MAIL CALL

Colombia's President

Our Aug. 9 story on Alvaro Uribe, based on a controversial Pentagon report, led readers to the Colombian president's defense. Cried one, "NEWSWEEK, you were had!" Said another, "Uribe is winning the drug war."

Defending Uribe's Record

It's unfair of NEWSWEEK to publish a declassified "intelligence" report from 1991 that leaves the impression that, at the time, the U.S. government suspected Alvaro Uribe, now president of Colombia, of being linked to narcotics trafficking ("Off the Hook?" Aug. 9). To the contrary, Uribe was known to those of us who followed his career as one of those brave public figures willing to openly proclaim their opposition to the drug cartel that then threatened to dominate his home city of Medellin. I was chief of South American affairs in the State Department when I first saw that inaccurate report from the Defense attache and complained. The U.S. Embassy in Bogota later corrected the record. That correction should have been declassified along with the original sloppy report that NEWSWEEK too readily credited.
Phillip McLean
Washington, D.C.