Pubdate: Mon, 21 Oct 2002
Source: Laurel Leader-Call (MS)
Copyright: 2002 Laurel Leader-Call
Contact:  http://www.leadercall.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1662
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

PENTAGON QUIETLY SHIFTS DRUG WAR RESOURCES TO TERRORISM EFFORT

WASHINGTON -- Citing the need to redirect resources to the war on 
terrorism, the Pentagon has quietly decided to scale back its effort to 
combat international drug trafficking, a central element of the national 
"war on drugs" for 14 years.

Officials are still weighing how exactly to pare the $1-billion-a-year 
program, but they want to reduce deployment of special operations troops on 
counternarcotics missions and cut back the military's training of anti-drug 
police and soldiers in the United States and abroad. And they want to use 
intelligence-gathering equipment now devoted to counter-drug work for 
counterterrorism as well.

Congressional Questions

But the military's counternarcotics effort is highly popular among some on 
Capitol Hill, where the retrenchment plans could run into trouble. The 
plans have not yet been spelled out for lawmakers; however, Defense 
Department memos and interviews with current and former officials make the 
Pentagon's intentions clear.

Congress ordered a reluctant Pentagon to enter the drug war in 1988, when 
surging cocaine traffic from South America sparked a sense of crisis in the 
United States .

"We should not be relaxing our efforts in the war on drugs," said Rep. 
Porter J. Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Select Committee on 
Intelligence and an important advocate for the effort. "Terrorism is the 
highest priority, but drugs are still insidious."

The Pentagon's plans have been couched in indirect terms. They were 
signaled this summer in a memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. 
Wolfowitz and distributed to senior uniformed and civilian officials.

He said the department had "carefully reviewed its existing 
counternarcotics policy" because of "the changed national security 
environment, the corresponding shift in the department's budget and other 
priorities, and evolving support requirements." The Pentagon will now focus 
its counternarcotics activities on programs that, among other things, 
"contribute to the war on terrorism," he added.

But even before the Sept. 11 attacks, senior officials including Defense 
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had bluntly stated their lack of enthusiasm 
for the anti-drug mission, which they contend is better handled by civilian 
agencies.

Thus, some experts believe the Defense Department may be taking advantage 
of the war on terrorism to scale back a mission they never wanted.

Lawmakers who support the Pentagon's anti-drug mission have been worried 
for some time by what they view as signs that the Rumsfeld team intends to 
scale back the effort.

Early last year, top defense officials asked the Pentagon comptroller to 
study whether to continue the counternarcotics work and other 
"nontraditional" missions. The study recommended paring the program, former 
Defense officials say. And some observers note that Rumsfeld has not named 
a permanent assistant defense secretary for special operations and low 
intensity conflict, who is supposed to oversee the anti-drug program.

In an interview, Pentagon counter-drug chief Andre Hollis emphasized that 
the Pentagon wants to retain parts of the program that have worked well but 
that all the pieces are being examined to determine if each "is still a 
priority mission. The top priorities now are to defend the homeland and to 
win the war on terrorism."

Over the years, Hollis said, the counter-narcotics mission has multiplied 
into 179 separate sub-programs, a number he called "surreal." He said his 
first assignment when he came to the job in August 2001 was to conduct a 
"bottom-up review" that would distinguish what the Pentagon does well in 
counter-narcotics from "what we shouldn't be doing, or that didn't need to 
be done anymore."

In particular, Hollis said, Defense wants to reduce the burden on special 
operations forces, which are relatively few in number and in heavy demand 
for terrorism-related missions.

And when possible, he said, the department wants to double up on the use of 
intelligence-gathering equipment. If, for instance, a National Guard 
helicopter is flying along the California-Mexico border "looking for drug 
activity, there's no reason why they can't also be looking for terrorists," 
he said.

But a former senior Defense official, who asked for anonymity, said the 
counter-drug operations would inevitably get short shrift if forced to 
share equipment with anti-terrorism operations.

The Pentagon spent about $1 billion on drug-related operations in fiscal 
2002, out of a total federal counternarcotics outlay of $19 billion. The 
Pentagon has a bigger anti-drug budget than the Coast Guard, Customs 
Service or the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and accounts for a 
significant share of federal money spent to fight drugs abroad.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager