non-U.S. billionaires.^[32]  Anyone with that kind of cash would be above the law almost anywhere, but in Colombia he was a law unto himself.  He offered the criminal justice system a simple choice: plata o plomo—silver or lead—cash or death.  He set the stylistic tone for his M.O. early in his career when he was arrested with a truckful of cocaine at a roadblock in 1979. After a brief stay in jail, his arrest was mysteriously revoked, the records vanished, and the two cops who busted him were murdered. He hadn’t seen the inside of a jail since, even though his rap sheet included the assassination of the Colombian Minister of Justice, the Attorney General, dozens of judges and journalists, scores of innocent civilians, and the machine gun massacre of 30 peasants.^[33]

 The Bush Administration was obsessed with Escobar because he more than anyone was responsible for industrializing the cocaine trade. Prior to 1980 the business had been dominated by individual operators flying single plane-loads or using “mules” to hand carry the stuff through customs. But all that changed dramatically after a bizzare incident in Medellin that had nothing to do with drugs.  In fall of 1981, a Marxist guerrilla group broke into the university and grabbed Marta Nieves Ochoa, the sister of a major local trafficker. Kidnapping the wealthy to finance revolution was a hallowed tradition in Latin America but this time the guerrillas made a fatal error. These narco-traffickers were not your ordinary capitalists. Instead of paying up, they called a council of war and formed a new organization called Muerto a Secuestradores—Death to Kidnappers—or, alternatively, to “their colleagues or the nearest relatives.”^[34]  The announcement, handed out on street corners and dropped from helicopters, contained a startling revelation. Over two hundred organizations had been present at this conclave, and each had agreed to donate ten men to the cause. Over the next ninety days their 2000-man hit squad rained horror and destruction on the Marxists. In Medellin, they invaded homes and blew away people merely suspected of involvement with the kidnappers,