After company confessed to paying terrorists, Chertoff took no action
 At an April 24, 2003 meeting with then-assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, a board member of banana giant Chiquita International gave a startling confession: his company was paying hundreds of thousands to a Colombian paramilitary group on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations.
"Roderick M. Hills, who had sought the meeting with former law firm colleague Michael Chertoff, explained that Chiquita was paying
'protection money' to a Colombian paramilitary group," the Washington Post's Carol D. Leonnig reports. "Hills said he knew that such payments were illegal, according to sources and court records, but said that he needed Chertoff's advice."
Chertoff confirmed that the payments were illegal, according to five sources familiar with the meeting who talked to the Post. He told Hills to wait for more feedback, but that feedback never came.
Chiquita then took the lack of response as a signal the US was tacitly implying they should continue paying.
"Justice officials have acknowledged in court papers that an official at the meeting said they understood Chiquita's situation was 'complicated,' and three of the sources identified that official as Chertoff," Leonnig added. "They said he promised to get back to the company after conferring with national security advisers and the State Department about the larger ramifications for U.S. interests if the corporate giant pulled out overnight."
Chiquita sources said neither Chertoff nor Larry D. Thompson, the deputy attorney general whom the company contacted after Chertoff left his job for a federal judgeship in 2003, got back to them. The firm continued making payments for another year -- eventually acknowledging they'd paid at least $1.7 million to the Colombian group.
"Chiquita's executives left the meeting convinced that the government had not clearly demanded that the payments stop," the Post adds. "Federal prosecutors, however, are now weighing whether to charge Hills; Robert Olson, who was then Chiquita's general counsel; former Chiquita CEO Cyrus Friedheim; and other former company officials for approving the illegal payments, according to records and sources close to the probe."
The company has since pled guilty to pay more than a million dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. Lawyers for the former Chiquita executives, who say they confessed in good faith and were never told to stop, say they were waiting for an answer "from the highest levels of the Bush administration."
"If what you want to encourage is voluntary self-disclosure, what message does this send to other companies?" asked Eric H. Holder, deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. "Here's a company that voluntarily self-discloses in a national security context, where the company gets treated pretty harshly, [and] then on top of that, you go after individuals who made a really painful decision."
Chertoff spokesman Russ Knocke wouldn't talk to the Post.
"I'm declining all comment, because there is an investigation ongoing," Knocke said.
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