too, am part of the Business Desk, and Berliner has edited many of my past stories. He did not see any version of this article or participate in its preparation before it was posted publicly.)

Berliner's essay , titled "I've Been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust," was published by The Free Press, a website that has welcomed journalists who have concluded that mainstream news outlets have become reflexively liberal.

Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence College graduate who "was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother ," he fits the mold of a loyal NPR fan.

Yet Berliner says NPR's news coverage has fallen short on some of the most controversial stories of recent years, from the question of whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, to the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, to the significance and provenance of emails leaked from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden weeks before the 2020 election. In addition, he blasted NPR's coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

On each of these stories, Berliner asserts, NPR has suffered from groupthink due to too little diversity of viewpoints in the newsroom.

The essay ricocheted Tuesday around conservative media , with some labeling Berliner a whistleblower . Others picked it up on social media, including Elon Musk, who has lambasted NPR for leaving his social media site, X. (Musk emailed another NPR reporter a link to Berliner's article with a gibe that the reporter was a "quisling" — a World War II reference to someone who collaborates with the enemy.)

When asked for further comment late Tuesday, Berliner declined, saying the essay spoke for itself.

The arguments he raises — and counters — have percolated across U.S. newsrooms in recent years. The #MeToo sexual harassment scandals of 2016 and 2017 forced newsrooms to listen to and heed more junior colleagues. The social justice movement prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 inspired a reckoning in many places. Newsroom leaders often appeared to stand on shaky ground.

Leaders at many newsrooms, including top editors at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times , lost their jobs. Legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron wrote in his memoir that he feared his bonds with the staff were "frayed beyond repair," especially over the degree of self-expression his journalists expected to exert on social media, before he decided to step down in early 2021.

Since then, Baron and others — including leaders of some of these newsrooms — have suggested that the pendulum has swung too far.

Author Interviews

Legendary editor marty baron describes his 'collision of power' with trump and bezos.

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger warned last year against journalists embracing a stance of what he calls "one-side-ism": "where journalists are demonstrating that they're on the side of the righteous."

"I really think that that can create blind spots and echo chambers," he said.

Internal arguments at The Times over the strength of its reporting on accusations that Hamas engaged in sexual assaults as part of a strategy for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel erupted publicly . The paper conducted an investigation to determine the source of a leak over a planned episode of the paper's podcast The Daily on the subject, which months later has not been released. The newsroom guild accused the paper of "targeted interrogation" of journalists of Middle Eastern descent.

Heated pushback in NPR's newsroom

Given Berliner's account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication. Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR's approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.

Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.

Alfonso also took issue with Berliner's concern over the focus on diversity at NPR.

"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

After this story was first published, Berliner contested Alfonso's characterization, saying his criticism of NPR is about the lack of diversity of viewpoints, not its diversity itself.

"I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals," Berliner said. "That's wrong."

Questions of diversity

Under former CEO John Lansing, NPR made increasing diversity, both of its staff and its audience, its "North Star" mission. Berliner says in the essay that NPR failed to consider broader diversity of viewpoint, noting, "In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans."

Berliner cited audience estimates that suggested a concurrent falloff in listening by Republicans. (The number of people listening to NPR broadcasts and terrestrial radio broadly has declined since the start of the pandemic.)

Former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin tweeted , "I know Uri. He's not wrong."

Others questioned Berliner's logic. "This probably gets causality somewhat backward," tweeted Semafor Washington editor Jordan Weissmann . "I'd guess that a lot of NPR listeners who voted for [Mitt] Romney have changed how they identify politically."

Similarly, Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton suggested the rise of Trump alienated many NPR-appreciating Republicans from the GOP.

In recent years, NPR has greatly enhanced the percentage of people of color in its workforce and its executive ranks. Four out of 10 staffers are people of color; nearly half of NPR's leadership team identifies as Black, Asian or Latino.

"The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?" Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner's piece. "I'd welcome the argument against that."

"On radio, we were really lagging in our representation of an audience that makes us look like what America looks like today," Lansing says. The U.S. looks and sounds a lot different than it did in 1971, when NPR's first show was broadcast, Lansing says.

A network spokesperson says new NPR CEO Katherine Maher supports Chapin and her response to Berliner's critique.

The spokesperson says that Maher "believes that it's a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

Jimmy Carter’s Colombia Blacklist Revealed

First Lady Rosalynn Carter meets with President Alfonso López Michelsen of Colombia, June 10, 1977. Mrs. Carter was the first in a series of presidential emissaries to deliver a tough message to López on drug corruption in the Colombian government. (U.S. National Archives)

National Security Archive Publishes “Ultra Secret” 1977 Narco Dossier for First Time

“Unprecedented” Intelligence Briefing for Colombian President Detailed Corruption Among Top Officials

Carter to Staff: “Do not send helicopters - Give me CIA info”

Washington, D.C., April 15, 2024 – A highly sensitive blacklist of allegedly corrupt Colombian officials assembled by the U.S. government and presented to Colombian President Alfonso López Michelsen in July 1977 as a way of gaining leverage over Colombian drug policy is the focus of a new Electronic Briefing Book published today by the National Security Archive. Located among records from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the full text of the secret intelligence dossier, including the names of some three dozen officials believed to have ties to the drug trade, is published here today for the first time.

James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, who will be one hundred years old in October, is known around the world as the president who negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel, reached a major arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, signed the Panama Canal treaty, faced daunting foreign policy challenges in Iran and Afghanistan, and who has engaged in numerous acts of charity and goodwill in the 43 years since he left office. Less well known is President Carter’s personal involvement—and that of his wife, First Lady Rosalynn Carter—in for the first time focusing U.S. policy toward Colombia on narcotrafficking and its corrupting influence among government officials, an issue that would come to define the relationship.

The episode culminated in Carter’s authorization of what the CIA called an “unprecedented” briefing for President López in which he was presented with a dossier of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement information that linked “ministerial and judicial officials, military and law enforcement personnel, and other high-level figures” to the drug trade.

Key officials named in the document include the defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, the minister of labor, Óscar Montoya Montoya, and Col. Humberto Cardona Orozco, then the head of INDUMIL, a military weapons manufacturer run by the Colombian government (See Document 29 ). The most serious allegations—those against Varón, Montoya and presidential candidate Julio César Turbay, who became president later that year—were revealed in an April 1978 broadcast of the CBS television show 60 Minutes , which had obtained a copy of a June 1977 White House memo sent to President Carter by Peter Bourne, his chief narcotics adviser. Bourne had urged Carter to hold up the sale of three military helicopters to Colombia and attached a one-page summary of Colombian officials believed to be involved in cocaine trafficking, which was the focus of the 60 Minutes report. (See Document 11 ).

While a number of key documents from the episode have been declassified previously, including in the State Department’s 2018 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volume , today’s posting features several top-level documents from the Carter White House that have never before been published, including frank policy recommendations from key advisers. Some of the memos bear President Carter’s own handwritten annotations advocating for tougher drug policies and a more confrontational approach on corruption. These include the extraordinary decision to assemble and deliver an intelligence briefing to the Colombian president. [1]

Some of these records were part of the Remote Archives Capture (RAC) program at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. The RAC was a security review activity dating back to 1995 during which the CIA, National Archives, and other U.S. agencies scanned hundreds of thousands of records from Presidential Libraries for sensitive material and, in many cases, provided declassified copies. The Carter RAC files were later obtained in bulk by the National Security Archive when the Carter Library made a large tranche available in digital form.

More than 2,500 additional high-level memos from the Carter White House, mined from the RAC collection, are now available in U.S. Foreign Policy in the Carter Years, 1977-1981: Highest-Level Memos to the President , the most recent collection added to the Digital National Security Archive series from ProQuest, part of Clarivate.

Highlights from today’s posting include:

• The full text of the long-secret intelligence dossier delivered to President López by three top U.S. officials on July 21, 1977. ( Document 29 )
• President Carter’s handwritten annotation on White House drug adviser Bourne’s memo recommending linking the delivery of promised military helicopters to corruption: “Do not send helicopters - Give me CIA info.” ( Document 13 )
• White House drug adviser Peter Bourne’s briefing memo for Rosalynn Carter’s meeting with the Colombian president, including a one-page summary of “Colombian Officials Allegedly Profiting from Cocaine Traffic” that months later would be leaked to members of the international news media. ( Document 11 )
• A State Department memo citing the “possible narcotrafficking activities” of Alfonso López Caballero, the son of President López, who went on to have a long career as a diplomat and policymaker and to hold top positions in a number of Colombian presidential administrations, serving most recently as ambassador to Russia from 2016-2022. ( Document 35 )
• A memo from NSC Latin America specialist Robert Pastor indicating that “the President was so much stronger” than his staff on the Colombian corruption issue and was the person who most wanted to include the names of corrupt Colombian government Cabinet officials in his letter to López. Carter himself said “that it was curious that he should be bolder than his advisors,” according to Pastor. ( Document 25 )
• U.S. Embassy speculation that Defense Minister Varón “may decide to be especially helpful and cooperative in [narcotics] matters in order to help disprove the allegations against him” in the narco dossier. ( Document 37 )
• Chargé d’affaires Robert Drexler’s cable complaining that the López government had done the “bare, protocolary minimum in hosting Mrs. Carter’s visit” in June 1977, treating it as a “ladies-only social event.” ( Document 10 )

U.S. concern about high-level drug corruption in Colombia emerged early in the Carter administration, and a key moment occurred in late April 1977 when the President was apprised of intelligence on the rapidly increasing pace of Colombian cocaine smuggling. Carter’s response, according to National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s April 27 memo to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was that the U.S. “should raise this officially and strongly with the Colombian Government.” ( Document 4 )

President Carter’s reaction set off a chain of events that after several months of preparations resulted in what the CIA said was an “unprecedented” high-level intelligence briefing in which the U.S. confronted the Colombian president, Alfonso López Michelsen, with information linking top Colombian officials—including two of his cabinet members, a leading presidential candidate, and ranking members of the security forces—to drug trafficking. ( Document 29 )

Revealed here for the first time, the long-hidden memo is a summary of information acquired by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement sources on narcotics corruption in the Colombian government and seems to address the Colombian president personally. [2] López is told that narcotics traffickers and their operations “are greatly facilitated by the cooperation and protection of influential Colombian officials” and that “further investigation by your Government would most valuable,” especially in cases of “high-level figures.”

The document lists some three dozen Colombian officials thought to have links to the illegal narcotics business, including prominent figures from political, judicial, law enforcement and military circles. The most well known person on the list, Julio César Turbay, who would go on to win the next election and serve as president from 1978-1982, is linked to narcotrafficking through his nephew, Anibal Turbay Bernal, who the report says is linked to narcotics traffickers who believed they would “be able to choose the heads of the Colombian law enforcement agencies should Julio Cesar Turbay become president.”

Top Colombian officials named in the report include two members of López’s cabinet: the Colombian defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, who the report says had “received narcotics and contraband payoffs,” and the minister of labor, Óscar Montoya Montoya, who is said to “have discussed illicit traffic in cocaine and coffee” with a known narcotics trafficker. Another key military official singled out in the report is Col. Humberto Cardona Orozco, then the head of INDUMIL, a military weapons manufacturer run by the Colombian government, a position that “lent itself to narcotics-related corruption,” according to the intelligence briefing. The former police intelligence chief in Cali, Capt. Harold Lozano Jaramillo, is said to be “operating a [cocaine] laboratory in his residence in Cali,” among other charges. The briefing also says that the former chief of the National Police, Gen. Henry García Bohórquez, used “his influence to facilitate the activities of several important Colombian narcotics traffickers.”

While some of the information in the dossier is derived from DEA investigations, other information would have come by way of the CIA, explaining why one of the Agency’s top officials for Latin America, Lawrence "Larry" Laser, participated in the López briefing. In a later interview, Robert Drexler, the Chargé d’affaires who led the U.S. Embassy during much of this period, described an early CIA counternarcotics operation that relied on “a very small number of trusted Colombian law enforcement officials” who the U.S. “could monitor closely” and through which the U.S. “collected intelligence on the contacts between the drug traffickers and high-level Colombian officials.” The intelligence was “horrifying,” Drexler recalled in an oral history interview with the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, “because it detailed the rapid spread of corruption.”

Whatever its exact origin, the alarming intelligence that sparked Carter’s heightened interest in Colombian corruption arrived at a transitional time for the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, amid what Drexler describes as a chaotic Embassy environment and growing diplomatic tensions over the naming of a new U.S. ambassador.

The previous ambassador, Philip Sanchez, who was appointed by President Gerald Ford, left the post on April 5, leaving Drexler in charge of the embassy. Sanchez, a Republican political appointee, was “a disaster” who “did virtually nothing,” according to Drexler. “[W]hile we could not get our act together, the Medellin Cartel did get its own act together.” The budding narcotics syndicate had begun to acquire “sophisticated equipment, planes, telecommunications, money, organization, and made better use of Colombian officials for their purposes than we could for ours,” Drexler recalled of his time working under Sanchez. On top of that, Sanchez had simply assumed that Carter, as the new president, “would keep him on because he was a Latin.” Drexler said that Sanchez “finally had to be ordered out of Bogota” by the State Department. Meanwhile, narcotraffickers grew in strength, numbers, and capabilities. “[A]s we got into 1977, they were well advanced in the cartelization of the supply side, and we were way behind in even recognizing, to say nothing of meeting[,] the problem.”

Carter’s first replacement for Sanchez, José A. Cabranes, a political appointee with personal ties to Secretary of State Vance, was “another slap in the face” to López, who for months refused to issue him credentials, and by the time he finally did so, Cabranes had withdrawn himself from consideration. It was thus left to Drexler, as Chargé d’affaires, to run the U.S. Embassy, as he put it, “for about 10 months in 1977” during “a formative period for the drug cartels.” As the ranking official, Drexler was a participant, notetaker and eyewitness as the Carter administration’s emissaries attempted to gain Colombia’s cooperation in narcotics enforcement by pressuring the Colombian president to clean house. [3]

Carter’s hands-on approach to López during this tumultuous time combined an apparent gesture of goodwill—Carter was sharing highly sensitive information from U.S. narcotics investigations with the Colombian president—with an intimidating show of strength—the U.S. was building law enforcement dossiers on corrupt officials in the López government. The Carter administration made clear that U.S. cooperation on other issues important to Colombia—the delivery of promised military helicopters; a favorable U.S. decision over disputed Caribbean islands—was contingent on the U.S. receiving assurances from López that Colombia was serious about taking on drugs.

Just as unprecedented as the presidential intelligence briefing was the role of First Lady Rosalynn Carter in setting the stage for the President’s confrontational approach to drug corruption in Colombia. The idea of employing Mrs. Carter to deliver a “substantive” message to López during her seven-country tour of Latin America in June 1977 seemed to surprise the Colombians during preparations for her visit, irking Drexler, who, in a cable to Washington, accused the López government of doing the “bare, protocolary minimum” for the First Lady’s planned stop in Bogotá and for treating her visit it as a “ladies-only social event.” ( Document 10 )

In fact, Mrs. Carter’s talks with López covered a wide range of policy issues, including nuclear nonproliferation, the Panama Canal treaty negotiations, U.S. relations with Cuba, and a new U.S. approach to foreign relations, emphasized by President Carter, that for the first time made human rights a factor in national security policymaking. ( Document 15 )

But her most important message to the Colombian president was about the alarmingly widespread nature of drug-related corruption at senior levels of the Colombian government and the need for López to act if he wanted to improve U.S.-Colombia counternarcotics cooperation. Mrs. Carter encouraged López to meet the following month with the head of the White House drug control office, Peter Bourne, and Mathea Falco, the State Department’s senior narcotics official, to discuss the matter further. It’s not clear from the available U.S. records whether Mrs. Carter mentioned—as López later claimed—that the U.S. emissaries would deliver him a dossier on narcotics corruption. The available evidence suggests not. [4] In any case, it is clear that corruption was a central focus of her meeting with the Colombian president, and that she told López to expect a more detailed briefing from the President’s emissaries soon.

Coming in the first few months of the Carter administration, the First Lady’s visit set the stage for a transformative period in U.S.-Colombia relations, as the new U.S. focus on human rights coincided with increasing U.S. pressure for Colombia to crack down on drug trafficking and narcotics-related corruption. But while Colombia’s human rights record at the time looked pretty good compared to some other countries, reports of widespread narcotics-related corruption in Bogotá made it necessary, in Carter’s view, to extract certain commitments from the Colombian president before the security relationship could resume.

At the time, the focus for Colombia was on three military helicopters promised by President Ford but held up by Carter as his administration reviewed the appropriateness of U.S. security commitments around the world. Narcotics had not been an important issue in U.S.-Colombia relations during the Ford administration, though the two countries did reach an initial agreement for the U.S. to provide the helicopters with the expectation that they would help Colombia find and destroy narcotics-related sites.

In a September 1975 meeting with Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, it was President López who brought up the subject of narcotics, lamenting how The New York Times had “blamed us” for the narcotics problem, while admitting that, “because of our situation, we are the center of traffic.” He said that Colombia was a “small country” that had been “invaded by people with and without passports, by planes, boats, etc.” and that were “heavily financed from within the U.S.” Throughout that year, the Times had published a four-part series on the international drug trade with Colombia as a primary focal point. [5]

“We don’t have the materials to fight back,” López said, leading Ford to ask, “How can we help?” The Colombian president did not hesitate: “We could use technology and economic help. We could use helicopters to find where the planes land. We catch them all the time.” Previous anti-narcotics aid had been too little, López said, noting that $900,000 from the U.S. was nothing compared to millions of dollars in bribes handed out by the traffickers. “The drug operators are worldwide,” said López. “You can’t deal with the problem by just dealing with it in the U.S.” ( Document 1 ) The next day, Ford told López that there would be $1.3 million in narcotics aid to Colombia in 1976, which he called “a huge increase,” and that his administration would also “look into the purchase of helicopters if necessary.” ( Document 2 )

Records from the first months of the Carter administration reveal that Carter took an active role in the initial decision to hold up delivery of the helicopters until they were confident that the Colombian government would crack down on corruption. Documents found in the RAC collection indicate that the issue came to a head during the first week of June and that Bourne, in particular, helped push the President to strike a more confrontational posture. Bourne’s June 2 memo to the President on “Cocaine trafficking in Colombia” provided talking points on the matter for the First Lady’s upcoming meeting with President López and pleaded with Carter to use the helicopter issue, “one of the only points of leverage we have,” lamenting that, “Some people at the State Department are willing to just give them the helicopters to avoid conflict.” Attached to Bourne’s memo was a one-page summary of “Colombian Officials Allegedly Profiting from Cocaine Traffic.” In the margins Bourne’s memo, Carter wrote: “Do not send helicopters - Give me CIA info.” ( Document 13 ) Around the same time, on June 3, the President asked the CIA director “if the Columbians [sic] were using the helicopters we gave them to run drugs,” according to a June 10, 1977, memo from Sayre Stevens, the Deputy Director for Intelligence at the CIA. [6] ( Document 16 )

The First Lady thus arrived in Colombia just as the Carter administration’s new tougher approach to Colombia, including a halt in the delivery of promised security assistance, was taking shape, and her trip was seen as a moment to begin a frank dialogue about corruption. In a reporting cable, the U.S. Embassy under Robert Drexler complemented Mrs. Carter’s diplomatic skills, saying that the First Lady “was especially effective in the manner in which she raised with Lopez and [Foreign Minister Indalecio] Lievano, firmly and forcefully, the [U.S. government’s] concern over corruption in the [Colombian government] … while not offending the thin-skinned Lopez’s sensibilities, which could well have caused a curtailment in [the Colombian government’s] cooperation in narcotics interdiction.” Drexler’s comment no doubt reflected his concern, expressed in an oral history, that taking too hard a line with the Colombian government on corruption could have derailed the entire U.S. counternarcotics effort there. ( Document 17 )

Several other documents from the RAC program published here for the first time show that the President continued to be personally involved in Colombia policy decision-making as the Intelligence Community prepared to brief López about narco-corruption in the Colombian government. Peter Bourne’s memo to Carter ahead of a June 20 Cabinet meeting on Colombia said that the group—consisting of officials from the White House Office of Drug Abuse Policy (ODAP), DEA, NSC, CIA and the Department of Justice—should consider what kinds of pressures the U.S. could apply toward Colombia and what “guarantees” the U.S. should “extract from the President of Colombia before releasing helicopters and other support.” Bourne noted that “Colombia has been a particular problem” with respect to “the lack of government effort in controlling narcotics and widespread corruption.” ( Document 18 )

One meeting participant, William Luers, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs (ARA), wrote in a memo that “the discussion centered around corruption: which ministers and high officials are involved and how much does Lopez Michelsen know himself.” Luers’ notes indicate agreement that Carter would send a “not timid” letter to López saying that “the President has knowledge of high level corruption” and warning that “the good name of Colombia” could be “damaged.” The letter, which would be hand-delivered to López during the upcoming visit of Bourne and Falco, would propose “the establishment of a high level joint commission to develop maximum cooperation and exchange intelligence information on trafficking and corruption.” ( Document 20 )

Later that day in his “Evening Report,” NSC Latin America adviser Robert Pastor noted how it had been Carter, at the June 20 Cabinet meeting, who had “asked us [Pastor and Falco] to revise the letter which Peter Bourne will deliver to President Lopez Michelsen on Wednesday.” The President wanted the letter and his emissaries “to make clear to Lopez that the President is aware of the degree of corruption in the Colombian Government and feels that further cooperation between our two governments will depend on whether President Lopez addresses this issue effectively.” According to Pastor, it was Carter who had wanted to name the Colombian defense minister. “[T]he President was so much stronger on this issue than the rest of us,” Pastor wrote in a June 27 memo, “that Mathea [Falco] and I thought we should include it.” According to Pastor, Carter himself thought “that it was curious that he should be bolder than his advisors.” ( Document 19 )

But Brzezinski was concerned that the letter drafted by Pastor and Falco and desired by Carter was too inflammatory, noting, in a June 21 memo to the President, that it made “a very serious accusation … but without any convincing proof.” The National Security Advisor shared his “strong reservations about the desirability of pointing so directly at a minister in President Lopez’s Cabinet,” recommending instead that Carter “state the proposition that we have cause to believe that ‘a number of high officials in the Colombian Government may be benefitting from the drug traffic, and go on to indicate that we are in a position to provide such information.” Brzezinski suggested that Bourne “could then point the finger more directly, and hopefully with greater effect.” ( Document 21 )

Dated June 21, the letter signed by Carter and later delivered to the Colombian president did not mention any Colombian officials by name, instead referring to “information which has come to my attention indicating that a number of high officials in the Colombian Government, and several important political figures, may be benefitting directly or indirectly from the illicit drug traffic” and offering him “a complete briefing” on the matter.

During their subsequent trip to Colombia, presidential envoys Bourne and Falco delivered the toned-down version of Carter’s letter to López (which he “immediately opened and read”) and told him that “President Carter has a list” of high-level Colombian officials involved in trafficking and “would be happy to arrange a private briefing” for López by “representatives of the Intelligence Community in Washington.” ( Document 22 )

Accepting the offer, the Colombian president, who was well aware of the Carter administration’s new emphasis on international human rights, seemed to draw a distinction between Colombia and the military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina that were increasingly at odds with the Carter administration over its new emphasis on morality and justice in foreign policymaking. López explained that “if Colombia were a military dictatorship, action could be faster, but Colombia cannot move as easily as a country where there is no rule of law.” Interestingly, in his report to President Carter on the meeting, Bourne observed that the Colombian president “made no move to demand large amounts of money, as we thought he might” but it is not clear what sort of request they were expecting from López.

In any case, the Carter administration was pleased enough with the the outcome of the Bourne/Falco visit to approve delivery of the long-pending U.S. helicopters and several other items that had been held up while Carter sought the Colombian president’s assurances on narcotics corruption. [7] Some of these appear to be related to intelligence, including discussions of a “regional communications project” that got underway shortly after the Bourne/Falco visit, and the idea to include in the briefing for López additional intelligence on opium cultivations. The latter, according to Drexler, was “in the spirit of Bourne/Falco offers of intelligence sharing, would enlist necessary support at highest level for effective enforcement action,” and would prepare the way “for necessary political and bureaucratic decisions for cooperative development of further intelligence and for eradication efforts.” (Documents 24 , 26 and 27 )

The intelligence briefing was given to López on July 21 in Bogotá by Bourne, Bensinger, and Lawrence “Larry” Laser of the CIA. Bensinger told the Colombian president “there is no question that traffickers are helped and protected by some influential GOC officials,” adding that the U.S. government “wanted to share with President Lopez information which we had developed on such corruption, knowing that his sincere interest in attacking [the] narcotics problem will lead him to make further investigations of his own into these matters.” Bensinger then handed the Colombian president “information on about thirty cases which exemplified narcotics-related corruption involving ministerial and judicial officials, military and law enforcement personnel and high-level figures,” according to the Embassy’s cable on the meeting. (Documents 29 and 31 )

Bourne’s memo to Carter on the López briefing said the Colombian president “did not flinch at any of the information” they gave him but that he pushed back on allegations against the defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, who, as Bourne noted, “was the one person on the list he could not move against directly.” Regarding the “F-2” police intelligence directorate, the subject of various corruption allegations in the briefing, López called it “a nest of criminals” and promised “to move aggressively against these people.” Bourne characterized López as “a tired embattled old man depressed by his failure to accomplish more than 20 per cent of his administrations [sic] original program, who is not particularly popular with the people, and who was badly stung by accusations that his sons were involved in illicit financial transactions.” [8] López “had planned to drift through his remaining year in office,” according to Bourne, who credited Carter with reenergizing the Colombian president. “[T]he interest you and Rosalynn have taken in him has lighted a fire under him and given him the energy, clear goals and inspiration to try to redeem himself in the time he has left,” he said, adding, “We have also placed in his hands some powerful weapons.” ( Document 32 )

The news media and U.S. lawmakers continued to spotlight Colombia’s growing role in the international drug trade throughout 1977, and early the next year, first Le Monde and later 60 Minutes published stories in which they revealed the identities of several people named in the list that had been given to López, including presidential candidate Turbay and defense minister Varón. The leak prompted an exchange of letters between the U.S. Embassy and the two officials and considerable embarrassment for all involved. 60 MInutes correspondent Harry Moses said the episode “may turn out to be the Carter administration's biggest diplomatic blunder in Latin America,” and at least some of Turbay’s supporters thought the revelations may have actually boosted their candidate’s chances in the upcoming election. By then, the U.S., with a new ambassador finally in place, had eased the pressure on Colombia, hoping to start fresh with Turbay, whose victory, by that point, seemed certain. (Documents 37-42)

For his part, Drexler said he had come to regret being among those who had tried to tone down the Carter administration’s tougher approach to Colombia and corruption, fearing that a confrontation on the issue would jeopardize what progress they had made in focusing Colombia on the narcotics problem. Referring to Rosalynn Carter’s visit, Drexler said he had “pleaded with her to not follow her husband’s instructions “to take a very hard line with Colombia” and felt that, in the end, he had successfully persuaded the First Lady to downplay the issue: “She met with the President, she touched on the subject of corruption lightly, and went on with confirming that the helicopters would come, as they did.”

“Later I regretted this,” Drexler continued, “and I think I made a mistake, that they were right all along in Washington, that they should have drawn the line then, that it would have been better to have a confrontation with Lopez at that point.” After receiving the helicopters, Drexler said he “was immediately invited on a joy ride with the Colombian Military high command, who it was clear to me thought that they were getting some marvelous new toys, and that they were likely going to divert these helicopters to their own pursuits, rather than have them used for drug interdiction.”

The Documents

Gerald Ford Library

President Gerald Ford begins his 1975 Oval Office meeting with President Alfonso López Michelsen of Colombia by noting that, “We have already agreed that we have no problems.” President López agrees that the two countries “have no problem at all.” Almost before they are seated, the two leaders have neatly captured the state of U.S.-Colombia relations in the mid-1970s. For years the U.S. had poured money into Colombia, much of which was managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) mission, which, in addition to development projects, ran a wide-ranging “public safety” program that reorganized and revamped Colombian police and intelligence forces. “[W]ith your AID we have decided that we don’t need your help any more [sic],” López says. “You can use the funds for needy countries.” Ford replies, “We readily appreciate your cooperation,” citing “experiences where countries having no obvious need keep on asking” for aid.

After a brief discussion, it is López who raises the issue of narcotics in Colombia, which had been the subject of several articles that year in The New York Times , with reports of widespread corruption damaging Colombia’s reputation as a democratic haven in Latin America. “It is a worldwide problem,” he says, “but because of our situation, we are the center of traffic.” Colombia is a “small country,” López says, that had been “invaded by people with and without passports, by planes, boats, etc., heavily financed from within the U.S. We don’t have the materials to fight back.” Ford asks: “How can we help?” López asks for “technology and economic help.” Helicopters would be especially useful, he says, to “find where the planes land.”

When Kissinger says the U.S. had given them “$900,000 for that,” López compares that to some $250 million in bribes that the narcotraffickers had handed out: “It is too little.” Kissinger says that he had asked Brent Scowcroft “to look into the possibility of helicopters.” Ford asks: “Are helicopters the best way?” López replies: “Yes, to locate airfields and boats.”

On September 26, Ford and Kissinger meet with Colombian President López in the Oval Office for the second time in two days. Returning to a topic from the previous meeting, Ford says he “had a check made on the narcotics,” telling López they would appropriate $1.3 million for the coming year, which he says “is a huge increase” that “gives us an opportunity to charter boats and aircraft.” The President adds that his administration would “look into the purchase of helicopters if necessary.”

CIA CREST database

A CIA memo encloses notes and 8x10 slides for use in briefing Rosalynn Carter on the mission and functions of the CIA and the broader U.S. Intelligence Community, reflecting the First Lady’s keen interest in foreign affairs. The fascinating briefing notes show the extent to which the Agency tried to reassure Mrs. Carter about its mission and operations in the wake of major disclosures about CIA involvement in assassination plots and other illegal acts.

Jimmy Carter Library through the Remote Archives Capture (RAC) program

Brzezinski informs Vance that President Carter had “noted a recent intelligence item” about Colombian cocaine exports, adding that, “the President stated that we should raise this officially and strongly with the Colombian Government.” Carter also wanted the head of the White House Office on Drug Abuse Policy, Peter Bourne, who is copied on Brzezinski’s memo, involved in the issue.

Director of Central Intelligence Adm. Stansfield Turner, the head of the CIA, tells his deputy to “stay in touch with” First Lady Rosalynn Carter’s staff “so we can provide her adequate support” during her trip to Central and South America.

The Deputy Secretary of State tells President Carter that the State Department is “taking action on the disturbing reports that official corruption in Colombia is contributing to traffic in cocaine.” Christopher describes a series of steps, beginning with an approach by Terence Todman, the new Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, on May 9. Todman’s meeting would be followed by the visit of Vance’s narcotics adviser, Mathea Falco, after which the Embassy would propose “specific actions [Colombian President] Lopez can take to deal with the problem.” Until then, the Department would “hold up delivery of three helicopters scheduled for shipment to Colombia under our narcotics program.” In the margin, Carter’s handwritten annotation reads: “ok”.

An undated three-page memo, apparently produced by the DEA in the first few months of 1977, reports awareness of “several levels of corruption in Colombia fed by tradition, socioeconomic pressures and the availability of large amounts of cash.” Corruption is found among “high level” political officials, “all agencies of law enforcement at all levels,” and in the judicial system. Most of the political allegations “converge on one figure in particular,” Julio César Turbay, a leading Liberal Party figure who would be elected president in 1978. Although this document includes significantly fewer names than the July 15, 1977, blacklist, several members of the security forces, including Capt. Harold Lozano Jaramillo, the police intelligence chief in Cali, customs agents, members of the DAS intelligence group, Colombian naval officers, judicial officials, and others.

U.S. National Archives - Access to Archival Databases

“A decision has been made to hold up, at least temporarily, delivery of the helicopters pending demarche on the high level corruption issue,” according to this cable from the State Department to the U.S. Embassy in Colombia. The issue is to be discussed during the upcoming visit to Colombia of State Department narcotics official Mathea Falco.

Jimmy Carter Library

In his “Monthly Narcotic Report” to President Carter, Bourne says that his office is “devoting considerable time and effort to formulating an appropriate strategy for dealing with Colombian cocaine traffic and the pervasive government corruption,” adding that he would like to “discuss this issue with Rosalynn before she leaves” on her trip to Latin America.

Document 10

Regarding difficulties it has had in making arrangements for Rosalynn Carter to meet with Colombian President López, the Embassy says that, “frankly, we were not prepared for Lopez’ decision to do no more that [sic] bare, protocolary minimum in hosting Mrs. Carter’s visit. Moreover, the ladies-only social event, like [the] decision to have Mrs. Lopez go to the airport, apparently reflects president’s idea that this visit is to be treated outwardly at least as a wives’ affair, despite our emphasis on its substantive purpose.”

On the corruption issue, Drexler says that, “Added care … should be taken in handling the narcotics/corruption issue, if it has to be raised. And I think it would be better not to raise it now.”

Document 11

Attached to White House drug policy director Peter Bourne’s memo about priorities for Rosalynn Carter’s visit to Colombia is a highly redacted copy of a document titled “Colombian Officials Allegedly Profiting from Cocaine Trade.” Unredacted names on the list include the leading presidential candidate at the time, Julio César Turbáy (“cocaine traffic involvement”); the National Police commander in Magdalena Department (“Colonel Salazar”), who is said to own a marijuana plantation; and Capt. Harold Lozano Jaramillo, the commander of National Police forces in Cali, who is said to run a cocaine lab.

Following up on the matter discussed in his May 14 “Monthly Narcotic Report #3,” Bourne lists four things that First Lady Rosalynn Carter should stress in her upcoming meeting with President López: 1) that the President and the First Lady were “seriously concerned about drug abuse,” 2) that Colombia has a serious problem with narcotics-related corruption, 3) that the U.S. wanted “a closer collaborative relationship” with Colombia, including high-level discussions; and 4) that helicopters promised to Colombia would not be delivered until Colombia makes a credible commitment to attacking the drug trade. Bourne writes that, “Even with commitment I doubt drug crop substitution programs will work because cocaine will grow easily almost anywhere in these countries.”

Document 12

Noting the continuing delay in delivery of three helicopters promised to Colombia by the previous administration, Vance reminds the President that the holdup “was occasioned by recent intelligence reports indicating that Colombian government officials are extensively involved in cocaine trafficking and that corruption is proving a serious obstacle in the narcotics interdiction effort in that country.” Vance recommends, and Carter agrees (see his handwritten annotation), “to withhold deliver of the helicopters” pending the outcome of an upcoming visit by White House drug chief Peter Bourne and State Department narcotics adviser Mathea Falco.

Document 13

Jimmy Carter Presidential Library

Attached to this memo is President Carter’s annotated reaction to Bourne’s June 2 memo recommending that Carter link the delivery of promised military helicopters to “highly specific commitments” by President López, “including vigorous moves against those in government who are known to be involved in the trafficking.” In the margins of Bourne’s memo, Carter has written:

To: Cy [Vance] Stan [Turner] Do not send helicopters - Give me CIA info. J.C.

Document 14

The State Department acknowledges “the President’s reaction to Dr. Peter Bourne’s memorandum and his decision not to deliver the helicopters promised Colombia under our international narcotics program.” Secretary Vance has “reconfirmed the decision he made on May 3 to withhold delivery pending the outcome of a visit to Colombia by Dr. Bourne and Ms. Mathea Falco” in June.

Document 15

U.S. National Archives - Access to Archival Databases; another copy of this cable was released in Foreign Relations of the United States , 1977-1980, Volume XXIV, South America (2018), Document 240.

The First Lady’s talks with Colombian President López cover a wide range of policy issues, including nuclear nonproliferation, Panama Canal treaty negotiations, U.S. relations with Cuba, and the new U.S. approach to foreign relations that emphasized respect for human rights. López told Carter that the U.S. should not “act as a ‘protector’ of human rights” in Latin America, since this was something under the purview of the OAS and UN. Speaking of efforts by Southern Cone military governments “to form a bloc countering US efforts on behalf of human rights,” López assured Carter that “Colombia had not been welcome as a participant.”

Regarding narcotics, López told the First Lady “that there were few things that had disappointed him as much as his experience with the [U.S. government] with regard to narcotics control. He said the question was whether Colombia was corrupting the US or vice versa,” and complained that the U.S. had delayed for three years the delivery of three helicopters promised by President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Carter told López that “it was impossible to confine responsibility in such a matter to one country” and “went on to observe that the narcotics trafficking had had a corrupting influence on the [Colombian government].” The Colombian president and his foreign minister, Indalecio Liévano, “entirely agreed with Mrs. Carter,” but said that Colombia “does not have the resources to fight back against the traffickers and that the promises [U.S. government] help had never come.” Carter again emphasized “that corruption was limiting the effectiveness of Colombian enforcement action” and encouraged López to meet and discuss the matter with Peter Bourne, head of the White House Office on Drug Abuse Policy, and Mathea Falco, the State Department’s top narcotics official, during their upcoming visit to Colombia.

Document 16

In response to a query, the Deputy Director for Intelligence, Sayre Stevens, reports to the Director of Central Intelligence that the CIA had “no intelligence information suggesting that Colombian helicopters are, or ever have been, involved in narcotics smuggling” and that “US AID Mission advisors” had found “no evidence of any misuse by Colombia of AID funds and commodities.”

Document 17

U.S. U.S. National Archives - Access to Archival Databases

First Lady Rosalynn Carter raised “a number of substantive issues of high priority to the US” in her meeting with Colombian President López, according to this cable from the U.S. Embassy. Although the Colombians had initially “tended to downgrade the importance of the visit,” this “tendency was gradually overcome as reports arrive of Mrs. Carter’s high-level reception at previous stops” on her tour of Latina America. “Mrs. Carter bore down most heavily on the [U.S. government’s] concern over drug abuse in the US, its corrupting influence in the [Colombian government], and in particular, that corruption’s impact on the effectiveness of the [Colombian government’s] enforcement program.” Agreeing with the First Lady, López said that Colombia needed “more and better equipment” that had been promised but never delivered by the previous U.S. administration and which was now being held up by Carter.

“She was especially effective in the manner in which she raised with Lopez and Lievano, firmly and forcefully, the [U.S. government’s] concern over corruption in the [Colombian government] with regard to Colombian narcotics enforcement action, while not offending the thin-skinned Lopez’s sensibilities, which could well have caused a curtailment in [Colombian government’s] cooperation in narcotics interdiction with USG agencies.”

Document 18

This briefing memo for President Carter comes ahead of a Cabinet meeting on “the narcotics environment in Colombia” and “ways to improve” Colombian counternarcotics efforts. Noting that “Colombia has been a particular problem” in term of “the lack of government effort in controlling narcotics and widespread corruption,” Bourne suggests the group consider what kinds of pressures the U.S. could apply toward Colombia and determine what “guarantees” the U.S. should “extract from the President of Colombia before releasing helicopters and other support.”

Interestingly, Bourne mentions how U.S. “efforts in Colombia have been hampered by an ongoing conflict between CIA and DEA over the collection of intelligence data”—a conflict that would not soon be resolved.

Document 19

Pastor writes: “The President asked us [Pastor and Falco] to revise the letter which Peter Bourne will deliver to President Lopez Michelsen on Wednesday, to make clear to Lopez that the President is aware of the degree of corruption in the Colombian Government and feels that further cooperation between our two governments will depend on whether President Lopez addresses this issue effectively.”

Document 20

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Luers provides a summary of a White House meeting focused on narcotics-related corruption in Colombia and the U.S. approach to Colombian President López. “Much of the discussion centered around corruption: which ministers and high officials are involved and how much does Lopez Michelsen know himself.” It was decided that President Carter would send a “not timid” letter to López telling him that “the President has knowledge of high level corruption,” warning “about the prospect of the good name of Colombia being damaged,” and proposing “the establishment of a high level joint commission to develop maximum cooperation and exchange intelligence information on trafficking and corruption.” The letter would be hand-delivered to López during the upcoming visit of Bourne and Falco.

Document 21

Carter’s letter to the Colombian president, which was hand delivered to López by Bourne and Falco during their June 24 meeting in Bogotá, says that his administration had decided to make “international drug abuse control a high priority.” Carter asks the Colombian president for information on “the involvement of United States citizens in the drug traffic” and says he wanted to provide López with “some information which has come to my attention indicating that a number of high officials in the Colombian government, and several important political figures, may be benefitting directly or indirectly from the illicit drug traffic.” Carter offers López “a complete briefing” on the matter. Carter says he is “concerned that future cooperation between our two countries will be jeopardized” by the corruption problem and proposes a “joint commission” to “share information” on “the illicit drug traffic.”

Attached here is a revealing June 21 memo to Carter from Brzezinski, who tells the President he has “strong reservations about the desirability of pointing so directly [in the draft letter] at a minister in President Lopez’s cabinet,” presumably referring to the minister of defense. Noting “the question of the reliability of our information” and also “Latin American sensitivity to U.S. interference,” Brzezinski thinks Carter’s letter should simply refer to “a number of high officials in the Colombian Government” who “may be benefitting” from the drug trade and say that the U.S. was prepared to provide López with the details in a follow-up “briefing” by top officials.

Document 22

The memcon from Bourne and Falco’s meeting with President López follows an initial summary provided the previous day and that is published in FRUS. This more-detailed readout of the meeting indicates that the lead item on the agenda was the delivery of President Carter’s letter on high-level narcotics corruption in Colombia, “which Lopez immediately opened and read.” López lamented that previous “constructive ideas in the narcotics field” had “come to nothing,” and that the U.S. continued to delay the delivery of long-promised helicopters. López also noted Carter’s new policy on human rights, saying, according to the memcon, “if Colombia were a military dictatorship, action could be faster, but Colombia cannot move as easily as a country where there is no rule of law.” After discussing other matters, Bourne “called attention to the involvement of persons at high levels in the [Colombian government] in trafficking,” adding that “President Carter has a list of such individuals and he would be happy to arrange a private briefing” for López by “representatives of the Intelligence Community in Washington.”

Document 23

In a memo to President Carter, with copies to First Lady Rosalynn Carter and National Security Adviser Brzezinski, the director of the White House Office on Drug Abuse Policy, Peter Bourne, credits First Lady Rosalynn Carter with laying “the ground work” for an “extremely successful” recent meeting with Colombian President López. “He immediately read your letter,” said Bourne, and “responded very favorable to it.” The Colombian president agreed to a number of bilateral steps to deepen anti-narcotics cooperation and, “most importantly he suggested that he would assign a narcotic liaison officer to their embassy here in Washington to work exclusively on the drug issue.”

Bourne also relayed Carter’s “concern over corruption,” telling López that Carter was “aware of information on many people in high positions in Colombia benefitting from the drug traffic.” López “immediately accepted” Carter’s “offer to provide him a confidential briefing” on the matter. Bourne told the President he was arranging for DEA Administrator Peter Bensinger and CIA deputy director E. Harold Knoche (“Hank Knocke”), who had served as acting CIA director during the first two months of the Carter administration, to take the lead on the corruption briefing for López and that they would provide “specific names.” Interestingly, Bourne reported that the Colombian president “made no move to demand large amounts of money, as we thought he might.”

Document 24

Not long after the “positive outcome” of the Bourne/Falco visit with President López, the State Department in this message approves the visit of another U.S. official to discuss the “regional communications project.”

Document 25

A comment included at the bottom of this memo to Brzezinski from NSC Latin America staffer Robert Pastor sheds some light on how Carter’s letter to López was crafted, revealing that it was Carter himself who favored a tougher, more confrontational approach with the Colombian president. At the bottom of a memo that is mostly about Chile, Pastor tells Brzezinski about something he overheard at the State Department. Upon reading a draft of the proposed Carter letter to López on narco-corruption, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs William Luers had said “I don’t think we should mention the Minister of National Defense,” referring to intelligence linking the Colombian defense minister to narcotrafficking, “but that seems to have been the President’s wishes [sic].” Indeed, Pastor tells Brzezinski that “the President was so much stronger on this issue than the rest of us … that Mathea and I thought we should include it, and if he had second thoughts, it would be easier for him to delete it than to rewrite it in order to add it.” Carter himself had said “that it was curious that he should be bolder than his advisors,” according to Pastor. Brzezinski seems to have been unaware that the defense minister’s name would be included in the draft, since Pastor adds, “If you had called me to ask, I would have be glad to tell you … [B]ut it was finished at 10:00 p.m., and you were gone.”

Document 26

After a briefing from Bourne on the “successful outcome” of their meeting with President López, “The President has authorized the delivery” of long-awaited helicopters to Colombia.

Document 27

The U.S. Embassy, under Chargé d’affaires Robert W. Drexler, recommends that the U.S. also provide President López U.S. intelligence related to “opium cultivation” during the upcoming intelligence briefing on official corruption to help push “for elimination of opium cultivation in Colombia.” This would be done “in the spirit of Bourne/Falco offers of intelligence sharing and would enlist necessary support at highest level for effective enforcement action.” The Embassy “strongly recommends that forceful presentation be made directly to President Lopez” on Colombian opium production to set the stage “for necessary political and bureaucratic decisions for cooperative development of further intelligence and for eradication efforts.”

Document 28

Bourne’s Monthly Narcotic Report to President Carter says, “We are scheduled to provide the promised briefing to President Lopez-Michelsen in Bogota on July 21, 1977. It will be conducted by Peter Bensinger of DEA, a representative of the Central Intelligence Agency under State Department cover and myself.” “The material to be presented has been prepared with exceptional care,” Bourne indicates in the memo, adding that, “consistent with your instructions we will carefully qualify the information we provide making it particularly clear the degree of certainly we attach to it.” Evidence shared with the Colombian president would also include “photos of opium poppies” growing in Colombia, as suggested in the Embassy’s July 6 cable. Bourne also says they will recommend that López “set up, with our help, an Internal Security Division to further investigate corruption.”

Document 29

This untitled report, found among the RAC documents at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, appears to be the text of the intelligence briefing on official corruption in Colombia that was delivered to President López during his July 21 meeting in Bogotá with DEA head Peter Bensinger, White House drug policy chief Peter Bourne, and Lawrence “Larry” Laser of the CIA. While some of the more prominent allegations in the briefing would come to light in a 1978 broadcast of 60 Minutes —which had obtained a copy of Peter Bourne’s June 1 memo (see Document 11)—the full López corruption briefing document, as far as this author knows, including the identities of some three dozen allegedly corrupt officials, has never before been published. The text of the López briefing even somehow evaded the finely honed searches of the State Department’s history staff, who reported the list as “not found” in their 2018 volume covering Latin America during the Carter presidency. One reason for this could be that the document was removed as part of the RAC program at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and then later returned.

The memo is a summary of information acquired by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement sources on narcotics corruption in the Colombian government and seems to address the Colombian president personally. [9] Noting President López-Michelsen’s “sincere interest in attacking the narcotics problem,” the Colombian president is told that the “extent of official corruption in Colombia, especially in the law enforcement and judicial sectors, renders effective enforcement and legal action in the narcotics field very difficult.” Narcotics traffickers and their operations “are greatly facilitated by the cooperation and protection of influential Colombian officials,” without which “they would find it very difficult to operate.”

The briefers inform the Colombian president that the information they are sharing is derived from “law enforcement and criminal intelligence activities in the United States as well as those conducted by foreign governments” and “ranges in quality from solid and detailed to somewhat sketchy” and suggest that “further investigation by your Government would most valuable,” especially in cases of “high-level figures.”

The document lists some three dozen Colombian officials thought to have links to the illegal narcotics business, including prominent figures from political, judicial, law enforcement and military circles. The most prominent person on the list, Julio César Turbay, who would go on to win the next election and serve as president from 1978-1982, is linked to narcotrafficking through his nephew, Anibal Turbay Bernal, who the reports says, “belongs to the narcotics network of Jose Manuel Parra Urrea.” The report says that Turbay’s presidential run “is anticipated by Parra’s organization,” which, as a result of its “multi-million peso investment in Anibal Turbay,” believed it would “be able to choose the heads of the Colombian law enforcement agencies should Julio Cesar Turbay become president.”

Top Colombian officials named in the report include two members of López-Michelsen’s cabinet: the Colombian defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, who the report says had “received narcotics and contraband payoffs,” and the minister of labor, Óscar Montoya Montoya, who is said to “have discussed illicit traffic in cocaine and coffee” with a known narcotics trafficker.

Another key military official singled out in the report is Col. Humberto Cardona Orozco, then the head of INDUMIL, a military weapons manufacturer run by the Colombian government. Cardona, the former head of the Uniformed Customs Police had been “removed” from that position “for narcotics-related corruption,” according to the briefing, which said that Cardona “took bribes from many of Colombia’s leading narcotics smugglers with who he was personally acquainted.” The new position at INDUMIL also “lent itself to narcotics-related corruption,” according to the intelligence briefing,

Other Colombian officials included in the report are:

• Harold Lozano Jaramillo, the former police intelligence chief in Cali, who is said to be “operating a [cocaine] laboratory in his residence in Cali and supplying cocaine hydrochloride at night, traveling in uniform and escorted by his F-2 [police intelligence] bodyguards.” Lozano is said to have been involved in protecting another lab near Cali and to have arranged the release of detained narcotraffickers.
• The former chief of the National Police, Gen. Henry Garcia Bohorquez, who used “his influence to facilitate the activities of several important Colombian narcotics traffickers.”
• Another F-2 official, Capt. Marcos A. Bonilla, who “owned a finca in Florencia where a cocaine laboratory was operating,” according to the report.
• Another police F-2 commander, Lt. Jorge Eliecer Arroyave Zapata, who is said to be “one of the biggest traffickers in Tumaco.”
• Fidel Duarte Sotelo, “a Justice Ministry official” and “brother of Hilda Duarte Sotelo de Robayo,” a known narcotrafficker.
• Arcesio Sánchez Ojeda, a member of congress from Nariño Department who went on to serve as senator and later governor of Nariño. Sánchez “was involved in cocaine trafficking with his brother, Lt. Carlos Vicente Sanchez Ojeda,” a Customs Office official in Buenaventura.
• DAS intelligence officials around the country had been “identified as being directly involved in narcotics trafficking or in supplying information to traffickers,” including Samuel Gutierrez, the DAS chief in Nariño.
• Orlando Ceballos Pineda, the city comptroller of Santa Marta.
• Orlando Noguera, brother-in-law of the governor of Magdalena Department.
• Several Colombian officials who are said to have facilitated the release of narcotrafficker Norberto Moreno Carrillo, including Minister of Defense Varón Valencia, Henry García Orozco, a Supreme Court magistrate in Cundinamarca Department, Martín Suarez Sarabia, a senate official, and Gilardo Ospina, a colonel in the National Police.
• A number of judicial officials accused of having taken bribes from narcotraffickers.
• A naval officer behind a purported scheme to smuggle some 48 kilos of cocaine aboard the Colombian naval training vessel Gloria .

Document 30

The CIA says that U.S.-Colombia drug control relations have strengthened “as a result of last month’s meeting between First Lady Rosalynn Carter and President Lopez.” The U.S. has agreed to $3.7 million in security assistance, including the long-awaited helicopters, “to try to curb the flow of cocaine and other drugs to North America.” For his part, Lopez “agreed to a meeting this week with high-level officials from Washington to discuss the sensitive issue of drug-related corruption in his government.”

Document 31

The Embassy cable on López-Michelsen’s meeting with DEA Administrator Bensinger, White House drug chief Bourne, and Lawrence Laser of the CIA, says the Colombian president was “receptive, candid and forthcoming,” pledging to “set up an elite civilian law enforcement unit to cope with crime and corruption, replacing the F-2 (detective) unit of the National Police.” Bensinger told López-Michelsen that narcotics problems “must be solved jointly by producer and user nations” but that “such cooperation is threatened by narcotics-related corruption,” adding, “[T]here is no question that traffickers are helped and protected by some influential GOC officials.” For that reason, Bensinger said, the U.S. government “wanted to share with President Lopez information which we had developed on such corruption, knowing that his sincere interest in attacking [the] narcotics problem will lead him to make further investigations of his own into these matters.” Bensinger handed the Colombian president “information on about thirty cases which exemplified narcotics-related corruption involving ministerial and judicial officials, military and law enforcement personnel and high-level figures.”

For his part, López-Michelsen “acknowledged that the problem was very bad and indicated that his own reports and information general supported the thrust of the briefing,” though he expressed doubts that the allegations about his defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, chalking them up to “attempts by Varon’s enemies to blacken his reputation and standing with the president.” Still, López-Michelsen admitted that, in Colombia, they were essentially “fighting crime with criminals,” singling out the National Police intelligence directorate (F-2), a key focus of the U.S. dossier, as especially corrupt. The F-2 was “directly involved in murders and kidnappings,” according to the Colombian president, sharing with his U.S. interlocutors his plans to disband the unit and fold its functions into the DAS intelligence organization, which responded to the president, not the military, as was the case with the National Police.

Document 32

Peter Bourne’s memo to President Carter on the López-Michelsen briefing says the Colombian president “did not flinch at any of the information we provided” about narcotics-related corruption in Colombia but pushed back on allegations against the defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia. Bourne says he “had the feeling” that López-Michelsen “not only wanted us to know that he knew a great deal more about Varon than we did, but that this was the one person on the list he could not move against directly.” Regarding the F-2 police intelligence directorate, López-Michelsen called it “a nest of criminals.” Bourne tells Carter, “It is clear also that he plans to move aggressively against these people.”

The Colombian president, according to Bourne, “is a tired embattled old man depressed by his failure to accomplish more than 20 per cent of his administrations [sic] original program, who is not particularly popular with the people, and who was badly stung by accusations that his sons were involved in illicit financial transactions.” Bourne says he thinks that López-Michelsen “had planned to drift through his remaining year in office,” but credits Carter with reenergizing the Colombian president. “[T]he interest you and Rosalynn have taken in him has lighted a fire under him and given him the energy, clear goals and inspiration to try to redeem himself in the time he has left,” adding that, “We have also placed in his hands some powerful weapons,” probably referring to the promised military helicopters.

Document 33

In a short letter to President López-Michelsen, Carter says that Bourne has told him of “the considerable progress that we have been able to accomplish together,” since the visit to Colombia of First Lady Rosalynn Carter in June. Carter says that López-Michelsen “can be proud of the aggressive steps” he had taken on dealing with narcotrafficking and expresses a “desire to continue to work closely with you” on narcotics.

Document 34

“President Carter’s offer to provide President Lopez with evidence compiled by US agencies on official corruption in Colombia was unprecedented,” according to this CIA analysis. His meeting in July with a U.S. delegation about the matter was a sign of “steadily improving relations in joint drug control efforts,” according to the report.” For instance, the report notes that, “after hearing information on cases involving ministerial and judicial officials, military and law enforcement personnel, and other high-level figures, Lopez stated that he planned to set up an elite civilian law enforcement unit to cope with crime and corruption in Colombia.” But ultimately the Colombian president’s effectiveness against drugs will be limited by political constraints, according to the report. The same article appeared in the August 6, 1977, edition of the National Intelligence Daily .

Document 35

In a memo to the top State Department narcotics official, State Department assistant legal adviser Louis Fields describes recent U.S. efforts to gain Colombia’s cooperation in the pursuit of Colombians indicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges. Among the items listed are the “possible narcotrafficking activities” of the son of President López-Michelsen, Alfonso López Caballero, who was believed to be working at the United Nations in New York City. Fields says that federal prosecutors were being careful with the case, and that, “No indictment will be sought in EDNY [Eastern District of New York] or further action involving this individual without prior consultation” with key officials in the State Department.

Also listed are “Griselda Blanca”—which is almost certainly a reference to Griselda Blanco, the infamous, Miami-based narcotrafficker—and her husband Alberto Bravo, who are said to be “sources and financiers” of the drug trade.

The memo also references so-called CENTAC cases that stem from the DEA’s Central Tactical investigations program , established in 1973 to mount conspiracy investigations against groups “at the top of the criminal hierarchy.”

Document 36

Having eventually reached a modus vivendi with the lame duck President López-Michelsen, the U.S. was soon faced with the harsh reality that a candidate with widely rumored ties to narcotraffickers, Julio César Turbay Ayala, would become the next Colombian head of state. The analysis from the newly installed U.S. ambassador, Diego Asencio, is both reassuring with respect to Turbay—“he is probably an honest politician operating in a corrupt milieu”—and bleak on the general outlook for Colombia—“It seems more likely … that the social and political milieu of Colombia has developed to a point that it is vitually [sic] impossible to organize a political group that would not contain elements associated with traffickers.” The situation was “not all bad,” according to the Embassy, as “the fact that traffickers have enormous liquidity and are becoming politically active … is scaring any number of traditional politicians.” The U.S. ambassador said he was “inclined to believe that [Turbay] is basically a sound individual, functioning pragmatically in a corrupt milieu.”

Document 37

After the foreign and Colombian press reported on allegations that the U.S. had given López-Michelsen a list of corrupt officials that included Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, the defense minister, the U.S. Embassy’s deputy chief of mission, Robert Drexler, was approached by the prosecutor general of the Colombian armed forces, Vice Admiral Melendez, who said that Varón was “obviously innocent” based on a supposedly strong record against narcotraffickers. According to Melendez, López-Michelsen had told Varón that he had first learned about that allegations about him in a report from a U.S. congressional delegation (“the CODEL Wolff report”), but a subsequent story in Le Monde had indicated that there was another report, presumably the secret report given to López-Michelsen by Bourne and Bensinger in July 1977 (but erroneously assumed by Varón and Melendez to have been delivered earlier by Mrs. Carter). After learning of the second report, “Varon went to see the president again,” according to the cable, and “Lopez acknowledged that the [U.S. government] had given him further information (in addition to the Wolff report)” but told the defense minister that “he did not take [the allegation] seriously and that Varon should not worry about it.”

Melendez suggested that the U.S. might allow López-Michelsen to make the intelligence report public “so that the flimsiness of the charges against Varon would be revealed.” The DCM replied that the “quality and the reliability of the data naturally varied and it had to be held closely to protect innocent people, to safeguard sensitive sources and also to avoid compromising ongoing or future investigations and prosecutions,” but that, ultimately, “It was up to President Lopez himself to decide how to handle any information and reports that we had provided him personally. This particularly applied to their dissemination to other Colombian officials.”

In the “Comment” section, the Embassy notes that Varón is unlikely to let the matter go and further that “Ambassador needs to consult with Varon on several issues,” including “military cooperation in bilateral narcotics control efforts,” adding that, “Varon himself may decide to be especially helpful and cooperative in these matters in order to help disprove the allegations against him.”

Document 38

In an aide-mémoire to the U.S. government, forwarded in this Embassy cable, President López-Michelsen outlines his concerns about revelations in Le Monde and in the Colombian media of the existence of a secret U.S. list of Colombian officials corrupted by the drug trade. Here the Colombian president’s message is being forwarded on to the State Department with copies delivered to Mathea Falco (State Department narcotics adviser), Peter Bensinger (DEA administrator) and Peter Bourne (White House drug adviser).

López-Michelsen opens his message with what appears to be a vague threat. Recalling First Lady Rosalynn Carter’s June 1977 visit, the Colombian president notes that she was the first person to tell him that the U.S. was preparing to share with him a list of Colombian officials linked to narcotrafficking. “It should be noted,” he adds, that Mrs. Carter had also asked him “to accelerate the judicial processes against American citizens involved in such crimes,” including “a person with connections to an influential North American senator, a friend of President Carter.” Citing “limitations proper to the separation of powers,” López-Michelsen implies that there is little he can do to help Carter’s friend.

The rest of the document explains the Colombian president’s concerns about specific allegations in the “ultra secret document” that had been given to him by Carter’s representatives the previous year and in a report issued later by a U.S. congressional delegation. Noting the allegations against Gen. Varón Valencia and the son of presidential candidate Julio César Turbay Ayala, López-Michelsen upbraids the U.S. government for giving “the appearance of truth to gossip picked up in Bogota,” saying that the U.S. “has limited itself to delivering to the government of Colombia possible clues on narcotics traffickers in some cases, and in others, political stories that have circulated for some time and have been collected without any analysis.” Saying that “the good name of Colombia has been compromised by the publication of these reports,” the president ends by noting that “the Communist Party” was “the principal beneficiary of the speed with which such unfounded reports have been leaked”—reports that make it appear that the so-called ‘establishment’ and the government itself is a syndicate of delinquents.”

Document 39

In a cable directed to Bourne, Bensinger, Falco, and others, U.S. Ambassador Diego Asencio evaluates the impact of news stories based on leaked information revealing that the U.S. had given President López-Michelsen a secret list of corrupt Colombian officials. The Colombian president had given Asencio “a personally drafted and closely held aide memoire, which is a species of defense of the GOC’s position in the matter and which he intends to use if further disclosures are forthcoming.” Asencio characterizes the aide-mémoire as “a slipshod document refutable on any number of points and drafted for the sole purpose of creating a political impact.”

Ambassador Asencio nevertheless sees the downside of freezing out the minister of defense, Gen. Varón Valencia, whose name had appeared in the recent news stories. To do so “would risk the current narcotics program which is now beginning to show promise after a sometimes difficult gestation period. The present cooperative framework would probably disappear. We would abandon our objective of building a viable narcotics unit, now with potential to survive presidential elections.” Asencio says that he intends “to meet with the minister of defense privately and encourage him and his agency to become more active participants in the narcotics program as a means of demonstrating his bona fides.”

Document 40

Bourne is concerned about news circulating in Washington that the 60 Minutes television program was planning a story on corruption in Colombia. The story is to be based in part on leaked copy of Bourne’s June 2, 1977, memo to President Carter, which included a one-page summary of some of the more notable names on the longer list that was eventually given to López-Michelsen. Bourne here describes it as “a list of high ranking individuals in Colombia whom we knew to be involved in drug trafficking.” The 60 Minutes story would ultimately air in April 1978.

Bourne is worried about the White House’s handling of classified information, recalling that he had previously raised with Lipshutz “the problem of xeroxed copies of classified memos circulated for comment in the White House ending up in the agencies,” as he thinks happened in this case. Bourne incorrectly assumes, however, that the memo, one copy of which even bears Carter’s handwritten annotation, “was circulated only to the NSC” and not to the President.

Document 41

After leading presidential candidate Julio César Turbay and the defense minister, Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, published letters to and from the U.S. ambassador about charges of drug corruption that had aired the previous day on the 60 Minutes TV program, U.S. Ambassador Diego Ascencio met with his “own kitchen cabinet” of Colombian political operatives who were divided over whether the allegations hurt or helped Turbay’s campaign. Asencio also reports that he spoken with Varón “and berated him mildly for violating the terms of our agreement,” presumably to not react in a way that would upset U.S.-Colombia relations.

Document 42

This cable reproduces an exchange of letters between U.S. Ambassador Diego Ascencio and two individuals named in a recent 60 Minutes television program about narcotics corruption in Colombia: the leading presidential candidate Julio César Turbay and Gen. Abraham Varón Valencia, the minister of defense. Turbay and Varón had made the letters public on April 6, the day after the program aired.

[1] A footnote in the relevant FRUS volume indicates that the text of the intelligence briefing was “not found” in the files reviewed by State Department historians.

[2] At one point, the document reads: “It is for this reason that we want to share with you the following information that we have developed on narcotics-related official corruption in your country, knowing your sincere interest in attacking the narcotics problem will result in an investigation of your own into this matter.”

[3] The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Robert W. Drexler, Interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy , Initial interview date: March 1, 1996, Copyright 1998, ADST.

[4] In a press conference held on a plane en route from Bogotá to Caracas, Venezuela, Mrs. Carter told reporters only that she had “very serious” talks with López about the narcotics problem and that Bourne and Falco would soon be dispatched to Colombia for further discussions about the issue. (See “Drug Traffic, ‘Very Serious,’ Mrs. Carter Tells Colombia,” The Washington Post , June 10, 1977)

[5] See Nicholas Gage, “ Latins Now Leaders Of Hard-Drug Trade ,” The New York Times , April 21, 1975; Nicholas Gage, “ Drug‐Smuggling Logistics Bizarre and Often Fatal ,” The New York Times , April 22, 1975.

[6] Stevens said there was no evidence that any of the 72 U.S.-supplied helicopters, which were in the hands of the Colombian Air Force, had been used to smuggle drugs. (See Document 16)

[7] “ U.S. to Aid Colombia Stop Flow of Drugs ,” The Washington Post , July 8, 1977.

[8] Earlier that year, the Colombian media revived previous allegations about the sons of President López citing evidence that Juan Manuel López Caballero had been involved in possibly illicit real estate transactions.

[9] At one point, the document reads: “It is for this reason that we want to share with you the following information that we have developed on narcotics-related official corruption in your country, knowing your sincere interest in attacking the narcotics problem will result in an investigation of your own into this matter.”

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Japan's security environment at its 'most severe and complex,' policy report says

The security environment around Japan is at its “most severe and complex (point) in the postwar era,” as Tokyo and its allies grapple with multiple challenges from China, North Korea and Russia, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday in its annual diplomatic policy paper .

But some of the strongest words were reserved for China.

“China is attempting to unilaterally change the status quo by force in the East China Sea and South China Sea, including over the Senkaku Islands, and is continuing and strengthening military activities in the area, making the security environment around Japan the most severe and complex in the postwar era,” the report said.

China has repeatedly sent government ships into the waters near the Japanese-administered Senkakus, which are also claimed by Beijing, where they are known as the Diaoyu. It has also clashed with the Philippines in the disputed South China Sea, of which Beijing claims a broad swath as its own territory.

Perhaps most alarming for Japan, however, has been China’s military moves near self-ruled Taiwan in recent years. Those moves have included large-scale military exercises around the island, which China claims as its own and has vowed to unify with the mainland, by force if necessary.

In its report, the ministry emphasized that “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait” is a crucial element of regional security.

But the report also noted that Japan aimed to craft a "mutually beneficial strategic" relationship with China “based on common interests,” making it "constructive and stable" through dialogue. It was the first time in five years that the paper referred to a “mutually beneficial” relationship between the two Asian powers.

That echoed an agreement reached by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last November, when the two leaders met in San Francisco on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

On improving South Korean relations, the paper called the country “an important neighbor” and pledged to “broaden our partnership and cooperation in various fields, and to open up a new era of cooperation.”

“In light of the challenging security environment in the Indo-Pacific, there has never been a time when closer cooperation between the two countries is more needed than now,” it said.

"The ROK is an important neighboring country with which Japan should cooperate in dealing with various issues of the international community," it said, using the acronym for the South's formal name, the Republic of Korea.

Tokyo’s often-fraught relationship with Seoul has improved in recent years, with Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol helping to repair ties that had been sent into a deep freeze over history and trade issues.

But despite the flowery words in the diplomatic paper, thorny issues remain for the relationship, including the Japanese-claimed island of Takeshima, which is also claimed and administered by South Korea, where it is known as Dokdo.

The paper outlined Tokyo’s position on the rocky islands by calling them “Japan's inherent territory in light of historical facts and under international law,” echoing what was said in last year’s report.

The move prompted the South Korean Foreign Ministry to summon a Japanese diplomat on Tuesday, the Yonhap news agency reported , after Seoul said earlier that it "strongly protests" the claim.

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