The Drug Lord's Dame; A secret affair reveals Colombia's 'pact with the devil.'.(Virginia Vallejo, Pablo Escobar, and politicians and traffickers relations)

Byline: Steven Ambrus

For more than a decade Virginia Vallejo held her tongue about her torrid love affair with Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. But when the former newscaster finally broke her silence last month, her sensational accusations became the talk of the nation. In an interview with the Miami Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald, the 56-year-old ex-model declared that Escobar plotted the 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos GalAn with Alberto Santofimio, a former cabinet minister and senator who at the time was contemplating his own run for Colombia's top job. Currently on trial in BogotA for conspiring to murder GalAn, Santofimio allegedly urged Escobar on three occasions in the mid-'80s to "neutralize" the popular politician, according to Vallejo. "Santofimio envisioned not only the killing of GalAn but also the transformation of the country into a narco-state," said Vallejo. "Everything was aimed at making Santofimio president ... and ensuring that his successor would be Escobar."

However far-fetched that scenario might seem in hindsight, Vallejo's disclosures provided fresh evidence tying prominent Colombian politicians to the country's leading drug traffickers. And then some. Within 48 hours of the Nuevo Herald story, the U.S. Embassy in BogotA announced it had "facilitated" the once glamorous--now indigent and nearly blind--anchor's flight to the United States; she had offered to provide information to authorities on several cases "of potential interest." That triggered speculation that Vallejo, who said she had also befriended Escobar's drug-trafficking rival Gilberto Rodriguez ...