Colombian group wanted explosives in Clinton's path

 BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
 

 BOGOTA, Colombia -- With President Clinton's whirlwind visit to the city of
 Cartagena fast approaching, Colombian and U.S. security officials last August
 worked frantically to prevent Colombia's largest and most feared leftist guerrilla
 group from placing explosives near Clinton's path.

 The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, came close in its
 attempt, according to reports confirmed recently by U.S. officials. But intercepts
 of cellular phone calls between a FARC commander and rebels inside Cartagena
 allowed security forces to thwart the bombers.

 Four rebels were captured as they assembled a bomb just three hours before
 Clinton arrived Aug. 30. Four sticks of dynamite and a half-dozen grenades were
 found the previous day near a government agency Clinton visited.

 U.S. Justice Department officials later asked for transcripts of the phone calls
 with a view to filing charges of plotting an attempt on the life of a federal official.
 But they dropped the case after concluding there was no proof of intent to harm
 Clinton, U.S. officials said.

 ``The attempts were aimed at structures around Clinton, not him,'' said Col.
 Germán Jaramillo, head of Colombia's secret police. ``But any little pop would
 have been a disaster.''

 That's what the FARC was after. ``We want to rain on his party,'' bombing plot
 chief Gustavo Rueda, who uses the nom de guerre of Martín Caballero, was heard
 telling one of his men in Cartagena in a phone call.

 Forty-five days earlier, Clinton had announced he would visit Colombia to
 figuratively hand over $1.3 billion in U.S. aid for President Andrés Pastrana's
 offensive on drug traffickers. The 20,000-member FARC immediately condemned
 the visit, saying that the U.S. assistance showed ``imperialist'' meddling in
 Colombian affairs.

 The Caribbean resort city chosen for Clinton's visit was regarded as one of the
 safest areas in the country. Security officials took no chances. Some 4,700
 Colombian soldiers and police plus 200 agents from the U.S. Secret Service, FBI
 and DEA maintained three concentric rings around Clinton throughout the visit.

 ``We were monitoring every single cellular and beeper call made in Cartagena for
 weeks before the visit,'' said a Colombian intelligence official who played a major
 role in the security arrangements.

 Washington sent in surveillance helicopters while the Colombian navy and air
 force deployed three frigates, two submarines and a fleet of small boats. The
 FARC, meanwhile, ordered Rueda, a 38-year-old doctor and veteran guerrilla who,
 at the time, commanded its 37th Front, to disrupt the visit.

 At 1 p.m. the day before Clinton's visit the Colombian Navy began intercepting
 calls from Rueda in the nearby countryside to two FARC cells inside the city.

 Made on cellular phones with prepaid cards so their owners could not be
 identified, the calls spoke of a FARC attempt to detonate several small explosive
 devices near Clinton on the day of his visit.

 Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá confirmed that Colombian authorities
 notified them of the plot and the efforts to stop it. As part of routine procedures,
 they considered canceling the visit, but concluded that security was tight enough.

 At the same time, Colombian security forces launched a frenzied search in
 Cartagena for the guerrillas and their explosives, according to the weekly Cambio
 and Semana magazines, which first reported the FARC plot.

 ``Everything they reported was true,'' Jaramillo said in an interview. ``The president
 was never in any danger.''

 Colombian security officials say the 50 hours of phone conversations they
 recorded show the two FARC cells tried to put at least four explosive devices, and
 perhaps, six in and near the walled Old City of Cartagena.

 ``We are working in four parts. Two inside and two outside the Old City,'' one
 guerrilla reported to Rueda in a transcript published by Semana. Rueda's reply:
 ``Try to drive them crazy.''

 Police first found a hoax bomb on the afternoon of Aug. 29 beside a fruit stand in
 the open-air Bazurto Market inside the Old City.

 Two hours later, police seized four dynamite sticks and six hand grenades and
 arrested three FARC members five blocks from a government agency that Clinton
 would visit the following day, Colombian security officials said.

 That was the only explosive device publicly announced during Clinton's visit.
 Police described it as a ``propaganda bomb'' designed to scatter FARC leaflets
 and it received little attention.

 At 2 a.m. on Aug. 30, police arrested a FARC member after the accidental
 explosion of a detonating cap as he built a third bomb in a poor suburb, security
 officials said. The suspect lost a hand in the blast.

 Colombian security officials said they then began scouring the city looking for the
 fourth device, questioning scores of suspected FARC sympathizers and launching
 almost house-by-house searches.

 But it wasn't until 7 a.m., just three hours before Air Force One landed in
 Cartagena, that an elite police commando unit located the fourth device.

 Alerted by neighbors' report of suspicious men, they burst into an apartment in
 the upscale Bocagrande neighborhood and found four men in their underwear
 building a bomb, the officials said.

 The explosives were to have been placed under a bridge that Clinton's motorcade
 passed on the way from the airport, according to the report in Cambio.

 Clinton's whirlwind trip went off without a hitch -- at least none that became public
 at the time. The next day, when a journalist chatting with a U.S. security agent
 noted that the visit had gone well, the official smiled and said: ``What you saw
 went OK. What you didn't see was even better.''