Sometimes Search Bloc commanders would ask the Americans to accompany them with a video camera to record payoffs to informants. There was such suspicion about corruption that the agents were asked to keep the camera focused on the bag of money from the minute it left the base until it was handed over to an informant.
When word of unauthorized excursions reached the U.S. Embassy, there was usually trouble. Murphy was told once, 'If you do it again, you will be back in the United States before your luggage arrives.' But with so little else to do inside the compound, it was hard for the Americans to sit back and watch.
The Search Bloc was, after all, trained, financed and even clandestinely guided by Americans. As Col. Martinez later described his feelings, the whole thing was in that sense an American production.
And now, just as friction between the Americans and Colombians at the Holguin Academy was beginning to subside, problems developed among the Americans. There is nothing unusual about competition between military and nonmilitary units thrown together on a mission, but in Colombia it grew into a significant bureaucratic battle.
The appetite for fresh intelligence from Medellin was fierce in Washington, which was pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the hunt. Each organization was out to prove that its men, equipment and methods were superior. Success on this unconventional mission in Colombia would likely have a big impact on future funding.
The CIA operated two kinds of aerial surveillance. It flew the wide-winged, silent Schweitzer aircraft to provide imagery, and had its own version of Centra Spike, code-named Majestic Eagle, to electronically eavesdrop on targets and pinpoint their location.
Centra Spike, the Army's secret unit, had its Beechcraft twin-engine planes performing essentially the same mission as the CIA's planes, but at a much lower cost. Centra Spike considered the CIA's radio telemetry inferior.
The Centra Spike team drew from the Army's vast talent pool, recruiting operators with both language and technical skills. These operators designed improvements to the system in the field, sending detailed suggestions to engineers in the United States. When Escobar switched from using standard cell phones to digital phones in 1989, for instance, it had taken the unit only 15 days to adapt.
There was always a race to send information back to Bogota and Washington. Pena remembers seeing the CIA and Centra Spike men actually racing from a meeting to be the first to telephone back new information.
Escobar's knowledge of electronics and law enforcement capabilities far exceeded the Middle East terrorists and Central American guerrillas Centra Spike had chased in the past. When Congress had begun authorizing more secret funds for Centra Spike after its early successes in Colombia, it was painful to the CIA. Now, with Escobar at large, the two units were competing head-to-head.
One problem for Centra Spike was that it reported to the CIA station chief. So even delivering fresh intelligence first was no guarantee of getting credit for it.
The Centra Spike operators were furious when a report from the National Security Council congratulated the CIA for useful information that in fact had been gathered by Centra Spike. Because budget dollars would grow more scarce in 1993 and the years ahead, it was more than just galling to see the CIA taking credit for the Army unit's success. It was a threat to the unit's survival. The Centra Spike commander, Maj. Steve Jacoby, complained bitterly to Ambassador Busby.
A competition was arranged: The rival units ran a series of field trials to see which could do a better job of pinpointing targets. They set up phony targets over Medellin and flew a series of missions in late 1992.
The contest wasn't even close. Centra Spike pinpointed signals to just under 200 meters. The best the CIA plane could do was more than four miles, even after trying three separate telemetry methods. That settled things, and the CIA backed off its claims for Majestic Eagle.
Centra Spike got another boost in congressional funding, and the operators looked forward to new equipment in the coming year that would double their system's accuracy as they tried to close the gap in the hunt for Pablo Escobar.
Up in their Beechcraft spy plane over Medellin one day, the Centra Spike operators were stunned by what they overheard.
They had just picked up a brief radio transmission from Pablo Escobar. They plotted the coordinates, then sent the data to the Search Bloc headquarters. There, the unit's commander, Col. Hugo Martinez, shared the information with his top officers.
It was at this point that the Centra Spike men picked up a phone call from the base. Someone was calling from the Search Bloc headquarters to warn Escobar. Apparently there was a soplon, a traitor, within Martinez's handpicked inner circle.
Escobar had been tipped off in plenty of time to escape. But the Centra Spike operators had recorded the soplon's warning - 'They're on their way, they're coming for you!' - which had gone out to an Escobar associate called Pinina.
Several days later, a Centra Spike technician visited Martinez at the base and played the tape. The colonel didn't recognize the voice, but he assumed it was one of the men on his command staff. So the colonel dismissed all but his two or three most trusted officers, sending all the others to Bogota for reassignment.
Eight days later, after briefing only his top commander, Maj. Hugo Aguilar, about a pending raid, Martinez was again called by the man from Centra Spike: Minutes after sending coordinates to the Search Bloc base, the unit had picked up another telephone warning to Pinina.
'If it isn't you,' the American said, 'it has to be one of the men who are right there with you.'
Martinez was angry, and frightened. It had only been two minutes! He knew he could trust Aguilar ... or could he? He summoned the major to his office and confronted him. Aguilar swore he had made no such call, and was wounded to be accused.
Martinez felt wounded, too. Aguilar said he had conveyed the colonel's plans to three other top officers, but that was it. The information had not traveled outside the Search Bloc's smaller new inner circle.
The colonel was spooked. If he couldn't carry on a conversation with his most trusted officer without Escobar finding out about it minutes later, what hope did he have of ever catching the man? Within 30 minutes, he was on a helicopter to Bogota, where he turned in his resignation. He explained to the generals that the situation
