Pubdate: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 Source: Chicago Tribune (IL) Copyright: 2002 Chicago Tribune Company Contact: http://www.chicagotribune.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82 Author: Los Angeles Times NARCOTICS, TERRORISM CONNECTED, U.S. FINDS WASHINGTON -- The United States has determined that about one-third of foreign terrorist organizations are trafficking in narcotics on a large scale, providing authorities with "shocking" insight into how two of the nation's most serious threats are connected, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Tuesday. "Law enforcement has been aware for some time of significant linkages between terrorism and drug trafficking. But we have not had the tools to quantify the drugs-terrorism nexus until now," Ashcroft said in a speech before the annual conference of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force. Earlier this year, Ashcroft said, he asked federal law enforcement agencies to draw up a list that quantifies all the major narcotics trafficking groups who are responsible for the U.S. drug supply. "Following extraordinary collaboration and information-sharing between agencies, this list has been developed--and what it reveals is shocking," the attorney general stated. "Nearly one-third of the organizations on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations appear also on our list of targeted U.S. drug suppliers." Cross-matching the lists is providing authorities with substantial leads in their global war on terrorism, Ashcroft noted, as well as helping to combat the growing problem of narco-traffickers responsible for selling cocaine, heroin and other drugs worldwide. Ashcroft's remarks came as U.S. authorities, working with state and local officials and their counterparts in Mexico, announced they had arrested more than 2,120 fugitives along the Southwest border in recent months. Ashcroft did not elaborate on which terrorist groups are suspected of being involved in drug trafficking. Justice Department officials would not comment on what organizations are on the drug trafficking list, except to say that Al Qaeda was one of them. "They are definitely using the drug trade to finance their operations, but it is not the major source of funding," one Justice Department official said of Al Qaeda, which U.S. officials have said was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. "They get more money from donations and trading in gold and other precious metals. It's a serious problem, but it's hard to say this is where we should be putting all our resources." Specifically, the Justice Department official said, Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime that protected it made millions of dollars from the heroin trade in Afghanistan. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth