As you know, your dad always dives into any problem with all his energy. He has lately been very involved in agreements with the Colombian Gov't about using some bases.
This picture makes it look like they were guarding HIM especially, but as you remember, they guard all installations, and likely they were guards for the Ministry building.
He said he was running as fast as he could to go past the press. this picture is from the LA Times, 31 Oct, but I understand it was picked up by the Washington Post and some other newspapers.
He gave the briefing to the Colombian military officers last week. He had words prepared for answers to questions that were not resolved yet, he said it went well.
There is a lot of negative publicity here calling them "bases gringas" but the truth is that the US has been using some bases for many years, there is a problem, in my view with oversight. Some special forces and contractors have no chain of command in the country, and are kind of running wild. The americans also complained about lack of standards for runways and fire trucks and so on.
So this agreement was necessary to regulate the use of resources and also use and construction of additional structures and so on.
Dad said there were big arguments over words like "shall" and that the wording was a big problem.
