A Day with the Chess Player

By JOHN MOODY/CALI Pablo Rodriguez Orejuela Tom Quinn

The phone call came at 8 a.m. "Don't eat breakfast," advised Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela. "I'm planning a big lunch for you so we can get to know each other."

Thus began a nine-hour public relations blitz by the man who allegedly serves as a patriarch of the Cali cartel. Rodriguez consented to see reporter Tom Quinn and me -- "the first and only interview I've given in my 52 years" -- in order to clarify what he insists are lies about his involvement in cocaine trafficking. Along the way he tried to raise doubts about the motivations of two enemies -- Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar Gaviria and the U.S. government, which wants him extradited to face numerous counts of drug peddling.

We had first asked for an interview with him last year through a source connected to the Cali drug organization. Finally came the invitation. Also a warning from Rodriguez: "I don't want my family's name damaged. My brother Miguel Angel and I are the only members of our family to be linked to this business."

As befits a fugitive from the law, Rodriguez insisted on stringent security arrangements. After Quinn and I arrived in Cali, we waited until noon the next day for a Rodriguez intermediary to pick us up. "I apologize in advance for the inconvenience I have to cause you," Rodriguez said. "But you understand. It's for my safety as well as yours."

Rodriguez's envoy turned out to be a hefty fellow who spoke passable English in a near whisper. After a meandering 30-minute tour of Cali to ensure that no one was tailing us, we followed a blue Mazda out of town. Trailed by two of Rodriguez's bodyguards on motorcycles, our motorcade entered the grounds of a house set back from the road and guarded by a white thick-gauge steel sliding door.

As we stepped out of the car, a beautiful young woman welcomed us with a broad smile and handshake. Behind her stood a man about 5 ft. 7 in., wearing a faded pink-striped cotton shirt and dark pants. Gilberto Rodriguez's appearance has changed dramatically since the last pictures of him were taken five years ago. His curly jet-black hair has turned a distnguished salt-and- pepper and covers the tops of his ears. He sports a closely cropped < mustache and has gained at least 30 lbs. But the glistening brown eyes were unmistakably those of the "Chess Player," his nickname in the drug world. He wore a gold-and-stainless-steel Cartier tank-style watch, and a hefty gold crucifix dangled around his neck. His hands were small, almost feminine in their softness, and fastidiously manicured.

From greeting to goodbye, Rodriguez acted like a charming host. Enthroning himself behind a built-in Formica desk, he said, "My time is yours. Ask anything you want. I won't be offended."

The house was comfortable but hardly posh. A white-coated butler floated silently into and out of the various rooms where we talked throughout the afternoon and evening, offering water, beer, coffee, soda. As a moonfaced secretary transcribed our formal interview, Rodriguez picked his words carefully, frequently consulting and reciting verbatim from typewritten notes.

For the record, he denied that he was a cocaine trafficker and insisted that he was being persecuted by the U.S. "You think one person, one 'baron,' as you Americans call him, can control all the cocaine being sent from Cali?" he said. "There are kids out there on the streets, 20 or 25 years old, shipping 10 kilos, becoming millionaires. You think one man can control that?"

Rodriguez contended that he lived in mortal fear of Escobar. "Mr. Escobar is sick, a psycho, a lunatic," he said. "He knows he's lost the war against the state. He lives now only to destroy." Their enmity, Rodriguez said, began in 1987 when he refused to help Escobar kidnap Bogota mayoral candidate Andres Pastrana. When Rodriguez declined, Escobar shouted, "Whoever is not with me is against me." Rodriguez blamed Escobar for the August 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento, which ignited the campaign to push the cocaine princes from Colombia. Rodriguez claimed he had warned Galan that his life was in danger. "Galan wouldn't listen to us," he said. "He was too wrapped up in the historic importance of his campaign."

Rodriguez also took credit for tipping off the police last June, when a truck packed with 800 kg of dynamite was disarmed before it could be parked outside the offices of the daily El Tiempo. He knew about it, Rodriguez said, because his people had intercepted a radio-phone call in which Escobar promised a "big, big surprise" for the newspaper.

Rodriguez insisted that Escobar wanted to kill him too. En route to our meeting, he told us, he had changed cars three times. His family celebrates birthdays on the wrong days, and he dares not spend Christmas with his seven grown children lest the target prove too tempting to Escobar. He divides his time among six or seven houses in Cali and maintains round-the-clock security. "God and good intentions aren't enough to shoo away evil," he said. "You've got to have firepower too."

Rodriguez remains in hiding from the Colombian police and army, who until recently would have turned him over to the U.S. The closest he has come to that fate was in 1984 when he and Medellin drug lord Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, who has since turned himself in, were captured in Spain. Both Colombia and the U.S. asked for their extradition. In 1986 the Spanish court, known as Audiencia Nacional, sent both men to Colombia to stand trial, stipulating that they should not be placed in double jeopardy by having to face the same charges in the U.S. Rodriguez was acquitted of drug trafficking despite the testimony of witnesses flown in by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Two days after his trial ended, the U.S. filed new charges against him.

Rummaging through a sloppy heap of papers, Rodriguez showed us a letter from Ochoa dated January 1990 proposing to mediate his dispute with Escobar, as well as his own reply three days later politely declining the offer. When we asked why a self-proclaimed law-abiding businessman maintains contact with an admitted trafficker like Ochoa, he shrugged and said, "We've been through a lot together."

Rodriguez, who has an interest in Cali's powerful America soccer team, is an avid fan of other sports as well, including baseball. He dislikes American football, he said, "because it is too violent for my tastes." His other passion, he said, is poetry, quoting from memory the Colombian Rafael Maya, " 'No one will know the secret of this soft sadness/ As sad as the valley that turns even sadder at dark/ Like the twilight of a tardy season.' "

Well after nightfall, Rodriguez escorted us to the gate and waved goodbye. The same driver returned us to our hotel, talking this time with cheerful animation about his boss: "Gilberto's really a good guy, not a nut case like Escobar. And he treats the people who work for him fairly. He's interested in our welfare. There's only one thing he won't tolerate in his organization."

"What's that?" I asked, already sensing the answer.

"Drugs," said the driver, and bade us good night. &

Q. Tell us about your cocaine empire.

A. Mr. Moody, given the kind of question you're asking, I gather you have this image of Gilberto Rodriguez, chief of a drug cartel. You'll be disappointed. I am not a narco trafficker, let alone the chief of a drug cartel. Neither am I a megalomaniac. Therefore I am not pleased when people try to portray me as an evil, intelligent, powerful man who has an unlimited fortune.

Q. You're saying you are not and have never been involved in trafficking narcotics.

A. That is exactly what I'm saying. The idea that I am a narco trafficker stemmed from DEA reports from the time I was a partner and president of the board of directors of a Panamanian bank ((First Interamericas Bank)). In 1984 the U.S. requested my extradition from Spain. Instead I was extradited to Colombia, where I was tried on the basis of a file submitted by the American government, with evidence it presented, and with witnesses brought from the U.S. to testify against me. I was acquitted first by a judge and then by the superior court of Cali.

Q. How did you manage to get yourself extradited from Spain to Colombia instead of to the U.S.?

A. I'll be honest about this. It might be true that the connections I had then with people from the political and economic sectors were useful. But I think what was most helpful was the excessive pressure the U.S. exerted on the Spanish government. Spanish judges are very respectable people who cannot be easily manipulated, let alone forced to do something.

Q. So what is the Cali cartel?

A. The Cali cartel is a poor invention of General Jaime Ruiz Barrera, or as he was called affectionately, Gato ("the Cat") Ruiz. He was commander of the Fourth Brigade from 1986 to 1988, if I'm not wrong. He chased Mr. Escobar and his partners persistently and yet failed in all his attempts. He didn't succeed in gaining immortality with the Medellin cartel. Thus the Cali cartel was invented, and with it the war over the New York market. Of course this tale about the Cali cartel has been helped along by my differences with Mr. Escobar.

Q. Are you saying you are innocent of everything of which you are accused?

A. Exactly. I think the DEA will never forgive me for the fact that so much money was laundered legally through the First Interamericas Bank of Panama in accordance with Panamanian law.

Q. How much money did your bank launder?

; A. It's been eight or 10 years since the bank was closed. I haven't got a good enough memory to recall the amount.

Q. You mentioned your well-known differences with Pablo Escobar. Tell us about them.

A. ((Laughs.)) Yes, it is true that I have differences with Mr. Escobar. All this started when Mr. Escobar called me and asked me to help him commit violent acts to get the Colombian government to abrogate the 1979 ((extradition)) treaty ((with the U.S.)). Mr. Escobar thinks that one must take justice into one's own hands. I don't agree. He thinks that a criminal can win a war against the state. I think that is absurd. The crimes he has committed in Colombia on the pretext of narco trafficking have been very grave mistakes.

Q. Why is Escobar at war with you, if you're just a law-abiding businessman with no interest in cocaine?

A. Because Mr. Escobar thinks that whoever is not with him is against him.

Q. Why did he think you would be interested in his plan to kidnap people?

A. I have no idea. I only know he was wrong.

Q. Can you walk freely in the streets of Cali?

A. No, I can't. First, because ((the Colombian secret police known as)) DAS, the army and the police have a warrant to arrest me, and I'm sure they'd comply with it the moment they saw me; and second, because if I get caught by the authorities, I'm afraid that Mr. Pablo Escobar would have me killed.

Q. Not much is known about your origins.

A. I was born between the towns of Mariquita and Honda Tolima. My father was a painter and a draftsman, and my mother was a housewife. We were three brothers and three sisters. When I was 15, I started working as a clerk in a drugstore in Cali. By the time I was 20, I was the manager, and at 25, 10 years after entering the business, I quit in order to start my own drugstore.

Q. And what about your own children?

A. I've got seven children. Six of them are professionals, and one is still a student. They all got their degrees at U.S. or European universities; most are now working in our businesses. Two of them are industrial engineers; another engineer has a degree from the university in Tulsa; ((one is)) a public accountant; and finally, there's one who's studying systems engineering. Then I've got a daughter with an M.B.A. and another one who's also a systems engineer.

Q. How do they like having their father routinely referred to as a drug lord?

A. It bothers them, but they've been brave.

Q. Some sources say you were part of a gang of young kidnappers.

A. This is not logical. I was chairman of the board of directors of a bank in Colombia and president of the board of directors of a bank in Panama. I also had the concession for Chrysler Motors for Colombia. In fact, I got that concession thanks to my dealings with Mr. ((Lee)) Iacocca. ((Chuckles.)) Maybe people confused coca with my dealings with Iacocca.

I was the founder and president of the Grupo Radial Colombiano, which ran more than 30 radio stations around the country. Can you explain to me how I could get official blessings for these businesses if I had a criminal past?

Q. There are two possibilities: one, that you were a smart criminal who never got caught, and two, it is always possible to bribe the authorities.

A. ((Smiling.)) A man brought up in a family like mine could never be a good criminal. And the Colombian authorities are not as corrupt as you think. You've never seen a mayor in Colombia being acquitted after being caught buying and consuming cocaine like Washington's mayor ((Marion Barry)) was.

Q. If you respect the Colombian authorities so much, why haven't you turned yourself in?

A. I do respect the Colombian authorities, and I believe in the country's institutions as much as I believe in Colombian justice. And you can be absolutely sure that if Mr. Escobar didn't exist, I would turn myself in. I am not worried about facing justice; I'm worried about my personal security.

Q. Why do you think Americans consume so many drugs, especially cocaine?

A. Because they live in a consumer society where every day means a struggle, where they have to work very hard in order to lead a decent life, and where everyone has to take care of himself without being able to count on anyone else, a friend or the next-door neighbor.

Q. What's the future of the cocaine business?

A. Economics has a natural law: Supply is determined by the demand. When cocaine stops being consumed, when there's no demand for it . . . that will be the end of that business.

Q. Do you think the Medellin cartel is finished?

A. In my opinion the Medellin cartel is not defeated. On the contrary, it's becoming stronger because it's giving up terrorism and going back into business.

Q. Does that mean that the violence is finished?

A. I think we are going through the most crucial time of the cocaine culture. I also think this phenomenon has to be observed from a global perspective. It is true that the American people have been damaged by cocaine. It is also true that producer and refiner countries are experiencing indiscriminate terrorism, hired killings, kidnappings and government corruption, including in the U.S. What is the difference between exporting a pound of coke from a producer country and exporting an AR-15 and its ammunition from the U.S. to murder innocent people in developing countries? Why are countries such as Germany free to export materials used to refine cocaine? Why do countries like Switzerland, Panama and even the U.S. protect money whose origin is dubious?

Q. What do you think personally about cocaine use?

A. I think it is harmful to youth, as well as damaging to the U.S. economy to have so much money drained from it.

Q. Have you ever used cocaine?

A. No, I have never been curious about it.