“You can run, but you can’t hide.”

These are tough times for terrorists and the despots who back them. On January 28, Abu Laith al-Libi, #3 in al Qaeda, was killed by a missile strike in Pakistan. Two weeks later, Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror-chieftain, Imad Mugniyah, met his demise in Damascus when his car exploded. Then, on March 1, Raul Reyes, second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), was killed in Ecuador. Three days later, Ali Saleh Nabhan, the al Qaeda “mastermind” of the 1998 attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was killed by a missile strike in Somalia.

Despite ideological disparities and geographic separation, all these terrorists were wanted for murdering and kidnapping American citizens. They had all benefited from the patronage and protection of dictators and warlords. All were tracked down through patient, persistent intelligence work. Their deaths demonstrate contemporary relevance of Ronald Reagan’s maxim following the capture of the terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro: “You can run, but you can’t hide.”

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Another old friend -- a former military officer with long and current contacts in the region -- put it this way: “Chavez is trying to distract the Venezuelan people from their disastrous economic straits -- despite record prices for petroleum – and divert the international community from focusing on what’s in the captured FARC computer records.” As for the troop deployments, “any Venezuelan soldiers ordered to the border region will be there to make sure that FARC founder Manuel Marulanda Velez -- ‘Tirofijo’ -- doesn’t get ‘taken out’ by the Colombians like Reyes was last week.”

U.S. DEA agents have long suspected that Tirofijo – now 77 and believed to be ill, is being protected in Venezuela. Though Mr. Chavez rejects charges that he is providing refuge to the much-wanted terrorist, e-mail exchanges in the captured computers cast serious doubt on his regime’s denials.

Having now seen some of these files, there is much to substantiate serious concern in Venezuela -- and elsewhere -- about what Mr. Chavez and his friends in the FARC have been up to. The captured computers provide details of long-term financial connections between Mr. Chavez and the FARC leadership; records of drug transactions connections; and conversations with American emissaries who assure that “Obama will be the next U.S. president.” There is even a reference to FARC obtaining 50 kilograms of radioactive material.

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