James T. Callahan: “Mr. Chairman, I do not profess to be an expert on Colombia or any other country. In fact, I do not profess to be an…”

“Mr. Chairman, I do not profess to be an expert on Colombia or any other country. In fact, I do not profess to be an expert on anything, but I have been involved in some of these issues because I chaired the committee that my good friend from Arizona now does so well in chairing, and I was intimately involved when we first created Plan Colombia. Let me just give my colleagues some insight into what really happened. All of the G-8 nations got together, and they recognized collectively that there was a tremendous problem in Colombia because they were the basis for the supply of narcotics all over the world. The Europeans recognized it. The Japanese recognized it. Everyone recognized the problem. So they had a donor conference and they agreed collectively to come up with $7 billion to fight this problem. So we went to President Pastrana and we said, Mr. President, we are going to participate too. Our participation is going to be $2 billion. And the rest of the nations, according to the Clinton administration, at the time said that they were not going to contribute anything until we did. So we ponied up. We came up with our $2 billion, and we sent our $2 billion mostly in the form of black hawk helicopters. But we sent our $2 billion and we told President Pastrana, here we are. This is the first step towards eliminating the problem in your country and thus helping the United States of America.”