Success in the War on Drugs
By JOHN A. PANNETON, National President
The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy continue to expand their contributions
to an already impressive cooperative effort to run down the “go-fast” boats
of drug runners operating off the nation’s coasts and
stifle the activities of large cartels that each year send
tons of cocaine, marijuana and other drugs from South America
and Mexico into the United States.
Begun 12 years ago, the coordinated antidrug effort has fostered
new tactics that sent cocaine seizures skyward, led to the
Coast Guard’s arrest of one of the world’s most
notorious and violent narcotics traffickers, and involved unprecedented
levels of cooperation between U.S. federal agencies and foreign
governments.
Many of the successes are the work of the Joint Interagency
Task Force South (JIATF-South), an international organization
created in 1994. Comprising domestic organizations such as
the Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, Customs and Border Protection,
Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI, the task force also involves
military forces of the Netherlands, France, Great Britain and
several South American countries, including Colombia and Peru.
Based in Key West, Fla., and assigned primary responsibility
for interdiction of south-to-north traffickers, the task force
has become expert at fusing information from intelligence and
law enforcement agencies and international partners.
Until the late 1990s, however, results were modest as the
drug runners’ 70-knot go-fast boats regularly outran
their pursuers. The Coast Guard developed new tactics, creating
eight helicopter interdiction detachments trained to stop the
go-fasts by disabling their engines with laser-sighted .50-caliber
sniper rifles. The Coast Guard contributed enormously to a
huge increase in drug seizures by JIATF-South in the 42-million
square mile transit zone between South and North America.
For example, cocaine seizures rose from 176 metric tons in
2003 to 254 metric tons in 2005, when JIATF-South stopped 66
go-fasts and 49 fishing vessels carrying cocaine.
Coast Guard training of JIATF-South partners will bolster
those results. In November 2005, for example, the British ship
HMS Cumberland and its onboard helicopter interdicted a go-fast
in the Caribbean, seizing 2 metric tons of cocaine. It was
the first time the British had successfully employed the airborne-use-of-force
tactics developed by the Coast Guard.
The Navy, like all Defense Department military services, is
legally barred from law-enforcement tasks, and has been confined
to performing surveillance missions and deploying Coast Guard
teams on its ships. But with the Maritime Transportation Act
of 2004 allowing Coast Guard gunners to fire from Navy helicopters,
the two services can now devote more muscle to the antidrug
fight.
Joint efforts pay off, and probably have put an end to the
long criminal career of Francisco Javier Arellano-Felix, leader
of the Arellano-Felix Organization (AFO), a drug cartel operating
out of Mexico’s Baja California. The AFO smuggled drugs
into the United States in multi-ton quantities and was infamous
for its brutality. The U.S. State Department had posted a $5
million reward for the capture of Arellano-Felix. Working closely
with the Drug Enforcement Agency and other organizations, the
Coast Guard arrested him Aug. 14 in international waters off
the coast of Mexico.
Rear Adm. Jody Breckenridge, commander of the 11th Coast Guard
District, said the operation’s success was directly attributable
to information sharing and collaborative planning among several
federal agencies. The investigation of Arellano-Felix was coordinated
by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, a joint
venture that includes the Coast Guard and JIATF-South.
The arrest was a terrific coup and an example of how cooperation
between the military and federal agencies — and their
international partners — can foster huge successes. The
partner organizations of JIATF-South have set a resounding
example for other collaborative efforts to follow.
Semper Fidelis.
