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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
In "Killing Pablo," Mark Bowden details the 16-month game of cat and mouse that finally took down Medellín cartel founder Pablo Escobar -- with the help of the U.S. government.
May 24, 2001 | Mark Bowden's new book, "Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw," tells the story of Medellín cocaine cartel boss Pablo Escobar, who became one of the richest men on earth and virtually controlled Colombia before he was hunted down and killed in 1993 -- after a dramatic 16-month game of cat and mouse conducted jointly by the Colombian and United States governments.
Bowden's also the author of "Black Hawk Down," an account of the 1993 raid on Mogadishu, Somalia, that resulted in the deaths of 18 American servicemen and more than 500 Somalis. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of a 1999 Salon Book Award.
But "Killing Pablo," Bowden says, "is a much more complicated story than 'Black Hawk Down,' and it takes place over a much longer period. It really begins in 1949 and tells in summary fashion the history of Escobar's rise and fall. 'Black Hawk Down' was written in very spare, direct prose, which I thought was the most appropriate way to write about a battle. 'Killing Pablo' has a lot more exposition. It gets into the action scenes when you get down to the final 16 months. It was a much different challenge than 'Black Hawk Down.'"
A 20-year veteran of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bowden first published much of what became "Killing Pablo" as a series of articles in the Inquirer, and it was also made into a CNN documentary that aired last November. In addition there's an elaborate Web site devoted to the book.
The attention is justified: Bowden combines page-turner prose with exhaustive investigative reporting, to tell a story about amazing characters -- the reserved but ruthless and occasionally charming Escobar; the courageous Colombian colonel, Hugo Martinez, who brought him down; the men of Los Pepes, the notorious anti-Escobar vigilante death squad that Bowden believes was created by the CIA and the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force. Bowden shows how U.S. laws prohibiting the assassination of foreign citizens were skirted, thanks to a cleverly reasoned exception to the law approved by former President Bush.
I spoke with Bowden last Friday, shortly after he'd arrived home following a week of appearances and lectures promoting his new book. As it happened, it was also the day after a car bomb killed seven people and injured 138 in Medellín, Colombia, in what Associated Press reports said "may be related to a spiraling feud between paramilitary militias and a Medellín-based organized crime gang [that] brought back chilling memories of the terror campaigns waged here during the 1980s and early 1990s by the Medellín cocaine cartel and its notorious leader, Pablo Escobar ... Among the top suspects in Thursday's bombing is La Terraza, a feared gang of toughs originally at Escobar's service."
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What was Pablo Escobar like personally?
If you met him, you'd find him very serious and low-key. Maybe a little withdrawn. He was reserved around most people. But if you got to know him, he could be charming; he would warm up. Also, when you first met him, he was very formal and polite -- almost to a fault, the politeness might seem a bit extreme.
Why did he act like that?
For most of his life he was feared, and no one likes to be feared in their social dealings, though you may want certain people to fear you [in other circumstances]. To offset the way people were frightened by him, my impression of him is that he was someone who would have enjoyed putting you at your ease, knowing that you were probably intimidated. He was also self-conscious about his lack of education. That goes with that excessive formality and politeness. He was the sort of person who would use a word incorrectly in an attempt to impress you that he had a higher level of learning than he actually had. And when he warmed up, he liked to tell stories, liked to brag about himself and the things that he had done.
What kind of things, criminal activities?
I'm basing this on the conversations I had with people who actually knew Escobar. He was stoned a lot [on marijuana], and when he was stoned and relaxed he would tell stories. For instance, Roberto Uribe, who was one of his lawyers, said that at one point Escobar told him how, as a young man, he'd go into banks all by himself and rob them, but be very polite, like he was enjoying himself. It was his way of demonstrating how cool he was, how in control he was, how he could handle fear.
He wasn't much of a cocaine user, but he did smoke a lot of grass.
I believe that's true, yes.
It seems odd to me. Here's this guy -- a gangster kingpin, a drug lord -- who's got to stay on top of things, but then he's a stoner, which is usually associated with being laid-back. Doesn't that impress you as being out of character?
Maybe, but it was part of his mentality; I think he believed he functioned better when he was stoned. It was a way of being hip, cool, a way of separating himself from standard establishment figures. He saw himself as a countercultural figure, his criminality was all part and parcel of that.
