Castro and US interior secretary Bruce Babbitt in attendance. In his inauguration speech, he made the drug war a special priority while warning that no one was in a position to lecture Colombia on how to fight that war. Drug war In June 1995, Samper claimed that his administration had made considerable progress in fighting the drug war—which had cost Colombia "countless lives" in the previous ten years, "including more than 3,000 police officers and soldiers, 23 judges, 63 journalists and four presidential candidates"—by launching an "integrated, multi-front attack on the cartels" that targeted "bank accounts, laboratories, crops, chemicals, transportation systems and political connections." In June 1995, a money-laundering law was signed; and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, a leader of the Cali Cartel, was arrested, one of over 1,100 cartel members arrested so far in the year. By August, five more cartel leaders—Henry Loaiza-Ceballos, Victor Patiño-Fomeque, José Santacruz Londoño, Phanor Arizabaleta-Arzayus, and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela—had been arrested, leaving Hélmer Herrera the only top leader at large. In the first half of 1995, about of coca crops and over of heroin crops were destroyed, much more than in 1994; more than of liquid chemicals and of solid chemicals were destroyed; of heroin were confiscated; and 243 drug labs were destroyed. In 1995, Colombia's Caribbean islands became bases from which the military could intercept drug shipments and communications. Unprecedented police operations in the city of Cali took place with the same objective of disrupting drug trafficking. Under strong U.S. pressure, leaders of the Cali Cocaine cartel are targets of a massive manhunt involving about 6,000 troops. Now controlling about 80 percent of the global multibillion-dollar cocaine trade, the loose-knit Cali syndicate is considered... to be one of the most difficult criminal enterprises to penetrate. While... anti-narcotics efforts concentrated on the rival Medellín cartel in the 1980s, the Cali organization grew... Instead of fighting the state through a campaign of terrorism, the leaders here set out to buy influence and control the economy.... all the leaders run separate trafficking, intelligence and security organizations, but they coordinate drug shipments and share information. With an intelligence apparatus encompassing hotel clerks, corrupt policemen and politicians and a taxi fleet of several thousand, the movements of police and army units are constantly monitored. To combat such corruption, Gen. Rosso José Serrano, commander of the National Police... [i]n the last two months... [has] kicked out 220 officers... 400 noncommissioned