Pubdate: Tue, 23 Jan 2007
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2007 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author: Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times

MILITARY HAS CUT ROLE IN DRUG WAR

WASHINGTON - Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
the U.S. military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, 
leaving significant gaps in U.S. narcotics interdiction efforts.

Since 1989, Congress has directed the Pentagon to be the lead federal 
agency in detecting and monitoring, by air and sea, illegal narcotics 
shipments headed to the United States, and in supporting Coast Guard 
efforts to intercept them. In the early 1990s, at the height of the 
drug war, U.S. military planes and boats filled the Southern skies 
and waters in search of cocaine-laden drug vessels coming from 
Colombia and elsewhere in South America.

But since 2002, the military has withdrawn many of those assets, said 
more than a dozen current and former counter-narcotics officials. A 
review of congressional, military and Homeland Security documents 
showed the same thing.

Internal records show that in the last four years the Pentagon has 
reduced by more than 62 percent its aerial surveillance flight hours 
over Caribbean and Pacific Ocean routes that are used to smuggle in 
cocaine, marijuana and, increasingly, Colombia-produced heroin. At 
the same time, the Navy is deploying one-third fewer patrol boats for 
detecting and catching smugglers.

The Defense Department also plans to withdraw as many as 10 Black 
Hawk helicopters that have been used by a multi-agency task force to 
move quickly to make drug seizures and arrests in the Caribbean, a 
major hub for drugs heading to the United States.

The Department of Defense defended its policy shift in a budget 
document sent to Congress in October: "The DOD position is that 
detecting drug trafficking is a lower priority than supporting our 
service members on ongoing combat missions."

It's hard to gauge the impact of the pullback, because authorities 
said they know only how much narcotics they are seizing, not how much 
is getting through, especially with fewer surveillance planes and 
boats to gather intelligence.

In the budget report to Congress, the Pentagon estimated recently 
that it detected 22 percent of the "actionable maritime events" in 
fiscal 2006 because it "lacks the optimal number of assets."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman