Buy the book at Stanford University Press or Amazon.
I am happy to speak via Skype to classes reading my book, please contact me at wltate at colby dot edu.
Reading questions for undergraduate students: Reading Questions
You can find more background on the Colombian conflict in the first chapter of my first book, Colombia Mapping the Eternal Crisis.
You can find some of the declassified cables and government reports used in the book at the National Security Archive’s Colombia Project.
For more on the declassified documents used in Chapter 2: Human Rights Policymaking and Military Aid, see the document collection Conditioning Security Assistance.
For example, on page 72:
Colombian officials were not the only ones opposed to the inclusion of human rights issues in foreign policy: some U.S. officials also believed that enforcement of the Leahy requirements made the U.S. military vulnerable to pressure from civilian agencies, to reduced bud gets and material supplies, and to an erosion of mission control. Some also argued that such requirements weakened U.S. allies involved in complex conflicts. In one of the most telling examples, declassified embassy cables revealed that during a May 1997 trip to Colombia, while the Leahy EUM agreement was being negotiated, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert explicitly expressed his rejection of the human rights conditions in meetings with Colombian officials. He told Colombian military officials that he would work to “remove conditions on assistance” and complained about the previous years of “leftist” influence in the U.S. Congress that “used human rights as an excuse to aid the left in other countries.” Hastert promised to promote counternarcotics assistance and recommended that Colombian officials should “bypass the U.S. executive branch and communicate directly with Congress.”
The cable referenced above: Hastert cable.
Witness for Peace produced a 25 minute documentary about US drug policy in Colombia, Shoveling Water: War on Drugs, War on People.
For more on fumigation, see Putumayo.